Swingshift

Live album by Cold Chisel

Released

23 March 1981

Cold Chisel chronology

East
(1980)

Swingshift
(1981)

Circus Animals
(1982)

Swingshift is a live album released by Australian band Cold Chisel in 1981. It was their first album to reach No. 1 on the Australian chart, debuting there in its first week. It peaked at number 9 in New Zealand. A press release said the title referred to, "the midnight to dawn shift that the staff in asylums dread: the hours when the crazies go crazy."

The performances on Swingshift were taken from concerts at Sydney's Capitol Theatre and Melbourne's Festival Hall from the "Youth in Asia" tour in the winter of 1980. Don Walker said compared to the studio versions of the songs, "Generally the feel's a lot better, and the band plays a lot better." The songs are as recorded live, but studio remixing took 125 hours.

Barnes said, "Most of the album was recorded at Sydney's Capitol Theatre on the last night of our Youth In Asia tour. It was a really hot night. Everything just happened, you know? Everyone fired." The opening acts for this night were Mental as Anything and INXS. Guest musicians were saxophonist Billy Rodgers (a one-time member of Dragon) and David Blight on harmonica, who is introduced by Barnes saying, "David Blight nearly cut his hand off the other day but he thought he'd come up and play anyway."

"I remember the show very well," Don Walker said. "It was pretty much the highlight of that tour. By the time we did that show, we'd played the East album all over the country and this was bringing everything home. Our chance to play all the East songs live to our home crowd."

Producer Mark Opitz said of the recording process, "I just turned up at gigs with recording equipment. Half the band didn’t know I was gonna do it. I didn’t want them to know too early because I didn’t wanna get them gun-shy."

There are covers of "Knocking on Heaven's Door", Creedence Clear Water Revival's "Long as I Can See the Light", and Jesse Stone's "Don't Let Go" on the album. Barnes introduces the latter song by saying he prefers the version done by Jerry Lee.

The picture on the cover of the album is taken from a still of a video recording from when the band played the Manly Vale in April 1980.

Cold Chisel re-released their catalogue in 2011, with Swingshift re-entering the Australian charts for one week at number 42.

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Wikipedia