Hey Joe 

With two new CD collections and a national tour, Joe Camilleri is back on the road again and eager to make music. Story by Larry Schwartz.

JOE CAMILLERI pulled into South Melbourne in his pearl-colored ’64 Thunderbird and hurried into Cafe Sweethearts. Apologising for being a little late, he launched into a vivid update on his activities as if resuming a chat with a long-lost friend.

The veteran singer-songwriter, producer and saxophone player takes you into his confidence with an easy charm. But for the trademark shades, he seemed to be just another Joe in loose-fitting blue top, blue trousers and comfy blue sandshoes.

He likens his attitude to music these days to his sense of dress. Not the blue but the fit. “I can’t wear clothing that doesn’t suit my body any more.”

He has spent the past two years in a self-imposed exile from recording, and it’s three years since he last recorded a Sorrows album, although he’s given the odd solo performance along the way.

He has devoted his talents and energies to producing albums by other artists at his inner suburban studio, called Woodstock “because it’s in Woodstock Street”.

His approach has been to help artists “to another level” without seeking to impose a particular sound. As was the case with the acclaimed new album from Tiddas, for instance, “my job is to stop them from hitting a brick wall and to give them the opportunity to experiment”.

He’s just finished an album with The Overnight Jones and four jazz albums by local musicians on his own label.

He’s eager to get on with the long-delayed new material. He was due to record a new album last February: “I pencilled it in in my own studio and it just kept getting rubbed out”. Before tackling the next album, Camilleri and Paul Kelly will co-produce a Renee Geyer album.

He may have been out of the public eye, but fans were recently reminded that the heart still beats, as he puts it, with the release of the five-CD Black Sorrows Box. The collection includes four albums plus “an adventure into the dark vaults, pulling out crapola”. And Radio Days, a 36-song,
three-CD anthology of live recordings, is due out tomorrow.

Camilleri says time has changed his perspective: live recordings he once cringed at are now often intriguing. “The good thing about the Sorrows is that it was always such a good live band and it produced something in its performances that some people would say it never reached in its
recording situations.”

Meanwhile, there is the need to go over old material for a six-week national tour with a new incarnation of the Sorrows: jazzmen Ian Chaplin (alto and soprano saxophone); Anthony Norris (trumpet) and Rob Burke (tenor saxophone); one of the original Sorrows, Wayne Burt (guitar); from
Things of Stone and Wood, drummer Tony Floyd and musician-manager James Black (guitar and keyboards); and jazz player Nick Heywood on double and electric bass.

Partly, Camilleri is interested in testing the new line-up to see how they might take to the work he’s been writing for the next album. He misses live performance. “I think it gives you so much to think about. It gives you inspiration to… expand ideas. It gives you a reason to go on and record
if you’ve got material.”

The Sorrows have been around for 13 years with several configurations. Camilleri has misgivings about rehearsing old material for the tour to familiarise new members. “I have this fear of being a cover band, covering my own tracks.”

This, at a time when music is inundated with retrospective CDs, should not be interpreted as a willingness to lie down and die in some antipodean hall of fame. “You only really exist because of what you are now,” he says.

“You have to pay homage to what you were, but you’ve still got to feel comfortable in that. I can’t wear what I was wearing 20 years ago and it’s the same sort of thing…the songs have to feel comfortable.”

The music industry can be fickle, and stardom fleeting. But Camilleri has been in it for the long haul, from the early 1960s in bands such as Golden Shantung, the Brollies, the Adderly Smith Blues Band, Lipp and the Double Decker Brothers and Roger Rocket and the Millionaires. Then came
Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons (1975 to 1982) and the Black Sorrows in 1984, plus side-projects including the covers album, Amazing Stories, with The Revelators.

Born in Malta, Camilleri was not three years old when his family migrated here in 1950. They thought they would find a better life, but it was not easy. To survive, migrants of his father’s era had to be multiskilled. His father worked 16 hours a day as a baker, metal shop worker and spray
painter.

Camilleri was raised in Port Melbourne – “one of the toughest neighborhoods in the ’50s” – in a modest home where the back yard revealed his father’s fixation with concrete. Until he visited Malta and saw it was a place of stone, Camilleri could not understand the reluctance to let lawns
grow. He would dig up the concrete whenever his dad was away.

Camilleri’s parents worked hard but never insisted he choose a secure career. He was free to pursue his interests and welcome to remain in the family home.

Part of his charm is that he comes across as having no pretensions. He has a reputation for a disciplined approach to his craft and for insisting on commitment from those who work with him.

He has few illusions about the Big Time. Camilleri’s approach has been to hang in there and enjoy making music. “I think you just have to go the distance,” he says. “I don’t consider myself a great musician or songwriter or anything like that. But I seem to have a certain amount of
determination that a lot of people don’t have. I think that’s a talent in itself, because it gets you through.”
 The Sunday Age 17th of November 1996