If you’ve spent any time around Australian rock music, the name Angry Anderson needs no introduction. But for the uninitiated: he’s the reason Rose Tattoo exist as a cultural force rather than just a band you read about in encyclopaedias.
Gary Stephen Anderson was born in Melbourne in 1947, grew up hard, and somewhere along the way developed one of the most recognisable voices in the history of Australian rock. Not big. Not tall. But when he opened his mouth on a stage, the room knew about it. He has been the lead vocalist and longest-tenured remaining member of the hard rock band Rose Tattoo since 1976, and according to rock music historian Ian McFarlane, over the course of a lengthy career, the gravel-throated vocalist has gone from attention-grabbing rock ‘n’ roll bad boy to all-round Australian media star.
Rose Tattoo were the Sydney band that AC/DC left behind, spiritually speaking. Blues-drenched, street-level, loud in a way that felt personal rather than just amplified. Songs like “Bad Boy for Love,” “We Can’t Be Beaten,” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll Outlaw” didn’t just become hits. They became part of the furniture of Australian rock culture, the kind of songs that get played at pubs where the carpet sticks to your shoes and nobody minds.
Beyond the band, Anderson became something larger than a frontman. On Australia Day 1993, he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his role as a youth advocate. He played the villain Ironbar Bassey in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. He had a solo number one with “Suddenly” in 1987, which soundtracked the wedding of Harold and Madge Bishop in Neighbours and introduced him to an entirely different audience who probably had no idea he’d once headbutted amplifier stacks until his scalp bled at the Reading Festival.
He is, in short, a lot of things at once. That hasn’t changed.
Fifty Years and Going Out on His Terms
The biggest news around Angry Anderson in 2025 is something that deserves to be said clearly, because it matters: he has confirmed that he will retire Rose Tattoo in 2025, fifty years after the band began in Sydney in 1976.
Half a century. Most bands don’t last five years. Rose Tattoo lasted fifty, with all the breakups and reformations and lineup changes and personal tragedies that entails, and Anderson was the constant through all of it. Choosing to end it on the anniversary rather than letting it fade is the kind of decision that tells you something about how he sees the band’s story. He wants it to have a proper ending, not just trail off.
The farewell wasn’t quiet either. Rose Tattoo toured Australia in 2025 as part of the Red Hot Summer lineup alongside ZZ Top and George Thorogood and the Destroyers. That’s a bill worth showing up for, and by all accounts Anderson delivered. Concert-goers at Bandsintown noted he still has the pipes, still commands a stage, still makes it feel like something rather than a nostalgia exercise.
First New Music in 17 Years
Alongside the farewell tour came something nobody was necessarily expecting: new music. In early 2025, Rose Tattoo released a cover of Stevie Wright’s “Hard Road,” marking the first new music from the band since 2008. The song itself has a fitting pedigree: written by Harry Vanda and George Young, the same production team behind Rose Tattoo’s classic recordings and, for that matter, a fair chunk of AC/DC’s early catalogue. It’s a family reunion of sorts, done right.
The choice to go out making music rather than just playing the hits says something. Anderson has never been interested in coasting.
