Michael Weiley of V Spy V Spy passes, aged 59

Michael Weiley, lead guitarist and singer with Sydney band V Spy V Spy, has passed after a battle with cancer. He was 59.

The news was confirmed by the band as well as his sister Georgia who farewelled “my gorgeous ‘big brother’ Michael, the gentlest soul I ever knew.”

Weiley was born in London and proudly recalls having only one guitar lesson in his life.

“We moved to Wales and I was at the actress Julie Christie’s house and this bloke with an earring dropped around for a visit and ended up showing me a chord.

“The next day I happened to be reading a pop magazine, and I saw a photo of that bloke with a earring.

It was Ronnie Lane, of the Small Faces and Rod Stewart’s Faces. “I had no idea!”

In his mid-teens, Weiley moved to Sydney, and attended Nelson Bay High School.

He met Craig Bloxom, who’d moved as a child from Los Angeles, and they began jamming.

They soon decided to drop out of school and form a band, joined by reggae –inspired drummer Cliff Grigg.

“Musically we came from different worlds,” said Weiley, whose guitar style came from the Stones, Zeppelin and David Bowie’s axeman Mick Ronson.

“But as a band, we were as one: one of us with come up with an idea, and almost immediately, the other two would build on it.”

V Spy V Spy took their name from the famous US comic strip from Mad Magazine.

The three lived in a roofless squat in Glebe for almost eight years, surrounded by refugees, drug dealers and bohemian artists.

The basement served as their first rehearsal room.

From there came their lyrical street politics.

Their ska-hard rock attack quickly got them a following around Sydney in the early 1980s.

They were managed by Midnight Oil’s manager Gary Morris and picked up by Dirty Pool, while their records were issued through Green, Powderworks, and later Warner Music.

Don’t Tear It Down reached #3 on the charts.

Like the Oils, Hoodoo Gurus and Australian Crawl, V Spy V Spy were massive in Brazil, where they toured no less than 16 times.

In recent years, Weiley led a new line-up of the band.

He recently observed that songs written 30 years ago – like Don’t Tear It Down about the destruction of inner cities, Credit Card about the gulf between the haves and have-nots, Injustice about the plight of First Nation communities, Harry’s Reasons about heroin addiction, Trash The Planet and Xenophobia (Why?) – were  still as relevant today as then.