“I’m not retiring, just stepping away from the long tours that have taken me away from my family for too long. I just want to say thank you.” DAVID TURNBULL talks to Australian musical legend of 60 years – Mike McClellan. 

When Mike McClellan walks on stage with his acoustic guitar he looks perfectly at home.

For him, this is the most comfortable place in the world.

“Even as a kid, I always sang, and when you put a human voice together with an acoustic guitar it becomes spellbinding,” he says.

“I’ve played with many fine musicians in my life, great bands, but to me, it’s always been about a guitar and a voice.

“It’s just so honest”.

By any measure, McClellan is an Australian musical legend. In a career that spans 60 years – yes, six zero – he’s had several major hits, iconic songs, sold-out concerts and gold albums.

For four years he compered a TV series on the ABC and had an acclaimed career as an advertising agency creative director/owner. Away from the bright lights he also played in more community halls than he can remember.

And he’s still doing it.

Now 80, Mike is currently touring the east coast as a farewell.

“No, I’m not retiring, just stepping away from the long tours that have taken me away from my family for too long. I just want to say thank you.”

On November 28, he’s at Smith’s Alternative in Civic, and I can guarantee it will be special. Smiths is an intimate venue where performers meet eyes with the audience, and that’s exactly how Mike likes it – up close and personal.

He is a singer songwriter par excellence, a person who has unflinchingly remained committed to crafting songs about love and loss with lyrics that share honest observations about the twists and turns adult life confronts us with without a trace of judgment.

Calm, compassionate songs

He is a grown up, Mike, his songs are calm and compassionate, the emotions real.

His fingerstyle guitar is perfect accompaniment for a tenor voice that can still hit the high notes with ease and keep them soaring above the heads of an enraptured audience.

Along with Paul Kelly, McClellan would have to rank as one of the finest songwriters Australia has produced.

If you raise an eyebrow, consider this.

A few years ago, Mike wrote a song entitled Letter to America that shares his disillusionment with the changes we’ve all seen in the US. To end the song, he wanted to include some lyrics from Bob Dylan, “…It’s not dark yet… but it’s getting there” ,but everyone told him he’d never get the copyright approval.

Undaunted, Mike emailed Dylan’s manager and an hour later he got a reply: “We love it. Go for it.”

Not a bad endorsement from arguably the greatest lyricist the world has seen.

It’s worth noting that since recording that song he’s had death threats.

McClellan was born in Melbourne in 1945 the eldest of four children. He has two brothers and a sister. 

His mother, Elaine, was a stay-at-home mum, and his father, Carey, served in New Guinea during World War II, and studied economics on his return. He joined the Commonwealth Bank before moving to Sydney as part of the Reserve Bank.

“We were just a normal middle-class family, comfortable enough in East Brighton and Turramurra, but I wouldn’t say affluent,” Mike says.

“We were not religious, but mum did send us to Sunday School.”

Mike attended Normanhurst Boys High and then studied to become a primary teacher in Armidale.

Both his brothers went into the law: Peter McClelland is the former Justice who led the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse, and Geoff, now retired, was the chairman of leading law firm Freehills.His sister Susie married a newspaper editor.

Mike sang in choirs at school and picked up a guitar in his mid-teens inspired by the ’60s folk revival led by Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. Later, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon and Jackson Brown became his road maps. 

He mastered the fingerpicking technique he uses on guitar at 19 when a badly broken leg ended his teaching career and forced him back to Sydney.

“Stuck at home for a year, and I focused intensely on fingerstyle, listening to Chet Atkins, Doc Watson and blues legends like the reverend Gary Davis, and Blind Blake,” he says.

“No formal training, I just listened to records and tried to work out what strings to pluck to get the same sound.”

Then, at 19, Mike tentatively ventured out into the coffee houses.

“Okay, it wasn’t Greenwich Village, but it was certainly a vibrant music scene with coffee houses all over the place. That’s really where I learnt my craft.”

By 1965, at age 20, he was slowly earning a name around town and got a gig at the premier folk club in Sydney – the Troubadour. He was already writing his own songs, but he cringes when he thinks back on them.

“They were just so self-conscious, so naïve.”

Big break when he won New Faces

His big break came in 1969 when he won New Faces on Channel Nine, and in 1974 he became a household name with his first major hit Song and Dance Man and later backed it up with the Vanda and Young-produced The One I Love.

By then, of course he was filling major venues in Australian cities, he had songs recorded by artists both here and overseas and toured the US and England.

But at the height of his fame, Mike stepped away when a daughter by his second marriage was born with cystic fibrosis.

“It was just obvious I needed to be home, and that’s what I did,” he says.

“I still recorded and played where I could, but I didn’t tour. I worked for Mojo before a partner, and I set up our own advertising agency.”

Even there his authenticity shone through.

He didn’t write jingles; he wrote songs that touched people’s hearts.

A campaign for Australian Airways underlines the point with a song focused on bringing loved ones together again.

“It’s always been about the heart to me,” he says.

“My whole journey is about sharing what I see and feel honestly.

“It’s all about the songs.”

Mike McClellan, Smith’s Alternative, November 28.

Journalist David Turnbull is writing a series of profiles about interesting people, mostly Canberrans. Do you know someone who deserves a go? Share the name and a number in an email to David via editor@citynews.com.au