Chris Bailey - co-founder and lead singer of the Brisbane, Australia band The Saints - has passed away.
The Saints first single ‘I’m Stranded’ is a cracker, and one of the first genuinely decent singles of the punk era, released in 1976 ahead of anything by the Clash, Sex Pistols or the Damned. The Saints themselves sat awkwardly as punk as it increasingly became self-parodic [actually more like AC/DC who came to London a bit before them and didn’t fall into any allowable niche either].
Their third single ‘Know your product’ with video clip is something approaching perfection and written by Bailey and bandmate Ed Kuepper. Bailey was a very talented song-writer and after the Saints broke up performed solo or with scratch bands. I saw him a few times and the work was always really beautiful.
A sad loss for music of the late 70s through to now.
I’m sorry to hear about Bailey’s passing but his death and your post here has led me down a wonderful new rabbit hole. I’ve heard a handful of Saint’s songs on Little Steven’s Underground Garage but I didn’t know they were Australian or that they achieved that sound so early in the 1970s.
When you hear bands like that from the mid-1970s, it’s usually a safe assumption that the Ramones had recently just rolled through town, but they didn’t make it down under until 1980. But it seems The Saints independently mined the same influences the Ramones did (early R&R and Detroit Proto-Punk) and almost simultaneously discovered how fun it was to speed it up. It’s almost like that sound was inevitable.
Nick Cave responded to a question about his death in The Red Hand Files.
I can only simply repeat, for the record, that, in my opinion, the Saints were Australia’s greatest band, and that Chris Bailey was my favourite singer.