ANGEL CITY - Shadows Fall, Sun Rises... Page 3
by Martin Popoff

"Well, I'm a rhythm guitar player. I've never really bothered - or had much of a great desire - to be a lead player. So it's really easy for Rick and I, because he has. He's a fantastic lead player and he actually just gets better over the years. He's playing incredibly these days, and he really always has, I think. I suppose he's much more applied than me. I've always played guitar to sing through. My biggest influences have been Bob Dylan, The Band, Neil Young, etc. I've always been into songs, so I basically play guitar to sing to them. And I love rock. So I'm a rhythm player. I like John Lennon, Keith Richards. Those are my biggest influences, whereas Rick is more influenced by people like Dave Gilmour from Pink Floyd, Jeff Beck. So it's really easy for us, because we've never been competing on the same level; we just combine very well. It's something that happens with brothers; I don't know what it is. Right now I'm over here in South Australia sitting at the front by the sea, and I reckon if I picked up my guitar, and Rick picked up his guitar in Sydney, which is a thousand miles away, I have a feeling we'd be playing in tune and in time with each other (laughs). This just something that happens. Angus and Malcolm from AC/DC, as brothers, the Finn Brothers... it's just something that happens with brothers."

Asked about the split between Brewster Brothers and Angels duties these days, John explains that "The duo... Rick and I are doing things like folk festivals. We just did the Port Fairy Folk Festival, and we play gigs like The Basement. It's one of the best places to see a band anyone in the world. It's full up with 400 people in it, and it's an intimate kind of situation, and that's what we're doing with the Brewster Brothers. And we don't work the Brewster Brothers too often now. We're now a ticketed band; we paid our dues all over again with the Brewster Brothers, and now we're playing with some fabulous musicians. We've got a violinist called Clare O'Meara who joins us, and the whole thing is quite different to The Angels, but equally exciting to us. Now, The Angels is a band that can go into virtually any town in Australia and we've got a household name. So we can go into places way out and pull hundreds of people. So when we go on the road, we go and do those sorts of things. So we probably work The Angels 75% of the time, and Brewster Brothers 25% of the time. But the Brewster Brothers is equally as important."

And what have the other two Angels guys (drummer Buzz Bidstrup and bassist Chris Bailey) been doing all those years that they were out of the band?

ANGEL CITY - Shadows Fall, Sun Rises... Page 4