The Choirboys performed in Queanbeyan in 2019. Mark Gable (centre) said the crowd went berserk when they played ‘Struggle Town’. Photo: Justin Hoffman Photography/Facebook.
Veteran Australian hard rock band the Choirboys gave Queanbeyan the unofficial nickname ‘Struggle Town’ when they released a song about it with that title in 1988.
“Get out of Struggle Town, never going back, never ever going back, oh yeah, I ain’t ever going back,” frontman Mark Gable sings to a black and white music video that depicts Queanbeyan as an industrial wasteland with smoking factories, unpaved flooding roads, a single mother hitchhiking and another woman running from something.
The Struggle Town moniker has seen Queanbeyan mocked on satirical Facebook sites and is referenced on the town’s Wikipedia page. It also landed former Canberra newsreader Greg Robson in trouble when he referenced the phrase on an evening bulletin.
Region caught up with Mark ahead of the band’s Run to Paradise 2025 Australian tour to ask about why Queanbeyan was chosen as the theme of this bleak song and how the town reacted to it.
The Choirboys are from Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Why did you choose to do a song about how hard it is to live in Queanbeyan?
I’m not from Sydney. I was born in Captains Flat, near Queanbeyan. My father was a miner, and it was a mining town back then, but I don’t remember living there; we moved to New Guinea when I was two.
After the 1970s, my mother lived in Canberra, and our [now late] drummer Lindsay Tebbutt’s family lived in Canberra, too, and we both visited a lot.
We were at Lindsay’s place one time and I asked Lindsey’s Dad what he was doing later that day. He said, “We are going down to Struggle Town”. I said, “What the hell’s that?” He said “Queanbeyan”. That’s how I got the idea for the song.
Was the music video depicting Queanbeyan as an industrial wasteland actually filmed in the town?
No, it was filmed in Wollongong. That’s why it’s got the factories. At that time, Queanbeyan wasn’t the struggle town it was made out to be, Wollongong was, though, as it’s always been working class.
What were the women in the music video running away from?
That was just artistic licence. The video was produced and directed by a woman who decided how it was going to work.
So you actually don’t mind Queanbeyan?
I love it! I have great memories of the place. It’s got some great cafes.
Did Queanbeyan locals take offence to you calling their home Struggle Town?
No, quite surprisingly, when we did a show in Queanbeyan, at the start of the song they went berserk. They loved it.
Given the decline of live music and rise of the Internet, how much harder would it be for a pub rock band like the Choirboys to make it big in 2024?
A lot has been killed by the Internet; however, you’ve got bands breaking through having worldwide success from Australia, which wasn’t possible before.
Before, we had to go through middlemen. You had to get an agent, you had to get a recording company, a publishing company, you had to work with the press and get the radio to play you. There were all these middlemen with whom you had to deal.
But now you have a band like Little Quirks that got their break because of the Internet and social media, so it’s a different world, and in many ways, it’s a better world. Our song ‘Run to Paradise’ has been streamed 80 million times.
On the other hand, social media relies more on images, so songs today aren’t as good as they used to be.
Are you glad you emerged in the late 1970s rather than now?
Yeah, it was unbelievable. You had Men at Work, ACDC, INXS, Midnight Oil, The Angels and The Divinyls. ACDC may never have happened if Angus, Malcolm and George had stayed in Glasgow … the fact that they were exported to Australia as immigrants and started a band when the pub scene was at its biggest [helped them] break big and become one of the biggest bands in the world.
I’m so lucky to have been around all those bands.
Your upcoming tour includes many small towns, such as Griffith, Albury, Thirroul and Dubbo. What do you like about regional Australia?
We love it. We go in as visitors and work there, but I wouldn’t really call getting up on stage and playing rock and roll working. As an amateur photographer, I have a lot of photos from towns like Griffith on file from the 1960s. It’s great just hanging out in these country towns.
It’s weird how people gravitate to country towns. You have to remember Cold Chisel’s Ian Moss was born in Alice Springs and Don Walker was born in Ayr in Queensland.
People expected a voice like Ian Moss’s to come from a big city like New York or Sydney, but Alice Springs? It’s amazing.
How do you go with late night shows at age 74?
I hate the late nights. I deal with it, but for decades I’ve been going to bed before 9 pm and I wake up at 5 am.
What can people expect on your upcoming tour?
I always loved touring with other bands, going backstage, and listening to their unbelievable stories. We’re going to tell you all the naughty stories.
Details of the Choirboys’ Run to Paradise 2025 tour can be found on the band’s website.
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