Joe Matera celebrated the launch of his second book, Louder Than Words: Beyond the Backstage Pass, on Friday, May 10, at Echuca Library.
Featuring a live musical performance and excerpts from his memoir, his love for music was clear from the outset.
The book, a follow-up from his first, Backstage Pass: The Grit and the Glamour, is filled with anecdotes from Mr Matera’s time on the road as both a musician and a music journalist.
“In a nutshell it's my life story, but weaved into the artists that shaped my life and my music,” he said.
“I talk about how I got into music where it's led me, and then talk about the artists that influenced me.
“I go into their own story and talk about their music and their sort of standing in popular culture.
“I talk about certain albums of theirs that I really love and talk about why I love it and what the effect is.
“Hopefully it shows people what it’s like to be on the road, let them hear the stories ... basically it’s my passion of music.”
Mr Matera knew he wanted to be in the music industry from an early age, finding a strong connection with the bands and songs around him.
“(My passion for music) has been with me from day one,” he said.
“I heard The Beach Boys Pet Sounds album when I was four years old, I fell in love.”
One of the stories Mr Matera read drew on this early love for music. Some of his former classmates from St Augustine’s College in Kyrabram were in attendance, nodding along as they remembered young Joe.
“I recall around the age of seven imagining myself being in a popular band that were releasing albums and performing for audiences around the world,” he said.
“I had an active imagination, and I used to daydream regularly. Actually, quite regularly.
“My school reports used to say, ‘Joe Matera daydreams too much in class and will not achieve anything in life’.
“Famous last words.”
While Mr Matera initially pursued a ‘normal life’, working at the Kyabram Cannery, his love for music took him out of the small town and into the industry.
“If someone said to me at that age ‘do you think you’re going to be touring the world some day?’ I’d go ‘yeah right whatever ... I mean Kyabram!’,” he said.
“But life sometimes just surprises you. It was a lot of hard work though.
“When I left school, I was working at the Ky Cannery I did all the normal jobs, got married ... but music was always there, and then the passion just kept me with it.“
Some of the musicians Mr Matera connected with both touring as an artist and meeting them as a music journalist inspired his journey.
A song that stuck with him was Run to You by Bryan Adams, which sparked Mr Matera’s creativity.
“When I listen to music, if I like a song, I love it and obviously inspires you to come up with your own ideas,” he said.
“One song in particular by Bryan Adams I really love is Run to You, his big hit from 1984.
“That riff at the start he plays goes up on the guitar and that’s the riff that holds the whole song.
“I thought ‘I love this song, I’m gonna write my own song. I'm gonna do my homage to Bryan Adams’.
“So I took the riff, I reversed it, I added in my own different parts to it and came up with my own song, Fallen Angel, which I released about 14 years ago.”
This song opened up a connection to and friendship with Bryan Adams, the author of the foreword for Louder Than Words: Beyond the Backstage Pass.
“Bryan Adams heard it, and he complimented me, he goes ‘great work, that’s a great song’,” Mr Matera said.
“He actually wrote the foreword, which, I have to point out; Bryan Adams has never endorsed any book about him nor has he authorised any book.
“With my book, he said to me ‘I want to read the chapter you wrote about my life’, so I sent it to him.
“He read it and got back to me and said ‘that’s great, I loved that. I’ll write a foreword for it!’.
“That’s total endorsement.”
Mr Matera brought his guitar along to play for the crowd, performing the riff from Run to You, then demonstrating how he used this for his track Fallen Angel.
He also played Louder Than Words, the namesake of his second book, and All Night Long, a semi-biographical song about his experience touring Europe.
Next, he performed an unreleased song, Rockpile written with his wife through the ‘cut-up method’, made famous by David Bowie, where words or phrases are cut up and chosen at random.
Another unreleased song, Waiting For The Sun was played about the experience of his wife's breast cancer, and the light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel during this time.
Mr Matera has a wealth of musical knowledge, which made it difficult for him to choose what to include in his book.
“There’s so much that I still want to share,” Mr Matera said.
“The first (book) I did different genres, and I covered everything from John Mayer to some bands from 60s right up to the 2000s, 2010s.
“I thought ‘I want to cater for everybody's taste’, so if you’re 10 years old you’ll find something or if you're 80 years old you’ll find something to enjoy.
“This book (is) here because the publisher said ‘make it more about your life’, I thought about who influenced me and who played a big part of my life.
“There’s a lot of other bands out there that I will for sure write about.”
Mr Matera lives and breathes music, as a performer, a songwriter and as a music journalist.
Touring, creating music and writing for many publications, including his Shepparton News column, allows him to do what he loves every day.
“I think it's important to be ambitious,” he said.
“I say to people ‘I don’t think I’ve done much’, and they go ‘what? Look at all the people you’ve interviewed and where you’ve been’ and I go ‘nah, I haven’t done this and I haven’t done that’.
“I’m always wanting to do more ... I just love what I do.
“I'm just lucky ... I say it’s a hobby that pays and makes a living for me, and not everyone gets to do that.”
Joe Matera’s second book can be purchased from Amazon.
His column Musical Musings is published fortnightly in Shepp News.