Welcome to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. Hello and welcome to this episode of A Breath of Fresh Air, a show where we take a deep dive into the lives and music of some of the greatest hit makers of the 60s, 70s and 80s. This week, my special guest is the Australian singer-songwriter Don Walker, whose name you may not know, but whose songs you’re most likely very familiar with.
Don was the main songwriter for one of Australia’s favourite bands between the years of 1973 and 83. He’s the guy who crafted so many of the hits for his mate Jimmy Barnes to belt out. Songs like There’s been so much written about Cold Chisel over the years, but in my chat with Don, I was pretty surprised to learn about their humble beginnings, about Don’s incredible personal background and to hear the story of how it was the band’s girlfriends who discovered and insisted they take notice of a very young Michael Hutchence from in excess.
Oh yes, said the girlfriends, we’re sure. What is it about them? And they’re like shaking their heads saying, are you not looking at the singer? Let’s get back to that in a little while. I’d like first to introduce you to Don Walker.
Hello, Sandy. Hello, Don. Welcome to a breath of fresh air.
My pleasure. Don Walker is considered one of Australia’s best songwriters. He was born in rural North Queensland, spending his early childhood on a sugar cane plantation where he became familiar with gospel, blues and swing before he could even talk.
He started having piano lessons following his family’s move to New South Wales in the mid fifties and subsequently played the organ too. He completed an honours science degree, qualified as a physicist and then moved to Adelaide where his musical life began in earnest. Well, I had done a degree and I had finished off that degree on a Commonwealth cadetship, which means the Commonwealth government pays you away, but then you owe them a few years work, which is good if you’re a physicist because it guarantees you a job.
That meant I didn’t have to look for a job teaching. There aren’t many places that in those days they could employ a physicist in Australia. And one of them was the weapons research establishment in South Australia, which is out between Salisbury and Elizabeth, where Jim grew up.
So you knew Jim already? No, I think he was in high school or should have been in high school. But I used to, you know, Elizabethtown Central was where myself and my mates from weapons research used to go and have lunch every day. So we didn’t see as much gang warfare as Jim indicates, but I’m sure he was running around, you know, it was close.
Yeah. So for a few years there, well, for a little while, you know, we’re inhabiting the same space without knowing each other. Of course, the Jim that Don talks about is the now world renowned singer songwriter Jimmy Barnes, who was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and emigrated with his family to Australia as a young child.
Jim often referred to his childhood environment as a slum of alcohol and violence, saying that his mother had him and his four siblings before she was 21. His older brother John became a successful musician as founder and lead singer of the rock band Swanee. John had encouraged and taught his little brother how to sing, and Jimmy got his first break when he was asked to join Cold Chisel at just 16 years old.
At the time, Cold Chisel comprised Ted Broniecki on keyboards, Les Kaczmarek on bass guitar, Ian Moss on guitar and vocals, Steve Preswich on drums, and Don Walker on piano. The guy who got Cold Chisel together, Les Kaczmarek, he got Ian and I in the band, and then according to Jim recently, he was the next one. You know, we’re looking around for a singer.
I knew Swanee. I had known Swanee for some years. Who is Jimmy’s brother? Yes, Swanee and I are the same age.
Swanee was an electric singer, incredible singer and front man, and you know, somebody that I had and have a lot of time for. Won’t they let her be? We thought we were looking around for a singer, and this is John’s young brother. Cold Chisel in the beginning was a random cover band, just doing the songs of the bands that we loved.
We tried writing some new songs, not only me, but the earliest songs for the band were written by, not only by me, but by John Swan, who was in the band for a little while, and Steve Preswich. I think they cooked up a song together. That’s when the band was in Armidale.
In Cold Chisel, the other guys dropped off for a little while, although they were still, they were always, you know, keeping the toe in the water. I mean, there’s a, the first song on the first Cold Chisel album is a song where I wrote some lyrics and Jim took them and wrote the music, and the second album’s got a couple of co-writes on it. When Cold Chisel got together, I was a little bit older than the other guys by a couple of years, but that sort of, that stuff seems important when you’re that young, and I guess I’d travelled a bit around the place, and I really wanted us to play original music, and so did the other guys, and so I started trying to write, and wrote a lot of bad songs before some okay ones started to come along.
John took on the job as Cold Chisel’s main songwriter from that point on. It was never discussed. It was something that I was very interested in as a discipline, and they were interested in what I was doing.
That was kicked off very early in the band. I wrote a song called Let Me Not Forget Me, which became, I rewrote the lyrics later, and it became The Party’s Over. This was like a jazz ballad, and the band looked at that and thought, oh, gee, this is all right.
He can do this. So that’s what led me to our mutual thing of, you know, I’m going to be writing songs, even though I haven’t written many, and they’re going to be receptive to that. Well, it worked out pretty well, didn’t it? You had a lot of massive hits.
The songwriting is not necessarily something that you’re born to. I’m sure some people are. I found it’s just something that if you’re fascinated about, and you think about a lot, and you spend long enough at it, you start to get reasonably handy at it.
What was your process for songwriting? Where did you draw inspiration? Well, I liked the music I was listening to, and I was passionate about it, and I thought, you know, I can do that too. But you were self-taught as a songwriter? Yeah, nobody taught me how to write songs, except for the people whose songs I really liked. But there was no such thing in those days as a songwriting course or anything like that.
You wanted to make money out of songs. You had to write good ones. You couldn’t go and teach it.
Of all the songs you wrote for Chisel, and there are so many, do you have a favourite? No. Really? They’re like kids to you, you couldn’t pick between them? Yes, and like kids, you know, there are good ones and there are bad ones. But they’re all your favourites? No, there’s not a, no, I don’t have favourites.
Well, he may not have been able to pick the one he likes best, but Don Walker was always keen to embody some sort of Australian experience in his songs. Most of his tunes say something about the country of his birth. At that time, Australian experience was the only experience I had.
So I wasn’t really focused on things being Australian. I was just focused on writing things that resonated with us and with the people that we were playing to, which was a very small group of people then. And our experiences were all broadly some kind of thing.
We’re all the same age and doing the same thing. So that’s what you write about. Were you surprised that they all became such big hits? I have had very few big hits.
There’s a small list of cultures and songs that are ongoing. You could call them sustainable. You sure could.
That are ongoingly, you know, meaningful to people. I guess I wrote about 50%, a little bit over 50% of those, because the other guys wrote hits too, in the end. We shouldn’t gloss over the fact that it took quite a few years for me to write anything that was acceptable to radio.
So there was a long period where I wasn’t writing anything useful in commercial terms. Well, I mean, that’s quite understandable, given the fact that you were a pub rock band for such a long time. I guess the aim wasn’t on being commercial at all.
Well, in those days, all bands were pub rock bands. I don’t think you can label Cold Chisel as a pub rock band unless you also label… I mean, NXS was a pub rock band, and so were the Go Betweens. It just means that you’re playing music in pubs, and that was the only place to play music, unless you went into universities, and we went into universities as much as anybody.
Pub rock is a style of Australian rock and roll that peaked in popularity throughout the 70s and 80s. It’s named after the live music circuit in which most associated bands developed their sound, inner city and suburban pubs. These were often noisy, hot, small and crowded venues that favoured loud, riff-based, heavy rock.
This is a Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Australian pub rock emerged in the early 70s with bands pioneering that sound by incorporating hard rock and blues rock and occasionally elements of progressive and psychedelic rock.
It developed separately from British pub rock with the Australian sound being heavier, bluesier and more hard edged. Bands like ACDC, Rose Tattoo and Cold Chisel expanded the sound further and all achieved mainstream success. Garrett and Billy the Kid, that’s for that movie.
And if you put that album on, that takes you straight into Texas and Mexico with very few tools. It’s only really got about three songs on it, but they’re gorgeous. And I loved that soundtrack and also loved the soundtrack for the Giorgio Moroder soundtrack.
Oh yes. And which was completely different. That was an electronic soundtrack.
So when I was approached by the South Australian Film Corporation, I had an idea. I really wanted to do a soundtrack and this was my opportunity. The movie Freedom had been about a loser of a young man blaming everyone for the fact that his dreams weren’t coming true.
The soundtrack was often hailed as the best rock music ever written for an Australian movie. Vocals were sung by the then unknown Michael Hutchence, who was singing out front of the pub rock band, In Excess. ♪ I must fly down Taron’s Road ♪ ♪ And when I’m dry I, I go down ♪ ♪ To the Love’s Pier Hotel ♪ ♪ Elaine is DJ tonight ♪ ♪ So run along and get it right, aha! ♪ Could you tell from the get go that Hutchence was gonna be a big star? Not directly.
Myself and one or two other guys out of Colchisle were taken up to a little pub in Paddington by our girlfriends. and you know with the message of you’ve really got to see this band and for us guys you know a good competent band and walked away and the girls are saying the girlfriends are saying no you’ve really got it because our management agency Dirty Pool they’re looking around for younger generations of bands that could that we could take out on tour and and they could be the next bands coming up and among those was you know the divinals in excess a number of other bands and the girlfriends were saying this has to be one of those bands and I’m saying are you sure oh yes said the girlfriends we’re sure what is it about them and they’re like shaking their heads saying hey are you not looking at the singer and yes the the bandwidths that in excess were connecting with was completely missing us but it was there was no can there was no question that you know Michael was a I mean naturally I never said it passed me by but it was most other people with cold chisel Don continued to write about everything he saw around him including the things he witnessed during his time living in Sydney’s Kings Cross I didn’t consciously I mean I don’t walk around observing people in fact those people who know me would say that I was particularly unobservant but you know if you’re writing and you’re in an environment eventually that’s gonna leak in you start to smell that in the songs the band’s popularity was growing and cold chisel started drawing huge crowds all over Australia major international success however always alluded them and it’s still something that Don remains slightly disappointed about oh very much but we didn’t give it a serious try I mean we went to America once for five weeks nobody cracks America like that we had more of a serious crack in Europe and we were on our third tour of Germany then we had got to the stage where we were headlining in Germany in large clubs and pubs right through Germany which was a big place for that kind of thing so we were doing our own 50-day tour at the time that we broke up America we never even tried it was a we’ve spent five weeks in America and it was a debacle from one end to the other you were with cultures all from 73 till 83 when that when the band disbanded why did that come to an end at that time we were exhausted I had run out of gas a little bit in and sort of figuring out where the next direction should lie we were facing a big jump to international and when you do that jump it’s hard And you’ve got to be prepared to go back to, you know, very, very hard economics, touring in cars, a lot of hard work for long periods of time and not in luxury. And by that stage, you know, we had enjoyed a year or two of success here.
Everybody had gotten nice and comfortable here. And members of the band were settling into family life. So there was no, I mean, when we left Adelaide to, you know, conquer the country, there was just five of us in one car and not much petrol money.
But for us to do that in America in 1983, we just didn’t have the gas to do that anymore. There was also a lot of turbulence within the group itself. Jimmy Barnes’s relationship with the band was often volatile and he left several times, leaving Ian Moss to handle vocal duties until he returned.
Those things happen. I mean, Jim wasn’t the only one who was, you know, leaving and coming back. Steve liked to do that too.
That meant that you could never take it for granted if you were comfortable for a day. But, you know, things worked out in the end. All right.
So was it at that time that you took a bit of a break from music and travelled around a bit? I did. I thought, well, that was 10 years music and that was good. That worked out well.
Not as well as I had hoped. I thought Coal Chisel had, we had it in us to be a worldwide band. And maybe if we had come along five years later, that would have been a lot easier.
It was a lot easier for bands who were trying to do that in the late 80s that were younger than us. In what way was it different? It’s just that the connections were more set up and it was accepted by that stage that Australia was a source of music and the younger bands could get over there and start hammering away at it a lot more quickly. By the time we got a record contract, we’d been traipsing around with no money for five years.
You know, with the younger bands, that didn’t happen. By the time they came along, you know, they could go from, like In Excess, for example, they could go from forming, getting their stuff together to having a record contract and be putting out records. They could do that in under two years.
Yeah, you’re a bit ahead of your time. Between 1978 and 84, Cole Chisell had released five studio albums and won numerous awards. Don’s songwriting credits include some of the band’s biggest and most iconic singles, among them 1984’s Saturday Night, 1980’s Girl and Cheap Wine, and 1978’s K-San, which in 2001 made the top 10 in a poll of the greatest Australian songs of all time.
After Cold Chisel disbanded, Don formed Catfish, an ensemble of backing musicians with him as frontman and songwriter. Catfish released two critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful albums, and Don’s writing became even more Australian. Well, initially, the first Catfish album, I had been travelling through Eurasia, and so the first Catfish album is very, it’s very un-Australian.
It’s, it’s, there’s a lot of Russian and Eastern European stories in there. And then after I’d been back in Australia for a little while, the second Catfish album came out and that’s very Australian. If we come up to 1998, you were back with Cold Chisel and releasing the first studio album that they’d done for 15 years, called The Last Wave of Summer.
How come? How’d you come back together again? I was reluctant because we had broken up in 1983 and we had driven the car as far as it would go, and the wheels were off, and I swore to everybody else, if we’re going to break this up, this is serious, we’re not taking a break, we’re smashing the crockery, and there’s no going back. And there had been, the idea of getting back together had come up from time to time, but I was adamant that no, when you break up, you break up. But I guess what changed my mind and softened me up was firstly, a set of songs that Steve Preswich had written, which were extraordinary songs.
And then Jim was living in France at the time with his family, and he was working on new material too, and he sent a new set of songs over. And Jim’s songs were really advanced. I mean, they were really sophisticated, really good stuff, different to Steve’s.
And I was drawn in by those two sets of songs. The fact that no matter where you go, Jim and Ian are still the two best singers that you could possibly work with. Person by person in cultures, they’re the best people anywhere.
This is a Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Cold Chisel had reunited in 1997.
They recorded their sixth studio album and supported it with a national tour. The album debuted at number one. It’s kind of seductive, the idea of taking songs into that group of people into a studio with the extra 15 years of things that I had learned.
I’ll be wishing on the earth a happy new year. I told everybody else I knew. That’s also around the time when Don’s association with the great Slim Dusty began.
Yes. Slim Dusty, who was born David Kirkpatrick, was an Australian country music singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer. He was an Aussie cultural icon, referred to universally as Australia’s king of country music.
He was also one of the country’s most awarded stars, with a career spanning nearly seven decades. He was the first Australian to have a number one international hit song, with his version of Gordon Parsons’ A Pub With No Beer. Oh, it’s a lonesome away from your kindred and all By the campfire at night where the wild dingoes call But there’s nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer Now the public is anxious for the quota to come And there’s a far away look on the face of the bum The mate’s gone all cranky and the cook’s acting queer Oh, what a terrible place is a pub with no beer I had had some success in conjunction with Graeme Connors, pitching songs into Slim.
And I think it was Graeme that first got me to co-write in the country music way. I mean, I had co-written with other guys in cultural, but that was always like, I’ll write some music to your lyrics or you write music to mine or whatever. But this was with Graeme Connors.
He frog marched me into a room and said, we are going to write a song because Slim is looking for songs and this is what we’re going to write about. And we wrote a song together and pitched it in and Slim did it. And the reason that Slim did that song, which was called High, Dry and Homeless, was because Graeme had pitched it in and Graeme was one of his known and trusted, you know, personally.
He’s a country guy, solid blue chip. I don’t know that Slim would have had much idea of who I was. But that’s not where your association ended with Slim Dusty, was it? No, we did a few more of them.
I wrote a couple of songs in Nashville a year or two later and Slim did them. Then there was a catfish song, Charleville, that Slim did and I’m told that that was initiated by Joy, Slim’s wife, found it on a cassette on the floor of the car and they heard it and Joy said, well, I think you need to do that, Slim. And the next thing, he had done a version and they rang me up and said, we would like to do a duet with you.
Would you be up for doing a duet with Slim? So in the course of doing that, that’s where Slim and I first met. I’m getting a common theme happening here, that it’s the women that make things happen. Yes, how right you are.
Well, I met her at a disco in the School of Oz Hotel The kind of place that some girls won’t attend The moon shone over Redwood Street and later I could tell I’d never be a lonely man again In Charleville, in Charleville, in Charleville, in Charleville There’s a pretty little woman, says she’ll say I will In Charleville, in Charleville, in Charleville, in Charleville Well, there’s a pretty little woman, says she’ll say I will We’re gonna have a wedding cake, it’s plenty ladies’ heart And fifteen hundred family and friends We’ll cook ourselves a dozen lambs and drink the district drop And whip around a hat and start again In Charleville, in Charleville, in Charleville, in Charleville There’s a pretty little woman, says she’ll say I will In Charleville, in Charleville, in Charleville, in Charleville There’s a pretty little woman, says she’ll say I will John Walker, in 1994 you recorded your first solo album having been with Tex Tom and Charlie, a trio, in years preceding that Why did you decide to go solo? Well, I guess the Catfish albums were solo albums in a way but without me having the courage or being completely comfortable with putting my name out there on them, in my face But I guess the first solo album, which was called We’re All Gonna Die That’s the first one that I heard it and I thought this is really what I want to be, the music that I want to make And it’s interesting that the albums that I make now sound a lot like that, even though apart from one person all the personnel playing on it are different Going solo, did that require a bit of shift of mindset an increase in confidence? What sort of adjustments did you have to make to your being to put yourself out there front and centre and be there on your own? It was generated really by the experience of working with Tex and Charlie And recording had been, with Cold Chisel and even more with Catfish had been long and laborious and getting details perfect and everything like that Tex and Charlie had the confidence to walk into a studio and record songs as you play live We’re now in the studio, we’re playing music together What we’re doing now, it will be going on the record That mindset, and we have the confidence that we can do that because we are professional musicians in our middle age and we know what the blue, if we are doing That experience of making a very good record with Tex and Charlie and working with the people that they worked with It was such a liberating experience I thought, well, I’m going to make records like that I had my own people that I wanted to do that with It’s fun to walk into a studio with a bunch of gun guys and women, if it happens to be women and walk out of the studio after 10 hours and there are four songs on tape To date, Don Walker has released five solo albums the latest of which is Live Lightning a 10 track live album recorded on his recent solo dates around Australia Get up in the morning Take a piss and look around Look at where I’m going Not a worry to be found Look at where I’ve been Look at you and look at me Any way you cut it This is not the place to be You’ve got to move, got to move, got to move You’ve got to move, got to move You kept on writing, you wrote a whole lot of songs for a bunch of different Australian artists In 2005, you, Tex and Charlie again recorded and released the widely acclaimed All Is Forgiven which was your first album together in 12 years So your edict about breaking up and never getting back together again that was smashed, wasn’t it? You did keep going back to places you’d been before to a great result Did you have that same attitude with women? Once it’s over, it’s over? Did you end up going back to relationships in the same way? No, bands are different to women We’ll leave it at that Anyway, you had lots of success with Tex and Charlie one more time in 2005 and you published your own book in 2009 So now you’re a published author, same as your sister and your mother That must have felt good Yeah, what felt good was that they, my sister and my mother liked it My father was a bit, he read the book and he looked at me His comment was, you don’t talk like that I was approached by a publisher who is now a good friend It was actually after a Tex Don and Charlie concert in 2005 which he and his friends had really enjoyed and I was approached and he said, do you have a book? I said, no, no way That’s not the kind of writer I am But then You rose to the challenge I released one through his publishing company And it’s a great book, it’s called Shots That’s right Well worth a read Moving forward again, Cold Chisel wrapped the 2011 Light the Nitro Tour that was the largest tour ever by an Aussie band or artist and released No Plans You released your incredible third solo album called Hully Gully and a song from that, The Perfect Crime, became the title song for the Cold Chisel album of the same name in 2015 Yes You must have been chuffed The songs that I have done on my solo albums do have a habit of turning up, not many of them but occasionally they turn up on a Cold Chisel album later which is good But the summer now gone What I mean to do All in all This time is only good For if you need to not be found For a while For a turn or two On the other hand Just maybe How long could Sadly the original line-up of Cold Chisel can be no more Founding bass guitarist Les Kazmarek died of liver failure in 2008 at the age of 53 In 2011, Steve Prestwich was diagnosed with a brain tumour He underwent surgery but never regained consciousness and died two days later at the age of 56 Jimmy Barnes, as we all know, went on to achieve global success on his own as did Ian Moss Don Walker continues to write and collaborate with some of the best-known names in Australian music pop, rock, country, indie and folk Artists like Missy Higgins, Kate Sobrano, Jimmy Little, Troy Cassadayly and Sarah Blasco as well as Moss and Barnes Don now has two books to his name the first we’ve already discussed called Shots the second from 2019 called Songs Among his industry awards are an aria for Tucker’s daughter which he co-wrote with Ian Moss Tucker’s daughter was voted Song of the Year in 1990 Don has three operas including the Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Services to Australian Music which was awarded to Cold Chisel in 2016 He was inducted into the Australian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012 and in 2020 the University of New England awarded him an honorary doctorate He says there’s still plenty more to come from him Hopefully, yes, there’s not as much time left as there used to be but fingers crossed Thank you so much for sharing your time and stories with us an absolute pleasure chatting with you Thank you for having me on Thanks Don, all the best now Bye Bye