West Australian 23/03 interview with Chris

[Jessii]

The land of the rising sun may have stolen Jimmy Barnes' girl away but Japan has also stolen the hearts of the Living End.
The band regularly play to massive crowds there, including 18,000 fans at last yrs Punk Spring event, so it's no suprise that Chris, Scott and Andy chose to cover Rising Sun for a tribute album.
They went even further, donning full Kabuki make up and garb for a video clip filmed in a karate dojo in the Melbourne suburb of Northcote.

"Oh yeah, love it," Cheney says when asked about the band's affinity for Japan. "Outside of Australia that would be my favourite place."
In fact, The Living End's leader has just returned from Japan. He visited the Fender guitar factory in Nagoya last month to check out the prototype of the Chris Cheney Signature series Gretsch guitar. The "Frankenstein model" axe is based on modifications he made to his own guitar over the years.

Cheney joins a very select list of Gretsch endorsees alongside Malcolm Young, Chet Atkins and Brian Setzer.
He says he first picked up that particulat guitar because his heroes - Billy Duffy from The Cult, Gene Vincents guitarist Cliff Gallup, Eddie Cochran and Duane Eddy, - all play that model.
"I loved the look of them intially and then i discovered the way they sound. Once I started playing them i never felt like i needed to pick up a Strat or anything like that."

The first Chris Cheney guitar arrived 2 weeks ago - "I've played it here at home and it's awesome, my dream guitar!!" - but further modifications are being made before they unveil the finished product.

When he's not designing guitars, Cheney is working on the follow up album to last years State Of Emergency, which heralded a major resurgence for the band.
"The writing process was pretty exhaustive for SOE but it was well worth it," he says. "The tours we did after that were all really big. We played the biggest venues that we'd ever played. We're really lucky."

[tanguyen]

Thanks Jessii for that. Did this article come with a picture?

[Jessii]

It had a picture from the video clip.
and the quote of the day in the paper is "I don't know how you can be in a australian rock and roll band and not appreciate cold chisel- chris cheney

[Kacky]

Thanks!

[Colezy]

Thanks Jess!

[Jodez]

Hey thats cool. Thanks ya

[mel_bound]

Cooool beans, thanks Jessii!

[The Dying Start]

Thanks Jessticles

[GoodOrEvil]

Trust mum not to buy the paper. I had to walk 50 meters there and back to get the paper!

[Colezy]

50 meters is nothing. 50m is the length of a swimming pool. Walking that distance twice is also nothing.