Cold Chisel, one of the most dynamic live acts Australia has ever produced. A band of outsiders driven to succeed at any cost and a band that lived as they played – hard and fast. A band of fractious temperaments that could implode at any moment and often did. If ever an Australian band embodied the sex, drugs and rock and roll ethos it was Cold Chisel and their record company was happy to trade off that reputation too. One of the very first Cold Chisel press releases put out by WEA read:
“They care little for the peripherals of the rock business, much preferring to drink more, fight harder and fuck crazier than any other band in Australia. They are traditional, definitive rock n’ rollers with excess being a keyword to their lifestyle”.
With each member’s distinctly different personality and background tensions were always simmering within the band. Don Walker (keys) was born on a cane farm in far north Queensland, later moving to the rural community of Grafton in northern NSW. He’s the only tertiary educated member of the band (a degree in quantum mechanics no less!). Ian Moss (guitar) grew up in the desert heart of Alice Springs. Phil Small (bass) was a suburban kid from Adelaide, while Jim Barnes (vocals) and Steve Prestwich (drums) came from the tough migrant outpost of Elizabeth north of Adelaide. Just as the Scots and the English have always been at each other’s throats so too were Barnes and Prestwich. Cold Chisel was a volatile prospect on and off stage – a tension that contributed to them being one of the most dynamic live bands you could ever hope to see.
The problem for Chisel in the early days was despite their impressive live reputation and following, the music media landscape in the 1970’s was dominated by top 40 AM radio and it was never going to touch something as wild and dangerous as Cold Chisel. All of that changed with the release of their third album East.
Chisel knew they needed airplay but they were never going to compromise on their hard rocking R & B roots to achieve it. Their self-titled debut and its follow up Breakfast At Sweethearts initially sold reasonably well, but with no airplay they were only preaching to the converted. It wasn’t until they broke through with East that earlier songs like Khe Sanh and Breakfast At Sweethearts later became radio staples.
In November 1979 Chisel released the first single from their forthcoming album East. As the principal songwriter for the band Don Walker had been working tirelessly to come up with a bunch of songs that radio would play. Choir Girl was his breakthrough. With its gorgeous, melodic piano intro and catchy chorus the song could have been any one of a ton of songs getting airplay at that time, but what sets Choir Girl apart is one of the most soulful vocals Jimmy Barnes ever produced with some wonderful harmonising from Ian Moss. There’s so much feeling in Barnes’ restrained delivery that he taps into the emotional core of the song and makes every word count. And that’s where the song gets really interesting, because Don Walker was never going to write a simple sing along pop song just to get radio airplay.
One nurse to hold her
One nurse to wheel her down
The corridors of healing
And I’ve been trying
But she’s crying like a refugee
At long last Cold Chisel were on high rotation on commercial radio, including the biggest radio stations in the country at that time – Sydney’s 2SM and Melbourne’s 3XY, who were both owned by the Catholic Church. The big question is: did they realise they were playing a song about abortion? The bad boys of Oz rock were laughing all the way to the bank.
With Mark Opitz at the helm on production and all five Chisel members contributing songs for the first time the band found a new gear hitting a creative peak that would see Chisel realise their full potential. East would become Cold Chisel’s most polished and successful studio album, but that didn’t mean that the boys were behaving themselves – far from it. The recording sessions at Paradise Studios became the stuff of legend as the rock dogs indulged themselves to excess with round the clock partying, including the notorious Jacuzzi in the studios.
Don Walker’s anti-hero anthem Cheap Wine was the second single from the album and took Cold Chisel higher into the charts cracking the top ten. My Baby became the third and final single (and the first Chisel single to feature Ian Moss on lead vocal), but by that time FM radio had launched in Australia (July 1980) and with it AOR (Album Oriented Rock) formats which saw many other tracks from East gain regular airplay, including Ita, Rising Sun, Standing On The Outside, Star Hotel and Four Walls.
Up until East radio didn’t want to have anything to do with Cold Chisel, but after its release radio couldn’t get enough of the album or the band and suddenly they became the mainstays of Australian rock radio formats. Ultimately it worked against the band to the point where many would see East as Chisel’s most commercial album, but is it really? The subject matter ranges from contemplating robbery (Standing On The Outside) to abortion (Choir Girl); prison life (Four Walls); life after getting out of jail (Tomorrow); a heroin overdose (Cheap Wine); and a pub being closed down and the subsequent rioting (Star Hotel) – hardly the subject matter of radio friendly unit shifters.
The sweetest moment on the record is Don Walker’s tribute to the editor of the Australian Women’s Weekly and TV host Ita Buttrose. It’s a combination of schoolboy fantasy…
Ita’s tongue never touches her lips
She could always be my godmother
And though the desk top hides her hips
My imagination’s strong
and suburban reality:
Every night when I get home
I settle down to prime time limbo
When all the boys are gathered around
Shouting Ita’s on TV
But even within a youthful, masculine fantasy Walker still wouldn’t succumb to caricature – he couldn’t resist the gritty realism that made Chisel the champions of the great unwashed:
And though the roaches are thick on the ground
Somebody goes to close my window
Keep the noise of the city down
Get a dose of integrity
Musically East is a melting pot of styles. Jimmy Barnes contributes two songs with the thumping boogie of Rising Sun and the R & B rocker My Turn To Cry (both songs dealing with lost love – one gone for good, the other he’s still chasing), while Steve Prestwich and Ian Moss deliver two stunning songs with Best Kept Lies (which began as a jazz riff) and Never Before, inspired by the music of Chick Corea whom Mossy had recently discovered.
After listening back to the album’s musical diversity again now on vinyl you can only admire the incredible playing from this phenomenal five piece who honed their craft with a punishing live schedule over seven years by the time East was recorded. Mark Opitz deserves full credit for finally capturing the essence of Chisel as a brilliant live outfit and turning them into a champion studio band.
With 5 times platinum sales East is easily Chisel’s biggest selling album, but whether it’s their best hardly matters. They achieved that success without compromising on their attitude or their sound and in doing so changed the landscape of Australian music. More importantly with Cold Chisel reaching a much wider audience there was a massive shift in Australia’s cultural identity through the music Cold Chisel were making and in particular the songs Don Walker was writing. As Australian rock icon Richard Clapton says:
“Don Walker is the most Australian writer there has ever been. Don just digs being a sort of Beat poet, who goes around observing, especially around the streets of Kings Cross. He soaks it up like a sponge and articulates it so well. Quite frankly, I think he’s better than the rest of us.”
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