Almanac Music: Cold Chisel, the big top and sentimental bullshit

But oh, who needs that sentimental bullshit, anyway
It takes more than just a memory to make me cry
– Flame Trees, Cold Chisel

Friday morning. I send the final message in a thread to a small group of friends. It’s three mini stories and links to three last songs. All week I’ve sent mini stories and links to songs that I would love to hear Cold Chisel play tonight (‘you and I we sent each other stories’).
Tonight!
We’re off to see Cold Chisel – tonight!
To say I’m excited is an understatement.

During the week my wished for set-list of songs includes: ‘Goodbye (Astrid, Goodbye)’, ‘When The War Is Over’, ‘Choirgirl’, ‘Plaza’, ‘All For You’, ‘Standing On The Outside’, ‘Letter to Alan’ – and finishes this morning with this:
‘Bow River’
Run-through-a-brick-wall intensity. This was kind of an anthem for me driving to Darwin aged 19. Immense Australia. The outback. The north. Monsoon rain. Flood. Dialled up to 11. This hits me with happy tears, sad tears and everything else. All my Oz roadtrips – to Darwin, Oodnadatta, Darwin again, Uluru. The wild of it.
I love the energy of the live version. Goosebumps.
‘Anytime you want babe, you can come around.
But only six days separates me from the great Top End.’

Friday evening. We’re on Ascot Vale Road into Epsom Road. Traffic builds. By the chaotic roundabout, we travel at much-slower-than-walking-pace. Groups of punters walk straight past us towards Flemington racecourse. There’s an all-roads-lead-to vibe in the air. Lots of blokes with greying hair. Lots of black.

The Improviser sits alongside me – not a bloke, not grey haired, not wearing black. That makes one of us. We park the car and walk through the gates while the voice of Tex Perkins thrums above us and over a twinkling guitar. The Cruel Sea in support! Before us rises the Big Top. An enormous circus tent erected in the car park, under which Cold Chisel will perform. It feels kind of perfect.

This is the Big Five-0 tour of Cold Chisel – celebrating 50 years. Here am I at age 49, having never seen them perform. I was too young as they surfaced and burned through the late 70s and early 80s. And they were broken up for much of my young adult musical life. But through it all, their songs found me and tattooed their way into the meaning of this life under southern stars.

In a blink, I’m a young man standing on the late late night sand dunes, eyeing proceedings sideways. I’m at that North Carlton terrace house post-exams bust-out party and she’s leaning in REAL close. I’m roaring down the coast with no clear plan. I’m three sheets to the wind and somehow standing on a table. All with Cold Chisel as background. “If you don’t like it why are you standing there for 20 minutes..?”

The Improviser and I divide and conquer the queues for nachos and merch. I pick up a beer and a late impulse purchase Bundy and coke. And we’re into the Big Top. We find our seats. All is ready. I feel alive to this moment.

I’m aware that anticipation has the potential to crush any life event under the weight of its own imagining. But this night has about it a heady air of scattered post-it notes and blank canvas; wistful memories and wild celebrations of now.

Between the organising, the lottery of ticket purchase, the more organising and responsibilities, much has needed to go right for us to be here now. And now, here we are. Here they are. Here strides Don Walker. Here’s Ian Moss, Phil Small, Charley Drayton. Here paces Jimmy Barnes. Here is Cold Chisel.

Da-na-na, da na na na.
Da-na-na, da na na na.
Da-na-na, da na na na.

And we’re into it. Without time to think, to wonder, to move from wide-eyed disbelief, the opening bars ring out: ‘Standing on the outside’.
And like a flick book before me come all the circumstances in which I feel an outsider.
Straight into ‘Letter to Alan’. Flick-book terror of car accidents and repercussions.
Straight into ‘Choirgirl’ before frontman J Barnes pauses to say hello.

I can’t quite believe this. I feel excited, thrilled.

Cold Chisel.
Cold Chisel.

In compiling my list of hoped-for songs I see a fair bit of wistful memory and defiance. I loved those songs aged 18, 19, 20. While uni types around me were into Pink Floyd and Morphine, Chisel was seen as bogan, nuffy music. But I knew different and that was fine. Again, I was standing on the outside. Broken neck and brain damage from a car accident, the weird not-quite-part-of-it of recovery and all that comes with that. And family and marriage and children and meaning and separation and new unfolding life — it’s all in the songs.

J Barnes introduces the crowd to one of his bandmates: “Hey Melbourne! I think you all know Mossy!” Which is the opening for Ian Moss in smooth, silky voice to deliver ‘My Baby’.

Cold Chisel under the big top. Around us, people stand and sing with full voice. This has become an event of massed singing. ‘My Baby’ into a pared back sort-of-reggae-version of ‘Breakfast at Sweethearts’.

Our massed choir of 10,000 roars out ‘Rising Sun’ and ‘Cheap Wine’ before the band breaks into a song from outside the prolific period spanning 1978-1983. ‘All for you’ was released in 2013 and is the story of an older guy heading out for a night with his woman. Celebrating life – connection – the mystery. We’ve spoken about it – and to me it’s me driving over to the Improviser’s place.

“It’s all for you cos you’re the only girl
And I’m young again
And it feels so good to be alive.”
In Row L, the Improviser and I dance up a storm – enough to receive big grins and thumbs up from punters in Rows M and N.

The event feels elevated.
I feel elevated, somehow.

Maybe it is the communal singing.
Maybe it is the atmosphere of escape, of defiance, of being alive.
Whatever it is, the experience is incredible.

One of my hoped-for songs of the past week was ‘Plaza’. It’s a song Cold Chisel has not played for decades. But incredibly tonight, Don Walker plays his piano intro, Ian Moss holds the microphone, and for the duration of the song, all other instruments and musicians lie silent.

“And who’s gonna judge the part somebody plays
In someone else’s budget movie?
Come on up to my room babe
I need a co-star
And I can’t afford to be too choosy.”

We’re arm-in-arm as Jimmy Barnes tells us a story: how this 50-year celebration tour came to be. How it grew from an idea around a celebratory dinner table. And how in a dream, he had again met the late Steve Prestwich, the original drummer and songwriter who died in 2011. In his dream, Jimmy Barnes is driving a car on the imagined band tour when the song ‘Flame Trees’ comes on the radio. It was written by S Prestwich and D Walker, but on the radio in the dream, the song is not Cold Chisel’s version. So, from the driver’s seat, Jimmy goes to turn down the volume. But a hand reaches out from the passenger seat to prevent him. It is S Prestwich who looks at him gently and says: “Leave it. This is not bad”.

The spiritual massed choir of 10,000 responds to this lead in, and as ‘Flame Trees’ begins, the whole tent almost lifts clear of the very Flemington turf. The mid-song key change ensures my cheeks are wet by song’s end.

“And I’m wondering if he’ll go or if he’ll stay…
Do you remember?
Nothing stopped us on the field in our day.”

‘Bow River’ is more than I dreamed. Ian Moss carves up the guitar – as he does all night long. And he sings like a bird. I’m a young man on P-plates, behind the wheel of an HK Kingswood, heading north.
“Anytime you want babe, you can come around.
But only six days separates me from the great Top End.”

Cold Chisel leave the stage.
They’re back for an encore.

They leave the stage.
They’re back for a second encore.

And we’re hand-holding-arm-waving-larynx-bursting-happy-to-be-here. Magical.

Sunday evening. Home.

To Cold Chisel: thinking back to Friday nights’ show, I feel incredibly lucky. You picked us up and collected us. On Friday you flew us with angels and you flew us with ghosts, you flew us with memory and you flew us with hope. And you brought us to celebrate the here and the now, in our field, in our day.

Thank you, Cold Chisel. Magnificent.

And I’m wondering if he’ll go or if he’ll stay.
Do you remember? — nothing stopped us on the field in our day.
– Flame Trees, Cold Chisel

About David Wilson

David Wilson is a hydrologist, climate reporter and writer of fiction & observational stories. He writes under the name “E.regnans” at The Footy Almanac and has stories in several books. One of his stories was judged as a finalist in the Tasmanian Writers’ Prize 2021. He shares the care of two daughters and likes to walk around feeling generally amazed. Favourite tree: Eucalyptus regnans.

Almanac Music: Cold Chisel, the big top and sentimental bullshit

About David Wilson

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