Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Friday, September twenty seven. Jim Chalmers met with his
Speaker 1: Chinese counterparts on his first official trip to the People's
Speaker 1: Republic on Thursday. Chalmers is the first Australian treasurer to
Speaker 1: visit China in seven years. He says it's vital in
Speaker 1: rebuilding mutual trust with our biggest trading partner. Will Glasgow
Speaker 1: is the only Australian journal resident in China. You can
Speaker 1: read his expert analysis right now at the Australian dot
Speaker 1: com dot u. Nobody does exquisite nostalgia like Cold Chisel,
Speaker 1: with a catalog of songs that can make any Australian
Speaker 1: tear up from the first note. Today we have a
Speaker 1: rare treat inside the rehearsal room as Jimmy Barnes, Charlie Drayton,
Speaker 1: Don Walker, Phil Small and Ann Moosse get together to
Speaker 1: make the magic happen.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe you remind Mettle bit of.
Speaker 1: You know that voice that scream we all do. That's
Speaker 1: Jimmy Barnes and this is Cold Chisel playing together for
Speaker 1: the first time in years. The Australian was invited into
Speaker 1: a place not even the most hardcore Chisel fans get
Speaker 1: to go the rehearsal route 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, would ye? Yeah, It's
Speaker 2: just a flat white.
Speaker 3: With white white. Please make it 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, you know. I'm the luckiest going in
Speaker 2: Australia to be able to do.
Speaker 3: That, you know.
Speaker 1: Barns guitarist and Moss, pianist and lyricist Don Walker, bassist
Speaker 1: Phil Small and drama Charlie Drayton last played together in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty at the end of their last tour.
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be better than it's going
Speaker 2: to be because we've had this chance to think about
Speaker 2: why we want to play. We're not coming in exhausted
Speaker 2: from studio recording. I can just feel the excitement from everybody.
Speaker 2: I can't wait to get in front of an audience
Speaker 2: 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 singing just to back off,
Speaker 2: you know, half a degree and a load of the
Speaker 2: songs to swing a lot more as opposed to pushing
Speaker 2: all the band, you know, because normally I want Everton
Speaker 2: played faster and harder and lowder. I'm going to let
Speaker 2: them do their own thing and find the grooves that
Speaker 2: work for the songs and singing with them.
Speaker 1: All for you is especially meaningful for fans and for
Speaker 1: the band themselves.
Speaker 3: It's very clearly a love song written from one to another.
Speaker 4: John Walker wrote this for his partner at the time,
Speaker 4: good Sho Ginny Barnes loves singing this song that has
Speaker 4: since it was written, because it's a song that he
Speaker 4: sings to Jane Barnes, his wife, all day and and
Speaker 4: you can extrapolate that to the listener. It's easily become
Speaker 4: any of people's favorite love song because it's just so direct,
Speaker 4: and it's written from a man to a woman who's
Speaker 4: very earnestly and directly explaining what she.
Speaker 3: Means to him.
Speaker 4: It's very bald and unpretentious and almost like a country
Speaker 4: song in the way in that there's very little artifice
Speaker 4: or pretension. It's just very direct. And Don Walker would
Speaker 4: have been about sixty when he wrote this. I'm guessing
Speaker 4: police he's seventy two today, so it's kind of funny.
Speaker 4: These great songwriters, the alder they get, sometimes they strip
Speaker 4: away the metaphors and the messages and just say it
Speaker 4: 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 Prestwitch. He died in twenty
Speaker 1: eleven after surgery for a brain chew, 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 dramas in the world.
Speaker 1: At the time, pressed which seemed irreplaceable. But then Charlie
Speaker 1: Drayton came along, already established as an outstanding drama in
Speaker 1: his own right, living in New York, married to another
Speaker 1: Australian musical superstar, the Divinyls, Chrissy Amphlet.
Speaker 2: Charlie is like a totally different abeest, 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.
Speaker 1: Listen.
Speaker 2: If Charlie hadn't joined the band, if we hadn't met
Speaker 2: up with Charlie, I don't think cultures or whatever I've
Speaker 2: got back together after Steve died.
Speaker 4: Hi, Charlie Andrew, how are you doing love for me
Speaker 4: 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, Christy Amflett was suffering multiple sclerosis
Speaker 1: and breast cancer, which eventually would claim her life.
Speaker 4: That was the first time you guys have Full five
Speaker 4: played together in years?
Speaker 3: Right? Just then?
Speaker 4: How you feeling.
Speaker 5: There's a music that's like medicine in that songbook. Then
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 we've been do a lot to
Speaker 5: get back here, and I will playing music with these guys.
Speaker 5: If you had told me in twenty eleven and Charlie
Speaker 5: have a feeling it's you know, might link up with coaches,
Speaker 5: well I'd be like, you're crazy.
Speaker 3: I was sitting.
Speaker 5: Was my wife, Christy, who had just entered a major
Speaker 5: change of life. We were sitting together when we heard
Speaker 5: the news about Steve's passing. She said, if coach has
Speaker 5: decides to play again, they'll come looking for you. Three
Speaker 5: days later, she got an.
Speaker 3: Email from Done.
Speaker 5: She knew she just knew so. And that's initially what
Speaker 5: brought us together. Playing music was about healing. In every
Speaker 5: chapter we've come together, we learned the value of like life.
Speaker 3: We have music at the top.
Speaker 5: That's the medicine.
Speaker 4: But you know.
Speaker 5: It's healing right now. 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 journals. 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 6: Kids A dam sads basfar, I'm just saying, man for
Speaker 6: your sad.
Speaker 1: This is a of course, Flame Trees, the nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: four song that never went to number one, but it
Speaker 1: has become an enduring part of the soundtrack to Australian life.
Speaker 4: Its music was composed by Steve Prestwich. The drummer, and
Speaker 4: oddly the drummer composed it on bass guitar first. From
Speaker 4: what I've read, he composed it across many months backstage
Speaker 4: at Colchissel shows while they're on tour. He was constantly
Speaker 4: playing with a chord progression bassline that became the driving
Speaker 4: force of the song, but he never could get.
Speaker 3: Lyrics to it.
Speaker 4: He also was a lyricist songwriter, but this one, for
Speaker 4: whatever reason, eluded him and it wasn't until I think
Speaker 4: either Don Walker heard him playing at backstage or Steve
Speaker 4: asked him directly, do you want to write something to this?
Speaker 6: Say all the Rage Mandriver then else Set Fautys down.
Speaker 3: Gone.
Speaker 4: Walker got in a nostalgic kind of frame of mind
Speaker 4: thinking of his growing up in Grafton and also just
Speaker 4: the notion of a young man on the cusp of
Speaker 4: adulthood and what that all represented and worked into what became.
Speaker 3: This song, Set Fauty.
Speaker 4: It's a song of coming and going, as in the
Speaker 4: character in the song, the protagonist has left, but he's
Speaker 4: coming back for the purposes of this song and seems
Speaker 4: to disdain or look back with some regret on what
Speaker 4: this town represented to him. And yet he's drawn back
Speaker 4: to it, and there's elements that he assuming it's a
Speaker 4: heat I mean, it's written from a mal perspective, elements
Speaker 4: that he can't get away from that kind of magnetic
Speaker 4: pool that so many of us have to our hometowns
Speaker 4: where we grew up. And it's such a young person's song,
Speaker 4: and I suppose that's why it's resonated with Chisel's audience
Speaker 4: at that time when it was released. Initially young people
Speaker 4: who are now what forty years older, which is primarily
Speaker 4: their fan base. I suppose middle aged people and above.
Speaker 4: But it's a young person's song because it's talking about
Speaker 4: that cusp of young adulthood where you're trying to find
Speaker 4: your place in the world and you come from somewhere
Speaker 4: and you're looking back at it with a certain sense
Speaker 4: of emotion and you're hoping what's ahead of you is
Speaker 4: better than where he came from.
Speaker 3: But you never really know.
Speaker 2: This has never been a band that feels is so
Speaker 2: good for me as this band. You know, there's just
Speaker 2: something about the way the rhythm section play, the way
Speaker 2: that Don approaches a piano. I don't know anybody else
Speaker 2: who plays piano like him, and Mossy. The interaction between
Speaker 2: Mossy and Don. Sometimes you can't tell where Don's leaving
Speaker 2: up and where Moss's felling in the chords, and that's
Speaker 2: it's really unique. And as soon as the band starts playing,
Speaker 2: I just I feel comfortable and that's where I've literally
Speaker 2: learned how it's seen doing that, So to be able
Speaker 2: to do it fifty years down the track is a
Speaker 2: real gift.
Speaker 3: They acknowledge that these songs mean a lot to a
Speaker 3: lot of people.
Speaker 4: They're currently gearing up to play this great songbook once again,
Speaker 4: to reopen the songbook for a generation of Australians perhaps
Speaker 4: who didn't get the chance to see them last time around.
Speaker 4: That was five years ago, and with every passing year,
Speaker 4: more and more people find this great band because the
Speaker 4: songs that they've written are timeless.
Speaker 1: Andrew McMillan is a music writer with The Australian. You
Speaker 1: can read his full interview with Cold Chisel right now
Speaker 1: at The Australian dot com dot au. Thanks for joining
Speaker 1: us on the front this week. Our team is Kristen Amiot,
Speaker 1: Jasper leak Leat, Sammaglue, Tiffany Dimak, Joshua Burton and me
Speaker 1: Claire Harvey,