Ian Moss - Early Life and Cold Chisel

Early Life and Cold Chisel

Born in Alice Springs to Geoff and Lorna Moss on 20 March 1955, Moss originally took piano lessons but switched to guitar at age 11. When Ian Moss was a child, he would perform for his family and friends. When he was nine years old, he sang "The Battle Of New Orleans" for his school. When Ian Moss was fourteen, he was asked to join a local band called "The Scene". Ian played rhythm guitar, so he had to plug in his acoustic to the bass player's amplifier. "The Scene" played at their local centers and soon began organizing their own dances. Ian Moss sang a couple of songs with "The Scene" and a year later, he bought an electric guitar to replace his acoustic.

"I was with them for about a year and by that time I was starting to get my own band happening," Ian recalls. That band was Anger & Tears.

Anger and Tears debuted when they played at the Alice Springs High School in 1970. The band also played at the school's dance and a local Battle of the Bands contest. Moss had failed a year of high school and decided to repeat in Adelaide. After attending high school in Adelaide he met songwriter and organist Don Walker and together they joined bass player Les Kaczmarek in a band called Orange. Within months the line-up also included drummer Steve Prestwich and singer Jimmy Barnes and the group's name became Cold Chisel.

While Moss' main role in the band was as its guitarist, he would often be called upon to take over lead vocals as well (when Barnes walked out of the band, as he did repeatedly). After periods spent in Adelaide, Armidale and Melbourne, Cold Chisel settled in Sydney in mid-1977 and finally won a recording contract with WEA late that year and recorded their self-titled debut album.

While Barnes remained the group's identifiable front man and lead vocalist, Moss also added lead vocal to several of the band's songs, the first of which was "One Long Day", the B-side of the "Khe Sanh" single and the closing track on side one of the debut album. His vocals feature on some of the band's best known songs, including the hits "My Baby", "When the War is Over" and "Saturday Night" and on "Bow River", which Moss wrote and the track that has since become his signature tune. "Bow River" was the only Cold Chisel song Moss performed when he returned to live work as a solo artist in 1988 and remains the only one he consistently performs to the present. Moss also sang lead on Cold Chisel's version of "Georgia" which became a staple of their live shows, although the only recording of this is on the 1984 album Barking Spiders Live: 1983.

Already established as a singer and musician, by late in the band's career Moss had also gained status as a songwriter, contributing "Never Before" for the East album, the track that was chosen as the first to be aired by Triple J when it switched from AM to FM in 1980. Songs on later albums included "Bow River" and "No Good For You" on Circus Animals, and The Last Wave of Summer's "Red Sand". He also featured on recordings by other artists, playing a guitar solo on the track "Skin" from the album Icehouse by Sydney New Wave band Flowers and an uncredited appearance on Richard Clapton's The Great Escape, that also featured Jimmy Barnes.