The original members were Bart Willoughby, Les Graham (aka Leslie Lovegrove), Ricky Harrison, John Miller, and Veronica Rankine.
No Fixed Address formed in 1979 at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (CASM) in North Adelaide, South Australia.
[1][2][3] Most of the band members were students at CASM, where they first heard reggae music from Jamaica, including Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Jimmy Cliff.
[7] In 1979, NFA played its first large concert at the National Aboriginal Day held at Taperoo, South Australia, and were especially supported by community radio station 5MMM after this.
[3] The soundtrack album to Wrong Side of the Road, with six tracks from each of the bands, sold well and received plenty of airplay on indie radio stations.
Willoughby broke his right arm in Perth, and the band had to get a replacement drummer for a concert that was filmed by ABC Television for Rock Arena.
[10] On the strength of their live performances and airplay of their demo recordings on 5MMM they were the cover story on the August 1980 edition of national rock magazine Roadrunner.
The song has become an unofficial anthem for many of Australia's Indigenous peoples, with its most well-known line "We have survived /The White man’s world /And you know /You can’t change that".
[17][11] NFA also toured with Ian Dury and the Blockheads (November 1981), The Clash (February 1982),[10] Midnight Oil, Split Enz, Mental as Anything, and others.
[citation needed] In 1987 Willoughby reformed the band and they toured Europe, including a number of Eastern Bloc countries, appearing at the East Berlin Festival.
[22] In June 2016, Ricky Harrison, Les Graham, John Miller, and Bart Willoughby reunited to perform in Adelaide when they were inducted into the SA Music Hall of Fame.