When Ray Ahn’s dad wanted to see him perform live for the first time, Ray told him it wasn't a good idea.
At the time, Ray’s band the Hard-Ons was making waves in the music industry, but it was also the peak of the neo-nazi movement in the punk scene.
And he said, “Well, so that all the idiots can see your skin colour from the back of the room, play with your shirts off.” It got to a stage where playing bare chested was a trademark of ours.Ray Ahn
In this episode of Seen, Yumi Stynes chats to punk legend Ray Ahn about the stereotypes that plagued his first years moving to Australia, the moment he fell in love with punk music and the power of being invisible.
Hosted by Yumi Stynes, Seen is a podcast series about cultural creatives rising to excellence despite arriving in a role-model vacuum. Over the series you'll hear from trailblazers like scientist Professor Veena Sahajwalla, writer Yassmin Abdel-Magied, Olympian Ellia Green and more about the transformative moment when they felt seen.
Host: Yumi Stynes
Created by: Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn
Executive Producer: Kate Montague
Producers: Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn and Cassandra Steeth
Junior Producer: Alison Zhuang
Sound design and mix: Ravi Gupta
Theme music: Yeo
Art: Evi-O Studios
SBS podcast team: Caroline Gates, Max Gosford, Joel Supple
Special thanks to Les Gok
This episode features clips from:
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Paramount Pictures
Batfink and Karate, Hal Seeger Productions
Kung Fu, Warner Bros. Entertainment
Countdown, ABC
Music:
Don’t Want to See You Cry - Hard-Ons
God Save the Queen - Sex Pistols
Raining - Hard-Ons
Transcript
(Theme music building)
Yumi Stynes: We start by acknowledging the Traditional Owners of the land we’re recording from whose culture includes a rich tradition of yarning, music and culture-keeping, the Cammeraygal and Gadigal people, and their Elders past and present.
(Music: Don’t Want to See You Cry by the Hard Ons)
Stynes: In a lot of musician’s stories, there’s a moment in time when their parent wants to come and see them play. For Ray Ahn, from one of the world’s longest-running punk bands, The Hard-Ons, that moment came right at the time when punk music and nazis had intersected in Sydney.
Ray Ahn: And I said, no, that's not a good idea. And he said, “why?” And I said, “look, there are some neo-Nazi skinheads at these shows and sometimes it gets really violent. Right?” He wanted me to explain what neo-Nazi skinheads are. And I said, “well, you know, these are these are white power fascists. They’re extreme racists. They're just unpleasant, violent people. I wouldn't want you there.” And my dad said to me, “well, you and Keish”, who’s Sri Lankan and he's a drummer with dark skin. He said, “you and Kiesh, take your shirts off on your play.” And I said, “Why?” And he said, “well, so that all the idiots can see your skin colour from right from the back of the room, play with your shirts off.”
(Music fade out, theme music building)
Stynes: I’m Yumi Stynes and this is Seen, a podcast about trailblazers who, unseen by the mainstream, rise to excellence anyway. In this episode of Seen, I’m chatting with one of the founding members of the Hard Ons, the legendary Ray Ahn.
Ahn: It got to a stage where playing bare chested was a trademark of ours. You know, we'd all play bare chested. And that was because my dad said to me, show them, show them who you are.
Stynes: Heads-up, there’s a bit of explicit language and use of racist slang, please listen with discretion.
(Theme music fade out)
Ahn: I didn't know at the time, but what that was doing was... it was normalising the powerful Asian person. It was normalising it! Just as Bruce Lee had done.
Stynes: I first met Ray about 15 years ago, and he was pretty much the same then as he is now - a funny, compact, guy with long, dead straight hair and skinny jeans. Like, if you spotted him in the street you’d go, “I bet that guy plays in a band.”
The hair is grey now, but apart from that, he’s barely changed.
Ahn: Hi Yumi, good to talk to you.
Stynes: Ray’s family moved from Korea to Australia in 1974 when he was 9 years old. Before he finished high school, he’d formed Sydney band The Hard-Ons, which was and still is the embodiment of the original idea of “punk”.
Ahn: We said “we are going to go and turn people off! What is the worst, least commercial name we can pick?” And I said “The Hard-Ons, let’s call ourselves the Hard Ons! That's it. No radio airplay, no TV weekly, nothing like that. It's gone.”
But what we've got in place is just an open road to just rampage artistically, do whatever the hell you want. And that is, it's completely intoxicating, you know. Come all the way from Korea, a place that was at the time shackled and enslaved - to a place that had so much freedom that your head was spinning? And that's why punk rock was so good for me, cause it spoke to me.
(Music transition)
Stynes: Back in Korea, Ray’s dad had trained as a pilot in the military. He’d lived through Japanese occupation, World War II and the Korean War. He was, in fact, official pilot to Korea’s then president - an insecure position as the president was in constant danger of assassination. In 1974 Ray’s dad was ready to move the family to safety.
Ahn: You know, the spectre of war was something that he didn't want me, my brother, to be involved with. He knew that if we stayed there, my brother and I eventually would have had to join compulsory military service for two years. He didn't want me, my brother, doing that kind of stuff. Some of the stories he told me were so horrifying. And I think he wanted me to be horrified.
Stynes: The Korean War had been devastating for Ray’s parents.
Ahn: My father was fifteen when he lost both his parents and his older brother. And my mother lost an older brother. When we left, they had a 10:00 curfew, to make patrolling the streets and that, easier in that area against North Korean spies and things like that. So, you know, it wasn't a pleasant place when we left.
Back in the early 70s, there was actually a shortage of pilots in Australia. So they were headhunting prospective immigrants from countries that had citizens that actually wanted to leave, you know. There was a lot of work going in places like North Queensland and on the cattle farms and things like that. So that's where my father ended up. Horrible job. He hated it, but he did it so that our family could move here and start our life again as it were.
Stynes: Ray, do you remember that move?
Ahn: Yeah, it was like going to Disneyland. We came here and we saw big sports cars and cars with like fins and wings and, you know, big trucks and all that kind of stuff. I remember thinking it was just really wonderful.
I remember we stayed with a family, a Korean family in Frenchs Forest. Big, wide streets and huge houses, long driveways with cars in them and very green surrounded by trees and what not.
Stynes: This family was a few years ahead of Ray’s. The teenage kids spoke fluent English and they helped prepare Ray and his brother for the Australian “culture” shock.
Ahn: I remember them all sitting there with a TV on they were watching a tennis match. and they were screaming at the TV set. Every time Evonne Goolagong would win a point, they'd be like just doing cartwheels and stuff like that. They explained that this was Australia's hero at the time, you know. Evonne Goolagong. I was too young and I just arrived in the country. So I didn't really know what to make of it other than, well, that's what they like here. They like tennis!
Stynes: Was racism something that your friends talked about during that time?
Ahn: Oh yeah! We were warned about all that stuff. I remember the 15 year old kid told me that there's one word that the white Australians loved and it was ‘ching chong’. I don't know if you're familiar with this term.
Stynes: Mate, who are you talking to? Of course I’m familiar with the term (laughing)
Ahn: Ching Chong back in 1974, it was it was almost like a call to arms for white Australians, you know? (Laughing) It's like let's show these people that they're different and we find that a little bit funny, you know?
They warned me and my brother just brace yourselves for impact, because that's what you're going to hear when you go to school. Me and my brother went to the school and I remember thinking, ‘when, when's it going to happen? When's this word going to happen?’ And, you know, took about a day, I guess.
Stynes: How did your dad react?
Ahn: So pragmatic about everything. It's like, “let me get this right: I went through World War II. The Korean War. I lost both my parents. I lost my brother. Your mum's lost her older brother. We survived. There was a military curfew happening in Seoul. You were staring at the reality of going and doing military conscription for two years. And you come to Australia a relatively peaceful paradise and you're worried about a word?! Haha, let's get real. You know, it's the word who cares? Suck it up. We are different, we look different. And people being what they are, they're just going to focus on it, fixate on it. And it's given the right opportunity, they're going to remind you that you're different. But look at the trade off. The trade off is that we're here.”
Stynes: So when I was a kid, there were very few situations where it paid to be Asian in Australia, but doing martial arts was one of those situations.
Ahn: Oh, yeah, totally. Look, when you think about the image of the Asian back in the early 70s, you know, Mickey Rooney pretending to be an Asian landlord in that movie Breakfast at Tiffany's.
(Archival audio from Breakfast at Tiffany’s:
Mr. Yunioshi: But that was two weeks ago, you cannot go on and keep ringing my bell you disturb me, you must have a key made!)
Ahn: It's grotesque. And then you had, of course, cartoons on TV - like Batfink
(Archival audio: Batfink and Karate theme song)
Ahn: Batfink had a sidekick. His name was karate.
(Archival audio: Batfink and Karate
Karate: That’s the worst picture of me I’ve ever seen! I look so stupid!
Batfink: That’s not your picture Karate, that’s a mirror!)
Ahn: And he was drawn with, you know, slanty eyes and Buckie teeth and that. And he had that accent and everything.
So Asians weren't exactly the strong, desirable people to be. They were like, you know, goofballs, you know, sideshow attractions, seen as a little bit of comic relief for white people. Something to be laughed at, that kind of thing, except! There were two Asians who were actually cool, right?
(Archival audio: Enter the Dragon
Bruce Lee: It is like a finger pointing away to the moon, don’t concentrate on the finger or else you will miss out on all that heavenly glory)
Ahn: Bruce Lee! and then of course you had a guy named David Carradine.
(Archival audio: Kung Fu
Master Po: As quickly as you can, snatch the pebble from my hand. When you can take the pebble from my hand, it would be time for you to leave.)
Ahn: Now David Carradine is white, but he played a half-Chinese guy in a TV show called Kung Fu. And you just couldn't get a wiser person. This guy was really wise, really powerful, really measured in his approach to life and really admirable, you know. So those two characters loomed large when I was growing up. When you look back on it now, it's pretty heartbreaking.
Stynes: Ray’s family were settling into Australian life. Ray was an honours student, nailing every subject and topping his year 7 class in English.
The whole family was squeezed into a 2-bedroom unit out in the suburbs of southwest Sydney. Next door lived an older teenage boy.
(Music)
Ahn: One day I heard over the fence all this music coming. And so I put my foot up on the first rung of the fence paling there and had a look and he was in his garage and he had a pool table set up and he was playing pool with his friends and they were blasting music. He saw me and asked me to come over. So I went over and, you know, I hung out with them and we became pretty good friends.
He'd get his records out. And we play these records. So we spent hours listening to these records. And, that was just before punk had actually happened.
Stynes: The biggest bands at the time were the Eagles, Simon and Garfunkel and Fleetwood Mac. And from Australia - AC/DC, Bee Gees, Skyhooks, and deeply tedious but inexplicably popular bands like Sherbet and Little River Band.
Ray Ahn: And then, of course, when Sex Pistols released all these records, he went and bought them. And he and he came up to me and said, look. You can have a single I don't really like it, and it was God Save the Queen.
(Music: God Save the Queen by Sex Pistols)
Ahn: I didn't really know what to make of it other than I just can't wait to go home and play this play. And I thought ‘this is great.’ So that was my record that I'll play to my friends. And I still have the record in my possession.
It was nuts because at the time there was a huge dichotomy, you turn on the TV and you see people like Elton John or Rod Stewart, you would see these huge, huge names. You see these people and you just go, well, it's pleasant, but I just can't relate to it.
Punk rock to me was so short and sharp and live for today and not worry about tomorrow, it was just really explosive and aurally very violent that a little kid is just going to go away from the music with nothing but really high impressions of it.
Stynes: So at what point did you decide, I want to be in a band, I want to be one of the makers of this noise?
Ahn: I guess I was 14 going on 15 at the time. I bumped into Blackie and Keish who were in my same year. They were playing this tape on this ghetto blaster that they had. And I stood and listened to them. And the music was incredible. It was just blasting hard rock. And then I realised that was their band.
Stynes: Ray and Blackie started hanging out, swapping records, and living like teenagers do - deep in the details of their chosen subculture. Ray remembers them arguing about which song was the world’s “heaviest”.
He also became Blackie and Keish’s artist - drawing pictures for their band, making demo cassette covers, painting the kick-drum.
Blackie was comfortable enough with Ray to shoot the breeze about the band and certain band members. Specifically the bass player.
Ahn: Blackie started saying, look he's such a nice guy and he's a really good bass player. But I'm not sure if he fits our band. His hair's kinda too long. He was wearing bell bottoms. Everyone else is wearing straight legs.
He was more of the Ted Nugent, Van Halen, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix School of, you know, the older, older generation of rockers, what did we like? We liked Devo, Japan, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, XTC, The Cure, Elvis Costello...
Stynes: Ray took this as a sign.
Ahn: I went home. I said, “Mum, Mum. I need some money, I gotta buy a bass guitar.” So I ran to Bankstown Rock Music, which was a shop that was in our neighbourhood. Went there, bought a bass.
Stynes: Bass in hand, Ray joined the band. They renamed themselves The Hard-Ons. But there was one problem.
Ahn: And I go “look, I have to tell you something, right. I don't really know how to play the bass.” And he said, “don't worry about it.”
After two weeks, Blackie’s like, “Right. We got a gig.” And I got photos from this gig right. We played in the lounge room of our drummer, Keish, his family, and it was a birthday party. So basically it was like 50 Sri Lankans in the room. Soon as we started playing. They just erupted. They just, they mobbed us. They were all shocked how good we were.
Then it just dawned on me that punk rock is a real gateway, that it's a real fast tracking method of being an artist, so you don't really have to be technically advanced, you just have to have a lot of unmitigated gall and a lot of hook to do and get up and go. And you can do it. It felt like after that one party, after two weeks of band practise, it felt like I'd arrived.
Stynes: What happened that day in a lounge room in Sydney’s west was a million miles away from where the music industry was at the time. Punk rock, in its essence, is about making chaotic art - chaotically, while being deeply suspicious of anything popular or mainstream. But punk rock as it was then - The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Stooges - was also - all white.
But it didn’t matter. The Hard-Ons started booking shows in Sydney, pulling crowds and making lots of noise. With Ray’s Dad’s instruction, The Hard-Ons started playing their gigs shirtless, and it became their signature.
Ahn: I’m not kidding you, you go have a look at photos on google. You know, I’m not wearing too many shirts there, you know. I’ve always played bare chested.
Stynes: I get full, head-to-toe goosebumps thinking about Indigenous footballer Nicky Winmar lifting up his shirt and pointing to the colour of the skin on his body. And same when I think about the Hard-Ons defiantly showing who they are.
Because the Australian music industry wasn’t reflecting Australia at the time. And nor was Australian television. As Ray says, the best Asian “representation” we got at the time was the mocking and humiliation of Asian people.
But every now and then the establishment surprises us...
Ahn: When I was growing up in the mid to late 70s, my family would religiously watch Countdown. When I was a little kid, it was a huge part of the weekend consciousness of Australians. It was a big, big deal. Countdown, for whatever reason, loved a couple of bands that I loved. One was Hush.
(Archival audio: Countdown - Hush performing Glad All Over)
Ahn: Two of the guys in Hush were Chinese, or at least half Chinese, Les was half Chinese. And they're obviously visually very, very Asian. You know, they weren't sidemen at all. The lead singer, he was white. He was English, actually. But you could see who the star was in that band. And it was Les. He was a lead guitarist. And he wasn't a shrinking violet. He was very showy and obviously a good guitar player. But striking.
Stynes: Les Gok... the lead guitarist for Hush... was a bonafide rockstar.
Ahn: You can't take your eyes away or your ears away, you just can't slam that much striking charisma into one person because it's not just the fact that he was wearing skin tight clothes that was shiny and he was skinny, but his hair was really long. He had all these, this attractive symmetry and shape to his body shape as it was. And then you give him a guitar and he's moving in a way that's throwing all these incredible shapes. And then you hear him and he's got this guy's this is a powerful person.
I didn't know at the time, but what that was I guess, doing, was, it was normalising the powerful Asian person. It was normalising it just as Bruce Lee had done. Not only that, but something that a white society, a predominantly white society would find desirable… that a white person would have.
Stynes: I remember watching the same show. I’m 10 years younger than Ray so I must’ve been a little kid but I remember being shocked. Shocked to see this Asian guy peacocking and prancing around onstage. Part of me was like, ‘how dare you!’ He wasn’t quiet and dignified like my Japanese uncles. Or obsequious and downtrodden like what I’d seen on TV. He was an Asian man embodying big dick energy.
The Hard-Ons have now been playing for four decades. They’ve endured longer than any other punk band in Australia - with the possible exception of Nick Cave.
Have you ever had any younger punk rock kids feed back to you and say it's because of you that I, an Australian, Asian, male or female, thought that I could actually do it as well?
Ahn: Yes, a few people have. Brian Estepa is a Filipino born singer songwriter, he's got record deals in places like Spain. Very, very talented. And I remember seeing him all over Facebook and stuff like that and his music is incredible. Out of the blue, one day he wrote to me and said, “you inspired me as an Asian Australian.” And I thought, it’s really nice.
You know, there's this big movement to try and get more representation of women's acts on stage, on big festivals. But there isn't that kind of pushing for Asian representation on rock festivals at all. I never even thought about it. And I think because maybe I should have used my power to go, “Hey, listen I can’t play your festival unless you get me some more acts. Now you’ve got Smashing Pumpkins there, so that’s good. But last year I was the only Asian here, you know. Other than the cleaners after we finished. Surely there are a lot of Asian bands around, let’s get them on stage.” Maybe I would have said that, you know, but at the time, I was just I think maybe even shamefully, I was just happy to just play.
Stynes: So for people who don't know the career of the Hard Ons. What are some of the heights that you have ascended? Like, what are some of the great accomplishments?
Ahn: I think the fact that we stayed completely invisible to the mainstream somehow, absolutely nobody knows who we are, but at the same time, we are very well known in the right circles, but not only well known, but we're really, really well loved in the right circles. I think that's a testament to our job that we did to deliberately be abrasive to the mainstream, to be unpalatable, as it were.
Stynes: And at the same time, you've got this life here in Australia where you live in the suburbs, you've got a wife, you've got a couple of kids, you volunteer at the school sausage sizzle, and you work sometimes in a record shop where I've seen you at work. You're really humble and open and you're personable and you're ready for a chat.
But on stage, you're also a rock star. Like you hold your bass really low, you play well, you've got great hair. Play with your shirt off. You're fucking cool. So this is does it ever frustrate you that they're so irreconcilable, these two personalities?
Ahn: No, because what I do is fictional, you know. Art is fictional. It's like a movie. You know, so I don't expect it to be, I don't expect it to be anything other than irreconcilable. It's just a fantastic hobby, you know what I mean?
(Music: Raining by the Hard-Ons)
Stynes: Seen - and unseen. Being able to choose to remain unseen by the haters? The people you have no interest in speaking to? Being unapologetically for your people, and them only? It’s a theme we unpack a lot on this podcast: That yes, there is a validating and humanising magic in being seen. But let’s not underestimate the power of being able to choose.
Ahn: I knew that I was different, but that's the magic of punk rock that it gives you unfettered, unlimited access to, just you know, some people might call it arrogance, but it's unshakeable self belief, your belief that whatever you're doing is 100 percent valid, you know, and that's what punk rock does to you. It just completely supercharges you and energises you. When punk rock came along, you had people like Susie Sue wearing bras with the nipples cut out and stuff like that designed not to titillate, but to shock and get a reaction.
The Hard Ons had already had a leg up in that department because we're already alienated and different to begin with. We're already different skin colour. So, of course, punk rock was going to be the perfect vehicle for people who are already being told that they don't belong.
To me, punk rock in its purest form, is a great voice for the alien, the underprivileged, and people who are different, and in our case, it just happens that we were different in a skin colour kind of a way, but we ran with that concept. I loved it!
(Music fade out, theme music building)
Stynes: This has been Seen. Hosted by me, Yumi Stynes, created by Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn with Audiocraft, in collaboration with SBS.
From Audiocraft this show was produced by Bernadette Phương Nam Nguyễn and Cassandra Steeth, our Junior Producer is Alison Zhuang. Sound design and mix is done by Ravi Gupta, and executive producer Kate Montague.
The SBS team are Caroline Gates, Joel Supple, and Max Gosford.
Our podcast artwork is created by Evi O Studios. Music is by Yeo.
(Theme music fade out, music sting)
Les Gok: Hi this is Les Gok, from Hush. Well that was really nice, a really nice thing for Ray to say and I’m very flattered and slightly embarrassed.
As much as I dreamt night and day about being on stage, it just didn’t seem like it was going to be possible. The place of Asianness in the late sixties, early seventies, was that it was borderline embarrassing. You've got to remember that the White Australia policy was, it wasn't removed for three or four years after I joined Hush.
In those days, blue collar, working class, you left school when you were 15 or 16. You did a trade And then on Friday and Saturday night you just got drunk and went to see a band. And a band like Hush who dressed up in this kind of androgynous, totally off the planet, with these Asian people, with this whole Asian, it was the last thing you would think would work, but it was totally embraced. And hopefully, this is born out of Ray and also Kate Cebrano said the same thing to me, too, that she and her brother watched Countdown when they saw me and, and Rick on Countdown they realised maybe they could do it as well.
It's important for me now to look back and see that perhaps we were able to infuse some of the young Asian kids with confidence that they may not have had before. A confidence that, not only did they, shouldn't they be embarrassed about their ethnic background, but maybe there is something in there that is special and that they can bring out of themselves that is unique, still Australian, but in a kind of a new, unique way.
(Music sting)
