Russell Morris hears a symphony thanks to mining magnate Clive Palmer

Now Russell Morris has done it all. The singer-songwriter’s trip via pop, rock and blues sees him land on stage with a symphony orchestra.

Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist Russell Morris. Picture: Michael Woods

When Russell Morris started out singing with Melbourne band Somebody’s Image in 1966, he needed only to round up the other four members to be ready for a show. More than five decades on, Morris must rehearse with 54 musicians, and his band, as they reinterpret his songs in an orchestral setting that has proved the unlikeliest hot ticket of 2023.

Equally improbably, the visionary who believed Morris’s audi­ences were no longer in pubs and clubs, and imagined Morris in front of a full-blown orchestra at the Sydney Opera House, was mining magnate and former controversial fringe politician Clive Palmer.

Palmer went to a Russell Morris Band gig on the Gold Coast last year and, after the show, queued up to buy CDs from the merchandise desk, manned by Morris. Palmer was back a few weeks later, this time not just to buy more CDs but also to ask if Morris was up for lunch. He was. But he was reluctant to fall in with Palmer’s grand plans that he perform before a symphony orchestra.

Morris was used to pulling 400 to 700 people a night. The Opera House seats 2679. Where would the other 2279 come from? Morris told Palmer they could lose a lot of money. “I have a lot of money to lose,” was the abrupt response from the former federal member for the Queensland seat of Fairfax. Palmer was confident Morris’s fans no longer regularly attended pubs but would show up at the right venue in the right setting. Palmer was right.

On July 2 this year Morris and the big band sold out the iconic Opera House. Two days later he did the same at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall. That flawless hometown performance is already legendary and from it comes the just-issued double CD The Real Thing Symphonic Concert, the live songs Morris, his band and the orchestra recorded that night, from 1968’s Hush (a chart-glancing single for Billy Joe Royal and Deep Purple, but a solid Australian hit for Morris’s band) to tracks from his acclaimed trinity of blues albums more recently.

Morris has come a long way from performing before a couple of hundred youngsters at the Anglesea Surf Lifesaving Club, south of Geelong.

One young fan there in January 1967 was Ian Meldrum, a clever but barely articulate dreamer who thought Morris could be a star. All he needed was the right song.

The bold Meldrum, not known to ever have taken a backwards step, became the band’s manager, then Morris’s. Within 18 months he’d hijacked a gentle Johnny Young ballad called The Real Thing – destined to be a Ronnie Burns single – and twisted it into radical, tie-dyed knots of swirling psychedelia. Ever majestic, The Real Thing sat atop our charts as man landed on the moon as one giant leap for Australian music.

And it was a well-received crowning point of Morris orchestral outing. One fan in front of me that night excitedly said to his mate: “Well, that’s the end of the show. How could you possibly top that?” Those of us who have been seeing Morris for 50 years had an idea and remained seated. He came back with two original hits: Wings of an Eagle and Sweet Sweet Love. No one could top that.

At the heart of this grand project are the imaginative scores written by David Hirschfelder, whose skills on keyboard have seen him part of Little River Band and John Farnham’s band. He played that unforgettable piano solo on Farnham’s 1988 hit Age of Reason. These days he concentrates on films and has written scores for Strictly Ballroom, Australia, Sliding Doors, Shine and Elizabeth, the last two winning him Academy Award nominations.

“It was David Hirschfelder who made it happen,” Morris says of the musician charged with writing the parts for every player. For his part, Hirschfelder was happy to be in as long as The Real Thing was part of the project.

“It’s one of the most pivotal songs,” Hirschfelder says. “It was one of the most influential songs when I was a teenager. I heard it and thought, what an epic piece of music It’s six minutes long, it’s crazy, it’s genius, it’s hypnotic and it’s kind of classical, and I was a young classical musician.” It was the moment Hirschfelder became interested in pop music.

The songs from Morris’s catalogue almost chose themselves from the start. The overture was crafted from some of the hits but Hirschfelder tried to capture the essence of them rather than cramming in familiar musical passages.

One of the joys for him was discovering Morris songs of which he’d been unaware, including the unaccountably overlooked A Thousand Suns. “I listened to it and thought, wow that’s a beautiful song and I loved the lyric.”

The challenge was to make sure the orchestra didn’t “get in the way” of what were already beautiful melodies. With the song Van Diemen’s Land, one from Morris’s blues series, Hirschfelder says he took a cinematic approach to it: “I treated it like a film score.”

For Morris, the authority and inflexible regimen of the orchestra is a challenge and a joy. You can’t just vamp until everybody is right to go. He likens it to the Queen Mary leaving the dock. “You’re going to be down at the dock at the exact time to get on the Queen Mary when it sails. Because if the boat sails without you, you’re really in trouble,” says Morris, who also likens these concert experiences to being strapped to the front of an express train for two hours. “If I start sort of drifting away and start looking around and having a good time, I’m likely to forget where I am,” he says. “You’re not the boss.”

In some ways, the boss has been Palmer, who was convinced Morris had lost sight of his audience. Morris describes Palmer’s funding of the first shows “a beautiful gesture”. Palmer set out to prove the singer wrong, and he has.

Russell Morris: The Real Thing (Symphonic Concert) is out now. Encore performances (tickets at www.russellmorris.com.au): Melbourne, Hamer Hall, October 30-31; Perth, Crown Theatre, November 11; Adelaide, Festival Theatre, November 17; Sydney Opera House, November 22; Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre, December 9.