25th Anniversary Reissue 
1998-2023

Photos: Amac

In 1995 I photographed Magic Dirt live at the Melbourne Big Day Out, where I was working with Peter Milne as part of his photo agency Braille. The band were hot, in form. From the pit front of stage I took a photo of the enraptured crowd. Later I made a connection with the band through their manager, Gavan Purdy. Gavan's  partner Leanne worked at the Continental Cafe in Greville Street, where I also worked nights as a waiter. The crowd photo would end up on the inside cover of the Friends in Danger album. 

In late 1995, Dave Thomas joined the band as guitarist to replace Daniel Herring, creating an opportunity for new photos, and we embarked on a road trip down the west coast of Victoria in my '65 Falcon XP wagon. We explored windswept and desolate Avalon Beach, surreal salt pans, and suburban hills, where the band skated and basked in the afternoon sun. 

In  Septrember 1997, for Young & Full of the Devil, and with Raul Sanchez now permanent guitarist, we met again, this time for a portrait session in my studio warehouse at Centre House, 252 Flinders Lane. The band were funny and mischievous. The vibe we were going for was 'the morning after winning ALL the ARIA awards'. 

For the album booklet photos, I suggested retracing Magic Dirt's journey from their hometown of Geelong to Melbourne. One sunny Melbourne day, I walked out the front door, down to Degraves Subway and onto Flinders St station with my Mamiya RB67, and jumped on a suburban train headed west to Geelong. I got off at various stations along the way, walked, and took photos of empty stations, fields, bus stops, and disparate youths. 

The album and the band are suitably named. As individuals, they have a tangible, raw, electric energy. Like all great bands, they are a gang, with an intuition and private language and humour that come from the long hours and intimacy of touring and creating art together. They are generous and collaborative artists, and our shoots were always very playful, funny, loose, and experimental. The photos still thrill me, and I'm wildly proud to have collaborated with the band for this iconic album, by a group of artists I adore to this day.

In 2023, on the 25th anniversary of the album's release, Magic Dirt re-released the album on all formats and embarked on a tour to celebrate. In Byron Bay, they played the Northern Hotel. We got together for an afternoon and took some new shots. That night, young lovers pashed in the front row while the band, in blistering form, tore through Young and Full of the Devil in its entirety.

With love, and dedicated to the spirit of Dean Turner and Magic Dirt.

Andy Mac
2025

Jules Lefevre, reporting for Music Feeds in 2023

Young & Full of the Devil is the second studio album by Australian rock band Magic Dirt. It was released in April 1998 and reached number 100 on the ARIA charts upon release. It re-entered the chart in April 2023 at number 76, a new peak.

The album was recorded in 12 days in 1997 at Birdland Studios. It was the first album to feature lead guitarist Raul Sanchez as Dave Thomas departed due to creative differences in mid-1997. According to bass player Dean Turner the band smoked hash and took some acid during the recording process, saying "We went in there and just had a good time you know. Just worked like 15, 17 hours a day."

Producer Lindsay Gravina said, "This record stands apart because in the purest sense, it's essentially an art record. This album captured the whole zeitgeist of those times, a fucking apocalyptic catharsis, for us personally, but also for the times in general – a last hurrah for a scene that had signalled its peak, and who better to call it?"