Welcome to a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. Hello, great to have you company. Well depending on where you’re tuning in from, you may or may not know the name of today’s special guest.
No matter really, because I’m very excited to either introduce you to or further your knowledge about one Joe Camilleri. Joe stands as one of Australia’s most dedicated and accomplished musicians. He’s the creative force behind several iconic songs, each of which mark significant milestones in Australian music history.
Maltese-born Joe has led two of the country’s most successful bands, Joe Josep and the Falcons and the Black Sorrows. His songwriting prowess is evident in covers by artists like Elvis Costello and John Denver. And beyond performing, he’s highly respected as a producer.
Today some 62 years since he first set out, Joe Camilleri is still wowing audiences everywhere. I’m sure after our chat today, you’ll know exactly why. Well, I started this caper in 63, I was born in Malta in 1948.
My dad came over in 49. A friend of his came back from Australia and he said, go to Australia, it’s paradise. It’s the best place in the world.
And of course it turns out to be true. But you’re living in North Eltona and we don’t even have sewerage. You kind of think London would be a nicer place to hang out, you know.
And the Beatles were just happening, the Rolling Stones were happening, all the things that I love. What were you listening to on the radio at the time? Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Crash Craddock, Frankie Laine, Johnny Ray. If your sweetheart sends a letter of goodbye, it’s no secret you’ll feel better if you cry.
When waking from a bad dream, don’t you sometimes think it’s real? But it’s only false emotions that you feel. Someone would have a piano and everyone would just rally around that. You know, sheet music was really fashionable and important to have, someone could play the piano.
And then we’d sing the songs or you’d go to a neighbour’s place and you’d sing the song. So do you remember the exact time that you made a decision to say, this is what I want to do with my life? No, I don’t really remember that. You know, I was drifting.
I left school at 12 and I was just drifting around, trying to get a job. My dad was really disappointed in me. I’m one of 10 kids, a third of 10.
And what I didn’t realise then, he gave up, you know, like all migrants give up so much to give their children an opportunity for a brighter life. And I was pretty much just pissing it up against the wall. I worked in kind of horrible places, you know, meat factories and not inspiring situations.
So my education was on the street and you kind of learn a lot by that. By the time the 60s came, someone was a bit older, someone had a car. Most of us had no licence.
It didn’t matter. It kind of mattered if you got caught. And we’re singing the songs, let’s start a band.
That sounds like a good thing. We buy the clothes first. Kind of have to look the part, you know, buy the clothes if we can afford it.
And pretty much that’s where it started, in a car in Bay Street, Port Melbourne. So you taught yourself to play? Yeah, yeah. You had the book and you had the will.
Charlie was the drummer, who was just terrible, still is. We had the look, we kind of had the potential, but it took a lot of work. We gathered up a few songs, things like Walking the Dog.
You have to learn it off the record, you have to have a good ear. I’m just a walking the dog. I’ll show you how to walk the dog.
I hated the bass, I hated the idea. And I was the only one that could sing a little bit. So my brother played the piano accordion.
So I said, Frankie, do you want to join a band? And he says, no, I don’t want to be in a band and I hate you. But I convinced him that it would be really good. And the clothes were really good.
Tell me about that look. What was the look you were after for the band? There were blue suits, purple lining. Buttons were also made out of material.
A lot of the British beat had the collars made of felt collar. And we had imitation leather plastic vests, which we thought were incredible. So you kind of look pretty smart.
We had beetle boots. You couldn’t buy certain colours. You couldn’t get a purple shirt.
You had to wait till it was available. You couldn’t get corduroy. And I was really interested in all these things, right? I was interested in the look more than the actual music.
I was just interested in listening to the music. I never thought that I’d be part of the fabric of the Australian music scene. So we had this look and then we were a four-piece band.
We got a job in a Catholic church and everyone had a dance. And then we got this gig playing at the Mod Ball. And the Mod Ball was full of top end of town.
It had Normie Rowe. It had those sort of people, Mike Ferber. It had the Wild Colonial Boys.
We were called the Drollys. I should have thought that through a little bit more because they were little troll dolls that you could buy in those days. It sort of represented how ugly we were.
And there was a band called the Kingbees and they were on after us. And they were really good, but they couldn’t sing. There was no singers.
And there was an opportunity for me, unknown to me. They just kind of liked what I did. They asked me to join and these guys were kind of serious.
They were university level intelligence. They were backing people like Normie Rowe. Brings a feeling on all inside of me.
They promised me money and I could play a little bit of harmonica. And they liked what I did. And I thought the noise sounded good.
So you joined the Kingbees. You weren’t playing guitar at the time. No, no, no.
I never had the inspiration to do any of that. I didn’t think I’d be a songwriter. I didn’t know anything about those things.
You were singing for them and on percussion. I wasn’t even on percussion. I wasn’t doing it.
I was just singing and playing harmonica. So were the Kingbees successful? Yeah. All of a sudden we’re playing 500 shows a year because you’re only doing 20 minute shows.
So we got a lot of work. They were wild days. How impressed was your dad with what you were doing? Well, you know, it kind of took a while.
You know, my dad, before he died, I would give him tapes, you know, when the sorrows were sort of in full flight and we thought there’s going to be no end. To the hits, you know, we were good writers and still are. He would take the tape and listen to it in the car, in the driveway.
In the early days, he would just slip me a couple of pounds or, you know, a few dollars and he says, do something, you know, just do something. I love him for that. So Joe, you’re gigging with the Kingbees.
You end up playing with a whole lot of other bands. Quite soon afterwards, the decade turns into the 70s and you pick up a saxophone. Where’d that come from? Yeah.
Well, that was kind of just one of those weird things. I just saw it in the window. I don’t think I could do that.
I don’t think I could do that. And I love doo-wop. I was interested in modern jazz.
I was interested in architecture. I was still interested in fashion. Like Sonny and Cher, I was making my own gear.
1970, I started playing in a band called Lip and the Double Decker Brothers. I thought I could do that. And I picked it up and I could make a noise.
I ended up becoming obsessed by it and wanting to play. I didn’t want to sing anymore. And we were into Captain Beepheart and Frank Zappa and Miles Davis.
And we were jamming it all in together. It was incredible on so many different levels. I was picking up things that down the line blew my mind.
You gigged around the place. You’re mainly singing. You’re playing the sax.
And then you come across Stephen Cummings, another very well-known Australian singer, and join a band with him called the Palacko Brothers. That doesn’t last too long. He goes off to start a band called The Sports, which did very well in this country.
And you decide to become a singer in your own band called The Falcons. The story there is that we played together in the Palacko Brothers. And we loved the same thing.
We ended up living together. And we’re going to join this band that had no name. We’re Dusty.
We’re coming in from 250km away. We played the night before. And we’re rehearsing with these geezers, right? And they’re top end of town.
You’ve got Daddy Kool. You’ve got Company Gang. And you’ve got the four-day writers.
John Plow is from Sydney. We love the four-day writers. We love Daddy Cool.
Daddy cool, Daddy cool Oh, Daddy cool, Daddy cool Daddy cool, Daddy cool We go to the rehearsal in the afternoon and I think it freaked Stephen out. It was everything he wanted. We walk out and I say, oh this is going to be great, Steve.
You know, we’ve got a band, they’ve got songs, we can write songs. This will be a kickstart to something new. And he says, oh Joe, I think I’m going to bow out.
I think I want to start something different to that. A little bit less traditional and a little bit more in this time. There was Graham Parker, Elvis Costello.
There was that scene happening, early punk. It was pretty punk. And I said, oh okay, I know it’s a drag.
And I said, oh well, I think I’m going to take this opportunity because I think it’s kind of everything that I want, you know. I can play the blues and play the rhythm and blues on the saxophone, which I was really interested in. So I joined the band and God bless Ross Wilson, you know, 10 years down the line, he’s a big star.
He’s got skyhooks, he’s producing records. And he said, I’m starting a label, would you be interested in being the first singer? I’m under contract, I can’t sing this song, it’s a Chuck Berry song. Would you be interested in doing it? And I said, yeah.
And so we went into the studio and we cut, run, Rudolph, run. The next thing I know, I had to have a name. It turned out to be Joe Josep.
I’m on counter. And then I needed a band. I think the single was Joe Josep and his Little Helpers.
It was pretty much the Falcons. Where did you get the name Joe Josep from? Well, I got that from my mum, really. Ross Wilson, he was riffing on something, you know, so you got to call yourself something.
I said, well, you know, Joe Camilleri doesn’t sound like a rocker, really. Doesn’t sound like something. It just sounds like a guy that’s selling you some vegetables.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. We went through a band name, you know, The, and I just happened to say Jojo Zep, and he just kind of poised and said, that’s it.
I said, nah, you know, Zep means Joseph in Maltese, you know, Zep. That’s what my mum called my dad, Zep. And he said, no, that’s it.
I hated it, really. I didn’t think it had any value. Little did I know that it was kind of like a pretty good name, really.
It was original. I eventually added The Falcons. It sounded good to me then.
All of a sudden it was a band. It wasn’t about me. Never wanted it to be about me.
I just wanted to be in a band. I don’t want to feel that I’m the leader of anything. And this band started.
We’re playing. Once again, Ross Wilson brings it home to me. He’s gone to Jamaica, and he’s come back with a whole bunch of Jamaican records, and he handed me a whole bunch of things.
He said, this is Jacob Miller. This is Tenement Yard. You should look at that record.
He’s just great. And this is Delroy Wilson. He’s singing a song called I’m In A Dancing Mood.
I’m in a dancing mood Dancing mood I’m in a dancing mood Dancing mood When you’re inside Cause you get a dancing mood I’m in a dancing mood A dancing mood He was really generous. The band formed into whatever it became. So he was really trying to carve out your unique style, right? Well, I don’t know if he was trying to do that.
What he was doing is just being very generous. He’s a music lover, you know, first of all. And I’ve known him for 10 years, even though I didn’t know him, you know.
He was the guy that gave me a dozen shirts from the Daddy Cool years, because I used to buy all these 50s shirts and things like that, and records. And we walked the same road in some ways. So he starts producing albums for you? Yeah, well, he was kind of, he was really interested in the Falcons because Gary was in Daddy Cool.
So we made this record with Ross and we didn’t have that much experience. Certainly I didn’t. And I was rough trade, really.
I was out there and I could sing a bit, but I didn’t really know how to. Being in a studio and knowing when to bang it out was a whole new skill for you to learn. Yeah, I could just get my ass kicked, you know, like for days.
And I’d go home and I’d be so disappointed in my effort and I couldn’t work out what it was. And it was, you’ve got to know when to put the foot down or when to take the foot off. You know, and then I would just go bang, hard, hard, hard, hard, and thinking that it was going to be okay because of the energy.
And so what ends up happening, of course, is that you lose all the energy. If you’re riffing and you’re singing, we’re doing King of Fools or something, you might be able to put something together that’s funny and then get into the song. But after you do it 20 times… You lose it.
You don’t have it. It’s kind of nothing. And you can’t come back tomorrow and do it because they didn’t want you to do that, you know.
Yeah. So, you know, I learned a lot of stuff from Ross. You learned the hard way, didn’t you? Because that first album, Don’t Waste It, kind of did nothing until, and the breakthrough really only came about 1979 when Screaming Targets took us.
That’s true. But, you know, it wasn’t that harsh. Don’t be so hard on me.
Sorry. We did do something. We had two singles off of Dancing Shoes and Security.
There was a party I’m moving Way down the block Out the bed I leap To the door I rock Yeah, but what can this poor boy do When I just can’t find my dancing shoes Can’t find them shoes Yeah, but what can this poor boy do When I just can’t find my dancing shoes Well, he’s driving me crazy I can’t get out on the town Going down This poor boy can’t move When I just can’t find my dancing shoes This poor boy can’t move When I just Get a pinch of dirt And a river flows They became really popular. But that was part of our live experience. We had the Honey Dripper.
We had all these songs that we could do that people loved. We had the King of Fools. We had all these songs from that album.
And people were saying, Oh man, you’re kind of, you suck. You know, we’ve got to come and see you live. So we made another attempt.
It was not as good even. The songs weren’t as good. But then we recorded Loud and Clear.
Now Loud and Clear changed everything because that was kind of warts and all and that got to the top 20. I bought The Honey Dripper I ain’t never The Honey Dripper Some sweet, hot thing That I don’t care Only made Another head care He jumps at his friends He kicks at a swing Changed everybody’s perception on what we can Oh yeah, that’s what, that’s who they are. That’s what we want.
And so when Screaming Targets was being recorded Peter Sully, who came over to produce the sports record which was an incredible big hit, right? In this period of time, I was producing records too. Peter didn’t want to do the felt He thought it was some kind of dumbass bar band, you know. He couldn’t see what was available to him until Michael Ganinski said You’re doing this, just give me seven days Two days rehearsal, five days in the studio.
That’s all you’re getting out of me. And those two days and the five recording days he fell in love with us as people fell in love with us as weird that had a lot of depth that no one was digging deep enough and we made this record. And I wrote most of those songs and it was a very successful one.
You got to keep a foot in a foot in a run And a heart in a one a step a two step a You got to keep a foot in a foot in a run A one a step a two step a Really quite a learning curve going from being a live band to a studio band going from not writing your own songs to actually writing hit songs all of a sudden you were really flying high and you get discovered in America. Yeah, well you know, I mean it’s funny how that works, isn’t it? Really, you know, from zero to the top end of town for a little bit. I certainly wasn’t ready for it.
I knew what it was like to be in the bottom end of town, but I didn’t know how to approach it. All of a sudden I could buy Art Deco furniture, which I loved, and all of a sudden I could not be hounded for the mortgage. All of a sudden there wasn’t just 400 people at a gig, there was a thousand people and people were hanging outside.
And it’s pretty hard to come to grips with that. All of a sudden your head sort of explodes. How did you keep your feet on the ground? I think my wife at the time sort of sorted me out.
And I also think that disappointment comes rushing in pretty fast. You’re only as good as that last single. And the music scene was still driven by singles.
It wasn’t really driven by albums so much. And we’re still an AM radio. I don’t think record companies were up to the task of digging deep as well.
They would give you maybe two singles off an album and you’d have to make another album in a year’s time. But I could not get out of looking. You gave me the business on and on.
Well, those big black eyes and I wonder what’s going on. Oh baby, you got me in the shape I’m in. Oh baby, you got me in the shape I’m in.
Oh baby, you got me in the shape I’m in. Such a night, like a thriller. Going round and round, baby, you know I had a lot of fun.
I said, now go on, have you hit a spin? Took me for a ride and I landed where I was. Oh baby, you got me in the shape I’m in. Oh baby, you got me in the shape I’m in.
Oh baby, you got me in the shape I’m in. It was a lot of pressure. Well, a lot of pressure and still is in a different way today.
But we could have had more singles off that Screaming Targets record. We could have had that in the charts for a lot longer. It wasn’t until the mid-80s that record companies realised that records have more value if you market them in a way that people can really think about that.
Oh, I like that song. Oh, is that on it? You know, it’s on TV and they’re playing Hold On To Me and Chain To The Wheel and Never Let Me Go, whatever was on the records at the time. And all of a sudden you’ve got six singles off an album and the record’s in the charts for 90 weeks.
It’s a different way of approaching it. It was about the marketing. I’ve tried so many times to call you up when you’re at work.
To tell you I realise that I get washed and I get through. I take the troubles off and I say all I do, all I want to do, all I want to do is get in touch with you. You travel through those late 70s, early 80s and then you hit a wall, Joe Camilleri.
Yeah, well, you know, at 1981, I think we kind of, we were burnt out. We’ve been to America, around the world. The singles are dried up.
They’re still pretty good, but the music landscape has changed. If you look at all the bands that were happening around, all around the world, they’re falling apart like a cheap suit. They’re just falling apart because the music’s changed.
They’re still writing sort of similar concepts and they’re playing probably better, but nobody wanted that anymore. You know, it was disposable. And so I had a hit, you know, Peter Solly comes out and he says to me, he looks at the tracks and he’s on heavy on cocaine and he’s at the top, once again, on the top end of town.
Jess had a number one hit with Zanac and he looks at my stuff and he says, you’ve got two songs and I’ve got five days and I’ve got four bags of cocaine and he sacks the band. My band, it’s not the same band, it’s just him, a drum machine and me. And he says, this is the best song you’ve got, which is a song called Taxi Mary.
I said, you must be joking. Nobody’s going to understand that song. He says, it’s the best song you’ve got, but he’s got two songs.
He’s got this version of Walk On By that I love and it becomes a hit. Each time we meet, walk on by, that’s all that I have left. So let me hide the tears and the sadness you gave me when you said goodbye.
I’ve heard them saying you, and so if I seem broken in two, walk on by, walk on by. Don’t see the tears, just let me breathe. I’m now at the bottom of the nine, I’m falling apart and I’m thinking, oh well, is there loving? Yeah, I’m done.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. I get a call, I’m doing a gig, I was done with the hit and runs and the shape, I couldn’t do it.
I get a call and he says, you’re in the top ten on Countdown, you’re number eight. Taxi Mary says, hit top ten, says you’re on TV next week. And then I had to pull a band together, which I ended up with an eleven piece band in cummerbunds.
I know what you’re thinking. And I recruited Jane Clifton, an old friend of mine, because she’s staying on Taxi Mary. Let’s drive up the band and take all of that loud sound, let those horns begin to flow.
Say don’t be such a nasty boy, you want to squeeze me tight, you call me honey. Counting out now, one by one. Cuatro, cinco, seto, oto.
Let’s all grab the bombers. When night is young, we’ll get on the street and we’ll cross the ditch, we’re running out of goods forever. It was short-lived for me because I had already hung up my boots with all that.
If I was going to do anything, I needed to do something from the start. And that’s basically how the sorrows started. I ended up working the wholesale markets as a veggie roadie and I realised then that I could not do this.
I have to do music as a career, but I had to find a pathway. You certainly take the highs and lows on your chin, don’t you? Well, you have to, don’t you? I mean, you know, you’ve got to… Roll with the punches. Well, I’ll get up and I feel okay about the world.
I didn’t know who I was. I just felt like there’s something I can do and that’s kind of valuable. I’ve already reached… My bar was so low.
So you buried Jo Jo Zepp and you gave birth to The Black Sorrows? Pretty much. It was a collective concept. Jo formed the blues rock band The Black Sorrows in 83.
The band is still active today, maintaining a reputation as one of Australia’s most enduring live acts. But they may not have made it at all without the help of British singer-songwriter Elvis Costello. We’re playing in Brisbane and it’s the first time in my life he’s side of stage watching Falcons.
He loved the Falcons. And we finish and we just had so young and he loved the song. The audience had gone nuts and he said, get back up there and do an encore.
I said, well, what’s the poor man saying? He said, just get up there and do an encore. And we became friends. And man, he was the instigator of the band.
He comes in to do a sort of a solo tour. He goes to a record store and he says, what is that? And he said, oh, that’s a band called The Black Sorrows. And then he sees my name and he buys four copies and sends them off.
And his wife, Mary, at the time falls in love with this record. So she somehow gets 20 copies and gives them all to her friends. It’s amazing what a little bit of publicity can do.
So that was pretty good and people are playing it. Everybody wants to hear Brown Eyed Girl, which wasn’t a hit for Van, but became a sort of hit for me. And all of a sudden we’re sort of getting played all around the world actually.
It was a gorgeous little record because the beauty of any record is its failure to be perfect. It just had all the beauty about the intent and the will. And it wasn’t perfect.
The singing wasn’t in tune all the time. But there was just something that bonded that record. This is the radio Standing in a salt lye laughing Skipping and a jumping Slipping and a sliding, yeah, up on with you Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la You go on to have hit after hit after hit.
You certainly climbed right back up to the top. You’re still not playing guitar are you? You’re concentrating on the sax. No, no, I wasn’t allowed to play guitar.
But I was writing. I now could play a little bit because I wrote a lot of those songs. That was the beauty for me.
I didn’t know anything about anything. I don’t know anything about the saxophone. I’m using my ear.
That’s all I have. That was the best thing I had. And my will.
You must have been feeling pretty good about yourself because you had hits like Chain to the Wheel. Never Let Me Go. They’re the ones.
One after another. Yeah, it was a constant stream for a little while. And because of Nick Smith.
I mean we haven’t spoken, we haven’t touched on Nick. And Nick was really the driving wheel. He was what I needed.
I needed someone like Nick to rein me in and bring out the cinematic component of the song. He was everything I’m not. So who is Nick Smith? Because you’re still with him today.
Yeah, Nick is kind of an aloof character. He’s a weirdo on so many different levels. He’s a great lyricist.
And the two of you have been riding high together ever since. I mean that were the 80s. We’re now into 2026.
Just tell me about the guitar though. When did that pop up? Well, obviously that happened during the Falcon years. But I realised I needed to feed the beast.
I brought a guitar. I was mucking around with it. Came up, the first song I kind of really put together that wasn’t with the saxophone was So Young.
And once again, I didn’t know anything about why it worked. It just worked. So that’s how that started.
And slowly I never wanted to be playing the guitar in a band. That didn’t interest me. In the Falcons and the Sorrows, we’d always have two guitar players.
And then I started playing a little bit. Then things changed. The difference between the Falcons and the Sorrows were the show has to go on.
It wasn’t a revolving door on purpose. It was all about contributing to the band as it was at the time. She said it was for real She’d take him back to where it started He would melt a heart of steel Bitter disappointment He would hear young Harley sing Have you found something more important Better come to dust And for a while he disappeared Like static on the dash Look comes back instead He just passed it for a while He listened to your gut all the time and here you are as you said sixty something years later.
You’re out on tour as we speak with the quintessential Black Sorrows Volumes 1 and 2 also released. And they are albums that contain all of Joe Camilleri’s music from over the years, right? Well, yeah. They’re the things that have made the making of us.
But there’s all these other songs that are also what the band is about. So it’s not quite a greatest hits compilation then? No, it has those elements. But it gives you an opportunity to continue the journey with us.
If you buy the record and you put the needle on the groove, hopefully you don’t get up and switch it off. Joe, you’re still as passionate today as you were when you first set out? I think I’m more so now than ever. Because I’ve only got a certain amount of time on this planet.
And I really haven’t found me yet. I think there’s still a bit more digging to do. And I’m enjoying playing.
I’ve always enjoyed playing live. But to me it has a different value. Writing a song has different meaning to me.
It’s as frustrating as it can get. When you write something that you think is valuable, you feel like I’ve still got something. There’s still something to say.
I’m not in the game on one level, but I still feel that I’m in the game on so many other different levels of being a musician in this country and playing around the world or whatever comes my way. The biggest thing I’ve learnt is, I’ve learnt what disappointment is. And I’ve learnt how not to take all those things on board and go with it.
So of all the songs that you have written, is there one personal favourite? No. Not really. It’s always the next one.
I love this song Full Notion. It’s one of the best songs I think we’ve ever written. It just does everything.
Harley and Rose does that too. I understand that it’s a slice of life that we all can share. So all your songs are pretty personal to you.
Well, they can be. The first fifty are really easy to write, aren’t they? Because the first fifty is about you. And then you have to start thinking about the second person, third person.
You have to start thinking about ideas. What advice would you have for up and coming younger musicians? What would you say to them? The best advice is not to take any advice, which would be the best thing. Because we’re all individuals.
We all have a way of being able to communicate. The most challenging thing is to not listen to your press and not listen to if you’re doing well and the reasons why you’re doing well. Because there’s going to be peaks and valleys.
Look at those opportunities that might bring a lot of disappointment, but is the making of you. Joe Camilleri, thank you so much for sharing your time. It’s just been a pleasure being with you.
And you.