“Manic riffs, pop sensibilities…it’s powerful,” explains vocalist Rusty Brown of his band Electric Mary. They have the experience and knowledge to produce songs for the classic music lover, yet still manage to intrigue the young. The Melbourne five-piece’s machine-like sound and explosive live performance speaks for itself. As their trademark tags says, “It’s rock n roll – how it used to taste.”
“We need this. We need to play this music, the music we grew up with – the reason we started playing in the first place. And there is one thing that I think we have being older – we have played in bands around the era that we are trying to show. So it’s not like we’re imagining what it’s like; we actually know what it’s like.” Rusty describes this project as “a gathering of musicians”. Each are best at what they do and were all keen to make a band that was fun.
He began writing for what was to become Electric Mary tracks in 2003 and a trip to New York with guitarist Irwin Thomas proved to him that he had to do so for the love, not the business. “Forget about going to record companies or radio stations or whatever, I’m going to make a band, find the people and just play music. Hopefully it’s great; hopefully people will want to see it and that’s what will happen.”
While in New York, they were given the opportunity to visit Electric Lady Studios. It was almost impossible to not be inspired being surrounded by musical history. “All the great songs that have ever been done in that studio, we were there,” he says. The likes of Stevie Wonder, AC/DC, Foreigner, Guns N’ Roses had recorded timeless material there.
It was here that he met Mary Campbell. “She’s a great inspiration, because she was at Electric Lady Studios for over 20 years. She’d seen all the bands come through,” Rusty explains. At the root of Electric Mary and all bands is the musical fan, he emphasises.
When the opportunity came to share the stage with his idol earlier this year, Rusty made use of any connection he could find. Starting with an initial MySpace message from a friend (“You’re going to love this Rusty, Whitesnake are coming out”) to making the first call to Premier Artist to source the band’s support – Electric Mary scored the gig.
Whitesnake’s vocalist David Coverdale was part of the Deep Purple that Rusty loved and continues to rate as his favourite band. “We were asking during [that] week, ‘Can we meet him?’ and the tour manager was like ‘probably not’. I was cool with that and just wanted to enjoy the night.”
But after performing like they do, they earned that meet. “Three, maybe four songs in [to the set], I turned and walked to Pete [guitars] and saw Coverdale standing there watching us. I looked on the other side and the other members were watching and the keyboard player was filming. I was like, ‘Oh my god, okay Rusty, eyes forward,’” he laughs.
“So we did the gig and we were all happy. I was getting changed and the other boys were getting their gear and Coverdale put out his hand for Neilo [bass] and me, and said ‘Great show’. That was enough for me.” But the appreciation didn’t stop there. Contrary to the tour manager’s prediction that Whitesnake would want their space, Rusty and Electric Mary were welcomed to meet the rest of the band. They came as a support and as fans and left as equals.
“We struck up a little email friendship and speak to them quite regularly. The first week we spoke about three times with the keyboard player, who actually plays in The Eagles. So we’re not talking about chumps here. These guys are the real deal.”
The best indication of the quality of a band is the response from the people, and this is where Electric Mary excels. “We used to open up with a song that went for nine minutes. Nobody cared. Nobody said, ‘That’s boring; you do too many solos’. Nobody says that.” What they do say is something that usually starts with, “You guys are awesome, that’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen,” he laughs.
Rusty believes the band are still developing, and hopes they can get to a level that enables this “gathering of musicians” to occur more regularly and ultimately tour as a headlining act. “The sad fact is we don’t have a record company; we’re not loaded, and so each musician in our band needs to find a way to live. Sometimes we can’t all get together…we’ve only really done 28 gigs over three years. But that’s not to say for the next ten years this is how it will be. We are building to a position were we can sustain ourselves.”
As long as it continues to be fun and the people come, they’ll play. “The audience is my meter. One of the first things I noticed in this band, from gig one – and this again is not being egotistical – the amount of applause we get at the end of songs. Yeah, that’s good. That’s what I wanna hear.”
