OAG's Radhi Reveals His Struggle With Drugs, A Collab With Rani Kulup & Comeback Plans

Even locally, from the now-defunct TV station MetroVision to mainstream radio to MTV and Channel V, alternative’s popularity was raising faster than you could say Dead Eye Dick.

With their jangly guitar pop and innocent boyish vocals, you could say that in Malaysia they were as big as any international band.



In a tell-all interview with JUICE magazine, founding member and frontman, Radhi-O, shares his complicated past, struggles with heroin addiction, and plans for a comeback 20 years after ‘60s TV’.

Below are a few quotes and points from that interview:

“There were too many metal bands at the time in the late ‘80s metal scene. I was listening to Slayer, Obituary, Kreator! I was in the process of discovering myself musically.”

“The first time we (OAG) were called Slimeballs. Then one night I had a dream, I went into a cave and outside the cave, there was writing on the rock that said ‘Old Automatic Garbage.’

I had no intention of grabbing attention. I just did it… you know?” he recalls of his switch from Slayer to Stone Roses. “There weren’t a lot of non-metal indie bands when we started, there was Spiral Kinetic Circus, Deflowered… not many bands at all compared to the metal scene. Even [Flop Poppy’s frontman] Andy was into metal.”

“I wrote in English so I could get close to my British stepdad. My mum remarried this man from Bradford, UK. I really wanted to impress him… Every time he went back to UK, he would come back with cassette tapes like Radiohead and Manic Street Preachers. He helped me with my transition from metal to indie music. Although since he and my mother got a divorce, I haven’t seen much of him.”

“Even though it’s a big hit, it’s such a cincai song. It’s not a serious song where when you listen to it, you get this guy who is a really good musician or something… I mean, [begins to sing] ‘Watching on and on again…’ what the f*ck is that, man?”

“If I had only listened to Paul Moss and [8TV CEO] Ahmad Izham, I would be the no. 1 artist right now… above Siti Nurhaliza because Siti is an ardent OAG fan! She brought us on tour twice. But I made a lot of mistakes. I missed the flights… twice! She told me, ‘Rugi lah… You could have been big in Indonesia.’”

He’s like John Lennon, he wants peace. If you look past the bad press, he really wants to make a change and do good things for Malaysia. He was at the Red Shirt rally, but he wore green… He’s weird, man. I did it for fun.

The singer’s struggles with addiction began when a skateboarding-friend introduced him to the substance in ’94. He has been in and out of rehab since then. OAG’s 1999 sophomore album Melody Mocker “took two years to finish because I was so hooked on heroin.”

“…the last time we played together was in ‘96.”

“Our new English album, I’m thinking of calling it Wanna Bee… because I want to be busy like a bee. Like I said, I don’t have time to fool around anymore. Maybe the first single’s music video will be, like, me with bees all over my face and body,” rubbing his hands over his face mimicking what he thinks it would look like.

“Yeah, something like that.”

Watch the exclusive video interview on JUICE too.