Though they didn't hail from the US or the UK, Aussie's, The Saints managed to become an integral part of the punk-rock conversation anyhow. The band's founder - Ed Kuepper - explains how they did it in the context of a new box set celebrating the band's first album.
Close your eyes and picture a time before the world became so relentlessly connected. Wait, wait...don’t go all the way back to the days of quill pens and horse-drawn carriages, but instead, imagine the latter half of the 20th century—right as the world began to recognize the potential to link ourselves together in new ways, for better or worse. Musically, this period was full of exciting cross-pollination. Genres, like rock and roll, spread across international borders without the need for modems or Wi-Fi. Records passed between the “in-the-know” crowd and slowly, but surely (though not so quietly) fueled a global movement.
Now, imagine Australia, a land far removed from other continents: it’s not just a hop, skip, and a jump away—it’s almost another world; Oceania if you will. Travel there today is challenging enough, let alone fifty years ago. Yet, through the global proliferation of rock and roll—and the burgeoning raw threads of punk rock—Ed Kuepper found himself inspired to embark upon a musical journey with nothing more than sheer willpower. His desire to create the music he wanted to hear just happened to align perfectly with the rise of Australia’s homegrown rock and roll scene. And the rest, as they say, is history. The band he founded - The Saints - are still revered today—not just as one of the greatest Australian punk rock bands, but as one of the best punk and rock bands, period.
Although their debut album didn’t land until 1977, The Saints had already taken shape by 1974. Now, as we hit the 50-year milestone, it's clear that this anniversary is no small feat and deserves recognition. Kuepper himself looks back on those early days of the band with awe and wonder. It’s only fitting, then, that a lavish box set released by In the Red Records has been created to honor this golden anniversary. The set includes a remastered version of their groundbreaking album (I’m) Stranded, several singles, live recordings from the time, and a 28-page booklet.
As the founder of The Saints, Ed Kuepper reflects on the band’s journey over the last half-century, exploring how their music still resonates today—and how it might shape the sound of the future.
Evan Toth: It looks like you've got some records behind you too.
Ed Kuepper: Not as many as you have.
ezt: No, but you've got some good stuff.
ek: Yours look like CGI modified...they go on for infinity.
ezt: It's just-- Let's see, what did I pull out? Oh, look who I pulled out there, Jimi. Just a random pull of Jimi.
ek: "1983...(A Merman I Should Turn to Be)", beautiful song.
ezt: We're here to talk about the reissue, the box. It's very exciting of (I'm) Stranded. Just to go back in time a little bit. Nick Cave has recently said that your early shows for him and for that area, for Australia and Melbourne, they were legendary and how much impact they had on that scene. Maybe you could just take us through a little bit of those days, that early part, that early wave of change in Australia's music scene. Did you feel like maybe you guys were ahead of your time at that moment?
ek: Well, I certainly felt that we were out of that time. I'm not sure if I thought in terms of the future, but we were certainly doing something that nobody else was doing. As far as an influence on other bands, when we played Melbourne, things were just starting to happen. People were forming bands after they saw us sort of thing but we were gone a month later kind of thing. It wasn't hard to keep track of that.
They were interesting and exciting times. We'd been together for a few years in Brisbane and had been playing to ourselves, a small group of friends really. Getting out of Brisbane and actually playing to people that we didn't know that were coming along to see us was pretty exciting stuff.
ezt: This is, of course, a time way before the internet and music was transmuted much differently then. How did you guys even get the vibe about that return to rawness, that punk rock vibe? What do you remember being influenced by to say, "Hey guys, let's do this. We can do our own sound here?" How did that happen?
ek: Well, I'd been playing guitar for a while. I took some lessons when I was really young and then proceeded to, I guess, unlearn some of that stuff and taught myself how to play guitar. I had an idea that I wanted to have a really, really great band. A bit of a pipe dream, almost. I knew Chris (Bailey) and Ivor (Hay). We all liked music, but we hadn't really discussed forming a band. It didn't really occur to me to ask them.
It came about by accident. I started playing at this high school party. There was a band on, and they weren't very good. Some friends of mine talked me into going on stage because I'd been boasting about this band concept that I had, which was, at that point, just myself. I played a song, and before I could get off stage, Chris and Ivor jumped on and we did another song. I can't remember exactly how long it was after that.
I eventually asked them, "Do you want to join a band?" That's where it started. That was in 1973, early part of the year. We just hit it off musically. As I mentioned earlier, we're already friends, but musically it came together. To me, it was remarkable looking back on it now that we continued because there really was no interest apart from our own interest in forming a band that was known. We couldn't get a show unless we put it on ourselves and hired a hall and that kind of thing. It was difficult. It was certainly often discouraging that we probably broke up.
ezt: Now, that was '73 you said you guys got together. The story behind (I'm) Stranded is interesting because you'd written that really around 1974, which is at this point 50 years ago. You recorded only a handful of live performances. What was it like to see that song, which you guys wrote so early on, become what it is at that time and, when it finally made it to the record?
ek: Well, when the song first came together, it was just another song that we had in our set. I didn't personally think it was remarkably better than other stuff that we did. It seemed to catch people's attention a little bit. Before we went into record, we did a poll of our 20 or 30 fans and just said, "If we record something, do you reckon we should record--" "Stranded" got I think the most single votes. There were about three or four other songs. We didn't go in our thinking about what kind of impact we would make. We went with what I think we assumed was our most concise and best shot at the time.
I don't think anyone expected much of a response. I think if we had recorded-- I'd send all the records out to the various papers, and it just happened to hit. I wasn't expecting it to, and I don't think anyone else was. I think it was necessary for us to record our existence, and for me especially, that had to be a record, not just a cassette. We did that, but with the expectation that we might record another single later in the year, and that'd probably be it. There really was no scope from what I could see in Australia to continue as a professional band or anything like that.
The fact that it took off overseas, especially in the UK, that had an immediate impact. From there on, suddenly got a lot of record company interest. Which was a remarkably unusual thing to have happened to an Australian band. I think it would've been unusual in most cases. There were cases in the States where you had a million different labels in the '60s and stuff where you'd have localized stuff but in Australia in the '70s, that was pretty unusual. Plus, we didn't have a label backing. We just put it out ourselves on our own record label sort of thing. It wasn't like there was this massive structure. Our business address was my mother's home. She had a phone. [laughs]
ezt: It's funny how these things were happening at the same time that even in the UK and in America, there was this DYI thing happening. As I said, there was no internet, there was no interconnectedness of these countries necessarily but everybody was putting that together at the same time. "Hey, let's just do this ourselves. Let's not wait for some record label, and let's just do this."
ek: Well, I think it got to a point for us anyway, where if we didn't do it ourselves, we would never have been recorded sort of thing. There was really, really no interest. Interest was either negative, it was hostile or polite, and no, you guys aren't what we're looking for sort of thing. That was probably the best response we got.
ezt: Maybe you could just talk about being in the studio---that first time and how did you put together what you wanted it to be? Especially going through the tracks for the box set now, what do you hear? When you hear those tracks from all those years ago, what do you hear? Are you hearing the youth that you had, maybe the naivete that you had? What is it that you remember from that time and what do you hear now?
ek: We recorded what became the album in two sessions. We did the single in May and we did the rest of the album, I think it was around late October. There's a big gap between the two, there's like six months. It took us almost three months before we actually got six weeks or two months to get the copies of the single and to send them out. When I first heard the single off the record, on not an incredibly great stereo, it just sounded like the best thing I'd ever heard. It was quite glorious actually.
The recording, it went really quickly. We set up, recorded and mixed in about five and a half hours or something and it just came together really easily. We just basically played it live and then I double tracked the guitar. This is where the band was really naïve because we booked a studio and really had no idea how important the engineer would be in this process. You just expect that you go into the studio, you're paying for the time, but you'd get complete cooperation. That wasn't always the case as we did find later.
Mark, the house engineer at Sunshine Studios in Brisbane, was really, really, really great. I don't think he was a really big fan of what we were doing musically, but he did his best to capture what we were wanting to put down, which is great. You can't ask for much more than that. That was good luck. I think the fact that we had the initiative to record it ourselves, the gods must have been smiling at us by putting us in contact with a really good engineer. I have nothing but really good memories of all that. There's no artistic friction, anything. We were doing what we were doing and we got it down quickly sort of thing.
The other tracks on the album, we recorded over two days over a weekend in late October and that was the same. It was like when we finished and we listened to rough mixes, it was like, "This is glorious, we can do it." As you went on to ask, how does it sound listening back, I still feel much the same. There are some things that I can pick out and think, "That could have been done a bit better or the sound could have been a bit better," but it is what it is and it served its purpose.
ezt: I think you've described this process of creating this box set as both exhausting and thrilling. Maybe you could just talk about some of the big challenges in assembling this expansive collection, and were there any moments where you thought, "Hey, look, this is more than I bargained for, this is a lot of work?"
ek: It was a lot of work, but it was enjoyable. I think if there was any periods where I got disillusioned with it, I think I got over them pretty quickly. By the time we got the rights to release it and had everybody from the band on board, it wasn't that difficult. I think the booklet took quite a while because it was a matter of leaving out stuff because there were a lot of bits and pieces, photographs and clippings and all that stuff.
ezt: It was too much.
ek: There was just way too much. Given that outside of a small group of people, not many people around the world actually have a (bleeping) clue who The Saints are, I can't think so. A 90-page booklet would have been probably a bit extravagant. [laughter]
ezt: Those people would have really wanted those 90. Now they're learning that there were 60 more pages.
ek: Yes. The shipping cost on that I think was a big deterrent.
ezt: That's true, right? That's something to keep in mind here. Speaking of shipping and things that are included in the box, you do have these unreleased live performances. Again, listening back to that, did they capture that spirit of where you remember that scene being at the time? What do you think when you listen to some of those live performances that maybe you hadn't heard in a while?
ek: With all the stuff that's included, I'm happy with it. If I had thought it was a really bad recording or if the performance was bad, we wouldn't have put it in. As far as capturing the time, they do. I'm not talking about a scene in a general one, I'm just talking specifically about what we were doing as a band, and they capture that pretty well. The live shows I think are really good. Especially given the fact that we never really played that much, I always thought we were actually a pretty good live band when the desire hit us. We weren't the band that would just jump on stage and do a show. It was always more complicated than that with The Saints, much to people's annoyance sometimes. [chuckles]
ezt: Was that just interpersonal stuff? That's really how a lot of bands made their money selling records on the Australian market? What was the big roadblock with the live performance?
ek: Oh, it wasn't a roadblock as such, it was just that we weren't as a band. I think if expectations were put upon us, like when we hit London and suddenly you're playing towards more of a hipster or a scene-spit crowd that has certain expectations of the way that you look or what you do on stage, I think we often confounded that. That was, at that point, nothing to do with any interpersonal problems. The band are pretty well as well as bands do come to think, given that we've been friends for a long time as well.
ezt: Back to the booklet, as you mentioned, there is a 28-page booklet which was going to be 300 pages, but it's 28 pages now. As you were kind of going through that stuff--
ek: Encyclopedia. [laughter]
ezt: The Saints Encyclopedia, that's right, that would be good. How important was it for you guys to preserve and share that visual and personal history, especially because as you mentioned there's, of course, the people who knew who you were, who respect and understand The Saints lineage in rock and roll and punk rock history? You've also got a younger group that are going to be seeing this box set and going, "Who are they? This is cool. What's this band about?"
Of course, this new stuff is available streaming whether people buy the box set or not. There might be some really young kids seeing this, "This looks like a cool band. What's going on? Let's click play." Did you think about what this stuff might mean for a younger generation at all?
ek: No, not really. I don't know, it's a bit presumptuous of me to assume how people are going to respond to it. I hope there's a few people that come to it. I imagine that there are, and if they like it, fantastic. That is remarkable to go back to that stuff, which is, as you pointed out, it's 50 years old. Taken totally out of the context of the time, if it stands up now for young people, that's great. I couldn't ask for anymore.
ezt: It's that young rock and roll punk rock, those feelings are the same as 50 years ago. Especially, there was just recently this-- A few weeks ago, The Beatles box set about 1964 just came out and a lot of people are just rediscovering what those things sounded like too. I'd imagine--
ek: I was totally unaware of that actually.
ezt: It was a very American-centric box set because it's about the records that came out specifically in America in 1964, which was such a big year for The Beatles. Those records were tinkered with in Hollywood, but still, there was this thought that they were very representative, a very important year for The Beatles. The Saints, too.
ek: If it's the stuff that you heard at the time, sure. I always thought the US versions of The Beatles albums were a bit skimpy compared to what we got here. We got the UK version. We got the 14 songs when you got 10.
ezt: You guys got the good stuff over there.
ek: Yes, we did. Didn't have to pay as much. [laughs] It's funny talking about The Saints 50 years down the track. That it's only 10 years after The Beatles. The Beatles were almost the beginning of musical time for me sort of thing. We were actually quite close to that.
ezt: That is weird, right? You guys came along 10 short years later.
ek: If it had been a few years earlier, we could have been the new John, Paul, George and Ringo.
ezt: It could have happened. You never know. Again, the connection to younger musicians and younger people who enjoy music. Mark Arm from Mudhoney, I grew up in the '90s, he's very much-- We loved those records back then. He's your de facto singer right now on this tour.
ek: It was great. It was a really fantastic tour. Mark is fantastic.
ezt: Talk to me about Mark, being a part of the group, and the other folks that you had working with you this time and that fusion of the different generations there.
ek: When the idea for the box set came up, I had in mind that I would do something to promote it. I wasn't really sure what it would be. It would involve asking Chris Bailey if he was interested in doing it. I wasn't incredibly hopeful of that because Chris generally declined things to do with the original band kind of thing. Then Chris died. I still thought, well, I still want to do something. A mutual friend suggested Mark. I was aware of him and did some further research and thought it'd be fantastic. Working with someone who has a really great voice and is really enthusiastic about doing the material, this was really paramount to me. We got in touch and he was really keen.
The other people, Ivor Hay was the original drummer. He was the bass player, a piano player, bass player, then the drummer for the first couple of years of the band. Ivor continued to be the drummer through the records that we recorded.
Peter Oxley: I've worked with Peter a bit. He is most known in Australia for his band, The Sunnyboys. That's a popish band, I guess.
Mick Harvey: I wanted to be able to recreate the sound of the records and because I always double-tracked often would put especially on the second and third LP, I'd often done acoustic guitar. I thought it'd be a really good thing to have a second guitar in the band so I asked Mick. I've always had a lot of regard for Mick's playing and he was keen. That's how the band came together, just asking people that I thought would be enthusiastic and able to do the job.
ezt: What about the audience's reactions? Were there any songs in particular that jumped out at people or maybe just to you? How did the interplay with the crowd go? What was some of the feedback you received?
ek: The feedback was fantastic for the most part. It was really, really positive. It's the first time that that catalog has been presented, not in its entirety, because we didn't play every song of the first three albums, but we played a lot of the songs, and a lot of them had not been played on stage for 40, 50 years, or something. I thought they went over fantastically. Some people didn't like it, but that's to be expected.
ezt: What do you mean some people didn't like it? You tell me who didn't like it! (kidding)
ek: It's hard to understand. I'm not even sure if they went to the shows. I think that was just feeling that whatever this was that we were presenting wasn't The Saints that they knew. People that became fans of Chris's '80s band, I don't think would have liked it that much because there was a really distinct musical, artistic difference and drive at that stage. That is a story. In fact, this is like a book in itself so we won't go into that too deeply. I'd say that that was the extent of it. Generally, I think people really liked it.
ezt: Outside of The Saints, of course, we keep coming back to this half-century 50-year number and your career has spanned so many different projects and musical phases. What's next for you personally, creatively, both as a solo artist or with The Saints? Are there any new musical directions or collaborations that you might be looking at?
ek: I've got a record coming out in a couple of months called After the Flood, which I've recorded with Jim White, that came out of some shows that we did that started around when COVID hit. We did this very guerrilla-like tour of Australia where we'd be heading to a venue in one state and then the border would close and then our agent would quickly look to see whether there was a venue that was available and interested where we could actually travel to. It was just this weird very fast, very fleet-footed tour. It was great. It was an absolute pleasure playing with Jim.
We decided to record an album based around the songs that we'd been playing on the tour. That's coming out next year. That is worth checking out. I have a band called Asteroid Ekosystem, which I'm a co-member of. I was asked to join this band with Alister Spence, Toby Hall, and Lloyd Swanton. We've done a couple of records. We're hoping to do a new one in the new year.
What else is there? There's a possibility, depending on the interest we get, that The Saints '73-'78 may tour the States, may do half a dozen shows there. I'm hoping that that comes through.
ezt: That would be exciting.
ek: Yes, it'd be really good. Mark is really keen on having that happen. Then there's a little bit of interest from Europe. We'll see. I'm open to doing a few more shows. In fact, I enjoyed the tour so much it was a shame that it finished after three weeks sort of thing. I think we could have done another three weeks and actually built on it, but these things take forever to organize so you can't just do it. Unfortunately, it was a big band. We had the five people that I mentioned earlier, plus there's a three-piece on section at all the shows. Touring with eight musicians plus crew and stuff like that it takes a bit of organization. Cast with about 20 or so people.
ezt: Seeing as though you're a vinyl guy with that library behind you, were you pleased you were satisfied with the way that the reissue came out or were there any interesting tidbits of information that went through that process? Were you involved in that listening to the new master or how did that go?
ek: I get involved from start to finish really. I approved the test press and I thought they sounded really good. I thought the pressings, the new mastering, which were done from the original tapes for the first time in about 40 years, I think they sound better than just about any previous version, which is really good. I'm happy to say that. I haven't listened to every box set, obviously, but test pressings and that's what you go by.
The booklet turned out really well, the other paraphernalia in the box set all looks really good to me.
ezt: Ed, I hope you look back, I hope you look at that box set and think about how you should be so proud of the work that you guys created. We come back to that 50 number all those years ago, 45, whatever it was. I hope it was a--
ek: 51 really.
ezt: Longer, right? I hope it was a fulfilling experience for you in that way.
ek: I have no regrets about the box set. The box set is great and the tour went really well and so far everything's gone quite nicely, which is good.
ezt: Ed, thank you very much for your time. I really do appreciate it. If you make your way to the States, I hope to catch you guys see you do your thing.
ek: Hopefully, we'll be able to do that.
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