The Freddie Mercury biographical drama film ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ became one of the highest grossing movies of 2018, picking up four Academy Awards & two Golden Globes, as well as rekindling an international love for the incredible legacy of music that Mercury & his band Queen left us, while collecting a whole new generation of young fans. Having never been a band to shy away from the spotlight, Australia’s Chocolate Starfish and their effervescent front man Adam Thompson, have regularly faced adversity & undertaken new challenges head-on & with bravado, having always seemingly delivered, whilst also gathering a whole new army of supporters long the way. But back in April of this year, Thompson decided to tackle one of his biggest hurdles to date, when he put together a group of musicians comprising of former band members from the We Will Rock You stage show, along with ‘Starfish’ six string wizard Zakk Zedras, to play a one-off showcase of the soundtrack… and promptly sold it out!
With rave reviews & glowing feedback, Thompson decided the time was right to take this show further afield and share it with audiences across the country, showing them just why Freddie Mercury has been such a major influence on Adam’s career, not only with his flamboyant dress sense but also his charismatic stage presence & energy. We managed to catch up with Adam to find out what it feels like to get to ‘live the dream’, why it was important twenty five years ago for Chocolate Starfish to remain different from all the bands and some exciting news regarding new music coming from one of Australia’s favourite ‘Heritage’ bands.
Sean: Hi Adam, great to talk to you again. How have you been?
Adam: Likewise mate. I’m really good, thanks Sean.
Sean: Well, 2019 has been another busy year for you and there is no sign that 2020 will be any different. When we spoke last year we got on to the subject of one of the major influences in your career as a front man, the one and only Freddie Mercury and now here you are living your dream…
Adam: Absolutely! It’s pretty amazing isn’t it? I was hoping the Bohemian Rhapsody shows would resonate well with people and they have. The first show we did, at The Palms in Melbourne, sold out really quickly and it was a fantastic night. So, it’s great for me to be able to do what is really the third of our classic album series, following on from ‘Bat Out of Hell’ & ‘KICK’, singing songs that were by my greatest influence.
Sean: I was listening back to our previous interview last night and I know just how much of a favourite Queen’s ‘Love of my Life’ is to you – I could hear the excitement in your voice when we discussed it. So, to be able to perform that song in front of a venue full of people must be quite emotional for you.
Adam: It is and you know we often look at love as a reflective thing on a person but often I look at love as a much broader concept – that holistic thing of sometimes you lose love itself or lose love of a passion or desire for life. Sometimes when I’m even rehearsing that song, I feel it’s not necessarily about a person but it’s about the greater love of life and I really resonate with it.
Sean: One of the most incredible gifts that Freddie Mercury had was the power to command an audience like no other. To be able to have tens of thousands of people clapping & singing in unison and then to be able to stun them to silence was something pretty special, so to open the second half of the show with that song must be quite moving.
Adam: It really is… it is just so exciting. And I do get emotional singing it. We start this weekend in Adelaide, which is fantastic and then we move on to the capital cities so this really is a boyhood dream to be honest.
Sean: It’s a huge night of music for Queen Fans – you guys perform over twenty-five songs from the back catalogue.
Adam: Yes, so obviously we are doing the movie soundtrack but also songs like ‘Save Me’, ‘You’re My Best Friend’ & ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ on the more rock side of things… so to be able to put those songs into the show as well means so much to me. It’s a two and a half hour show divided up into two halves – we’ve titled the first set ‘The Majesty Set’, the second set is ‘The Monarch Set’ and then if we are fortunate enough to get an encore we do twenty-two minutes of ‘Live Aid’.
Sean: Wow. Well, I’ve grabbed tickets for the New Year’s Eve show at Crown Theatre in Perth, so you’ll definitely be getting calls of ‘encore’ from me [laughs]
Adam: [laughs] We’ll play until they kick us out.
Sean: I must talk to you about the incredible band you’ve pulled together for this because there are some big hitters up there on stage with you for these shows, I believe.
Adam: So, we have some of the guys who were in the We Will Rock You band like Andrew Swann, who is on drums and he was actually selected by Roger Taylor himself when he came here to piece together the band for the Asian Tour of the show. He drums just like Roger and he is a gun. He knows it back to front and he has had so much experience with all these songs. We also have Zakk Zedras from Chocolate Starfish who is on the first guitar and I know you’ve interviewed Zakk about things separate to Starfish before, but he adds an element of showmanship that really supports me & the sort of performer I am… he often quotes, and I agree with him, that he’s my Steve Stevens kind of thing – he’s fantastic and has his own style & showmanship which works so well. We also have Johnny Zion on bass who usually plays in Ian Moss’s band, Ben Grayson is on keyboards and he’s played absolutely everywhere – he’s played with Cookin’ on 3 Burners, The Bamboos and a whole bunch of other bands. On the second guitar we have John Skovron, who is just a gun player around Melbourne so we have these wonderful duel guitarists with all the harmony bits & pieces – it’s just so great.
Sean: It’s an incredible stage full of talent and for the audience to not only get a night of some high quality classic rock music but it’s spread out over a two and a half hour show and we just don’t get that kind of value much nowadays.
Adam: You’re right, you don’t. I think we reflected on this the last time we spoke. There are concept bands out there who are doing things like Queen & INXS – the stuff that we have done previously but as any ‘Starfish’ fan will know, we try to bring something slightly different. It’s a recording artist putting their own stamp on a classic album so I don’t pretend or try to be Freddie. I have all the hallmarks of the flamboyancy but with my own style & spin on it. I think it’s important that when you come to hear these songs, you want the artist to put their own feel into it. I think we did that back in 1994 when we recorded ‘You’re so Vain’ – we didn’t try to be Carly Simon because that would be almost impossible but what we did was put our own spin on that and I try to do that same with some of the Queen stuff. There’s enough flamboyancy in me already without me having to wear a moustache [laughs]…
Sean: [laughs] You hit the nail on the head there with regards to ‘You’re so Vain’ because seeing you at the Red Hot Summer show at Sandalford’s here in Perth back in January, alongside ten thousand other people and when I caught you for a couple of the shows on the ‘KICK’ tour, when you play that song it still sounds as fresh & as tireless now as it did in the early days – the place just goes off…
Adam: It does and it is… and I’m going to give you a bit of a scoop on this because I’ve not mentioned this to anyone yet – In the Red Hot Summer Tour we integrated the 4 Non-Blondes song ‘What’s Up’ to do a bit of a breakdown in ‘You’re so Vain’ and the crowd response was so phenomenal that we have gone into the studio and recorded a version of it that we are going to be released on December 1, in a couple of weeks.”. Interestingly at the same time, I found about ten old reel-to-reel tapes of all the old videos that we did back in the 90’s – I didn’t piece it all together until recently but the first lyric of ‘What’s Up’ is “Twenty-five years and my life is still trying to get up that great big hill of hope” and this year is our twenty-fifth anniversary of our debut album ‘Chocolate Starfish’ so the video clip to go with the song is going to be peppered with all the old footage from twenty-five years ago but coupled with Red Hot Summer, Rock The Boat, Big Red Bash with all the crowds singing along to that version of 4 Non-Blondes ‘What’s Up’ so that’s going to be pretty amazing.
Sean: I remember just how well that was received… ten thousand people singing along with you must be such an amazing feeling.
Adam: And similarly Sean, we have done our own version of it, in our own style and it sounds ‘Starfish’ so it’s a good thing.
Sean: Last time we spoke we discussed the release of your last album ‘Spider’ and how that seemed to have given the band a new lease of life, driving you on once again with all these Red Hot shows, the KICK tour and so on but I have to be honest, you guys just don’t seem to stop.
Adam: I’ll use the word ‘Heritage’ – I don’t think there are any other heritage bands out there at the moment that are garnering new fans across the board like we are… its quite phenomenal what’s happened. Most other bands have their core fans and they service them well but every new step we take is broadening our horizon and we are picking up new fans – Bohemian Rhapsody is a great example of that, where we are picking up younger fans due to the success of the movie. When we were doing Rock the Boat over the last two years, where ironically we have been one of the younger bands on there, alongside artists like Suzi Quatro, The Angels, Ross Wilson…all of a sudden we are this unknown quantity and the older generation see the entertainment value in us and now they come to our shows and that is great.
Sean: I spoke to Dave Gleeson earlier this year and we were talking about the Red Hot Summers & festivals like that and we talked about you guys in the early days. Dave said and I quote, “We had a fierce rivalry with them back in the day – not fierce in that way but we just thought, “Who are these blokes?”, “What’s this blokes look all about?”, “What are they doing? But now they are my mates – they are unreal.” And what I love is that you stuck to your guns, kept your identity by remaining that bit different to a lot of the other bands of the time and here you still are.
Adam: Yeah and I use this analogy going back to Queen on this where twenty-five years ago, when I started wearing all that flamboyant stuff and doing it, I remember seeing Freddie do these performances around the time of Live Aid and I said that I wanted to perform and dress like that. This is going to sound politically incorrect but it actually isn’t… the guys pointed out he was a gay guy and as a straight guy I probably couldn’t really do that. I said, “But I want to do that. That’s how I want to be.” So, of course I had all the aspersions of my sexuality and all that which were totally untrue… they would have been fine if they were but they were totally untrue but the irony is that twenty-five years later, as you just said, I’ve stuck to my guns and now it’s helped to allow blokes to be a little bit more flamboyant, a little bit more expressive and a little bit more out there but it’s taken over a quarter of a century to get to that stage.
Sean: I must admit when I saw the Red Hot line-up I was disappointed to see you guys aren’t there this year.
Adam: Thanks mate [laughs]. I just did a bit of a video for the Red Hot Summer Tour congratulating them on their tenth anniversary and I think I said something like, “No Chocolate this year but if you had chocolate every year you’d get sick of it, wouldn’t you.” [laughs]
Sean: We’ll call it a diet year this year [laughs]
Adam: [laughs] I like that – yes, a diet year with no chocolate.
Sean: Back to your Bohemian Rhapsody shows because 2020 sees you embark on a hoist of regional appearances all over the country too from WA to Tasmania.
Adam: Yes it’s fantastic. We’ll be back over your way for three shows in WA during April including Geraldton, Bunbury & Mandurah but also we have shows in Victoria, New South Wales and right up the east coast to Cairns and as far south as Tassie – there’s about twenty five shows in all and tickets are on sale now. ‘Starfish’ have always been very popular in the regional areas because back in the day we always toured there and a lot of our core group of fans are from country areas. Just last weekend we were at a festival in Wagga Wagga and because we keep coming back to those places, we unresolvedly had probably the greatest reaction out of the bands on the night because they almost look at you as their band and that’s a good thing.
Sean: It’s great to see these timeless songs being remembered so fondly. I’ve been tracking Jon Steven’s current tour and he is selling out night after night with a wide age group of fans, singing every word to every song…
Adam: Yeah, they do. And whether its Starfish songs, or Jon’s songs or INXS songs or whatever it might be they are peppered full of melody & good lyrics. And even though there is some great music out there at the moment, a lot of it is lyrically simplified and I think there are messages & stories in older songs that when you listen to them you go “wow” and you realise it’s not one dimensional and it’s got so many layers to it – I think that’s what a lot of young kids are experiencing. There are kids out there who I’m sure are experiencing Queen for the first time and thinking their parents know nothing about them. There are all these great messages to these amazing songs and they think they are experiencing them first… and I’m really proud of that.
Sean: So, with all this non-stop work out on the road have you & the rest of the guys had a chance to write any new material?
Adam: Yes, we have. I’ve got about thirty-five ideas there and they are being un-packed around this tour and we are doing little writing sessions here & there. I’m not sure whether it will be a full album or an EP but there’s two or three there I’m really excited about and I think they have been influenced by some of the music I’ve been performing as well – so that might give you a little indication of some of the sounds that might come out of it.
Sean: I’ll look forward to that because I really did enjoy ‘Spider’ – in fact the CD is still in the car and have a listen every now and again, when I get a chance.
Adam: Ah, thanks mate. Even now, when we perform a couple of tracks off that album and throw them in the set they get as good as a reaction as our other ones and that’s all you can really ask for.
Sean: Well it certainly doesn’t seem to be winding down for you anytime soon and we really wish you all the best for these shows. I’m looking forward to catching up with you & Zakk for a glass or two of bubbly after the show at Crown Theatre on New Year’s Eve and see in 2020.
Adam: Definitely mate. The show finishes around 10.30pm so plenty of time for us to find a bar… in fact we’ll invite the whole audience along and I’ll sing them into the New Year [laughs]
Sean: That sounds like a plan and a most memorable night Adam.
Adam: Thanks Sean and I just want to say a big thank to you all at The Rockpit for always supporting us. It’s really appreciated.
Sean: You’re welcome. The pleasure is all ours, Adam. Have a great Christmas and look forward to seeing you New Year’s Eve.
Adam: You too mate. Cheers.
TOUR DATES
Friday 7th February 2020
Eastbank Centre, SHEPPARTON VIC
www.riverlinksvenues.com.au
Saturday 8th February 2020
Ulumbarra Theatre, BENDIGO VIC
www.bendigoregion.com.au
Friday 28th February 2020
West Gippsland Performing Arts Centre, WARRAGUL VIC
www.wgac.com.au
Saturday 29th February 2020
The Wedge, SALE VIC
www.thewedge.com.au
Friday 13th March 2020
Mildura Arts Centre, MILDURA VIC
www.milduraartscentre.com.au
Saturday 14th March 2020
Horsham Town Hall, HORSHAM VIC
www.horshamtownhall.com.au
Friday 3rd April 2020
Anita’s Theatre, THIRROUL NSW
www.anitastheatrethirroul.com
Wednesday 15th April 2020
Queens Park Theatre, GERALDTON WA
www.qpt.cgg.wa.gov.au
Friday 17th April 2020
Mandurah Performing Arts Centre, MANDURAH WA
www.manpac.com.au
Saturday 18th April 2020
Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre, BUNBURY WA
www.bunburyentertainment.com
Saturday 16th May 2020
Wendouree Performing Arts Centre, WENDOUREE VIC
www.wcpa.com.au
Friday 29th May 2020
Albury Entertainment Centre, ALBURY NSW
www.alburyentertainmentcentre.com.au
Friday 12th June 2020
Townsville Civic Theatre, TOWNSVILLE QLD
www.townsville.qld.gov.au
Saturday 13th June 2020
Cairns Performing Arts Centre, CAIRNS QLD
www.cairns.qld.gov.au
Friday 26th June 2020
Princess Theatre, LAUNCESTON TAS
www.theatrenorth.com.au
Saturday 27th June 2020
Theatre Royal, HOBART TAS
www.theatreroytal.com.au
For more information, please visit www.chocolatestarfish.com.au
