Words by Dan Rzicznek

On April 30, 2023, the music and entertainment world lost Broderick Smith. He was 75 years old. Fans of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard may know Smith as father of the band's beloved vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, Ambrose Kenny-Smith, but will also recognize him as the narrator of the band's 2013 album, Eyes Like the Sky.
A circuitous tale of murder, revenge, goat-lust, and, above all, survival, Eyes Like the Sky serves up a western movie on wax. Perhaps overlooked by casual listeners, what is arguably the band's first concept album has nonetheless attracted a small but rabid cadre of devotees. The music on the record is as twanged-out as Gizz gets, with sweeping, thematic melodies and gritty surf grooves mingling together. Crackling above the instrumental fray is the thoroughly distorted voice of Broderick Smith. His narration sounds windblown and gnarled, tangled in barbed-wire—a perfect complement to the band's sonic sorcery.
Smith wrote the story and words for Eyes Like the Sky, which makes him in many ways the star of the record. As the Gizz machine churns away behind him, Smith conjures a tortuous landscape where the bones of cavalrymen bleach on the sand and you don't hear the rifle report until after the bullet has hit you. The writing is sinewy and violent—a rhythmically-charged prose to match the saga's brutal content. Whether one regards it as a curiosity or a classic, there's no denying that Eyes Like the Sky is an important artefact from King Gizzard's primal years. The album was not Smith's first time working with the band, however.
On 2012's 12 Bar Bruise, Smith contributed spoken narration to the track Sam Cherry's Last Shot. His reading of an excerpt from a historical text (1883's Thirty-Three Years Among Our Wild Indians by Col. Richard Irving Dodge) hints at the distorted vocal effect and gruesome subject matter that would become central to Eyes Like the Sky. As Stu mentions in the liner notes of 12 Bar Bruise, "Many firsts here - first collaborations and early narrative based music with Brod Smith..." Indeed, Smith's narration on both albums opened the door for future narration-related Gizzard projects, Murder of the Universe chief among them.

Smith joined King Gizzard on stage on three occasions that we know of:

• 7/20/12 Castlemaine (Sam Cherry's Last Shot).
• 11/13/13 Triple R Performance Space.
• 12/1/18 Gizzfest (Eyes Like the Sky, Year of Our Lord, and The Raid).

Unfortunately, only Head On/Pill circulates from the 2013 performance, although the KGLW.net setlist wizards concur that material from Eyes Like the Sky was likely performed. This week was meant to mark the fourth time Broderick graced the stage with King Gizzard. The band had arranged for him to join them in a landmark performance capping off the ‘23 Residency tour at the iconic Hollywood Bowl, ostensibly to guest on tunes from Eyes Like the Sky, or perhaps Sam Cherry's Last Shot. Of course we'll never hear the fruits of this final collaboration, and that is worth lamenting.

As word spread of Broderick Smith's death, the Internet lit up with tributes and remembrances, and the King Gizzard fanbase in particular shared recommendations from across Smith's career with one another. The team at KGLW.net has curated several celebratory performances and recordings featuring the man himself, while acknowledging that these highlights are just a few of many in a career that included over a dozen albums and numerous live concerts, as well as acting appearances on stage and screen. We hope they serve as an entry point for the interested listener.
We begin with a clip from a 1980 memorial concert for Adelaide-born songwriter Andrew Durant. Broderick delivers a solemn yet rousing version of the Durant-penned Ocean Deep. After clicking play, you might think to doublecheck the video information, because this sounds nothing like the raw, grizzled recitation of Eyes Like the Sky. Instead, here is a country crooner minus the drawl— a warm and soulful tenor reminiscent of Van Morrison. Smith commands Ocean Deep with a precision and sincerity that engages the listener completely. A vocal chameleon, Broderick sounds slightly different on each project, but Ocean Deep offers a good example of his sound from the eighties onward.

Time-traveling backward to the 1973 Sunbury Pop Festival, here's a downright incendiary performance by Carson, a slightly psychedelic boogie and blues band that Broderick served as frontman for. Anyone who has watched a lot of live King Gizzard will note the obvious father-son resemblance in terms of not only physical appearance, but also energy and stage presence, down to the charismatic antics and natural ability to work a crowd. Broderick's rave-up vocals and electrifying harp-work (some of it fed through a wah-wah pedal!) drip with the blues as his bandmates lay down a chugging groove and take an extended round of solos, bringing numerous hairy hippies to their feet to dance.
Carson made just one studio album, 1972's Blown, and it's a memorable listen. In particular, the intro to the track titled simply A Boogie prefigures King Gizzard's Boogieman Sam. One has to wonder if the lads of King Gizzard didn't consult the aforementioned track, or perhaps the patriarchal boogieman himself, during the boogie-centric songwriting of Fishing for Fishies. Carson's second and final release, On the Air (1973), features the same song (now titled just Boogie) along with other selections from their Sunbury set, including an ambitious rendering of Hey Joe. An expanded reissue of On the Air includes worthwhile material from Carson's earlier live performances. The harder edge heard on the 1970 tracks (without Broderick, who wouldn't join until 1971) brings to mind Blue Cheer or very early Black Sabbath. Both Blown (Banana Power is another absurdly cool track) and the expanded On the Air are available on streaming platforms and well worth a listen.

When Carson dissolved in early 1973, not long after their Sunbury appearance, Broderick landed on his feet and co-founded The Dingoes, a country-rock outfit with a fresh sound and style. An eponymous album was well-received in 1974, followed by Five Times the Sun in 1977 and Orphans of the Storm in 1979. Of these three, Five Times the Sun received the widest release. (Affordable copies remain plentiful on Discogs.)
Recorded in the United States and produced by Elliot Mazer (of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young fame), Five Times the Sun is a remarkably solid collection of tunes. On the album's opening track, Smooth Sailing, Broderick sounds (it can't be helped!) like a better Rod Stewart, and noticeably different from Ocean Deep or the bluesy swagger of his work with Carson. The album features guest performances by keyboardist Nicky Hopkins (Starting Today and Way Out West) and multi-instrumentalist Garth Hudson (Waiting for the Tide to Turn). (For anyone keeping track at home, this puts Ambrose two degrees of separation away from music royalty such as Bob Dylan, John Lennon, The Rolling Stones, Jerry Garcia, and many others.) The best playing on the album, however, comes from The Dingoes themselves. In particular, the melodic and down-home guitar work of Kerryn Tolhurst and Chris Stockley stands out. Broderick's newfound raspiness feels down-to-earth and fits right in with the optimistic, backcountry vibe of the lyrics.

During their time in America, The Dingoes were booked as the opening act of a national tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd. However, the infamously tragic 1977 Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash occurred just prior, killing four members of Skynyrd's band and management. Legend persists to this day, perhaps incorrectly, that the cancellation of that tour ended the momentum of The Dingoes in the States. The band released their third album in 1979 before parting ways. Broderick returned to Australia and promptly began a successful solo career with his band, Broderick Smith's Big Combo. The eighties found Broderick focused on acting roles for the small screen, although the nineties and oughts saw a steady stream of solo releases (as well as fresh material from The Dingoes in 2010), culminating in a memoir and accompanying album (both titled Man Out of Time) in 2018. Man Out Of Time endures as Broderick’s final significant artistic output. It is a stark and honest folk-country outing, tastefully embellished but self-aware of the final stages of life. In a way reminiscent of Johnny Cash’s American Recordings, this is the slightly weary yet determined product of a lifelong talent with plenty still to give.

In 2019, filmmaker Chris Franklin premiered a short documentary about Broderick's life and music, titled simply Broderick Smith. This film captures Smith's endearing wit and even-keeled humility, along with his reverence for both live performance and the craft of songwriting.

On May 16, 2023 at the Theatre Royal in Castlemaine, family, friends, and fellow performers gathered to celebrate Broderick Smith's life and memory. Thankfully, video of the event has been made available, and while many might be tempted to skip directly to the set of four King Gizzard songs at the end of the night, we recommend the entire presentation. Photographs from throughout Broderick's life are projected (with a few visual jokes thrown in), and then we are treated to a short video of candid Broderick antics filmed and edited by Ambrose. This is followed by a clip of Smith in the 1970s (our best guess) discussing current bands and songwriters that he admires (including the Grateful Dead, the Band, Randy Newman, and Van Dyke Parks), and then an absolutely scorching live take on Bruce Springsteen's Badlands by the Big Combo. The pervasive Boogie from Sunbury follows before the focus switches to live music and the tribute concert proper begins.
Musical friends and former bandmates take the stage to honor Broderick and the proceedings, while of course tinged with solemnity, are overall celebratory and cathartic, including originals written or co-written by Broderick, and covers of songs by Ben E. King and Patty Griffin. Ambrose pops out during Shannon Bourne and Richard Tankard's performance to contribute harmonica to You're Not Naked, vocals and harmonica to Stella Joy and the perennial Boy on the Run, and acoustic guitar and vocals to Andrew Durant's Ocean Deep. After a short break, King Gizzard takes the stage for an appropriately Amby-focused set. Following an impassioned version of Let Me Mend the Past, Ambrose shares that the band wrote Cut Throat Boogie after unsuccessfully attempting to learn A Boogie by Carson. To stick with the theme, they play Bitter Boogie next, Ambrose's heavily effected vocals in the outro sounding like some kind of digitized banshee. A super-sized Boogieman Sam closes the affair, with Bourne and Tankard returning to the stage to join in the triumphant jamming.

Whether you knew him only from King Gizzard's Eyes Like the Sky and Sam Cherry's Last Shot, or go all the way back to the Carson days (perhaps spotting yourself in the Sunbury footage), we hope this selection of material serves as an introduction or a reminder that more riches await the listener who spends time with Broderick Smith's musical legacy. The man may be gone, yet we still have the songs and can still hear his remarkable voice bring the words to life.