The Church celebrate forty-five years as a band this year and are celebrating their career to date with “The Singles Collection” tour. Earlier this year Andrew Slaidins caught up with frontman and founder Steve Kilbey to talk all things the tour and their career. This interview was originally intended to be a video but internet gremlins made this interview impossible to use in that format. Carefully the conversation has been transcribed and hopefully some of the spirit, fun and passion from Steve Kilbey translates into written words.
Steve Kilbey – The Church “The Singles Collection” tour interview
Andrew: Hey Steve, how are you? Welcome to The Rockpit!
Steve: I’m all right. I’m in Bellingen in New South Wales in an Airbnb. I’m playing a solo show here on Friday night, so I’m just trying to have some time off, but someone found out about that and filled it up with interviews.
Andrew: Oh, damn them!! But it’s a great thing as we get to catch up and I get to welcome you to The Rockpit and, we get to have a chat about “The Singles Collection” tour that’s coming up this November and December.
Steve: Definitely.
Andrew: To say that I’m excited to be chatting to you is an understatement, I’m a huge fan of the band. The Church captivated me from a very young age. I guess I was probably, you know, probably 9 or 10 when I first saw you guys on Countdown. That’s where I first became a fan. It’s been a near fourty-five-year journey that I have enjoyed and held your music close during. Last year you did the “Already Yesterday Tour” which was a magnificent celebration of the first four albums. I absolutely loved that show as it took me right back to where it all started. Having grown up with those albums, the live show gave those songs a whole new perspective as I had never seen the band live before.
Steve: Thank you. Where are you based again Andrew?
Andrew: I’m in Melbourne.
Steve: Where did you see it?
Andrew: I saw it at the Palais in Melbourne.
Steve: Alright.
Andrew: Based on that tour I guess I was hoping for the next four albums to be toured for this year, I guess my wishes have been granted in some ways with “The Singles Collection” tour.
Steve: That makes me happy to hear, this should be a banger of a tour.
Andrew: My first question as a fan is are there any new vinyl re-releases to coincide with this tour?
Steve: “Hindsight” has just been reissued. Did you ever hear of that album?
Andrew: Absolutely “Hindsight 1980-87” is the band’s first greatest hits package.
Steve: That’s the one. Hindsight’s being rereleased, there might even be a new church album out this year; there should be a new church album out this year and a new single, which we might be able to add to the set as well so that it’s not all old stuff.
A lot of our singles are deep cuts. Some are pretty obscure it won’t be in chronological order, so I’m hoping the whole thing doesn’t feel too sort of shallow. We’ll be doing the hits singles of course and as I said, some of our singles are pretty fucking obscure.
Towards the end it’s even doubtful. It is very ambiguous. What was a single or not. Towards the end, they, they weren’t singles. They were just like the first track that they used to say, back in 2004, they started saying, we’re just gonna drop this track and stop. They stopped being singles that were released and tracks that were dropped, and some of the things that we dropped in the nineties and the two thousands are quite left of centre. I think the show will have balance. I think that this tool will have balance and there will be songs everybody knows, and some songs people maybe didn’t know or have forgotten about.
Andrew: With the last tour something that really struck are so incredible. In the scheme of things every track made those albums what they were as a listening experience. Many in my opinion were worthy of being singles too. When looking back at the bands career there have been forty-two singles from the band, that’s quite a run of singles throughout The Church’s career.
How much fun was it revisiting the singles history and curating a set list, after having a bit of a read I found out there have been 42 singles as they call them from The Church over the bands career.
Steve: I didn’t know it was that many (laughs) Well yeah it would be that many.
Andrew: Amongst that list there were a few international only singles. There was one for I Europe, one for the America, one for New Zealand that were only ever released in those areas. It’s interesting when you look back at the history of the band. Did you ever fully realise the international appeal of the band?
Steve: No, I didn’t. I always hoped secretly in my heart of hearts, I think everybody does. You know, oh, I hope this band goes on forever and has success and everybody in the world loves us and we can go on playing forever. I mean, I didn’t really think that was gonna happen and there have been times where I think we’ve reached a kind of a vintage veteran. I always compare it to a car. If you bought a Ford Falcon in 1980, you know, in about 1990, people were going, oh, that’s just an old car. And in 2000 people would be going, that’s an old bomb. But if you kept, if you were holding onto it and kept looking after it. Now in 2025, if you have a 45-year-old Ford Falcon, people go, that’s a veteran car, that’s a vintage car. People might point it out to their kids and tell them to go and look at that beautiful old Ford Falcon. You know what I mean? It’s just a case of perception. I think you go in and outta fashion all the time.
Take grunge for example, when grunge came along, I felt like it was the end of the line. Nobody wants to hear this sort of stuff or what we are doing anymore. Then grunge goes away and along comes Brit Pop, and then something else is something else. But if you hang in there long enough, so sooner or later people think that you’re a classic band and you’re no longer up against all that fashionable stuff. Rock music is a, a history of different fashions coming along and wiping out the last thing. So with bearing all of that in mind, I never thought it would go on this long. I didn’t think it would have success all around the world. It was sort of started off as just get a band together and play some gigs and try and get a record deal and get one record out and marvellously it is turned into this long-lasting thing.
Andrew: 45 years as a band, as a brand, as an entity is, is nothing to sneezed at. The number of shows that have already sold out for The Singles Tour is astounding. There’s always been something very special about The Church for me as I mentioned earlier; the diversity, the changes in mood and feel. You’ve always done things your own way and I think that that’s a part of the lasting appeal of the band.
Steve: I’ve always done things my own way. I had to and it’s amazing how much opposition I faced, nowadays I can have my own way and do whatever I like, you know? It’s amazing thinking back to the eighties and how much pressure there was to conform and it’s true. I have this story I sometimes tell. A guy in EMI once grabbed me and said, come in and watch this. He had just got a videotape of the new Spandau Ballet song, and he stuck it in the VCR and he said, mate, if you don’t get like that, your career’s gonna be over. So, you better look at that; become like that. People were forever saying, you’ve gotta do this, you’ve gotta do that, you’ve gotta dress differently, you’ve gotta have short hair, you’ve gotta have long hair, you’ve gotta play here and there. You’ve gotta be on this TV show. You’ve gotta make a video like this It was an enormous amount of pressure, and I always just wanted to have my own way. I clashed with record companies, I clashed with managers, I clashed with the other guys in the band. I clashed with the audiences, and I wasn’t always right either.
Sometimes I was wrong, but I always, 90% of the time I did things my way and it just doesn’t work for me any other way. It was always had to be that way. I dunno, I can’t learn. I can only figure out, I have to, you know. No one could teach me to play an instrument. I had to figure it all out. No one could teach me how to use a studio. I had to figure it all out. And when you figure everything out for yourself, you sort of don’t wanna listen to other people’s opinions. I hate producers. I don’t like working with producers, I don’t like someone saying, oh don’t you think this song’s a bit long? Or don’t you think this song’s a bit short? You know, you should be more like this. Heaven forbids anybody suggests I change the words. So I did things, I did things my own way and, I guess that helps. That helps your longevity because people can feel that; I could feel that. I could feel that when my favourite bands, because like you I’m a fan. I have a lot of bands that I got into, and I would be really disappointed when I could feel that something had changed. Perhaps they weren’t doing things the way they wanted to do them anymore. Maybe they had collapsed to someone in the industry going, oh, you gotta do this, you gotta do it like that. I don’t know who David Bowie was listening to, but I, I hated “Let’s Dance” but there you go. That was his most successful album. I loved David Bowie up until “Let’s Dance”, I really f*cking, hated “Let’s Dance” yet it was highly successful for him. It’s a sort of double-edged sword following your own muse. And as I say, nowadays I can have my way, I can sort go, it’s my bat and ball, I’m going home if, if you don’t do things the way I wanna do it.
Andrew: I guess it kind of brings me back to the heights where you’d started to reach success in the America with “Starfish” and “Gold Afternoon Fix”. If my research is correct, John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) was on the table for producing “Gold Afternoon Fix”?
Steve: Yeah.
Andrew: Obviously the record company had something to say about that.
Steve: They were trying to sway us and then you reach something that resembles a sort of a hodgepodge compromise, where they say, you should be like this, and we go, no, we’re gonna be like that and then you reach some horrible compromise in the middle that nobody’s happy with. That happened a lot and I don’t need anybody’s idea for my vision. Look, if they gave out PhDs for rock and roll, I would have one, and I would’ve had one 50 years ago because I’ve dedicated my life to this. I have dedicated my life to rock and roll as soon as The Beatles appeared on the scene. I was a student of rock and roll, The Beatles and all the bands that were around. I was reading the magazines, listening to the music, discussing it with people, watching the TV shows.
You know, once upon a time when I was a kid, there weren’t many TV shows. There was a show on Saturday on the ABC that used to have half an hour of rock clips. Well, you can bet on every Saturday at midday. I was sitting at home watching that show, watching Mick Jagger live at Madison Square Gardens going, what? Why is this so amazing? How, what is he doing? Why do I feel so excited? Why, do I love this so much?
Andrew: I get that completely.
Steve: Then you start buying albums, reading all the press, and then when I was getting into recording myself, I starting to find out about recording studios and how it’s all done.I filled up my whole mind with this stuff. I was saying to a guy before, you know, 95% of my mind is full of rock and roll, and the other 5% is doing the other normal things you’re supposed to be able to do to exist in this society. I don’t need f*cking advice from a producer.
Some producers were great, but the ones that came in and wanted to change things and wanted to do something that you didn’t want to do or wanted to have the last say, I didn’t need that. Producers like Gavin McKillop that co-produced “Priest=Aura”, he was great as was Bob Clearmountain right in the beginning when we did “Blurred Crusade”, they enabled me to do the things I wanted to do.
When we made “Starfish” and then “Gold Afternoon Fix”, we had people who make it clear they don’t really want to be there and they’re only doing you for the money. Bossing you around and belittling you and stuff. I didn’t need that, yet those guys took all the credit ‘Under The Milky Way’ when it was a hit. They didn’t f*cking think of that; they sort of got out of the way and the hit happened. They didn’t bring it to the band; it would’ve been a hit whoever f*cking produced it. Whatever producing means, I don’t know. I’m just very passionate when it comes to rock and roll, anything else, you know I’m like, oh yeah. I will listen to your opinion on what car should I buy? What should I eat for dinner? You know, where should I go? Where should I have my holiday? I’m open to suggestion, but when it comes to my own music and the way I do things I know I’m very opinionated about how it should be. I was never really looking for advice.I did things my own way. It seems to have paid off in the end and here we are. I can say The Church has lasted 45 years, of course it’s only me. The other guys had to leave the band because they didn’t want to do things my way. Marty and Peter, they had to leave, they had to go off and do things the way they want to do them. It was always me. No matter what it appeared to be, it was always me who was bearing the brunt of all of this and going, no we’re gonna do it this way and here we are. It appears to have paid off to have followed my own star, sometimes it was painful to argue against the zeitgeist. It’s easy to underestimate the zeitgeist that prevailed in the eighties when an American record company is saying, we’ve just given you all this money to make this record. We want you to be like the Thompson twins and you go, look, I ain’t gonna be like the f*cking Thompson twins and these people are really angry with you. They, they come in and they’re whispering and they’re complaining even when you’re having a rehearsal and writing a song there’s a guy standing there going, no, don’t pursue this and it’s like, they’re nipping it in the bud before it even gets a chance. So, you’ve gotta learn. I had to learn to filter all of that out and be so strong and self-opinionated. That the band could be the way we wanted it to be, I was always fighting it because from the moment you started, they were all trying to change you.
Andrew: When you look back at the bands career and the songs that you guys have recorded and specifically tying it into this tour the singles, is there a particular single that you were surprised that took off that did things that you didn’t expect it to do?
Steve: I think all of them. I was surprised we only really had four hits. Let’s face it. I was surprised any of them were hits, pleasantly surprised. I didn’t know they would be. There were more songs that I thought would be hits that weren’t, I thought when we released the double single I thought for sure, “Tear It All Away” would be a hit. I thought WOW People like “Unguarded Moment”, wait till they hear, “Tear It All Away”, they’re gonna love it. No, radio wouldn’t touch it. You would’ve thought “Reptile” might’ve been a really big hit. I mean, how f*cking much more of a hit would you want than that? But that, nah, it wasn’t a hit, it didn’t get played on the radio . And then after about 1990, nothing we could do could be a hit. We were already had our point where you don’t have a chance of having a hit single anymore. They’re just not gonna play your songs on the radio. After a certain point, no matter how catchy or poppy or whatever, I don’t know. I’ve, I thought “Already Yesterday” might have been a hit, but it wasn’t, it didn’t get played. “Tantalized” as well. Its funny ‘Heyday’ was a very successful album, but all of the songs of ‘Heyday’. Didn’t get played. People say they love that album, it’s one of their favourite albums. ‘Seance’ was another one. ‘Seance’, nobody played any of the songs off ‘Seance’. It would’ve seemed like we were dead and buried and then under the ‘Under The Milky Way’ came along unexpectedly and then ‘Metropolis’ was a bit of a hit in Australia. Interestingly enough, this is an interesting fact ‘Unguarded Moment, ‘Almost With You’, ‘Under The Milky Way’ and ‘Metroplolis’ all only got to like 21 in the charts for whatever that’s worth. They weren’t, they weren’t massive hits. There were songs that were number one that no one would remember now, our songs that were sort of like only medium size hits and they had more longevity, more shelf life than, than these super successful songs. It’s a funny old game the pop music game. There are some incredibly talented people who don’t get anywhere, and then there’s absolute rubbish that gets to the top of the pile. Then there’s guys like me who just go on doing what they do, moving in and out of fashion all the time, you know? I think maybe we’ve reached a stage now where we are the veteran car where we don’t have to worry about anything anymore. People see us as this classic act, you know and in that we’ll always have a bit of an audience.
Andrew: With the band the way it is and the lineup that it is today. Is a collective of very creative minds. Ashley Naylor is an incredible player. Ian Haugh is a sensational too and has such a great creative mind. How do you go about writing a bunch of new music? Does it, is it become collaborative or is it still directed by you?
Steve: We made a new album last year, and we’d go in the studio, some days nobody had anything, and some days we all would jam and jam and jam. When we jam, I’m always like the editor of the Jams, we will jam and I go, okay, I really like this bit. Let’s work on that. Sometimes me and Ash would write a song on our own. Sometimes me and Ian would write a song on our own. Sometimes it was Jeffrey and we would write a song. Everybody had little ideas. Everybody had bits and pieces and at the end of the day, I kind of would put it all together. I’m the sort of the decider at the end. I have the, the say at the end of the day of what was gonna be, be the record. But everybody’s bringing their own important ingredients into the band. The Church today and like it was with the old band from “Heyday” onwards was a collaborative unit. We collaborated on the music. Sometimes it was more me than them, but everybody had an input, I wasn’t playing everything and I wasn’t telling everyone what to play, but I would still be the one to choose what we would do and what we wouldn’t do. It’s pretty much just gone on being like that. I have all these amazing musicians and don’t always know what to do. I’m not an amazing musician, but I always know what to do. I like to work with amazing musicians who need a context, and that’s what I do. That’s my job I provide a context for them to play in, and then when they played something. You could give a song to a guitarist, and they could do 500 lead solos, and then you’d go, I don’t know which one. That’s where I come in and I go, that one there, that’s the one we want to use. So that’s, that’s sort of how I’ve always survived. But not by being an incredible musician I’m always thinking about the song at the end of it all and that’s the way I have always been. The Church’s strength has always been having these great players and being able to harness all these great players is what I do. Somebody at the end of the day must make the decision. You can’t have five or six people making all going we should do this and do that. You’ve gotta have one guy in charge, and that’s kind of me.
Andrew: Initially the tour looked as though it would be just a November run, but it has now extended into December and into 2026. With the success of the first few dates additional dates have been added. You must be blown away by the response to these shows as most of them have sold out. It must feel amazing knowing that The Church’s music is resonating across generations after forty-five years.
Steve: I am blown away. I’m humbled. I’m excited. Yeah. I’m glad, I’m glad that it meant so much in an ephemeral world. We are in a pop world where things come and go so quickly. It really is extraordinary to know that some song I wrote so long ago still means so much to people. I joke around about it, you know, you can’t let it get to you too much, it’s ok go Wow. But, you know, every now and then, I pat myself on the back and go, well done.
Andrew: You know and you certainly knew what you were doing for sure. You’ve achieved longevity in a business that’s known for having a very short attention span.
Steve: It’s a marathon Andrew, not a race.
Andrew: Exactly. And that’s the thing you found your stride and it’s more profound than ever.
Wrapping this one up, the rest of 2025 is also looking to be a big one. We won’t go into that now, but the band is also a part of the Crowded House, Red Hot Summer Tour that pretty much starts during the tail end of this tour.
Steve: Yeah, we’re part of the Crowded House tour as well and that’s what selling fast too. Okay now here’s the problem, those Crowded House shows are selling out as well. The Church shows are selling out, so now we’re starting to compete. As these shows sell out and we are adding new dates, it’s inevitable that sooner or later those shows are going catch up with what The Church is doing. We won’t be at all the Red-Hot Summer dates because we’ve got our own tour to do.
I did see some of those Red-Hot Summer/Crowded House shows sold out in a day. I haven’t really been looking at the internet much lately, but I, I noticed that they added two more shows and we’re available for them. But as it moves into November, I fear and I feel that they will probably be having to soldier on without us because we are going be doing our own shows. But it’s a good problem to have for sure.
Andrew: Great to be wanted and in demand.
Steve: It is always.
Andrew: Alright Steve, we’ll wrap it up. I know you’ve got busy day full of interviews.
Steve: Alright mate, Okay.
Andrew: Hope to catch up with you soon and I’ll definitely see you the Forum show in Melbourne, my friend.
Steve: Beautiful. Bye mate.
Andrew: See you them, look forward to it. Thank you.
