by Jimmy Barnes
Within a week we went from being dead in the water, covered in marks where record companies had been prodding us with ten foot poles, to being a good signing. We were baffled by the whole deal. How did they pull this off? But it wasn’t long until WEA’s signing looked like a smart move.
THE BAND WANTED TO make a record more than anything, but, at the same time, we were terrified about not getting it right. WEA, the record company, were very supportive but they wanted us to deliver. I’m sure they were putting pressure on us but we didn’t really care what they thought; we wanted them to like us, but too bad if they didn’t. The only pressure we felt, we put on ourselves. By the time we recorded we were a cracking live band. In fact I would go as far as to say that on a good night we were great, as good as anybody in the world. We were hard, fast, ferocious and tight as hell. We left nothing in reserve. Every ounce of energy and sweat we had, we poured out onto the stage. We left gigs shattered and exhausted and so did our audience.
Capturing that energy in the studio would prove to be more difficult than we thought. We got into the studio in January 1978 with Peter Walker as producer. He was a guy that we all admired. Peter used to play guitar in Bakery, a band from Perth. He was not your average rock guitar player. He didn’t wear black jeans and cowboy boots. He was quite conservative really. He was thin and very short-sighted. He wore thick glasses or else he would have been as blind as a bat. Peter could play the guitar though. As a band we had watched in amazement as he tore it up on stage at Bakery shows.
But Bakery was not Cold Chisel; they were a blues band. Peter was a laidback guy and we should have known he wouldn’t understand what we were trying to capture. Bakery, even in their wildest dreams, never played a show as hard and as fast and as loud as Cold Chisel played every night of the week. He didn’t know what we were chasing. So we chased our tails trying to make things perfect, spending more time getting the right compression or the great snare sound instead of catching what we did best, playing with intensity and passion. I don’t believe that we caught that in the studio until many years later, when we recorded The Last Wave of Summer album. But I’ll tell you about that when we get there, okay?
It took three months to make the first album. Let me rephrase that. It took our whole career up until then, and it probably took all of Don’s life as a writer, to get to that point, and then it took us three months in the studio with Peter Walker. Peter liked to share his experiences with us so we would spend ten minutes on a song and then four hours hearing a story about Bakery on the road. We were such fans, we just sat around him, listening like kids enjoying a bedtime story. He also liked to explain the ins and outs of recording to us.
‘Now guys, I’m going to tell you about analogue delay, then we’ll test some out on Ian’s guitar, okay?’
I could only hear so much about compression ratios before I wanted to blow a gasket and get really drunk. After these long talks the band would quite often have to regroup so I could sober up a bit and we could start again. Then we would spend ten minutes recording and sit down for another long talk on when and where to use reverb and how to set delay times. I would listen for a short time and then go and look for pins to stick into my eyes.
Recording seemed to be a lot about sitting around waiting for shit to happen. I never had the patience to sit and wait for anything. If I wanted something, I took it. But I couldn’t reach across the mixing desk and just do something, one, because I had no clue what to do and two, because that was Peter’s job. I much preferred playing live, where you could see the whites of people’s eyes and you knew instantly what was good and what was bad. If it was good they clapped and if it was bad they threw bottles, simple. And if you didn’t like the audience you could jump out and swing at them.
Sitting around doing things over and over, until they had no feel or dynamics, was not what I thought being in a rock band was all about. I wanted it to be explosive and earth shattering and it just wasn’t. Recording was making something in a dark room with no one to bounce things off, and then waiting three months until it was finished, and then another three months until it came out – only to listen six months later and say to yourself, ‘Oh, I wish I’d done this or that.’
Even today I use the studio to get what I want and then get out. It’s not where the best music is made. I think that music becomes something special when it’s played in front of people and sparks start to fly between the audience and the band. I have never understood those bands that don’t like to play live. I’m the opposite; in fact, I live for it.
It wasn’t all Peter’s fault. The band wanted to sit around and talk and hang in the studio. Nowadays we go to work with a positive idea of what we want and how we want to do it. If we want to sit and talk, we go out to dinner, not into a two-thousand-dollar-a-day studio. We were young and stupid.
We finished the record and realised how much we had to learn to take the band to the next level. It seemed that being in a band was a continuously changing, growing process. Even when you thought you’d learned something, suddenly you’d find a better way of doing it and then it would take a while until you mastered that and by the time you got it, it had changed. You started out making music for fun and then you spent a long time finding ways of getting the job done. Once you learned enough you went right back to doing what you started out doing in the first place – making music for fun. What a strange business.
THINGS WERE MOVING FASTER and faster – one night in Adelaide, the next night in Melbourne and the next night in Sydney. We were playing all over the country, we never seemed to take a night off. We’d do our own shows one night and a support the next.
We played at the Bondi Lifesaver one night in March 1978 with Skyhooks, and Greg Macainsh, their main songwriter, loved Don’s songs so he went back and talked us up around the Melbourne radio scene. ‘This band I saw in Sydney, they’re called Cold Chisel and they have some great songs. There was one about Vietnam that was a killer.’ So even before our record was released there was a buzz about ‘Khe Sanh’.
I can sit and say that the album doesn’t sound like we did. I can say it all day long here but that would miss the point. The album did sound like us, but the band’s sense of urgency was missing. The intensity that had been built up from the day we met, the edge we honed at every gig, was dulled. We had spent every night sharpening our tools so that when we hit the stage we were deadly. All that was thrown aside. All the things that we’d learned about live performance were of no use to us. The studio was a different animal. That’s what we were told.
‘Oh yeah. That might work when you’re on stage but that’s not how it works in here. You guys need to listen to me and I’ll show you how it’s done.’ This was the language used by every producer or studio engineer we met for a long time. It seemed to me that they were protecting their jobs by keeping the two worlds as far apart as they could. In fact, what we wanted to do in the studio was what we were doing every night on stage. All they had to do was throw a mic in front of us and capture it. We needed someone who let us use the tools we had. This would take us years to master.
Our first album, Cold Chisel, was full of good songs written by Don, but we didn’t really know how to get them on tape. Peter Walker was our mate and in hindsight he did a fairly good job. ‘Khe Sanh’ was an exceptional song. It was recorded a lot lighter than the band actually played it live, but the lyrics were angry, the message was important and the song cut through on its own merits. It is one of the most played and easily recognisable songs ever recorded in this country, so Peter obviously did something right. But if you’d been around to see the band live in 1977 and 1978, you’d know we sounded nothing like that album. We were a ferocious, loud, out of control rock’n’roll band and our record sounded soft. How did that happen?
EVEN BEFORE MAKING THE first album we had noticed that there was a lot more pressure on the band to come up with the goods. We were filling houses all over the country and with those full houses came a huge respons
ibility to the punters who were lining up for tickets. These guys were making it possible for us to have a say on how we wanted to perform. Before the houses were full we were at the mercy of the promoters or the venues, but now they needed us and the only people we had to please were the audience. We had just come to terms with that pressure when suddenly, in April 1978, we had an album out and a whole new lot of problems arose. Now we had people in magazines talking us up and the record company putting their own spin on things, which we didn’t always agree with.
People would come and see us for the first time, expecting to hear a band that sounded like the Cold Chisel album, and we were nothing like that. We played those songs the way we had been playing them to packed houses before we recorded it. Delicate songs like ‘Just How Many Times’ for instance, instead of being wispy and haunting, were being delivered by a battering ram of a band. ‘One Long Day’, a song that in the studio was bluesy and piano driven, became a grinding rock song. In fact most of the songs were nothing like the album; everything became hard and fast and edgy and just rock.
I KNOW THAT IN the period from when we met to when we started recording, I had not only worked out what the audiences wanted from us but also what I thought we did best. We had played night after night in sweaty dirty pubs where most people didn’t give a fuck about you and we had figured out what it took to make them sit up and take notice. And sometimes that was different to what the band itself wanted to play. Ian would always want to play blues and jazz rock, Steve would be continually trying to make the band funky, and all I knew was that whenever we started doing either of those things people sat down or walked out.
It was as if the rest of the guys had a bit of a chip on their shoulders and wanted to be cool. The last fucking thing I wanted was to be cool. I wanted us to be red hot. I wanted people to walk out of a venue either loving us or fucking hating us. I didn’t want them to sit on the fence. If they didn’t like us they could fuck off and stay away and if they liked us they could bring their mates along and know that we would always give everything we had to them. I didn’t want to be in a funk band or a reggae band and I certainly didn’t want to be in the same room as a jazz rock band. So I would do everything I could to make the band get off their arses and hit the audience square between the eyes.
I used to stand and look at Steve until he pushed a song harder or faster, I would climb on Ian’s back and yell in his ear, I would sit on Don’s piano and pour whisky down his throat even though I knew he didn’t like it. Phil just stood his ground and played. He wasn’t too tall so he had a low centre of gravity, which meant I could jump on him without knocking him over, but I rarely did. Phil stayed back towards his bass amp. Maybe he felt safer back there. Out of the way of my storming around. He didn’t need me messing up his almost perfect hair. His shirt was always neatly tucked in and he always looked in control. So I left him alone most of the time. He was too cute to attack. Anyway, I picked on Ian because he was out front with me and I felt that this was what we were supposed to be doing. Entertaining at all costs. Even if it meant that we spilled our own blood. I was happy to spill mine for the sake of the show and if I had to I would spill Ian’s. But Phil was off limits. Steve normally finished the show with some sort of blood loss from smashing his hands on the snare or the cymbals. The audience liked it and so did I. I would turn Ian’s amps up to full, put everything on ten when he wasn’t looking. I drove the band crazy trying to make more of a rock band out of them.
I look back now and see that it wasn’t just about what the audience wanted. It was about what I wanted. My life had always been out of my control, from the time I was a child until the time I joined the band. And I joined a band because I could not control myself. I wanted to drink myself into oblivion because I had nothing to live for. I joined the band at sixteen and a half and I didn’t expect to live to twenty-one. I wanted everything around me to be out of control because that was when I felt comfortable. I could hide in among the chaos and no one would see what a fuck-up I was. So whenever the boys tried to settle the whole thing down, I did my best to sabotage it. I needed the chaos.
By the time we were signed I was living on whisky and cheap speed. I hardly slept unless I passed out and I never sang straight. With all the chemicals that were running through my veins, no band could play hard enough for me, so I was constantly pushing them harder and harder. Wanting more of everything: more volume, more lights, more booze, more speed, more sex, more fame, just more, that was all I knew. I had started my life with nothing and now I wanted everything and I wanted it all at once.
Anyone who tried to travel with me or keep up with me was left burnt out and damaged. Even back then I would have moments when I would surprise myself with how much punishment my own body could take. I wasn’t consciously trying to kill myself but I knew that everyone had a limit and I just couldn’t seem to find mine. Hardened drinkers, junkies and professional hellraisers would fall around me, and I just seemed to keep going. I didn’t show signs of slowing down. I think that when I began to realise that I wasn’t going to die young, I started pushing it harder just because I could.
My job didn’t require that I was an animal, it demanded it. I was painting myself into a corner and eventually my world would come crashing down around me, but not for a long, long time. I will tell you all about that later. I don’t think you’re ready for it yet. Back to Cold Chisel.
OUR SECOND RELEASE WAS an EP we recorded at the Regent Theatre in Sydney in October 1978. It was a ball-tearing gig that was put on by Double J, when it was a new and progressive rock’n’roll station that played all sorts of young Australian music. Those were the days.
On the bill were some good mates of ours, Midnight Oil. The show was hosted by a flying, surfing pig that was in Tracks, a famous surf magazine at the time. His name was Captain Goodvibes, the Pig of Steel, and he was very funny. He started life as a pork chop and turned into a super pig after being exposed to radiation. He loved to drink and take drugs and surf. He was awesome. He would swing across the stage on a rope and every time he did the crowd would roar. So we were in for a great night.
The Oils played and were brilliant, as usual, but there was just one problem. The venue was a beautiful old theatre and the security were worried about our rock audience ripping the place apart and jumping on their seats. They really clamped down on anyone getting up during the Oils set.
Because this show was being recorded, we wanted it to be as wild as we could make it. This wasn’t going to happen with the crowd sitting down. We sat around backstage and worked out a plan to fix the situation. We walked on stage and instead of starting with one of our usual songs, we tore into an upstanding version of the national anthem, which was ‘God Save the Queen’ at that time. We knew that during The Oils, every time small groups of people would try to stand up, the bouncers would quickly sit them down so they didn’t get out of control. But if we got them all to stand up at once they were fucked. What decent Australian security guy could make an audience sit down during the anthem? Once they were all up, it was all over and we had them jumping for the whole show. The theatre wasn’t wrecked, but it certainly shook at its foundations that night.
WE CAME UP WITH the name for the record after a drinking session where we were all throwing around ideas.
I think WEA had given me a Jerry Lee Lewis record around that time and I loved it, as I do most Jerry Lee stuff. One of the songs on that record was called ‘You’re Sixteen, You’re Beautiful and You’re Mine’. Now, in light of The Killer marrying his first cousin, who, by the way was only thirteen, I happened to say, ‘His record would have been better if it was called “You’re Thirteen, You’re Beautiful and You’re Mine”.’
We all laughed out loud. That was the name we needed. It was perfect for our EP and it stuck.
The cover of the EP was made while we were on tour down in Melbourne. Some dear friends of ours lived in this great place on Punt Road, by the Yarra River. Every time we hit Melbourne th
at’s where I went first. The girls who lived there were Georgina and Jan. Georgina was cute, with raven dark hair, and a free spirit. Jan was a beautiful blonde girl who could party as hard as anyone I’ve ever met. Jan and I hit it off from the moment we met and were great friends for years. She was wild.
The girls threw huge parties at their house. The place took on legendary status after a while. It was sort of a rave before raves started, only we knew everyone who turned up. If we didn’t, they either fitted in, or were chucked out on their arses before they could start any trouble. The house was a second home to me. Everyone who was there looked out for everyone else, so it got wild but no one got hurt.
On many a night I had to save a dear friend of mine, James Freud, who would later go on to join The Models, from getting beaten up at the house. The problem was that James was just too damn good looking and all the girls loved him, which of course meant most of the boys hated him.
‘You look like a fucking poof with that fucking eye makeup on. Why don’t you take that shit off?’ Roadies and other blokes who thought they were really butch would start on James as soon as they saw him.
But James didn’t just sit and take it. He was a funny guy. ‘Give us a kiss and I’ll tell you who else is gay in the room.’
They just couldn’t cope with him. ‘You fucking fag. I’m gonna bash your fucking head in.’
That’s when I’d step in. If anyone wanted to hit James, they had to hit me first. By the way, James wasn’t gay. He just liked wearing makeup. But it didn’t matter to me, I just hated people who were arseholes.
