Cold Chisel rocker reveals his VERY surprisingly ‘normal’ job after the legendary Australian band called it quits in the early 80s

Legendary Cold Chisel rocker Phil Small has revealed the surprisingly ‘normal’ job he worked after the Australian band split in the early ’80s.

The 70-year-old bass guitarist admitted he kept busy with warehouse work and other odd jobs during the fourteen years the band was on hiatus between 1983 and 1997.

‘After the band broke up, there is a huge void for everyone. I thought, ‘What the hell am I going to do now?'” Phil told the LISTNR Cold Chisel Podcast.

“It was like just leaving a big party and slamming the door to an empty room. Nothing there.”

Small added that he had to keep himself busy and did this by taking on various jobs until the band’s shocking reunion in 1997.

‘So I had to go out to work. I got work wherever I could, at one point sitting sidelined on a truck. “I worked at St. Vincent de Paul,” he said.

‘One of my longest jobs was actually at the record label Polygram, just in the warehouse. A lot of musicians got work there through word of mouth.”

However, when the band reunited in 1997, Small was able to put that work behind him and play up a storm again with singer Jimmy Barnes on stages across Australia.

Small first joined the band in 1975 and has since played on all their studio albums and toured the world with the iconic rock group.

For an Australian rock band that has endured against all odds, look no further than Cold Chisel.

From late 2023 through 2024, frontman Jimmy Barnes has been in and out of the hospital, first for a hip replacement and then for open-heart surgery, followed by another hip operation.

Just a few months later, he was back to his best, performing a national tour celebrating the band’s 50th anniversary.

In October, Cold Chisel played the first of two sold-out shows at Melbourne’s Flemington Racecourse, supported by The Cruel Sea and Karen Lee Andrews.

Singer Barnes, 68, was seen belting out the group’s classic hits alongside fellow bandmates Phil Small, Charley Drayton and Don Walker.

The 70-year-old bass guitarist revealed that he kept busy with warehouse work and other odd jobs during the band’s 14-year hiatus between 1983 and 1997.

Small added that he had to keep himself busy and did so by taking on various odd jobs until the band’s shocking reunion in 1997.

The band recently released 50 Years – The Best Of to coincide with the Big Five-0 Tour, and the album immediately reached number 1 on the ARIA album chart.

But there is also another number one for Barnes: his sixth book, Highways and Byways: Tall Tales and Short Stories from the Long Way Round.

Highways and Byways has made its debut on the bestseller lists at the top of the Australian biography/autobiography category.

“I’m thrilled that I’m still here and that such wonderful fans/readers still travel the highways and byways with me,” Barnes said in a statement.

“I started writing about eight years ago and it has been a wonderful, cathartic experience for me and my family, as well as an honor to see my stories help other families start conversations that can promote their healing.”

He was forced to cancel two months’ worth of gigs in August after noticing pain in his side during a performance in New Zealand, leading to urgent ‘reparative’ hip surgery.

The singer previously underwent open-heart surgery to ward off a staph infection, which then returned and attacked his hip, leading to final shock surgery and a six-week recovery.

Barnes later made his triumphant return to the stage after his health problems when he performed with his band Cold Chisel at The Entertainment Quarter.

The Cold Chisel 50th anniversary tour, dubbed ‘The Big Five-0’, has already sold more than 150,000 tickets across 16 shows, making it one of the most highly anticipated Aussie tours of the year.