The Church Bring Psychedelic Symphony Back to Life
A Psychedelic Symphony will see THE CHURCH joined by a 30 Piece Symphony Orchestra under the baton of celebrated conductor and composer GEORGE ELLIS. Together they will perform an epic orchestral set as they reimagine and enhance their beloved songbook including Under the Milky Way, The Unguarded Moment, Metropolis, Reptile, Almost With You and more. Timeless, enigmatic, and unmistakably their own, The Church have occupied their own space in Australian music with a body of work that continues to evolve without losing its spell. The Church have never stopped growing or innovating.
No ordinary concert, A Psychedelic Symphony is a rare chance to experience the songs you already know and love, added to by suitably grand orchestral arrangements. A wonderful celebration of the music of one of Australia’s most important bands. The legendary Steve Kilbey talks to Rob Lyon about what will be an extraordinary tour.
The upcoming tour looks absolutely extraordinary, and it seems like an ambitious undertaking?
Yeah, and Adelaide’s selling the worst out of all of them, so… can you kick some ass down there for me?
Absolutely, we will, for sure. A thirty‑piece orchestra, that’s going to be an incredible experience. Was George Ellis the obvious choice for conductor?
Yeah, yeah, strangely enough, so George is one of my best friends. We had breakfast, and he said, what are you doing now? And I said, I’ve got to have a meeting with the promoter. He said, what are you doing? I said, we’re discussing where we’re going to go next, what The Church is going to do next and he said, tell him to do Psychedelic Symphony again. I thought, okay, and I mentioned it to the promoter, and he was really… immediately, he was up for it. He went, that’s it, that’s it, let’s do it! I wouldn’t do it without George. George is my go‑to classical guy if I want arrangements. It was always going to be George, and the promoter had a lot of experience doing orchestral shows that move around. The last time we did this show, it was only at the Opera House. We only did one night, and I thought it was a real shame that all that work and all that rehearsal ended up being one gig. So I’m really happy now that it’s moving all around most of Australia. We’re not getting to Perth, unfortunately, but yeah, and it looks like all the gigs are going to sell out, except probably Adelaide. Why?
We have to do something about that. I find that surprising, because there’s always been plenty of love for The Church here in Adelaide.
I don’t know what happened? Where did I go wrong?
I think the word probably just hasn’t quite got out yet to the right people. It’s a different beast here in Adelaide. For some reason, people don’t go searching for these things unless it’s right under their nose.
We’ve never done well in Adelaide. Never. Never. Doesn’t matter at which stage you look at. Regardless of what was happening anywhere else, we always have struggled in Adelaide. That’s just the way it is. Some cities rise up, and some… you know, as far as… you know, we go around America, and a place where we used to be really popular, we’ve gone down a bit, and a place we weren’t so big, we’ve come up again. But Adelaide has always… it’s always the worst attended gigs we’ve ever done, and has always been that way for forty six years.
The band that we have now, we always deliver. We just did twenty eight shows in America in thirty eight days, I think. Every night, we delivered. Even when we were tired and lonely or whatever. We always manage to deliver. So with that, I don’t feel any pressure, because we will… this orchestral thing, we will deliver, and it’ll be good. It doesn’t cause me any stress. All the other shows are on track to sell out, so really, if Adelaide does better than it is at the moment, it’ll just be icing on the cake. So I don’t feel any pressure about that. I feel more pressure about filling in this fucking census form tonight, you know? That’s causing me more pressure than wondering how The Church and the orchestra are going to go.
Is it the same orchestra in each city?
No, no, we pick up a different orchestra. When we’re within a state, like Sydney and Newcastle will be the same orchestra, and Melbourne and Geelong are the same, and Star Casino in the Gold Coast and the Brisbane show, they’ll be the same. But otherwise we’ll be picking up new orchestras, which means a lot of rehearsal every day. Lot of gas.
How do the rehearsals go?
We will be having our overall rehearsals and getting everything up to speed, and then when we pick up a new orchestra, we will have to spend a day rehearsing with them at the gig. Like, getting to the gig. None of this turning up at five o’clock and running through a song, we’ll have to run through the whole set every day with the new orchestra. It’s a lot of freaking work.
Are there a lot of nuances in terms of how each of these orchestras play, from what research you’ve done into each of them?
I don’t know. I don’t know how it’s going to be. I mean, I’ve done this with David singing, one of the singers in a David Bowie show that went around Australia playing with orchestras, and, you know, some orchestras are better than others. Some orchestras, you know, it seemed to me their brass was a bit out of tune. I don’t know… it’s rock and roll, isn’t it? I’m going to find out, along with everybody else, what that’s going to be like.
Going into these shows, it must create a sense of excitement, but also a little bit of anxiety?
Yeah, yeah. You’re winging it a bit. You are. You’re winging it a bit. You’re turning up somewhere, and there’s thirty odd players who haven’t played the songs, and then you’re going to have a rehearsal, and then an hour later you’re going to go on stage and hopefully deliver. There are moments in the songs where the orchestra has to learn to jam a bit. There are points where we go off the book, and the orchestra will be required to jam until George brings them back in at the point where they re-join the music. There’s a few points like that, so they’re going to have to get used to that, because classical players don’t like to jam. Do you know what I mean? Just like rock musicians don’t like to read music. Classical players don’t like to jam, and sometimes never the twain shall meet.
Do some of The Church songs naturally lend themselves to the orchestral arrangement?
I reckon they do. Well, we already did this in 2011, and it worked out really well, and I found most of the songs were eminently suitable for orchestration. So I think they do. I think it can add something to this, the orchestra is another layer of… I don’t know, another layer of, like, imagine a meal, and now you’ve added this new sauce or something that brings out all the flavours. I think that.
Even the newer albums as well?
Yeah, we’re going to be doing songs off the new albums too, yeah, yeah. All the classics, and the new ones, too.
Any temptation to do a live recording with this particular tour?
It has been mooted. It was already being mooted now. Somebody has approached us and wants to do Hamer Hall. I guess that will probably happen. It’s not really my department. If that happens, that’s great, and if it doesn’t, I don’t really care. It’s just too much stuff all the time, think about this, think about that. So I just concentrate on the music. Hopefully it will get recorded, but if it doesn’t, I’ll let it go.
Last time we spoke, you had a number of new albums in the works. Is there likely to be another Church album next year?
There is. We’ve had a Church album that’s now two years old, been sitting in the can, because the nature of a record deal we were signing, which required… we are re‑releasing all those old Church albums that never got very much of a run, or didn’t get released on vinyl at all. The former members of the band sort of dicked around a bit and held up the whole process. I’m not blaming them, by the way. It was just they were in no particular hurry to sign the deal, and the new deal takes in their new record. So the company releasing all these old records is also the company releasing the new record, so the new record got held up for two years, but it’s finally coming out. Probably just before November, they’re saying, so maybe it’ll be out by the time we hit the Opera House and all the other gigs. Maybe we’ll have, if we’re really lucky, our new album on sale.
Even your own solo stuff, is there more to come?
There’s nothing… no, I’ve exhausted the pipeline. There’s nothing coming down the pipeline at all. When this Church album comes out, that’s it. There’s nothing more for me to release. I’ll have to start making some new stuff. No, I don’t… I must… like Mr. Trump, I’ve exhausted my stockpiles temporarily.
Being so busy touring, is it hard to find that moment to stop and be in the right zone to even contemplate new songs?
That tour of America we just did was really hectic and a new record was the last thing on our mind, especially when we’ve got this other one sitting there waiting to come out. I think once that’s out… I think we will definitely do at least one more after this. At least one more record after this, for sure.
Interview By Rob Lyon
Catch The Church – A Psychedelic Symphony with The George Ellis Orchestra on the following dates, Tickets from Metropolis Touring…
