Song writing legend delivers on love and other bruises
Don Walker’s song writing for Cold Chisel influenced generations and his latest album again proves why he is the boss.
On Love Songs, Cold Chisel’s Don Walker reaches back through decades of writing to make an album haunted by old roads, American songbooks, Mexican rhythms and the music that first made him fall in love with songs.
Over the years he has been filing away songs. Eventually, he’ll take a look at the accumulation and decide there’s an album in there. This latest album, Love Songs, came into focus when he realised that, among the songs he’d gathered, a particular thread had emerged. The results are among the best of his career and he’s touring to highlight the album.
“I never write with a theme in mind because I think the results of that are stilted and artificial,” Walker says from his home in Sydney. “I think if you just write, there’ll be underlying currents that emerge organically. That’s the way it’s been for me. The album will naturally reflect the concerns and the environment that it was created in.”
Those currents stretch a long way back. There are echoes on Love Songs of the country-pop records Walker absorbed as a young man.
“There was a period in country in the early ’70s which was an intense time for me, and I loved those songs — the Glen Campbell songs and songs like Snowbird and Gentle on My Mind. They all use a certain kind of chord cycle which, to me, is very much connected to hitchhiking, travel, freedom and a certain amount of wistful nostalgia that has to do with my life in my early 20s.”
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Walker pauses when asked how much of that young hitchhiker remains inside these songs.
“I don’t think it’s explicitly in the songs,” he tells me. “It’s in me, and therefore you can hear it in the songs. I guess that would be the best quick answer I can put together for that. Those things become part of you, and they’re there whether or not you consciously decide to write about them.”
The roots of Love Songs run deep for Walker. A tune like It Should Always Be You could have been sung by Sinatra. It carries the elegance of the Great American Songbook – something Walker traces to childhood and his father’s record collection.
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“My earliest memories of my father playing me music were things like Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael – all that sort of stuff,” he recalls. “I’m always trying to write those kinds of songs. That’s one of those. I don’t listen to modern music. I listen to old stuff. If I play music at home, it’ll be jazz and jazz singers, and people like Roy Orbison.”
The Orbison connection is telling. Walker remains fascinated by music where craftsmanship and emotional extremity somehow coexist. He remembers seeing Orbison late in his career with what appeared to be an unremarkable backing band, only to watch the singer reduce the audience to tears.
“It was the most astonishing concert,” he says. “I think it was Crying, where it just keeps climbing and climbing, and in the last eight bars the whole audience stood up. There were people weeping. I was tearing up myself. After everybody settled down, he said in that meek little voice, ‘Did you like that? Would you like me to do the last bit again?’ He did the end of that song three times. It felt like somebody grabbed your collar and hauled you out of your seat.”
A highlight of the album is The Girl I Used to Know, which dates back to the ’90s and was once put forward for Cold Chisel. Walker handled the rejection, perhaps knowing it would eventually find its perfect place somewhere further down the line.
“Whenever, on the rare occasions that Chisel gets together to do some recording, I put a lot of stuff in front of them and so does everybody else – way more than we can ever use,” he explains. “The majority of the stuff doesn’t get a bite from the other guys, and this was one of them. But that doesn’t make it rejected. I never take it personally. I’m always going to get some songs on a Cold Chisel album.”
And when Love Songs hits the stage, fans can expect to hear a fair stash of new songs. Walker plans to perform more of the new record than he usually would, backed by an expanding ensemble that includes his core band, three backing singers and a four-piece horn section.
Don Walker’s fifth solo album, Love Songs, is out now on vinyl, CD and digital, through MGM Distribution.
Don Walker plays Imperial Hotel Eumundi on October 30 and The Old Museum, Bowen Hills, on October 31.
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