Rose Tattoo frontman Angry Anderson dies aged 79 on tour — SkimNews
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- Angry Anderson died aged 79 after being hospitalized following a cardiac arrest while touring in Germany with Rose Tattoo, the band he fronted for half a century.
- Rose Tattoo's self-titled 1978 debut, featuring "Bad Boy for Love" and "Rock 'n' Roll Outlaw," was produced by Vanda & Young; by 1981 both it and follow-up "Assault and Battery" had reached No. 1 on the British heavy metal charts.
- Anderson's 1987 solo power ballad "Suddenly" became a smash when it soundtracked the wedding of Scott and Charlene (Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue) on Neighbours, peaking at No. 2 in Australia 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 open their 1993 Use Your Illusion tour, the same year Anderson received an Order of Australia.
- Anderson's later years blended music with hard-right politics — he ran for the National Party in the federal seat of Throsby in 2013 and switched to the Australian Liberty Alliance in 2016 — alongside youth advocacy rooted in his own experience of child abuse and men's health campaigning after five early bandmates died of cancer.
- Anderson lost his son Liam in 2018 in a case that drew national headlines; he also headlined the 1991 AFL grand final half-time show, arriving in what looked like a Batmobile to deliver a legendarily off-key rendition of "Bound for Glory."
Why it matters: Angry Anderson's death closes the book on a 50-year career whose influence ran from the NWOBHM to Australian punk — Guns N' Roses covered Rose Tattoo, and the band was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2006. He leaves a stretch of mainstream Australian culture (the Neighbours wedding, the AFL grand final) genuinely shaped by a self-described 'rough diamond' who later courted hard-right politics and personal tragedy.
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