RICHARD CLAPTON
STEPPIN’ ACROSS THE LINE
by Robert Dunstan

Iconic Sydney-based singer songwriter Richard Clapton is currently on a national tour to celebrate the 35 years since the release of his debut album, Prussian Blue, in 1973. The tour, which will culminate in a huge concert at Sydney’s State Theatre in July with some special guests, will also include a visit to Adelaide. Richard, who has enjoyed radio hits with such songs as Girls On The Avenue, Deep Water, Capricorn Dancer (from the surf film Highway One), Down In The Lucky Country and Glory Road and was an early champion of INXS, is more than eager to have a chat over the telephone.
Richard’s current touring band is comprised of 26-year old Melbourne-based guitar player Danny Spencer (currently also playing with Rogue Traders), drummer Johnny Salerno, bass player Guy Bortolan and keyboard player Richard ‘Tank’ Tankard of Shane Howard’s band and also Things Of Stone & Wood.
“And they are some of the best musicians I’ve ever played with,” Richard immediately enthuses. “They would certainly be among the very top players I’ve ever worked with.”
The singer songwriter immediately corrects me when I suggest he is embarking on a ‘greatest hits’ tour.
“No, because this will be more about shifting the focus back to what I’m really about,” he sniffs.
“Sure, there will be all of the radio hits but the focus will be more on some of the songs I’ve written that the general public have tended to overlook,” Richard quickly continues. “They may know three or four songs – Capricorn, Girls and Deep Water – so it’s going to be more about the best songs I’ve written. And over the last few years – maybe the last 10 years or so – I seem to have got shifted into the old Countdown pop star thing. Doing the big Countdown tour probably didn’t help that, but I think I have to now get out and demonstrate that there’s more to me than that.
“My hardcore fans know what that is – they get it in one as they bicker with each about whether or not I should play Dark Spaces or Wintertime In Amsterdam - and they’ve always been great. And quite honestly they just think, like I do, that Girls On The Avenue is just a good time party song. Which is all it is.”
When Richard was in Adelaide late last year to perform a short acoustic set in Elder Pk as part of ABC TV’s 50th birthday celebrations, he’d announced that Girls On The Avenue, which he then played, was written about the girls of the night who frequented Adelaide’s Hindley St back in the early ’70s.
“That’s become a bit of an urban myth,” he laughs. “The song’s origins are much more boring than that.
“It was written when I was living in Rose Bay, a suburb of Sydney, with my mate Colin who was the programmer for Double J at the time. Anyway, we got pissed one night and we were living on Chaleyer Avenue and the next street over was just called The Avenue. So, while it’s a boring explanation, that’s really where Girls On The Avenue comes from.
“But when I played the Mediterranean Hotel [now Rio’s International] in Hindley St when the song was first on the charts, all these girls came along to the show and said, ‘It’s about time someone wrote an anthem for us’. I’d had a few beers and thought, ‘What anthem?’. I didn’t actually get it until the guys in the band pointed out that they were all working girls. And my manager at the time thought it was a good idea and that we should run with it. So we did.
“So it’s become an urban myth about Girls being written about Hindley St. But it’s a better story than Rose Bay.”
In 2006 Richard released Rewired, an acoustic album of his best known songs. He did, however, find it hard touring that album.
“I came out of the Sydney folk scene but when Girls On The Avenue came out, it was the first time I could afford to put a band together and it was also the beginning of what would become Aussie pub rock. So I spent the next 30 years doing pubs. So if I’m not playing in a venue that really suits acoustic music – and there aren’t too many of those – I found that I just wasn’t reaching people. The punters would get a bit restless during the acoustic stuff and then I’d do Deeper Water as an electric song and the whole place would just erupt.
“So I must confess that I chickened out of doing acoustic stuff about halfway through the tour to promote Rewired. I discovered that the punters basically just wanted to come out and see me, drink hard and get their rocks off.
“So, as the responsible artisté I am, I had to give them what they wanted,” he laughs.
Thus, Richard reckons that he and his band are likely to come out swingin’ when they hit the Governor Hindmarsh stage.
“The current set list is going really well – it opens with Obsession, Capricorn and Deep Water so it has a lot of impact - but we’re toying with taking a risk and doing a bit of acoustic stuff. We haven’t worked that out and we’d probably be feeling a bit nervous about throwing it in. And my acoustic songs are quite contemplative – they are not very uptempo.
“So I sometimes find it a bit frustrating that I can’t really do some of those songs without people getting a bit restless,” he concludes.
Richard Clapton plays the Governor Hindmarsh on Fri Apr 18 (with Emily Davis) and Mannum’s Pretoria Hotel on Sat Apr 20. For more on Ralph, please see Bob’s Bits in this issue.