ANDREW HAUG
You Can’t Kill The Radio Star
Written by: Tom Wilson - Sense Music Media
“It’s been a pleasure,” Andrew Haug says at the end of our hour-plus interview. “Good luck transcribing these rants!” He isn’t wrong. Still as enthusiastic as ever, the metal die hard was born to talk. He’s been preaching the gospel of metal on Australian airwaves since 1993, racking up interviews with everyone from IRON MAIDEN to OZZY OSBOURNE, MEGADETH to METALLICA. Starting on Melbourne community radio station 3RRR, he shifted to Triple J in 2001, taking over the rains from Costa Zouliou and re-branding The Three Hours of Power to the Kubrick-inspired Full Metal Racket. He brought the noise for ten years, conducting more than 600 interviews and playing the latest heavy music. Then, it all went south, and he had to push forward alone, creating the Australia’s First 24/7 internet radio station for metal aptly called AndrewHaug.com. He spoke to us from Melbourne.
What do you remember about working at a radio station in the aftermath of 9/11?
I remember that vividly, because I had a good friend of mine, Gene Hoglan [drummer for STRAPPING YOUNG LAD/DEATH/DARK ANGEL] on the air with me that night when that happened. He stayed in Australia for an extra week after the STRAPPING YOUNG LAD tour to do some drum clinics … Gene ended up coming into the studio with me that night, and he said he was going to head downstairs in between a music break to have a cigarette. I said “go for it.” I remember he came upstairs and he said, “Oh my god … a plane’s just hit the World Trade Center.” Even at that point, I was like, “World Trade Center? What’s that?” … Back then, they were just buildings to us. We put on the TV in the studio, and it literally looked like watching a scene out of a movie. We’re all conditioned to watch these disaster movies for so long, and there we are seeing it in reality, going, “It looks just like a movie.” We continued with the show for another ten or twenty minutes, and he went out and had another look on the TV, and then he came back in and said, “Another plane has hit, man. This is war!” I was like, “Shit!”
[Meanwhile] I still have the show on tape. I’m going to have to dig it out. I remember at the very end, Gene was pretty bummed about it, and he wanted to use the phone to call some of his friends in New York … At the end of it, I remember signing off saying something like, “Yeah, some of you are probably glued to your TV sets by now. We pray for what’s happening at that point.” Of course, none of us knew what was to come, we just knew that two planes had crashed and how the hell does that happen, you know? … We were just like, “What is happening?” When we look at it now, this was a really life-changing moment that none of us thought was possible. Now we’re going through the same thing [with COVID], in the way we interact – someone coughs, everyone looks like, “Ooh, you might have something!” We’re conditioned for this shit now … When we got home, Gene and I and his housemate stayed up all night just glued to the TV. Then Gene couldn’t get home for a week, because Ansett Airlines had collapsed within that week, and all flights across the world had been stopped for about a week or two, and he was really bummed … It was a really flat time. None of us were really prepared for what was to come after this, which we all know now is the full paranoia of terrorism.
What were some of your indelible musical experiences? I still remember where I was and what I was wearing when I first heard Primal Concrete Sledge by PANTERA. I was ten years old and my life was changed forever. What were some of those [moments] for you?
For me it started age six, when I discovered the KISS Dynasty record in my late uncle’s collection at my Nanna’s house, and I was just glued. When [my uncle] was alive, I was like, “You’re the one who is responsible for this journey of metal,” because he was into STATUS QUO and SLADE and AC/DC growing up. I remember we’d run down the back of my Nanna’s house, me and my twin brother Paul, and going through the records … I remember staring at KISS Dynasty and being horrified. Gene Simmons scared the hell out of me. But I was so intrigued by that album cover. I hadn’t heard it, I didn’t know what the music sounded like, I was just staring at it … That, to me, is the origins of how it sort of started … When people say, “What’s your favourite metal album of all time?” I’d have to say Master of Puppets, because I was at the age when it was released, and when you are there and it’s fresh and you haven’t heard anything like that, you’re just, like, wow … I remember that record, I played it four or five times a day with school friends, for like four months … The reason it’s so special to me is because I was there as it came. That’s the METALLICA I grew up with. When someone is fourteen today, listening to that record, are they going to get the same feeling that I got? The METALLICA we know today aren’t the METALLICA we know then, because people age and evolve and change, you know? But being there in that moment, seeing them as they were, you were kind of growing with these artists, so you could feel their emotions through the music. That’s why I’m always curious, when I meet someone who is fourteen, and I sit them down and play them Master of Puppets, are they still going to have that same feeling of that “outsider” kind of approach. Because that’s kind of what metal was at that point. It was dangerous, it was outsider music. These days it’s so widely accepted that I don’t know if that really exists anymore … There are two-year-old kids doing BEHEMOTH covers on drums on Youtube and everyone’s like, “Oh, that’s cute.” I’m curious – would a fourteen-year-old listening to Master of Puppets feel that energy that I felt when METALLICA put that record out at that time? [Another big first experience was] the death metal movement. Like, “What the hell is this?” You’re into SLAYER and MEGADETH and METALLICA in the late-80s, thinking “You just can’t get any heavier than this.” Then along comes CARCASS and MORBID ANGEL, and you’re just, like, what am I getting into? I think today, that’s all gone. Everything is now hybrids, and cross-genre this and that. To see something keep evolving in the heaviness sense, I was just really blessed with the eras that I’ve been a part of … I don’t fall into the nostalgic mindset like a lot of my friends – “Oh, those old days were so much better.” That’s just ageist thinking, you know? You’ve got to stay forward and progress. You can still look back and go “Fucking-A, they were great times, and really good feelings,” but I know over time people drop off, and then they hold onto what made them feel a certain way. That’s why a lot of people don’t like certain bands still releasing music, because it’s taking away from their precious nostalgic feeling of “When I was sixteen, I felt fucking invincible when I listened to Powerslave. Now MAIDEN suck!” They don’t – they’re still writing good music, it’s you who has changed and you who has dropped off. That band is still trying to progress as musicians because that’s what they do … We want to freeze things in time, because it gives us our feelings, and we all know our favourite eras as well … When I tell people, “Yeah, I saw METALLICA on the Justice… tour,” they’re like, “Oh man, you’re so lucky. I was two-years-old.” And I just think, fuck yeah, I am lucky. Because I forget the time and age and all of that shit. I’m just grateful I got to experience something like that.
You started AndrewHaug.com in 2012. How did it come about?
Well, a lot of people don’t know the full story. I won’t divulge everything …
Oh, go on. [Laughs]
2011, the start of the year – the station manager at Triple J said, “You know, we think it’s time you moved on.” I was like, “What? Are you kidding me?” I never had any strikes against my name. I think I held the record of the most long-service leave never taken, because I’d go overseas to Wacken and metal festivals, and I would pre-record five weeks of radio straight – five programs – so no one would touch it, because I loved doing it. I didn’t want to give it to the hip-hop person, just so they can take the piss out of metal, because a lot of the station people would let other announcers take over their show…
Yeah, I can remember Wil Anderson doing that, and it pissed me off.
Yeah, I was like, “No, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do these shows in advance.” And I did that. Over time, they were saying, “Maybe get guest programmers.” So I eventually did, and I got some pretty good names like Kirk Hammett, and I got Dave Mustaine. I brought in a couple of good friends. So anyway, they told me [in] the year of 2011 that this is kind of [my] final year, and it was absolutely devastating. You’ve got your dream job, you’re doing a great job, I was really, really disappointed by that. I was like, you’re pulling the rug underneath me for no reason other than “time to move on.” “You’re not doing a shit job – we just think it’s time for you to go,” and you just think, well, that’s a bit unjust. That’s kind of an unfair dismissal to be honest, really. There’s no justified reason to let you go. Like, “Tom, you’re doing a great job, but we just think it’s time you go.” Wait a minute – this doesn’t make sense! So, on a legal battle, that was not a positive in their approach, so I did seek a lot of that legal advice at the time and said that this could be an unfair dismissal case because I’m being driven out for no justifiable reason, other than, “Oh, it’s a youth station, [and] you’re getting a bit old.” I’m like, “Oh, is that age discrimination?” [Laughs] Blah-blah-blah …Every week, going in there, shutting out the fact that this job is going to end at the end of the year. I didn’t tell anybody about it, apart from family. I thought, hopefully they’ll overturn it, and realise, “this guy is great. He loves what he does.” I think I did a pretty decent job. And then yeah, mid-year – “We haven’t changed our minds … Let’s hold a competition so you can … find your replacement.” A lot of people don’t know this. I was like, “Are you kidding me? You want me to auction off my job? And I can say, “Anyone want to take my job? I don’t want to lose it, but here it is!” So they made it out that I passed the torch, and I didn’t. I left kicking and screaming, saying “this is bullshit.”
Later in the year, that’s when I went, “Well, where can I go from here?” This really is the top of the mountain in this country. Australia is the cubby house of the world. I looked into a lot of radio in other countries, because I’ve done radio since I was nineteen, and I’ve never taken a year off. I thought, OK, I’m not losing my passion for this, because that’s mine. I’m just losing a job and a paycheque. OK, that’s replaceable, but not my passion – that’s mine. I applied to a few stations overseas … They wouldn’t let me in, so that’s when I started to research online radio, which kind of was in its infancy in some respects. “What? Listen to radio on the internet? That doesn’t make sense!” I jumped on it quick, and started to investigate, going “Where can I go from here? Because I’ll be damned if I’m going to stop this because they’re stopping me.” So that’s what I did. At the end of the last show, I told people, “Here’s my Facebook page. Just follow me – I’m going to do something!” I didn’t want to tell them what I was planning on. I just wanted to let people know that this isn’t over. I did end up revealing that it wasn’t my decision when I did all my live talkback on the final show, because I thought, “I’ve got to keep it professional.” I did thank the station. I said, “It’s been a hell of a ride,” because it absolutely was. To me, I thank Costa Zouliou [original host of Three Hours of Power], because he passed the torch to me. [Costa] got me the opportunity [but] I’ve never looked back at all. I don’t need to. I’m proud of what I did, absolutely. Some of the best radio I’ve ever done was throughout that time … But now I look back and go, “Well, three hours once a week at 10 o’clock at night when most people are going to bed, and I’ve just gone and built the first ever 24/7 online metal radio station.” I’m in a better place now because this is mine … I just burrowed down and built this beast. It’s been a hell of a journey, but one I don’t regret one bit, and now I look back and go, “Yeah, I’m glad I did this.”
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