Patrick Emery, beat.com.au
The practice of rock’n’roll is replete with style. Leather jackets, stovepipe denim jeans, gym boots and a pirate’s hat worth of garish tattoos. A sneering anti-establishment attitude and the abrasive discourse of rebellion. Nobody ever conquered rock’n’roll with complicity and acquiescence. Profanities and substance abuse, behavioural excess and public offence. Buy the manual, learn the script, take the classes.
Loud Mag, Brian Giffin, 1st November, 2012
Years ago, Sebastian Chase made a promise to his lifelong friend Ian Rilen that he would release three of his albums. Now that the time is right, six years after Rilen’s death, for the last of those to appear, Chase has resurrected the famous Phantom Records to honour that commitment. Rilen didn’t stand for fame or fortune, which is why you probably know his bands – Rose Tattoo, X, Hell to Pay – but not him. Ian Rilen stood for rock n roll, and rock n roll is all over this album, lovingly packaged inside a hardback cover with an 80-page book of photos, art and dedications from those who knew and loved him best.
“Ian is pure heart, pure soul, pure music” – Paul Kelly
“Ian was a national treasure” Don Walker
“The man was a damn good kisser” Tex Perkins
“It’s got a massive thumping heart and a twinkling eye and a hand up yer back – the real deal” Tim Rogers
FORGET what you think about posthumous albums. Ian Rilen and the Love Addicts’ Family From Cuba is bursting with life.
Recorded in July 2006 just months before his passing, it’s an album that demonstrates how powerful and inspired Ian Rilen was right until the end. (more…)
The Age, Martin Boulton, 26th October, 2012
Family from Cuba
Ian Rilen & the Love Addicts
(Phantom)
FORGET the star rating when it comes to the final album from one of this country’s most passionate, rebellious and loved musicians – Ian Rilen was quite simply a star.
The original Bad Boy for Love – he wrote and played on Rose Tattoo’s most well-known song – Rilen was a brilliant, cheeky and eternally romantic star to the many fans he made over nearly four decades, to his family and his many, many friends. He died, aged 59, in 2006 after battling cancer, but not before making one more helluva rockin’ album…
Read the full article at The Age.
We were just like dreamers
Dreaming, in the sun
Situations ever-changing,
Changing everyone.
We were just like lovers
Lying B everyone
Wait till night time covers
Hiding, everyone.
Ian Rilen
Lyrics from a Sardine song
He took me one day to the place he’d found to live in Cook Road, Centennial Park. At that time there were still grand houses, Federation Houses as they were called in that street. It was a time before the incursion of what Ian Rilen would call, ‘the unit people’.
“I play rock’n’roll for a livin’, I ain’t doin’ all that well,
I play rock’n’roll for a livin’, as if you couldn’t tell.
I’m a rock’n’roll man,
We’re just doin’ it ’cause we can”
– Ian Rilen, “Rock’n’Roll Man”, 1999
Ian Rilen was doing a short stretch at Long Bay in 1970 when he made the decision that changed his life. He decided he was going to be a bass player, and not just any bass player, but a great bass player. There were nights, later – and more than a few – when he was just that; when, in fact, he was one of the great rock’n’rollers. The story goes, as he’d told me, that when he was inside there was another young inmate there who wanted to be a drummer, and so the pair would run their exercise in the yard like a rhythm section, stamping out and mouthing their respective parts. (more…)
I knew Ian Rilen as well as some but not as well as others. In common with everyone that came into the Rilen orbit, however, I have a few stories. Many are about his penchant for living at or near that rock and roll place called the edge. Others that you won’t hear so often are about a loving father to four people, a de facto husband to another and a friend to many, many others. Read the full article at I-94 Bar.
Jack Marx
A death that has been very lightly reported in the Australian media is that of Ian Rilen, who lost his life to cancer just 12 days ago. Ian was the original bass player for Rose Tattoo, and author of Bad Boy for Love, a song that tends to get wheeled out whenever some advertising creative wants to show that the product being sold is as tough as nails. Read the full article on Sydney Morning Herald.
Jen Jewel Brown, Sydney Morning Herald, November 25, 2006
Ian Rilen, 1947-2006
WHEN a man has lived as wild a life as the rock’n’roll musician and songwriter Ian Rilen, it might come as no surprise to hear he has checked out early. Yet his far-flung admirers are shaking their heads over his loss to bladder cancer at 59. Read the full article at Sydney Morning Herald.
Of all the misfortunes that could have taken founding Rose Tattoo member Ian Rilen from this earth, few in Australia’s music community would have been laying bets on cancer. Notoriously hard-living, Rilen was often compared to Keith Richards, Iggy Pop and Motorhead’s Lemmy – both for his authentic rock ’n’ roll spirit and for his freakishly robust constitution. He seemed genuinely indestructible. (more…)