Its been a long and beautiful journey so far. I was 13 when I did my first gig, and that was a little while ago now. I started my career as a guitarist in Brisbane, and had already toured up and down the east coast in an original band for several years before I moved to Melbourne in 1983. It took awhile to get settled in my new home town, but before long I found myself playing in cover bands for the first time, and I ended up in a band called The Nazz, which was kinda like Cold Chisel doing 60's covers on nitrous oxide, but without the class. We worked that poor old horse into the ground for 5 years, until I eventually said "enough!"
One of the great things to come out of that band was a lifelong friendship and working relationship with keyboard giant Michael Caruana. When I said I was leaving The Nazz, he said he was coming with me. We weren't exactly sure what to do, so we put together a band with his brother Nicky Bomba, and a young singer named Tony Kopa, and we called ourselves The Truth. An ironic band name, because we all used to bullshit A LOT. One thing lead to another, and we woke up one day to find that Triple J were playing one of our songs. The interesting thing was that we hadn't sent it to them. Still, that's Rock'n'Roll, and that's how it generally happens.(?)
Next thing we started getting very busy. We signed to Mushroom, and released our debut album, and seemed to be getting a lot of commercial radio airplay. We became everyone's favourite support act (always the bridesmaid.) and found ourselves on an endless merry-go-round of touring, with the likes of Bryan Adams, Roachford, Baby Animals, Diesel, Hunters & Collectors, Bon Jovi and some other guys as well. We were poor, but we didn't care, we were living the dream, but without the sleep One of the highlights was a gig in Sydney where Living Color turned up, and got up and jammed with us onstage for 45 minutes, doing Stevie Wonder tunes and basically anything other than "Love Rears its Ugly Head." We were ready to play it, but apparently they didn't know it. Fortunately for me, Vernon Reid was back in his hotel roomIt was good.
Anyway, we split up.
That's when I started my new career as a sideman. Basically, I was willing to play with just about anybody. But I was blessed to work with some real fine ladies and gentlemen. It started with a brief promo tour with Jon Stevens, which lead to some work with Ross Wilson and Daryl Braithwaite, who must have spoken to Tina Arena, because she offered me a tour through Europe which included a show at Wembley Stadium, supporting the Bee Gees. I said yes. When I got back to Australia, I was working with both Ross and Daryl when I got the call to do a tour with John Farnham. I said yes to that too. The tour saw us also working with Human Nature, Kate Ceberano, James Reyne, Ross Wilson and Merril Bainbridge, and yielded the Live At The Regent album. I remember that the tour bus was very full and that we laughed a lot. Then John very kindly sang one of my songs, The Way, on his 33 1/3 album. He sang it real nice.
These days I'm still working with Daryl Braithwaite, and I'm currently putting together a band called The Geoff Wells Experiment, with keyboardist Phil Turcio, drummer, John Corniola, Jason Vorherr on bass and a monster of a singer in Jimmy Cupples. We'll be doing the stuff that made me want to play guitar in the first placeLed Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Free, Hendrix, Jeff Beck, that sort of thing. Onward and upward
