AIRBOURNE LITERALLY FIGHTS FOR ROCK

Airbourne realizes they’re not reinventing the wheel, acknowledge their influences, and are not affraid to throw fists for rock and roll.

Airbourne is touring in support of their new album, Runnin’ Wild, but the band doesn’t exactly come across as music innovators. That’s fine with Joel O’Keefe his brother Ryan O’Keefe and the rest of the band. Those seeking an initial comparison look no further than fellow Australians AC/DC, and Airbourne said that’s OK with them.

We caught up with Joel recently at the Mayhem Festival and talked about what they grew up listening to.

“When we were growing up the only other bands we were listening to were Rose Tattoo, AC/DC, Motorhead, Judas Priest, The Angels, Billy Thorpe, Creedence Clearwater Revival, rock and roll bands that sort of hit that… just that there’s something to ya. It’s hard to explain. It’s like a drug. When you’re addicted to it you can’t get enough of it, and when someone tries to take it away, don’t let ’em. That’s what it was like at school and stuff like that and with the neighbors.”

With their old-school rock background, Joel said the band often found themselves throwing fists to capture their school’s only CD player in the ’90s amid a sea of grunge and other styles of music popular at that time.

“There was one CD player in the entire school, so all we wanted to do was we wanted to do was to hear rock and roll – AC/DC, Rose Tatto, and Motorhead – and we didn’t listen to radio in the ’90s. This was in the ’90s, and we had our uncle’s record collection. Our albums were like Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath and other stuff. The other kids wanted to put whatever was on the radio at the time, which for us, we wouldn’t let ’em. We were like pit bulls, ‘This is our CD, and we’re not lettin’ ya…’ We’d get in fistfights over it, because we just wanted to hear rock and roll. So, for us it’s always been about fighting for it, and we had to do that since day one. So, it’s good.”

Airbourne will play two shows in the U.S. in New York and Baltimore in September with Motorhead, and then they have a full blown U.K. tour in November.