Still chained to the wheel … Joe Camilleri’s victory lap on vinyl
Joe Camilleri is a genre-busting Australian musician who is still going strong at 77 – with a double LP just released that celebrates one of Australia’s most enduring bands, The Black Sorrows.
Joe Camilleri is hanging around his kitchen and playing a big-bodied red guitar. When he’s not doing interviews, he strums out a tune or two. But duty eventually calls and it’s time to talk music rather than play music.
Our chat centres on new album The Quintessential Black Sorrows, a career-spanning collection Joe personally curated. Within minutes he is time-travelling through the decades, recalling everything from café gigs and car-boot sales to writing radio anthems and European tours.
“It was a big list that turned into a short list, and then had to turn into a shorter list,” Camilleri says of compiling the songs for the two-LP collection. “I wanted the vinyl to feel like a journey. Five tracks a side (with one exception) – you drop the needle and hear the making of the band.”
Camilleri hasn’t sequenced the music chronologically.
“Our career wasn’t that. We’ve been bouncing around the place – different ideas, different line-ups,” he says. “I wanted the record to flow emotionally.”
The story, as Camilleri tells it, starts in a kitchen with a crate of records. After Jo Jo Zep & the Falcons had run its course, he was stacking vegetables on trucks at the market when a mate up the road suggested playing some music.
“He said, why don’t you come and play at the café?” he recalls. “I grabbed a few pals. We did a Sunday arvo. It went over so well we did it again. I didn’t have songs, and I wasn’t interested in playing Falcons songs. It had a life of its own. It was refreshing.”
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The idea lit the fuse: zydeco, R&B, French accordion music, even Chuck Berry began floating into the mix. Those beginnings – and the lack of a label – led to a DIY streak. Before the majors circled back, The Black Sorrows were selling albums out of the car boot.
“We had to be independent,” he says. “Not out of design – out of necessity.”
Radio started spinning Dear Children and CBS picked up the record.
“All of a sudden we had a following,” he recalls. “And a band that sounded different to what was being played. And we had a front line – I wasn’t in the middle. The girls were. Everyone was a lead singer.”
Those girls were, of course, Vika and Linda Bull, recruited after a Sorrows stretch that saw them recording with the legendary Venetta Fields.
“They weren’t great at first,” Camilleri grins, “But I knew they would be. They had that synchronicity, that island dancing, and a beautiful feel.”
The Sorrows became a show band without being showy – songs first, then the spectacle that naturally followed. In the studio, magic announced itself in odd ways.
“With Hold On To Me, I knew we had something. Lucky Oceans came in and played one of the best solos of my recording career. Sometimes I love the outro more than the song.”
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The new compilation makes room for the songs that never leave the set – Harley & Rose, Chained to the Wheel – but also for side-roads and songs from the commercial margins. “I like songs that don’t have a shelf life,” Camilleri says.
There’s fresh work here, too – a new single For Your Love that sounds every inch the classic Sorrows cut: lyrical, melodic, built to last. Camilleri describes the process with long-time co-writer Nick Smith.
“I’m the nuts and bolts—melody, feel, the thing you can sing,” he says. “Nick’s the wordsmith. Sometimes a lyric arrives and all I have to do is not ruin it. We’ll change a bridge if it needs it. When it blossoms into spring, you feel it.”
Camilleri is 77, still writing, still rehearsing, still chasing the next song.
“It’s a fragile world, the art world,” he says. “Lots of moving parts just to get to something. But I’m still as excited by it as I was at 13, trying to play the same stuff. Some songs take years; some fall off the bone. Maybe all that work was happening underneath.”
Ask him about formats and he lights up like a record store clerk.
“I’ve got all the players – vinyl, CD, streaming,” he says. “My old CD deck blew up, but when I put a disc on in the car it sounds huge. Vinyl makes you get up, drop the needle, pay attention. That’s part of why this compilation is sequenced the way it is.”
In the end, The Quintessential Black Sorrows is less a greatest-hits victory lap than a living map of how Camilleri moves through the world: curious, collaborative, restless.
“It’s all about friendship,” he says. “Trying to get through life the best way you can. You’ve got to want to be part of it.”
He pauses, smiling at the thought of the next session or the next stage.
“I’m still up for it. What else am I gonna do?”
The Quintessential Black Sorrows is available through ABC Records. For tour dates, go to theblacksorrows.com.au/gigs