Acclaimed singer, songwriter Colin Hay is touring Australia from late April to promote his new album Next Year People. Australian Musician’s Greg Phillips caught up with Hay for a pre-tour chat.
My conversation with Colin Hay begins with him asking me if I am in fact an Australian musician … to which I reply yes but not a good one. He then asks me if I play guitar and if so, what my favourite chord is … to which I reply yes and A minor. We discuss the merits of the chord and Colin suggests, “It’s a good one isn’t it. It often gets you out of a bind. You’ll be somewhere and think, what would happen if I go to A minor? It’s a kind of a happy thing that happens.’ It’s at this point I feel I need to reclaim my position as interviewer rather than interviewee. After all, there is much I need to discuss with Colin Hay. For instance, there’s a new album due out on February 13th, an Australian/New Zealand tour beginning on April 23rd, and there’s a small matter of clarifying why he smacked me in the face back in 1988 while we were both working on the set of a film.
Hit records can be a blessing and a curse. The incredible international success Colin Hay earned with his band Men at Work during the 80s was generated from just three albums during a short four year period. His solo career post-Men At Work has lasted 18 years to date and is about to yield album number twelve. Yet despite the consistency and quality of his solo recordings, you can rest assured that it’s mainly the Men at Work hits that audiences worldwide still come to hear. The use of the band’s tunes in high profile TV shows like Scrubs and Modern Family has also meant that the Men At Work legacy has been kept alive. Not that Colin is complaining, nor will Men at Work fans be disappointed with the set list when they attend Australian shows from late April. However, they’ll also be lucky enough to sample some songs from his excellent new album ‘Next Year People’.
Some of the songs off Next Year People had been living with Colin for a while and had been road tested in shows but a large cluster of them came in a burst, out of a songwriting collaboration with his Californian neighbour.
“A lot of them I co-wrote with a guy that lives up the road … Michael G … Michael Georgiadis,” explains Colin. “He’s a bit older than me and did a record with Bernie Leedon from The Eagles in the 70s. He was a contemporary of The Eagles and Neil Young and all those guys. He had a band called Hamilton Streetcar which opened for The Doors in 1968. He is a beautiful guitar player and a great songwriter. We started writing a few songs, not many but a few ‘cos he’s a busy guy. Anyway we just hit this moment a few months ago where he would come over with these musical ideas, half songs. They were really cool. We starting writing songs really quickly. There’d be one, then boom, there would be more and I think we wrote six songs together for this record.”
Hay claims his songwriting method hasn’t really changed much throughout his career. Generally, he sits with an acoustic guitar, comes up with a musical idea and it becomes apparent fairly quickly if it’s an idea worth persevering with. It’s not something that always comes easy though.
“You have to spend time doing that because there are all sorts of other things that can lead you away from that, so many distractions,” he tells me. “Even some of the equipment and tools of the trade in the studio are distractions. It’s very tempting to go down to the studio and turn all of the machines on and get a drum track and start fucking around. That’s one way of doing it but you might end up with 40 or 50 ideas and you never really finish the songs. I think my approach has been to try to finish the song before you actually record it. If you do bring in a drummer and bass player or another guitar player, when they are recording the track, it’s a song. It’s not like well, here’s an idea and there’s going to be a lyric later on. I think it is better if they have the lyric in their ear to play to. It’s kind of an old fashion approach I suppose.”
Colin has always been the quintessential storyteller and it’s no different with the new album. Next Year People features a bunch of engaging life tales and quirky observations. On the track ‘Waiting In The Rain’, Hay reminisces about his days growing up in a music store back in Scotland. “On a Monday I’d be waiting for the songs to come in, the singles to arrive from the hit parade,” he explains. “There was a new chart every Monday and there’d be The Who and Kinks, and Rolling Stones and Elvis Presley. I’d get to play them first, so that was a good moment. We also had guitars and pianos and drums in the shop. I remember we had one Rickenbacker guitar in the window. it was a hundred and fifty pounds but I couldn’t play that one, it was a bit too special.”
Then there’s ‘Did You Just Take the Long Way Home?’, a song about a guy who optimistically thinks his partner is just lost as opposed to having left him. “I think that the production of that song is great,” says Colin. “I like that one. The idea is just about a guy who is living in some kind of fantasy that his wife or girlfriend or live-in partner hasn’t left him. Sometimes when they were living together, while she was coming home, she would get lost. Partly he is thinking, well maybe she’s just on her way home. That delusion that we all go through that maybe she hasn’t left … but she has.”
On the track Mr Grogan, Hay’s compassionate vocal performance ensures that you feel the sadness of a man nearing the end of his working days. The title track Next Year People tells of a farming community which endures hardship year after year, yet persist in going through the same process annually with nothing but hope to cling to.
Australian audiences will feel the true poignancy of these tracks in April as Hay will be touring on his own with just an acoustic guitar as accompaniment. His choice of acoustic guitar while on tour is the local brand Maton. “I play Matons on the road because I find them to be the best guitars to play,” he says. “They are great guitars and because their pick up system is second to none. I prefer them to anything else that is out there that I’ve played. I have different guitars in the studio. I have a nice J200 that I use and I have Martins and Collings and I also a couple of Matons in the studio too. I always use Matons when I am touring solo.”
As well as Hay’s thoughtful musical narratives, he also enjoys spinning a tale or two between songs and has plenty of life experience to draw from. “Life seems to become more ridiculous the older I get,” he says. “A lot of the stories are just stuff. I try to hopefully make it more than just telling road tales.” Nudging to tell me one, I enquired if any famous faces had dropped by any of his shows recently.
“Daniel Craig was doing a play with Hugh Jackman in New York when I was playing there. So Hugh came along to see the show and brought Daniel along, so that was really nice. What was good was when we left, I had Wolverine and James Bond as my security detail which was funny. People were looking and I said to them, OK, bring the car around and they were like, yes sir. McCartney came along a few years ago too, that was pretty exciting to play for him. He stayed all night and after that i saw him a few times but that’s top of the food chain as far as my business goes.”
I tell Hay I have a story for him too and ask if he remembers a movie he featured in called Raw Silk back in the eighties. “What a funny little film that was,” he recalls. “I loved working with David Argue, he made me laugh so much that boy.” I too worked on the film as an extra however I don’t recall fun being part of my Raw Silk experience. I was playing the part of a cop who had to escort Hay into court to face the judge. The judge called Hay’s character to the stand and he was supposed to just shrug me off and step forward but instead I felt the back of his fist in my face. The director said cut, there were laughs all round and Colin apologised. We did two more takes and I got the fist in the face each time. Moments before the shot, I had told Hay that I worked at Juke magazine (weekly music mag which ran from 1975-92), forgetting that Christie, the editor had written some negative comments in the magazine about Men at Work a week or so earlier. Could there have been a link between the magazine comments and the whacks to the face?
“I whacked you 3 times?,” he enquired. “I don’t consciously remember that and it’s not something that I really think would have deserved a couple of whacks in the head.” We settle on accident as the probable cause and move on.
Colin Hay has lived in California for some time now, has travelled the world many times over but still gets a little nostalgic when he returns to Australia. “I do get emotional … yeah,” he says. “I like the way it makes me feel. I usually fly into Melbourne and it’s usually green, green hills and dales. I lived there for a long time so I have my very close friends there. It is always tinged with sadness now because both my mother and father are gone. That was one of the reasons I used to love coming back. It was always great to see them. It’s a very small family I come from, my brother and sister and I. It wasn’t too extended in any way. My brother lives in New Zealand. My sister is still in Melbourne, so there’s a lot of sadness when I come back. I miss them a lot. I still love coming back, it’s a great place.”
‘Next Year People’ is out Feb 13 on Compass Records thru MGM
http://www.colinhay.com/
AUSTRALIAN SOLO TOUR DATES
VICTORIA
Ringwood Karralkya Centre Thursday April 23 8pm
Bookings: www.karralyka.com.au or phone 9879 2933
Frankston Frankston Arts Centre Friday April 24 8pm
Bookings: www.fac.com.au or phone 9784 1060
Ballarat Her Majestys Theatre Saturday April 25 8pm
Bookings: www.hermaj.com or phone 03 5333 5888
Warrnambool Lighthouse Theatre Sunday April 26 7.30pm
Bookings: www.lighthousetheatre.com.au or phone 5559.4999
Melbourne The Forum Wednesday May 20 8pm
Bookings: www.ticketmaster.com.au or phone 136 100
NEW SOUTH WALES
Newcastle Lizottes Thursday May 7 9pm
Bookings: www.newcastle.lizottes.com.au or phone 4956 2206
CANBERRA The Playhouse/Canberra Theatre Thursday May 14 8pm
Bookings: www.canberratheatrecentre.com.au or Phone 6275 2700
BYRON BAY Byron Theatre Sunday May 17 7pm
Bookigs: www.byroncentre.com.au or Phone 6685 6807
SYDNEY COMEDY FESTIVAL
SYDNEY Enmore Theatre Saturday May 9 9.30pm
Bookings: www.ticketek.com.au or phone 132 849 or Enmore Theatre 9550 3666
QUEENSLAND
Brisbane The Tivoli Friday May 15 8pm
Bookings: www.ticketmaster.com.au or phone 136 100
Toowoomba Empire Theatre Saturday May 16 8pm
Bookings: www.empiretheatre.com.au or phone 1800 655 29
WEST AUSTRALIA
Perth Regal Theatre Saturday May 23 8pm
Bookings: www.ticketek.com.au or phone 132 849
Margaret River Colonial Brewery Sunday May 24 8pm