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Australian Musician Issue 16 Summer 98
Cold Chisel by Murray Engleheart
Cold Chisel guitarist, Ian Moss, a man who for the last 20 years has quietly been this country's connection to the DNA of Stevie Ray Vaughan and then some, has the whole Chisel reunion pretty well sussed. It's not about making a million or filling in time during gaps in wanting solo careers. It's largely about restaking a claim, reasserting themselves and taking a stand for traditional musical values.
"My thought is perhaps the general music scene has drifted back from the eighties' electronic keyboards kind of thing into the nineties where we started getting back more to reality. The guitars are plugged straight into amps and the effects are told to go and hang themselves. It's back to real players and more of that traditional thing; real playing and good songs which is kind of where we started. You had to be a good player and you had to have good songs. It's sort of come back to that. Maybe that's been the catalyst."
15 years after the band's Last Stand shows which themselves were a stand alone phenomenon,Cold Chisel are back in a huge, undeniable way. Their massively anticipated reunion has proven to be one of the biggest events in the Australian music industry. Period. Not that anyone with any eye on the marketplace could have seriously doubted it would be anything less. In an unprecedented move their comeback album, the bristling and heartfelt, The Last Wave Of Summer, reached platinum sales status on pre-release orders alone. The response to the teaser placement of the album's Yakuza Girls on the band's net site which drew a staggering 225,000 hits in the space of 12 hours was a sizable indicator of what was to come. It follows then that the band's current tour will be sold out across the board right around the country. An at the time rumoured offer of $3 million to appear at the Adelaide Grand Prix a few years back now somehow seems like a gross miscalculation of the band's street value. Yep, the Cold Chisel juggernaut is back on a highway near you.
"Any time there was a mention of the band getting back together it was very quickly squashed." says bassist, Phil Small. "There just was not the vibe at any of those times. There was never any question around it, it was just always passed up. It's only been the last couple of years that everyone's happy about it and the vibe's there."
"Most of it's just been outright incredible rumour" continues Ian Moss of past reunion talk. "There's been absolutely no discussion of it whatsoever. The rumours seemed to really die off when we actually did decide to do it. It seemed to go really quiet. But all the other times the bits of press you might have seen that we were getting back together there was absolutely no dialogue between us whatsoever."
The first moves towards the reunion began about two and a half to three years ago. Actual rehearsals began in May 1997 at the Sydney Opera House while initial recording commenced in late October at Megaphon Studios in Petersham in inner Sydney.
Moss: "A lot of writing had been done prior to us getting together. So that side was covered. People were sending in their demos and there was no problem with the writing, no problem with the song quality. But I wondered what was it going to be like playing together again for the first time in 15 years."
An impromptu jam at drummer, Steve Prestwich's country NSW home a few years back was an early indicator that got minds tickingand hearts racing.
Moss: "It was really encouraging. Phil and I just happened to roll up and we had this jam and thought no problem at all. It was still there just between the 3 of us. So I was fairly confident when I walked in to the Opera House. Don (Walker) joined us and no problem at all. The only other question was Jim and he walked in and it was definitely the old chill down the back kind of thing. (puts on a big radio announcer type voice) There was that sound."
The band's first actual show back together was at the Argent Hotel in Broken Hill early this year. The gig was advertised as a Jimmy Barnes' show.
Small: "It was immensely enjoyable but it was very nerve racking actually that first night."
Moss: "My impression was that it was a bit weird because we were definitely trying to maintain a certain amount of secrecy doing the old just letting people know in the town on the day (thing) as much as we could spreading around that it was actually Cold Chisel. But despite our problems that night I think we played really well. But personally I left there sort of going I wonder how many people actually knew it was Cold Chisel or whether a couple of people thought, there's a couple of guys from Cold Chisel playing in Barnesy's band! I wasn't really convinced. The next couple of nights yeah. But on that first night I wasn't really convinced that everyone even knew."
The Last Wave Of Summer album which was mixed in New York in July and has the engineering and production fingerprints of Tony Cohen and Kevin Shirley among others on it expertly merges all of the great Chisel elements. It creates new glories rather than just recapturing past.
Small: "I just think it's the band 15 years down the track here and now basically. It's like I would have thought, hoped and imagined the band would have been if we never broke up."
Moss: "We were conscious of trying to pick up where we left off and make it seamless and take it a step higher again from the last Cold Chisel album. It was the result of lots of hard work.We worked pretty hard over 15 months to attain that."
Small "It's got to be of a certain standard. It's got to be the best we can possibly be otherwise there's no point in doing it.What we've built up after 15 years without even being together could be so easily destroyed by going out doing a rat shit gig and putting out a second rate album."
Were the Last Stand shows a good full stop?
Moss: "Yeah. It was kind of sad because it was still strong. I think actually Phil might have said on tape on the Last Stand video that kind of the saddest thing about it was that we never played so well in our lives. But at the same time it was good because at least we went out on a high note."
Small: "At the same time previous to the Last Stand shows there was definitely something rotten in Denmark within the band. We had lost the vibe within the band. There was no point. Everyone was just sick of the music, sick of each other's company and sick of the continual touring. The vibe was just gone."
So what rekindled the spark?
"I think it's just been the 15 years. I think everyone's appreciated what the band was and is, and is capable of being. I think the combination of us. You can't deny that there's something pretty special there."
Any concerns that you're creating or have created too great an expectation?
Moss: "Yeah that's always a risk factor. I guess it's something we knew from the start that there's definitely a legend here and quite often the legend probably nine times out of ten is bigger than the reality. Being aware of that is why we worked so hard at trying to make this a better album or at least a progression from the last record."
There's always been so much going on musically within the band; blues based rock n' roll, soul, swing and R and B. Do you ever sit down and quietly marvel at the magic of the chemistry of it all within the band?
Moss: "I try not to think about it too much knowing that it does work. It's kind of like why fix it if it's not broken?"
Small: "You just go up there and do it without thinking. You just go with the flow of it. That's how it seems to work. Everyone bounces off each other. You can't really explain it sometimes. Some nights we play really good other nights not so good. Some nights you really want to get out and do a good gig and it doesn't work. Other nights you couldn't give a stuff and it's fantastic. It's just something that happens."
Equipment and technology has changed enormously in the last 15years. Was that something you had to wrestle with in the studio?
Small: "No, not really. If anything we've just kept basically what it always was. We've both gone back to valve amps and you can't get any older than that. Basically the same old format."
Moss: "I think it's the old story. All this new equipment, all the digital kind of stuff. But when it comes to rock n' roll new is definitely not better by any means."
What have you got in mind for your gear?
Moss: "I'm still settling on it. I've had a rig setup I've been happy with for the Ian Moss solo thing but I'm still deciding whether that's going to be suitable or whether I should go with something slightly different for Cold Chisel. I do find the ColdChisel thing a little differently oriented to the solo thing. The Cold Chisel thing seems to be compared to my thing more; short song, drive it home kind of short solo, powerhouse solostuff. Maybe more aggression, less effects and less fancy stuff than the solo thing. With the solo thing I've been getting stuck into things like echo plexes and octaviers and Vox wah wahs and that kind of thing. But that kind of equipment, particularly echoplexes suits slower paced things where there's a lot more air and time to do extended guitar solos. The Cold Chisel thing is probably not lending itself to that kind of thing. It's more of a short, punchy thing."
And on the album?
"Amplifier wise for me mainly it's called a Peach which is locally built. Most of the album is duel 30 watt Peach which is fairly much a standard Fender bassman preamp kind of configuration, but with more of a Vox kind of output and the EL84 valves and then class A wiring. It's a little bit more hitech than perhaps a Vox or a Marshall. It produces a really, really clean sound but still with tonnes of the essential guitarplayer's sustain."
And the bass?
Small "A Fender 300 watt ... a very straight forward amp, pretty simple. When we first started rehearsing I tried out a couple of the new state of the art sort of amps. One was a transistor copied off valve technology. It was alright, it wasn't bad but..."
Chisel always had a rep as being a boy's band. Is that still the case?
Moss: "I hope not. It used to worry me a bit. I'd always figured we were somewhere in the middle. I've seen real boys bands. There was that concert on television a while back with AC/DC in Madrid. I don't think there were too many women at that from what I could see. There was a girl up on somebody's shoulders and the camera spent a lot of time on her. Cold Chisel supported Slade, the reformation of Slade back in England, touring around England at the end of '82. Now there was a real boy's band. I don't think I can recall seeing one female at those concerts. So we're not a boys band in that respect by a long shot."