Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
What's Chain's Matt Taylor been up to lately? OR Can a career ever recover from singing about your cleaner?
Join Cheryl Lee - That Radio Chick on STILL ROCKIN' IT for news, reviews, music and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
Today I share a phone conversation I had recently one of Australia’s finest blues purists, self-taught harmonicist, Matt Taylor, about ….. remembering when we were young – see what I did there?!?
Now 74 years young, as with so many of Australia’s greatest musicians, we originally inherited Matt also from the UK as a youngster, from working class Liverpool.
Having toured with every other blues legend on the planet including Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Willie Dixon, BB King, Albert King, Freddy King, and Howling Wolf, Matt and his band Chain on our way to a town near you very soon.
Most importantly, which band did Matt fall in love with from just a photo?
Includes Songs:
I Remember When I Was Young - Matt Taylor
For Your Love - The Yardbirds
Turn Up Your Radio - The Masters Apprentices
Rock 'n' Roll Music - Chuck Berry
Please Please Me - The Beatles
House of the Rising Sun - The Animals
Black & Blue - Chain
What is Matt Taylor 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 Chick, cheryl Lee, here with you. Welcome to the Still Rocking it podcast, where we'll have music news, reviews and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians and artists. Today I share a phone conversation I had recently with one of Australia's finest blues purists, self-taught harmonicist, matt Taylor, about remembering when we were young. See what I did there. Now, 74 years young. As with so many of Australia's greatest musicians, we originally inherited Matt, also from the UK, as a youngster from working-class Liverpool, having toured with every other blues legend on the planet, including Muddy Waters, buddy Guy, willie Dixon, BB King, albert King, freddie King, Howling Wolf. Matt and his band chain are on their way to a town near you very soon. What's Matt Taylor been up to lately? Let's find out. You're with Cheryl Lee, that radio chick. Thank you for joining me today and I'm pleased to introduce Matthew Taylor, aka Matt Taylor from Chain. Thank you for having a chat with us today, matt.
Speaker 2:Oh, my absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1:Most of us will remember Matt as the lead singer and harmonica player from Chain. We'll talk a little bit about Chain and some of the memories, but perhaps I could take you right back to the very beginning. Matt Were you from a musical family.
Speaker 2:Yep, I was the least musical in my family. My parents I'm a Queenslander and my parents entertained the American troops in what they used to call concert parties. So the concert party would go out to an American camp and there'd be comedy and they'd sing songs and you know all of that type of stuff. And my sister learned to play the piano and they tried to teach me clarinet. That was just absolutely useless. She thinks it's a waste of time. Then in 1963, my dad sees a picture in the paper. My dad was from Liverpool. He says Matty, come over here and they used to call England the old country. Oh, look, what's happening in the old country. I looked at it and here's these four long-haired lads. And he's these four long-haired lads. You know, in my book it explains it a lot better. Within 24 hours I was growing my hair long, and this is 63, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they'd say, get a haircut and get a real job.
Speaker 2:Oh gotcha Well, that came from your own family. Get a haircut and get a real job. Oh gotcha Well, that came from your own family. Get a haircut and get a real job. The thing was is that if you come from a musical family, you're hearing it all the time, there's music all around you and even though you're running around shooting guns, that's basically all I used to do playing, and you know you're taking all of this stuff in. You know I can remember my dad would sing Old Shep and I'd have to go downstairs because, you know, any song about a dog dying was just a little bit too much.
Speaker 1:See that here.
Speaker 2:And do you have any brothers? No, I've got a lovely sister. Still great friends with my sister. She's four years older than I am, she still lives in Brisbane and whenever we talk we just carry on the conversation from where we left off last time. One of those kind of relationships.
Speaker 1:Oh, very lovely. How did you end up? A boy from sunny Queensland end up settling over in Perth?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a long, long story too. A fellow named Fred Robinson, who was a sort of spiritual teacher and he used to go around Australia and he set up a commune in Western Australia. I've always been interested in those kind of subjects so I went with my wife at the time and we went and settled in a place called Bailingup in Western Australia and was there for about two years In a commune In a commune, yeah and then moved up to Perth and I've been here ever since and the rest as they say, is history yes.
Speaker 3:You are listening to Still Rocking it. The podcast with Cheryl Lee.
Speaker 1:I don't think we'll keep you in suspense any longer. Let's hear that fabulous hit now. I Remember when I Was Young. Matt Taylor wrote the song and performed it originally, and it has been covered by greats like Daddy Cool, mondo Rock Cold Chisel, men at Work, renee Geyer, australian Cruel, richard Clapton, the Whitlands the list goes on. Well, I remember when I was young, the world had just begun and I was happy. So you're self-taught, matt. You started getting interested in blues. So you didn't become a moth head, like you didn't become a Beatle. You started listening to blues.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you the story is I'm a raging Beatles fan in 63. And even by the time the Beatles came to Australia I went to the show I was already a blues fan by that stage. And how it came about is I bought Please Please Me the Beatles first album the day it came out and I love the Chuck Berry and Little Richard songs. So the next album I bought were the best of Chuck Berry and the best songs. So the next album I bought was the best of Chuck Berry and the best of Little Richard.
Speaker 2:And then I'm going through a magazine called Fabulous and I see a picture of a band that looks exactly the way I feel, and of course this is the Rolling Stones. So I become a Rolling Stones fan from a picture in a book. So the very first day the Rolling Stones album came out, I bought it, ran home, put it on the radiogram. My dad got home from work, stood in front of I'm playing the Rolling Stones and my dad stands in front of me and says, matty, what's that shit? So dad was not impressed with the Rolling Stones at all.
Speaker 2:But my dad was a harmonica player so we had harmonicas all over the house. Me never touched them. Old man music, not interested. Then I hear the Rolling Stones playing me so I get every harmonica in the house. I could not figure out how on earth they were doing it. And then Fabulous magazine comes around the right time again and there's an interview with Keith Ralph from the Yardbirds and he says there's only one harmonica you can play the blues on, and in America it's called a marine band, but in Australia and England it's called an echo super vampa. So I basically just went and bought an Echo Super Vampire, brought it home and I'd say within a month I could play everything on that Stones album, all the harmonica. I just had a natural feel for it again because I'd been listening to it all my life, not realizing that I was learning how to play it, and I didn't even realise I was learning it.
Speaker 2:You were taking it in by all senses. Yeah, it's the same as writing songs. I used to play hockey and I'd entertain the hockey team by making up rude verses to Beatles songs and you don't realise that's teaching you how to write songs.
Speaker 1:That's true, it's the very first baby step.
Speaker 2:An incredible thing is I'm reading Bob Dylan, a book he wrote about himself. Fabi is a really good writer. I've got a lot of respect for Bob, and Bob said before I wrote one song, I would get old folk songs and rewrite the lyrics to them. Exactly what I did you start off getting old songs, rewriting the lyrics, and then, bit by bit, you think, oh, I don't need. You know, that's a good lyric, let's put something else underneath it. And before you know it, you're just writing songs.
Speaker 1:You are listening to Still Rocking it the podcast with Cheryl Lee I think we'll have a song from the Yardbirds now For your Love, In memory of Keith Relf, vocalist and harmonicist for the Yardbirds, who he lost in tragic circumstances aged just 33, who gave Matt Taylor the big tip on the best harmonica to play. You started early with a band called Bay City Union, and was that with Glenn Wheatley.
Speaker 2:The Bay City Union did its first gig on the 14th of February 1966. Actually it might have been the 13th. It was that weekend where Decimal Currency came in.
Speaker 2:I was wondering how you remember that. Yeah, of course the 14th of February is also my sister's birthday, so Valentine's Day in a romantic way means nothing to me, but it's a very important date in my life and I'm always aware when it comes up. Glenn wasn't in the original band. Like many bands, you go through 20 members. When we decided to go down to Melbourne, I wasn't the original singer. The original singer was a fellow named Paul Johnson, an amazing guy, not with us anymore. He eventually is asked to leave the band and I become the lead singer instead of the rhythm guitarist. So I was lead singer and harmonica player in the Bay City Union. And of course Phil Manning joins the Bay City Union along with Glenn Wheatley and when that band breaks up, everyone goes their own way. You know, the drummer of the Bay City Union joins fraternity with Bronze Spot.
Speaker 2:It's a very you know, when you go back into that history we're all wound up with each other. You know, yes, it was quite an issue, wasn't it? There were, like. I remember the chain drummer once told me he said I could go in now and play with Spectrum and you wouldn't even know they had a different drummer. You know, we were so close. We knew each other, especially rhythm sections, bass and drums. We'd go and jam virtually with anyone and that's the other thing we did a lot of was jamming. Yes, the Bay City Union was a pretty average band when we hit Melbourne, but nine months after we hit Melbourne it was a hot little unit, as I say sometimes. I do a show about it and I say it was so hot that everyone wanted to steal the musicians it. I say it was so hot that everyone wanted to steal the musicians. You know the Bass's Apprentices stole Wheatley and.
Speaker 2:Phil Manning went off with. There was a couple of girls and I think it was a Laurie Allen review and there was a couple of girls in it, so Phil was gone.
Speaker 1:Yes, that was his incentive wasn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was his incentive. So you know it was. And of course, the Bay City Union was really the first. You know, if you go and see a blues band somewhere, the Bay City Union was the first. We didn't do any English covers, we just went straight to the source and, just you know, did Muddy Waters and Little Walter Howlin' Wolf. It was probably a little bit too early.
Speaker 3:You are listening to Still Rocking it, the podcast with Cheryl Lee. What a great time in music.
Speaker 1:It was back then everybody playing with everybody else.
Speaker 2:Let's hear a song from the Masters Apprentice who apparently stole Glenn Wheatley from Bay City Union, their hit Turn Up your Radio Back soon to chat more with Matt straight after this the wonderful thing about Melbourne at the time is that those great big dancers that they had you could have a jazz band start the night and then two pop bands, you know a boy singer comes on and then someone like the Bay City Union comes on and plays blues. We made a living. It was fantastic. And when I started off I had a little scrapbook someone gave me and I went 16 pages in and put a little asterisk and I said, if I can fill up those 16 pages I'll be quite happy.
Speaker 2:If anyone would have said to me when I was 17, when I started earning a living playing music and I'd only taken up music from 13. So I was a professional musician, certainly by 18, and has been a professional musician ever since. Now, if anyone would have told me that I'd still be doing the odd gig you know, 50 odd years later, I would have just laughed at them Because it wasn't a full-time profession. I've got a number one record at one stage full-time profession. I've got a number one record at one stage. I go back to Brisbane and my parents have a little party for me and my dad gets me in the corner, puts his arm around me and says, maddy, when it all falls through, I'll get you a job on the trams. God bless them.
Speaker 2:And the trams only lasted another five years and they got rid of them and replaced them with buses. So, as I tell many people, um, when I started, there were people much more talented than what I was better guitarists no one could play harmonica better than me, I'll tell you that but singers. There were just so many talented musicians and their fathers said, oh look, look, son, get the trade. And when you've got the trade, go and do your musical thing. And of course, they got the trade and they're still doing it now. You know, I burned all the bridges. I had nothing to fall back on. It was that or starving.
Speaker 1:That's right, so that was a good plan. No plan B.
Speaker 2:There's no plan B, so you have to make it work and it's wonderful. You could do it in those days. I don't know how any musician now you know when you're paying, you know 500 bucks a week rent. You know no idea how you could have done it. The other thing, too, is I've never been on the dole. That was because I came from parents who went through the Depression. They'd get through to you no matter what you do, have some money behind you for the bad times.
Speaker 2:I've fucked with that all my life. Even with this COVID rubbish, we got nothing. The musicians got nothing from the government, not one cent. I've lost thousands and thousands of dollars worth of work and so when I hear people complaining oh, I'm only doing 750, I think you, god, you know, don't complain to me. Be a musician and then find out just how well you're looked after.
Speaker 2:But you know, be that as it may, I'm still here, I'm still surviving, I'm still writing songs. You know, being a blues musician, we just keep playing until we fall off the roost. I love John Farnham, you know, keeps retiring and he keeps doing more gigs every year than I do and he's retired In a way. Covid's forced many musicians into a form of semi-retirement. But you know I've got Adelaide coming up in October, so I'm really looking forward to that and hopefully by that stage everyone's had COVID by that stage and haven't got 5,000 people a day getting it. Everyone's plans just change all the time. Now You've got one thing planned and then you rang up sorry, matt, got COVID locked up for seven days. Okay fine.
Speaker 1:Can you tell us when and where and what's happening when you come in?
Speaker 2:No, no no, I've got no secrets with me, you know. Let's have a look. Adelaide yeah, we do the 28th, 29th and 30th We'll do the old condo club at Broad, adelaide and then the Rosemount is it hotel. 30th, we'll do the old condo club at Broad, adelaide and then the Rosemount is it Hotel, then the Three Brothers Vans. On the 30th we do all the out of the way places chain when we come to Adelaide. But you know the real chain fans just look it up and they know where to go. They'll track it down. There's plenty of time to work on it.
Speaker 2:There's supposed to be a Brisbane Blues Festival at the start of October. I'm booked for that. Whether it'll happen, I don't know. So once this COVID thing goes away or settles down, then we can get on playing music. I don't think music will ever be the same Again the musical scene because what we've done is changed people's going out habits. That's so right. Anyway, I'm looking forward to doing Adelaide.
Speaker 1:Get on the Google-o-meter from about now either on Matt Taylor's website and keep an eye on that on the Googlometer. They'll probably see you at the Three Brothers Arms.
Speaker 3:You are listening to Still Rocking it. The podcast with Cheryl Lee.
Speaker 1:I'd say it's time for a song. Earlier Matt said he loved the Please, Please Me album by the Beatles, particularly the songs the beatles covered by chuck berry and little richard. Let's have a listen now to an old recording of chuck berry's rock and roll music that inspired the beatles that matt so loved.
Speaker 2:Just let me hear some of the rock and roll music In your way to.
Speaker 1:Backbeat. You can do this. Last time I saw you was it the Fraternity 50th anniversary celebration at the last year. That was great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was fantastic. And then Tony Butel from the old Bay City Union and Fraternity was there and I hadn't seen him since Fraternity Been living in different cities and everything. It was just lovely to catch up. Yeah, there's an enormous amount of history there.
Speaker 1:There was, so for those that don't know, it was sort of celebrating the 1970s.
Speaker 2:Well, that was an incredible show too, my Pongo. That would have been probably the third or maybe fourth music festival in Australian history. It was before the Melbourne ones. So Adelaide got in really early. You know we're ahead of our time in many ways. You are and have been. You know I think the greatest turned up for the Beatles and when they arrived anywhere was in Adelaide. You know the streets were just crammed with. You know it was something ridiculous, like it was a quarter of the population of South Australia. It was some ridiculous thing like that. So yeah, and there's always been a great little blues scene in Adelaide, which of course helps chain quite a bit.
Speaker 1:Well, I have always said that we punch people by their way.
Speaker 2:That's because you've always had a great musical tradition.
Speaker 1:We've got a great little underground spot here in Adelaide that you must go to and I'll flick it through to you. You always have new and old blues musicians playing downstairs underground.
Speaker 2:You can sneak in. Well, in the old days, kane would come into town and we'd play in one of the big pubs and then we'd go off to the Coe Club in what's your, that famous street there, Finely Street. Finely Street, yeah, and probably Chris Finnan would be playing there till three in the morning. So I'd get up and play with Chris and then we'd go over the road to one of the pubs on the corner in Hindley Street and Rob Riley would be playing with his band, and they'd start at five o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2:Adelaide and Nathan. I think that from Friday and Saturday no one slept, and then on Sunday they'd fire a cannon down the street. There was just no one there, no, so everyone would just stay up and go to sleep sometime on Sunday and be ready for work on Monday.
Speaker 1:So this little spot which is holding up the blues tradition here in.
Speaker 3:Adelaide at the moment is called.
Speaker 1:Memphis Slim's.
Speaker 2:House of Blues Great piano player.
Speaker 1:Memphis Slim's. Just also congratulations on the longevity of Chain. I counted them. There's been about 30 amazing artists come through and be part of the Chain legacy. So congratulations on that amazing longevity and also your induction, 10, 12 years ago now, into the WA Music Hall of Fame. Clearly you're a blues fan and a blues man, but have you got any sneaky?
Speaker 2:likes. Especially when you're a songwriter, you listen to very little. I've got so much music going around my head most of the time that a lot of times music comes on unless it really grabs me I'll just turn it off. You know, non-blues things like Steely Dan, because of the perfection of the playing, really blow me out. Great playing, whether it's blues, anything tremendously good playing. I love that, and about once every five or six years I just will spend a couple of weeks listening to classical music. I really like classical music. Then after about two weeks I've had enough of it. Yeah, and I listen to it for quite a while With the old blues. When I hear it it's just like listening to an old friend or pumping into an old friend. You know, I was lucky enough to do two tours with Muddy Waters and tours with Buddy Guy and Willie Dixon, you know. So I've seen so many of the greats. I've done all of them BB King, albert King, freddie King, done shows with them. All. That's my music, though at the moment I write what I call Oz Indigo. I've got two or three CDs out of my Oz Indigo. It's blues-based but just as someone like Eric Clapton, he's still a blues player but he plays Layla and things like that wonderful songs.
Speaker 2:As a songwriter, I don't have any restrictions on what I write. I just write what I feel I need to write, whether it sounds like blues or not. People can play blues, but all they're doing is copying something You've got to do. What I used to tell young musicians is, for two years, copy everything known to man, just every turnaround. Learn the blues from back to front and then spend the rest of your life forgetting it and replacing it with your own way of doing things. With me now I've completely got rid of all the old ways, and those ways were fantastic. Love them to bits, but I've replaced them with my way of doing it.
Speaker 2:The blues I play, even though it may not sound like blues now, but it's real. It comes from my soul and it's real. It's not a copy of something. You know I can't watch boys and all of that type of stuff. Someone copies a song and that's supposed to be fantastic. I think you're sorry. You know, copying a pop song ain't that hard. Believe me, if you've got a bit of a voice, you can do it.
Speaker 3:You are listening to Still Rocking it. The podcast with Cheryl Lee.
Speaker 1:Let's hear the Beatles song Please, Please Me, title track of the album that inspired Matt Taylor all those years ago.
Speaker 2:In the 60s I think the greatest non-original song was House of the Rising Sun and I can remember hearing it and it just blew me away. Bob Dylan says he heard it on his car radio and just parked and just listened to it. And I think it's about time now, where I do a version of it that's close to the original and of course you've got to sing it from a female point of view. You know you've got to sing it because that's what it's about. You know. It's about a young girl gets involved with a gambler. It wasn't a father. The gambler is her boyfriend and he takes her down in New Orleans. He's gambling all the money and he's got her on the game. That's what the House of the Rising Sun's about. She goes back to New Orleans to wear the ball and chain, not to jail. She's gone back to this fucking asshole. You know to wear the ball and chain. So I sing as close to the original as possible. Yeah, and from that female point of view which you know. It only makes sense from the female point of view which you know. It only makes sense from the female point of view.
Speaker 2:Get on the computer and put in House of the Rising Sun and get some of the earlier versions. Like you know, my mother was a tailor, sewed my new blue jeans and I say my partner is a gambling man down in New Orleans and I can't remember what the original one was. My lover was a gambling man, or you know. Uh, that's that's. The key point is that she gets involved with a gambler and he gets her on the game. Of course she's still in love with him and she says Mother, the mother is in the present, mother, tell my little sister not to do what I have done and spend your life in cindery in the house of the rising sun. It's a lament, and she's warning the listener and warning her mother to make sure that her little sister doesn't do what she does.
Speaker 2:It's a fabulous song. As I said in the 1960s, I think that was just one of the most amazing songs. Yeah, and the Animals did such a fantastic version of it, but of course in those days you couldn't sing it. Well, a folk singer's could, from the female point of view.
Speaker 2:The other thing, too, is when I do my show, I say here's three songs that were written by women or for women and are about women that men had monster hits with. And of course, the first one was Little Red Rooster. And, as I say, if you listen to Little Red Rooster, what man do you know who wants another rooster in the barnyard with him? None, from a female's point of view. If you find my Little Red rooster, drive them home. We've had no fun in the barnyard since my little red rooster's been gone. It was actually written by a woman and wasn't written by Willie Dixon. It was written by Memphis Minnie and Willie just pinched it off her, but Willie did things like that.
Speaker 2:And the other one, of course, is Elvis' biggest hit, hound Dog. It's sung from the female point of view Because the real words forget the Elvis words. They were just silly words made up. The real words is you ain't nothing but a hound dog Snooping round my door. You ain't nothing but a hound dog snooping round my door. You ain't nothing but a hound dog snooping round my door. You can wag your tail, but I ain't feeding you no more. Now that pretty much tells you what hound dog is all about.
Speaker 1:Yes, I've written all that down. Thanks, matt, that's good stuff, and I know two other great songs that you know. Really congratulations.
Speaker 2:They have become the soundtrack to our lives and they're part of the Australian music landscape, of course, black and Blue, and I Remember when I Was Young and I remember watching John Farnham once and thinking had you not taken that easy path of you know, sadie the Cleaning Lady, you would have been able to go on stage, do your great songs and no one would be singing out. Two Sadies, no one. Never take the easy way out. Never take the achy breaky heart. Yeah, yeah, you'll have this monster hit and then you'll just be a laughing sock from then on, no matter how good you are, no matter how good you were. Barnum was good enough to become bigger than Sadie. I've never, ever done anything unless I believed in it, and do it for the rest of my life. This need be.
Speaker 1:Oh, good on you, and we thank you for all of those years of the fabulous music. And do get onto the Googlometer. We shall see you in October here in our beautiful town of Adelaide. Thank you so much, matt Taylor, for chatting with us today.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1:And sharing some of your history and some stories with us. I really, really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was just a, and usually there shouldn't be more than really half a second delay between. But it's going through towers and satellites and everything like that, all sorts the Twitterverse.
Speaker 1:That's right. It was a bit tricky, but we got there Fantastic.
Speaker 2:Ring me about a week before Shane gets there. We can plan a day where we can get together and do what's necessary.
Speaker 1:Sit and have that chat with Kelly. That'll be good, okay.
Speaker 2:Bye-bye Cheryl Bye.
Speaker 3:You are listening to Still Rocking it.
Speaker 1:the podcast with Cheryl Lee it makes sense, I guess, to finish up with the animals and the house of the rising sun cannot finish the podcast without chains, black and blue chains hit single from from the album Toward the Blues. 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.