Melbourne for a Song August 3-9, 2005
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August 3–9, 2005 Rediscover sex after CHILDBIRTH How kids cope with TRAGEDY melbourne for a songMark Seymour and other musicians reveal their inspirations KENZIE C MARIO BORG STEPHEN M STEPHEN songs from the ForFor decades, Melbourne has labelled itself the musicalmusical hubhub southof Australia, and its local songwriters admit to an intense spiritual affi nity with their hometown, writes Debbie Kruger FRED KROH WAYNE TAYLOR WAYNE Clockwise from top left: Russell Morris, Mark Seymour, Stephen Cummings and Deborah Conway coverstory Melbourne. Living with his family in Mont Albert, he In Australian popular music, writes spasmodically. Mark Seymour After a childhood in country Melbourne has played a starring role. More than any other “I’ll go on a binge”, he says. A mainstay on the touring Victoria, Mark Seymour studied at Melbourne University city, the sense of Melbourne as a character, not just a place, circuit for decades, he is writing more confi dently now but and took up teaching before dedicating himself to a full- has been palpable. In my book, Songwriters Speak, understands that his audiences largely come for the time music career. Hunters and Collectors, the quintessential I interviewed 45 of Australia and New Zealand’s greatest nostalgia factor – particularly when he performs with pub rock band, provided music for the urban populace. It tunesmiths, and found that Melbourne songwriters had the fellow Melburnians Jim Keays and Darryl Cotton. New was diffi cult for Seymour’s staunch intellectual parents to closest affi nity with their hometown. songs rarely get an airing. accept the path he chose, but he shrugs off any suggestion The city’s moods, its citizens, its suburbs and its climate Asked which song he’d most like to be remembered for, that the intensity he was so well-known for as the Hunters’ pervade the lyrics of some of our best-known songs, and he replies: “The next one I’m going to write.” leading man was because of an intellectual background. have inspired some of the most creative artists to fashion a “I think there is a tyranny in intellectualism,” he says. soundtrack for several generations. “It can block you. Melbourne Uni people stand out like Melbourne’s musical enclave has always been tighter Stephen Cummings dogsbods to me. They’re incredibly than musical communities in other parts of Australia. In Stephen Cummings grew up in self-critical, really rigorous, and very the 1960s and 1970s, songwriters and musicians Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, a shy boy Melbourne on song sceptical. congregated at Armstrong’s Studios in South Melbourne. who read books to try to get out of his BILLY THORPE – Most People I “If something strikes me as Bruce Woodley, freshly returned from The Seekers’ overseas own head. The resultant intensity in his interesting, my next step is that it will Know Think That I’m Crazy success, wrote songs with Hans Poulsen there. adulthood took time to fi nd its way into manifest itself in a song. But unless I John Farrar, future songwriter/producer for Olivia his songwriting; in the 1970s, when “I’d gone to Melbourne for two weeks and believe that I can write it using Newton-John, was resident guitarist and arranger for songs writing for The Sports, it was more stayed eight years. I would play to 1000 language that actually has some form as diverse as the Johnny Young-penned The Real Thing and about finding enough material to people and 200 of them would be fi ghting of beauty in itself, I won’t go there – Smiley and Axiom’s A Little Ray of Sunshine, written by entertain audiences in pubs fi ve or six on stage. People would come along to hear even if I have reacted to it honestly.” Brian Cadd and Don Mudie. Daddy Cool recorded Ross nights a week. Somewhere Over the Rainbow and Seymour has clear memories of Wilson’s Eagle Rock at Armstrong’s. where some of his most famous songs Their first hit, Boys (What they were getting Mamma at In the mid-1970s a new breed of Melbourne songwriter Did The Detective Say), was were written and how. Talking To A 1000 decibels. And this came to the fore, led by The Skyhooks’ Greg Macainsh, who inspired by detective Stranger was written in a house in wrote songs like Balwyn Calling and Carlton. It wasn’t a novels, but brings to guy said to me, ‘You Carlton with the band’s keyboard long stretch to the work of Paul Kelly, whose 1985 song mind the heyday of know, mate, most player. Throw Your Arms Around Me From St Kilda To Kings Cross spearheaded a long career of Melbourne-based people I know was inspired equally by a relationship quintessentially Melbourne songwriting. Crawford Productions’ think you’re and his city. Melbourne has been the breeding ground for songwriters early cop shows such f***ing crazy’. I “I was in love with this girl. She as signifi cant at home as overseas – Little River Band, Nick lived in Carlton and I used to travel as Homicide. went home – I Cave and Archie Roach, to name a few. It has also been Probe Cummings across town to see her, and I was was living with home to some of the most outstanding female songwriters about those early acutely aware of the geography of that and artists Australia has produced, including Deborah Sports hits and there are Warren Morgan in transition, crossing Melbourne.” Conway, Renee Geyer and Missy Higgins. recollections of sitting at Toorak – and there Say Goodbye, which has the the kitchen table in a was a piano in the back. memorable line, “You don’t make me Malvern fl at, nutting out songs He was writing, and he feel like I’m a woman anymore”, was south Russell Morris Born and raised in the east, with fellow band members Andrew remembers hearing me sitting on the inspired by an argument Seymour heard through a wall in a St Kilda Russell Morris is an essential part of Melbourne’s music Pendlebury and Ed Bates, such as bed in the front singing, ‘Most people I history. Morris recorded Johnny Young’s The Real Thing Reckless, the infectiously catchy Who apartment. know think that I’m crazy …’. I wrote that in 1969. It brought together the leading lights of Melb- Listens To The Radio? and Don’t Throw “This conversation transpired ourne’s music scene, with Ian Meldrum producing, Brian Stones. song in two minutes.” between the tenants that were there, Cadd and his band The Groop playing on it, and John “I lived above a shop in Malvern by NEIL FINN – Weather With You which I thought was really funny. I’d Farrar arranging and playing guitar. the railway line,” says Cummings. (co-written with Tim Finn) been through something similar with Morris was a fl edgling songwriter, unsure of himself “Most of the songs I just fi lled with little “Obviously it’s about emotional weather my girlfriend, where I came home and and musically untrained. He wrote a follow-up, Paper bits of things that were around me.” and the changeability of everyday life. she ground her fi nger in my breastbone – a girl literally nailed me to the fl oor Walls, about teenage angst. Even when he had major hits It was during his solo career when The spark was the crazy weather in with Sweet Sweet Love and Wings of An Eagle in the early Cummings’ dark side was let loose. In and said, ‘What the f**k are you Melbourne. One of my fondest memories 1970s, he was low on self-confi dence. His unconventional successive albums he created a mythical doing?’. song structures and illogical timings frustrated other metropolis, Lovetown, and populated it of Melbourne is when the cool change But the line, ‘You don’t make me musicians but, along with sweeping poetic imagery, they with fictitious broken and lovelorn would come in and the big black clouds feel like I’m a woman anymore’ came were his trademarks. people such as Jane, who features in would roll in over the Domain and the through a wall. I heard that, and I Wings of an Eagle was written in the front garden of his three songs, including You Jane. sun would hit them. You’d have had a thought, ‘That’s just fantastic’. It parents’ house in Doncaster, the lyrics coming to him “I liked the idea of a story song, and beautiful sunny day and then all of a suddenly gave it a humorous edge.” As a solo artist since the late 1990s, without conscious intent. “I’d been reading about Red that one led to another few songs – sudden these big, menacing, thick Indian traditions and life, and I found parallels between Melancholy Hour and Walk Softly But Seymour has been even more acutely looking clouds would roll in, but they’d them and Aborigines. The words were ambiguous when I Carry a Big Stick. I like romantic aware of the infl uence of Melbourne in wrote them: ‘Well I’m looking out on overcast sky in the clichés; I am interested in love.” be lit intensely by the sun.” his writing. Home Again and Strange morning/And I can hear the warning as it calls to you/As Cummings lives in Caulfi eld with COLIN HAY – Who Can It Be Now? Little Town are odes to the city. the birds migrate and the wind is raised I see the eagle his wife and two sons, writing songs “I was living in St Kilda, I was on the dole, He has been inspired to write songs soaring/Although I’m just a pawn in nature’s game’.” and novels (his new book is called and everyone that came knocking on the about incidents elsewhere – London, Sweet Sweet Love was written in London, when Morris Kitchen Man) in a garage at the back of door seemed to want something, whether Auckland, Sydney – but knows there is something fundamental about was longing for his girlfriend at home.