Member-only story
Radio Birdman: Ground Zero for Australian Independent Music
Murray Engleheart’s exceptional biography threads the dizzying heights of Radio Birdman — their acclaim and disfunction — while expertly tracing the history of alternative rock and roll in Australia.
Retaliate First is the title of the official Radio Birdman biography.
Featuring insights drawn from over 130 interviews, and directed by Murray Engleheart who one of Australia’s preeminent music writers, the book is as much an anthropological account of Sydney in the 1970s and 80s, as it an unfiltered and unbiased account of Radio Birdman, the defiant Australian rock ’n’ roll band whose 50th anniversary coincided with the release of this book in 2024.
And if you wanted to see rock ’n’ roll on Australian TV — Rage was the show
They’d play Radio Birdman. They’d even have members of Radio Birdman playing Radio Birdman.
Aloha Steve and Danno may or may not have been the band’s greatest song, but it’s their best-known. Take a listen; it’ll set the tone for everything you’re about to read.
