Rock of Ages

by Paul Chai | 08 Sep 2018

There was a time when music was a young person’s game, but a generation of musicians are proving that playing rock ‘n’ roll is a lifelong passion

On a recent Sunday night, Mark Seymour, former lead singer of seminal 80s band Hunters & Collectors, found himself downstairs at Melbourne’s Prince of Wales Hotel. The Prince bandroom has been a part of the city’s live music scene for decades, but Seymour was there after friends had recommended the Elwood Blues Club, a weekly get-together celebrating Australian blues and roots music.

 

“Ross Wilson (from Daddy Cool and Mondo Rock) was playing, and there was just this back line of old guys and it was really good,” Seymour says. “I was just standing there watching it and there were about 100 people in the room, and god knows how old they were, but I’m looking around and thinking, ‘I might be relatively young here.’”

Seymour will turn 62 this year, and he is about to hit the road with his new band The Undertow. It’s a huge tour playing theatres all along the east coast and over to Perth

(see breakout on page 22) in support of the album Roll Back the Stone. It’s the second time he has taken the album on the road, and fans show no sign of being tired of it.

He may have swapped his Hunters & Collectors singlet for a well-cut suit, but Seymour is still in love with playing music. “There is a point in rock music where, if you have had success, you are supposed to bow out gracefully and give someone else a go,” he says. “But it’s a bit of an urban myth. It doesn’t bear much relevance when you make a living doing this. That urge to write songs has never gone away, and I think, ‘Why should I stop?’ There is no reason.”

Far from stopping, Seymour says his songwriting has in fact improved over time. When he left Hunters & Collectors, he admits to being “fragile” about whether or not he had a future in music, but he kept writing songs and the new music began to find an audience. “That idea of being identified as a songwriter was important to me, and I think that took a long time,” he says. “I think Australian audiences now see me as a guy that writes songs, not just the front man of Hunters & Collectors.”

Getting better all the time

Ian Moss, guitarist with Aussie rock legends Cold Chisel, has also forged a solo career outside of his “day job” playing stadium gigs with Chisel. He recently released his first studio album in eight years and is touring the new work at a series of high-profile theatre gigs as well (see breakout). The self-titled album is a soulful collection of songs co-written by “Mossy” and Sydney singer-songwriter Sam Hawksley (with help from members of Cold Chisel). It’s some of Moss’ best work to date.

Like Seymour, Moss says what keeps him going in the music game is the idea that even after so long, there is always something to learn.

“I love guitar playing and I love the idea of getting better. It’s what keeps me going. It’s the main thing,” he says. “I still pull out books or watch YouTube and try to learn a lot of jazz and jazz fusion – try to work stuff out. I have managed to work some stuff out and put that into the solos on my new album. It’s definitely harder the older you get. When you do learn something new it takes a long time to make it fluid and make it part of your natural playing, but I keep trying.”

Moss learned guitar from an early age, picking apart songs like “Sadie (The Cleaning Lady)” with his guitar teacher before moving to more guitar-led tunes from The Shadows. Once he discovered improvisation, he found his musical happy place. “It was just such an exciting, thrilling thing. I was hooked. And pretty soon Hendrix appeared on the scene and Cream and the late 60s acid hippie movement, so the timing was pretty good,” he says.

In fact, it was veteran US musicians that inspired a young Moss in the first place. People like Sam Cook, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin turned the budding guitarist onto the blues at an early age. Then, when it came to Cold Chisel, he was allowed free rein to make up his own solos, but within a tight rock time frame.

“(Cold Chisel songwriter and pianist) Don Walker would always build in solos, but they certainly weren’t written. There was space for a solo, and he would say, ‘Go for it.’ Generally, you had eight bars, so you had to burn from the beginning and you had to be at your peak for the whole eight bars, whereas in traditional jazz and blues you start ‘noodling’ and you build it up and you take a journey. Big difference there.”

Moss is quiet and self-effacing. Born in Alice Springs in 1955, he has been part of some of the most famous songs in Australian music, from pub favourites like “Khe Sanh” to the haunting “Bow River”, which he penned about his love for his home in northern Australia. So it’s a surprise to hear that Moss still thinks he has room to improve on his songwriting.

“I think there’s more to say. I’m happy musically with everything, but you can always get better lyrically,” he says of the new album. “I’m pretty happy with the lyrics, but I think I can get a bit deeper and more personal. Rather than writing the ‘correct’ lyric, you can ask, ‘What does it mean to me?’ So I can get deeper and better in that area.”

A question of legacy

Despite writing new music, Mark Seymour’s Roll Back the Stone is a retrospective album, reimagining some of the singer’s biggest hits like “When the River Runs Dry”, “Holy Grail” and “Throw Your Arms Around Me”. Recorded live and raw at Melbourne’s Bakehouse Studios over three nights, the songs take on a different life with Seymour’s new band. But I am curious about the idea of legacy – how does it feel to have written some of the best-loved songs in Australian music?

“The notion of legacy sort of takes care of itself,” Seymour says. “I have become more comfortable with the idea of the handful of songs that are famous, for want of a better term, and what that actually means to me.”

Initially, Seymour found it strange that certain songs took off while others didn’t. He talks about the many songs that he has written that didn’t set the world on fire, but the retrospective allowed him to examine the ones that did. “It made me start looking at those songs again and thinking what it is about them that was so good,” he says. “There are a lot of unanswered questions there, and that has kept me interested and reinvigorated my interest in songwriting. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that there are certain rabbit holes not worth going down, and you have to be willing to relinquish things.”

Moss is characteristically laid-back about the idea of legacy – “It’s good to be liked,” he says – but says he has also learned a thing or two about chasing his musical muse. “You get a thread of an idea, but you can’t force it to pop out of that little window. You have to wait for it to open the window, and when it sticks its head out, you grab it,” he laughs. “You can hear when you go for a cliche, but who knows? In 10 years’ time that cliche might be cool again.”

Where to see MARK SEYMOUR

Mark Seymour’s Roll Back the Stone tour is heading out to theatres later this year. Seymour and his band The Undertow play the Astor Theatre in Perth on October 27; The Tivoli in Brisbane on November 3; the Athenaeum Theatre in Melbourne on November 10; and the Enmore Theatre in Sydney on November 24. Tickets through ticketek.com.au and ticketmaster.com.au.

Roll Back the Stone 1985-2016 is out now via Bloodlines Music; bloodlinesmusic.com.au.

For more information visit markseymour.com.au