Don Walker - Songs

As ever, the doyen to the rest of us. Beauty, humour and pathos coexist in his songs. Any time I try to write, the voice of The Don is in my head: You sure you wanna do that? Consistently, persistently, the master. Tim Rogers The thinking mans poet. He delivers lyrics that paint true pictures of life in detail, and melodies that have been a part of our musical fabric as long as I can remember. Troy Cassar-Daley A jewel of a songwriter.

When Slim asked for something special for his 100th album, Don didnt let him down: he sent Slim the unforgettable Looking Forward, Looking Back. This song has become a theme for so many people, in a totally different field of music from Dons regular form. He creates treasures of words and music. Joy McKean The stories in Dons songs open up to wider stories back and beyond. His lyrics are lean, clear-eyed, love-thirsty and lonesome. Paul Kelly Dons ability to get at the miniature of any subtle emotion and gently turn it out for you to see is amazing. Ian Moss One of the great poets of the Australian experience. Ian Moss One of the great poets of the Australian experience.

His lyrics speak of and to an Australia that is too rarely glimpsed in song, giving voice to the forgotten and dispossessed, and transforming the currents of grief and love and tenderness that run through even the most ordinary of lives into something universal. James Bradley

Published by Black Inc., an imprint of Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd Level 1, 221 Drummond Street Carlton VIC 3053, Australia www.blackincbooks.com Copyright Don Walker 2019 Don Walker asserts his right to be known as the author of this work. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers. 9781760641504 (hardback) 9781743820988 (ebook) Cover design by Saso Creative Text design and typesetting by Akiko Chan Front cover image by Sandy Edwards To Firoozeh, Leili, Danielle and ShahrzadForeword I HAVE BEEN READING Don Walkers writing for forty-odd years and I still find things that I missed or never completely understood. Dons songs shaped my life.

I spat his words at audiences all over this country. Sometimes I was pleading for help but most times I was spitting venom from his pen. I always thought that Don had a window that let him look into my soul. In a way, that was comforting maybe someone else knew what I was going through. But most of the time it made me uncomfortable. He knew me.

He saw the real me. The one I tried to hide. Over the years, I have come to realise I am not the only person who feels like this. Somehow Don knows all of us. His words touch people from all different walks of life. You just have to look at the faces of a typical Cold Chisel crowd to see that.

Rich or poor, petrolheads or country hicks, it doesnt matter. They all stand shoulder to shoulder and sing along with us. Dons lyrics tell our stories, voice our opinions. They offer support to the downtrodden and scream out for justice. They talk of feeling lost and alone and they rejoice at the freedom of the open road. He has a way of making you think that he is talking just to you and, sometimes, just for you.

These are very rare gifts. When Cold Chisel was put on the backburner for a while, Don started singing his songs in his own voice and, thankfully, hes been doing it regularly ever since. Watching Don deliver the songs I sang night after night was an experience it was like I was hearing those familiar words for the first time. Reading this book felt similar. The words hold up stripped of the music. His stories written on the pages of the book lie silent, but as you read them they come to life.

I can still hear the melodies but while I read the book, the music seems to fade into the background and new melodies, new meanings, present themselves. This is a good cross-section of what Don has written, but it is just the tip of the iceberg. It is just a small sample of a huge body of work that has helped shape generations of Australians. He is one of the most prolific writers I know. There are songs and stories that Don has shared with me that have never seen the light of day. Yet.

They wait, quietly, until he finds the perfect melody to make them sing. Like so many people, I am always here waiting to give voice to Dons beautiful words. Jimmy BarnesIntroduction I BEGAN WITH A SONG FOR a high school music class. There were no words, but that song still sounds good now, for a first effort. Several years later I wrote another one for the band I was in, which we performed at the Hoadleys National Battle of the Sounds at the Garden Theatre in Grafton. That one had lyrics, fortunately now lost.

After I moved to a regional university, dreaming about songs became one of several ways to avoid study late at night. The first summer break was spent in the cotton fields near Wee Waa. Forty-degree dry heat, with a hoe and no hat, ten hours a day, is a lot of time to think. There were other bands to draw my mind astray, playing up and down the New England Tablelands. There were other summer breaks at the Parkes radio telescope and at the Weapons Research Establishment north of Adelaide, and a lot of hitchhiking and driving rudimentary vehicles between. Cold Chisel formed in Adelaide at the end of 1973, which meant I had a close group of friends and an enterprise to write for.

That band, and the songs I thought they needed, became the obsessive focus of an otherwise aimless life. The songs were bad. The loyalty shown by my bandmates was extraordinary. I was trying to cram Duke Ellington and Led Zeppelin and the memory of someone I held dear into one net, and the results were often a plodding mess that resembled none of the ingredients. We were playing in rooms where no one wanted to hear anything they hadnt heard before, where the patrons worked too hard in the day to tolerate having their time wasted at night, so the songs improved. Lyrics are made to be experienced, not read.

The most powerful lyrics are often meaningless when theyre deboned from a song, like looking at black-and-white photos of a painting. But, Ive sent what I think are the best in for printing here anyway. I learned in those clubs, and from my peers and those I admired, that theres really only one rule dont bore people. Thats how I tried to write, and how Ive tried to make the selection ahead. 197076 THESE SONGS WERE WRITTEN IN truck-stops and on overnight drives on the Hay Plain and the Nullarbor and the Newell, and in motel rooms from Geraldton to Cairns, in winter in St Kilda and in the tropics with no money. Some of them are nave.

I was young, and couldnt imagine that theyd ever be read. Khe Sanh I left my heart to the sappers round Khe Sanh And my soul was sold with my cigarettes to the blackmarket man Ive had the Vietnam cold turkey From the ocean to the Silver City And its only other vets could understand About the long-forgotten dockside guarantees How there were no V-Day heroes in 1973 How we sailed into Sydney Harbour Saw an old friend but couldnt kiss her She was lined, and I was home to the lucky land And she was like so many more from that time on Their lives were all so empty, till theyd found their chosen one And their legs were often open But their minds were always closed And their hearts were held in fast suburban chains And the legal pads were yellow, hours long, pay packets lean And the telex writers clattered where the gunships once had been But the car parks made me jumpy And I never stopped the dreams Or the growing need for speed and novocaine So I worked across the country end to end Tried to find a place to settle down, where my mixed-up life could mend Held a job on an oil-rig Flying choppers when I could But the nightlife nearly drove me round the bend And Ive travelled round the world from year to year And each one found me aimless, one more year the worse for wear And Ive been back to South-East Asia And the answer sure aint there But Im drifting north, to check things out again You know the last plane out of Sydneys almost gone Only seven flying hours, and Ill be landing in Hong Kong There aint nothing like the kisses From a jaded Chinese princess Im gonna hit some Hong Kong mattress all night long Well the last plane out of Sydneys almost gone Yeah the last plane out of Sydneys almost gone And its really got me worried Im goin nowhere and Im in a hurry And the last plane out of Sydneys almost gone

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