Rock's Backpages Writers' Blogs » Joe Matera

Both Ends Burning

Joe Matera — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 21:53:15 +0000

Last Thursday night, I caught Roxy Music at Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne. Roxy Music were in town as part of their For Your Pleasure world tour. The band came onstage at 8.30pm, and played a blinding 100 minute set comprised of many of the band’s hits and fan favorites. Up onstage, the four original members; guitarist Phil Manzanera, vocalist Bryan Ferry, saxophonist Andy McKay and drummer Paul Thompson were augmented by extra members including a 22 year old guitar wiz kid Oliver Thompson on guitar and Tara Ferry – Bryan’s son – on percussion.Last Thursday night, I caught Roxy Music at Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne. Roxy Music were in town as part of their For Your Pleasure world tour. The band came onstage at 8.30pm, and played a blinding 100 minute set comprised of many of the band’s hits and fan favorites. Up onstage, the four original members; guitarist Phil Manzanera, vocalist Bryan Ferry, saxophonist Andy McKay and drummer Paul Thompson were augmented by extra members including a 22 year old guitar wiz kid Oliver Thompson on guitar and Tara Ferry – Bryan’s son – on percussion.

The band walked onstage to the instrumental backing tape of India and took their positions before kicking off the set with The Main Thing. The first few songs blitz the crowd and each is applauded by the appreciative audience. Most the audience remain seated until mid way through the set, where things picked up and once the riff to Same Old Scene echoed through the arena, the crowd are on their feet dancing. Lets Stick Together really pumps the crowd to new heights of joyful participation. The group performs their entire set against a backdrop of ever changing visuals with the band members themselves, blended into the visuals at various points throughout the set. During the final song, For Your Pleasure, the band, one by one, each leave the stage waving goodbye as they each walk off stage, starting with Bryan Ferry right through until pianist Colin Good is the last to walk off, with the echoing last strains of sounds emanating from his piano. It’s a magnificent finish and a perfect way to end the night and bookend a superb performance.

Setlist for the night was:

India (tape, for walk on) – The Main Thing – Street Life – Pyjamarama – Prairie Rose – If There Is Something – More Than This – Jealous Guy – Like A Hurricane – 2HB – n Every Dreamhome A Heartache – Tara – Bitter Sweet – To Turn You On – Same Old Scene – My Only Love – Virginia Plain – Love Is The Drug – Editions Of You – Do The Strand -Avalon – Let’s Stick Together- For Your Pleasure.

After the show, I had been invited earlier by Phil Manzanera to meet him and the band. So with my buddy Peter Hodgson, we’re both soon ushered in backstage with only a handful of other guests to a waiting backstage room where drinks are given out while we’re waiting. Soon after, some of the band, start filtering through the room including Phil Manzanera. We greeted each other and then chatted for awhile, with Phil informing me about how much he likes my instrumental track Travellin’ West. The conversation then segues into the guitars he’s using on this tour, how the tour itself has been going and how he is enjoying spending his days between shows, exploring the vast Australian landscape. But all good things eventually come to an end and so it wasn’t long before it was time to head home.

Many thanks to Claire Singers and Phil. Check out Phil’s website: http://www.manzanera.com As well as Roxy Music official website: http://www.roxymusic.co.uk

Looking Through A Glass Onion

Joe Matera — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:13:09 +0000

Over the weekend Liz and I went out to check out John Waters’ brilliant show Looking Through A Glass Onion which tells the story of John Lennon with Waters as Lennon himself. Before I discuss the show, I must mention, it is amazing in one’s life who one runs into and at the points in one’s life, that certain people reappear out of the blue. Maybe I am waxing too philosophical about it, but that’s how I always approach and view life. Having said that, as I walked into the venue, to my surprise I ran into Rob Robson. I had not seen Rob for over 16 years. Rob was the director of the STAG musical productions I was involved in, playing guitar, back around the mid-1990s, Les Miserables and Chess. As the saying goes, ‘it certainly is a small world’. And the synchronicity of meeting him – a person from my theatre years – and meeting up again at another theatre show, well do I need to say more?
Back to the show, Looking Through A Glass Onion is constructed around a format of spoken monologue that is interspersed with songs from John Lennon’s catalog both with The Beatles and post-Beatles, it’s a truly wonderful trip through music history and through a life and career of one of the 20th century’s greatest singer/songwriters. Divided into two halves, the first half covers Lennon’s Liverpool years through to the Beatles success and their eventual break-up. After a short intermission, the story continues through Lennon’s 1970s solo years and ending with his tragic death in 1980. The material Waters covers musically is perfectly matched with his storytelling, from Sexy Sadie which expressed Lennon’s disillusion with the Maharishi to Woman which documents Lennon’s feelings on Yoko to Beautiful Boy about his love for son Sean. That’s just three out of so many, that also include Strawberry Fields Forever, Revolution, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Working Class Hero and Imagine.
The underlying theme is one that shows Lennon’s desire to lead a normal life but one that would express his creativity through his music. Along the way, Waters superbly delves into the experiences that shaped Lennon’s public persona; the infamous “being bigger than Jesus” mis-quote, and his reactions to the racism directed at him and Yoko. Throughout the performance, one feels as though Lennon himself is there in the flesh retelling his remarkable life story to the audience, Waters channeling of Lennon’s spirit and character is chillingly authentic. The dynamic light show which is kept at a minimum, helps boost the light and dark shades of the story line and music. Coming away from this I learned some new things about John Lennon and also realized what a giant of a man he was both in musical output and the sort of good moral character that underlined his entire life. I highly recommend this show to everyone, in fact it’s so good, some one should offer Waters a movie version of this celebrated show.
Check out more about John Waters and his show at: http://www.johnwaters.com.au/

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Looking Through A Glass Onion

Rockin’ With Suzi Q

Joe Matera — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 03:28:18 +0000

I recently did a gig with a great Melbourne singer and guitarist – and all round top chick – Nat Allison. If you’re not sure who Nat is, she previously played guitar for Vanessa Amorosi and appears in the video to Amorosi’s 2007 come back single ‘Kiss Your Mama’. Anyway during the gig, Nat was telling me how she recently returned from London after having been invited to play guitar on legendary ‘Suzi Quatro’s new album which is coming out some time this year.

This reminded me of the time I interviewed Suzi in 2006 and jammed with her – albeit via a phone line. I was speaking to her about her then new studio album, Back To The Drive, which came out that same year. Prior to speaking to Suzi, I had listened to the album in-depth and mentioned to her that the song, “Duality”, in my opinion, summed up the entire album, an album that revealed her two sides; (being a Gemini) the soft rock and hard rock sides to her musical personality. Suzi was really impressed and commented back to me “Thank God, a journalist with a brain!” I won her over instantly from that moment on.

Anyway here’s few interesting questions I asked her during our interview.

Me: “Suzi, when you wore those cat suits back in the ’70s, was it true you couldn’t wear any panties and bras underneath”?

Suzi: “You actually can’t! Because the line of the jumpsuit is skin tight so you don’t want any lines. Anyway, I’m a small busted girl so a bra doesn’t really look right on me anyway.”

Me: Did you ever indulge in the excesses of rock and roll like drugs?

Suz: “I always found drugs boring I gotta say. Of course I tried them but only very early on, but I didn’t like it and I just did not like getting high”.

Me: What about groupies?

Suzi: “I was with Len Tuckey (her guitarist and later husband, and ow ex-husband) then but I always had groupies of both sexes and still do around. In fact one particular guy was the reason I wrote Glycerine Queen about”.

After our chat I mentioned to Suzi how one Michael (a highly under rated ballad which should have been a single! – and which appeared on her 1975 album) was one of my favorite Quatro songs) So, I pulled out my acoustic guitar and started playing her a bit of the song. As she listened, she went ahead and sung back to me a few lines of the song while I accompanied her on my guitar over the phone! Joe and Suzi live down the phone line…*LOL*.

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Rockin’ With Suzi Q

Foreword…

Joe Matera — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 06:37:16 +0000

After doing some after Christmas cleaning, preparing for the new year that’s upon us, I found some old diaries which I had kept that I had scribbled my recollections of my many meetings with many greats of the music world during the course of my career. Like the time I met Lemmy Kilmister at his invitation back stage at Vodafone Arena in 2005, where our meeting was hilarious punctuated by midgets in kangaroo suits! (You can read the full version of that meeting here: http://www.joematera.com/journalism.html)