Story by Greg Phillips and Christie Eliezer

Joe Camilleri is an Australian music icon, an exceptionally gifted musician and songwriter with around forty years of live and recording experience under his belt. He is also regarded as one of our finest saxophone players. Greg Phillips tracked Joe down to discuss the changing role of brass in rock music.

When did you first pick up the sax?

I didn't start playing until I was 23. I had an E flat instrument, and I wanted to play in a band. I'd get a music book, but what I'd think was C was E flat. I didn't know that E flat saxes were musically different. Everything I did was back the front. It was embarrassing at first. You pick up your horn and you're thinking 'well I'm playing C, how come that guy isn't.' It took me ages to work out I was a minor 3rd away from everybody else, depending on what key they were playing with, but nobody in rock and roll wanted to play in E flat.

Brass has always been in jazz and soul, when was the first time you remember hearing brass in a rock context?

It was in American music. I was importing the Prestige label records. There'd be a catalogue and it would have all their blues artists and some of them like Lightning Hopkins, might not have a bass player but they'd have a sax player. Or I'd see King Curtis, tenor saxophone, and I'd chase that down. I discovered things for myself. I was into blues. The Four Tops had a lot of horns on their records. Tenor and trumpet. I didn't realise until later that all that Doo Wop thing was just full of horns. It was a clash of two cultures. All the rock music came from Kansas City, the horn players that played jazz were doing rock and roll sessions. People were discovering new things. Junior Walker changed the way to play in a rock and roll band. He and King Curtis and a few others pioneered that 'yakkity sax' kind of thing. Before that it was really just jazz playing with fewer notes. But in Doo Wop the tenor sax was the thing. Reg Holloway and Fats Domino and Little Richard's players, those guys played a huge part in changing things. Then you had the honkers like Joe Houston.

Then when Tamla Motown and Stax came in, things slowly changed and they used baritone, hardly any trumpet as lead instrument. Lashings of reeds. But then the guitars took over. Then you would have a rock and roll saxophone solo but that's all you get. I remember a story that Junior Walker tells in which the band Foreigner wanted him to play sax on the song 'Urgent'. He couldn't understand why the band wasn't there, he had to do an overdub. He would always play with a band.

With the Falcons, we had a nice little things with Wilbur Wilde and I too. Wilbur is such a good player.

For band today thinking of adding a brass section, what kind of things do they need to consider?

You gotta make room for it. That's number one. If you don't, it's always going to be out of place. Then you have to find parts. You don't want to have someone doubling someone else's part. That works occasionally but rarely. You have to consider where you want the horn section to be part of the energy. Soul music was that. They'd never jump on someone's thing. They'd take turns coming up front. It's just arrangements really.

You don't seem to play the horn as much as you used to?

I do, it's just that I pick up five or six instruments. Nobody takes me seriously (laughs). I play an $80 melodica and they're more interested in that, or the colour of my saxophone.

I remember you used to play sax for up to half an hour on the tune Cthalu?

Yeh, I was a young man then. Might be difficult now. The really good thing about all that stuff is perception. I'm a much better saxophone player now than I ever was, but where you put the energy is different. I would play 20 minute solos and the audience were OK about it, whereas you play a 20 minute solo in a rock band now and they look at you like you owe them money.

I'm about to start a new Black Sorrows record next week and I'm looking at the horns in a really different way. Some of the songs will have a very staccato approach to tunes and others will be like a tenor sax just sitting inside the track, more of a mood thing. Those are the important issues, how do you make the brass work within the song, and is it worthy of being there. With reeds and horns sometimes the music just gets left behind. When ska was popular, that music was dominated by horns. Look at Morphine the guy playing baritone. More often than not a saxophone player in a rock band is hanging around playing tambourine.

When I play with Wilbur, its fun, with the two horns, all of a sudden you have a section. If you play the right harmonies people take notice… you know … there's the ticket price right there.

Your thoughts on keyboard brass sounds?

It's a different thing. It's like keyboard strings, I've done it myself. Sometimes I've wanted a clarinet . There's so much work to be done with that stuff that you might as well just get a player in, and the job's done.

Things are different, a ten piece band is a rarity. I would carry an eleven piece, no worries if there was enough work. I might make less money, but I'd be happy doing something I really want to do. If there was enough people to follow that too. I just hope things change. I'm just glad when I see a 15 year old kid playing… anything, I get excited. I think maybe this kid will carry the torch. Long live music and all the things that go with it.

This year Joe will release a new Bakelite Radio album (Volume 3), a Black Sorrows recording, and as co-label owner, Niki Bomba's 'Learning to Breathe'. Recently released was a 2 disc compilation

"I Believe To My Soul/The Best of 1977-2003" through Raven.

Read more from our BRASS IN ROCK feature.