BURGOS’ CATCH PHASE OF FAME THROUGH WIND BACK WEDNESDAY
- Bernard Zuel
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
Scanning the surfeit of music documentaries available on the streamers at the long weekend – many, if not most, pretty ordinary and little more than commissioned puff pieces – it was pretty obvious that Australian music docos are unlikely to turn up in this roster.
Which is a shame, and not just because we are perfectly capable of making bad/kiss-arse/empty music films. There are some odd, funny, wild, sad, fascinating, and sometimes all-of-those-at-once, stories in this country. Ones like the stories of the Burgess brothers, Denny and Colin, who were there or thereabouts for some of the biggest things to hit Australian music in the, shall we say, formative years.
One of them, Colin, left us last year, but Denny is still about and a year ago was awarded an Order Of Australia. So Wind Back Wednesday has gone back two decades to remember a film that told that story, and along the way hopefully prod someone somewhere to put this on screen again. In colour, and better yet, in VistaVision.
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THE COMEBACK KINGS
Directed by Joel Peterson
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DENNY AND COLIN BURGESS could well be Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood in poorer light. Or smaller rooms.
The chances are you won’t remember them from such high points as Colin being the drummer in the Masters Apprentices, and for a few minutes the first drummer in AC/DC, and Denny being the wild man bassplayer in Throb, and for their last minutes, the bassplayer in Masters Apprentices.
But having lived through nearly 40 years of playing music and now being weathered to the point of wreckage they’re defiantly hanging on to not just the hair (Denny in beyond-bleached blond; Colin with a poodle perm of heroic proportions) and the clothes (black leather or fire engine red pants, broad checks and enough glitter to inspire Cher) but the very idea of rock’n’roll which sent them on to the stage in the first place.
Playing music isn’t just what they do – they readily admit they can’t really do anything else - it’s who they are: the defining element of their lives. Whether playing to several thousand screaming teenagers in the late ‘60s or before barely a dozen bored retirees sipping shandies in a suburban bowling club 35 years later, a gig is a gig is a stepping stone to another gig.
It’s why they really do believe that a career resurrection is at hand with just a bit of luck and timing, despite the music industry’s complete indifference; that their self-financed new single and album could be a hit, despite its barely amateur hour quality; and that they can fill the 1000-body capacity Metro they’ve hired to launch the records, despite pulling eight paying customers to the warm up show in Muswellbrook.
It should be pathetic: a This Is Spinal Tap without the irony, a Sunset Boulevard without the drama. Throw in a serious car accident which nearly killed Colin and left him dependent on painkillers to even move and Denny’s quixotic tilt at a seat on the board of his favourite football club at the same time that his wife is expecting their first baby and the pathos almost slips into bathos.
But Joel Peterson’s low budget film swerves these obstacles thanks to the unflagging enthusiasm and unfeigned optimism of the Burgess brothers, to whom it has never occurred to ask for sympathy and who you quickly come to like, and a witty voiceover from James Valentine, which is not afraid to affectionately mock occasionally.
The obstacle The Comeback Kings can’t completely avoid is the feeling that we’re watching a good Australian Story episode stretched too long and too thinly. It looks like videotape and feels like television and the diversion to Denny’s footy club threatens to derail the film’s momentum.
But then you suspect there’d be something wrong with anything too slick and impersonally perfect around the garnets in the rough who are the Burgess brothers.
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