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Wow, like there's a jazz contemporary funky musician who's using the same chords as
Stravinsky.
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And that's when I thought, wow, like it's sort of removed all the barriers of music.
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Hello and welcome to the Keyboard Chronicles, a podcast for keyboard players.
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I'm your host, David Holloway.
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I'm thrilled as always to be here with you.
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I'm particularly excited to bring you part one of our interview with Mr.
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David Hirschfelder.
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I had the pleasure of interviewing David.
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We worked out more than 20 years ago, back in the good old days when magazines were a
thing and you interviewed musicians for magazines.
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And obviously I was incredibly impressed with David's amazing career back then.
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Well, he certainly
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achieved a lot, lot more since then.
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So in part one of this interview, we talk about David's early years, his work with the
amazing Jazz Fusion band Pyramid.
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We talk about David's involvement with the Little River band and we start our discussion
on David's work with the absolutely stellar John Farnham.
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And then what you'll find in part two is we'll continue that discussion, talk about
David's incredibly successful film composition and scoring career.
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and lots lot more in part two.
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So yeah, I'll let you jump into part one and I'll see you at the start of part two.
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David, it's an absolute honour and a pleasure to have you on the show.
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Sir, how are you this fine weekday morning?
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Very good, David.
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Good to see you again after all these years.
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Yes, look, it has been a while and I have mentioned in the introduction, I had the
pleasure of seeing you in the flesh.
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I said more than 20 years ago.
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So now it's wonderful to have you back on.
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I mean, so much has happened since then and we'll get onto that.
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But I thought we might just initially kick off with what's the last 12 months been like
for David Hirschfelder.
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Uh, a bit quiet, uh, work wise because I, um, I became a grandfather and, twice in one
year.
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so there was two trips to America.
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Um, and, uh, during that, one of them where we were there for the birth and it was two
months and I was staying in upstate New York.
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I did collaborate with my son on, uh, on an advert advertising jingle, which came in while
I was there.
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I do those occasionally because they're fun and it's great to work with my son who's also
a composer.
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And what else happened that year?
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Oh, I recorded a live concert with Mindy Meng Wang, who's an amazing musician.
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She plays Gu Jing, which is the ancient Chinese harp.
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She's a phenomenal musician and we did an improvised concert.
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um
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sort of late 2024 and released an album in early 2025.
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And we were performing live on just piano and guzheng, improvising to a poetry of Dalai
Lama, the sixth Dalai Lama.
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And it was in Mandarin and English and also mixed with visual art.
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by Ben Thompson, who's a great digital artist.
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And so yeah, we did that concert and then we released an album about a year ago, actually
in January, late January, 2025.
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And so we did a little bit of promotion for that.
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And then also, what else?
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Oh, I reconnected with a bass player from Pyramid, Roger McLaughlin.
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who came to our concert.
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we just, when we rekindle our friendship, sadly he contracted um a terminal illness.
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And so, yeah, not wishing to bring a downer on the thing, but he passed away, which is
sad.
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So um one of the projects I've got going now is to re-release early pyramid recordings.
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So that was a jazz fusion band I was in in the very early eighties.
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And, um, we're going to re-release some and also release some previously unreleased
material.
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Although I think some of it's been on YouTube, but we're going to make a CD release of
that.
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And what else?
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I scored a picture with my son, uh, who's also, you know, he's my co-composing colleague.
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Whenever I get too busy, we had to write 80 minutes of music in four weeks for a
documentary about, um,
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John Clark, I don't know if you remember John Clark.
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The iconic New Zealand Aussie or Aussie New Zealander who is a beloved, um he made many
great appearances on the ABC um and his daughter lovingly curated about 2000 hours of his
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footage down to um a condensed biopic or not a biopic, a biography.
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of her father.
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And so that was a lovely project to work on in 2025 as well.
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And that's the one that screened recently, because I literally watched that only in the
last two or three weeks.
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So I think they screened it again on the ABC and it was amazing.
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They did, yeah.
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It had a really good cinema run, very successful, which is great because documentaries
often don't go to cinema.
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They go straight to TV.
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But this one had a good cinema run.
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And I mean, it was universally acclaimed.
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mean, he's brilliant.
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And it was just a lot of music to churn through.
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But it was a labor of love and a great joy to not only work.
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ah
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on that film telling his story and being a part of his iconic journey, but also working
with my son in, you know, who's based in LA and we, have similar setups and we're very
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compatible.
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So yeah, pretty full year.
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Yeah, absolutely for a quiet year.
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So you've alluded to a few things we're definitely going to delve into there.
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So, but I thought we'll go back right to the start, just a decade or two ago, David, your
childhood and teenage years.
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what, what got you initially into music?
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What was your sort of musical upbringing?
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Um, well, I, I discovered piano at the age of four, um, at my grandma's house and my
grandma said to my parents, David really loves the piano.
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I'm going to give it to you because he, he's, he's played it more than anyone else has in
the last six months in the last weekend.
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And so that's how I've developed my love affair with piano and later keyboards.
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Um,
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I was classically trained and, um, but in the early, in my early teens, I did discover,
uh, rock and roll.
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And I think the first thing that blew my mind was Brian cad's incredible piano playing on,
uh, the real thing.
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He played piano on Russell Morris's, the real thing.
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And I listened to that and I thought, wow, I mean, that gave me as much chills as
listening to Beethoven.
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Um, but it had an incredible beat.
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so I went to the piano and played it by ear.
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And that's when I thought I've got to look more into this modern music.
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So I sort of straddled both camps for a while.
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was um still playing and loving classical music as I still do.
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I don't play it anymore.
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Um, but I was very much, uh, into rock and roll and my father bought me an organ and I
played.
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first thing I did is do what you're not supposed to do and put it through an amplifier and
distortion.
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And I discovered there's a whole world with electronics.
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then later I sold my clarinet to buy my first synthesizer, which is a Roland SH-5.
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So that's in a nutshell up to about the age of 18.
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And then I could keep going, but...
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And so that's great at age 18.
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what did you do formal training post 18 or you essentially moved straight into the
industry with the training you'd already had?
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Well, I was self, I am self-taught as a composer and as a keyboardist.
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um When I, when I say keyboardist, was a classically trained piano player and also learned
um classical harmony at, you know, sort of high school, advanced high school level.
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I don't know what the education system's like now.
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I did get into Melbourne university, the faculty of music.
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um And, uh but in the first year I was getting a lot of recording sessions.
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and, and gigs around town, uh, to the extent that I ended up deciding to defer my course
at the end of the first year to pursue a, um, a live performance career.
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And, um sadly in a way I never went back to uni, but at the time I've got to be honest,
there was no real, um, formal training available in the late seventies for, um,
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you know, music and film scoring, which I was always interested in film scoring actually
from a very early age.
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I used to love the big swords and sandals epic films and I loved the music.
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just thought the music made the films and I remember thinking when I was six year old,
that's what I want to do when I grow up.
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I want to make music like that.
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Yeah, great.
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And tell us about that lead up sort of from around age 18 to actually joining Pyramid.
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So what was the momentum that got you started in that project?
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Well, we'd have a lot of jam sessions with uh Melbourne younger musicians who are at, uh
musicians like Willie Ziggia, who's Deborah Conway's partner and musical director.
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He used to come along and I just was opened up to a whole world of improvising under the
tutelage of Tony Gould, who was my favourite aspect of learning music at Melbourne Uni.
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He took a jazz um
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Jazz Orchestra every Wednesday and that was my favorite.
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I went to that and I met Jeremy Allsop on bass and Des McEnner on drums and a bunch of
jazz musicians who eventually led me to David Jones, who's a phenomenal musician, a master
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percussionist.
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And he's the same age as me, we had similar interests and we ended up forming Pyramid
after...
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couple of years we settled on Roger McLaughlin on bass and Bobby Vinnia on flugelhorn
who's just an amazing spiritual guru slash musician.
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He really opened my mind to a lot of sort of metaphysical ideas both musical and
non-musical.
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He was a very deep guy and so he was a great mentor to have when I was a young musician
starting out.
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Absolutely.
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I mean, was this a, given your training and you obviously had a little bit of experience,
was this still a big step up for you?
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So just for the sake of our viewers and listeners, we'll be linking to some of the video
footage.
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And as you mentioned, David, like I was literally watching Roger McLaughlin's YouTube
channel last night with some of the amazing stuff from Montreux and we'll talk about that
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in a sec.
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But was this a step up for you being in an outfit of that level of accomplishment as far
as, I assume there was lots of practice involved, but yeah, tell us a little bit about.
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working that act up to being at Montreux in 83.
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Well, did.
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uh I, uh my first year of deferring from university, I um rented an apartment and hired a
grand piano and practiced like three or four hours every day.
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And I also did a lot of transcription of Herbie Hancock solos, George Benson solos,
Michael Brecker, a lot of, uh if I heard a solo on a recording that I liked, an
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improvisation, I, uh
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I just had to transcribe it and see what the hell they were playing and why I liked it so
much.
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And I think the one that blew my mind the most was Herbie Hancock's solo on actual proof.
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Just the, you know, the chords he used, they were polytonal, ah which I'd discovered
earlier when I listened to Stravinsky.
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I thought, wow, like there's a jazz contemporary funky uh musician who's using the same
chords as Stravinsky.
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And that's when I thought, wow, like there's, sort of removed all the barriers of music.
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And I went on my own journey of just studying what I liked.
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Like if I heard a classical piece, I could buy the score and listen to it and analyze it.
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In the case of jazz musicians, I transcribed them.
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And um so I sort of developed my own set of knowledge.
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And by the time I was 21, I stopped doing that and was just
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full time playing, I was playing two or three nights a week in a cover band playing Donny
Hathaway and George Benson and more sort of smooth listening music, which is very cool.
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And then on two or three nights a week, I was playing more adventurous avant-garde
improvised and also composed music with the band Pyramid.
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Yeah.
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you certainly had the chops built up there.
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As I said, we will link to the Montreux stuff.
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mean, what's your recollection of that?
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I mean, watching some of those videos, again, incredibly tight, incredibly interesting
music.
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Was that one of your first big international gigs?
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Yeah, we, when we, we got the invitation to play the Montreux Jazz Festival and I think we
had a manager at the time, Liz Holtham, who was, um, she was a huge fan of the band, very
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smart woman too.
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And, um, somehow got a connection with some of the Montreux Jazz Festival, sent them some
recordings of us playing live and also a recording we'd done in the studio.
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And they listened to it and they said, yes, we'd like you to come and play at the Montreux
Jazz Festival.
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So.
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That was a big buildup.
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And that was also the year I got married to my beloved.
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It was a huge lady, beautiful lady.
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I'm still with after 43 years.
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Um, so it was a huge, uh, time and, um, first big trip overseas, um, and to be performing
there was amazing.
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It was just a amazing experience.
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We, played one night.
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And then we were on very late because it went way over schedule and Claude knobs came out
and said look I'm gonna announce a special surprise where I'm inviting pyramid to perform
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again tomorrow night and we opened for Lonnie Liston Smith um On his show we did in one
hour set So what you see on YouTube is a combination of that performance and also the
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night before
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And look, we are a keyboard playing podcast, so I've got to ask you in those videos, your
rig looks incredible.
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It's a huge rig and I think we're going to be talking about rigs at different junctures of
your career, but just tell us about what you were packing then.
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I mean, I could, think I saw it was a Rhodes, he had a mini-mig, what was, what was sort
of your rig, if you can recall back then?
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I sure can.
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Now I had a, I had a Rhodes and I think it was, I have a 73 or an 88?
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I've had both.
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I think at that stage I was packing a 73.
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Um, and we'll go sort of the next, the first level, which is the pianos is there was a
Rhodes, there was a CP 70, um, which I opted for that.
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upgraded later that year to a CP 80, but that stage was a CP 70.
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Um, on top of the CP 70, I had a Korg.
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Poly 6, ah which I use mainly for art.
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It had a great arpeggiator in it and it was a really great instrument um to just quickly
call up a diversity of sounds.
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I had some very cool, unusual filtering inverse polarity stuff, the Prophet 5, which was
the other synth I had, did not have.
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So I had a Prophet 5 as well, which was hooked up to a sequence art.
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I know if you remember the old sequences they used to go hand in hand.
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This was pre-Mitty, by the way.
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Later in the year when I joined as a river band, I put MIDI on every keyboard I could.
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Under the Prophet 5, I had a really interesting keyboard, was kind of a Korg electric
piano, but you could sort of add strings to it.
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That's what I liked.
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And also it could sound harpsichord-like and clavinet.
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I replaced the clavinet, which I used to have.
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Sometimes I regretted that decision because a clarinet is such an awesome instrument.
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But this instrument could do the clarinet parts, but it was more harpsichord like, but it
was kind of interesting and quirky.
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And then you could sort of add strings to it instantly so you could get a wash of sounds
very quickly live.
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I think that's all I had.
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and I did have a drum machine as well.
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had a Korg drum machine that was all hooked up via the very ancient ASCII.
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connection, was sort of like a clock thing.
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I don't know how it all worked and I can't remember the exact detail.
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uh
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Yeah, that's amazing.
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Yeah, particularly pre-MIDI with drum machines, that's no easy feat.
201
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um And I know you, I think you were doing a lot of the covering of the bass lines with
your left hand too, while soloing with the right.
202
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So I mean, obviously that your upbringing um led to that, but I mean, that hand
independence, was that something you had to progress a lot further when you were with
203
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Pyramid or you pretty much had that down by that stage?
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Look, I had it down.
205
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I worked a lot of my left hand when I was uh wood shedding.
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I call it the wood shedding year, was 1977.
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And I was working at a nightclub, you know, six nights a week, getting good money.
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And then I'd have all day to practice.
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I mean, I'd sleep in till about 10 or 11, and then I'd practice all afternoon.
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Cause I mean, the nightclub era, this is back when nightclubs actually had live music.
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And then before.
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DJs came along.
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ah Still great love for DJs, no disrespect, but at that time there was a transition and we
would do, but anyway, my six months, 10 year at this nightclub, that was when I did
214
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probably the most practice in my life.
215
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And then I lost my license, which was a miracle.
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And I had to go back to Ballarat where I grew up.
217
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um And then I practiced even more.
218
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And I got a job in a local, a local Ballarat nightclub four nights a week, which again,
kept me sustained.
219
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And then when I got my license back, would drive back and forth and I was just so busy.
220
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So yeah, I bought a combi van so I could cart all my gear around.
221
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was just saying to a friend of mine the other day, gosh, I must've had a lot of energy and
strength when I was in my twenties, because I lived in an apartment in the eight, in 1980
222
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and it was upstairs and after a gig at 2 a.m.
223
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I'd have to carry the CP-70 and the Rhodes and all my synths.
224
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Um, at that stage, I think I had an ARP Quadra, which was not light.
225
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It was a nice big synth.
226
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That was before I got the Poly-6, which was a lot smaller, but the ARP Quadra was cool.
227
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Yeah.
228
00:20:23,018 --> 00:20:26,340
But I had a lot of, man, I had a lot of gear and it was all heavy.
229
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Keyboards were much heavier.
230
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So you, young, young guys and girls who playing keys now.
231
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No offense, but you got it much easier from a wage point of view.
232
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Absolutely, that's a major feat of strength doing that.
233
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um And just one last question about Pyramid, there key influences on you as a band?
234
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watching some of the music and obviously Jazz Fusion's incredibly diverse and whatever,
one of the ones that screamed out to me was Gentle Giant, but there are others, were there
235
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particular influences on you when you were in that band?
236
00:20:56,824 --> 00:21:01,357
Look, uh yes, the short answer is yes, there are huge influences.
237
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In fact, um the first, probably the biggest influence was Joe Zarbinal's weather report.
238
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Joe Zarbinal's approach to keyboards.
239
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I actually watched him perform live in Melbourne in 79.
240
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And I never got an Oberheim synthesizer or an ARP.
241
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ah
242
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2600, which were his keys.
243
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But I managed to get similar sounds and then develop my own sounds.
244
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But I was very much influenced by his approach to synthesis.
245
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He sort of used an orchestral approach, which I guess uh called me in later into
discovering my desire to be an orchestral or reconnect with my childhood dream to write
246
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music for large acoustic ensembles.
247
00:21:53,641 --> 00:21:55,064
uh
248
00:21:55,064 --> 00:22:06,219
But he was a magician and I saw him as a wizard who was able to conjure up the feeling of
an orchestra with some very cool analog synths.
249
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he had the Oberheim four voice and the, yeah, so I sort of, and his approach to the
Rhodes, specifically the way he used the MUTRON bi-phaser, which I had, I actually went
250
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and bought one as soon as I found it, that's what he used.
251
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I bought a Mutron Bi-phase, which sadly I didn't keep, but I loved what you could do with
it, the stereo, you know, making the synced stereo oscillators.
252
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So I had two speakers, one on the side of the stage and, you know, the Rose was just this
giant pad, you know, jumping from one speaker to the other, not with the, uh not with the
253
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tremolo that the Rose is famous for, but for the
254
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a stereo kind of wobble courtesy of the neutron biphase.
255
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So yeah, he was a big influence and also Herbie Hancock, his approach to keys and PIC,
particularly the way he approached voicings on the CPs 70 and 80 inspired me to, but that
256
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was a huge influence on me as well.
257
00:23:14,738 --> 00:23:21,218
So those two were probably the biggest influence and Chick Corea, mean, all the Miles
Davis.
258
00:23:21,375 --> 00:23:31,980
recordings, like Bitches Brew, what an incredible, yeah, all that stuff seeped into my
subconscious and came out as my own version of that music.
259
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Nah, absolutely.
260
00:23:32,861 --> 00:23:38,845
And I'm so thrilled to hear that some of it's been, you mentioned that you're sort of
curating and some, some releasing of some of the materials.
261
00:23:38,845 --> 00:23:39,936
can't wait to hear that.
262
00:23:39,936 --> 00:23:45,960
What was the sort of, uh, the segue from, from Pyramid and, and LRB.
263
00:23:45,960 --> 00:23:46,801
You've mentioned that.
264
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So, and obviously for, there'd be very few people around the world that listen to this and
majority of our listeners are in the UK and US.
265
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Um, they will have also heard of Little River Band.
266
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Just tell us a bit, little bit about the impetus for, for moving into that sphere.
267
00:24:00,514 --> 00:24:06,336
Well, Little River Band was an accidental move on my part.
268
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Not accidental, but it was pure random luck.
269
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In fact, most of the things that happened to me were sort of random.
270
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Luckily, I was up to the task when the plate was handed to me.
271
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But unbeknownst to me, um there was two members of the Little River Band which were huge
jazz fusion fans.
272
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And they would secretly sneak into pyramid gigs.
273
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And so they recommended me to uh Graham Goble, the main songwriter, who was keen on the
idea of having a, I guess, spicing up their sound a little bit and going a little bit
274
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more, you know, taking the, the direction a little bit more into an area of sophistication
or whatever, I don't know.
275
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But he called me out of the blue and I'd
276
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sort of barely, I recognised the name Graham Goble.
277
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He said, Graham Goble, and then it was a pause, I'm from the Little River Band.
278
00:25:01,362 --> 00:25:03,453
I thought, oh wow, okay.
279
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And he said, look, he invited me to play on a record.
280
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were about, well, actually they were recording it and they wanted a uh session player to
come and play keys as they often did on their recordings.
281
00:25:15,416 --> 00:25:22,858
Previously they had picked the great um Peter Jones, who is another mentor of mine,
fantastic musician.
282
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Melbourne, Melbourne based.
283
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so they, they, they want to give me a crack.
284
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And so I played on their record and then, uh, did a tour with them late in 83.
285
00:25:34,050 --> 00:25:37,950
And then they, during that tour, they asked me to become a full-time member.
286
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And I thought, well, this is great.
287
00:25:39,870 --> 00:25:52,450
And I mean, honestly, at the time I, wasn't the sort of music I was really chasing, but
what I did learn and admire in their work ethic was an intention to detail.
288
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They had so much, um, like the professionalism was just on a whole other level to what I'd
ever experienced with uh a massive crew.
289
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And I didn't have to worry about lugging keyboards anymore because there was someone to
not only cart them in for me, but to set them all up and do you like it this way and how
290
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do you want it?
291
00:26:12,137 --> 00:26:14,008
And, and then make suggestions.
292
00:26:14,008 --> 00:26:16,429
You know, if you set them up this way, we can do this.
293
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And, um, and suddenly it was like, wow.
294
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It was hard to go back after that.
295
00:26:21,998 --> 00:26:28,038
that experience after being spoiled with a professional crew, know, technicians.
296
00:26:29,198 --> 00:26:33,898
And yeah, was, and look, they are fantastic musicians.
297
00:26:33,938 --> 00:26:36,558
They are really, I learned a lot from them.
298
00:26:36,558 --> 00:26:38,798
I learned a lot about stagecraft.
299
00:26:38,838 --> 00:26:41,578
John Farnham was their lead singer at the time.
300
00:26:41,578 --> 00:26:46,358
So I also learned a lot about how to communicate with an audience and what presses
audiences' buttons.
301
00:26:46,358 --> 00:26:49,090
And I think that informed me a lot about.
302
00:26:49,090 --> 00:27:00,401
the storytelling and music, which I knew innately, but to be involved in music on that
level and to see how the songs connect with the crowd and how the performers connect with
303
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the audience, ah it was uh a great eye-opener for me.
304
00:27:05,378 --> 00:27:06,639
Yeah, absolutely.
305
00:27:06,639 --> 00:27:08,280
I think I've heard of that Farnham guy.
306
00:27:08,280 --> 00:27:18,838
might talk about him later if we get time, but it's, so you re you went on to record three
albums with LRB and you co-wrote a number of the songs, which are amazing.
307
00:27:18,838 --> 00:27:27,714
Um, so what were your recollections of both those early recording processes, particularly
as a co-writer and those early gigs again, I mean, you'd already been at a high level
308
00:27:27,714 --> 00:27:33,278
with, with Pyramid, but with the particular things you've already talked about stagecraft,
but anything else that you recall?
309
00:27:33,580 --> 00:27:48,034
Well, I also, guess, um, having a regular income, which was a new thing for a freelance
musician, being part of a band, was more solvent financially and, um, you know, enabled me
310
00:27:48,034 --> 00:27:52,756
to take more risks and invest more money in equipment.
311
00:27:52,756 --> 00:27:58,157
Um, I bought a Fairlight, uh, during that time.
312
00:27:58,317 --> 00:28:00,302
And in fact, I bought that, just
313
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pride of the playing to win album, LRB playing to win album.
314
00:28:06,447 --> 00:28:11,601
so I delved as deeply as I could into that, not as deep as you can.
315
00:28:11,601 --> 00:28:22,139
That was a very deep instrument, but I basically used the sequencer part of it rather than
the, there's a section where it's like code, you write code into the computer and it
316
00:28:22,139 --> 00:28:23,500
generates things.
317
00:28:23,500 --> 00:28:25,846
I didn't go that deeply, I'll be honest, but I
318
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I could relate to page R, which was a fantastic sequence of page and the light pen and you
could sort of pop notes in using the light pen, was, you know, we're talking before the
319
00:28:37,097 --> 00:28:38,458
days of computer mice.
320
00:28:38,458 --> 00:28:48,108
um And I sort of, and then also you could uh finesse your waveforms with Fourier analysis.
321
00:28:48,108 --> 00:28:50,668
did get into that and uh
322
00:28:50,668 --> 00:29:00,566
Sort of, I did merge sounds like one of my favorite noises I got in the, on the playing to
win uh sequence was a combination of woodblock and clavinet.
323
00:29:00,687 --> 00:29:06,462
And by merging those two wave forms together, which was slightly different to sort of
doubling them.
324
00:29:06,462 --> 00:29:11,596
was sort of like you could really mix and sort of then mess with the sound a little bit.
325
00:29:11,596 --> 00:29:15,439
It created a very interesting tone.
326
00:29:16,401 --> 00:29:18,304
so yeah, that was a big.
327
00:29:18,304 --> 00:29:21,917
eye-opener for me, that instrument, and then using that in a pop sense.
328
00:29:21,917 --> 00:29:34,366
And of course, even though I was a pop band, they gave me license to be quite, you know,
within the harmonic framework of their songs, they gave me lot of encouragement to be, uh
329
00:29:34,366 --> 00:29:38,729
you know, quite experimental with the sound of what I did.
330
00:29:38,729 --> 00:29:40,840
So within that genre.
331
00:29:40,840 --> 00:29:46,122
So I enjoyed a lot of the discipline and the creativity involved in that.
332
00:29:46,122 --> 00:29:46,392
Yeah.
333
00:29:46,392 --> 00:29:55,848
And I've got to ask about the Fairlight, David, back at the time when you bought that, I'm
guessing, and I think our listeners and viewers will be aware that the Fairlight was an
334
00:29:55,848 --> 00:29:57,429
Australian initiated instrument.
335
00:29:57,429 --> 00:29:59,230
So it was, was created in Australia.
336
00:29:59,230 --> 00:30:02,733
Um, how many people do you think in Australia they will own them?
337
00:30:02,733 --> 00:30:04,182
Cause they were pricey.
338
00:30:04,182 --> 00:30:05,414
they,
339
00:30:05,486 --> 00:30:05,946
Yeah.
340
00:30:05,946 --> 00:30:06,306
Yeah.
341
00:30:06,306 --> 00:30:22,246
It was, when I bought it back then, it was $35,000 back in 1984, which was, you know, I
think I did the math once and it's like, it's like the equivalent of paying $150,000 now
342
00:30:22,246 --> 00:30:23,886
for one instrument.
343
00:30:24,166 --> 00:30:34,598
And, um, you know, I'm lucky I had a very, I have a very supportive partner who we'd saved
up money for a deposit for a house and she.
344
00:30:34,674 --> 00:30:38,817
You know, look, it worked out well in the end, but she took the leap of faith with me.
345
00:30:38,817 --> 00:30:41,338
said, I said, look, I really like his instrument.
346
00:30:41,338 --> 00:30:43,839
I don't think see how we can afford it.
347
00:30:43,839 --> 00:30:45,160
And she said, you know what?
348
00:30:45,160 --> 00:30:47,381
I have a feeling it's going to be a good eye.
349
00:30:48,142 --> 00:31:01,419
And so there she was the earth mother of intuition sort of, uh, could tell that it was
going to somehow pay us back at some point, which it did, you know, mean, LRB and then it
350
00:31:01,419 --> 00:31:02,920
went on to use it.
351
00:31:03,118 --> 00:31:05,998
with Whispering Jack, John Farnham's record.
352
00:31:06,358 --> 00:31:10,378
And, you know, so it really did earn its keep.
353
00:31:12,058 --> 00:31:15,898
but sadly, funnily enough, I didn't buy it outright.
354
00:31:15,898 --> 00:31:18,378
I bought it on lease.
355
00:31:18,638 --> 00:31:23,618
So at the end of the period, I owed $14,000 on it.
356
00:31:23,618 --> 00:31:26,184
And, you know.
357
00:31:26,184 --> 00:31:29,997
Uh, I only had 12 and I, uh, could only sell it for 12,000.
358
00:31:29,997 --> 00:31:33,861
So I had, I had to let it go, but I'll tell you why I let it go.
359
00:31:33,861 --> 00:31:46,951
Because by the time the lease was up, I'd already replaced it touring with an Akai
sampler, which I sort of transferred all the samples over that I needed and thought it was
360
00:31:46,951 --> 00:31:48,062
time to let it go.
361
00:31:48,062 --> 00:31:53,667
And I sometimes regret that because there's definitely something special about that.
362
00:31:53,667 --> 00:31:55,050
But as you know,
363
00:31:55,050 --> 00:32:01,282
As everyone knows, that was the start of an incredible explosion in keyboard technology.
364
00:32:02,486 --> 00:32:05,649
It'd interesting in an Australian context how many of you had them.
365
00:32:05,649 --> 00:32:06,420
I can think of two.
366
00:32:06,420 --> 00:32:12,796
know Iver Davies had one and I know you had one and they might've been lucky to have been
a handful of others, I'm guessing, but yeah, amazing instrument.
367
00:32:12,796 --> 00:32:20,433
um And so uh the other thing I do have to talk while we're still in LRB land, you've
mentioned Playing To Win.
368
00:32:20,433 --> 00:32:21,384
It's an iconic song.
369
00:32:21,384 --> 00:32:27,330
Ironically, I'm literally spending the next week learning that song for my weekend worry
cover band.
370
00:32:27,528 --> 00:32:28,809
And it's not easy.
371
00:32:28,809 --> 00:32:32,142
I'm sure it is to you, but it's certainly not to me.
372
00:32:32,142 --> 00:32:33,160
Just tell us a little bit.
373
00:32:33,160 --> 00:32:41,288
mean, you've already mentioned about the sound, which is fascinating how you combined the
sounds, but yeah, just tell us about the recording process on that track and the amazing
374
00:32:41,288 --> 00:32:43,950
playing in that and what you use.
375
00:32:43,980 --> 00:32:53,612
As I said, the Fairlight was one component, and probably the main component of it, but I
also had some brass stabs.
376
00:32:53,853 --> 00:32:58,974
So the Fairlight is an eight voice, they're eight monophonic voices.
377
00:32:58,974 --> 00:33:03,375
So in a way, if you want chords, and that was the core of the sequencer.
378
00:33:03,375 --> 00:33:11,418
em But I was also doubling it with Prophet 5 for some brass stabs.
379
00:33:11,418 --> 00:33:13,336
um
380
00:33:13,336 --> 00:33:19,888
Then there was also a uh monophonic glock at the top, which I just mixed in a little bit.
381
00:33:19,888 --> 00:33:20,858
Uh, you know, don't know.
382
00:33:20,858 --> 00:33:28,450
It's hard to sing the part where it goes, the low notes were just very low.
383
00:33:29,570 --> 00:33:35,932
Like, and the good thing about the Fairlight is it was sort of eight bit and grungy.
384
00:33:35,932 --> 00:33:37,953
So it sounded interesting.
385
00:33:37,953 --> 00:33:43,424
So when you played the notes low, they weren't, they were just.
386
00:33:43,444 --> 00:33:49,719
a robotically low version of the samples that was up there, but it sounded interesting.
387
00:33:49,780 --> 00:33:51,732
And it was a matter of capitalizing.
388
00:33:51,732 --> 00:33:58,748
You're not trying to mimic acoustics instruments or acoustical properties at all.
389
00:33:58,748 --> 00:34:04,113
You were using something that started out as acoustic and it's been messed up by 8-bit.
390
00:34:04,113 --> 00:34:07,746
Yeah, it's hard to describe, but yeah, I had a lot going on.
391
00:34:07,746 --> 00:34:09,297
In fact, the...
392
00:34:09,932 --> 00:34:19,421
Spencer Proffer, the producer here, come in while I was working on it, in my, I had my
keyboard rig set up and he'd just look and say, I have no idea what you're doing in here,
393
00:34:19,421 --> 00:34:28,479
but just use, utilize my engineers and staff to, and they'll bring you whatever you need
and, and, and they'll help you record it.
394
00:34:28,479 --> 00:34:35,165
then, uh so I recorded all this stuff first and then the band overdubbed to the Fairlight
on that track.
395
00:34:35,446 --> 00:34:37,227
So anyway, incredible song.
396
00:34:37,227 --> 00:34:40,678
I think most people listening or watching this are absolutely aware of it.
397
00:34:40,678 --> 00:34:41,468
So no, thank you.
398
00:34:41,468 --> 00:34:46,129
And I can assure you, I'm doing a dumbed down version of your playing for my band.
399
00:34:46,369 --> 00:34:48,530
It's just amazing song.
400
00:34:48,530 --> 00:34:55,312
so um obviously LRB, I said, you did three albums, did a lot of live performance with them
as well.
401
00:34:55,312 --> 00:35:02,924
Now there's an obvious link there as far as the move into John Farnham's band, but what
was sort of the broader impetus for that occurring as well?
402
00:35:03,276 --> 00:35:10,800
Well, John Farnham, okay, so here's a little bit of a, you know, a slightly sad story.
403
00:35:10,800 --> 00:35:23,707
Little River Band was a fantastic musical experience, but in the end, didn't, it struggled
to connect with its audience in America with another lead singer other than Glenn
404
00:35:23,707 --> 00:35:24,677
Shorrock.
405
00:35:24,898 --> 00:35:32,682
And so we were all a bit disheartened because, you know, we, and the band, know, Graham
and...
406
00:35:32,984 --> 00:35:41,286
Graham and Wayne, the remaining, and Steve, Housden, they just felt it was the best
version of the band that they'd had.
407
00:35:41,286 --> 00:35:48,478
But that doesn't always translate to, um you know, and it's nothing to do with the new
personnel.
408
00:35:48,478 --> 00:35:57,781
It's just the fact that the bands changed and taken a bit of a, you know, in some ways we
sounded sometimes more like yes than we did Little River Band.
409
00:35:57,781 --> 00:36:02,592
It was quite a high tech progressive sound which didn't, I guess, sit
410
00:36:03,630 --> 00:36:07,051
comfortably with a lot of LRB fans, which is fair enough.
411
00:36:07,051 --> 00:36:08,111
It's just what it is.
412
00:36:08,111 --> 00:36:11,052
It's not a complaint or it's just an observation.
413
00:36:11,352 --> 00:36:14,793
And um so in the end, we decided we gave it one more go.
414
00:36:14,793 --> 00:36:20,695
We did an album called Now Rains, but um that just didn't connect with anyone at all.
415
00:36:20,695 --> 00:36:28,917
And I think we decided shortly afterward, finished recording that album to go our separate
ways.
416
00:36:29,277 --> 00:36:33,918
And John said to me in the car on the way home from that meeting,
417
00:36:34,338 --> 00:36:36,849
He said, look, I want to do a solo album.
418
00:36:36,849 --> 00:36:37,689
I've got ideas.
419
00:36:37,689 --> 00:36:39,759
I really want to make the music I want to make.
420
00:36:39,759 --> 00:36:43,640
um I'm 37 years old and this is my last chance.
421
00:36:43,801 --> 00:36:46,361
I really want to reinvent myself.
422
00:36:46,541 --> 00:36:48,160
Are you up for being part of that?
423
00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:49,622
And I said, mate, I'd love to.
424
00:36:49,622 --> 00:36:52,743
I mean, I just love the guy and he's incredible singer.
425
00:36:52,743 --> 00:36:56,644
And I really thought that would be a lot of fun.
426
00:36:56,644 --> 00:36:57,804
And it was.
427
00:36:58,064 --> 00:37:04,506
we just, so I set up my entire Regan in his studio, in his basement of his, house.
428
00:37:06,035 --> 00:37:16,083
and, and he was renting the house at the time because, know, with LRB ended up being in
financial strife and we didn't really, uh, you know, it was a financial strain on all of
429
00:37:16,083 --> 00:37:18,985
us and I was renting and he was renting at the time.
430
00:37:18,985 --> 00:37:29,624
And so, uh, I just set up in there and we mucked around for two or three months and ended
up making whispering Jack, uh, the bones of it.
431
00:37:29,624 --> 00:37:32,937
And of course, once we'd, I'd sequenced it all up.
432
00:37:32,937 --> 00:37:34,970
had, you know, two.
433
00:37:34,970 --> 00:37:37,511
I had a QX1 sequencer, had the Fairlight.
434
00:37:37,511 --> 00:37:52,149
um Ross, the producer, brought along an SP-12 drum machine, which we hooked up to that and
head sampled a whole lot of interesting pseudo drum sounds like slamming porch doors and
435
00:37:52,149 --> 00:37:53,000
things like that.
436
00:37:53,000 --> 00:38:01,835
um Not that any of us had a porch at the time, but I think it was Glenn Wheatley's Porsche
actually.
437
00:38:01,835 --> 00:38:04,460
So we sort of made all this
438
00:38:04,460 --> 00:38:09,490
We made this record up and had no idea that it was going to be as big as it
439
00:38:09,984 --> 00:38:14,688
And look, so I'm going to set this up for our viewers and listeners that aren't aware,
although there won't be many of them.
440
00:38:14,688 --> 00:38:20,824
So in an Australian context, there's no doubt John Farnham and the band at the time too
were absolutely revered.
441
00:38:20,824 --> 00:38:28,851
I'm talking for our US listeners, I'm talking Springsteen level for UK, either a whole
range of artists I would equate to as well.
442
00:38:28,851 --> 00:38:34,006
um So, but in an international context, obviously John Farnham is revered as a singer.
443
00:38:34,006 --> 00:38:36,297
He's considered a singer's singer.
444
00:38:36,682 --> 00:38:44,186
And there's a long list of international singers that cite him as an, you know, either as
an influencer or as an amazing inspiration.
445
00:38:44,287 --> 00:38:49,070
So that's just a long winded way of saying this was an amazing period, David.
446
00:38:49,070 --> 00:38:54,253
And you said mucking around in the basement coming up with, um whispering Jack.
447
00:38:54,253 --> 00:38:58,686
So, I mean, the line of notes famously credit Jack as playing keyboard drums.
448
00:38:58,686 --> 00:39:00,607
You've already talked about the Fairlight CMI.
449
00:39:00,607 --> 00:39:02,926
So that was obviously a key part.
450
00:39:02,926 --> 00:39:10,310
I think you've already mentioned you use PageR to do a lot of that, but just tell us about
the programming side and how you set up a lot of that.
451
00:39:10,626 --> 00:39:18,731
Well, I had page R at that stage that the Fairlight was by then was MIDI retrofitted.
452
00:39:18,971 --> 00:39:29,417
So um in fact, ah I had two QX1 sequences, one to drive the Fairlight because we just felt
that it was easier to have.
453
00:39:29,417 --> 00:39:37,702
um I came up with the ideas on page R, but in the end I
454
00:39:37,966 --> 00:39:41,326
transferred the parts to a QX1 for live.
455
00:39:41,766 --> 00:39:52,626
But so when we made the record, we had one QX1, which was hooked up to a bank of eight
DX7s, the TX816.
456
00:39:52,866 --> 00:40:00,726
I fell in love with a DX7 in the, while I was with Little River Band in 1984.
457
00:40:02,446 --> 00:40:05,478
yeah, later, 83, I bought a DX7.
458
00:40:06,482 --> 00:40:17,368
And I actually use it not only for its signature bell sounds and the FM sounds you
normally associate with that, but also it had some amazing string textures, which were
459
00:40:17,368 --> 00:40:20,650
really complex, which I used on Whispering Jack.
460
00:40:20,650 --> 00:40:26,943
It also had some incredible uh synth warbly effects, which you don't normally think of.
461
00:40:26,943 --> 00:40:31,976
You normally think of those as a warmer analog synth uh sound.
462
00:40:31,976 --> 00:40:35,240
And I was able to experiment and get a lot of
463
00:40:35,240 --> 00:40:38,231
really useful sounds out of the DX7.
464
00:40:38,231 --> 00:40:50,596
I loved it so much I ended up buying a rack of eight of them and hooking it up to the
sequencer so that I could have multi layers of DX7s, which is really, that's the sound of
465
00:40:50,596 --> 00:40:51,316
Whispering Jack.
466
00:40:51,316 --> 00:41:05,112
It's all DX7s and Fairlight and a Prophet 5 for some added punch here and there and some
analog want and the drum machine.
467
00:41:05,112 --> 00:41:06,783
The SP 12.
468
00:41:06,783 --> 00:41:10,646
So that we had them all hooked up midi clock.
469
00:41:10,646 --> 00:41:20,052
So once you started it, you sort of, or yeah, you could stop and it knew where it was up
to they to the bar.
470
00:41:20,052 --> 00:41:22,654
They were all sort of locked to a bar position.
471
00:41:22,654 --> 00:41:30,719
So if you started at say bar 35, um, everyone would jump to that somehow.
472
00:41:30,759 --> 00:41:31,810
that how it worked?
473
00:41:31,810 --> 00:41:35,042
did I have to, I don't know how we.
474
00:41:35,062 --> 00:41:47,831
I have a feeling we had to sort of, um, you know, it's, it's really stretching my memory
now because of course, you know, late in the, in the early nineties, by then I was using
475
00:41:47,831 --> 00:41:52,534
SIMPTY code where everything just locked to a timeline.
476
00:41:52,534 --> 00:41:53,995
But this was prior to that.
477
00:41:53,995 --> 00:42:01,880
This was when I, you know, using it as a, and I was just making this up as I went, was
just reading the manuals and saying, how the hell does this work?
478
00:42:02,121 --> 00:42:04,374
And, um, so.
479
00:42:04,374 --> 00:42:10,196
Somehow we got it all to work and then we overdubbed to the sequences that were generated.
480
00:42:10,196 --> 00:42:21,059
We overdubbed additional, I played a lot of additional keyboard parts in the studio, ah
gave it another layer and then we added a lot of guitars as well.
481
00:42:21,059 --> 00:42:28,241
And John, we discovered this young player, Brett Garcett, who's phenomenal player.
482
00:42:28,301 --> 00:42:31,722
so he played guitar, Roger McLaughlin.
483
00:42:32,054 --> 00:42:35,756
My colleague from Pyramid, played fretless bass.
484
00:42:36,197 --> 00:42:48,656
So there was a few overdubs, but essentially, yeah, it was a techno driven, was an amalgam
of uh a contemporary sort of post industrial, uh, techno pop sound.
485
00:42:48,656 --> 00:42:59,512
Uh, when I say techno, no high tech, high tech pop, um, with a sort of an orchestral
overview, I guess, bringing back.
486
00:42:59,512 --> 00:43:03,163
drawing in from my Joe Zarwin training in the early eighties.
487
00:43:03,163 --> 00:43:17,069
um And uh we were just having fun making the music that we liked making, choosing the best
songs that were thrown at us, writing a couple of songs ourselves to make it up to a 10
488
00:43:17,069 --> 00:43:18,410
track album.
489
00:43:18,808 --> 00:43:20,119
And which is amazing.
490
00:43:20,119 --> 00:43:22,790
No, no, that's not too much at all.
491
00:43:22,790 --> 00:43:27,954
And yes, I know you have a co-writing present with going, gone on that album as well.
492
00:43:27,954 --> 00:43:36,699
So I'm struggling to recall the sequence, but at that stage when you were recording, did
you have a record company on board or you actually pitched the album to a record company?
493
00:43:36,699 --> 00:43:38,946
I can't remember the sequence of this.
494
00:43:38,946 --> 00:43:42,058
Well, how that record came out was really amazing.
495
00:43:42,058 --> 00:43:49,433
John at this stage was considered a sort of a washed up singer, ah sadly.
496
00:43:49,433 --> 00:43:55,216
you know, that's unfortunately there it's a harsh industry and you can easily fall into
the wrong category.
497
00:43:55,216 --> 00:44:03,162
um So the only person who believed in him really was his manager, Glenn Wheatley is also a
good friend.
498
00:44:03,162 --> 00:44:08,706
And he always believed in John's talent and just had a strong feeling that
499
00:44:08,706 --> 00:44:10,376
This has to work.
500
00:44:10,376 --> 00:44:15,348
You know, you can't have a singer that good and an album this good.
501
00:44:15,348 --> 00:44:21,640
ah It's worth taking a huge punt on, which he did.
502
00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:27,351
Glenn Wheatley actually put a lot of money into this and funded it.
503
00:44:27,351 --> 00:44:34,213
It cost over a hundred thousand dollars to record in the studio, which was a big gamble on
his part.
504
00:44:34,213 --> 00:44:36,684
And then he had to probably pay that again.
505
00:44:36,842 --> 00:44:41,085
on promotion and, uh he formed his own record company.
506
00:44:41,165 --> 00:44:47,830
I think he had, he might've already just formed it and it was licensed through BMG, but he
was the label.
507
00:44:47,830 --> 00:44:53,234
So he took all the, all the financial risk and BMG agreed to distribute it.
508
00:44:53,234 --> 00:44:58,538
ah So it was Wheatley records distributed through BMG.
509
00:44:59,054 --> 00:44:59,954
Just amazing.
510
00:44:59,954 --> 00:45:00,795
Yeah.
511
00:45:00,795 --> 00:45:03,736
And just a couple more questions on the recording of that album, if you don't mind David.
512
00:45:03,736 --> 00:45:09,558
So obviously it doesn't get any bigger as far as the song than your voice in the bag,
pipe, solo.
513
00:45:09,558 --> 00:45:11,559
So did you sample a real Piper?
514
00:45:11,559 --> 00:45:16,341
I can't actually recall the story around this either, or you were using the Fairlight.
515
00:45:16,341 --> 00:45:18,690
How did you sort of approach that in the recording?
516
00:45:18,690 --> 00:45:31,501
Well, in the recording, uh we were actually in the studio and we'd tracked all the keys
that were pre-produced in the garage.
517
00:45:31,501 --> 00:45:34,344
then John wasn't satisfied.
518
00:45:34,344 --> 00:45:45,073
And I'd sort of use these samples and mixed with synths of uh pan pipes and flutes, no
bagpipes.
519
00:45:45,073 --> 00:45:47,014
um
520
00:45:47,382 --> 00:45:48,703
And it didn't change key.
521
00:45:48,703 --> 00:45:52,506
didn't change from the F to the B flat, which it had to.
522
00:45:52,506 --> 00:45:56,348
So John said, I think it really needs bagpipes.
523
00:45:56,509 --> 00:45:58,340
And we thought, what the hell?
524
00:45:58,340 --> 00:46:00,231
Okay.
525
00:46:00,231 --> 00:46:02,513
Um, we gave it a go.
526
00:46:02,513 --> 00:46:05,595
Um, I went to the bagpipe.
527
00:46:05,595 --> 00:46:08,557
We found the best bagpipe expert in Melbourne.
528
00:46:08,557 --> 00:46:14,041
I went to his house and he said, well, for a start bagpipes only play in B flat.
529
00:46:14,041 --> 00:46:15,802
So you're going to have to.
530
00:46:16,064 --> 00:46:24,799
Either very speed the tape, which will make the bagpipe sound weird, or you'll have to
change the key.
531
00:46:24,799 --> 00:46:34,215
So I had to go back and redo just that section, which was the solo, which was, I had to
move that from F up to B flat.
532
00:46:34,215 --> 00:46:42,648
But ironically, moving it to B flat was already preparing it for the, the bridge to the,
uh
533
00:46:42,648 --> 00:46:46,600
the chorus, we're all someone's daughters, we're all someone's sons, that's in B flat.
534
00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:58,086
So having the chorus, having the solo, if you like, the instrumental in B flat was a nice
lift from the end of the chorus to the instrumental and it set it up beautifully.
535
00:46:58,086 --> 00:47:01,227
And it actually made the song sound better.
536
00:47:01,307 --> 00:47:04,649
That so-called limitation of the bagpipes.
537
00:47:04,649 --> 00:47:06,910
um, yeah, it was.
538
00:47:07,274 --> 00:47:10,967
So we recorded four bagpipes players four times.
539
00:47:10,967 --> 00:47:14,920
So we had the sound of 16 real bagpipes.
540
00:47:14,981 --> 00:47:23,307
And then to do that live, actually a friend of mine, Steve Lincoln Smith from Yamaha, was
turned out he's a bagpipe player.
541
00:47:23,307 --> 00:47:33,456
And so he allowed me to sample him his bagpipe notes individually so I could play them
live on a sampler.
542
00:47:33,456 --> 00:47:36,212
uh
543
00:47:36,212 --> 00:47:37,465
Amazing.
544
00:47:38,520 --> 00:47:47,276
By then I'd learned all the little ornaments and everything that bagpipes play because
they play all these little tiny notes in between the notes.
545
00:47:47,276 --> 00:47:59,954
uh They've got Gaelic terms, but they're sort of ornaments that enable them to put
separation and reattacking of the notes because a bagpipe is just, it just starts and
546
00:47:59,954 --> 00:48:00,355
stops.
547
00:48:00,355 --> 00:48:03,927
There's no, you can't tongue with your tongue or anything.
548
00:48:03,927 --> 00:48:08,450
It's all just, you have to attack the note by putting grace notes.
549
00:48:08,498 --> 00:48:12,884
and ornaments between the notes of a melody.
550
00:48:12,985 --> 00:48:17,331
And so I learned this whole, I had this crash course in how bagpipes work.
551
00:48:17,332 --> 00:48:21,578
So I was able to then reverse engineer that and play it live.
552
00:48:22,260 --> 00:48:23,072
That's amazing.
553
00:48:23,072 --> 00:48:27,011
And just as a brief segue, did that ever pay off in your later film scoring career?
554
00:48:27,011 --> 00:48:29,497
Have you ever needed to use bagpipes in any of your scores?
555
00:48:29,497 --> 00:48:30,816
I'm just trying to recall.
556
00:48:30,816 --> 00:48:32,627
I haven't, I've never used it.
557
00:48:32,627 --> 00:48:41,849
And I've wanted to, actually um I ended up using samples of an Ilyin pipe, which is a
different sound altogether.
558
00:48:42,190 --> 00:48:49,412
But they, I've used samples of those, but I've never worked with a live, sadly, and I'm
not proud of it.
559
00:48:49,412 --> 00:48:51,563
I've never used a live one again.
560
00:48:51,563 --> 00:48:54,554
It's such an amazing sound.
561
00:48:54,554 --> 00:48:55,992
um
562
00:48:55,992 --> 00:48:56,683
Yeah.
563
00:48:56,683 --> 00:48:57,563
I love it.
564
00:48:57,563 --> 00:49:00,736
And obviously the albums record, I'm going to jump forward a little bit here.
565
00:49:00,736 --> 00:49:04,509
You're then out on tour touring it and it was an incredible tour.
566
00:49:04,509 --> 00:49:08,422
How did you replicate such a densely produced studio album live?
567
00:49:08,422 --> 00:49:09,483
So what was your touring rig?
568
00:49:09,483 --> 00:49:13,727
I think you've already talked about sort of a bit of the mapping you needed to do, but
just how did you approach it?
569
00:49:13,727 --> 00:49:15,878
Cause that's no mean feat on its own.
570
00:49:16,238 --> 00:49:19,060
Yeah, well, um, I think it was for the live tour.
571
00:49:19,060 --> 00:49:25,244
I, that was when I did away with the, the, the Fairlight was too cumbersome to carry
around.
572
00:49:25,264 --> 00:49:38,333
And when I realized when someone said to me, if you get a, um, an Akai, um, S 1000, you'll
be able to have, you know, about four Fairlights worth of sounds in there.
573
00:49:38,333 --> 00:49:44,007
Well, no, in fact, I had every single, we didn't have to change discs to load, load up
different.
574
00:49:44,007 --> 00:49:46,274
The Fairlight had such limited memory, but.
575
00:49:46,274 --> 00:49:53,180
The AQUI S1000 could have everything all sitting there ready to go, just as programs that
would be called up.
576
00:49:53,180 --> 00:50:02,848
So, and it was, you know, it's just sort of that big, as opposed to a massive mainframe
and and a screen.
577
00:50:02,848 --> 00:50:06,050
So, um, I needed to drive it with something.
578
00:50:06,050 --> 00:50:10,875
Well, there was an eight note sequencer, the QX1.
579
00:50:10,875 --> 00:50:15,138
So I got a second QX1, had them sync, had the two QX1 synced.
580
00:50:15,898 --> 00:50:23,114
And, um, and, and so literally a lot of the pre-programmed keyboard parts were happening.
581
00:50:23,114 --> 00:50:32,762
So there was literally probably about, you know, half a dozen of me on stage playing from
the, from the pre-recorded stuff.
582
00:50:32,762 --> 00:50:33,833
So yeah.
583
00:50:33,994 --> 00:50:40,559
And, and I had to develop these, click track scenarios instead of using a click track.
584
00:50:40,959 --> 00:50:44,462
We actually actually made percussion parts.
585
00:50:45,688 --> 00:50:51,971
that sounded like they were part of the band and it didn't matter if there was a bit of
bleed from that.
586
00:50:51,971 --> 00:50:55,342
Because this is all in the days before in-ear monitors.
587
00:50:55,702 --> 00:51:00,564
So this was the day when no one wore headphones or in-ear monitors.
588
00:51:00,564 --> 00:51:08,887
So um you just had to have, if you had a bit of spill, you had to make sure it sounded
musical enough to blend in with the.
589
00:51:09,688 --> 00:51:12,109
So that's how we did that.
590
00:51:12,109 --> 00:51:13,510
And that worked quite well.
591
00:51:13,510 --> 00:51:14,714
um
592
00:51:14,714 --> 00:51:24,320
The drummer liked it because he had this specific percussion part to, to lay in, to work
with without having just a click, click, click going.
593
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:28,008
And so Angus was just working with that coming through the monitors essentially.
594
00:51:28,008 --> 00:51:28,430
Yeah.
595
00:51:28,430 --> 00:51:31,530
And that's what we did with Little River Band too.
596
00:51:31,530 --> 00:51:34,550
Steve Preswich, phenomenal drummer, Colt Gisles drummer.
597
00:51:34,550 --> 00:51:39,130
Can't believe we managed to get him when Derek Palicci left.
598
00:51:39,310 --> 00:51:48,310
Steve was a beautiful guy, wonderful human being, a rock solid drummer, great R &B drummer
and an amazing songwriter too.
599
00:51:48,310 --> 00:51:52,890
He actually ended up writing a couple of songs that LRB recorded.
600
00:51:53,030 --> 00:51:55,430
Anyway, he was very happy with that.
601
00:51:55,430 --> 00:51:57,230
I developed that technique.
602
00:51:57,230 --> 00:51:58,851
during Little River Band.
603
00:51:58,851 --> 00:52:03,913
had it pretty finely honed by the time we toured with John Farnham, that was the way we
did it.
604
00:52:03,913 --> 00:52:16,598
uh so, you know, it was, it meant that some, could, I could even at sound checks just walk
away from the keyboard sometimes and, put it, you know, use the, I had an extension cord
605
00:52:16,598 --> 00:52:24,061
on the KX5 keytar and I could walk out the front and have a listen to what the band sounds
like.
606
00:52:24,070 --> 00:52:25,930
It was pretty, pretty nice.
607
00:52:25,930 --> 00:52:26,551
It was.
608
00:52:26,551 --> 00:52:32,125
And look, I do need to ask about the live and there's an amazing visual record of this.
609
00:52:32,125 --> 00:52:37,830
And it's something that I recorded off the TV and played to death on my VCR, which was the
classic Jack release.
610
00:52:37,830 --> 00:52:41,523
And obviously that was filmed in Melbourne with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
611
00:52:41,523 --> 00:52:43,824
And so I do have to ask you about that.
612
00:52:43,865 --> 00:52:53,322
A couple of questions around that was um what was first was your recollection of the
filming and because that was a big production piece, came across briefly, but I imagine
613
00:52:53,322 --> 00:52:55,794
there was a lot of preparation involved in that.
614
00:52:55,810 --> 00:52:57,111
Yeah, there was.
615
00:52:57,111 --> 00:53:05,659
And actually I think a lot of the shots, it was shot over, I'm pretty sure over two
nights, but one of the nights I came down with a flu.
616
00:53:05,659 --> 00:53:07,239
I was so sick.
617
00:53:07,600 --> 00:53:14,666
And so they just doped me up with pseudoephedrine and I felt amazing, but I was still
pretty out of it.
618
00:53:14,666 --> 00:53:17,949
Um, I don't know how I got through that to be honest.
619
00:53:17,949 --> 00:53:24,254
I guess when you're in your twenties, you have superhuman powers that you don't have when
you're older.
620
00:53:24,482 --> 00:53:29,925
But I got through it and yeah, the camera work, it was all set up.
621
00:53:29,925 --> 00:53:32,747
then the show was so finely honed.
622
00:53:32,747 --> 00:53:34,467
We'd done a lot of shows.
623
00:53:34,548 --> 00:53:41,011
And so it was decided we need to uh audio, a visual document of this and record it.
624
00:53:41,011 --> 00:53:45,994
So they made the special for Channel 7 or whatever, one of the TV shows.
625
00:53:46,104 --> 00:53:48,135
Which is absolutely amazing.
626
00:53:48,135 --> 00:53:51,337
And I'm saying this now, we're two thirds of the way through the interview.
627
00:53:51,337 --> 00:53:59,381
So, you know, I'm not doing this to be charming to try and convince you to stay, there are
very few exceptions of people that can get away with playing a keytar and you're
628
00:53:59,381 --> 00:54:00,212
definitely one of them.
629
00:54:00,212 --> 00:54:05,554
So you were dressed amazing, looked amazing and killed it on the keytar.
630
00:54:05,554 --> 00:54:06,965
that's number one.
631
00:54:07,145 --> 00:54:16,230
Number two, what's fascinated me doing both research for this interview, but just over the
last six months anyway, I'm not sure you're aware over the last
632
00:54:16,652 --> 00:54:26,929
two years, there are at least a dozen reaction videos from different singing teachers in
the US, UK, you name it, on a bunch of those songs from that night.
633
00:54:26,929 --> 00:54:32,604
So obviously that's about John's voice, but I mean, you're the voice help and long way to
the top.
634
00:54:32,604 --> 00:54:42,701
If you look on YouTube, there are at least a dozen reaction videos for every single one of
them where people now to this day having their minds blown by the performance of the band
635
00:54:42,701 --> 00:54:44,622
and obviously John's voice.
636
00:54:45,102 --> 00:54:45,462
Yeah.
637
00:54:45,462 --> 00:54:55,442
I mean, I've seen one of those, there's a, gentleman with long sort of, uh, dark braids
and he's a African-American vocal guru.
638
00:54:55,442 --> 00:55:01,982
And, and he'll look on his face when he first hears John sing a note, he just says, Oh my
God.
639
00:55:01,982 --> 00:55:04,742
His eyes just pop out of his head.
640
00:55:04,942 --> 00:55:06,962
Who is this guy?
641
00:55:07,162 --> 00:55:10,002
He was discovering him for the first time.
642
00:55:10,002 --> 00:55:12,110
I, I was so hard.
643
00:55:12,110 --> 00:55:23,470
warmed by that because that was the same feeling I had when I was 19 and I was at a jazz
club hearing Kerry Bedell and she invited John on stage.
644
00:55:23,730 --> 00:55:30,330
And Kerry Bedell's a very kind of, she's a hardcore jazz singer.
645
00:55:30,330 --> 00:55:36,830
Can't imagine why she would invite a pop singer like John up until he sang Georgia.
646
00:55:36,830 --> 00:55:40,270
And when I heard him sing Georgia, the old jazz standard,
647
00:55:40,310 --> 00:55:42,865
He absolutely sang the shit out of it.
648
00:55:42,865 --> 00:55:44,246
He was incredible.
649
00:55:44,246 --> 00:55:47,824
And I thought, my God, I never knew he could sing like that.
650
00:55:47,824 --> 00:55:53,868
And that's when I discovered that he's absolutely freak of nature.
651
00:55:53,868 --> 00:55:55,891
Yeah, absolutely.
00:00:00,056 --> 00:00:08,201
Wow, like there's a jazz contemporary funky musician who's using the same chords as
Stravinsky.
2
00:00:08,201 --> 00:00:13,900
And that's when I thought, wow, like it's sort of removed all the barriers of music.
3
00:00:22,286 --> 00:00:25,826
Hello and welcome to the Keyboard Chronicles, a podcast for keyboard players.
4
00:00:25,826 --> 00:00:26,926
I'm your host, David Holloway.
5
00:00:26,926 --> 00:00:29,846
I'm thrilled as always to be here with you.
6
00:00:29,846 --> 00:00:33,446
I'm particularly excited to bring you part one of our interview with Mr.
7
00:00:33,446 --> 00:00:34,746
David Hirschfelder.
8
00:00:34,746 --> 00:00:37,206
I had the pleasure of interviewing David.
9
00:00:37,206 --> 00:00:45,186
We worked out more than 20 years ago, back in the good old days when magazines were a
thing and you interviewed musicians for magazines.
10
00:00:45,486 --> 00:00:50,446
And obviously I was incredibly impressed with David's amazing career back then.
11
00:00:50,446 --> 00:00:51,734
Well, he certainly
12
00:00:51,734 --> 00:00:53,745
achieved a lot, lot more since then.
13
00:00:53,745 --> 00:01:01,122
So in part one of this interview, we talk about David's early years, his work with the
amazing Jazz Fusion band Pyramid.
14
00:01:01,122 --> 00:01:10,409
We talk about David's involvement with the Little River band and we start our discussion
on David's work with the absolutely stellar John Farnham.
15
00:01:10,530 --> 00:01:20,938
And then what you'll find in part two is we'll continue that discussion, talk about
David's incredibly successful film composition and scoring career.
16
00:01:21,014 --> 00:01:22,857
and lots lot more in part two.
17
00:01:22,857 --> 00:01:27,232
So yeah, I'll let you jump into part one and I'll see you at the start of part two.
18
00:01:40,110 --> 00:01:42,676
David, it's an absolute honour and a pleasure to have you on the show.
19
00:01:42,676 --> 00:01:45,218
Sir, how are you this fine weekday morning?
20
00:01:45,218 --> 00:01:46,094
Very good, David.
21
00:01:46,094 --> 00:01:48,496
Good to see you again after all these years.
22
00:01:48,844 --> 00:01:53,756
Yes, look, it has been a while and I have mentioned in the introduction, I had the
pleasure of seeing you in the flesh.
23
00:01:53,756 --> 00:01:55,486
I said more than 20 years ago.
24
00:01:55,486 --> 00:01:58,537
So now it's wonderful to have you back on.
25
00:01:58,537 --> 00:02:02,559
I mean, so much has happened since then and we'll get onto that.
26
00:02:02,559 --> 00:02:08,881
But I thought we might just initially kick off with what's the last 12 months been like
for David Hirschfelder.
27
00:02:09,229 --> 00:02:19,709
Uh, a bit quiet, uh, work wise because I, um, I became a grandfather and, twice in one
year.
28
00:02:19,929 --> 00:02:22,309
so there was two trips to America.
29
00:02:22,629 --> 00:02:30,749
Um, and, uh, during that, one of them where we were there for the birth and it was two
months and I was staying in upstate New York.
30
00:02:30,749 --> 00:02:39,126
I did collaborate with my son on, uh, on an advert advertising jingle, which came in while
I was there.
31
00:02:39,126 --> 00:02:45,769
I do those occasionally because they're fun and it's great to work with my son who's also
a composer.
32
00:02:45,950 --> 00:02:47,671
And what else happened that year?
33
00:02:47,671 --> 00:02:56,976
Oh, I recorded a live concert with Mindy Meng Wang, who's an amazing musician.
34
00:02:56,976 --> 00:03:02,269
She plays Gu Jing, which is the ancient Chinese harp.
35
00:03:02,269 --> 00:03:06,061
She's a phenomenal musician and we did an improvised concert.
36
00:03:06,061 --> 00:03:07,942
um
37
00:03:08,078 --> 00:03:14,458
sort of late 2024 and released an album in early 2025.
38
00:03:14,458 --> 00:03:26,838
And we were performing live on just piano and guzheng, improvising to a poetry of Dalai
Lama, the sixth Dalai Lama.
39
00:03:26,838 --> 00:03:34,658
And it was in Mandarin and English and also mixed with visual art.
40
00:03:36,046 --> 00:03:39,466
by Ben Thompson, who's a great digital artist.
41
00:03:39,706 --> 00:03:51,006
And so yeah, we did that concert and then we released an album about a year ago, actually
in January, late January, 2025.
42
00:03:52,186 --> 00:03:54,926
And so we did a little bit of promotion for that.
43
00:03:54,926 --> 00:03:57,046
And then also, what else?
44
00:03:57,046 --> 00:04:05,586
Oh, I reconnected with a bass player from Pyramid, Roger McLaughlin.
45
00:04:05,804 --> 00:04:08,515
who came to our concert.
46
00:04:08,515 --> 00:04:14,657
we just, when we rekindle our friendship, sadly he contracted um a terminal illness.
47
00:04:15,098 --> 00:04:23,341
And so, yeah, not wishing to bring a downer on the thing, but he passed away, which is
sad.
48
00:04:23,341 --> 00:04:31,769
So um one of the projects I've got going now is to re-release early pyramid recordings.
49
00:04:31,769 --> 00:04:35,436
So that was a jazz fusion band I was in in the very early eighties.
50
00:04:35,874 --> 00:04:41,756
And, um, we're going to re-release some and also release some previously unreleased
material.
51
00:04:41,756 --> 00:04:47,397
Although I think some of it's been on YouTube, but we're going to make a CD release of
that.
52
00:04:47,837 --> 00:04:48,848
And what else?
53
00:04:48,848 --> 00:04:57,930
I scored a picture with my son, uh, who's also, you know, he's my co-composing colleague.
54
00:04:57,930 --> 00:05:05,782
Whenever I get too busy, we had to write 80 minutes of music in four weeks for a
documentary about, um,
55
00:05:06,456 --> 00:05:09,327
John Clark, I don't know if you remember John Clark.
56
00:05:10,028 --> 00:05:29,769
The iconic New Zealand Aussie or Aussie New Zealander who is a beloved, um he made many
great appearances on the ABC um and his daughter lovingly curated about 2000 hours of his
57
00:05:29,769 --> 00:05:36,052
footage down to um a condensed biopic or not a biopic, a biography.
58
00:05:36,110 --> 00:05:37,330
of her father.
59
00:05:37,330 --> 00:05:42,886
And so that was a lovely project to work on in 2025 as well.
60
00:05:42,964 --> 00:05:47,749
And that's the one that screened recently, because I literally watched that only in the
last two or three weeks.
61
00:05:47,749 --> 00:05:50,936
So I think they screened it again on the ABC and it was amazing.
62
00:05:50,936 --> 00:05:51,647
They did, yeah.
63
00:05:51,647 --> 00:05:59,234
It had a really good cinema run, very successful, which is great because documentaries
often don't go to cinema.
64
00:05:59,234 --> 00:06:00,445
They go straight to TV.
65
00:06:00,445 --> 00:06:02,557
But this one had a good cinema run.
66
00:06:02,738 --> 00:06:05,120
And I mean, it was universally acclaimed.
67
00:06:05,120 --> 00:06:06,321
mean, he's brilliant.
68
00:06:06,321 --> 00:06:09,944
And it was just a lot of music to churn through.
69
00:06:10,265 --> 00:06:14,129
But it was a labor of love and a great joy to not only work.
70
00:06:14,129 --> 00:06:15,882
ah
71
00:06:15,882 --> 00:06:28,141
on that film telling his story and being a part of his iconic journey, but also working
with my son in, you know, who's based in LA and we, have similar setups and we're very
72
00:06:28,141 --> 00:06:28,822
compatible.
73
00:06:28,822 --> 00:06:31,734
So yeah, pretty full year.
74
00:06:31,734 --> 00:06:34,578
Yeah, absolutely for a quiet year.
75
00:06:34,578 --> 00:06:37,742
So you've alluded to a few things we're definitely going to delve into there.
76
00:06:37,742 --> 00:06:45,402
So, but I thought we'll go back right to the start, just a decade or two ago, David, your
childhood and teenage years.
77
00:06:45,402 --> 00:06:48,576
what, what got you initially into music?
78
00:06:48,576 --> 00:06:50,688
What was your sort of musical upbringing?
79
00:06:51,250 --> 00:07:02,450
Um, well, I, I discovered piano at the age of four, um, at my grandma's house and my
grandma said to my parents, David really loves the piano.
80
00:07:02,450 --> 00:07:11,308
I'm going to give it to you because he, he's, he's played it more than anyone else has in
the last six months in the last weekend.
81
00:07:11,388 --> 00:07:16,673
And so that's how I've developed my love affair with piano and later keyboards.
82
00:07:16,673 --> 00:07:18,026
Um,
83
00:07:18,026 --> 00:07:25,470
I was classically trained and, um, but in the early, in my early teens, I did discover,
uh, rock and roll.
84
00:07:25,470 --> 00:07:34,174
And I think the first thing that blew my mind was Brian cad's incredible piano playing on,
uh, the real thing.
85
00:07:34,174 --> 00:07:37,355
He played piano on Russell Morris's, the real thing.
86
00:07:37,455 --> 00:07:43,168
And I listened to that and I thought, wow, I mean, that gave me as much chills as
listening to Beethoven.
87
00:07:43,310 --> 00:07:45,911
Um, but it had an incredible beat.
88
00:07:45,911 --> 00:07:48,592
so I went to the piano and played it by ear.
89
00:07:48,592 --> 00:07:52,133
And that's when I thought I've got to look more into this modern music.
90
00:07:52,233 --> 00:07:55,284
So I sort of straddled both camps for a while.
91
00:07:55,284 --> 00:07:59,390
was um still playing and loving classical music as I still do.
92
00:07:59,390 --> 00:08:00,875
I don't play it anymore.
93
00:08:00,875 --> 00:08:08,878
Um, but I was very much, uh, into rock and roll and my father bought me an organ and I
played.
94
00:08:09,240 --> 00:08:14,152
first thing I did is do what you're not supposed to do and put it through an amplifier and
distortion.
95
00:08:14,413 --> 00:08:18,825
And I discovered there's a whole world with electronics.
96
00:08:18,825 --> 00:08:26,259
then later I sold my clarinet to buy my first synthesizer, which is a Roland SH-5.
97
00:08:26,299 --> 00:08:29,041
So that's in a nutshell up to about the age of 18.
98
00:08:29,041 --> 00:08:31,592
And then I could keep going, but...
99
00:08:31,598 --> 00:08:36,178
And so that's great at age 18.
100
00:08:36,178 --> 00:08:42,898
what did you do formal training post 18 or you essentially moved straight into the
industry with the training you'd already had?
101
00:08:43,074 --> 00:08:47,196
Well, I was self, I am self-taught as a composer and as a keyboardist.
102
00:08:47,196 --> 00:09:00,943
um When I, when I say keyboardist, was a classically trained piano player and also learned
um classical harmony at, you know, sort of high school, advanced high school level.
103
00:09:01,224 --> 00:09:03,725
I don't know what the education system's like now.
104
00:09:03,725 --> 00:09:06,767
I did get into Melbourne university, the faculty of music.
105
00:09:06,767 --> 00:09:13,210
um And, uh but in the first year I was getting a lot of recording sessions.
106
00:09:14,639 --> 00:09:28,991
and, and gigs around town, uh, to the extent that I ended up deciding to defer my course
at the end of the first year to pursue a, um, a live performance career.
107
00:09:29,311 --> 00:09:42,254
And, um sadly in a way I never went back to uni, but at the time I've got to be honest,
there was no real, um, formal training available in the late seventies for, um,
108
00:09:42,254 --> 00:09:49,454
you know, music and film scoring, which I was always interested in film scoring actually
from a very early age.
109
00:09:49,454 --> 00:09:55,434
I used to love the big swords and sandals epic films and I loved the music.
110
00:09:55,434 --> 00:10:01,934
just thought the music made the films and I remember thinking when I was six year old,
that's what I want to do when I grow up.
111
00:10:01,934 --> 00:10:03,846
I want to make music like that.
112
00:10:03,948 --> 00:10:05,340
Yeah, great.
113
00:10:05,340 --> 00:10:09,215
And tell us about that lead up sort of from around age 18 to actually joining Pyramid.
114
00:10:09,215 --> 00:10:13,690
So what was the momentum that got you started in that project?
115
00:10:13,836 --> 00:10:26,553
Well, we'd have a lot of jam sessions with uh Melbourne younger musicians who are at, uh
musicians like Willie Ziggia, who's Deborah Conway's partner and musical director.
116
00:10:26,553 --> 00:10:40,461
He used to come along and I just was opened up to a whole world of improvising under the
tutelage of Tony Gould, who was my favourite aspect of learning music at Melbourne Uni.
117
00:10:40,461 --> 00:10:43,630
He took a jazz um
118
00:10:43,630 --> 00:10:46,230
Jazz Orchestra every Wednesday and that was my favorite.
119
00:10:46,230 --> 00:11:01,830
I went to that and I met Jeremy Allsop on bass and Des McEnner on drums and a bunch of
jazz musicians who eventually led me to David Jones, who's a phenomenal musician, a master
120
00:11:01,830 --> 00:11:02,970
percussionist.
121
00:11:02,970 --> 00:11:11,910
And he's the same age as me, we had similar interests and we ended up forming Pyramid
after...
122
00:11:12,184 --> 00:11:25,524
couple of years we settled on Roger McLaughlin on bass and Bobby Vinnia on flugelhorn
who's just an amazing spiritual guru slash musician.
123
00:11:25,524 --> 00:11:31,929
He really opened my mind to a lot of sort of metaphysical ideas both musical and
non-musical.
124
00:11:31,929 --> 00:11:38,834
He was a very deep guy and so he was a great mentor to have when I was a young musician
starting out.
125
00:11:39,214 --> 00:11:39,894
Absolutely.
126
00:11:39,894 --> 00:11:46,934
I mean, was this a, given your training and you obviously had a little bit of experience,
was this still a big step up for you?
127
00:11:46,934 --> 00:11:50,954
So just for the sake of our viewers and listeners, we'll be linking to some of the video
footage.
128
00:11:50,954 --> 00:11:58,934
And as you mentioned, David, like I was literally watching Roger McLaughlin's YouTube
channel last night with some of the amazing stuff from Montreux and we'll talk about that
129
00:11:58,934 --> 00:11:59,994
in a sec.
130
00:12:00,134 --> 00:12:09,238
But was this a step up for you being in an outfit of that level of accomplishment as far
as, I assume there was lots of practice involved, but yeah, tell us a little bit about.
131
00:12:09,238 --> 00:12:12,328
working that act up to being at Montreux in 83.
132
00:12:12,428 --> 00:12:13,098
Well, did.
133
00:12:13,098 --> 00:12:27,196
uh I, uh my first year of deferring from university, I um rented an apartment and hired a
grand piano and practiced like three or four hours every day.
134
00:12:27,196 --> 00:12:39,072
And I also did a lot of transcription of Herbie Hancock solos, George Benson solos,
Michael Brecker, a lot of, uh if I heard a solo on a recording that I liked, an
135
00:12:39,072 --> 00:12:42,370
improvisation, I, uh
136
00:12:42,370 --> 00:12:47,491
I just had to transcribe it and see what the hell they were playing and why I liked it so
much.
137
00:12:47,571 --> 00:12:53,833
And I think the one that blew my mind the most was Herbie Hancock's solo on actual proof.
138
00:12:53,833 --> 00:13:01,955
Just the, you know, the chords he used, they were polytonal, ah which I'd discovered
earlier when I listened to Stravinsky.
139
00:13:01,955 --> 00:13:11,328
I thought, wow, like there's a jazz contemporary funky uh musician who's using the same
chords as Stravinsky.
140
00:13:11,380 --> 00:13:16,892
And that's when I thought, wow, like there's, sort of removed all the barriers of music.
141
00:13:16,892 --> 00:13:21,484
And I went on my own journey of just studying what I liked.
142
00:13:21,484 --> 00:13:27,477
Like if I heard a classical piece, I could buy the score and listen to it and analyze it.
143
00:13:27,477 --> 00:13:32,158
In the case of jazz musicians, I transcribed them.
144
00:13:32,199 --> 00:13:36,130
And um so I sort of developed my own set of knowledge.
145
00:13:36,130 --> 00:13:40,376
And by the time I was 21, I stopped doing that and was just
146
00:13:40,376 --> 00:13:53,078
full time playing, I was playing two or three nights a week in a cover band playing Donny
Hathaway and George Benson and more sort of smooth listening music, which is very cool.
147
00:13:53,078 --> 00:14:02,546
And then on two or three nights a week, I was playing more adventurous avant-garde
improvised and also composed music with the band Pyramid.
148
00:14:02,870 --> 00:14:03,880
Yeah.
149
00:14:03,880 --> 00:14:06,133
you certainly had the chops built up there.
150
00:14:06,133 --> 00:14:08,055
As I said, we will link to the Montreux stuff.
151
00:14:08,055 --> 00:14:09,936
mean, what's your recollection of that?
152
00:14:09,936 --> 00:14:16,962
I mean, watching some of those videos, again, incredibly tight, incredibly interesting
music.
153
00:14:17,523 --> 00:14:21,026
Was that one of your first big international gigs?
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Yeah, we, when we, we got the invitation to play the Montreux Jazz Festival and I think we
had a manager at the time, Liz Holtham, who was, um, she was a huge fan of the band, very
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smart woman too.
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And, um, somehow got a connection with some of the Montreux Jazz Festival, sent them some
recordings of us playing live and also a recording we'd done in the studio.
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And they listened to it and they said, yes, we'd like you to come and play at the Montreux
Jazz Festival.
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So.
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That was a big buildup.
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And that was also the year I got married to my beloved.
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It was a huge lady, beautiful lady.
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I'm still with after 43 years.
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Um, so it was a huge, uh, time and, um, first big trip overseas, um, and to be performing
there was amazing.
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It was just a amazing experience.
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We, played one night.
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And then we were on very late because it went way over schedule and Claude knobs came out
and said look I'm gonna announce a special surprise where I'm inviting pyramid to perform
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again tomorrow night and we opened for Lonnie Liston Smith um On his show we did in one
hour set So what you see on YouTube is a combination of that performance and also the
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night before
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And look, we are a keyboard playing podcast, so I've got to ask you in those videos, your
rig looks incredible.
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It's a huge rig and I think we're going to be talking about rigs at different junctures of
your career, but just tell us about what you were packing then.
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I mean, I could, think I saw it was a Rhodes, he had a mini-mig, what was, what was sort
of your rig, if you can recall back then?
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I sure can.
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Now I had a, I had a Rhodes and I think it was, I have a 73 or an 88?
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I've had both.
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I think at that stage I was packing a 73.
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Um, and we'll go sort of the next, the first level, which is the pianos is there was a
Rhodes, there was a CP 70, um, which I opted for that.
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upgraded later that year to a CP 80, but that stage was a CP 70.
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Um, on top of the CP 70, I had a Korg.
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Poly 6, ah which I use mainly for art.
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It had a great arpeggiator in it and it was a really great instrument um to just quickly
call up a diversity of sounds.
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I had some very cool, unusual filtering inverse polarity stuff, the Prophet 5, which was
the other synth I had, did not have.
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So I had a Prophet 5 as well, which was hooked up to a sequence art.
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I know if you remember the old sequences they used to go hand in hand.
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This was pre-Mitty, by the way.
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Later in the year when I joined as a river band, I put MIDI on every keyboard I could.
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Under the Prophet 5, I had a really interesting keyboard, was kind of a Korg electric
piano, but you could sort of add strings to it.
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That's what I liked.
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And also it could sound harpsichord-like and clavinet.
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I replaced the clavinet, which I used to have.
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Sometimes I regretted that decision because a clarinet is such an awesome instrument.
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But this instrument could do the clarinet parts, but it was more harpsichord like, but it
was kind of interesting and quirky.
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And then you could sort of add strings to it instantly so you could get a wash of sounds
very quickly live.
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I think that's all I had.
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and I did have a drum machine as well.
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had a Korg drum machine that was all hooked up via the very ancient ASCII.
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connection, was sort of like a clock thing.
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I don't know how it all worked and I can't remember the exact detail.
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uh
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Yeah, that's amazing.
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Yeah, particularly pre-MIDI with drum machines, that's no easy feat.
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um And I know you, I think you were doing a lot of the covering of the bass lines with
your left hand too, while soloing with the right.
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So I mean, obviously that your upbringing um led to that, but I mean, that hand
independence, was that something you had to progress a lot further when you were with
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Pyramid or you pretty much had that down by that stage?
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Look, I had it down.
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I worked a lot of my left hand when I was uh wood shedding.
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I call it the wood shedding year, was 1977.
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And I was working at a nightclub, you know, six nights a week, getting good money.
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And then I'd have all day to practice.
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I mean, I'd sleep in till about 10 or 11, and then I'd practice all afternoon.
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Cause I mean, the nightclub era, this is back when nightclubs actually had live music.
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And then before.
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DJs came along.
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ah Still great love for DJs, no disrespect, but at that time there was a transition and we
would do, but anyway, my six months, 10 year at this nightclub, that was when I did
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probably the most practice in my life.
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And then I lost my license, which was a miracle.
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And I had to go back to Ballarat where I grew up.
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um And then I practiced even more.
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And I got a job in a local, a local Ballarat nightclub four nights a week, which again,
kept me sustained.
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And then when I got my license back, would drive back and forth and I was just so busy.
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So yeah, I bought a combi van so I could cart all my gear around.
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was just saying to a friend of mine the other day, gosh, I must've had a lot of energy and
strength when I was in my twenties, because I lived in an apartment in the eight, in 1980
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and it was upstairs and after a gig at 2 a.m.
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I'd have to carry the CP-70 and the Rhodes and all my synths.
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Um, at that stage, I think I had an ARP Quadra, which was not light.
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It was a nice big synth.
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That was before I got the Poly-6, which was a lot smaller, but the ARP Quadra was cool.
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Yeah.
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But I had a lot of, man, I had a lot of gear and it was all heavy.
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Keyboards were much heavier.
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So you, young, young guys and girls who playing keys now.
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No offense, but you got it much easier from a wage point of view.
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Absolutely, that's a major feat of strength doing that.
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um And just one last question about Pyramid, there key influences on you as a band?
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watching some of the music and obviously Jazz Fusion's incredibly diverse and whatever,
one of the ones that screamed out to me was Gentle Giant, but there are others, were there
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particular influences on you when you were in that band?
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Look, uh yes, the short answer is yes, there are huge influences.
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In fact, um the first, probably the biggest influence was Joe Zarbinal's weather report.
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Joe Zarbinal's approach to keyboards.
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I actually watched him perform live in Melbourne in 79.
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And I never got an Oberheim synthesizer or an ARP.
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ah
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2600, which were his keys.
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But I managed to get similar sounds and then develop my own sounds.
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But I was very much influenced by his approach to synthesis.
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He sort of used an orchestral approach, which I guess uh called me in later into
discovering my desire to be an orchestral or reconnect with my childhood dream to write
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music for large acoustic ensembles.
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uh
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But he was a magician and I saw him as a wizard who was able to conjure up the feeling of
an orchestra with some very cool analog synths.
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he had the Oberheim four voice and the, yeah, so I sort of, and his approach to the
Rhodes, specifically the way he used the MUTRON bi-phaser, which I had, I actually went
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and bought one as soon as I found it, that's what he used.
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I bought a Mutron Bi-phase, which sadly I didn't keep, but I loved what you could do with
it, the stereo, you know, making the synced stereo oscillators.
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So I had two speakers, one on the side of the stage and, you know, the Rose was just this
giant pad, you know, jumping from one speaker to the other, not with the, uh not with the
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tremolo that the Rose is famous for, but for the
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a stereo kind of wobble courtesy of the neutron biphase.
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So yeah, he was a big influence and also Herbie Hancock, his approach to keys and PIC,
particularly the way he approached voicings on the CPs 70 and 80 inspired me to, but that
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was a huge influence on me as well.
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So those two were probably the biggest influence and Chick Corea, mean, all the Miles
Davis.
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recordings, like Bitches Brew, what an incredible, yeah, all that stuff seeped into my
subconscious and came out as my own version of that music.
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Nah, absolutely.
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And I'm so thrilled to hear that some of it's been, you mentioned that you're sort of
curating and some, some releasing of some of the materials.
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can't wait to hear that.
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What was the sort of, uh, the segue from, from Pyramid and, and LRB.
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You've mentioned that.
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So, and obviously for, there'd be very few people around the world that listen to this and
majority of our listeners are in the UK and US.
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Um, they will have also heard of Little River Band.
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Just tell us a bit, little bit about the impetus for, for moving into that sphere.
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Well, Little River Band was an accidental move on my part.
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Not accidental, but it was pure random luck.
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In fact, most of the things that happened to me were sort of random.
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Luckily, I was up to the task when the plate was handed to me.
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But unbeknownst to me, um there was two members of the Little River Band which were huge
jazz fusion fans.
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And they would secretly sneak into pyramid gigs.
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And so they recommended me to uh Graham Goble, the main songwriter, who was keen on the
idea of having a, I guess, spicing up their sound a little bit and going a little bit
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more, you know, taking the, the direction a little bit more into an area of sophistication
or whatever, I don't know.
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But he called me out of the blue and I'd
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sort of barely, I recognised the name Graham Goble.
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He said, Graham Goble, and then it was a pause, I'm from the Little River Band.
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I thought, oh wow, okay.
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And he said, look, he invited me to play on a record.
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were about, well, actually they were recording it and they wanted a uh session player to
come and play keys as they often did on their recordings.
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Previously they had picked the great um Peter Jones, who is another mentor of mine,
fantastic musician.
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Melbourne, Melbourne based.
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so they, they, they want to give me a crack.
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And so I played on their record and then, uh, did a tour with them late in 83.
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And then they, during that tour, they asked me to become a full-time member.
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And I thought, well, this is great.
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And I mean, honestly, at the time I, wasn't the sort of music I was really chasing, but
what I did learn and admire in their work ethic was an intention to detail.
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They had so much, um, like the professionalism was just on a whole other level to what I'd
ever experienced with uh a massive crew.
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And I didn't have to worry about lugging keyboards anymore because there was someone to
not only cart them in for me, but to set them all up and do you like it this way and how
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do you want it?
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And, and then make suggestions.
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You know, if you set them up this way, we can do this.
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And, um, and suddenly it was like, wow.
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It was hard to go back after that.
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that experience after being spoiled with a professional crew, know, technicians.
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And yeah, was, and look, they are fantastic musicians.
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They are really, I learned a lot from them.
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I learned a lot about stagecraft.
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John Farnham was their lead singer at the time.
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So I also learned a lot about how to communicate with an audience and what presses
audiences' buttons.
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And I think that informed me a lot about.
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the storytelling and music, which I knew innately, but to be involved in music on that
level and to see how the songs connect with the crowd and how the performers connect with
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the audience, ah it was uh a great eye-opener for me.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I think I've heard of that Farnham guy.
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might talk about him later if we get time, but it's, so you re you went on to record three
albums with LRB and you co-wrote a number of the songs, which are amazing.
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Um, so what were your recollections of both those early recording processes, particularly
as a co-writer and those early gigs again, I mean, you'd already been at a high level
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with, with Pyramid, but with the particular things you've already talked about stagecraft,
but anything else that you recall?
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Well, I also, guess, um, having a regular income, which was a new thing for a freelance
musician, being part of a band, was more solvent financially and, um, you know, enabled me
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to take more risks and invest more money in equipment.
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Um, I bought a Fairlight, uh, during that time.
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And in fact, I bought that, just
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pride of the playing to win album, LRB playing to win album.
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so I delved as deeply as I could into that, not as deep as you can.
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That was a very deep instrument, but I basically used the sequencer part of it rather than
the, there's a section where it's like code, you write code into the computer and it
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generates things.
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I didn't go that deeply, I'll be honest, but I
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I could relate to page R, which was a fantastic sequence of page and the light pen and you
could sort of pop notes in using the light pen, was, you know, we're talking before the
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days of computer mice.
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um And I sort of, and then also you could uh finesse your waveforms with Fourier analysis.
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did get into that and uh
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Sort of, I did merge sounds like one of my favorite noises I got in the, on the playing to
win uh sequence was a combination of woodblock and clavinet.
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And by merging those two wave forms together, which was slightly different to sort of
doubling them.
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was sort of like you could really mix and sort of then mess with the sound a little bit.
325
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It created a very interesting tone.
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so yeah, that was a big.
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eye-opener for me, that instrument, and then using that in a pop sense.
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And of course, even though I was a pop band, they gave me license to be quite, you know,
within the harmonic framework of their songs, they gave me lot of encouragement to be, uh
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you know, quite experimental with the sound of what I did.
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So within that genre.
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So I enjoyed a lot of the discipline and the creativity involved in that.
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Yeah.
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And I've got to ask about the Fairlight, David, back at the time when you bought that, I'm
guessing, and I think our listeners and viewers will be aware that the Fairlight was an
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Australian initiated instrument.
335
00:29:57,429 --> 00:29:59,230
So it was, was created in Australia.
336
00:29:59,230 --> 00:30:02,733
Um, how many people do you think in Australia they will own them?
337
00:30:02,733 --> 00:30:04,182
Cause they were pricey.
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they,
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Yeah.
340
00:30:05,946 --> 00:30:06,306
Yeah.
341
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It was, when I bought it back then, it was $35,000 back in 1984, which was, you know, I
think I did the math once and it's like, it's like the equivalent of paying $150,000 now
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for one instrument.
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And, um, you know, I'm lucky I had a very, I have a very supportive partner who we'd saved
up money for a deposit for a house and she.
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You know, look, it worked out well in the end, but she took the leap of faith with me.
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said, I said, look, I really like his instrument.
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I don't think see how we can afford it.
347
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And she said, you know what?
348
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I have a feeling it's going to be a good eye.
349
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And so there she was the earth mother of intuition sort of, uh, could tell that it was
going to somehow pay us back at some point, which it did, you know, mean, LRB and then it
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went on to use it.
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with Whispering Jack, John Farnham's record.
352
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And, you know, so it really did earn its keep.
353
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but sadly, funnily enough, I didn't buy it outright.
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I bought it on lease.
355
00:31:18,638 --> 00:31:23,618
So at the end of the period, I owed $14,000 on it.
356
00:31:23,618 --> 00:31:26,184
And, you know.
357
00:31:26,184 --> 00:31:29,997
Uh, I only had 12 and I, uh, could only sell it for 12,000.
358
00:31:29,997 --> 00:31:33,861
So I had, I had to let it go, but I'll tell you why I let it go.
359
00:31:33,861 --> 00:31:46,951
Because by the time the lease was up, I'd already replaced it touring with an Akai
sampler, which I sort of transferred all the samples over that I needed and thought it was
360
00:31:46,951 --> 00:31:48,062
time to let it go.
361
00:31:48,062 --> 00:31:53,667
And I sometimes regret that because there's definitely something special about that.
362
00:31:53,667 --> 00:31:55,050
But as you know,
363
00:31:55,050 --> 00:32:01,282
As everyone knows, that was the start of an incredible explosion in keyboard technology.
364
00:32:02,486 --> 00:32:05,649
It'd interesting in an Australian context how many of you had them.
365
00:32:05,649 --> 00:32:06,420
I can think of two.
366
00:32:06,420 --> 00:32:12,796
know Iver Davies had one and I know you had one and they might've been lucky to have been
a handful of others, I'm guessing, but yeah, amazing instrument.
367
00:32:12,796 --> 00:32:20,433
um And so uh the other thing I do have to talk while we're still in LRB land, you've
mentioned Playing To Win.
368
00:32:20,433 --> 00:32:21,384
It's an iconic song.
369
00:32:21,384 --> 00:32:27,330
Ironically, I'm literally spending the next week learning that song for my weekend worry
cover band.
370
00:32:27,528 --> 00:32:28,809
And it's not easy.
371
00:32:28,809 --> 00:32:32,142
I'm sure it is to you, but it's certainly not to me.
372
00:32:32,142 --> 00:32:33,160
Just tell us a little bit.
373
00:32:33,160 --> 00:32:41,288
mean, you've already mentioned about the sound, which is fascinating how you combined the
sounds, but yeah, just tell us about the recording process on that track and the amazing
374
00:32:41,288 --> 00:32:43,950
playing in that and what you use.
375
00:32:43,980 --> 00:32:53,612
As I said, the Fairlight was one component, and probably the main component of it, but I
also had some brass stabs.
376
00:32:53,853 --> 00:32:58,974
So the Fairlight is an eight voice, they're eight monophonic voices.
377
00:32:58,974 --> 00:33:03,375
So in a way, if you want chords, and that was the core of the sequencer.
378
00:33:03,375 --> 00:33:11,418
em But I was also doubling it with Prophet 5 for some brass stabs.
379
00:33:11,418 --> 00:33:13,336
um
380
00:33:13,336 --> 00:33:19,888
Then there was also a uh monophonic glock at the top, which I just mixed in a little bit.
381
00:33:19,888 --> 00:33:20,858
Uh, you know, don't know.
382
00:33:20,858 --> 00:33:28,450
It's hard to sing the part where it goes, the low notes were just very low.
383
00:33:29,570 --> 00:33:35,932
Like, and the good thing about the Fairlight is it was sort of eight bit and grungy.
384
00:33:35,932 --> 00:33:37,953
So it sounded interesting.
385
00:33:37,953 --> 00:33:43,424
So when you played the notes low, they weren't, they were just.
386
00:33:43,444 --> 00:33:49,719
a robotically low version of the samples that was up there, but it sounded interesting.
387
00:33:49,780 --> 00:33:51,732
And it was a matter of capitalizing.
388
00:33:51,732 --> 00:33:58,748
You're not trying to mimic acoustics instruments or acoustical properties at all.
389
00:33:58,748 --> 00:34:04,113
You were using something that started out as acoustic and it's been messed up by 8-bit.
390
00:34:04,113 --> 00:34:07,746
Yeah, it's hard to describe, but yeah, I had a lot going on.
391
00:34:07,746 --> 00:34:09,297
In fact, the...
392
00:34:09,932 --> 00:34:19,421
Spencer Proffer, the producer here, come in while I was working on it, in my, I had my
keyboard rig set up and he'd just look and say, I have no idea what you're doing in here,
393
00:34:19,421 --> 00:34:28,479
but just use, utilize my engineers and staff to, and they'll bring you whatever you need
and, and, and they'll help you record it.
394
00:34:28,479 --> 00:34:35,165
then, uh so I recorded all this stuff first and then the band overdubbed to the Fairlight
on that track.
395
00:34:35,446 --> 00:34:37,227
So anyway, incredible song.
396
00:34:37,227 --> 00:34:40,678
I think most people listening or watching this are absolutely aware of it.
397
00:34:40,678 --> 00:34:41,468
So no, thank you.
398
00:34:41,468 --> 00:34:46,129
And I can assure you, I'm doing a dumbed down version of your playing for my band.
399
00:34:46,369 --> 00:34:48,530
It's just amazing song.
400
00:34:48,530 --> 00:34:55,312
so um obviously LRB, I said, you did three albums, did a lot of live performance with them
as well.
401
00:34:55,312 --> 00:35:02,924
Now there's an obvious link there as far as the move into John Farnham's band, but what
was sort of the broader impetus for that occurring as well?
402
00:35:03,276 --> 00:35:10,800
Well, John Farnham, okay, so here's a little bit of a, you know, a slightly sad story.
403
00:35:10,800 --> 00:35:23,707
Little River Band was a fantastic musical experience, but in the end, didn't, it struggled
to connect with its audience in America with another lead singer other than Glenn
404
00:35:23,707 --> 00:35:24,677
Shorrock.
405
00:35:24,898 --> 00:35:32,682
And so we were all a bit disheartened because, you know, we, and the band, know, Graham
and...
406
00:35:32,984 --> 00:35:41,286
Graham and Wayne, the remaining, and Steve, Housden, they just felt it was the best
version of the band that they'd had.
407
00:35:41,286 --> 00:35:48,478
But that doesn't always translate to, um you know, and it's nothing to do with the new
personnel.
408
00:35:48,478 --> 00:35:57,781
It's just the fact that the bands changed and taken a bit of a, you know, in some ways we
sounded sometimes more like yes than we did Little River Band.
409
00:35:57,781 --> 00:36:02,592
It was quite a high tech progressive sound which didn't, I guess, sit
410
00:36:03,630 --> 00:36:07,051
comfortably with a lot of LRB fans, which is fair enough.
411
00:36:07,051 --> 00:36:08,111
It's just what it is.
412
00:36:08,111 --> 00:36:11,052
It's not a complaint or it's just an observation.
413
00:36:11,352 --> 00:36:14,793
And um so in the end, we decided we gave it one more go.
414
00:36:14,793 --> 00:36:20,695
We did an album called Now Rains, but um that just didn't connect with anyone at all.
415
00:36:20,695 --> 00:36:28,917
And I think we decided shortly afterward, finished recording that album to go our separate
ways.
416
00:36:29,277 --> 00:36:33,918
And John said to me in the car on the way home from that meeting,
417
00:36:34,338 --> 00:36:36,849
He said, look, I want to do a solo album.
418
00:36:36,849 --> 00:36:37,689
I've got ideas.
419
00:36:37,689 --> 00:36:39,759
I really want to make the music I want to make.
420
00:36:39,759 --> 00:36:43,640
um I'm 37 years old and this is my last chance.
421
00:36:43,801 --> 00:36:46,361
I really want to reinvent myself.
422
00:36:46,541 --> 00:36:48,160
Are you up for being part of that?
423
00:36:48,160 --> 00:36:49,622
And I said, mate, I'd love to.
424
00:36:49,622 --> 00:36:52,743
I mean, I just love the guy and he's incredible singer.
425
00:36:52,743 --> 00:36:56,644
And I really thought that would be a lot of fun.
426
00:36:56,644 --> 00:36:57,804
And it was.
427
00:36:58,064 --> 00:37:04,506
we just, so I set up my entire Regan in his studio, in his basement of his, house.
428
00:37:06,035 --> 00:37:16,083
and, and he was renting the house at the time because, know, with LRB ended up being in
financial strife and we didn't really, uh, you know, it was a financial strain on all of
429
00:37:16,083 --> 00:37:18,985
us and I was renting and he was renting at the time.
430
00:37:18,985 --> 00:37:29,624
And so, uh, I just set up in there and we mucked around for two or three months and ended
up making whispering Jack, uh, the bones of it.
431
00:37:29,624 --> 00:37:32,937
And of course, once we'd, I'd sequenced it all up.
432
00:37:32,937 --> 00:37:34,970
had, you know, two.
433
00:37:34,970 --> 00:37:37,511
I had a QX1 sequencer, had the Fairlight.
434
00:37:37,511 --> 00:37:52,149
um Ross, the producer, brought along an SP-12 drum machine, which we hooked up to that and
head sampled a whole lot of interesting pseudo drum sounds like slamming porch doors and
435
00:37:52,149 --> 00:37:53,000
things like that.
436
00:37:53,000 --> 00:38:01,835
um Not that any of us had a porch at the time, but I think it was Glenn Wheatley's Porsche
actually.
437
00:38:01,835 --> 00:38:04,460
So we sort of made all this
438
00:38:04,460 --> 00:38:09,490
We made this record up and had no idea that it was going to be as big as it
439
00:38:09,984 --> 00:38:14,688
And look, so I'm going to set this up for our viewers and listeners that aren't aware,
although there won't be many of them.
440
00:38:14,688 --> 00:38:20,824
So in an Australian context, there's no doubt John Farnham and the band at the time too
were absolutely revered.
441
00:38:20,824 --> 00:38:28,851
I'm talking for our US listeners, I'm talking Springsteen level for UK, either a whole
range of artists I would equate to as well.
442
00:38:28,851 --> 00:38:34,006
um So, but in an international context, obviously John Farnham is revered as a singer.
443
00:38:34,006 --> 00:38:36,297
He's considered a singer's singer.
444
00:38:36,682 --> 00:38:44,186
And there's a long list of international singers that cite him as an, you know, either as
an influencer or as an amazing inspiration.
445
00:38:44,287 --> 00:38:49,070
So that's just a long winded way of saying this was an amazing period, David.
446
00:38:49,070 --> 00:38:54,253
And you said mucking around in the basement coming up with, um whispering Jack.
447
00:38:54,253 --> 00:38:58,686
So, I mean, the line of notes famously credit Jack as playing keyboard drums.
448
00:38:58,686 --> 00:39:00,607
You've already talked about the Fairlight CMI.
449
00:39:00,607 --> 00:39:02,926
So that was obviously a key part.
450
00:39:02,926 --> 00:39:10,310
I think you've already mentioned you use PageR to do a lot of that, but just tell us about
the programming side and how you set up a lot of that.
451
00:39:10,626 --> 00:39:18,731
Well, I had page R at that stage that the Fairlight was by then was MIDI retrofitted.
452
00:39:18,971 --> 00:39:29,417
So um in fact, ah I had two QX1 sequences, one to drive the Fairlight because we just felt
that it was easier to have.
453
00:39:29,417 --> 00:39:37,702
um I came up with the ideas on page R, but in the end I
454
00:39:37,966 --> 00:39:41,326
transferred the parts to a QX1 for live.
455
00:39:41,766 --> 00:39:52,626
But so when we made the record, we had one QX1, which was hooked up to a bank of eight
DX7s, the TX816.
456
00:39:52,866 --> 00:40:00,726
I fell in love with a DX7 in the, while I was with Little River Band in 1984.
457
00:40:02,446 --> 00:40:05,478
yeah, later, 83, I bought a DX7.
458
00:40:06,482 --> 00:40:17,368
And I actually use it not only for its signature bell sounds and the FM sounds you
normally associate with that, but also it had some amazing string textures, which were
459
00:40:17,368 --> 00:40:20,650
really complex, which I used on Whispering Jack.
460
00:40:20,650 --> 00:40:26,943
It also had some incredible uh synth warbly effects, which you don't normally think of.
461
00:40:26,943 --> 00:40:31,976
You normally think of those as a warmer analog synth uh sound.
462
00:40:31,976 --> 00:40:35,240
And I was able to experiment and get a lot of
463
00:40:35,240 --> 00:40:38,231
really useful sounds out of the DX7.
464
00:40:38,231 --> 00:40:50,596
I loved it so much I ended up buying a rack of eight of them and hooking it up to the
sequencer so that I could have multi layers of DX7s, which is really, that's the sound of
465
00:40:50,596 --> 00:40:51,316
Whispering Jack.
466
00:40:51,316 --> 00:41:05,112
It's all DX7s and Fairlight and a Prophet 5 for some added punch here and there and some
analog want and the drum machine.
467
00:41:05,112 --> 00:41:06,783
The SP 12.
468
00:41:06,783 --> 00:41:10,646
So that we had them all hooked up midi clock.
469
00:41:10,646 --> 00:41:20,052
So once you started it, you sort of, or yeah, you could stop and it knew where it was up
to they to the bar.
470
00:41:20,052 --> 00:41:22,654
They were all sort of locked to a bar position.
471
00:41:22,654 --> 00:41:30,719
So if you started at say bar 35, um, everyone would jump to that somehow.
472
00:41:30,759 --> 00:41:31,810
that how it worked?
473
00:41:31,810 --> 00:41:35,042
did I have to, I don't know how we.
474
00:41:35,062 --> 00:41:47,831
I have a feeling we had to sort of, um, you know, it's, it's really stretching my memory
now because of course, you know, late in the, in the early nineties, by then I was using
475
00:41:47,831 --> 00:41:52,534
SIMPTY code where everything just locked to a timeline.
476
00:41:52,534 --> 00:41:53,995
But this was prior to that.
477
00:41:53,995 --> 00:42:01,880
This was when I, you know, using it as a, and I was just making this up as I went, was
just reading the manuals and saying, how the hell does this work?
478
00:42:02,121 --> 00:42:04,374
And, um, so.
479
00:42:04,374 --> 00:42:10,196
Somehow we got it all to work and then we overdubbed to the sequences that were generated.
480
00:42:10,196 --> 00:42:21,059
We overdubbed additional, I played a lot of additional keyboard parts in the studio, ah
gave it another layer and then we added a lot of guitars as well.
481
00:42:21,059 --> 00:42:28,241
And John, we discovered this young player, Brett Garcett, who's phenomenal player.
482
00:42:28,301 --> 00:42:31,722
so he played guitar, Roger McLaughlin.
483
00:42:32,054 --> 00:42:35,756
My colleague from Pyramid, played fretless bass.
484
00:42:36,197 --> 00:42:48,656
So there was a few overdubs, but essentially, yeah, it was a techno driven, was an amalgam
of uh a contemporary sort of post industrial, uh, techno pop sound.
485
00:42:48,656 --> 00:42:59,512
Uh, when I say techno, no high tech, high tech pop, um, with a sort of an orchestral
overview, I guess, bringing back.
486
00:42:59,512 --> 00:43:03,163
drawing in from my Joe Zarwin training in the early eighties.
487
00:43:03,163 --> 00:43:17,069
um And uh we were just having fun making the music that we liked making, choosing the best
songs that were thrown at us, writing a couple of songs ourselves to make it up to a 10
488
00:43:17,069 --> 00:43:18,410
track album.
489
00:43:18,808 --> 00:43:20,119
And which is amazing.
490
00:43:20,119 --> 00:43:22,790
No, no, that's not too much at all.
491
00:43:22,790 --> 00:43:27,954
And yes, I know you have a co-writing present with going, gone on that album as well.
492
00:43:27,954 --> 00:43:36,699
So I'm struggling to recall the sequence, but at that stage when you were recording, did
you have a record company on board or you actually pitched the album to a record company?
493
00:43:36,699 --> 00:43:38,946
I can't remember the sequence of this.
494
00:43:38,946 --> 00:43:42,058
Well, how that record came out was really amazing.
495
00:43:42,058 --> 00:43:49,433
John at this stage was considered a sort of a washed up singer, ah sadly.
496
00:43:49,433 --> 00:43:55,216
you know, that's unfortunately there it's a harsh industry and you can easily fall into
the wrong category.
497
00:43:55,216 --> 00:44:03,162
um So the only person who believed in him really was his manager, Glenn Wheatley is also a
good friend.
498
00:44:03,162 --> 00:44:08,706
And he always believed in John's talent and just had a strong feeling that
499
00:44:08,706 --> 00:44:10,376
This has to work.
500
00:44:10,376 --> 00:44:15,348
You know, you can't have a singer that good and an album this good.
501
00:44:15,348 --> 00:44:21,640
ah It's worth taking a huge punt on, which he did.
502
00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:27,351
Glenn Wheatley actually put a lot of money into this and funded it.
503
00:44:27,351 --> 00:44:34,213
It cost over a hundred thousand dollars to record in the studio, which was a big gamble on
his part.
504
00:44:34,213 --> 00:44:36,684
And then he had to probably pay that again.
505
00:44:36,842 --> 00:44:41,085
on promotion and, uh he formed his own record company.
506
00:44:41,165 --> 00:44:47,830
I think he had, he might've already just formed it and it was licensed through BMG, but he
was the label.
507
00:44:47,830 --> 00:44:53,234
So he took all the, all the financial risk and BMG agreed to distribute it.
508
00:44:53,234 --> 00:44:58,538
ah So it was Wheatley records distributed through BMG.
509
00:44:59,054 --> 00:44:59,954
Just amazing.
510
00:44:59,954 --> 00:45:00,795
Yeah.
511
00:45:00,795 --> 00:45:03,736
And just a couple more questions on the recording of that album, if you don't mind David.
512
00:45:03,736 --> 00:45:09,558
So obviously it doesn't get any bigger as far as the song than your voice in the bag,
pipe, solo.
513
00:45:09,558 --> 00:45:11,559
So did you sample a real Piper?
514
00:45:11,559 --> 00:45:16,341
I can't actually recall the story around this either, or you were using the Fairlight.
515
00:45:16,341 --> 00:45:18,690
How did you sort of approach that in the recording?
516
00:45:18,690 --> 00:45:31,501
Well, in the recording, uh we were actually in the studio and we'd tracked all the keys
that were pre-produced in the garage.
517
00:45:31,501 --> 00:45:34,344
then John wasn't satisfied.
518
00:45:34,344 --> 00:45:45,073
And I'd sort of use these samples and mixed with synths of uh pan pipes and flutes, no
bagpipes.
519
00:45:45,073 --> 00:45:47,014
um
520
00:45:47,382 --> 00:45:48,703
And it didn't change key.
521
00:45:48,703 --> 00:45:52,506
didn't change from the F to the B flat, which it had to.
522
00:45:52,506 --> 00:45:56,348
So John said, I think it really needs bagpipes.
523
00:45:56,509 --> 00:45:58,340
And we thought, what the hell?
524
00:45:58,340 --> 00:46:00,231
Okay.
525
00:46:00,231 --> 00:46:02,513
Um, we gave it a go.
526
00:46:02,513 --> 00:46:05,595
Um, I went to the bagpipe.
527
00:46:05,595 --> 00:46:08,557
We found the best bagpipe expert in Melbourne.
528
00:46:08,557 --> 00:46:14,041
I went to his house and he said, well, for a start bagpipes only play in B flat.
529
00:46:14,041 --> 00:46:15,802
So you're going to have to.
530
00:46:16,064 --> 00:46:24,799
Either very speed the tape, which will make the bagpipe sound weird, or you'll have to
change the key.
531
00:46:24,799 --> 00:46:34,215
So I had to go back and redo just that section, which was the solo, which was, I had to
move that from F up to B flat.
532
00:46:34,215 --> 00:46:42,648
But ironically, moving it to B flat was already preparing it for the, the bridge to the,
uh
533
00:46:42,648 --> 00:46:46,600
the chorus, we're all someone's daughters, we're all someone's sons, that's in B flat.
534
00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:58,086
So having the chorus, having the solo, if you like, the instrumental in B flat was a nice
lift from the end of the chorus to the instrumental and it set it up beautifully.
535
00:46:58,086 --> 00:47:01,227
And it actually made the song sound better.
536
00:47:01,307 --> 00:47:04,649
That so-called limitation of the bagpipes.
537
00:47:04,649 --> 00:47:06,910
um, yeah, it was.
538
00:47:07,274 --> 00:47:10,967
So we recorded four bagpipes players four times.
539
00:47:10,967 --> 00:47:14,920
So we had the sound of 16 real bagpipes.
540
00:47:14,981 --> 00:47:23,307
And then to do that live, actually a friend of mine, Steve Lincoln Smith from Yamaha, was
turned out he's a bagpipe player.
541
00:47:23,307 --> 00:47:33,456
And so he allowed me to sample him his bagpipe notes individually so I could play them
live on a sampler.
542
00:47:33,456 --> 00:47:36,212
uh
543
00:47:36,212 --> 00:47:37,465
Amazing.
544
00:47:38,520 --> 00:47:47,276
By then I'd learned all the little ornaments and everything that bagpipes play because
they play all these little tiny notes in between the notes.
545
00:47:47,276 --> 00:47:59,954
uh They've got Gaelic terms, but they're sort of ornaments that enable them to put
separation and reattacking of the notes because a bagpipe is just, it just starts and
546
00:47:59,954 --> 00:48:00,355
stops.
547
00:48:00,355 --> 00:48:03,927
There's no, you can't tongue with your tongue or anything.
548
00:48:03,927 --> 00:48:08,450
It's all just, you have to attack the note by putting grace notes.
549
00:48:08,498 --> 00:48:12,884
and ornaments between the notes of a melody.
550
00:48:12,985 --> 00:48:17,331
And so I learned this whole, I had this crash course in how bagpipes work.
551
00:48:17,332 --> 00:48:21,578
So I was able to then reverse engineer that and play it live.
552
00:48:22,260 --> 00:48:23,072
That's amazing.
553
00:48:23,072 --> 00:48:27,011
And just as a brief segue, did that ever pay off in your later film scoring career?
554
00:48:27,011 --> 00:48:29,497
Have you ever needed to use bagpipes in any of your scores?
555
00:48:29,497 --> 00:48:30,816
I'm just trying to recall.
556
00:48:30,816 --> 00:48:32,627
I haven't, I've never used it.
557
00:48:32,627 --> 00:48:41,849
And I've wanted to, actually um I ended up using samples of an Ilyin pipe, which is a
different sound altogether.
558
00:48:42,190 --> 00:48:49,412
But they, I've used samples of those, but I've never worked with a live, sadly, and I'm
not proud of it.
559
00:48:49,412 --> 00:48:51,563
I've never used a live one again.
560
00:48:51,563 --> 00:48:54,554
It's such an amazing sound.
561
00:48:54,554 --> 00:48:55,992
um
562
00:48:55,992 --> 00:48:56,683
Yeah.
563
00:48:56,683 --> 00:48:57,563
I love it.
564
00:48:57,563 --> 00:49:00,736
And obviously the albums record, I'm going to jump forward a little bit here.
565
00:49:00,736 --> 00:49:04,509
You're then out on tour touring it and it was an incredible tour.
566
00:49:04,509 --> 00:49:08,422
How did you replicate such a densely produced studio album live?
567
00:49:08,422 --> 00:49:09,483
So what was your touring rig?
568
00:49:09,483 --> 00:49:13,727
I think you've already talked about sort of a bit of the mapping you needed to do, but
just how did you approach it?
569
00:49:13,727 --> 00:49:15,878
Cause that's no mean feat on its own.
570
00:49:16,238 --> 00:49:19,060
Yeah, well, um, I think it was for the live tour.
571
00:49:19,060 --> 00:49:25,244
I, that was when I did away with the, the, the Fairlight was too cumbersome to carry
around.
572
00:49:25,264 --> 00:49:38,333
And when I realized when someone said to me, if you get a, um, an Akai, um, S 1000, you'll
be able to have, you know, about four Fairlights worth of sounds in there.
573
00:49:38,333 --> 00:49:44,007
Well, no, in fact, I had every single, we didn't have to change discs to load, load up
different.
574
00:49:44,007 --> 00:49:46,274
The Fairlight had such limited memory, but.
575
00:49:46,274 --> 00:49:53,180
The AQUI S1000 could have everything all sitting there ready to go, just as programs that
would be called up.
576
00:49:53,180 --> 00:50:02,848
So, and it was, you know, it's just sort of that big, as opposed to a massive mainframe
and and a screen.
577
00:50:02,848 --> 00:50:06,050
So, um, I needed to drive it with something.
578
00:50:06,050 --> 00:50:10,875
Well, there was an eight note sequencer, the QX1.
579
00:50:10,875 --> 00:50:15,138
So I got a second QX1, had them sync, had the two QX1 synced.
580
00:50:15,898 --> 00:50:23,114
And, um, and, and so literally a lot of the pre-programmed keyboard parts were happening.
581
00:50:23,114 --> 00:50:32,762
So there was literally probably about, you know, half a dozen of me on stage playing from
the, from the pre-recorded stuff.
582
00:50:32,762 --> 00:50:33,833
So yeah.
583
00:50:33,994 --> 00:50:40,559
And, and I had to develop these, click track scenarios instead of using a click track.
584
00:50:40,959 --> 00:50:44,462
We actually actually made percussion parts.
585
00:50:45,688 --> 00:50:51,971
that sounded like they were part of the band and it didn't matter if there was a bit of
bleed from that.
586
00:50:51,971 --> 00:50:55,342
Because this is all in the days before in-ear monitors.
587
00:50:55,702 --> 00:51:00,564
So this was the day when no one wore headphones or in-ear monitors.
588
00:51:00,564 --> 00:51:08,887
So um you just had to have, if you had a bit of spill, you had to make sure it sounded
musical enough to blend in with the.
589
00:51:09,688 --> 00:51:12,109
So that's how we did that.
590
00:51:12,109 --> 00:51:13,510
And that worked quite well.
591
00:51:13,510 --> 00:51:14,714
um
592
00:51:14,714 --> 00:51:24,320
The drummer liked it because he had this specific percussion part to, to lay in, to work
with without having just a click, click, click going.
593
00:51:24,320 --> 00:51:28,008
And so Angus was just working with that coming through the monitors essentially.
594
00:51:28,008 --> 00:51:28,430
Yeah.
595
00:51:28,430 --> 00:51:31,530
And that's what we did with Little River Band too.
596
00:51:31,530 --> 00:51:34,550
Steve Preswich, phenomenal drummer, Colt Gisles drummer.
597
00:51:34,550 --> 00:51:39,130
Can't believe we managed to get him when Derek Palicci left.
598
00:51:39,310 --> 00:51:48,310
Steve was a beautiful guy, wonderful human being, a rock solid drummer, great R &B drummer
and an amazing songwriter too.
599
00:51:48,310 --> 00:51:52,890
He actually ended up writing a couple of songs that LRB recorded.
600
00:51:53,030 --> 00:51:55,430
Anyway, he was very happy with that.
601
00:51:55,430 --> 00:51:57,230
I developed that technique.
602
00:51:57,230 --> 00:51:58,851
during Little River Band.
603
00:51:58,851 --> 00:52:03,913
had it pretty finely honed by the time we toured with John Farnham, that was the way we
did it.
604
00:52:03,913 --> 00:52:16,598
uh so, you know, it was, it meant that some, could, I could even at sound checks just walk
away from the keyboard sometimes and, put it, you know, use the, I had an extension cord
605
00:52:16,598 --> 00:52:24,061
on the KX5 keytar and I could walk out the front and have a listen to what the band sounds
like.
606
00:52:24,070 --> 00:52:25,930
It was pretty, pretty nice.
607
00:52:25,930 --> 00:52:26,551
It was.
608
00:52:26,551 --> 00:52:32,125
And look, I do need to ask about the live and there's an amazing visual record of this.
609
00:52:32,125 --> 00:52:37,830
And it's something that I recorded off the TV and played to death on my VCR, which was the
classic Jack release.
610
00:52:37,830 --> 00:52:41,523
And obviously that was filmed in Melbourne with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
611
00:52:41,523 --> 00:52:43,824
And so I do have to ask you about that.
612
00:52:43,865 --> 00:52:53,322
A couple of questions around that was um what was first was your recollection of the
filming and because that was a big production piece, came across briefly, but I imagine
613
00:52:53,322 --> 00:52:55,794
there was a lot of preparation involved in that.
614
00:52:55,810 --> 00:52:57,111
Yeah, there was.
615
00:52:57,111 --> 00:53:05,659
And actually I think a lot of the shots, it was shot over, I'm pretty sure over two
nights, but one of the nights I came down with a flu.
616
00:53:05,659 --> 00:53:07,239
I was so sick.
617
00:53:07,600 --> 00:53:14,666
And so they just doped me up with pseudoephedrine and I felt amazing, but I was still
pretty out of it.
618
00:53:14,666 --> 00:53:17,949
Um, I don't know how I got through that to be honest.
619
00:53:17,949 --> 00:53:24,254
I guess when you're in your twenties, you have superhuman powers that you don't have when
you're older.
620
00:53:24,482 --> 00:53:29,925
But I got through it and yeah, the camera work, it was all set up.
621
00:53:29,925 --> 00:53:32,747
then the show was so finely honed.
622
00:53:32,747 --> 00:53:34,467
We'd done a lot of shows.
623
00:53:34,548 --> 00:53:41,011
And so it was decided we need to uh audio, a visual document of this and record it.
624
00:53:41,011 --> 00:53:45,994
So they made the special for Channel 7 or whatever, one of the TV shows.
625
00:53:46,104 --> 00:53:48,135
Which is absolutely amazing.
626
00:53:48,135 --> 00:53:51,337
And I'm saying this now, we're two thirds of the way through the interview.
627
00:53:51,337 --> 00:53:59,381
So, you know, I'm not doing this to be charming to try and convince you to stay, there are
very few exceptions of people that can get away with playing a keytar and you're
628
00:53:59,381 --> 00:54:00,212
definitely one of them.
629
00:54:00,212 --> 00:54:05,554
So you were dressed amazing, looked amazing and killed it on the keytar.
630
00:54:05,554 --> 00:54:06,965
that's number one.
631
00:54:07,145 --> 00:54:16,230
Number two, what's fascinated me doing both research for this interview, but just over the
last six months anyway, I'm not sure you're aware over the last
632
00:54:16,652 --> 00:54:26,929
two years, there are at least a dozen reaction videos from different singing teachers in
the US, UK, you name it, on a bunch of those songs from that night.
633
00:54:26,929 --> 00:54:32,604
So obviously that's about John's voice, but I mean, you're the voice help and long way to
the top.
634
00:54:32,604 --> 00:54:42,701
If you look on YouTube, there are at least a dozen reaction videos for every single one of
them where people now to this day having their minds blown by the performance of the band
635
00:54:42,701 --> 00:54:44,622
and obviously John's voice.
636
00:54:45,102 --> 00:54:45,462
Yeah.
637
00:54:45,462 --> 00:54:55,442
I mean, I've seen one of those, there's a, gentleman with long sort of, uh, dark braids
and he's a African-American vocal guru.
638
00:54:55,442 --> 00:55:01,982
And, and he'll look on his face when he first hears John sing a note, he just says, Oh my
God.
639
00:55:01,982 --> 00:55:04,742
His eyes just pop out of his head.
640
00:55:04,942 --> 00:55:06,962
Who is this guy?
641
00:55:07,162 --> 00:55:10,002
He was discovering him for the first time.
642
00:55:10,002 --> 00:55:12,110
I, I was so hard.
643
00:55:12,110 --> 00:55:23,470
warmed by that because that was the same feeling I had when I was 19 and I was at a jazz
club hearing Kerry Bedell and she invited John on stage.
644
00:55:23,730 --> 00:55:30,330
And Kerry Bedell's a very kind of, she's a hardcore jazz singer.
645
00:55:30,330 --> 00:55:36,830
Can't imagine why she would invite a pop singer like John up until he sang Georgia.
646
00:55:36,830 --> 00:55:40,270
And when I heard him sing Georgia, the old jazz standard,
647
00:55:40,310 --> 00:55:42,865
He absolutely sang the shit out of it.
648
00:55:42,865 --> 00:55:44,246
He was incredible.
649
00:55:44,246 --> 00:55:47,824
And I thought, my God, I never knew he could sing like that.
650
00:55:47,824 --> 00:55:53,868
And that's when I discovered that he's absolutely freak of nature.
651
00:55:53,868 --> 00:55:55,891
Yeah, absolutely.
