He’s considered one of the most genuinely talented figures in Australian music still at the top of his game and now Australia can officially lay claim – and Kyneton too!
The Black Sorrows frontman Joe Camilleri had called Australia home for 70 years before he was made one of the Macedon Ranges’ newest citizens last month.
The third eldest from a Maltese migrant family, Camilleri said he had always felt like a citizen of the world, but his citizenship gave him a “wonderful release and sense of belonging”.
“I should’ve done it earlier but it was just one of those things: every time I tried, something went completely haywire.”
It’s not an overstatement. What should have been a much smoother process was complicated by poor record-keeping during wartime and bureaucracy.
What Camilleri didn’t anticipate was that he had four different birth certificates with four different names: none of which he completely identified with. Adding to the challenge was his decision to “reclaim” his own name through Births, Deaths and Marriages.
For the first time, this year, he was finally able to complete the paperwork.
“Here’s the thing: I am Australian. I feel Australian. I’ve always felt Australian, so it wasn’t that I didn’t feel like I belonged, but I said, ‘I’m finally doing it’,” he told the Express.
For weeks he was asking his brothers and sisters to quiz him for an Australian citizen test that he was “amped up to do”. But there was no test.
There was also no ceremony at the Kyneton Town Hall this year or crowd. Coronavirus precautions meant, instead, a digital one-on-one with the mayor Cr Janet Pearce.
“I felt so excited. I felt like a 12-year-old. I was overjoyed,” he said.
“It was new for me, new for the mayor, and I was so excited that I forgot to say, ‘Do I get the wattle – are you going to send me a few seeds?’.”
Camilleri’s new citizenship was a chance to reflect on his time here and the decision of his parents to make the relocation as British subjects. His mother came by herself to Australia with four children under five on a two-month voyage. His father was already on the other side.
“I think it would have been a very difficult choice to make. Leaving your friends and family behind is such a big thing,” he said.
“They gave us an opportunity to be what we were going to be – even though I was a f-k-up first!”
Camilleri may have found his calling through music but there was some disillusionment first. He left school when he was 12 and a half, and discovered quickly what he didn’t want to do.
“That was a real disappointment – to me. I just got a useless job. I think music was a kind of release for me. I got into the music business because I liked singing and I could sing the songs of the day. I felt I was part of some fraternity that I didn’t even know existed.
“With tenacity, will and love – I didn’t know what I was doing, I was just doing. The more I got into it, the more I got seduced by it.”
Jo Jo Zep and The Falcons was his first taste of fame in his 20s but life almost returned to ‘normal’ once Camilleri had achieved his ambition of touring in the US and UK. He began a young family and picked up odd jobs in manual labour and hospitality.
It had been about a year since the demise of his first band when someone asked Camilleri to play at a Melbourne café. He brought together a group of like-minded musicians for the gig and for what was the beginning of The Black Sorrows.
It wasn’t long before songs such as So Young, Hit and Run, Shape I’m In, Hold On To Me, Harley and Rose,Chained to the Wheel, Never Let Me Go and The Chosen Ones became radio staples.
Camilleri has been awarded ‘living legend’ status by Rolling Stone, inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame and his career spans more than 50 years, but don’t call him a music star – he humbly rejects the tag.
“I’m just a geezer. I’m not a rock god. I don’t live it – but I do live to play music,” he said.
The Black Sorrows still average 150 shows a year and Camilleri is just about to release his 50th album.
Now enjoying the natural beauty of the Macedon Ranges every day, Camilleri calls Kyneton home and he owes it all to a stopover that allowed him to take in the atmosphere.
“I came here for a coffee and I bought a house,” he said.
“It was just the right time and moment. I’ve just fallen in love with it. I love coming home. In fact, I never stay anywhere anymore if I can help it, I will always come home – even if it’s a four-hour drive.
“All around here is beautiful and it’s just a beautiful thing to have an Australian citizenship and feel that there’s a belonging there.”
