Latest / The Front / The melancholy beauty of Cold Chisel (Best of 2024)

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The melancholy beauty of Cold Chisel (Best of 2024) · The Front

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: From The Australian. I'm Claire Harvey. We're hoping you're having
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: a great holiday break and today we're bringing you one
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: of our favorite episodes from the year. This episode originally
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: aired on September twenty seven. As legendary rockers Cold Chisel
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: prepared to hit the road for their Big five OZHO tour.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: The Australian went inside the rehearsal room to talk love, grief,
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  Speaker 1: healing and joy with Jimmy Barnes, Charlie Drayton and Cold Chisel.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: The Front will return with all new episodes on Monday,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: January thirteenth. Just hit follow or subscribe to make sure
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: you don't miss an episode.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Maybe spy away.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: You know that voice, that scream we all do. That's
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: Jimmy Barnes.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: And this is Cold Chisel playing together for the first
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  Speaker 1: time in years. The Australian was invited into a place
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  Speaker 1: not even the most hardcore Chisel fans get to go,
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  Speaker 1: the rehearsal room for their forthcoming national tour. This is
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: what Chisel chose to play first, a ballad written by
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Don Walker in twenty ten, All for You. Once upon
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: a time, Jimmy Barnes would have warmed up for this
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: with a bottle of something hard in twenty twenty four.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: His poison comes in a porcelain cup.
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  Speaker 4: You could get me a coffee, would Yeah, yeah, It's
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  Speaker 4: just a flat white with white white to please make
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  Speaker 4: this sound.
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  Speaker 3: I'm music writer Andrew McMillan sat down with the band.
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  Speaker 4: I am the luckiest man in the world to get
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  Speaker 4: up every night and sing this, this set of songs,
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  Speaker 4: you know, like they sing Don Walker songs every night.
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  Speaker 4: What a blessing, you know. I'm the luckiest going in
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  Speaker 4: Australia to be able to do that, you know.
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  Speaker 1: Barns guitarist and pianist and lyricist Don Walker, bassist Phil
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  Speaker 1: Small and drama Charlie Drayton last played together in twenty
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: twenty at the end of their last tour.
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  Speaker 4: I think it's going to be even better than it's
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  Speaker 4: ever been because we've had this chance to think about
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  Speaker 4: why we want to play. We're not coming in exhausted
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  Speaker 4: from studio recording. I can just feel the excitement for everybody.
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  Speaker 4: I can't wait again in front of an audience with
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  Speaker 4: this band.
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  Speaker 1: This tour is called the Big five Oho and it
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  Speaker 1: sees the band older Grayer yes, but also in Barnes's case,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: fresh from a brush with death, He's been through open
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  Speaker 1: heart surgery and two major hip operations, all connected to
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: a raging staph infection. Barnes has had to strengthen his
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  Speaker 1: battered body, especially his hips, to adopt his classic pose
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  Speaker 1: standing with one foot upstage, one foot downstage, using his
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  Speaker 1: full body to project that remarkable voice.
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: This tour is going to roll more than it rocks,
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: you know, which is a really cool thing. I think
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  Speaker 4: it's going to have a lot more swing and a
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  Speaker 4: lot more groove, which it doesn't mean it's going to
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  Speaker 4: be less intense, but it's going to be not as
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  Speaker 4: frantic maybe, which I think is going to be a
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  Speaker 4: really cool thing. My thoughts are seeing in a just
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  Speaker 4: a back off, you know, half a degree and load
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  Speaker 4: the songs to swing a lot more as opposed to
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  Speaker 4: pushing all the band because normally I want Everton played
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  Speaker 4: faster and harder and lower. I'm going to let them
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  Speaker 4: do their own thing and find the grooves that work
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  Speaker 4: for the songs and singing with them.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: All for you is especially meaningful for fans and for
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: the band themselves.
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  Speaker 5: It's very clearly a love song written from one to another.
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  Speaker 5: Don Walker wrote this for his partner at the time,
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  Speaker 5: Good Shoe. Ginny Barnes loves singing this song that has
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  Speaker 5: since it was written because it's a song that he
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  Speaker 5: sings to Jane Barnes.
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  Speaker 4: His wife, all day and it's.
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  Speaker 5: You, and you can extrapolate that to the listener. It's
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  Speaker 5: easily become honey of people's favorite love song because it's
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  Speaker 5: just so direct, and it's written from a man to
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  Speaker 5: a woman who's very earnestly and directly explaining what she
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  Speaker 5: means to him. It's very bald and unpretentious and almost
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  Speaker 5: like a country song in the way in that there's
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  Speaker 5: very little artifice or pretension. It's just very direct. And
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  Speaker 5: Don Walker would have been about sixty when he wrote this.
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  Speaker 5: I'm guessing at least he's seventy two today, So it's
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  Speaker 5: kind of funny. These great songwriters, the alder they get,
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  Speaker 5: sometimes they strip away the metaphors and the messages and
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  Speaker 5: say it real straight and it works just as well.
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  Speaker 1: All for You was the last song the band recorded
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  Speaker 1: with their former drummer Steve Prestwich. He died in twenty
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  Speaker 1: eleven after surgery for a brain tumor, a loss that
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  Speaker 1: is still raw.
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  Speaker 4: Steve was one of my favorite people in the world,
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  Speaker 4: one of my favorite drumas in the world.
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  Speaker 1: At the time, Prestwich seemed irreplaceable. But then Charlie Drayton
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  Speaker 1: came along, already established as an outstanding drama in his
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  Speaker 1: own right, living in New York, married to another Australian
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  Speaker 1: musical superstar, the Divinyls, Chrissy Amphlet.
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  Speaker 4: Charlie's like a totally different beef, complete to Steve. He's
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  Speaker 4: got the swing in this groove. He's relentless, he doesn't
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  Speaker 4: let you miss it. You know, he's a king of groove. Listen,
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  Speaker 4: if Charlie hadn't joined the band, if we hadn't met
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  Speaker 4: up with Charlie, I don't think cultures or whatever I've
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  Speaker 4: got back together after Steve died.
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  Speaker 5: Hi, Charlie, Andrew, how are you doing? Love for me?
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  Speaker 5: You get your hand.
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  Speaker 1: When Andrew talks to Charlie Drayton after they rattle through
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  Speaker 1: All for You in the studio, the emotion is momentarily overwhelming.
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  Speaker 1: Back in twenty eleven, Chrissy Amphlet was suffering multiple sclerosis
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  Speaker 1: and breast cancer, which eventually would claim her life.
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  Speaker 5: Was the first time you guys have full five played
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  Speaker 5: together in years. Right just then, how you feeling.
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  Speaker 6: There's a music that's like medicine in that song book
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  Speaker 6: been there's some healing in us.
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  Speaker 7: Playing together because.
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  Speaker 6: We play one way together, different to how we play
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  Speaker 6: with the other musicians. So they have just played one
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  Speaker 6: song together again. It's emotional because we've been We've been
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  Speaker 6: through a lot to get back here.
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  Speaker 1: And.
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  Speaker 6: I love playing music with these guys.
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  Speaker 2: If you had told me in twenty eleven, hey, Charlie,
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  Speaker 2: I have a feeling that you know you might link
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  Speaker 2: up with coaches, I'd be like, you're crazy.
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  Speaker 7: I was sitting.
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  Speaker 6: With my wife, Christie, who had just entered a.
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  Speaker 7: Major change of life. We were sitting together when we
• 8:02
  Speaker 7: heard the news about Steve passing. She said, the COACHSTL
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  Speaker 7: decides to play again, they'll come looking for you. Three
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  Speaker 7: days later she got an email from Gone.
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  Speaker 4: She knew, She just knew so.
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  Speaker 6: And that's initially what brought us together. Playing music was
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  Speaker 6: about healing, and every chapter we've come together, we learned
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  Speaker 6: the value of like life. We have music at the
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  Speaker 6: top that's medicine, but you know it's healing right now,
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  Speaker 6: that's why I'm feeling some happy.
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  Speaker 1: Joy coming up the meeting behind another of Cold Chisel's
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: deeply moving smash hits. This story is from The Australian's
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Review section. Each week, it's the home of the best reviews,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: previews and interviews with artists, authors and musicians by some
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: of Australia's best journals. Check us out at the Australian
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: dot com dot au.
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  Speaker 3: And we'll be back after this break.
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  Speaker 1: On the drums is Steve Prestwich, Cold Chisel's late lamented
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  Speaker 1: drummer Kids.
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  Speaker 8: Dab Sad, Child's Pastafi. I'm just saying, man for me
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  Speaker 8: your sad.
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  Speaker 1: This is, of course Flame Trees, the nineteen eighty four
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  Speaker 1: song that never went to number one, but it has
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: become an enduring part of the soundtrack to Australian Life.
• 9:58
  Speaker 5: Got It's music was composed by Steve Prestwich. The drama
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  Speaker 5: and oddly the drummer composed it on bass guitar first.
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  Speaker 5: From what I've read, he composed it across many months
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  Speaker 5: backstage at col Chissel shows while they're on tour. He
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  Speaker 5: was constantly playing with a chord progression, a bassline that
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  Speaker 5: became the driving force of the song, but he never
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  Speaker 5: could get lyrics to it. He also was a lyricist
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  Speaker 5: a songwriter, but this one, for whatever reason, eluded him.
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  Speaker 5: And it wasn't until I think either Don Walker heard
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  Speaker 5: him playing it backstage or Steve asked him directly, do
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  Speaker 5: you want to write something to this?
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  Speaker 8: Lose the Bai dram sat back down.
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  Speaker 5: Gone. Walker got in a nostalgic kind of frame of
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  Speaker 5: mind thinking of his growing up in Grafton and also
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  Speaker 5: just the notion of being a young man on the
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  Speaker 5: cusp of adulthood and what that all represented and worked
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  Speaker 5: into what became this song. It's a song of coming
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  Speaker 5: and going. As in the character in the song, the
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  Speaker 5: protagonist has left, but he's coming back for the purposes
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  Speaker 5: of this song and seems to disdain or look back
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  Speaker 5: with some regret on what this town represented to him,
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  Speaker 5: and yet he's drawn back to it. And there's elements
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  Speaker 5: that he assuming it's a heat I mean, it's from
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  Speaker 5: mal perspective, elements that he can't get away from that
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  Speaker 5: kind of magnetic pool that so many of us have
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  Speaker 5: to our hometowns where we grew up. And it's such
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  Speaker 5: a young person's song, and I suppose that's why it's
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  Speaker 5: resonated with Chisel's audience at that time when it was released.
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  Speaker 5: Initially young people who are now what forty years older,
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  Speaker 5: which is primarily the fan base. I suppose middle aged
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  Speaker 5: people and above, But it's a young person's song because
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  Speaker 5: it's talking about that cusp of young adulthood where you're
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  Speaker 5: trying to find your place in the world and you've
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  Speaker 5: come from somewhere and you're looking back at it with
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  Speaker 5: a certain sense of emotion and you're hoping what's ahead
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  Speaker 5: of you is better than where you came from, but
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  Speaker 5: you never really know.
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  Speaker 4: This has never been a band that feels is so
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  Speaker 4: good for me as this band. You know, there's just
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  Speaker 4: something about the way the rhythm section play, the way
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  Speaker 4: that Dawn approaches a pea. I don't know anybody else
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  Speaker 4: plays piano like him and Mossy. The interaction between Mossy
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  Speaker 4: and Don sometimes you can't tell where Don's leaving off
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  Speaker 4: and where Mossie is felling in the chords, and that's real.
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  Speaker 4: It's really unique. And as soon as the band starts playing,
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  Speaker 4: I just I feel comfortable. And that's where I've literally
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  Speaker 4: learned how it's seen doing that so to be able
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  Speaker 4: to do it fifty years down the track is a
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  Speaker 4: real gift.
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  Speaker 5: They acknowledge that these songs mean a lot to a
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  Speaker 5: lot of people. They're currently gearing up to play this
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  Speaker 5: great songbook once again, to reopen the songbook for a
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  Speaker 5: generation of Australians, perhaps who didn't get the chance to
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  Speaker 5: see them last time around. It was five years ago,
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  Speaker 5: and with every passing year, more and more people find
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  Speaker 5: this great band because the songs that they've written are timeless.
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• 14:07
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