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After The End

Author: Jane Rocca

It took a breakdown spurred by the death of his father and leaning on good friend Jimmy Barnes for The Living End front-man, Chris Cheney, to hit the reset button.

His debut solo album The Storm Before The Calm is a testament to the hell of a ride it’s been.

“I went into a tailspin when my father died 10 years ago and it finally caught up with me,” says Cheney, who relocated to Melbourne from LA with his wife, property advisor Emma Cheney, and their two daughters just as the pandemic kicked off.

“Dad’s behaviour and state of mind affected me when I was growing up, but I didn’t know it at the time,” he says.

“I was always about trying to impress him… he suffered from some kind of mental illness and was hard work for mum, but he wasn’t diagnosed and his behaviour definitely played a role in how I felt.

“When someone like that disapears from your life, I found myself asking, what does it all mean?”

Cheney says it also took a stint in Nashville to shed those demons through songwriting and pondering life’s bigger questions.

His solo record has been almost a decade in the making, and the first single, California, is an ode to the place he and his family called home for nine years.

Still Got Friday On My Mind reflects on his father’s death and the consequences of that loss among a whirl of country pedal steel.

Best known for his rockabilly/punk band The Living End and writing and recording eight studio albums over a 25-year career, it would seem Cheney has been living the dream life – a high-profile music career and longevity in the biz others only wish for.

The Living End managed eight top 10 albums, two making it to No. 1 (their self-titled debut in 1998 and 2006’s State Of Emergency) and many hung in the top five.

It was a whirlwind of non-stop touring and, for Cheney, leaving his wife Emma at home to mostly raise the kids without him. He might have hit the rock-star jackpot, but it meant he missed out on milestone moments with his kids.

Cheney admits he descended into alcohol and substance abuse after the death of his father Noel in 2012. A trip to St. Vincent’s hospital in Sydney in 2017 with kidney issues was the straw that broke the proverbial. It was the wake-up call he needed, accompanied by a bedside kick up the butt by his mate Jimmy Barnes.

“It was scary; the booze had finally caught up with me,” says Cheney who now also has a rockabilly side project with Barnes called the Barn Shakers.

“I rebelled and became self-destructive because I got sick of being Mr Nice Guy and wanted to see what it was like to be more reckless and careless,” Cheney says. “I waited until I was 35 to do that.”

Those seismic shifts almost led to a marital breakdown and a purging that went from the existential to the cathartic.

“Emma stuck by me and having Jimmy to support me was amazing,” Cheney says. “He really reminded me [of] the importance of family, the need to come good for them. He really set me straight.”

CHRIS CHENEY \ Saturday, July 30 at The Corner Hotel, Melbourne.

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Chris Cheney bares his soul on emotional solo debut

Author: Jade Kennedy

From ‘California’ to ‘Corner Shop’ – Chris Cheney gets raw and emotional on his debut solo album, ‘The Storm Before The Calm’.

Almost 30 years after co-founding dynamic Australian rockabilly band The Living End, frontman Chris Cheney is branching out on his own with the release of his debut solo album.

One listen to Cheney’s deeply personal new offering The Storm Before The Calm and one thing becomes abundantly clear: we’ve never really known Chris Cheney at all.

“The Living End have just never had songs that personal, for a start, and if they were, it’s sort of been represented under the umbrella of the three of us,” Cheney says, referring to bandmates Scott Owen and Andy Strachan. “Whereas this is just me, under my name, and people know it’s a solo project.”

Lead single ‘California’ was released in March; an ode to the place Cheney called home for nine years, until a global pandemic ushered a return to Melbourne.

Living in Los Angeles, Cheney says he found himself in some “incredible” situations that were particular to the “buzzing” LA music scene.

“You’re on stage at the Troubadour, and to the left is Chris Shiflett from the Fooies, and Duff from Guns ‘N’ Roses on the right, with Captain Sensible and my old mate Slim Jim Phantom from the Stray Cats, because we had a band together and all of these different people would just come along and jump up and jam,” he says. “We did tours of that, and I was pinching myself. Like, that stuff just didn’t happen when I was living in Glen Waverley.”

LA was creatively “very inspiring” for Cheney, who began writing The Storm Before The Calm while living there.

“There’s a standard and a level there that is pretty darn high,” he says. “I like that, and I like feeling that pressure.”

After “tinkering” on some songs on his own, Cheney found himself working with Skylar Wilson in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2016.

“[Skylar] is just amazing; he’s from that whole Leon Russell school of piano playing and the band that he brought in were just fantastic,” he says. “They weren’t old Nashville, they were kind of young contemporary guys. They have all that old school Nashville chops, but they didn’t rely on them – they were okay with bringing in a few more modern-style licks and playing, which was nice.”

Cheney then worked with Aussie Justin Stanley, who had relocated to Los Angeles and worked with the likes of Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton.

“I showed him some songs and said, ‘Hey, you want to help me finish these off?’” Cheney says. “So he played drums and piano on ‘Still Got Friday on My Mind’ and ‘Lost in the Darkness’ and one other one, I think.”

‘Still Got Friday on My Mind’ is one of the tracks Cheney says he is “super proud” of, and it’s one that really allows fans into his deeper psyche, as it deals with the “sore point” of his father’s passing.

“I suppose for me, it’s a way of dealing with it, like any songwriter it’s like a therapy session if you just write it down on paper and put music to it and it’s a way of dealing with it,” he says. “But he had been very sick for a while, and I was going out to visit him one morning where he’d been particularly ill for the last couple of days.”

After arranging to see his father one weekend, Cheney “selfishly” went out the night before, and spent too long the following day “probably trying to find the Panadol” and overcoming the “messy” night before.

“And of course by the time I got there, he was gone,” Cheney says. “So it was a huge regret for me, and that was my way of saying, well I kind of wish it was still Friday night, then I wouldn’t be dealing with what was going on on the Saturday or the Sunday, whenever it was.”

Cheney says he is proud of the track, because it showcases what he wanted this record to be: “Where people go, ‘Wow, I didn’t realise that that guy could do this, I thought he just jumped around on stage and climbed up on a double bass and did the blazing guitar solo thing.’ So that’s what I’ve noticed from people that have heard the record, they sort of go, oh okay, so you’ve got that side to you as well.”

Cheney “really tried” to make the lyrical content of this record as “raw and personal as possible,” with nothing blocking their emotional depth.

“I think the whole key with this record was that there were a few times where I didn’t quite know if I wanted to say what I wanted to say,” he laughs. “It was a little too raw, a little too close to the bone, a little too personal. But what I found was if I didn’t say it directly and if I didn’t make it really simple and clear, then it just sounded like I was kind of skirting around an issue, and it sounded like it was watered down, or like I’d tried to sugar-coat something.”

After recording 10 songs in what he now refers to as the “Nashville sessions,” Cheney returned to his garage in Melbourne and continued writing, penning ‘California’ as well as follow-up singles ‘Corner Shop’ and ‘Football Team’ as well as ‘Little White Pills’ – which, incidentally, is about the most ‘Living End’ sounding track on the album.

“If it had just been the Nashville record it would have been quite a dark album, and I think I definitely would not have been as happy with it if it had come out three years ago as what I am now,” Cheney says. “Because when I got back to Melbourne, and the extra songs that I wrote, it seemed to balance it up. I found then that I had a complete record, and it would have been a different beast altogether.”

Cheney says that “as a sum of the parts” the album feels more complete now, even though it meant discarding half of those original 10 tracks in favour of some of the newer songs.

“The Nashville stuff was a little bit more probably country, Americana, that sort of feel – acoustic-based – and I think three of the more rock songs that I wrote on the album happened once I got back here,” he says. “When I hear it now, I feel like I’ve almost written – unintentionally – a concept record. Like there’s definitely a narrative that flows through it.”

Every time he tried to shy away from the real, Cheney says the songs “weren’t as good” – and that is why he brings so many personal demons to the surface on this record.

“As honest as it is, I think at the end of the day if you choose to go through the lyrics with a fine-toothed comb, you’ll see exactly what I’m saying and where it has all come from; but if you don’t you can just listen to the songs and listen to the hooks, and hopefully they’re the things that are the most prominent,” he says. “I’m one of these people that ruminates on things, and you probably shouldn’t do it, but I do. So I’ve had my fair share of lying there all hours of the evening, or making bad decisions. But we’re only human, aren’t we?”

Cheney says he hoped people would get a little bit of insight into who he is “without the big production and the thumping drums and guitars and everything that The Living End records normally have”.

“I didn’t know if people would buy it, and I didn’t know if I could really do it” he says. “Until you throw yourself into the studio and you strip everything back, and you just have a piano and sing along with that – which is what the first track on the record is, essentially just piano and a little bit of guitar and it’s all vocals.”

Admittedly, though, Cheney wouldn’t have exposed himself in such a way 20 years ago.

“I wouldn’t have have been able to listen to my vocals like that,” he says. “But I’m okay with it now.”

Cheney has also been exploring visual art – the artwork on The Storm Before The Calm is all his own – and has even held an exhibition this year; but it isn’t a new venture like many believe.

“As a kid, before I got into the guitar, I just sat and drew all the time,” he says. “I never had a pencil or a pen and a piece of paper very far from my grasp. I just used to sit and draw all day.”

Even The Living End logos and poster designs showcased Cheney’s artistic flair in the band’s early days. But using a brush and paint was a new experience, and one Cheney has embraced whole heartedly.

“I went from just kind of fooling around and trying to teach myself a few techniques to I’ve now got a garage that’s like bursting at the seams with all these canvases, and it’s been great,” he says. “It’s sort of very similar to song writing, you know, you just throw an idea at the canvas and then add something to it; if you don’t like it you paint over that bit then paint something else.”

Between the music and art, Cheney says the past two years have been the “most creative probably ever” in his life.

“It’s definitely re-awakened my love for visual arts, because it had sort of been suppressed, I suppose, over the last 10 or 15 years – I’ve just been so focused on the band,” he says. “And I don’t know, I just sort of forgot that I could draw and do all that stuff so it’s been great, and I’m kicking myself now that I haven’t done more of it over the years because it’s sort of become a new obsession.”

For now, music will once again take precedence for Cheney. He has a number of shows with The Living End between now and the end of the year, as well as a run of solo shows in support of the album.

“It doesn’t feel like I’m having to sell the idea too hard to people; they’re kind of like, okay, yeah, I’m interested in hearing that. That’s really nice,” Cheney says. “I guess the few times I’ve done outside of the band over the years, whether it be the ‘Distant Sun’ cover or the White Album or whatever, I think I’ve proven that I can kind of hold my own when I need to.”

The Storm Before The Calm will be released tomorrow, Friday 17th June.

Chris Cheney Tour Dates

Saturday 16th July: The Zoo, Brisbane
Friday 22nd July: Mojo’s, Fremantle
Saturday 23rd July: Jive, Adelaide
Saturday 30th July: The Corner, Melbourne
Saturday 13th August: Factory Theatre, Sydney

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My Rig: Chris Cheney

Author: Eli Duxson

“You know what, it doesn’t fucking make any difference what you plug into and run through, you get up there and you put on a ripper show – it all comes out of your fingers at the end of the day,” The Living End’s Chris Cheney laughingly and matter-of-factly explains.

Cheney has carved out a reputation as one of Australia’s best guitarists as The Living End’s charismatic frontman and axeman, but has ventured on his own path to release a solo album years in the making, The Storm Before The Calm.

Featuring tracks from earlier Nashville recordings, musings of his time in Los Angeles, and reflections of his childhood after his recent relocation back to Melbourne, the record reflects different parts of his life.

Synonymous with Cheney’s on-stage presence is no doubt his assortment of Gretsch guitars which he’d always had a penchant for, before he even owned one.

“There was just all those cool old photos and footage of those rockabilly guitar players which was one thing, and the playing was just next level which was what drew me to them,” he says.

Leading up to the release of his upcoming album, we thought we’d discuss his Gretsch affinity at length as well as the rest of his “complicated” live setup.

GUITARS

Gretsch White Falcon

“The Falcon’s just got this kind of extra mojo that I haven’t realy found, even when I’ve played other White Falcons, that guitar just has something. It just has that thing that I was looking for I suppose, that fine, good balance between the Gretsch kind of twang, that deep growl, and that bitchin’ AC/DC toughness with the string attack. Not only was it the best looking guitar, it had the sound as well.”

AMPS

Vox AC30 & Wizard Modern Classic

“It’s a lot more complicated than probably what people would expect. I have backwards cabs that are all plugged in, isolated, and all miked up, and then I have one front-facing cab. My main two cabs are and AC30, a new one, just a Hand Wired, and a Wizard 2×12 cab facing backwards, which has one of my 100-watt Modern Classics running into it. They are ridiculously loud, you don’t want to stand at the back of the stage when The Living End are playing – it hurts. The forward-facing cab I just have for some feedback and a little bit of monitoring because I like to be able to feel the sound. You gotta have that thunk hitting your legs, and to hit a note and get a little bit of feedback and that squeal when you need to.”

PEDALS

Voodoo Lab Ground Control Pro

“Pedal-wise, I have a Ground Control switcher, so I have that in front of me to make adjustments if I need to. Basically I’m just running an Eventide TimeFactor, so all my delays are pre-set for different songs on the Ground Control, I have a trusty old Klon, and an Ibanez Tube Screamer that I’ve had since I was about 17 which never leave the board.”

SLIDE

VB Stubbie

Cheney is also known to not only enjoy drinking the Very Best on stage, but to inventively use it as a slide!

“A lot of people cringe at a few of the things I do to my guitars, but it’s all about putting on a show really – the multiple uses of a VB bottle! It cleans up alright though, it probably gets into the wiring over the course of 20 years or something but you just wipe them down.”

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BLUESFEST BRING ON THE END

Author: Unknown

The Living End are truly Rock Royalty. Formed in 1994 in Melbourne, it was 1997 when the band blasted through with their double A side single featuring ‘Prisoner of Society’ and ‘Second Solution’ – songs that have become festival anthems around the world. This five times ARIA-winning band are one of the Aussie treasures playing at Bluesfest this October. This will be the third attempt by the Byron event since the 2019 COVID-19 lockdown to host their festival. Mandy Nolan had a chat with Chris Cheney about the band’s upcoming Bluesfest gig…

When I speak to Chris Cheney the lead vocalist of The Living End, it’s Lockdown Number Four in Melbourne. The impacts of the virus have been massive for the entertainment industry.

‘It’s really frustrating when you look at the bigger picture of the entertainment industry, and people are nervous about putting events on.

‘The government hasn’t given the entertainment industry the support it needs.’

It’s something musicans like Cheney find annoying. ‘When the shit hits the fan, it’s the entertainment industry that steps up and puts on a concert to raise money.’ The reciprocal support for the music industry has definitely been lacking.

The landscape for musicians has certainly changed. When The Living End started it was all about the pub. ‘The pub was everything – we did thousands of gigs before we got on Triple J, we built the following from the ground up.’

Consequently The Living End has the smarts of a band who know how to play to a crowd. They are a powerful festival act.

‘It’s an endurance test getting through our show’ says Chris. ‘You have to be match fit – we also have to be fit in ourselves. The songs don’t sound the same unless you are at 200 per cent!’

‘This is the first time we have played Bluesfest. I haven’t been before, never been and never played it, so we intend to come out of the gates with all guns blazing, we will be like bulls at a gate!

‘Bluesfest isn’t specifically blues and roots but it’s the core and it’s our background,’ says Cheney.

The Living End are playing at Bluesfest 1–4 October. Tix from bluesfest.com.au.

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A Living End To 2018 Gigs

Author: Luke Voogt

Aussie rock legends The Living End lead a dozen-strong line-up of alternative bands in a series of gigs at Torquay over summer.

Barwon Heads drummer Andy Strachan was thrilled to play on Boxing Day at Torquay Hotel.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve done (pub) gigs,” he said.

“Everyone’s generally pretty loose and ready for a good time – I think more bands should do it.”

The gig kicks off an Australian and New Zealand tour for the multi-ARIA-winning band.

“I’m super excited – there are waves almost everywhere (on the east coast),” Strachan said.

“We should do this as an annual event – go on a little a surfing trip.”

The band recently released new album Wunderbar, featuring the single Don’t Lose It.

Jimmy Barnes, Kacey Chambers, Eddie McGuire and Ray Hadley appear in the track’s video clip parodying talent shows. “It was the most fun we’ve ever had doing a video clip,”

Strachan said. “Generally, with video clips, there’s a whole lot of waiting around but this one was just hilarious from start to finish.”

TV presenter Tom Williams, a good friend of Strachan’s, turns the satire up to 11 as a corny talent show host.

“He’s such a charismatic guy and he doesn’t mind the taking the piss out of himself,” Strachan said.

Living End guitarist Chris Cheney plays Boy George-esque judge ‘Valentino’ while bass player Scott Owen plays a corporate producer.

“I don’t care what they do, they can fart into a lunchbox,” Owen says in the clip.

“I just want someone who’s going to make money.”

Strachan said “all fingers were pointed directly at me” to play third judge, the Delta Goodrem-inspired Alexis Dream.

Molly Meldrum plays an Elvis impersonator, while The Wiggles’ Murray Cook and Puppetry of the Penis also make appearances.

“We had to blur some of that,” Strachan said.

“There’s an adults-only version somewhere.”

The number of celebrities “snowballed” once Cheney phoned Barnes for the video, Strachan said.

“He says, ‘whatever you need mate, I’m there,’ in his Jimmy voice.

“We’ve done a lot of stuff with Jimmy in the past – he and Chris get along really well.

“If you had said 20 years ago you’re going to be mates with Jimmy Barnes from Cold Chisel … it’s so surreal.”

The Living End finished Wunderbar in a few “intense” months of recording in Berlin, Strachan said.

Cheney wrote most of the new album, which Strachan described as high-energy and “sonically different to anything we’ve done”.

“Chris has a song-writing gift … but we all chip in,” Strachan said.

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Throwing Off The Shackles

Author: Brendan Crabb

As Aussie rock mainstays The Living End return for an eighth full-length, frontman Chris Cheney tells Brendan Crabb about his relationship with their breakthrough anthem.

The Living End’s recent decision to launch Don’t Lose It, lead single from new album Wunderbar at small gigs in Sydney and Melbourne was greeted with enthusiasm by the punkers’ fanbase. However, a fellow journalist/photographer lamented to this scribe after the Sydney show that the veterans eschewed breakthrough hit Prisoner Of Society in favour of new material. “It didn’t seem the right time and place to play it,” vocalist/guitarist Chris Cheney says when told of this. “God, hasn’t he heard it a million times before like we all have?” he laughs.

“We’re so into the (new) record, that we just went, ‘Fuck it, everyone knows the other songs. This is the ideal opportunity to be a bit of a showcase of new songs.’ We’ve always kind of done that. We used to go out and do these secret gigs where we’d just play all new material, sort of road-test it. We stand behind it [the new album], and I think the audience could see that. The one thing people said to me was that they have a lot of character and personality, these songs. In an era where people aren’t making records anymore, we have made a record.”

What type of relationship does the frontman have with Prisoner Of Society nowadays? Cheney pauses before responding. “A love-hate one. No, I don’t hate it, it’s fine. It’s forever going to be the song that kind of put us on the map first I suppose. I think it’s a good song, I just don’t like the recording of it, I don’t like the version that we recorded… It was a different time. We were kind of part of that whole punk/pop thing, and just the vocals are sung in a certain way that I’m like, I just wouldn’t sing it that way anymore,” the frontman laughs. “But I can appreciate the song, and I still think it’s a good song.”

While having a healthy respect for their past, including playing heritage-themed shows previously, the aforementioned willingness to forge ahead has meant 20 years on from the multi-platinum success of their self-titled debut, the trio sought fresh ways to create on album number eight. The trio — also featuring co-founder, double bassist Scott Owen and long-time drummer Andy Strachan — decamped to Berlin, Germany for recording and pre-production sessions on Wunderbar. They worked alongside producer Tobias Kuhn during the six-week stint.

“We only decided in like September that we were going to make the record, and then [by] January we were already making it,” Cheney laughs. “So there wasn’t a huge turnaround. Trying to pack up my house in LA in shipping containers and think about relocating [back to Melbourne] and trying to write a record at the same time was nuts.

“When we got to Germany, the songs still needed to be finished off and I really felt like they were influenced by just the surroundings. Every day I would get up, we were staying at an Airbnb and a hotel and a few different places, but you’d get up in the morning and then you’d walk to the studio. Just walking past the subway, past all the German signs, and your streets, sights and smells and everything, I found it was influencing me. It was just giving me this kind of… Just this different approach when I got to the studio each day because I was in a completely different environment. It’s hard to say exactly how it influenced the record, but I definitely think it’s got a lot of character that it wouldn’t have had if I’d just been sitting in my bedroom all day, every day recording.”

Of the new record, the frontman dubs the multi-faceted Death Of The American Dream as a “kind of political” but a predominantly personal statement partially inspired by his living in Hollywood for several years, while adding that the rest of the tracks on the record are not necessarily political at all. “There’s a couple of little statements here and there, but it’s a very diverse record this one. Whereas [2016’s] Shift was very introspective… That was actually quite dark and grim, to be honest, but this one I find is a little more optimistic. There’s a little more hope and a few more different kinds of subject matter that we’re tackling that I don’t think we would have tackled in our twenties.

“We’ve never been like the Oils or something and made a proper, full-blown [political] statement. It’s more just been about social issues and stuff that’s going on, as opposed to laying down our opinion.”

Wunderbar (BMG) is out now. The Living End tour from 1 Nov.

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The Living End On Taking A Leap Of Faith

Author: Alex Callan

It may have been 20 years since The Living End were talking about being a brat that talks back, but god damn, they haven’t lost the punk. If you don’t believe me give a spin to ‘Death Of The American Dream’, a track of their newest album Wunderbar.

“I’m stoked that you brought up that song because that’s probably my favourite off the record,” remarks the bands Double Bassist Scott Owen. “That one was just a bit of a jam and when we demoed it we didn’t have any lyrics written.

“So I just barked down the microphone. I was pretending I was on the phone to somebody and that was my phone call was the verses of the song. It was thing called ‘Can I leave my number’ as if I was leaving a message for someone,” he continues.

“We were more focused about getting the energy right to make it a banger of a song and didn’t care as much about the lyrics and Chris took it away and turned it into the ‘Death Of The American Dream’ which tuned it to a completely other dimension.

“It’s the first time we had every written like that. I didn’t expect it to turn into what it did, it was just something we did for a bit of fun and then it grew legs and got a life of its own.”

Recording the album over six weeks in Berlin, Scott spoke about how the band were “fish out of water” when they headed over to work with Tobias Kuhn, a producer the band had never met before.

“The whole idea was to take a bit of a leap of faith,” he says. “We didn’t want to play it safe and put ourselves in the same situation we have before, so instead we thought we would take an adventure and work with someone we don’t know in a place that’s really far away.

“It was a great idea; it was the best thing we could of done,” Scott expands. “Tobias was unreal; we got aong with him really well and had really similar musical tastes and ideas so it was a really good collaboration there in a sense.

“We try not to have too many preconceived ideas about songs and try to just let them go to where they want to be. We just want each song t have their own identity.”

Now back in Australia, The Living End will once again be hitting the road for the Wunderbar tour and bringing along West Thebarton for the ride.

“Truthfully, I don’t really know much about West Thebarton,” laughs Scott before continuing, “so I’m really looking forward to touring with them so I can check them out. We have just done a bunch of gigs in Europe which has been really good for us and now we have a few gigs between no and when the tour starts but we absolutely cannot wait to get back up there again.

“Being in a studio is great, but it feels like you’ve got the shackles on and everything is under the microscope so we all can’t wait to let lose on stage again.”

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The Living End Get It Horribly Right

Author: Zachary Snowdon Smith

Any uni student knows that spending hours dawdling over an essay doesn’t necessarily make the finished product any better. Punk trio The Living End found the same to be true when they emerged from the studio with their quickest record ever, Wunderbar, which was produced in just four weeks.

“We didn’t sacrifice quality – it just meant that we got the job done without procrastinating,” says frontman Chris Cheney. “It almost made me worried that everything was going horribly right. You’re waiting for it. When’s the hurdle coming? When are we going to get stuck? But it ended up as the most fun record we’ve ever done – the easiest experience I’ve ever had in the studio.”

To record their new album, the band didn’t book time at Abbey Road or the Capitol Records tower in LA. Instead, they sequestered themselves in the quaint and tourist-free central German town of Rotenburg an der Fulda. In Rotenburg, the band started each day with a ten-minute stroll to Toolhouse Studios, where they met with Tobias Kuhn, a producer known for his frenetic energy during recording sessions.

Recording Wunderbar, Cheney found that Germany fulfills the Australian reputation for laid-back amicability better than Australia does.

“I find [Berlin] a lot more chilled to walk around,” says Cheney. “You don’t see anywhere near the aggression or the violence that I see on a daily basis in Melbourne. I mean, God forbid you were to walk down the street with an open beer. You can’t do that.

“It’s a funny kind of arrangement. The laws over there are looser. It’s almost like with teenagers: if you give them a little bit of responsibility, they tend to grow up and appreciate it and not abuse it. Whereas, in Australia, there’s this police state: ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that.’ That tends to make people rebel against it. It’s a funny thing; even though Berlin’s a pretty crazy town, you feel very safe walking around there. I hate to say it, but I don’t feel like that when I’m walking around Melbourne sometimes.”

Even as Spotify continues to reduce albums to modular collections of tracks, Cheney takes pride in Wunderbar’s completeness, which he hopes will prompt a few people to listen to it all the way through before cannibalising it for playlists.

“As an album, it flows really well,” he says. “I know that’s a little bit defunct these days, but for us, that’s important. There were certain songs we really liked that didn’t end up on the record, because they didn’t fit… We’re not aiming to reinvent the wheel. We’ve dabbled a bit, but with this record, the strength lies in the fact that it’s a straight-up rock ‘n’ roll record.”

One standout track is the cochlea-pummelling ‘Death Of The American Dream’, which sounds a bit like the Living End’s take on Highway 61 Revisited. The mortifying spectacle of the Trump presidency has sparked a minor renaissance of anti-American political music. However, Cheney, who spent seven years living in the US, says that ‘Death Of The American Dream’ was written as a diagnosis, not an attack.

“As a kid, for me, America was Mickey Mouse and Disneyland and Elvis and Graceland and Cadillacs, this larger-than-life country,” says Cheney. “At the moment, it’s down on its luck. This song isn’t a piss-take on America at all. It’s saying, ‘I would defend the States forever’, and I love the place. I think you’ve got to go through a rough patch sometimes. They’ll find their feet again. It’s just going to take some time.”

Ultimately, Wunderbar may be most remarkable for its solidity – for the absence of the self-conscious reinventions commonly employed by bands who have spent 20 years on the road.

“You’re not supposed to get better as you get older,” says Cheney. “The shows aren’t supposed to be more intense, but I feel like they are with us. I look at some of the old footage and hear live recordings and it’s just terrible. But now, I feel like we can really play our arses off.

“Every single night, I go off on these different tangents and improvise, and the whole thing feels like it could run off the rails at any minute, but that’s the beauty of it. That’s the magic of a Living End show. We’re not just going through the motions. Maybe we have in the past at certain times, but I take more risks now. That’s what live music is.”

The Living End will tour Australia this November. Wunderbar is out now from BMG.

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The Living End

Author: Joshua Martin

You won’t see repackaged, remastered, or rehashed iterations of The Living End’s 20-year-old eponymous debut record this year – singer and guitarist Chris Cheney doesn’t care for anniversaries.

For him, 2018 is Wunderbar – the band’s staunchly contemporary new LP, recorded in icy Berlin. Upon its release, a few things will immediately confront fans of The Living End – not least of all its tongue in cheek German title. The garish purple cover is another departure, an array of nine television sets broadcasting fractured palm trees.

“I like the idea of a paradise, an unobtainable thing we’re all looking at through our screens and devices, all trying to make our lives better through technology. It tied into my experience too, having left LA being all palm trees, then being in the harshness of Berlin and looking back at the palm trees of LA,” Cheney explains.

The surprising abstraction continues into the album itself, a set of 11 tracks spanning personal politics and identity as a microcosm for simmering political divide, condensed into the purest white-hot rock’n’roll the band has written in years.

“I used to be always trying to be a character, always trying to be something else and try to put myself into a role. I think with this record there’s a lot of me coming to terms with the way I sing and play guitar and the way I write songs,” Cheney says.

Nearly every part of Wunderbar’s distinct character leads back to the album’s sessions in Berlin and the baroque small town of Rottenburg an der Fulda where German producer Tobias Kuhn enticed the band to record in a blistering six week period in February. Germany remains a bastion of rock’n’roll, immune to the irrelevance plaguing the genre elsewhere and The Living End revel in its proud regional tradition on Wunderbar, collaborating with Dusseldorf rock heroes Die Toten Hosen on several tracks.

“We first went there back in 1998 or 1999. We were so green that it felt like such a foreign place. I was like ‘Wow, I feel like I’m on another planet completely.’

“[Die Toten Hosen are] the ones who first took us to Germany in ‘98 – we’ve stayed in contact with them and done a lot of shows with them over the years. It needed that big voice, that big chant, and we thought who better than those guys to come and yell on it.”

Wunderbar’s best tracks are a distinctly Australian mish-mash of international influences with unexpected maturity; ‘Not Like the Other Boys’ rails against traditional moulds of masculinity (“Didn’t I try to raise you like a man? Just like the other boys”) while ‘Amsterdam’ showcases an unguarded Cheney against just an electric guitar.

“[‘Amsterdam’] was written as a full band track and it had this surf-garage line, almost like early Midnight Oil. I pitched it to the band and everyone was like, ‘Yeah, it’s great but it doesn’t fit what the album is.’ It was Tobias who suggested stripping everything away and step up to the microphone with the guitar,” Cheney says.

Standout track ‘Death of the American Dream’ uses Cheney’s experience in the US as a template for a psychobilly 21st century interpolation of ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ before a reflective acoustic interlude offers the troubled superpower a bone.

In 2012, Cheney lamented he could “sympathise with guys who have felt like they have done all they can in a band.” The patchy two records that followed, 2011’s The Ending is Just The Beginning Repeating and 2015’s Shift stayed that course, but things couldn’t be more different now.

“You go through hurdles and slumps through the years and maybe we were going through one then. I can’t see any sign of us slowing down at this point. For a long time I was consumed by the Living End and that was when it became a grind. I think this record has done so much for us and our own enthusiasm.”

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The White Album: The 50th Anniversary Concert

Author: Helena Metzke

Four of Australia’s greatest male vocalists come together once again, for what is one of the most successful Beatles events ever to be staged in Australia.

THE BEATLES, ALSO KNOWN AS ‘THE WHITE ALBUM’ DUE ITS DISTINCTIVE PLAIN WHITE SLEEVE, IS THE NINTH STUDIO ALBUM BY CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED ROCK BAND, THE BEATLES.

50 years on, the album remains a renowned work of art, which continues to be celebrated around the world. Returning for the third time, following two sold-out tours in 2009, and 2014, Chris Cheney (The Living End), Phil Jamieson (Grinspoon), Tim Rogers (You Am I), and Australian singer-songwriter Josh Pyke, are reconvening to once again honour The White Album.

“It still has something to offer,” begins Chris Cheney, lead-vocalist and guitarist of The Living End. “It’s not nostalgia – it’s not great just because it’s a nostalgic record – I think it still pushes the boundaries, it’s still odd and fascinating, and it’s powerful.”

“It’s got everything in there,” he says. “Take something like ‘Black Bird’, surrounding human rights movements, or something like ‘Piggies’, which looks at confronting authority.

“And then you’ve just got these weird and wacky, beautiful songs woven in between.”

Cheney was approached some years ago by Tim Woods, promoter of The White Album Concert, when the notion of the tour was initially put forward to him.

“There was a bit of hesitation at first, because I’d never really done anything like this before,” explains Cheney. “And I think playing something like a Beatles song – one song here and there is okay – but to do an entire performance, well, the last thing I wanted to partake in was a tribute band or a covers act.”

“But when I found out that Phil, Tim, and Josh were involved, it was like, ‘Okay, this isn’t just going to be a cheesy cover band,’” he continues. “I realised this was something where we were all hopefully going to bring something unique to the table, and it’s been absolutely magical, which is why we’re now doing it for the third time.”

Performing The White Album in full, from beginning to end, Chris, Phil, Tim and Josh maintain they are not imitating the works of John, Paul, George and Ringo, but rather celebrating them. “There are enough Beatles covers bands out there, who sing in Liverpool accents and pretend they’re The Beatles,” expresses Cheney. “And that’s just not our kind of thing, really.”

“We all come from different backgrounds, and it’s obviously been something that has reacted well among audiences; us putting our own stamp on it,” says Cheney. “But in saying that, it’s sacred material, and it’s something you don’t want to stuff up.

“We’re very aware of where we’re treading, and we’re just giving it a different spin; we’re not adding to it, and we’re hopefully not taking away from it.”

Widely regarded as the most influential band in music history, it was commonplace for The Beatles to break genre boundaries. Drawing from an extensive pool of influences, the four-piece experimented with a variety of genres, including pop, rock, folk, and blues, just to name a few.

“The main thing I’ve drawn from them [in my own musical career] is that it’s okay to have diversity in your music – it’s okay to have lots of different influences,” says Cheney. “And so I guess I’ve tried to sort of channel my influences, the same way that they did theirs.”

“They weren’t afraid to borrow ideas from other people, and they wore their influences on their sleeve,” he says. “And I like to think I’m trying to channel The Beatles influences as well, when I’m performing my set of tracks off The White Album.

“If I’m playing something like ‘Back in the U.S.S.R’, I know that Paul McCartney was influenced by a cross between Chuck Berry and The Beach Boys, you know, that sort of vibe, that real ‘50s rock n’ roll, which is my kind of background.

“We really try and get into the essence of what The Beatles were trying to do, and we’re not just copying their version.”

Backed by a 17-piece orchestra, which is led by musical director Rex Goh, the ensemble will feature guitars, strings, and horns, as well as two drummers, causing the concert to be a true spectacle.

Celebrating its 50th anniversary, The White Album continues to hold its mark in history, as one of the most progressive works of its time, and titles The Beatles as true geniuses of their craft.

“I seriously pity anyone who is just like, ‘I’ve never really listened to The Beatles,’ or, ‘I’ve never paid much attention to them’, because I think you’re really missing out,” expresses Cheney wholeheartedly. “There are a lot of great bands out there, and they’re just one of them, but to not have a knowledge of their work, or to not have any Beatles records in your collection, is a bloody tragedy.”

When & Where:
Hamer Hall, Melbourne – July 13 and 14