by Jimmy Barnes
‘Thanks guys, for coming. That was a great fucking party, wasn’t it?’
What could we say?
‘Yeah, Pig. Let us know when you get married next time. We’ll be there for sure.’
Pig smiled through broken teeth and busted lips. ‘Fuckin’ oath. You guys are the fuckin’ best mates a roadie could have. Let’s find another drink somewhere, eh?’
CHAPTER EIGHT
very positive fucking forward movement
THE CLUBS, 1977–1978
IN SYDNEY, WE WOULD play five sets a night at Chequers Nightclub. Half hour on, half hour off was the way they liked it. This was a famous old nightclub that had been witness to the birth of some of Australia’s best bands. It had seen its fair share of the worst bands too. And it had seen many a band die in the arse.
I first saw AC/DC in that room. They were fresh faced and young. So was I, come to think of it. Malcolm, with silver platform boots, looked like he was in a glam band. And Angus’s school uniform was freshly made by his sister. But even then they were ferocious. I knew they were going places.
When we started playing there it was right in the middle of the disco days. Disco ruled. So we would go on stage and play to an empty dance floor and then the DJ would put on ‘Play That Funky Music’, flick a switch and the mirror ball would start to spin. The dance floor would be packed, full of blokes with huge collars on their shirts and way too much chest hair showing, and girls with faces covered in too much makeup and dresses cut way too low. We didn’t know where all these people were coming from. Our audience didn’t wear white suits or low-cut dresses, but there they were on the dance floor as soon as we finished. They must have been hiding under the tables while we were on because I never seemed to see them. It was very strange, but it just made us work harder.
We did some great shows at Chequers. We did a few shockers too. Cold Chisel didn’t fuck up too often but I guess disco music wore us down for a while. We lifted our game and before long we were at our best again. We played at the club night after night, and eventually we started seeing people taking off their jackets, rolling up their sleeves and staying on the floor when we came on.
The girls began standing down the front, looking at us differently. Nodding to their friends and talking to each other as if they were ordering at a takeaway restaurant, only it seemed that we were what was on the menu.
‘Oh, I like that bass player. He’s so cute. He looks like JPY.’ They would talk to each other and shout out to Phil while we played. ‘Over here. Come and stand over here. Oh, and that guitar player’s nice too. Why is he not wearing shoes?’
Then I would walk past dripping sweat on them and put them off.
We still weren’t a dance band by any stretch of the imagination, but people started to like what we were playing. Slowly but surely, we were building a following at Chequers and around the traps in Sydney.
Chequers had one of those dressing rooms with no privacy. Behind the stage there was a space big enough for maybe one person. It was first in, best dressed. The rest of us sat on a bench seat in the corridor. We would be changing while waiters with plates of Chinese food walked past and laughed at us, shouting, ‘Don’t stand around here, we got food to serve.’
It was one of those gigs where you didn’t stay in the dressing room long anyway, unless you liked getting bitten by fleas. So we’d get changed and get on stage as soon as we could, and when we weren’t playing we would be up at the bar, looking for free drinks and girls.
The people who ran Chequers treated us well, gave us free drinks when we needed them most and always encouraged us to keep going. The staff were the first to start cheering for us. I think we got booked again because they liked us, long before the crowd started responding. But something was happening all around the country – people were starting to take notice.
Still, not one of the record companies seemed to warm to us. Every night of the week we would be out there playing killer shows. Unfortunately, every night they could also find Steve and I after those shows, having drunk all the free booze we could, throwing punches and yelling at each other out in the street. They all thought we were going to implode, so they never signed us. But at least they knew that people liked what we were doing, so we felt that we were getting somewhere.
AT CHEQUERS I USED to see a woman who was always extremely well dressed. She wasn’t a teenager like most of the crowds we played to. She was elegant and beautiful. She would stand in the corner alone and sip cocktails with umbrellas sticking out of them. As the lights from the club danced around her, she looked like a beauty from a ’40s movie. And I imagined that she was alone because she was so amazing that no one could work up the courage to talk to her. It didn’t take long until we were waving to each other across the crowded room and I could see her watching me on the stage.
After one gig, I had drunk enough to walk up to her. ‘I couldn’t help notice you were staring at me,’ I said in my coolest voice.
‘I thought you’d never notice. Boys are so slow.’ She put her hand on mine and smiled at me. Within minutes we were out of the club, into a cab and on the way to her apartment in Elizabeth Bay. The apartment was big, the kind of place a singer like me could never afford. It overlooked the harbour.
‘Nice view from here,’ I said looking back at her, the harbour behind me. I told you I was smooth. She excused herself for a moment and I was left standing alone on the balcony, admiring the harbour, wondering what it would be like to live in such a beautiful place with such a beautiful girl. But it wasn’t long until the harbour view paled into insignificance. She walked back into the room. The lights were dimmed but I could see her skin shining in the moonlight. She had removed her clothes and was standing in the middle of the room waiting for me. Within seconds we were writhing around on the floor. My hands were all over her when she whispered something in my ear.
I stopped what I was doing. ‘Would you repeat what you just said?’
I could have been wrong but it sounded to me like she said, ‘We had best be quick as my boyfriend will be home very soon.’
She whispered his name. I froze. It was a name I recognised – an extremely well known, and extremely violent, Sydney gangster.
‘Would you say that again please?’ I asked uncomfortably. She repeated herself and much to my horror, I had heard right. I have never gotten dressed and out of a place quicker in my life. If the doorbell had rung I would have jumped a hundred feet off the balcony into the pitch-black, shark-infested waters of the beautiful Sydney Harbour without a second thought.
I saw her again the next night we played at Chequers. We both waved politely to each other from a distance. But for a second, just a second, everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Her eyes met mine, and sparkled. Or was that the mirror ball? Before she turned away, she smiled at me, and for a fleeting second, I considered taking him on. But I was way too young to die. And anyway, I had another set to do.
WE MADE NO MONEY playing at those half-empty inner-city gigs but every week or two we would jump in the truck and drive out of town to Wollongong, or up to Newcastle, and bang!, the places would be packed to the rafters, full of punters who wanted to drink and listen to real music. Rock’n’roll music. And believe me they knew how to drink. They were out for a good time and as fast as the barmen poured the drinks, they threw them back and shouted for more. Every time we ventured to either of these places the crowds got bigger and bigger. We would fill up one hall or pub and then move on to a bigger one next trip. Publicans told us time and again that hands down our crowds drank more per head than any other band playing in their venues, and they loved us for it. This started in Newcastle and Wollongong and a few other working-class towns around the country and spread like a virus until the same thing was happening everywhere.
Most nights after playing in Newcastle, I would find someone to drink with, be it some surfie from Redhead Beach or a girl that I’d met at the gig. I would insist that we stay back for a few quick
drinks. The guys by this point just wanted to get home. I always seemed to have more energy than them, so they would leave me behind to find my own way back to Sydney. Next day or even later that night you could find me walking along the side of the highway with my thumb stuck out, looking bleary-eyed and tired, but always happy, hoping for a lift back to Sydney in time for the next show. Laughing quietly to myself about the trouble I had started during, and after, the show.
Wollongong was the same. We’d play to great audiences for over two hours, until we had just about played everything we knew, or were too tired to play anymore. And we’d be collapsed in the corner of the dressing room when someone would turn up at the window – which was two floors up, they had to shimmy up a pole to get there – to tell us how good the gig was and to get back fucking on because they weren’t done yet and didn’t want to go home. So out we’d go again to this room full of drunken punters who’d refused to leave and were threatening to wreck the joint if we didn’t play more. It was crazy.
BACK IN SYDNEY, EARLY in 1977, we were told we would be playing a few nights in an Oxford Street wine bar called French’s Tavern, for little or no money. In the words of the guy who booked us at the agency, ‘This will be the start of some very positive fucking forward movement for you boys.’
‘Couldn’t we make some positive fucking forward movement and make enough money to eat as well?’ I asked naively.
‘Don’t be so fucking stupid. This will be a good run for you. You’ll get free fucking booze and the place will be full of those fucking trendy inner-city chicks. You know, the ones with more dollars than sense.’ So we basically played shows for as much wine as we could drink. I hated wine.
We had been playing to crowds all over Sydney but mainly out in the suburbs. Oxford Street was not our strong suit. Radio Birdman were the band everybody liked around this area. Cold Chisel were never an inner-city band. We were never that cool. And we didn’t want to be. Punks didn’t like us because we were too wild for them. I remember when the whole punk thing exploded and people started spitting on bands and shit like that. I just hated it.
‘Anybody who fucking spits on me will be spitting fucking teeth, get it?’ I snarled at audiences all over the country.
The odd punk who got carried away and did it would have me jumping off the stage and onto their heads. I had fights with support bands and their audiences night after night. A couple of years later, a punk band played some shows with us and the singer and I nearly came to blows. I can’t remember what he said but I do remember running the back of his head into the wall with my hands wrapped around his throat. At a guess, I’d say that we both might have had a little too much to drink. In those days, rock’n’roll was fuelled by lots of booze and speed and fights were quite common at gigs. Well, they were at our gigs anyway.
But we did make some good friends at French’s, friendships that have stood the test of time. Midnight Oil were the next band after we finished our little run at French’s Tavern. They came down a couple of nights for a glass of wine or two and to see how we were doing. We became friends immediately. I remember the first day I saw The Oils. I thought they were a frightening rock’n’roll band. Powerhouse drummer, killer guitar players and then there was that singer. Peter Garrett is one of the greatest front men to come out of Sydney, or anywhere else in the world come to think about it. On stage, he is a scary man, menacing and intense, but off stage you couldn’t meet a gentler soul. We have stayed good mates and over the years we have done some fantastic shows together.
AFTER ONE OF THESE nights at French’s, Ian was talking to some girls and got invited to a party. ‘Hey guys, there’s a couple of cute blondes out there and they want me to go with them to some place up the Cross,’ he announced in the band room. The band room, as it was at most shows, was a toilet somewhere in the back of the gig.
‘Are they nice guys?’ I asked, almost ignoring him while finishing a bottle of Stone’s Green Ginger Wine.
‘Do you need some help?’ Don said, looking for anywhere to go as long as it was out of French’s and away from me.
So Don and Ian headed off to the party. The venue was a squat in Darlinghurst Road. I didn’t want to go. The place would be full of hippies and heroin addicts. Not really my scene. The squat was an old hotel that was falling down, but for a few years before it crumbled, it would be home to all sorts of wild and wonderful people and parties. Ian even lived there for a while.
The girls soon disappeared and so did Ian. Don found himself alone at the party. Looking around for someone to talk to, he found a few guys from the Tatts, with eyes as wide as saucers. They were grinding their teeth and looked like they were chewing their own tongues out. They were talking with a loud, cocky-sounding guy in one corner of the room. ‘I’ve been living in England for years now and to come back here and see the way this industry is run makes me laugh.’
‘What do you fucking mean?’ one of the Tatts protested.
‘I’m just saying it’s amateur hour around here, that’s all.’
‘Fuck off back to England then if you don’t like it.’ The boys from Rose Tattoo were proudly Australian.
Don sidled over and listened in.
‘There are no fucking good managers in this country. There’s plenty of talent but you need someone to show them what to do with it.’
‘And you’re the fucking man for the job, eh? I don’t fucking think so.’ The Tatts were bored with all this business talk and walked away, looking for a beer or anything else they could consume, leaving Don and the music industry critic looking at each other.
‘Hi, I’m Don Walker. I play in a band called Cold Chisel. I couldn’t help but hear what you were saying.’
‘Oh yeah. My name’s Rod Willis.’
‘We’re one of those bands that needs to find a good manager. There aren’t any, as far as I can see. If you want to have a coffee, we could have a talk about your ideas.’
‘Yeah okay then, if you want to talk about it give me a call next week.’ Rod gave Don his number and walked away. He had Don’s attention. Don would meet him two days later and Rod Willis would become an integral part of Cold Chisel’s success. But first Rod would go to Chequers to see us play five sets in a battle with the DJ and disco music. We won that night. He saw us on a great night, he loved the band and it was just a matter of time until he and Don met up again. He went on to manage us for the next thirty-two years.
At the time he met Don, Rod had a job booking bands at the Harbour Premier Agency with a bloke called Chris Murphy, a fast-talking music agent with more movements than a tin of worms. Chris went on to manage INXS. With his cut-throat style of management and the band’s raw talent, they took Australian music to the world. I’ve heard that Chris has said he was considering managing us at one point. But if he was, we never knew about it. We never wanted to have much to do with him at all. Rod was our man.
ROD HAD SOME BIG ideas from day one. The first thing he said to Don was, ‘When do you guys rehearse?’
Don looked at him blankly and said, ‘Er, we don’t. Not much anyway.’
Rod was stunned. ‘What? Why not? Are you fucking kidding me?’
‘No, I’m not. We don’t have time to rehearse. We have to get to and from gigs. We don’t have any spare time. We’re a working band. We rehearse at soundchecks.’
Rod now looked at him blankly. ‘I’m not saying I know it all, but here’s an idea. Maybe if you did, you could inject a few new songs into your set and who fucking knows, you just might get a reaction from the punters who’ve seen you before. You know what I mean?’
Don agreed straightaway. Finally, he had an ally. He had been trying to tell us the same thing forever, but we didn’t listen. I was always way too hungover to rehearse.
So, grudgingly, we went into a rehearsal hall and learned a few new songs. One of them was ‘Khe Sanh’.
CHAPTER NINE
a reputation for being very volatile
SIGNING AT LAST, 1977
Eventually, in September 1977, we were signed to WEA Records but it wasn’t easy. At first the only company interested in us was the music publisher, Rondor. By the way, there are two copyrights in every song. The first belongs to the person or band who made the recording – like Cold Chisel – and the record company controls this. The second belongs to whoever wrote the song – mostly Don Walker – and that’s usually controlled by the music publisher. Anyway, Rondor’s boss, John Bromell, would become our publisher, and he also cooked up a scheme to get us a deal with a record company. He was a bit of a rogue who had seen the best and worst the music industry had to offer. And luckily for us, he loved the band.
John conspired with Rod and Peter Rix, a guy who was managing some big acts at the time. Peter would pretend he managed us, as a favour to John. Peter had a lot of clout in the industry and the record companies might take him seriously, whereas Rod had no track record at this time. Their idea was to fool WEA, one of the biggest record companies in the world, into believing that every other record company in the country, in particular their mortal enemy CBS, wanted to sign us. And in fact, CBS were waiting with contracts already drawn up, just needing us to sign on the dotted line. WEA, who didn’t like to be beaten to a band by anybody, especially CBS, rushed over and offered us a deal. A deal, by the way, that by new band standards was pretty good.
As soon as the deal was signed, Peter retired from our management and Rod took over. The same day we signed the recording contract, Don and I signed a publishing deal with Rondor. Signing with John was the least we could do. He was a rogue but he was a very smart rogue and he knew that signing Don Walker was one of the best deals he had done in a long time. Compared to the rest of us, Don made more money because he wrote the songs. But we all know first deals aren’t good, so maybe he didn’t make as much as we thought.
