“I don’t think it’s a lonely life when you’ve got somebody standing with you” – interview with Airbourne

We had the opportunity to chat with Ryan O’Keeffe, drummer for Australian band Airbourne about the festival and more.

I’m here with the fantastic Ryan from Airbourne. How are you doing today?

Ryan O’Keeffe: Good, thank you. How are you?

I’m doing well, thank you. How did you feel to play on the 35th anniversary of the festival?

Ryan O’Keeffe: So I think we’ve been here, it’s our fifth time, I think, fifth or fourth. But I believe I’m on the fifth. But there was, you know, there was one point in the set where we were supposed to play “Bottom of the Well”, but Joel had to come to the drums because I haven’t mic’d to Joel’s ears. And he’s like, “Bottom of the Well”. And I was like, “We can probably move things around maybe. And I said, maybe we’ll do “Cheap Wine”“. And we said we’d do “Cheap Wine”. That goes back to when we first flew here from the States back in the first time we played. I think in ’08 or ’09 when we were in a van. And I remember playing it because “Cheap Wine” is a slow song, so you see the claps of the audio. And I remember seeing that and I was like, “You know what, why not? Let’s play that again“. And I remember looking out and that was about 20 years ago. So I got to see the same song doing the same thing with the claps going through the sound mic. That’s because sound travels through the audience, and you can see. And that’s just, that was my little moment.

You have a lot of experience in playing live shows, as you said. But also you have experience in the studio and working on music. Do you think that the life of an artist is a lonely life?

Ryan O’Keeffe: Not if you have a good woman. My girlfriend, she’s, you know, she’s got to dance studio, she’s a fucking professional personal trainer. So I don’t think it’s a lonely life when you’ve got somebody standing with you. And so I’m very lucky in that way. Very lucky.

Last year, it was also like a great year for many incredible reasons. But we also lost the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne. Was he or Black Sabbath an influence for you or for Airborne?

Ryan O’Keeffe: Absolutely. I mean, I built a bar when I was in year 10. They asked us to build, you know, something like a bedhead or some shit, in woodwork you build something. So I chose to build a bar. Turned out the science labs were throwing out their vinyl top bars. But I built an actual corner owl shaped bar with a mini corrugator on the front rows. The whole time I was doing that and putting that in, Ozzy Osbourne was the soundtrack. Ever since Joel and I were kids, Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, these are the gods that we look up to. And that’s exactly why on this record that we’ve released that we are referencing them quite a lot. Because we wouldn’t be here without them.

And you’re playing in the same festival as these amazing artists. So that’s something absolutely amazing. Ryan, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. Is there anything else that you want to add to our readers?

Ryan O’Keeffe: Oh, well, yeah. We spent a long time on this record. There’s a reason why it’s called “Airbourne”. Just take a listen.