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