Why we love Chisel: Newcastle's connection to legends of rock

The band and the city had a lot in common. Fifty years later, the music is still a bridge linking the band and the city. Everyone has grown up, but the intrinsic values hold fast.

After the first venues and dates were announced for Chisel's latest tour, The Big 5-0, which included one date, November 6, in Newcastle at the Entertainment Centre, there was probably a big sigh that shuddered through the suburbs. Surely that's not going to be adequate for Chisel's huge Newcastle following to pay their good money and enjoy the full band, especially when it could really be their last tour?

Lo and behold, this week the band confirmed six more dates, including an outdoor show at Roche Estate in the Hunter Valley (tickets on sale next week for the November 30 gig). Of course they added another Newcastle show. They even said it out loud: "We've tried to get to the places where the outcry was loudest," Chisel guitarist Ian Moss was quoted as saying.

It was inevitable there would be another Newcastle area show. Cold Chisel and Newcastle are related; they've been on a journey together from almost the beginning.

Here's Chisel's Don Walker on ABC Radio last year: "When we left [Adelaide], the first place we could actually draw a crowd and they got what we did was the Mawson Hotel south of Newcastle. From there, the word spread on us through Newcastle. We could always go up to Newcastle suburbs and pick up a bit of money."

While the Boomers are rusted-on hardcore Chisel fans, the band's appeal is universal. How can it not be, with an absolute bundle of Australian rock 'n' roll anthems, including Khe Sanh, Shipping Steel, Flame Trees, Cheap Wine, Saturday Night, Choirgirl, Rising Sun, Star Hotel, Standing on the Outside, You Got Nothing I Want and Bow River?

We asked a few fans what Chisel meant to Newcastle, and to them.

Neil Jameson, award-winning music writer and author

It defies belief they were so raw, brilliant and pertinent way back then and their songs have gone the distance, yet their fame is confined almost entirely within these shores. Australia's best-kept secret? Maybe. Ah, but ... who needs that sentimental bullshit anyway?

Their early, formative fame was deeply embedded here. That pub rock culture of the time, which was so strong here, from basically Catherine Hill Bay to Nelson Bay, was so embedded. And people would travel. They'd go out to Swansea and watch 'em. Back in the days before random breath-testing. This band that had a vodka-soaked reputation, people would jump in their cars and make the pilgrimage to wherever Chisel and the Oils were playing. And then run the gauntlet home with a gutful of whatever. That was the culture of the time.

They just tapped into that. Chisel were so reflective of that culture.

Kurt Speirs, bass player in The Appointments

My favourite Cold Chisel song is Breakfast at Sweethearts. Phil Small's reggae-drenched bass line that drives it is an endless source of inspiration.

Every so often I go on another Chisel deep dive and find a gem, or hear a song for the 1000^th time, and just fall in love with it. The force and finesse of the live band almost makes you forget the sentimentality and nostalgia that is baked into so many tunes.

I was lucky enough to be in the crowd at Bluesfest [2012], and share that with one of my best mates.

Michael Byrne, lawyer and entertainment writer

I have a friend who has a rare 12-inch vinyl of Bow River played live. It's a much better version than the one on the album. A couple of times a year when I'm drunk and leaving the pub, I knock on his door and yell out, 'Can we listen to Bow River?!!!' He always answers the door. Even in his sober pyjamas. Sometimes we both sit there with a cup of tea and sing along. It's that kind of song.

Dean Kyrwood, musician and actor

I've been playing Flame Trees for probably 15 years, but only just added Bow River in recent months. I do Flame Trees because it seems to transcend generations and will win over any crowd. I think people connect to the nostalgia aspect of the lyrics. With Bow River, I've only just got to the point where I feel confident playing it. It's pretty difficult to play and sing, and with both songs I've had to adapt the key because the vocal ranges of Jimmy and Ian are incredibly difficult to hit for any male singer.

Cold Chisel to me is complex, intelligent, sophisticated songwriting that sounds simple but isn't - [it's] musicianship that connects to the working class.

Nick Milligan, author, music writer and critic

As a millennial who was, for a long time, not of age to see Chisel in licensed venues, my first real chance arrived on October 13, 2011, when they launched their Light the Nitro tour at Newcastle Workers Club (or Newcastle Panthers, as it had then become known). It doesn't happen all the time, but I occasionally find myself in front of a band that's obviously too big for the venue. Not "too big" in popularity, but in sheer presence and musical ferocity. Like watching a Bengal tiger stalk in a terrarium.

A band with Steve Prestwich as its only songwriter would be a very fortunate band indeed. A band with Steve Prestwich and Don Walker writing songs? That's completely unfair. But a band with Prestwich, Walker, Moss, Barnes and Small all writing songs was surely in violation of some cosmic and arcane quota.

That's how I view Cold Chisel. Their mercurial chemistry and the size of their body of work echoes, for better or worse, the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. Chisel are a tense and combustible creative democracy. They've written songs that have become as close to scripture as any Australian act. If you write an anthem about life, and particularly Australian life, in a stark, uncomplicated and honest manner, aided by sublime melodies, then you'll find your way into hearts and minds. Cold Chisel did this 100 times over. The songs are immediate and they're authentic. There's a purity of craft and intent. And you can still sing them after eight schooners. That's also important.

Ben Leece, musician and owner of Rudderless Record Store

It's one of those bands that are imprinted on most Australians' DNA. Just growing up, I have distinct memories listening to East on family road trips as a kid. I think it came out in 1980, travelling to family holidays in the car, I remember listening to that album back to front so many times.

My Baby I played in a few cover bands. That's a great song. This album, East, Standing on the Outside, it is so rocking. When it gets to the end of that song the band is cooking, I would have loved to have been there, a sweaty pub where this band is just on the edge. It's that perfect thing of barely holding to the rails. It's just so . . . it just feels like it's about to fall off, but it doesn't.

Mark Mordue, author and music writer (as quoted on his Facebook page)

I was lucky enough to be invited to take part the ABC-TV Australian Story dedicated to the band Cold Chisel. The episode itself was called (after their song) Standing On The Outside Looking In.

Pretty appropriate given the feel of the band and what they represented to fans like me as teenager in Newcastle in late 1970s, going to see them at venues like the Mawson Hotel, Belmont 16 Foot Sailing Club, Swansea RSL, the Winn's Shortland Room etc... wild days, working class youth, surfies and westies united in good times: Cold Chisel would even pay a kind of tribute to my Newcastle hometown with their song Star Hotel.

Because I was such an early starter seeing them - and the band helped inspire me, really, in my writing and to be a rock journalist as their songs were so charged with meaning for me (and they always put on a wild show) - I've remained deeply attached to them, especially those first four albums: Cold Chisel, Breakfast at Sweethearts, East and Circus Animals.

What's just as amazing is they have split apart and come together a few times now over the decades - and kept writing fine songs, doing it all with the same heart and intelligence as ever.