Mega Kudos to Levi Clay for pulling together this great interview, excerpt posted here. Also a big thanks to Brett Garsed for the shout out during the interview :)
I guess the biggest one to mention is John Farnham, this must have been absolutely huge for you! (Readers will remember Michael Dolce saying how seeing Brett Garsed on a national broadcast in his youth changed his whole musical life) How did it come about?
I'd been working as a plumber since I was 15 years old and I was about 21 at the time when I decided to take the initiative and send out demo tapes. The first tape went to Mike Varney's "Spotlight" column in Guitar Player magazine. He responded very favourably and put me in the mag so that inspired me to take the next step and send out a resume to various management and record companies. I sent a tape to the Wheatley Organisation who were managing amongst other people, John Farnham and The Little River Band so Glenn Wheatley wrote me a letter insisting I call him which of course I did. He offered me an audition with John to do a short pub tour which I jumped on, got the gig and had a great time. This was in the summer of '85 and John told me he was going to do a new solo album the following year and he and his producer Ross Fraser invited me to be a part of it. After returning to plumbing in between all of this I did the album, then started touring in September of '86. The album became the biggest selling album in Australian history and I'm still working with John till this very day. We'll celebrate the 25th anniversary of "Whispering Jack" with a tour at the end of this year.
What are some of your fondest memories of your time on that gig? (lets leave out all the strippers and cocaine - you'll deny it all im sure!)
Hah hah! No strippers (or at least that I know of!) and most definitely no cocaine. I was raised to be a clean living lad and to be honest, I only tried to play the guitar drunk once and that was at my own 21st birthday and it was awful so out of respect for the audience and my own professionalism I always make sure I have a completely clear mind when I'm playing
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Brett Garsed: Dark Matter
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