Daryl Braithwaite shares his photos from Fire Fight Australia backstage and onstage
Daryl Braithwaite was feeling all the good vibes at Fire Fight Australia and hung around after his set to indulge his side hustle of photography.
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After finishing his triumphant set at Fire Fight Australia last weekend, the beloved Daryl Braithwaite and his bandmates decided to stick around for the show.
The former Sherbet frontman, who led one of the biggest singalongs of the day with his signature cover of The Horses, is also an amateur photographer.
Here’s his look at Fire Fight Australia, the spectacular bushfire relief concert which continues to inspire donations from good folks in Australia and around the world.
I wanted to get a vista of the whole stadium and this was taken on a GoPro. I love venues, especially massive venues, looking at the scale of it, Queen’s stage, the PA, the lights, the people on the ground who look like ants. I was right up on the top floor of the stadium for an interview with Channel 7; I sat down in one spot and then they moved me to another and then told me they didn’t have time to do the chat. That was OK, I got the stadium shot.
I think my stage manager Michael Vella took this one. Even though I have been doing this for five decades, the whole day was just overwhelming. It was such a big audience and you could feel people were having a good time, they were full of goodwill. We didn’t have a soundcheck – everyone had about 10 minutes to get ready – so we were flying by the seat of our pants. I heard the introduction and just hope everything worked as we started As Days Go By. That photo was the one I wanted to show my son Oscar, who at 31 loves to take the p … out of me.
This is one of my favourite band shots. I filmed the whole set and took the shot off that. You look at it and go ‘Mmmmmm, that’s a good crowd!”
Our drummer John has more front than Myer so they got him to ask Alice to be in a photo. None of us had met him before so didn’t know if he would turn like a cut snake if you asked him for a photo but he was very accommodating.
Everyone has their dressing room for about an hour and then another band went in there so I wanted to capture all the band names. Everyone was very friendly. I got to meet Brian May when he went over the stadium. A limo arrived at the artist entrance and he popped out of it so as he walked towards me, I loved forward and stuck my hand out and said: “Hi Brian, just want to thank you for doing this.” And he was like: ‘Oh, my pleasure.” My crew saw it happen and recognised the moment when Brian had didn’t know who the f … I was, so it was funny in that respect. I let the rest of my band shake hands with the hand that shook Brian May’s hand. We’re a bit kooky in this band.
I was interested to see how the crowd would react to 5SOS. They’re Australian, they’ve been away for a while, have become very popular … I think they did really well. I loved that last song of theirs Youngblood, I thought that was really mighty. And they looked really good on the stage. I just liked them as a band.
I went out into the crowd to shoot Alice; I don’t think I have ever got to see him play … maybe back in the 70s, so I took a lot of shots. I loved that backdrop and he was really good, he performed with so much credibility and finesse. The crowd reaction proved that, they loved him.
I just loved the red curtains in this shot – and Adam. He is a great singer who sounds like he could be classically trained and he is also cheeky, he’s got that thing Freddie had.
How could people be so cruel to a kangaroo (laughs), just kicking it around from one side of the stadium to the other like that? But yes, at least it saved everyone doing another Mexican wave.
You can donate to the bushfire recovery fund via firefightaustralia.com