Rose Tattoo frontman Angry Anderson dies aged 79 — SkimNews
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- Angry Anderson died aged 79 after being hospitalised following a cardiac arrest while touring Germany with Rose Tattoo, the Melbourne-born band he fronted for five decades.
- Rose Tattoo, co-founded in Sydney in 1976, released their self-titled debut in 1978 with enduring singles "Bad Boy for Love" and "Rock 'n' Roll Outlaw," and both that album and follow-up "Assault and Battery" reached No 1 on the British heavy metal charts in 1981.
- Anderson's 1987 power ballad "Suddenly," used to soundtrack the Scott-and-Charlene wedding on Neighbours, peaked at No 2 in Australia (kept off the top by Kylie Minogue's "Locomotion") and No 3 in the UK.
- Guns N' Roses covered Rose Tattoo's "Nice Boys" on their Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide EP and recruited the band to support their 1993 Use Your Illusion tour, the same year Anderson received an Order of Australia.
- Rose Tattoo were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2006, with the source tracing their direct influence on acts from the Cosmic Psychos to Amyl and the Sniffers and the 1980s new wave of British heavy metal.
- Anderson's later life blended youth advocacy with hard-right politics — he stood as a National Party candidate for the NSW seat of Throsby in 2013 and appeared on SBS's Go Back to Where You Came From in 2012.
- Anderson suffered the death of his son Liam in a 2018 case that made national headlines, and his work with troubled youth was rooted in his own experience of childhood abuse.
Why it matters: Anderson's death closes the book on a 50-year run for one of Australian rock's most enduring and influential acts, whose blood-and-thunder Alberts-era sound helped define both the local sharpie scene and the 1980s British heavy metal movement. His unlikely pivot from banned-on-Countdown hellraiser to mainstream TV fixture and Order of Australia recipient made him one of Oz rock's most unusual crossover figures.
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