Russell Morris reflects on six-decade music career ahead of retirement
Aussie rock legend Russell Morris is putting away his guitar after 60 years, sharing tales of Molly Meldrum punch-ups and Hells Angels encounters ahead of his farewell tour.
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They say it’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock ‘n’ roll, and Russell Morris has been there, done that.
It’s a long way also, literally and figuratively, from the mean streets of working class Melbourne – where he grew up and regularly rubbed shoulders with underworld figures – to a waterfront estate on the Gold Coast where the legendary Aussie muso sits on his back deck, sipping a chai tea and contemplating his looming retirement.
After more than six decades in the increasingly cutthroat music industry, the singer famed for hits including The Real Thing and Wings of an Eagle, is embarking on his national farewell tour.
He’s also reflecting on stories from his colourful career, including being managed by Ian “Molly” Meldrum (who he once knocked out), doing drugs with a Hells Angels bikie boss named Ball Bearing and having billionaire Clive Palmer as his No. 1 fan and concert underwriter.
But at 77, grandfather-of-three Morris says the time is right to hang up the mic.
“I see too many (artists) who shouldn’t be performing any more,” he says.
“I’m a big sports nut, and I don’t want to be like one of those cricketers or footballers where everyone’s going ‘he should have retired six months ago, he should have pulled the plug when he was on top’. I don’t want my legacy to deteriorate. I want to go out when I’m still singing and not having to do it for money.
“I just want to do the final tour and make sure it’s a real cracker.”
Morris, an ARIA Hall of Famer and Order of Australia recipient, became a rock star almost by accident.
It was 1966 and he was going to Richmond Tech – “a hairy school where a lot of (Melbourne) Underbelly guys ended up going”.
“The only reason I survived was because I was the school fool, so no-one wanted to beat me up,” he recalls with a wry laugh.
“Some of my friends formed a band called Somebody’s Image. I wasn’t even in the band at first. I just used to go and watch them rehearse and hang out with them at parties.
“Then their singer got poached, and the band that poached him felt sorry for them and invited them down to do a Christmas gig at the Anglesea Surf Club. I joined Somebody’s Image but hated my voice and wanted to quit. But the guys persuaded me to go down to Anglesea and see how it went.
“I used to surf down that way, and half the people in the crowd knew me, and they went absolutely nuts, cheering and stamping their feet.”
In the audience was a pop music writer named Ian Meldrum who liked what he saw, and convinced the band to let him manage and produce them.
When Morris went solo 18 months later, he asked Meldrum to continue as his manager and producer. It was “Molly” who took The Real Thing, written by Johnny Young of Young Talent Time fame, and turned what was a gentle ballad into a psychedelic mega-hit that became Morris’ only chart-topper (shooting to No. 1 as Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon), and an Australian rock classic.
Morris scored early 1970s hits with Sweet Sweet Love and Wings of an Eagle, and after several years based in New York recording two albums, returned to Australia to sign with the iconic Mushroom Records.
Through the 1980s and 90s, his band Russell Morris and the Rubes achieved critical acclaim, while he also performed in The Rocky Horror Show and alongside John Farnham, Kate Ceberano, Angry Anderson and Jon Stevens in Jesus Christ Superstar.
Throughout a storied career, in which he had five top 10 hits and recorded 15 studio albums, Morris performed with fellow Aussie greats including Brian Cadd, Rick Springfield, Powderfinger, The Church, The Whitlams, Darryl Braithwaite, Jimmy Barnes, Jack Jones and Troy Cassar-Daley.
The Real Thing featured in the hit 2000 film The Dish starring Sam Neill and was covered by Midnight Oil.
Morris says he never fully embraced the drug-fuelled lifestyle of the archetypal rock star, dabbling in pot and acid “which I couldn’t handle . it was just too full-on, too intense”.
But when he performed at a Hells Angels concert in Victoria in the late 1970s, the bikie gang’s now-deceased president Chris “Ball Bearing” Coelho invited him into his caravan for a drink and a little something extra.
“He handed me a bourbon, which I hate, then slapped down this rolled up tissue thing and said ‘take that’,” Morris recalls.
“And I went ‘what is it?’ and he said ‘just f---ing” take it!’ What do you say to a Hells Angel, stick it up your arse? So I took it, and oh my God, I was off my face. I was up all night.”
Despite parting professional ways with Meldrum in the 1970s, Morris has remained great mates with the man he calls both a “genius” and a “pain in the arse”.
“He cracked the shits and didn’t talk to me for five years after we had a disagreement and split, but we made up,” says Morris.
In the late 1960s, he was forced to punch a button-pushing Meldrum out after a violent argument outside a Melbourne jazz club called The Fat Black Pussycat.
“Ian had this way about him where he liked to antagonise people,” Morris says, recalling another time Molly picked a fight with a dumbfounded Mushroom Records boss Michael Gudinski, calling him a “f---ing arsehole and sweeping all his stuff off his desk before storming out and slamming the door.
“Molly told me in the car outside he was tired and just needed a pep-up,” Morris chuckles.
Another memorable Morris moment occurred a few years ago when Clive Palmer sidled up to him at the merch desk at a Gold Coast concert, announced himself as a big fan and later offered to bankroll symphony orchestra-backed concerts by the singer at The Sydney Opera House and Melbourne’s Hamer Hall.
Used to pulling crowds of about 500 people, Morris feared Palmer’s big-band, big-stage dream would turn out to be an embarrassing flop but the 2600-seat Opera House and 2500-seat Hamer Hall concerts in 2023 both sold out and a successful national tour followed.
Morris says he will continue to write songs in retirement, in between fishing with his good mate, former Channel 7 boating, fishing and surfing personality Ken “Brownie” Brown.
His farewell tour, backed by a 13-piece band, kicked off in Bendigo on Thursday night before dates in Adelaide, Newcastle, Perth, Mandurah, Geelong, Canberra, Brisbane, Tweed Heads, Melbourne and Thirroul.
The tour will climax with an Opera House concert on September 7.
Originally published as Russell Morris reflects on six-decade music career ahead of retirement
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