Cold Chisel delivers its gospel to its Oz Rock faithful
Under a huge, triple-steepled big-top cathedral, the Cold Chisel faithful did gather in Melbourne on Saturday night to hear the rock and roll gospel according to Jim, Ian, Don, Phil and Charley.
For more than two hours, a massed choir of disciples did proclaim the gospel from Australia’s premier rock band with shouting, screaming and a seething sea of bodies who hung on every word and every note.
And, verily, it was good. Very, very good.
The latest round of Cold Chisel’s 50th anniversary tour of Australia and New Zealand took a high energy sweep across the band’s history from its origins in the Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth in October 1973.
In an intimate moment, as he introduced the evergreen classic Flame Trees to the crowd, Barnes explained that initially Cold Chisel celebrated the 50-year milestone in October 2023 with a quiet dinner in Sydney.
He told the audience that he felt this was a weak way to mark the milestone, and went to the dinner nervously to propose a celebratory tour he believed his bandmates wouldn’t support.
To his surprise, they did. Barnes said he went home to enjoy “the best sleep I’ve had in 45 years”, dreaming that he was driving keyboardist/songwriter Don Walker, lead guitarist and vocalist Ian Moss, bassist Phil Small and drummer Charley Drayton to a gig when his own version of Flame Trees – a slower, gospel-tinged affair – came the car radio.
Barnes said he went to switch it off, fearing the band wouldn’t approve, when he felt the hand of sate founding drummer Steve Prestwich, who wrote that stunning melody, reach out to Barnes’ hand to stop him. To Barnes, it was the endorsement he needed for the Cold Chisel show to go on.
More than 10,000 Melbourne punters were glad as hell that the show did go on.
The big-top, a special feature of handful of shows on this tour, is significant.
It’s a reminder of a now legendary show in 1982 in which Cold Chisel promoted its 1982 album Circus Animals with – what else? – a circus with lions, tigers, firebreathers, acrobats and trapeze artists including Barnes, singing and swinging from a trapeze with a bottle of vodka in his hand.
There was no such daring-do in 2024 but Co9ld Chisel hit Melbourne with a full-throttle, take-no-prisoners selection of crowd-pleasers from its 1978 to 1984 heyday including Flame Trees, Choir Girl, Cheap Wine, Khe Sanh, Saturday Night, Forever Now, Bow River and Goodbye (Astrid Goodbye).
But it also chose a selection of favourite songs dear to diehard fans and the band itself, including a few songs from its post-1998 reformation period, and earlier cult album tracks with a strong emphasis on tracks from the uncompromisingly tough Circus Animals LP.
Barnes, who’s been through plenty of health issues in the past year, stood and delivered right from the guts as always while Moss played a virtuoso set in which every guitar solo was supreme.
The rhythm section led by Walker, hunched as always over his keyboard, Small with a bass guitar that always seems a little to large for his diminutive stature and Drayton on the drums, maintaining a swing that gave Cold Chisel its unique sound when Prestwich was on the skins, just kept pumping. Old friends Dave Blight, on harmonica, and saxophonist Andy Bickers, with back-up singers including Eliza Jane and Mahalia Barnes, made up an incredibly solid supporting cast.
The fact that the phlegmatic, no-nonsense Walker could be seen occasionally grinning quietly over his keyboard as the band smashed through its set showed the pleasure the band must have felt watching the audience bring its best songs to life after so many years.
And, yea, filled with 135 minutes of divine inspiration from the big-top pulpit, the congregation filed away into the night still singing the word from the book of Cold Chisel.
