At the start of a long gone decade marked by sociopolitical upheaval, The Saints began to blaze their trail as one of the world’s first punk bands. Like The Stooges and MC5, they were another young group distilling their adrenaline, anger and anxiety into songs that hit speakers like sledgehammers to the hippy movement. After becoming schoolmates in Brisbane, vocalist Chris Bailey, guitarist Ed Kuepper and drummer Ivor Hay first collaborated in 1973 - the same year AC/DC were formed. With Hay back on drums after Jeffery Wegener departed, bassist Kym Bradshaw joined. The first and most famous iteration of The Saints began to capture their lightning in a bottle in 1976. Through a few abrasive minutes of buzzsaw guitar and snarling vocals, palpable feelings of Aussie alienation were distilled into their debut single, ‘I’m Stranded’.
The group’s speed was honed in Hay’s backyard shed opposite the local cop shop, during Queensland’s two long decades as a conservative police state under premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen. “We were around before punk was a thing in Australia”, Kuepper says. “We weren’t part of some revolutionary movement - as far as [the police] were concerned, we were just some absolute deadshits) Stranded also contained razor-sharp originals like ‘No Time’ and ‘Demolition Girl’. It was released by EMI in mid-February 1977, coming out a few days after The Damned’s first album, with debuts from The Sex Pistols and The Clash arriving later that year.
