Features / Music

“The Randy Newman [comparison]'s quite weird, ‘cause I don’t have one Randy Newman album. I just know his Toy Story songs."

"He’s all, like, 'I’m going to take two bands on the road and I’ll decide on the day who I play with on the night.’ That’s amazing – who does that?” Lanie Lane talks Jack White and songwriting.

"We want everyone to party like it’s 1997; have a whole lot of old farts in the moshpit going, ‘Ow, don’t do that, my back hurts!’" Fiona Horne talks about Def FX's comeback.

“You just learn how to deal with each other. Earlier on you come to blows a bit on the road because everyone is stressed out, but you realise that you’re just tired, which is obviously why you’re having a fight, so we just don’t fight anymore.”

Cold Chisel songwriter and keyboardist Don Walker tells Dan Condon about getting along with his bandmates, making Jimmy Barnes swear and playing with “a nose full of speed”.

"And we’ve been playing live so much and we get so fucking into it when we’re live that it made us feel like we needed to put more steroids into the songs or something."

“We’ve always aimed for it, but we kinda tend to procrastinate a little bit and then freak out when we have a deadline or something. The theory is if you have 40 songs, there’s gotta be some good ones in there,”

Well, it’s a great lifestyle. The least fun part, I guess, is just all the time on the phone and the internet, dealing with emails and arguing with people about money and all that kind of rubbish.

It wasn’t this sweet thing, it got more sexy. I feel like my voice has gotten a lot stronger since we recorded the album. I feel like I’m singing twenty times better than I did on the album. I’ve got heaps more power and I’m happier with the tone.”

"The (Hilltop) Hoods have proven that you don’t need to be [in Sydney or Melbourne] to make things happen... I know Adelaide, I love Adelaide."