“We haven’t forgotten about Australia, obviously, we love to play here, but unfortunately because it’s so big over there, there’s millions more people over there, by the time we play a festival season over there and do our headline tour, it’s months and months and all of a sudden the year’s gone,” says Airbourne guitarist David Roads.
As Dave admits, nowadays Warrnambool-bred rockers Airbourne spend the majority of their time overseas and the lion’s share of that is spent in Europe, where the band’s quintessentially Aussie brand of rock and roll sees them billed at the top of festival lineups and playing in front of “anything from 70 to 100,000 people” by Dave’s estimate.
“Germany is the first big country that took us on board in Europe,” Dave recounts. “Then we sort of blew up in France. It’s sort of big all over the place there. Most of mainland Europe we do well in and we’ve even grown in eastern Europe.”
“We’re now starting to go to places like Serbia, Lithuania, Croatia, and Russia. We never used to go that far east, but we’re starting to do that now.” Back home things are admittedly quieter, but Airbourne are grateful for the reception the European crowds give them.
“We’ve had a few ups and downs throughout our career,” says Dave. “Our career was nearly doomed from the start, before we released our first album. Capitol Records got bought out by Virgin Records and just about every band on the label got dropped.”
“There were bands on tour that lost all their tour support and I think we were on tour with Dallas Crane, we’d just finished recording our first album, and then that happened and we thought that would really damage us but we had our lawyers fight for our album and we got it back.”
“We went back to America, showcased it as SXSW, and that’s when Roadrunner picked us up. We stayed with the Americans and being signed to Roadrunner made it easier to go to America a lot and that made it easier to make the jump over to Europe. That’s how we got our foot in the door in the Northern Hemisphere.”
Airbourne haven’t just got their foot in the doors, they’ve obliterated the door with battering ram force and proceeded mercilessly crush everything underfoot. The band’s manager, Gregg Donovan, who also takes care of Grinspoon and Josh Pyke, mused on the situation back in 2007.
“We’re doing really well with one of our acts, Airbourne, who we can’t get arrested in Sydney – we’re lucky to sell out the Annandale – but yet these kids from Warrnambool are selling 30,000 tickets in two weeks in the UK,” he told ABC News.
“They’re doing unbelievable business. They’ve been breaking all over the place, and that’s been really difficult.” Whilst the band’s American label proved the key to breaking into Europe, back home the gatekeeper, everyone seems to agree, is national youth broadcaster triple j.
Back in January 2014, Cherry Bar owner James Young wrote an op-ed for Tone Deaf in which he criticised the station’s lack of support for homegrown Aussie rock bands, specifically citing Airbourne. So does the band agree with Young’s views?
“I think triple j did play us a long, long time ago back in the day, but yeah, it does hurt you a little bit, because triple j is a powerful radio station in this country,” Dave says. “It would be good if they were playing more Australian bands, but I guess we’re not too fussed about it now.”
We know we’ve got our fans here and our hard rock fans, but I guess with the support of triple j it would get across to a broader audience because they’ve got coverage of the whole country.”
“I know Triple M played us as well, but it didn’t get in some of the rural areas and that’s where a lot of our fans are. Because they’re so isolated they don’t hear about us unless they’re following music magazines or online.”
But when asked whether Airbourne’s career would’ve played out differently had they received triple j support, Dave’s not sure. “Hard to tell, really,” he says. “Maybe, just maybe we might’ve gotten that bit bigger with constant play from triple j.”
“If a mainstream radio station like triple j got behind you and played your new singles or album like they do with popular bands of the time and give you heavy rotation it would have an impact. But that’s the way our career’s been so far.”
We’ve never had mainstream radio support anyway, we’ve been the slow-growing sort of band, as opposed to the overnight success thing. We’ve been doing the hard yards, playing as much as we can, and that seems to be working for us.”
You know the deal, Airbourne are a band that just likes to make rock and roll and that’s always been the top priority, as it was during the recording of their latest album Breakin’ Outta Hell.
“We recorded it at Sing Sing in Melbourne. It’s the first album we’ve recorded on home turf, which was good for once,” Dave says of the album. “We recorded with Bob Marlette, the producer we worked with on our first album.”
“It’s a rocking album. Every song’s had the attention poured into it. We spent enough time in pre-production, working with Bob and rehearsing, to give each song the proper attention. I feel like sometimes we’re a bit rushed in the studio.”
“Timelines get tight and that and you feel like you’re rushing the last part of it, but we had the right amount of time to get it right. Just the overall sound of it all — the songs are really exciting — and the album sounds amazing, the guitar tones, the drum tones, everything.”
Airbourne’s new album, ‘Breakin’ Outta Hell‘, is out now. Their national tour kicks off January 2017 – check below for dates and get your hands on the album here.
Airbourne National Tour Dates
Saturday, 7th January 2017
Summernats, Canberra
Tickets: Summernats
Friday, 13th January 2017
The Metro Theatre, Sydney
Tickets: Metro Theatre
Saturday, 14th January 2017
The Triffid, Brisbane
Tickets: The Triffid
Friday, 20th January 2017
Trak, Melbourne
Tickets: Trak
