Cold Chisel commemorate 50 years of music with the release of 50 Years – The Best of, a comprehensive collection highlighting their enduring influence on Australian rock.
Released today, Friday, August 16th, this 25-track anthology comes just weeks before their sold-out national tour, ‘The Big Five-0’, starting in Armidale on October 5th.
Available in double-vinyl and double-CD formats, as well as on streaming platforms, 50 Years – The Best of features iconic tracks like “Khe Sanh,” “Flame Trees,” “Cheap Wine,” and “When the War Is Over.” The album also includes live renditions of “Shipping Steel” and “Goodbye (Astrid, Goodbye)” – considered definitive versions of these classics – and a brand new song, “You’ve Got to Move.”
Author Trent Dalton’s liner notes capture Cold Chisel’s impact on Australian culture:
“After 50 staggering years of making music, and still burning bright (as their blistering new track, ‘You’ve Got to Move,’ so powerfully evidences here) Cold Chisel remains the defining rock ‘n’ roll sound of Australia. Modern Australia was raised by this band. Chippies built to their sound; men shipped steel to their sound; teenagers danced to their sound; children played to their sound; brawlers brawled to their sound; students studied to their sound; lovers said goodbye to their sound.”
Jimmy Barnes’ health issues have impacted his August and September shows, as he continues to recover. This follows a series of medical challenges over the past year, including multiple operations and time spent in ICU for a bacterial infection in December that required valve replacement surgery.
From their beginnings in Adelaide in 1973 to becoming Australia’s premier rock band with albums like East and Circus Animals, Cold Chisel have created anthems that resonate across generations. As they prepare for ‘The Big Five-o’ tour, 50 Years – The Best of stands as a celebration of their legacy and an invitation for new listeners to discover their timeless sound.
Cold Chisel recently sat down with Rolling Stone AU/NZ Editor-in-Chief Poppy Reid to reflect on what makes a great song and the stories behind their best hits in the latest episode of ‘Behind The Rolling Stone Cover’, sponsored by Shure.
And according to Walker, the key is having fun. “I’ll only be working on a song if I’m really enjoying it. That’s the whole point,” he told Reid in the episode.
“If you get me in the three weeks after I finished a song [and] I think it’s great, I could say then ‘that is a good song.’ But if you ask me about the same song six months later, I’d say, ‘Well, I don’t know, it’s a bit of a dog.'”
Barnes, meanwhile, insisted the best songs are ones that connect personally with the audience. “A good song is a song that, while I’m singing it, it feels like it’s my experience, I could connect to it. I think this is the same whether it’s Van Morrison or Metallica or whatever,” he said.
50 Years – The Best 0f is out now. For more information on ‘The Big Five-0 Tour’, visit coldchisel.com/tour.
