Australian guitarist Brett Garsed had no idea of the legacy of the Nelson family when he joined Matthew and Gunnar Nelson’s band Nelson in the mid 80s.
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Matthew and Gunnar were the twin songs of Rick Nelson. Rick knew that. But he wasn’t aware of who the Nelson’s brother grandparents were until one day…
Brett tells Noise11.com, “I didn’t (know about the legacy). I remember seeing Matt and Gunnar on Hey Hey It’s Saturday for a brief minute and they were really funny. You couldn’t really take your eyes off them with the long blond hair. It was kind of good in a way. What I knew of Rick Nelson, their father, was that he was a musician. I didn’t know he was part of the TV show The Nelsons. I knew nothing of Ozzie and Harriet. I knew nothing of that legacy over there”.
Brett had been with John Farnham before Nelson. He was the guitarist on ‘Whispering Jack’, ‘Age of Reason’ and ‘Chain Reaction’ before heading to the USA to join Nelson. “When I met Matt and Gunnar I was just meeting them as two musicians,” he said. “Once I heard their demos I just went ‘these are hit songs’ and they were hit songs. We had a national number one single with ‘Love and Affection’. There are not too many Australia’s who can put their hand up and say ‘I played on a national number one single in America’ but I can say that. It was a big record.”
While Brett new who Rick Nelson was he had no idea about how famous the Nelson’s grandmother Harriet Nelson was. “The funniest thing was we did go and hang out with their grandmother Harriet quite often. It was typical me “G’day Harriet, Matt and Gunnar’s grandma”. Then one night their then manager and his wife, who was an insane fan of Ozzie and Harriet and the Nelsons in general, we sat there and watched this documentary with her and it was all about Rick Nelson. I was sitting there going ‘wow this is quite the family’. I came to realise people would use as a reference for the ideal family. They’d say ‘its not exactly Ozzie and Harriet’ or ‘its not the Nelsons’.
Matt and Gunnar were only about the band Bretty says, “Matt and Gunnar were great in that way. They were musos. They were just focused on their career and getting that done. They didn’t walk around advertising that they were Rick’s sons. I never thought about it too much. I just thought about the band and what we were doing.”
Brett Garsed has donated the song ‘From The Inside’ for the second Guitars 4 Vets album ‘Second Tour’.
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