Hitting The Road Again
Author: Candice Silverman
For Australian rockers The Living End, life on the road is not all flash and glamour. The band have returned from their Warped Tour of the US and are now full-steam into a lengthy Australian jaunt.
On the Warped Tour they took in some red-blooded rock ‘n’ roll behaviour with the odd party, including a bash at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion to liven things up.
“It’s a pretty full-on tour, it was like boot camp,” frontman Chris Cheney says.
“At times, it wasn’t very luxurious. But that’s OK – neither is rock’n’roll.”
Even more reason to let their hair down at Hef’s.
“It was very surreal and very LA,” Cheney says. “There were lots of people like Vince Neil from Mötley Crüe and Ron Jeremy, a famous porn legend at the party, but it wasn’t like there were Playboy bunnies everywhere. Well, there were just a couple.”
The band’s two month stint in the US, which included a solo tour after Warped has seen them playing to large and enthusiastic crowds and racking up healthy album sales of State Of Emergency, which has only just hit shelves in the US.
“The reaction to the album has been great,” Cheney says. “There’s a really great vibe and it’s nice to be in the middle of it.”
But Cheney, who became a dad just seven months ago, spent the whole trip looking forward to being back in Australia to see his baby daughter.
“We are very lucky to do what we do, but the downside is getting homesick,” he says. “It’s not natural to take off for two months and say goodbye to your family and friends and travel around the world.
“It’s a weird situation and we always find ourselves coming home and feeling like we’re in a parallel universe where everyone is a bit older and doing different things. This is what we do and we wouldn’t change it for the world, but it is sort of a double-edged sword.”
The band have spent a week at home in Melbourne before they begin their marathon 34-date Australian tour over six weeks. In fact, their tour schedule looks like a return to the great days of touring rock in the 70s when Australian bands from the Ted Mulry Gang to AC/DC would play in stops everywhere from Whyalla to Kingaroy.