Icons: The Sunnyboys

After a big first album, Sydney’s power-pop greats struggled with label pressure and an increasingly erratic frontman for their next two. Now they’re back in action, three decades after forming. PATRICK EMERY maps the unlikely trajectory with members Peter Oxley and Richard Burgman.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] In 1981, with a critically acclaimed debut album, a brilliant young songwriter in Jeremy Oxley and a reputation for powerful live shows, The Sunnyboys’ future seemed as bright as the band’s name implied. Less than five years later, the dream had faded. The Sunnyboys’ second and third albums had largely tanked, and the band’s relationship with its label had soured. Jeremy Oxley was displaying the early signs of the mental illness with which he’d be diagnosed some years later. Jeremy would subsequently re-form a version of The Sunnyboys with himself as the only original member; plagued by Jeremy’s erratic on- and off-stage behaviour, the band’s light was eventually snuffed out in the early 1990s.

Mushroom Records’ 25th anniversary brought about a partial reunion – Tim Oxley filled in for original guitarist Richard Burgman, who had moved to Canada – while a mooted 2004 reunion was stillborn when it was realised Jeremy was not in the required psychological and emotional space to return to the fold. For many fans – not to mention the members of the band – it seemed that The Sunnyboys would remain a distant memory.

Then came the announcement of the first performance of the original Sunnyboys line-up in 28 years. Listed originally as Kids in Dust – a pseudonym the band used in the early 1980s when playing the Trade Union Club – the re-formed Sunnyboys took pride of place in the line-up for the Sydney leg of the Dig It Up! festival curated by the Hoodoo Gurus last April. For a band seemingly lost to the dustbin of history, it was a triumphant return to form.

Peter Oxley had first teamed up with his younger brother Jeremy in a garage band by the name of Wooden Horse while the brothers were still at high school. “I was 15, Jeremy about 14. We had our acoustic guitars, and Jeremy started writing songs almost immediately,” Peter Oxley says. “We formed a little group – Bill Bilson had a drum kit so he played drums, and we got a school friend to play bass. Both Jeremy and I were playing guitar. That band was called Wooden Horse, and we used to put on dances at the local amenities hall. It’d cost about 20 cents to get in, and we’d sell lemonade. When our bass player wasn’t allowed to play with us anymore, Jeremy said ‘Oh well, Pete, you better play bass’. So I said ‘OK’, as I wasn’t the greatest guitar player on earth.”

While the Oxley siblings – Peter, Jeremy, Tim and Melanie – would all go on to play in bands in the 1980s, Peter Oxley says classical music training was not part of his family upbringing. “We’re not classically trained. It was just the normal, old things – when we saw a local rock ’n’ roll group, we thought, ‘Wow, that’s alright’, so we got acoustic guitars and off we went,” Oxley says. “I’m not sure where it comes from, but certainly the family’s all very musical.”

“Because we’d played in bands all through high school, we didn’t really think about becoming a recording band and making big records”

After finishing high school Peter moved to Sydney to study architecture; Jeremy followed a year later, enrolling at the Alexander Mackie Art School. By the time Jeremy moved to Sydney, Peter had already been playing with Richard Burgman in the Shy Imposters for most of 1979. After the Shy Imposters broke up, Peter – eager to rekindle his musical association with his younger brother – recruited Jeremy into the remains of the band and The Sunnyboys were born. “Bill and Peter were excited to play with Jeremy,” Burgman recalls. “And they asked me to play as well, so I did.”

The Sunnyboys played their first gig supporting one of Peter’s favourite bands, The Lipstick Killers. “It was at the Chequers nightclub in Goulburn Street in the city,” Oxley says. “I think there were about four bands on, and I think we were about second on the bill. It was fantastic, very exciting.”

It didn’t take long for The Sunnyboys – with Jeremy Oxley, blessed with one of the most exciting young songwriters in the local music scene – to attract attention. In the early 1980s the independent music scene existed largely in a parallel universe to the mainstream music industry. A deal with a major label could result in a cash advance to record, inclusion on commercial radio playlists and national exposure on Countdown – as well as the omnipresent pressure to maintain popular currency.

“There were a lot of bands getting signed around that time,” Burgman says. “You had bands like Mental As Anything and Midnight Oil – everyone was trying to get the best deal.” While Burgman shies away from the suggestion of a feeding frenzy, Oxley admits that the level of interest in the fledgling Sunnyboys was occasionally daunting.

“We were pretty young, and because we’d played in bands all through high school we didn’t really think about becoming a recording band and making big records,” Oxley says. “We were a little naive in that respect. We were doing what we’d always done, and it was quite natural to play together. But when there was a bit of pressure to sign a record deal at the time, I remember Big Time Records, I think, said, ‘OK guys, you sign tonight or that’s it’. I think that was at the Civic Hotel after we’d played a show. It was a really strange thing to say!”

The Sunnyboys eventually signed to Michael Gudinski’s Mushroom Records and released their eponymous debut album in 1981. Featuring the singles ‘Alone With You’ and ‘Happy Man’, the album reached number 13 on the Australian national charts. Much of the inspiration for the songs on the album had come from Jeremy’s previous relationship. “It’s very much a teenager’s record,” Burgman says. “I think if you look at that first album in that light, the songs on the record are just stories.”

Oxley, however, concedes that in hindsight the songs on the record betray a more troubled soul. “At the time I knew that they were great lyrics, but you were concentrating on the music, and you didn’t look at the lyrics as a 19-year-old in terms of how intense and deeply personal they were,” Oxley says. “Truly in hindsight you think, ‘Oh my goodness, these lyrics Jeremy was writing were truly very heartfelt and soulful’. They were his real feelings at the time. They weren’t third-party storytelling, they were real heart-on-the-sleeve stuff. The lyrics are incredible now when you’re listening to them. I think the longevity of the songs really does relate to the intensity of those lyrics.”

The Sunnyboys had been lucky enough to secure the services of the legendary Lobby Loyde to produce the band’s debut album. Loyde had come across the band when he’d heard them rehearsing out the back of a shop where a couple of Loyde’s friends were starting a T-shirt printing business. “Lobby heard us and offered to help us,” Burgman says. “Lobby was a really funny guy, and an interesting character. He was always trying to help people become successful, and he wanted to pass on his knowledge and experience to other people.”

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Peter Oxley is similarly positive about Loyde’s enthusiasm and commitment to the task. “He’s a fantastic man, and he had good ideas, but essentially he really just tried to get us to record how we played live,” Oxley says. “Although we didn’t really capture the power we had live, the first one was close. Lobby was a fairly casual fellow to be recording with.” Loyde was also a strong supporter of hard work, and regular touring to maintain popular interest. Burgman observes that Loyde’s enthusiasm wasn’t necessarily matched with business acumen. “Lobby was all about being on the road, hard work, but that’s not how businesses are run,” Burgman says.

Meanwhile, the band’s label was pushing The Sunnyboys to return to the studio to capitalise on the success of the first album. It was around this time that Oxley says The Sunnyboys started to lose control. “We were certainly ready to make our first album, but after the first album was released and was very successful, it seemed to get very much out of control,” Oxley says. “We were pressured to make our second album very quickly. The quote from the record company was: ‘You’ve got to go into the studio and make your second record because if you don’t, people will forget you’. So there was that sort of pressure, which in hindsight wasn’t true – it was just a veiled threat to a certain degree.”

The Sunnyboys returned to the studio to record what became their follow-up album, Individuals. Loyde took the master tapes to the United States to mix. The result wasn’t to the band’s satisfaction. “Lobby was away from a long time, and we were on tour and a cassette was sent to us of the mixes of that album. We thought, ‘Oh no, that’s horrible, please don’t release that!’” Oxley says. “But everybody seemed to say that it was too late, and that it needed to come out. So we were very disappointed that album was released the way it sounded.”

Both Burgman and Oxley look back on Individuals with mixed emotions. “Jeremy had 20 years to write the first album, and six months to write the second,” Burgman observes. “There are some great songs on that second album – I think it’s a great record, but to get past the production is very difficult. Even for me to play it is hard, because I know how good that record could have been,” Oxley says. “Some of the songs on the album we really liked – though in hindsight our audience probably wanted more of the first album, done better,” Burgman says.

With critical reception down on the first record, and the band caught on a seemingly endless touring loop, the fun started to go out of it. “From that point we were starting to feel like we had no control over what was happening,” Oxley says. “And because the second album wasn’t as successful as the first album, the record company’s interest in us waned a little bit, and that was quite a big learning curve as well. We were young guys, and all of a sudden the interest was starting to be lost. And – in hindsight – that really affected our morale. We were endlessly touring, and wondering what was going on,” Oxley laughs.

For the next album, The Sunnyboys decided to get some space, heading across to the UK to record. “Lobby was telling us that the third album makes a band,” Burgman says. “We went to England to find an international producer with credibility, and so we could place ourselves in an international context.”

“When Bill mentioned The Sunnyboys casually, Jeremy pulled out a bottle and was drunk by the end of the afternoon. It was clear that Jeremy wasn’t ready.”

The Sunnyboys replaced Loyde – who’d been managing the band as well – with Michael Chugg. “That was a good move because we were able to play but not as heavily as before, and we were able to get out of a debt that we were in,” Oxley says. “We were struggling a bit to work out whether we should continue to keep playing, so we thought we’d go to England to broaden our horizons, so to speak. We were going around and around in Australia, so we needed to go somewhere else just for a morale boost.”

Burgman describes the band as “in a hopeful state” when it headed off to England to record Get Some Fun. “We were hoping that this would be better sounding and selling than the second album,” Burgman says. “Jeremy was in reasonably good form, and Peter was taking very close care of him.”

Jeremy Oxley’s behaviour had indeed begun to present a problem. Heavy drinking, drug abuse and poor social company was taking its toll on the talented songwriter. At the time, however, the rest of the band wondered whether Jeremy was simply suffering from exhaustion. “Because we were so young, it was hard to know whether there was something truly amiss or that it was just Jeremy just feeling very pressured and being sick of playing in the band, and being sick of being on tour, and that his actions were related to that,” Oxley says.

When Jeremy revealed that his drinking was ‘to drown out the voices’, Burgman says it became apparent that something was seriously wrong. For Oxley, the full reality of his younger brother’s psychological condition didn’t sink in until after the band broke up. “I think it took a couple of years after The Sunnyboys stopped playing to realise that there was something troubling Jeremy more than just playing in The Sunnyboys, or playing music, or just living his life. So it did take quite a long time for that realisation to happen,” Oxley says.

While Get Some Fun was hailed by some as a return to form, it failed to reignite the buzz that had surrounded The Sunnyboys a couple of years earlier. Jeremy’s erratic behaviour provided the catalyst for the band’s decision to break up. Oxley laments the fact that no one suggested the band simply take a break from touring and recording. “That was never mentioned!” Oxley laughs. “We could have just done that. In modern days I have great respect for John Watson, who looks after Silverchair and Missy Higgins – he was putting the wellbeing and health of the people he was looking after before the push to put out a record or doing a tour. In our time that wasn’t even thought about or mentioned to us – it was always ‘You’ve got to stay in the public eye or people will forget about you.’”

While Jeremy went on to record Wildcat under The Sunnyboys moniker in 1989, the band lay dormant for the best part of a decade before being invited to play at the Mushroom Records 25th Anniversary Concert. “Michael Gudinksi rang me a couple of months before and asked if we’d played a couple of songs,” Oxley says. “Jeremy initially said he didn’t feel like doing it, so I told Michael we couldn’t do it. But three or four days before the show Jeremy rang me and said, ‘So what’s happening, are we going to be playing?’” Oxley laughs.

With Burgman unable to travel out from Canada in time to play, the Oxley brothers’ younger brother Tim was drafted on second guitar. “We went down on the Friday night and rehearsed, and we played, and Jeremy had a good time as well.”

That would be the last time the world would hear of The Sunnyboys for a few years. In 2004 Tim Pittman put together a compilation of Sunnyboys singles, rarities and live tracks. The band members – apart from Jeremy – talked about a possible reunion tour, only to be stymied by Jeremy’s antipathy to the idea. “We talked about it, but we realised it depended on Jeremy’s mental state,” Burgman says. “Bill [Bilson] went to Ipswich to see Jeremy, and sat down with him. Jeremy showed him some new songs he’d written, but when Bill mentioned The Sunnyboys casually, Jeremy pulled out a bottle and was drunk by the end of the afternoon. It was clear that Jeremy wasn’t ready.”

While Jeremy’s condition had improved – including getting married and finding the appropriate treatment for his schizophrenia – the prospect of a Sunnyboys reunion still seemed remote. When Oxley was asked by The Hoodoo Gurus – contemporaries of The Sunnyboys back in the early 1980s – if he and Jeremy would do an acoustic set at this year’s inaugural Dig It Up! festival, Peter was uncertain about Jeremy’s reaction. “We’d been asked if we wanted to do an acoustic set, so I rang Jeremy and he said, ‘No, that’s way too scary. Let’s play an electric set.’”

For a band that had burnt out so spectacularly almost 30 years earlier, Oxley was pleasantly surprised at how well the initial rehearsals and show itself proceed. “With that show, there was no effort in getting it all together. When we started rehearsing it just came together, it was just great. There wasn’t that pressure that there was in 2004 – it worked well, and I think that’s the way we like to be able to play,” Oxley says. Burgman agrees: “We had the four of us in the room and we plugged in. Jeremy was really loud and it sounded, really, really good. By the end we thought, ‘This is going to be really good’. Jeremy was smiling, Bill was so good it was frightening. It felt amazing. We did a version of ‘Shaking’ that almost made me cry!”

Oxley says he was nervous before the Dig It Up! show, but confident that the band could pull it off. “It was pretty scary!” Oxley laughs. “But we’d been rehearsing all that week, so we were pretty confident that it was going to go well. But we were overwhelmed by the response, which was fantastic. I wasn’t quite prepared for the response we had, which was a great feeling. Jeremy described it as exhilarating, which was perfect!” Burgman’s observation is even more glorious. “We polished our halos and played like angels,” he laughs.

Since that successful show, The Sunnyboys have announced a number of shows over the Australian summer, including a set at the Meredith Music Festival. “We want to give the fans the songs they want to hear as long as we can,” Burgman says. Oxley admits there were moments when he assumed The Sunnyboys would never play together again. “Yes, basically for a very long time I didn’t ever think the band would ever play,” he says. “We always talked about doing it, but it just needed to be that perfect timing which seems to be now – which is a bit of luck, isn’t it?”

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The Sunnyboys will play the Meredith Music Festival this Friday (Dec 7) and The Corner Hotel in Melbourne on Saturday (Dec 8), before supporting Elvis Costello & The Imposters nationally from Jan. 26 to Feb. 6.