It’s a song about grief, mourning, loss and the afterlife. It’s played at funerals, 21st birthdays, retirement parties – even weddings. It’s popped up in a spectrum of Australian TV shows and movies over the decades, and with the 1980s addition of an expletive-laden audience chant, this failed debut single from the Angels is now one of the most famous in Australian rock history.
When AC/DC encouraged their producers Harry Vanda and George Young to sign the then Keystone Angels in late 1975, the band mainly played '50s rock'n'roll covers, and had even toured as the Australian backing band for Chuck Berry.
Bassist and vocalist Bernard ‘Doc’ Neeson came up with Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again, and a version was recorded for the band's debut album. Vanda and Young were convinced it would be a hit, but its likeness to a Status Quo B-side, Lonely Night, became impossible to ignore. So the Angels re-recorded the song, speeding it up, and adding the "ambulance siren" opening guitar riff.
Released in March 1976, the single stalled at No 58 in the charts. A third version was recorded in 1978 for US release and also flopped. However, subsequent songs like No Secrets, Take a Long Line and I Ain’t the One succeeded where See Your Face Again had failed, and by the late 70s the Angels were in the front rank of Australian rock.
At their live shows, See Your Face Again’s popularity exploded when audiences began shouting “No way! Get fucked! Fuck off!” in the empty space in the chorus after Neeson’s lingering question. Some nights the live version would balloon to more than 10 minutes, with an extended call-and-response between Neeson and the often raucously drunk, sweat-drenched crowds.
And so See Your Face Again finally became a certified hit in 1988, when the Angels released a live version with the by then infamous NWGFFO chant included. It reached 11, becoming the Angels' second-highest charting original single.
Back in the 80s, Neeson told me the song began its life as a slow, acoustic ballad. The inspiration for the lyrics, he said, came from hearing a friend describe his grief following the death of a girlfriend in a motorcycle accident. He didn’t mention Status Quo’s Lonely Night, or its remarkably similar key line, “I never thought I'd see or hear you again.”
As for the origins of the NWGFFO crowd chant, I first heard it at a police-organised Blue Light disco at my outer western Sydney high school in 1983: the DJ would turn down the volume mid-song and encourage the kids to shout the response. The legend goes that just one touring Blue Light disco DJ introduced thousands of schoolchildren to the NWGFFO chant, and older students, or teachers, then began shouting it at Angels shows.
Not all Angels fans were happy with “No way, get fucked, fuck off!” becoming attached to See Your Face Again. The ones moved because the lyrics were about the death of a girlfriend to this day insist on fan forums that the chant cheapens the song and robs it of its powerful, nostalgic strength.
Yet the chant endures, now as immortal as the song. In 2011, guitarist Rick Brewster told me: “It’s not our best song, but we can’t kill it off. We thought about dropping it from the live show a few times, but not for long. So many Angels fans love it they’d probably riot if we didn’t play it.”
I asked Brewster how many times he had played that "ambulance siren" opening live, across the Angels' 40-year career. “About 3000 times, maybe more," he said. “That song just won’t die.”
