Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
What has Billy Field been up to lately? OR Did we dare ask him about his Bad Habits?
Join Cheryl Lee - That Radio Chick on STILL ROCKIN' IT for news, reviews, music and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
Today we share a recent zoom room chat with APRA award winning singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, recording studio owner and music producer, William Bruce Field.
#1 debut solo album' Bad Habits' and subsequent hit single has been woven into the fabric of our musical history, was also covered by David Lee Roth, John Farnham and Jeff Duff.
Follow up #1 hit single 'You Weren't In Love With Me' was also covered by Beccy Cole and Marina Prior.
From his childhood on rural NSW sheep station to the heights of Australian music in the 80s to his Paradise Studios working on albums by Air Supply, Cold Chisel, INXS, Paul Kelly, Icehouse, The Angels.
Most importantly, who is he heading to Adelaide with later this month?
Includes Songs:
Billy Field - Bad Habits
Billy Field - You Weren't In Love With Me
Al Green - I Wanna Hold Your Hand
Sherbet - Nowhere Man
What is Billy Field up to at the moment?
Let's find out .....
Get out when you can, support local music and I'll see you down the front!!
Visit: ThatRadioChick.com.au
That Radio Cheek, cheryl Lee, here with you. Welcome to the Still Rocking Podcast, where we'll have music news, reviews and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians and artists. Today I share a Zoom room chat I had recently with Australian singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist recording studio owner and music producer, billy Field. We follow his journey from a large sheep and cattle property in rural New South Wales to ARIA. Award-winning success. The single from his number one selling debut album, bad Habits, is written into Australian music folklore and has been covered by David Lee Roth, john Farnham and Jeff Doss. We discover if Billy has any bad habits. What's Billy Field been up to lately? Let's find out. You're with Cheryl Lee, that radio chick. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 1:And in the Zoom chat room. I'm pleased to welcome William Bruce Field. Welcome, Billy, how are you?
Speaker 2:Brucey, Brucey. Well, Cheryl, thank you. Thank you for asking me.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining us. Of course, we're talking to Billy Field, 69 years young Australian singer songwriter and multi-instrumentalist and also Australia-wide famous producer, going right back to the very beginning, because you were brought up in a rural area on a farm and you worked there right into your 20s. How did you get from Billy Field in the fields to Billy Field, famous musician?
Speaker 2:well, listen, I'm sure you're painting a far more glossy picture than it should be painted, but I was born out on a rural sheep station. I spent my early years there and it was a family enterprise sheep farming. And then, when my grandfather died, my father went to Sydney to run the family business, and so the whole family moved to Sydney. But in school holidays I spent all my school holidays in the country working with the livestock and doing all that, so so I sort of had the best of both worlds, fortunately, and uh, when I was about um oh 25, I was studying commerce, which I wasn't very good at because, um, I was interested in figures, but not mathematical ones, you know.
Speaker 2:And I completely wasted my education, but I had a good time because I was interested in figures, but not mathematical ones, you know, and I completely wasted my education but I had a good time.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the main thing. But you know, I did learn enough about it to be frightened and stay away from it for the rest of my life. And so when I was working out on Sheep Station there, my sister had a friend whose brother he was managing a hotel up in Ymir and offered me a job. When I was at school and boarding school and school, I was playing a bit of music and we had a schoolboy band that made a few records that were recently notable and had a few gigs playing around, you know, when we were 15, 16, 17. And then when we all got to sort of 18, we all went our different ways. And that's when I went to study commerce and then my father died.
Speaker 2:Then I went out to the country, so I'd been playing a bit of music and my sister's friend said come up and play some music for a month in a bar up there, which I did. And then he said stay for another month, stay for another month, stay for another month, stay for another month, so on. And my poor brother back on the sheep station wasn't getting any help for me and ultimately I decided I was just going to play the music from now on. So I worked in some bars around Sydney for quite a few years and then one of the guys I played in a bar with had the idea to build a recording studio and so I got involved in that with him and, uh, we were very lucky and it was very successful. We made a lot of I think we made something like 40 gold albums, you know, in 15, 20 years. And you know a lot of bass, metal aid, actually cold chisel and, uh, the angels men at work and, and you know, ice house and you Mondo Rock and those guys from New Zealand Spit Ends.
Speaker 1:And In Excess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in Excess yeah.
Speaker 1:And Air Supply.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, All those Air Supply records we made, which were probably some of Australia's most successful records, but it wasn't really due to me. I was just like a partner that was involved in the enterprise because I was still playing in bars and things and I was writing a few songs. Whose sister was a friend of my brother's, and so I met him that way in Adelaide. Wonderful man, brilliant in many regards. More credit goes to him for that album than me, but I was certainly the good looks, you know. Oh.
Speaker 1:There you go Still rocking that podcast with that radio chick, cheryl Lee. Well, I have so far resisted the urge to ask Billy if he has any bad habits. So let's hear the song now from the debut album in 1981, which spent two weeks at the top of the Australian album charts and reached number four on the singles chart. You play a lot of different instruments. I thought perhaps you may have I can't help myself, bad heavens. You play a lot of different instruments. I thought perhaps you may have come from a musical family. Mum and Dad are they musicians?
Speaker 2:My grandmother was a vaudevillian person that came out to Australia doing vaudeville. As a teenager she was on the stage and sung. My mother actually played the piano. I didn't realise it until one day I came home and she was there banging away on the piano. It was quite good. I couldn't believe it. I didn't know until I was about 25 that she could play a bit, but played by ear. She wasn't really a disciplined pianist and neither am I disciplined. I'm just a bit of a. You know I consider myself just a bit of a rough old pub gigger, but you know so I'm not really any great, you know serious. But I play a bit of the jazz and, you know, on a good day I'm happy with myself, you know.
Speaker 1:So there's a little bit of musicianship in your DNA, yeah, Do you have any children, Billy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got two children.
Speaker 1:Are they musical?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, my daughter was extremely talented, but she wasn't passionate. And my son played a little bit for a while, but he wasn't interested. He's an artist, so I don't know if it's in the genes. It's more like a so-called masochism, to keep at it.
Speaker 1:But I often find that living in a rural area, on a farm or a ranch, sometimes, you know, music comes automatically along with that. I guess there's not much else to do, yeah. Except crotch the sheep.
Speaker 2:Crotch them, yeah, crotch them, no. It's a lot of good down-home people there, but they're not necessarily people that are interested in what's going on in the world. You know it's such a big job doing what they're doing. They come home and they're always exhausted and back in those days, you know they had to chop wood for the oven and the hot water system.
Speaker 1:That's right, it was relentless.
Speaker 2:But it was lovely being with such good, humble people and a lot of them were a lot of fun. You know they were very whimsical. You, you know you can station hands out in the country in the southern part of, you know, western southern part of new south wales are actually of irish extraction.
Speaker 1:they've got a great sense of whimsy and they're, you know they're fun and yeah, and and they work bloody hard, I know that because my husband is from a farming community in victoria yeah, his mum is still on the property actually so we know all about chopping wood and I really do love to take it. We've got five children and for those exact reasons, we love taking them regularly to the farm and expose them to those people. We must talk about the great Australian hits that are part of the soundtrack to our lives now, from the Bad Habits album you Weren't In Love With Me. It came out when I was 16. And what a beautiful song for the broken hearted. You know. Either unrequited love or a romance breakup.
Speaker 2:My girlfriends and I would sit around our little record player and play the single over and over, crying, you know, reveling in the pain of being a teenage girl that was a song that wasn't supposed to go on that album because that album was fundamentally a big band album like swing, you know that kind of music, and we wrote it as such. But we only had nine tunes that were tenable to go on that album and we needed another song and it would have cost us, like you know, probably four thousand dollars in those days to go back and do another session because you have to hire all those guys. Yeah, so, as was purely an economic well, I don't know if it's economic decision, but my partner, tom, he said, well, why don't we put that record on? I said no, we can't put that on, it's not, it's not thematically in the style of the album, you know, even though that was kind of music I was doing myself in bars anyway.
Speaker 2:So you know, we thought it was such a long shot doing the Bad Habits, we didn't really think the chance of it being successful was like zero. But you know, we we wanted to do it as a project because we wanted to do that kind of music at the time and that was really the thing that made the record go triple platinum or whatever it was, you know, because that was so successful as a radio record. Bad habits was successful as a radio record too, and so since I found out about you but because you were in love with me was really what made it go into, you know, a big thing- so the album went, number one you went in love with me went number one it's also being recorded and performed by Becky Cole and Marina Pryor and in 82, at the APRA Music Awards most performed Australasian popular work.
Speaker 1:There you go, so no wonder it's one of those songs that is the fabric of our youth.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you, Cheryl. Well, they give you a plaque, they don't give you any money, though.
Speaker 1:Oh, bugger Still off my podcast with that radio chick, cheryl Lee. So for all of us crowded around our little record players as teenagers, here it is Get the Tissues you Earned in Love with Me.
Speaker 2:I'm standing on the outside. I don't know where I'm going to.
Speaker 1:I'm really interested to know what you like to listen to, when you can listen to whatever you like.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, that's impossible to answer because there's just so many different types of music I like and I absolutely love everything. I love Thelonious Monk, I like the Beatles, I like Sinatra, I love Al Green. I'm not really a Stones man, although I love a lot of Stones songs. I think they're very clever, they're great, lyrics they're great. And I like, of course, all the blues guys. I like Van Morrison, and Look, there's so much stuff, there's so many jazz artists I love.
Speaker 2:Billie Holiday obviously, is a big influence on a lot of my stuff. And Louis Armstrong, of course, the king of jazz, I don't know, I like a lot of my stuff. And Louis Armstrong, of course, the King of Jazz, I don't know. I like a lot of jazz artists, clifford Brown, and I just listen to anything that comes along. But one of my favorite albums at the moment is an album by Al Green called Livin' For you. It's basically an R&B sort of soul album and it's just such a soulful album, beautifully produced. But there's been so much music, great music, in my period. You know a lot of those black bands out of philadelphia in the 80s, you know the tramps and, uh, you know, I could make a list of, yeah, 50 bands, I absolutely know. But to be honest, I I have to say I think the beatles really blitz, blitz it. You know. They're what. It's just really the greatest vocal group of all time and the greatest songs and the greatest you know, just absolute. It's just like they're the Shakespeare's of popular music, I think you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was like there was nothing really before, well before the Beatles and Elvis.
Speaker 2:They of course came from Elvis and the Everly Brothers, very much inspired. But they just took it out because really they're a vocal group, they're a vocal harmony group and they're just such a beautiful. And McCartney can, you know, harmonise a train wreck, you know. The thing is that they had a sound like the Eagles are a great vocal group and there's a lot of groups that are great vocal groups. The Everly Brothers are great, but they both had very similar voices so it gave that sound of the Everly Brothers.
Speaker 2:And likewise the Eagles have got that sound, with that lovely bass player singing that high harmony, really sweet sound which I absolutely love. But the Beatles have got got John Leonard's kind of got that sort of bluesy, nasty sort of voice, you know, and a lot of that stuff. And then we've got Paul on top, which is he's the sweetest honey chicken, and then George on top of that, who's again a sweet. So he's got this incredible sweet and sour sound. It's just beautiful. You know, there's no vocal group that has got that sound. It's just the way they sounded when they sung together and they were all brilliant musicians as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:And hence their longevity and their huge worldwide ongoing success it'll be like Shakespeare they'll listen to that in 300 years and no one will come and become more. You know, in 300 years, I'm sure of it. It's just a fluke of nature. And also Ringo's fantastic drummer. I mean the creativity he brings to that music, which it needed, because in a small ensemble, the percussion side of it's a major factor in making it special, you know, yeah so maybe the um shorter list would be to ask you what you don't like to listen to.
Speaker 2:Oh well, you know, no, no, I wouldn't do anything. It's uh, it's the ideas and things that I like, you know, it's nice that people got something to say, but you know, I've done, I think, 11 albums now and, uh, the albums. I've had something to say. No one's at least been interested oh, not true.
Speaker 1:Still rocking the podcast with that radio chick, cheryl lee. Well, have I got a treat for you now? The best of both worlds, al green playing a beatle song. I want to hold your hand. Yeah, we got the feeling now, al Green. We got the feeling now. Shut up, al Green.
Speaker 2:Oh boy, I don't what, all right.
Speaker 1:I know that you understand, and when I don't, I say that there, that there's something we must get on to before you run out of time. I know you're a very busy man and I appreciate you chatting to us today. What we must get on to, of course, your upcoming visit to adelaide later this month well, yes, I'm chomping on the bit.
Speaker 2:We're going to be playing at the aca bar hotel and I'm supporting, I'm just going to do a little support for the marvelous funny and I'm going to do something I haven't done, which I've just started doing, which I've got backing tracks of the original orchestrations of my bad habits album. A lot of you know it's just so inconvenient to try and pull a big band together here and there, and very costly yeah, very expensive.
Speaker 2:so basically I I've got the original orchestra backings, like we did when we made the recordings, and I play the piano and sing live to that. Sometimes I have other musicians, you know, saxophone player or someone plays with me but basically I'm playing live with the original backings and I love it because you know, it's nice to have the music and not have to worry about the music and just enjoy doing it.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. We're so looking forward to catching up with you guys. To see you together is going to be fabulous.
Speaker 2:We could play a few songs with Swanee as well, which would be fun. So I'll play piano and do some stuff with him as well, but mainly Swanee's the headline.
Speaker 1:I'm just basically, I'm freeloading. Have you performed with Swanee ever before?
Speaker 2:No, I've worked with him in the studio and he's just an extremely lovely man and one of Australia's great singers. He's the sort of powerhouse singer that nobody else I can think of can do. Brace yourself for a good time.
Speaker 1:Ian McFarlane. You know him. He's, you know Australian musicologist. According to him, Billy, you are one of the most popular acts on the Australian scene in 1981 as your husky voiced singer piano player. So get along to the Aker Bar, get onto the Google-o-meter and grab your tickets and we'll see this husky voiced singer piano player with our other great mate, swanee, and we really look forward to seeing you then it's very kind of you.
Speaker 2:You're far too complimentary, but I you know I'll be graceful, I won't spoil you you've been part of so many fabulous australian.
Speaker 1:You know iconic bands, apart from your songs, of course, being the fabric of our. You know lives, the soundtrack of our lives. You know cold chisel, apart from your songs, of course, being the fabric of our, you know lives, the soundtrack of our lives. You know Cold Chisel and In Excess and all those others, the Angels, you know, which, of course, are my favourite. Being a South Australian girl, you have to like the Angels, you have to love. Cold Chisel. It's in our DNA.
Speaker 2:You've been a part of it all. Yeah, no, it was definitely great rubbing shoulders with those people and most of them are just well, virtually all of them are actually really delightful people. It's a privilege and I got an opportunity to learn from them and also a lot of professional musicians crossing paths. All the time. I was always trying to learn stuff from people and I sort of became friends with the guys in Sherbert a bit and I just I absolutely love Sherbert. They're still one of the greatest Australian bands of all time and Daryl is really probably the greatest singer we've got in the country. You know, I just I'm in awe of Daryl. He's terrific.
Speaker 1:And he doesn't age, does he?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he takes care of himself. He's a bit of a surfy and, uh, he's kind of careful with his voice, unlike myself, he's. I think he's probably pretty careful with his voice because he has to be, because, you know, when he performs he's, you know he's, he's just magnificent, beautiful artist and a beautiful man and, and uh, really one of our greats.
Speaker 1:Yeah he too was in adelaide not all that long ago and we went to see him at one of our other iconic south yeah, he too was in Adelaide not all that long ago and we went to see him at one of our other iconic South Australian venues the Bridgeway. He still got it hasn't he, he still got it.
Speaker 2:Sure does. And really I'm more friends with the guys that wrote the songs, you know, garth the piano player, and Tony the bass player. And I've done a bit with Tony. Tony's played with me a bit over the years, done gigs with me, and he's gorgeous. They're just lovely guys, you know, and that's the real payoff, you know getting to meet people you love. You know.
Speaker 1:Still rocking that podcast with that radio chick, cheryl Lee. On that note, I think we'll go out with a song. This is the live version of the Beatles, billy's favourite band of all time, sung by his great mate Daryl Braithwaite out the front of Sherbet.
Speaker 2:He's a real nowhere man sitting in his nowhere land making all.
Speaker 1:Thanks a lot. Thanks again for your time, Mr Billy Field. I shall see you down the front at the Arca Bar.
Speaker 2:Okay, lovely Over and out. Thank you.
Speaker 1:You're with Cheryl Lee that radio chick. Thank you so much for joining me on the Still Rocking it podcast. Hope to catch you again next time. Get out when you can support Aussie music and I'll see you down the front.