When tickets sold out to this year’s They picked up 18 ARIA Awards across Riverboats Music Festival in record time it their seven albums, and reigned over the was largely attributed to the Powderfinger music charts until their extraordinary legacy, and the pulling power of its former career ended in 2010. frontman Bernard Fanning as the festival’s headline act. “We were by no means an overnight success,” says Fanning. “It all felt pretty But the talented singer-songwriter whose gradual. “ remarkable musical story spans more than 30 years, is quick to deflect the link. “We were, for a long time, just one foot in front of the other. And then it all kind of “I certainly can’t take credit for that,” clicked around Double Allergic where we laughs Fanning. “There’s a pretty found a little bit more of our natural state. good lineup and I think when the right We stopped being so influenced by other combination of bands come together people around us, and just started doing people tend to jump on it.” our own thing. It’s no coincidence that we found our voice and people found us at And while he will be bringing his old the same time.” Powderfinger compadre Ian Haug (Hoggy) along to help out on guitar duties While Double Allergic was Powderfinger’s alongside his current band The Black Fins, breakthrough album in 1996, they were he was eager to make one thing clear. all still working part-time jobs to pay the bills. “It’s not a Powderfinger concert,” he says. Then in 1998, along came Internationalist, “It’ll be mostly my tunes, songs from right followed by Odyssey Number Five in across my career, and maybe something 2000, catapulting Powderfinger to the new. But we’ll dig out a couple of those major leagues. old chestnuts at some point.” “I guess it’s always ‘the dream’, you Powderfinger was formed in 1989 by know….. you’re playing to huge audiences five young Brissie boys who went on and everyone loves you. But it’s not very to become bonafide superstars of the realistic; it’s not a reality for most people Australian alternative rock scene. in the music world.”
6 Riverboats Music Festival 2020 “But it was an exciting time for us appreciate that people are very moved because things were really taking off, by it though. That is the whole idea, for and that’s what you’ve always been kind me, of making music - that it actually stirs of hoping for. It (that time) was great something in other people, as well as me.” BERNARD because it was still modest enough for it to be fun and not big pressure all the These days Fanning, who turned 50 last time.” year, lives in the coastal town of Byron Bay with his Spanish wife Andrea and two young “And then with the success, that’s what children. FANNING creeps in I guess, the bigger things get, the more pressure there is.” He recorded his last two solo albums Civil Dusk and Brutal Dawn in a studio he set When Powderfinger split in 2010, fans up in Byron with Nick DiDia, and plans for across the nation were heartbroken. another album are on the (distant) horizon.
For Fanning, the decision to separate was “I’m not really in any rush to do that yet, I’m about prioritising family. “It was really just going to write and write and write and difficult and a bit of a whirlwind to think see what comes up,” he says.
“that is the whole idea for me of making music, that it actually stirs something in other people, as well as me”
back on it now. I mean we knew for a while “I’ve been listening to a fair bit of rock and before anyone else did that we were going roll again and really enjoying that, and to make our last record.” starting to play a lot more electric guitar again, so that might be the way I end up “We’d got to a point where we really just going.” And as for the obvious question… couldn’t commit to doing it really happily anymore. Everyone’s priorities were Will there ever be a full live Powderfinger changing, and everyone had kids, and all reunion? “It’s a no until it’s a yes,” Fanning sorts of things were going on.” laughs.
Powderfinger’s last show was almost 10 “Everytime we have a meeting someone years ago, yet many fans still grapple with jokes about it and it gets kind of laughed the reality that it’s over. off, and we keep going. But I mean, it’s not on my radar at the moment.” Does Fanning wish people would let the Powderfinger legacy go and just move on? We’ll take that as a yes then…..
“Well sometimes, but not really,” he says. Bernard Fanning performs at Riverboats 2020 on Saturday at 9.30pm “I think the further away I get from it the more I appreciate it, but also it’s not something that I sit and dwell on. I
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