Melbourne review wrap: Cold Chisel at Flemington Racecourse

Well, that was emotional.

I can’t speak for the other 9999 Cold Chisel fans who bellowed every word to Standing on the Outside like we’d assembled for rock ‘n’ roll church under the big top at Flemington. But the second song, Letter to Alan, put a lump in my throat and something in my eye that pretty much stayed there for two hours.

★★★★★

There would be plenty of songs for us – Choir Girl, My Baby, Breakfast at Sweethearts and Forever Now all followed in a breathless rush. But this Letter was for them: for the memory of roadies Alan Dallow and Billy Rowe, killed 44 years ago in a car accident, a turn in the same cursed and miraculous road that delivered the band here.

Jimmy Barnes sang it with every atom of his visibly scarred body. Pianist Don Walker, guitarist Ian Moss, bassist Phil Small and “new” drummer Charley Drayton (since 2011) played like their lives were on the line. From there until the traditional closing slammer Goodbye (Astrid Goodbye), that was the deal. Play like there’s no tomorrow.

It’s possible to break down the elements that make Chisel, even at 50, one of the world’s great rock ‘n’ roll bands. First, add to Barnes’ paint- stripping delivery Moss’ sweet soul voice and unique feel as a blues player, best illustrated in the immense dynamic arcs of One Long Day and Bow River.

Second, from the larrikin dropkick of Cheap Wine to the bereft war vet of Khe Sanh, Walker’s songs – and plenty by his bandmates – comprise a panorama as rich and unflinchingly real as any Australian has written. As a band, they lay back like 4am jazzers in Plaza Hotel and swing like a rockabilly gate in a gale in Rising Sun.

It’s much harder to parse why it all means so much to 10,000 people making like the world’s most ecstatic pub choir in every second song. Maybe, like when Barnes relates a dream he had about late drummer Steve Prestwich, we’re all remembering old friends, here and gone, who we sang with way back then.

One song Prestwich co-wrote tells that story – about memories and loss, good times and good friends gone, and the impossibility of ever really going back – with such devastating beauty and eloquence that that thing in my eye acts up big time. Is Flame Trees the best song ever written? It is tonight. The fact that it’s almost certainly the last we’ll all spend together makes it almost unbearable.

Cold Chisel play at Flemington Racecourse on Saturday, October 26.