Every now and then we get the opportunity to talk to a real legend of Australian music. Someone who has created their own legacy time and time again. Someone who’s name brings a smile to people’s faces, a National treasure. Australian music royalty Kate Ceberano is celebrating her illustrious 40-year career with the release of her 30th album, My Life is a Symphony, and a national concert tour that, after selling out Melbourne, Adelaide & Sydney, will be coming to Perth Concert Hall this Saturday, 9th December.
Singer, songwriter, performer, artist, and legend of Australian music, Kate Ceberano has enjoyed one of the most enduring and inspirational careers in Australian music. Ceberano has collected multiple ARIA awards and nominations, a Logie, is the winner of the 2016 Australian Songwriters Hall of Fame and has many more accolades to her name. In the 2016 Queen’s Birthday Honours, Ceberano was appointed Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to the performing arts, particularly music, as a singer, songwriter and entertainer, and to charitable organisations.
We caught up with Kate to talk about the success of the album and symphony shows. We also get to chat about the record-breaking Jesus Christ Superstar arena shows that toured Australia in the early ’90s, as well as ask Kate which song she wish she could have written.
Kate: Hi Sean
Sean: Hi Kate. How are you?
Kate: I’m good thank you. How are you?
Sean: I’m awesome. Thank you so much for finding the time for a quick chat.
Kate: Oh my pleasure.
Sean: It sounds like you’ve had a chaotic this morning [laughs]
Kate: Oh it’s not any different than it usually is [laughs] My world and my life, it seems from this last year has been phenomenally busy. Just unbelievably busy but gorgeous busy.
Sean: It’s been incredible to watch this huge journey which has included these wonderful symphony shows as well, which have just received such an incredible reception.
Kate: Yeah I know, right. It was wholly unexpected for Lee and I too. We started working together after covid really. My husband had been working fulltime with his podcast, directing, and doing a multitude of other things and it got to that stage after covid when I felt I just didn’t want us to be apart. I had already done the symphony record the week that covid hit Victoria, so it didn’t actually get finished for nearly three and a half years. And it was the first project that we did together. We did it as a multi media unit ourselves – we didn’t have a label so we sort of went independently through ABC and we just ran with everything that we knew from our own respective worlds and it’s just been like the best the best year of all years.
Sean: And of course the album was so well received, not only hitting top spot but also receiving an ARIA nomination for Best Adult Contemporary Album, which was even more of a blessing.
Kate: Yeah and you know at times you wonder, sometimes when you see actors and stuff where they’ve been like nominated for half a dozen Academy Awards they never win them, you kind of start to wonder how it all works and what the politics are… you don’t want to think about it too much actually but in this case I really did feel it had its own standalone private success story, which we were all proud of. Orchard, and I don’t want to demonetize them but they are a new label and they’re an independent. And they, you know, we don’t have all the bells and whistles and we didn’t have a marketing budget. We didn’t have a bunch of well-paid staff to kind of go out and promote and do Instas and all the socials. We sort of just physically did it ourselves. So it was like the little train that thought it could.
Sean: Incredible. And, of course, the shows have been selling out all over the country. And some of the most iconic venues Australia’s has. As you can tell by my accent, I’m originally from the UK so I’m still yet to tick off some of these incredible venues like Hamer Hall and Sydney Opera House, places like that. And, of course, we’ve got you at the wonderful Perth Concert Hall, which is one of my favourites.
Kate: Yeah, one of my favourites too. I actually have a very fond story of kind of like a “being discovered” sort of story for the Perth Concert Hall. When I was about 16. There was this incredible impresario. His name was Clifford Hocking. And he was sort of like one of the last of his kind, the theatre acting agents who – a bit like The Producers. Do you know that movie? And highly, highly eccentric, highly high camp, high everything. But he’d brought out Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. He was really quite someone. So he discovered me in a bar/restaurant in Melbourne. And he put me up for a gig. I think Renée Geyer couldn’t make the gig at a big jazz festival during the time of the America’s Cup in Perth. And so, I’d just turned 16, 17 maybe and I gathered together my first jazz ensemble. And in the lobby of the Perth Concert Hall, we started a week’s residency. It was the most perfect way to be discovered. You know, maybe twenty-five people, fifty people max, just drifting through the lobby, turned into two hundred and then three hundred, and by the end of the week, a conga chain of people waiting to come to the lobby to see us play.
Sean: Wow, that’s incredible.
Kate: Yeah it really was. And so I feel very, very connected to the Perth Concert Hall, just on that level as an artist, just having been seen and heard for the first time and then you add that to the extreme helium of what the America’s Cup felt like and what that felt like in Perth at the time, making it unforgettable.
Sean: Oh, there’ll be goosebumps as you walk through that lobby again.
Kate: Yeah, well, there always is and look, I’ve been back many times before. I’ve made a wonderful record there with WASO before. And I’ve been there performing with half a dozen ensembles as a sort of like a group player. But to come back as myself, with my own symphony and the symphonic arrangements for this record, it’s going to be a real highlight for me, a real highlight.
Sean: I can’t wait to see the show. You touched on the fact that the album was done very much independently on a small budget and in-house but this is completely opposite to something you did recently with the fantastic family at Mushroom getting together for the Mushroom 50 celebrations.
Kate: Oh, Sean what a blessing to have been invited. In over forty years, you kind of see people in record companies and that culture of record companies, come and go, right? I remember Michael (Gudinski) and I… they’ve been my publisher for all of my career and their auxiliary agencies, for instance, Frank Stivala is my agent and has been my agent for 30 plus years, and he’s a partner in the Gudinski Premier Artists which is a book agent for the Mushroom group, so I’ve always been a part of the family but I’ve only ever had my one massive hit with Mushroom, proper. I’ve had hits singing with other people. There was another band called The Models that I sang with and they had five top ten hits, almost the same summer that the band I was in had five top ten hits, so we were kind of like the enfant terrible of that decade. And Mushroom were all over it. And that was, you know, that was Michael. That was Michael saying, “You kids are it and I’ll back all your horses and take a punt.” And he really did.
Sean: What an incredible guy. I would have loved to have sat down with him. He must have had some incredible stories.
Kate: Look, most of it he probably wouldn’t have shared because he’s seen and done things that, you know, it would have taken ten men to have endured. [laughs] But he seemed to have done it in his stride. And, you know, he lived a mostly, you know, I want to say a really rich and culturally rich life. And he took Australians and he took parochial Australians and made them world players, Kylie being obviously, our greatest export of all. And, and that was, that was like, you know, that’s let’s like up there with Willy Wonka. That’s magic.
Sean: I don’t want to take up too much more of your time but I have to talk to you about Jesus Christ Superstar, because it’s been a passion of mine. I’ve been very lucky to talk to Russell (Morris) and Angry (Anderson) and Jon Stevens about the record breaking production that toured the country back in the early nineties. I would love to hear some of your memories of that because it is a show I absolutely love. Could you believe the numbers that came out to see that production back then?
Kate: It was testament to the sheer quality of the show, because we were only booked for nine and it went for a hundred shows… almost around eighteen thousand people a night. When you consider the population of Australia back then, it wasn’t a lot [laughs] but we would go to a state to play ten shows and by the time we had left, gotten around the country and back they would be booking us for another ten. So we just ended up going round and round the country. The only reason why it sort of stopped was that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, they don’t like each other. [laughs] And so they were kind of like, that’s it. We don’t want to make any more money for each other. We hate each other. [laughs]
Sean: [laughs] It’s the chemistry that worked for them for so long.
Kate: [laughs] I know. I know. I know. Oh, I suppose it’s just the way it can be sometimes for that kind of, you know, I don’t know. But all I know is that we ran out of our lease on the show itself, but the show was so beloved. And to this day, you know, I have people come up to me and they just look at me with this kind of, this face, and I know what they’re about to say. And what they’re usually going to say is, “Oh, my God, I’ll never forget”. And then they tell me their emotional response.
Sean: Well, here’s your right to reply, because I have had it on good authority from Russell, Angry, and Jon, that there were many jokes played around those shows, and your name pops up in a lot of those accusations.
Kate: What, as me being the instigator? [laughs]
Sean: Oh, yes, yes. [laughs] I’ve heard of messages being written on Angry’s eye lids or his head with biro pen. I’ve heard of water in peoples shoes. I’ve heard of it all [laughs]
Kate: [laughs] It was like the best of all boarding schools, you know, it was a locked in, locked down and kind of loving it proposition. And I have to be honest with you. You know, when you’re an artist, like any of us, respectively, when you’re on stage and you’re the lead, it’s lonely. And you’ve got bands and you’ve got people, but you kind of, sometimes you sort of feel a bit sad for yourself and say, I’m actually paying to have friends. Whereas when we were in an ensemble cast on a rock tour like that, that went for almost over a year, it was the first time where all of us were equal and respectively involved in each other. We couldn’t be one without the other.
Sean: That’s a proper family, isn’t it? Again, you’ve gone from the Mushroom family to the Jesus Christ family. It’s just, it’s been an incredible warm…
Kate: I think it’s time for Kate to get back in a band. What do you reckon?
Sean: Now that would be great. Well, the symphony shows certainly give you an almighty band behind you. I’ve really been embracing them. I saw The Angels do their one and then just recently I saw Russell’s, which was just spellbinding.
Kate: You know, each one of us, we come from a certain school of music. I don’t know of people that sing as earnestly as the three people you just mentioned. Well, and you can add John Farnham to that as well. Because we, I’ve never heard any of us fake it. Really, honestly, if there’s sentiment at hand and people that are enjoying what we’re singing and feeling, I’ve never seen any of them come to a show, and this is like even for the hundred shows that we’ve spent together, where any of us were faking it.
Sean: And of course, the audience pick up on that anyway. If they can see a band just going through the motions, they know.
Kate: Well, actually, I’m going to put something on the line here and say, given that you’re British, because I’m a big fan of British music. I was raised on.. all my heroes are British. Cilla Black, Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield. I was, you know, and then all of the great ’60s men, I mean I love Paul Weller, I know he’s ’70s and onwards and I love Jules Holland. And I think that there’s a certain honesty to the way British thing has come up. Rod Stewart is another. David Essex. I toured with David Essex.
Sean: Silver Dream Machine. What a movie.
Kate: Oh, which one?
Sean: Silver Dream Machine, where he was the motorbike rider.
Kate: He’s so sexy and so lovely. [laughs] I feel that there’s a lot to take out of the British culture. Like Australians, Australians don’t… I want to say, are a little bit conservative and they’re too shy about how they might be seen on the field. The British show up and they’re like, oh, I’ll give it a go. [laughs] And then, of course they do. And then you’ve got this heart on their sleeve, Adele, current, but let’s look at Adele. But I mean, even Amy Winehouse, I keep on citing women. But it seems like all the conversations at the moment are always around female artists, which kind of really annoys me. [laughs] But it could be, oh my God, it could be, it could be anyone. Well, I mean, Eric Clapton, all of the flavours, Rolling Stones, everyone. There’s, to me, there’s just a great deal of sincerity about that. And also about really being honest about who you are. I was listening to a podcast by Joe Strummer and I listened to his radio all the time, just because, again, it’s that sort of British eccentric sort of take on Jamaican music meets America meets British music meets world music. I just feel that that’s something we should be, we should all aspire to getting back to in music.
Sean: It’s such a wonderful thing. I won’t keep you any longer. I’ll finish with one final question. And that is, if you could be credited. If you could be credited with writing any song ever written, what song would you choose?
Kate: Oh, wow. That’s a big question. Oh, you’ve got, now see, I take these things really seriously. What song do I wish I had written? Oh, I love that Bonnie Raitt song. Well, yeah, but I, that’s more like what I like listening to. Would it be Wuthering Heights? Would it be, it’d be someone kind of, it’d be Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’. It’d be ‘Heroes’. Heroes. I would have wished I could have written and, and been and lived that life and been him.
Sean: Oh, wonderful. Well, we’ll, we’ll put that one down as yours. You now own it for 24 hours.
Kate: Yay, thank you.
Sean: Kate, thank you so, so much for your time. I can’t wait to see the show when you get to Perth. Have a safe flight. And Lee, thank you so much for arranging this. I really appreciate that.
Kate: No worries. Good on you, Sean.
