Angry Anderson, the frontman of Australian hard rock veterans Rose Tattoo, has died aged 79.

“It is with great sadness we announce the passing of Gary “Angry” Anderson on the eve of Monday 21 September 2026, surrounded by his loved ones here in Australia” reads a statement posted on the band’s Facebook page.

“Angry was a devoted father, and much-loved member of his friends, bandmates and the wider music and entertainment community. His loss will be deeply felt by all those who knew and loved him both here in Australia and overseas.

“The family and band members are asking for privacy at this difficult time and will not be giving interviews. We kindly ask that their wishes are respected as they come to terms with this devastating loss and take time they need to grieve.

“We thank everyone for their prayers and messages of love and continued support.”

Anderson was born in Melbourne in 1947, and formed his first band, Buster Brown, in 1973. The blues rock outfit recorded their only album, Something to Say, the following year, before drummer Phil Rudd left for Sydney to join AC/DC in 1975.

Anderson followed him a year later, when he hooked up with Rose Tattoo, a band whose blues-drenched, sewer-rat rock’n’roll embodied the singer’s uncompromising personality. The band shared both a production team (Vanda and Young) and record label (Albert Productions) with AC/DC, not to mention a deep kinship with their fellow Aussies.

“In the early days the Tatts were AC/DC’s fave band to go and see,” Anderson told Classic Rock in 2018. “That’s how we got signed to Alberts, they recommended us. Malcolm and Angus [Young] and particularly Bon [Scott] all jammed with us back then.”

The band’s self-titled debut album (released in some overseas territories as Rock ‘n’ Roll Outlaw) was released in 1978, and is best known for featuring the song Nice Boys, later covered by Guns N’ Roses on their Live ?!★@ Like a Suicide EP. They recorded four further studio albums – Assault & Battery (1981), Scarred For Life (1982), Southern Stars (1984) and Beats From A Single Drum – before splitting in 1987.

In their early years, Rose Tattoo made their name by combining their bluesy hard rock with famously aggressive and confrontational live shows, fuelled by cheap drugs. The band’s show at the UK’s Reading Festival in 1981 became legendary when Anderson deliberately smacked himself in the face with a microphone and then, his face smeared with blood, slammed the stand through the wooden stage before exiting to the wings.

“Speed was around, amyl was around, it was all about getting fully charged and just seeing how fast and dangerous you could be,” Anderson told Planet Rock magazine in 2018. “We had this maniacal bass player [Ian Rilen], this Ronnie Wood character playing guitar [Mick Cocks], and Pete [Wells, slide guitar], who was this God-like creature.

“So I’m feeding off this maniacal energy, and I was so inspired by it and so caught up in it I thought, We’re going to be the most dangerous thing on the fucking planet. And if you don’t like it, stand aside or lose a limb.”

In the summer of 1987, Anderson scored an unlikely hit single in the UK when Suddenly from his first solo album Beats From A Single Drum reached number 2 in the UK.

The song’s popularity was due to it being used in a much-watched episode of Australian television soap opera Neighbours, which featured the wedding of popular characters Scott Robinson (Jason Donovan) and Charlene Mitchell (Kylie Minogue).

A second solo album, Blood From Stone, arrived in 1990, before Rose Tattoo briefly reunited in 1993 to support Guns N’ Roses on tour in Australia – “Axl Rose said, ‘No Rose Tattoo, no Guns N’ Roses'” Anderson said in 2018 – and reformed in 1998, subsequently releasing three more albums, Pain (2002), Blood Brothers (2007) and Outlaws (2020).

Away from music, Anderson played the character Ironbar in the 1985 blockbuster film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and embarked on a political career as a member of the conservative National Party before standing as an election candidate for the short-lived far-right Australian Liberty Alliance Party.

“I ran for a federal seat, then for a state one and finally for the Senate, and it soon became obvious that both parties are as bad as each other,” he told Classic Rock. “The Who articulated it perfectly: ‘Meet the new boss, the same as the old boss’ [from Won’t Get Fooled Again]. I will be a conservative for the rest of my days, but I’ve got a foot in both camps. Power is all about keeping people at odds with one another.”

Rose Tattoo had planned to play their final shows in 2026, but the band’s European tour was cut short last month after Anderson suffered a cardiac arrest and was hospitalised in Germany.

“We wrap it up at the end of next year,” Anderson told Melbourne radio station 3AW last year. “We will be 50 years old in ’26 on New Year’s Eve. I am proud to say – because I have survived all the original members, and a few along the way – we have achieved what we set out to achieve. At the end of the day, if you can say that you are a lucky man.”

On September 23, 2016, following another successful crowdfunding campaign, Marillion released 18th album Fuck Everyone And Run. The 68-minute, six-track production reached No.4 in the UK chart – the first time they’d hit such heights since 1994’s Brave. Ahead of the launch, vocalist Steve Hogarth gave Prog a track-by-track rundown.

Tucked away in a rather anonymous business park in the Buckinghamshire countryside, the Racket Club has been Marillion’s headquarters and recording studio for over two decades.

At its core is a control room, decorated in eastern drapes and artefacts that provide the comfortable feel of a Mongolian yurt. It’s here, as singer Steve Hogarth delights in explaining, that “all the magic happens”.

It’s July 2016 and the band’s 18th studio album F.E.A.R (Fuck Everyone And Run) has recently been completed, and Hogarth is visibly enthralled with results. It’s a beguiling work, with three of the tracks extending to over 15 minutes.

It’s beautifully layered, and as guitarist Steve Rothery neatly puts it: “It really embraces who we are and what we do.” With that thought, Hogarth talks us through the lyrical themes that provide an astute and salient take on the state of the world.

El Dorado

Split over five segments and extending to over 16 minutes, the track possesses the sublime musical passages that Marillion have always been known for.

Hogarth: “It’s really about a sense of foreboding and a feeling that everything is going to change in this country. I was trying to paint a picture of someone mowing their lawn in a quiet garden as a storm comes towards them.

It’s an ecological storm, a financial storm, it’s a humanitarian storm. It’s a feeling that there’s a sort of watershed coming. I don’t know what it is, but there’s just a foreboding. If there is a central theme to the record, it’s that, and the fact that we brought this about on ourselves and a sense of shame.

El Dorado is for me about the fact that there’s a sense of shame over the migrant crisis. It’s about the way that this country has responded to the refugees spilling over from Syria, which is a war that we’ve stoked the fire in, even if we haven’t created it.”

Living in FEAR

Ostensibly a song about peace, with archetypal 60s sentiments of disarmament, it’s a polished, succinct track that also has a sublime earworm of a chorus.

Hogarth: “That was one of the tracks that we worked on at Real World Studios [owned by Peter Gabriel]. They’ve got this big screen in the studio because they occasionally do soundtracks for films, so we can drop the big screen in the evening and just put a movie on, with the sound off and just have that running while we’re jamming.

So we’d be in the dark and there would be a vibe going. We were able to work late, stop and have dinner and then go back in to the studio space at nine or 10 at night, and there’s always a different atmosphere than there is during the day.”

The Leavers

An expansive song that contains five distinct, seductive sections. With soaring Rothery guitar solos and opulent keyboards, it’s one of the finest tracks that the band have released over recent years.

Hogarth: “The Leavers is a totally different animal. I wrote it really as a response to the corrosive effect that travel has on you. When you’re in a touring band, or even more so in a touring band’s crew, you’re hardly ever home; you wake up in a new city every day. There’s a repetitive thing of the process of putting a show together – perform a show, you take it down, get on the bus, go to sleep and go again. For crew that’s the life.

When you get home if you’re off, you’re not being paid and you feel like you’re unemployed. It’s also about how these gypsy, thrill-seeking people seem to arrive, do their thing and then are gone. You can’t trust them because they’ll forget you as soon as they’re gone.”

White Paper

Another shorter song, there’s a distinct sadness to the lyrics that’s neatly equalled by the authoritative musical backdrop.

Hogarth: “It’s about several things. It’s a sort of sister story to The Leavers in some respects. It’s about trying to settle into domestic life, about wanting to live passionately and in the moment. There’s also the thing about slowly coming to terms with the fact that you’re getting old, and you better get used to the fact that what you are railing against is very beautiful and natural.

There’s a line in the song: ‘I used to be centre stage, time I should act my age’, and that really is what this song’s about – at one time feeling you were the most important person in the equation, then having to come to terms with the fact that you’d better stand at the side and watch something beautiful going on, rather than try and occupy that space yourself, with your own ego.”

The New Kings

A powerful lyrical statement on the general state of the world, the track runs to almost 20 minutes of luscious progressive rock.

Steve Hogarth: “This is really a song about how the old systems of democracy have become overwhelmed and compromised by money and corporations – along with the fact that the division between rich and poor is widening all the time.

In 1989 there wasn’t any money in Russia, as everybody owned it all. Within 10 years, there were some people who were ludicrously rich. I mean, how can you do that legitimately?

The only people in Russia who had the cunning and sharpness to become businessmen were the politburo scumbags at the top. They controlled everything and had the keys to the locked doors where the money was. There’s also a healthy sprinkling of tax evasion, and a kind of overall loss of faith in what this country represents to me.”