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Stepping off the hot Barcelona pavement and into La Licorera is like entering another world. Located down a quiet side street and run by charming couple Konstantin and Zhanna, this wine bar has been in continuous operation since 1932, and it looks like it: wooden floor, upturned casks as tables, walls festooned with a multitude of reds, whites and rosés, the smell of history in the air. All that’s missing is Salvador Dali holding court over a glass of local Cava. Then suddenly…
“Hello mate,” booms Airbourne frontman Joel O’Keeffe, bounding into the shop with the energy of a Tasmanian devil in a leather jacket, followed at a shuffle by his marginally more reserved brother Ryan. Joel takes a look at the bottles surrounding us. “It’d take a while to get through this lot, right?”
As tempting as the idea of power-drinking our way through several hundred bottles of classy vino is, that’s not why we’re here. Word had reached Classic Rock that the brothers – and Ryan in particular – are wine connoisseurs on the quiet – a notion utterly at odds with the Australian band’s image as the wild men of modern rock’n’roll.
The plan is to spend a refined couple of hours in their company, savouring the wines, talking about everything from 20-plus years on the rock’n’roll frontlines to their amped-up, self-titled new album, and maybe getting to know the cultured gentleman beneath the howling mad facade. Except Joel is on medication for an issue with his throat, so he can’t really hit the booze hard. And Ryan? Well, he’s got the red eyes and dishevelled air of a man who only just peeled himself away from his last alcoholic beverage.
“Yeah, we found an Irish bar and were there until god-knows-what time,” he croaks, beads of sweat materialising on his forehead.
So you’ll be taking it easy?
“Nah. Fuck that.”
We take our seats at one of the cask-tables and the first bottle of wine arrives, along with a tabla de embutidos y quesos, a tray full of cheese, breadsticks and thinly sliced meat. “You don’t get that in Irish bars,” says Joel, a man who is as exuberant off stage as he is on stage even with a dodgy throat.
The wine is a crisp, quality blanco de guarda from the Abadia Retuerta winery in Spain’s Duero valley. Three glasses of this white nectar are poured. Ryan tastes it. “This would be good for the start of a meal,” he says, with the seriousness of a man who knows what he’s talking about. “With some cheese and ham,” he adds, taking something from the platter.
Over their six albums to date, Airbourne have built a reputation as bare-chested warriors of rock’n’roll. Oenophiles? Not so much. But here we are, drinking nice wine and eating fancy Spanish bar snacks.
“Our parents liked to have the odd glass when we were growing up,” Ryan says of his wine journey. “And I went to [noted Australian wine region] the Clare Valley in my twenties, which produces some great wine. Touring has made it better, cos we get the posh stuff on the rider, especially in France.”
He starts counting off the wines he likes. “If you’re in Germany you’ve got to have Riesling. You’ve got the Riojas here and the Primitivos in Italy. We’re basically getting a free wine journey every time we go on tour.”
Have we been getting Airbourne wrong all this time? Are they secretly cultured gentlemen who enjoy a glass of Châteauneuf-du-Pape before retiring early to your tour bus bunk with a book?
“Nah,” says Joel. “It’s still insanity on the road. We might come here and taste wine with some jazz playing in the background, which is cool. And then straight to the Irish pub.”
“Guinness on Sundays, always,” Ryan says sagely, nodding.
Joel: “We’ll hit a pub, connect the phone to the bluetooth, get the rock’n’roll playing and hijack the place. Then we go back to the bus and carry on until six in the morning.” He raises his glass. “You might have started something today, mate.”
What’s the most you’ve ever thrown down on a bottle of wine?
Joel: “Oh, we don’t usually remember. You wake up the next day and there are always empty bottles. It’s best not to think about the price.”
Airbourne aren’t in Barcelona just for the booze and nibbles, although that would be nice. No, they’re in the middle of a European tour to tee up the imminent arrival of their self-titled sixth album. It’s been a long time coming – almost six years since their last one, Boneshaker.
“Obviously, covid fucked things up,” says Ryan, topping up our glasses. “We’d sort of started talking about making a record before that, but we didn’t really have any lyrics. People were saying: ‘Come on, where’s the record?’ We were like: ‘We’re not going to write songs on Zoom.’ Fuck that. That’s just not rock’n’roll.”
“You look at the records Mutt Lange made, like Back In Black or Def Leppard’s Hysteria,” says Joel. “They spent a long fucking time making those records. And what happens? Everyone keeps going back to them. We went: ‘You know what, we can take our time and do the Mutt Lange thing.’”
Funny he should mention that name. In Airbourne’s case, ‘the Mutt Lange thing’ is actually real. It turns out that the band managed to drag the most successful, and reclusive, hard rock producer in history away from counting his millions in whatever château he lives in these days. How the hell did that happen?
Joel: “Through Bryan Adams.”
It turns out Airbourne’s A&R man knows the Canadian singer well, and put the two parties in touch. Adams acted as a sort of mentor/song doctor on two tracks on the new album: Here She Comes and the nudge-nudge Put The Rhythm In You. “He became a real inspiration for us,” says Joel. “Like the old guy in The Karate Kid.”
It was Adams who brought Lange on board, the two of them having worked together several times over the years.
“We didn’t even know he’d be involved at first,” says Ryan. “He did it as a favour to Bryan. Bryan said: ‘I’m gonna send this song to Mutt.’
Joel: “You’d wait and see what was coming back, and you’d be walking around at home, going: ‘Mutt Lange is listening to our song – this guy has worked on all of my favourite records.”
Did he change much of your stuff? “Yeah,” says Joel. “He changed a lot. But that’s what you want – it makes it better.”
What’s Mutt Lange actually like? “Never met him,” says Joel, shrugging. “But that only adds to the mystique. He doesn’t need to do this, he only does stuff that he loves.”
Another song on the album, Rock And Roll Heaven, pays tribute to some of rock’s fallen heroes – Malcolm Young and Bon Scott are mentioned, as is Lemmy. It turns out that Airbourne have never met any of AC/DC, which feels faintly ridiculous. Lemmy was a different matter. The band crossed paths with the late Motörhead frontman early on, when he appeared in the video for their 2007 single Runnin’ Wild.
“Okay, so our little band from Australia had signed to Capitol Records somehow,” says Joel, popping a couple of breadsticks in his mouth. “They said: ‘You need to come over to the States and make a video. We’re gonna put you in a truck and shut down LA.’ We’d just watched the movie Con Air, and there’s a guy at the end who looks like Lemmy, wearing an army helmet and driving a truck. We said: ‘Can we get the guy out of Con Air who looks like Lemmy?’ They said: ‘Why don’t we just get Lemmy?’”
Sounds like a no-brainer.
Joel: “Right. His only request was: ‘I need two big bottles of Jack Daniel’s, two big bottles of Coca-Cola, some onion rings and a limousine.’ So, we’re sitting around waiting while they’re messing about with the cameras, and this limo pulls up and the window comes down. We couldn’t see anything, just the glow of a cigarette. Then the flash of a lighter lit up his eyes and face, and he goes: ‘Okay boys, jump up.’ So we went over there like four little squirrels and peer in through this half-open limousine window. We go: ‘There’s a problem with the camera, they fucked something up. He goes: ‘‘Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty of drinks and music.’
Ryan: “So we basically crawled into this limo, one by one, towards Lemmy. He was sitting there like he was on a throne with his Jack and a cigarette, ZZ Top’s Recycler album blasting out.”
Joel: “It was like the master and his apprentices.”
What did you talk to Lemmy about?
“It was this really useful list of things to do,” says Joel. “‘Have you got a manager? Have you got a lawyer – a real one, not a fake one. Your label – that’s gonna change. Don’t get girlfriends – that you give a fuck about, anyway. You’re gonna be attacked from every side – people are gonna try and change your sound, your look, every single detail.’”
Ryan: “And they did. They tried to change the shit out of us.”
How did they do that?
“We were too this, too that: too hard, too blunt, too rock’n’roll,” says Joel, a look of disgust passing over his face. “They wanted to get me all dressed up, take different photos.”
Ryan: “It was all bullshit. We weren’t having it.”
“It was the greatest chat we’ve ever had,” Joel says emphatically. “Having Lemmy look at you eyeball-to-eyeball and tell you how it is, this little nothing band from Australia, it was a real gift.”
“I really miss Lemmy,” says Ryan.
“I think everybody does,” Joel adds, sadly.
The first bottle of wine is done. Lemmy would have wanted us to order another, so that’s what we do. Bottle number two is a lovely Gramona III Lustros 2017.
“It’s nice,” says Ryan, bringing his full expertise to bear. “This would go well with fish or a Mediterranean chicken vibe. It’s about what you’re eating with it.”
Barcelona is a long way – distance-wise and culturally – from Warrnambool, the coastal town at the bottom of Australia where the members of Airbourne grew up. “It’s a great place to grow up,” says Ryan, turning on the tourist-board charm. “Sandy beaches, cliffs, in winter you get whales coming in to have their babies.”
It turns out the good burghers of Warrnambool are proud of their hometown sons – the band have been given the keys to the town.
“There’s a mural near the train station too,” says Ryan.
Does it look like you?
“I’ve got a tongue about this long,” he says, indicating the length of your average ruler. “And instead of a tour bus, he’s got us in an old convertible car with a cow in the back.”
Have you ever owned a cow?
“Never,” he says, looking baffled.
It was in Warrnambool that the O’Keeffe brothers got their music career started. Their parents played traditional Irish music, and they roped in the kids to play with them – Joel on guitar, Ryan on bodhrán.
Joel: “Ryan and I played when the Olympics was happening [in Sydney in 2000]. The torch was coming to Warrnambool, and we played as the fucking thing came down the road. We played a rock’n’roll version of Waltzing Matilda.”
Despite the fact that Airbourne didn’t have much to do with Irish music, their parents were supportive. Not surprisingly, their father’s death in 2014 hit them hard.
“It’s probably the only time I’ve thought: ‘Is this worth it?’” says Ryan, serious for once. “He was a massive figure for us. He sat us down when we were kids with his business books and tapes about leadership and goals, and taught us to set up and run a business. It was tough when we lost him.”
The UK took Airbourne to heart early on. Their first gig here was in the downstairs room at Nottingham Rock City. Funnily enough, Motörhead were setting up for their own gig in the big room upstairs.
“We’ve always had a great relationship with the UK,” says Joel. “You guys have always got us. We’ve played some amazing gigs there.”
Apart from playing shows, what’s the best thing about the UK?
Ryan: “Greggs. We spent four fucking months touring America in the back of a Bedford van eating fucking Twinkies and shit. We got to the airport [in the UK], and our first stop was at a petrol station with a Greggs. We were stacking the steak bakes three high and eating them like Pac-Man.”
What’s the craziest gig you’ve ever played?
“They can all get pretty crazy,” says Ryan. “We’ve done gigs in the middle of nowhere. When we were in America, we played a gig right next to an alligator farm. They said: ‘Don’t go over there, because the alligators can snap through the fence and pull you under.’ We’re like: ‘Yeah mate, we’ll stay right here.’”
He picks up a couple of pieces of cheese from the platter in front of us and washes them down with a swig of wine. It’s no Greggs, but it’ll do.
Rock is littered with stories of sibling bust-ups, such as Ray and Dave Davies of The Kinks, Black Crowes Rich and Chris Robinson, the Gallagher brothers. What’s the worst argument Airbourne’s O’Keeffe brothers have ever had?
Ryan: “He stole my Iron Maiden T-shirt out of my wardrobe when we used to live in a band house.”
Come on, you can do better than that.
Joel: “Well, one time we pushed each other through a window and a wall at the same time.”
How the hell did that happen?
Joel: “It was at the band house. We trashed it the night before we went to Sydney to get signed. Things got a bit out of hand.”
Ryan: “We don’t fight as much now as we used to, because we don’t see each other as much outside the band. But we have screaming matches on the phone.”
“But,” says Joel, “we’ve got each other’s backs one hundred per cent. We can be very vicious dogs when it comes to protecting our band. We’re Airbourne dogs.”
Ryan: “Airbourne is our fucking boss. It’s this entity that we’ve created that we work for. We always say that people have paid money to come see our crappy band. They don’t have to do that. They choose to. We have a duty to rock every single night. We’re here to serve, live and die for the band, and for rock’n’roll, cos it’s the one and only thing we can do. It’s who we are.”
What’s the closest you’ve come to actually dying for Airbourne?
“I was thinking about this the other day,” says Ryan. “We were doing a video shoot, and I was sitting on the drum stool, looking at my phone during a break. I got up to get a coffee, and this massive metal rigging bolt came crashing down from the ceiling and smashed right into the stool where my head had just been. I’d have been a goner.”
He takes a big mouthful of wine, like it might erase the memory.
Joel: “I used to climb the stage scaffolding a lot. At Wacken one year, I crawled right out above the middle of the stage, hanging upside down by my fingers, thinking: ‘This will get everyone talking.’ I watched the footage back later and I realised I was literally just fingers away from death.”
What do you think when your brother does that, Ryan?
“I’m just stuck behind the drum kit, playing the beat, waiting for the day I hear a loud thud,” he says, grinning.
Joel pulls out his phone and brings up a photograph of what looks like a severely damaged building.
“Yep,” he says. “We were in Mexico and there was an earthquake. The fucking hotel split apart. The roof was coming in. Running down the stairs was legitimately scary. I remember screaming at the other people in the building: ‘Fucking move!’ You have all these images of 9/11 running through your head.”
The second bottle of wine is dead. The cheese and meat have been cleared. As has Ryan’s head, at least a little. Their show in Barcelona isn’t until tomorrow night, and the drummer looks at the tempting array of wines surrounding us. The look on his face says: ‘I could stay here’.
Sadly, that’s not to be. They have to be elsewhere, hopefully well away from earthquakes and alligator farms. It’s been a lovely afternoon, if not one that has entirely dispelled the perception of Airbourne as a bunch of hard-rocking, hardliving Aussie greasers.
“But that’s how we are,” Joel says as we shake hands and prepare to go our separate ways. “We haven’t changed for anybody so far, and we’re not about to start now.”
Airbourne is out now via Spinefarm. Limited copies of Classic Rock 357 with Airbourne on the cover are still available. Thanks to La Licorera 1932 for their hospitality.
