Cold Chisel
Last Stand – 40th Anniversary Box Set
Released: 17 November on Universal Music Australia

Cold Chisel’s Last Stand is part of Australian music folklore.

It was late 1983 and the swansong for the biggest band in the country.

At the time, the tickets sold faster and in bigger numbers than any tour by an Australian artist, ever.

The first show of the tour was at the Logan Campbell Centre, Auckland on September 20, 1983 – exactly 40 years ago today.

After a blitzkrieg run through Australia and New Zealand, it all came down to four huge shows in December 1983 at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.

“Goodbye Now Babe, I Won’t Be Comin’ Back For Long”

And sure enough, it would be 15 years before Cold Chisel would be seen on stage again.

These four shows in Sydney were recorded and filmed to create some of the most loved and enduring live recordings in Australian music history.

For the first time ever, they are all gathered together in Last Stand – 40th Anniversary Box Set – with some additional tracks never before released on vinyl or CD and with photos, posters and an authentic tour laminate bundled in as well.

VINYL

First Item: The legendary Last Stand album in its extended 19-song glory is released as a beautiful, remastered double album on thick 180g vinyl for the first time ever. Originally, this album was released in October 1992 and only on CD. It was the height of the CD boom and vinyl was all but dead. Here the album is now remastered especially for vinyl and also with enhanced gatefold artwork.

Second Item: The Barking Spiders Live 1983. This rough diamond of a record was first released in 1984 and was made to appear as though it was a bootleg by a band called The Barking Spiders. It featured no mention of Cold Chisel, but the songs were a giveaway – captured at the Last Stand shows delivering a blistering single vinyl album of what was originally 11 songs, now remastered for vinyl as 12 songs, including Conway Twitty’s gem It’s Only Make Believe (which featured on the subsequent CD release). Seven of these songs do not appear on the Last Stand album and are all different versions to those five that are repeated on both albums. The Barking Spiders Live 1983 has not been available on vinyl for many years and is presented here exactly as it was in 1984 – including the poster of the first-ever photo of Cold Chisel from 1973. The only change to the original vinyl release is the inclusion of It’s Only Make Believe and it’s all newly remastered by Don Bartley.

Third Item: 10″ vinyl mini-album, Last Stand Outtakes. This has never before been released on either CD or vinyl and includes four great outtakes. Mastered for vinyl by Don Bartley, it captures Cold Chisel raw and wild and features the Circus Animals’ favourites Wild Colonial Boy and Letter To Alan as well as the then-brand new Build This Love and a long version of the Isley Brothers/Beatles classic Twist & Shout. Running at 20+ minutes, it’s almost a full album in itself. The artwork came from a hardcore fan, Ian Morrison, from a call-out we did for fan submissions of photos, memorabilia, merchandise etc from back in 1983. Ian snuck a camera into a Last Stand show in Newcastle in 1983 and captured the photos we included here. Thank you, Ian.

CD/DVD

All of the above vinyl items are also included in the Box Set on CD as well – all housed in slimline 5″ sleeves. We know that many of you are still CD lovers – and so all of the CDs are here and in the case of Last Stand Outtakes it’s on CD for the first time. In addition, we have also included the best-selling DVD of the film Last Stand shows (with new artwork). All of the CDs/DVD are housed in a specially designed gatefold package.

ADDITIONAL ITEMS

In addition to all of music detailed above, we have included the iconic photo of Jimmy Barnes from the Last Stand album cover as a stand-alone poster (free of any type), one-of-three great individually numbered photos from the Last Stand shows (from photographer Greg Noakes) and a special backstage laminate from the Last Stand tour.

Imagery and artwork can be downloaded from here.

This is the ultimate Last Stand experience – The 40th Anniversary – Cold Chisel style! – will be released through Universal Music Australia on 17 November 2023. Pre-order all the versions now from here.