Chocolate Starfish have had a busy 2018… and 2019’s ‘Fish Diary looks to be filling up pretty quickly too, with another Red Hot Summer Tour lined up & possibly a bit of studio time slipped in there somewhere as well. They are currently back out on the road with a nationwide tour of their Classic Album Series and this times its INXS’s monumental KICK album that gets the ‘Fish treatment, with sold out shows all over the country. But it also seems to have given the band the ‘kick’ they needed, with the release of SPIDER earlier this year, their first album for over 20 years which seems to have given the band a new lease of life. The Rockpit’s Sean Bennett caught front man Adam Thompson, as he’d just returned home from a run to discuss why they chose the KICK album, the sad loss of former band member Zoran Romic, taking music to under privileged kids and his love for all things Freddie Mercury…
Sean: Hey Adam, thanks for taking the time to chat to us here at The Rockpit.
Adam: No problem at all.
Sean: After some old out shows in the Eastern States, you’re due here in Perth to play a couple of gigs in your Classic Album Series and this time you are taking on certainly one of the most iconic albums to come out of Australia in the 1980’s and that’s INXS’s KICK album. What were the main reasons to pick this one?
Adam: It was certainly one of the bands that were a huge influence for us, especially starting in the 90’s and there were also plenty of Aussie bands to look up to from the 70’s & 80’s. But the KICK album in itself was one that was just so jam packed full of hits, although musically way different to what we ended up becoming as Chocolate Starfish. It was a very influential album in terms of song-writing and with how the band delivered what they wrote & recorded.
Sean: Being such a well-known album did that make the project even more daunting and add some unnecessary pressure to you guys?
Adam: Look it was and it did but we decided about 5 years ago to do this Classic Album series where we would pick an album to do every 3 years – so 3 years ago we did Meat Loaf’s BAT OUT OF HELL, which in itself was an incredibly hard task to undertake. KICK was just as interesting but also a completely different challenge – vocally it’s not a high as BAT OUT OF HELL was, but the arrangements are quite challenging for the muso’s. The INXS guys very much played their instruments as separate pieces, as opposed to what you’d consider a normal rhythm section or a normal guitar/keyboard thing. So we found it was a challenge but one that we also wanted to bring a bit of Starfish life to and not just do it as they did.
Sean: So you’ve added a bit of a twist to it?
Adam: Of course we have [laughs] because that’s what makes us us! I’ll give you a bit of a hint – with the track Mediate, which is a semi-spoken; I do it very preacher-esque, so to speak with a big golden book, like a huge bible called the Book of Eights [laughs]. The show is pretty cool.
Sean: Can’t wait to see the gig. So do you have a favourite track off the album?
Adam: Yeah for me its MYSTIFY – it’s one I have always enjoyed and love sinking my teeth into and I tell an interesting story about my relationship with the Minogue family and how it’s sort of crossed over into that world as well – you’ve gotta be there for that at least. So that’s an interesting “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon” as they say {laughs}.
Sean: I was lucky enough to see INXS at Metropolis in Fremantle back in ’93 and I have to say it was something special – Hutchence just gave off this almost sexual aura, it was almost mystical – so hard to describe. He certainly had “a gift” that few performers naturally have.
Adam: You’re exactly right there. Hutch’s delivery was very sexual and also very mysterious. He was probably one of the last bastions of mysterious rock n rollers that people like David Bowie and suchlike were. And like those greats before him he had his personal fights with his own demons and his own challenges as well. With my shiny bald head, I am never going to be Hutch [laughs] but I bring my own theatre to it, which the Starfish fans have come to know and enjoy. So we certainly pay homage to the album but with a good twist of Starfish very much added to it.
Sean: It’s always been well documented that like INXS, your live gigs are something to behold and you carry along with you a reputation for putting on a good show. What keeps you guys going?
Adam: Thank you for that – yeah we have and it’s important to us. 5 or 6 years ago when we all sat down and discussed where Starfish were going and we had to be sure we could deliver with vigour and not that retiring RSL style of show – that was never on our radar and I always wanted to make sure we had that energy & passion that we had back in the 90’s… and by the way I’m not heavy breathing because I’m unfit and out of breath, it’s because I just got back in from a run before your called me {laughs} so I’m still trying to keep pretty fit [laughs}
Sean: I’m sure you need to be with these shows coming up…
Adam: Yes, it is pretty full on. We kick off this weekend with a sold out show on the Gold Coast. We also sold out The Palms in Melbourne about 4 weeks ago too. Then we are off to Adelaide before coming over to Perth. So we hope all you Western Australians come out to see us.
Sean: Two shows here; the first is on Friday 14 September at The Northshore Tavern in Hillarys, followed by Saturday 15 September at The Charles Hotel. Tickets are available at ticketmaster.com.au so check websites for shows times and the like. You’ve also had a busy year with the Red Hot Summer Tour earlier in 2018. How did that go?
Adam: Yes it was great fun. We were on the bill with the likes of Suzi Quatro and The Angels and we must have done something right because we have been invited back for both legs of the 2019 tour as well, which is pretty exciting. So we’ll be on the Jimmy Barnes & Joan Jett leg as well as back with Suzi, The Baby Animals & The Angels too – that’s 26 shows over the summer so it’s going to be a busy one.
Sean: And at the start of 2018, you released your first album in over 20 years, SPIDER. How difficult was it to get back into the studio after such a long time?
Adam: That’s an interesting question because for me, like I said earlier, I didn’t want us to become the shy retiring band that just only played their previous hits. But it’s also hard to sell records as a heritage artist so to speak. We were really lucky because during the Red Hot Summer Tour I wore this kilt and was this larger than life front man who jumped off the stage and ran through the crowd to the merchandise table and we were selling about 100 albums every concert, which was great. So people have managed to get hold of SPIDER – as an album it is a kind of celebration of where we are today as a band, but also in memory of my co-writer in Zoran (Romic), who we tragically lost 6 years ago to cancer.
Sean: And a fitting tribute to him is the 3rd track on the album, HEAVYWEIGHT which you co-wrote with Zoran. Was it emotionally hard to record it without him, knowing you guys wrote the song together?
Adam: Yes it was. It was a track we wrote maybe 10 years ago when we got caught up briefly – we had a bit of a strained relationship for a while. We didn’t really know where we were going in life for a long time after the band had stopped doing anything because that’s all we had known. But it was his illness that brought us closer together again. When I wrote the lyrics he had been a strong and healthy man, but when I was there doing some pre-production for the song, I realised it could so easily have been written about his last 3 or 4 months before he left us. I was so blessed that he wanted me in his corner during those last 3 months, when he was at his worst. He reached out for me for that final time which was so very special. I felt his presence when we were in the studio recording it.
Sean: I love the quote on your webpage “”I am for now, you are forever”…
Adam: It’s great isn’t it? It’s on his tombstone too. It’s a lyric I came up with and for me it’s so special that he and his family wanted it on his headstone. I don’t think I could have a better gift in life than to have that. It’s pretty special.
Sean: Thank you for sharing something so personal Adam. It kind of put the album in a new light for me – I’ll have to listen to it after we’ve finished this interview. I’d like to take you back now to your childhood. Was school a good place for you?
Adam: No not really. I had a few years as a troublesome teenage. I lost mum to cancer when I was around 14 years of age, so I struggled a bit with school for a while because of that. I grew up pretty quickly emotionally because of experiencing mortality at such a young age, so it wasn’t until Year 12 when I changed schools in my town and found they had a music program and theatre group and it was there where I found something that enabled me to express myself. And it wasn’t until a couple of years later at Uni that I started writing songs, answered an ad in the newspaper as a guy was looking for a co-song writer. When I met him I told him I hadn’t actually written anything of note but he said he’d paid $100 for the ad and I had been the only person who had contacted him [laughs]. So he asked me to hang around for a bit so that he felt that he’d actually got some of his monies worth out the $100 ad [laughs]… true story! So we wrote a song together that day and I quit Uni a month later and 10 years later we had ARIA awards. It was all pretty amazing.
Sean: Where were your musical influences coming from back then?
Adam: I originally came from out in the country so it was quite a modest radio network back then. I actually think it was quite a bit behind the metro based radio stations so AC/DC, Skyhooks, Cold Chisel were all in the realm but don’t forget I was having a challenging time, so I actually put all my emotions into sport at the time so I didn’t give much credence to music and what it could do, until that last year of high school where I found that performing allowed me to express myself in a way that sport hadn’t. And not long after that I found Freddie Mercury & Queen and I realised “ok, that is me, that’s what I want to be and what I want to do”. I wanted that amount of passion. LOVE OF MY LIFE by Queen is my favourite song of all time.
Sean: Brian May’s acoustic guitar intro just set the tone of that song…It sends shivers down my spine. In fact it’s given me goose bumps just thinking about it. How weird is that that it’s not even playing and it’s done that.
Adam: Mate, I have too… [Sings] “Hurry back, hurry back”…
Sean: That goes to show the power of a song when it can do that without even being played.
Adam: It’s because it’s probably a big part of both our childhoods – we’re almost the same age you and I, so you remember those moments. When Freddie passed I couldn’t fathom how something so beautiful and so raw and emotive… well, I believe we still had his best years to come…
Sean: Another front man with “the gift”…
Adam: Exactly. When I saw Queen Live at Wembley, my ego just wanted to be able to command a crowd like he did at that concert. To be able to silence 100,000 people like he could was incredible. But now as a person who’s been through life and is enjoying my entertainment on a different level, to be able to bring a crowd to that moment now is less about ego but more about the power of music and how it’s able to reach into the soul of someone. It took me probably 25 years of cathartic outpouring to reach the point of being able to put on a show and taking the crowd from jumping wildly up and down to hearing a pin drop – that’s the soul talking and that is where I want to be now.
Sean: Its sounds like musically you are in a fantastic place right now. Something else I found out while preparing for our chat was the amazing work you do with two projects that are extremely important to you. The first is www.musomagic.com where you take music workshops to remote corners of Australia and even places as far away as Mumbai. And the other is www.musikarma.org which helps disadvantaged kids through music. Can you tell me a bit more?
Adam: Yes of course, so we go all round the world and we try to inspire under privileged kids with music. So, I was up in the Northern Territory just last week doing some of that, which is so amazing. And I also have a team in India too; in fact I was over there just over 3 weeks ago with them doing some work there. We visited the slums and we work with kids that just can’t afford anything. We just try to bring something into their lives, with the power of music. So if your readers want to visit those websites it would be great. Music really can help in the remotest & poorest of places.
Sean: I think it’s pretty amazing when people give something back to music so I hope it continues to grow and be supported. Just a few quirky questions before I let you go…what would I find you’ve listened to on your iTunes last?
Adam: [laughs] KICK Of course – we had a rehearsal tonight and with the show coming up this weekend I had to have a refresher and a listen.
Sean: Anything new that’s made you sit up and go “wow”?
Adam: Loving Morgan Evans, he’s a country guy from Newcastle who’s doing good things in the US right now. I’ve been listening to his new album which is great. His new single is KISS SOMEBODY, which is doing really well i6n the US. Such a talented guy.
Sean: Dinner guest question time – 2 hour booking slot, 3 empty chairs, 3 guests ONLY, past or present. Who would you choose?
Adam: Obviously, my first would be Freddie. For my second we would need a translator for Beethoven, so I could discuss his philosophy’s on creating music and the third would be a good friend of mine, who I have only recently been reacquainted with and that’s Judith Durham from the Seekers – she’s just released a new album and a song I co-wrote with her many many years ago is the opening track.
Sean: I think already know the answer to my final question – any song ever written and you could be credited as writing it. What would you want that song to be?
Adam: I was trying to think if there is another song but no… LOVE OF MY LFE by Queen is my choice. It defines me on my musical journey so far.
Sean: I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our chat Adam and thank you for your time. We wish you all the best for the tour, the album & Red Hot Summer tour too. So looking forward to the Perth shows and I’ll hope to come say hello after the gig.
Adam: It’s been great, so thank you. And please do. It would be great to catch up. Take care.
WA DATES
Friday 14 September: Doors 7pm, Northshore Tavern, 66/470 Whitfords Avenue, Hillarys
Tickets: Ticketmaster.com.au – $39.22 plus handling fee
Saturday 15 September: Doors 8pm, The Charles Hotel, Charles Street North Perth,
Tickets: Ticketmaster.com.au – $39.22 plus handling fee, $30 from the bottleshop or $35 at the door if available.
EAST COAST DATES
Friday 7 September: The Governor Hindmarsh, Adelaide
Friday 21 September: Palms At Crown, Melbourne
Friday 19th October: Wests Cardiff, Newcastle
Saturday 20 October: Bridge Hotel, Rozelle NSW
