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Stars of the underground

Clinton Walker — RAM, March 1986

"We're on our way! I can feel it!"

Beside the pool at the Coconut Grove Motel on Queensland's 'beautiful' Gold Coast, Robert Forster dances a quick little jig, rubs his hands together with glee and can barely suppress an excited squeal.

For good reason Bob has just heard that over only a week of release in England, the Go-Betweens ' latest single Spring Rain–off the band's new album Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express–has entered the charts at #112. It's the first time the Go-Betweens have made the (mainstream) charts anywhere, and the closest they've ever come to the sort of success that's always been so deserved, yet so elusive.

The news arrives on the first day proper of the Go-Betweens' current Australian tour, so it's some beginning. The tour kicks off tonight at Gatton, near Toowoomba with a gig at the Agricultural College there. We got here to the Gold Coast two days ago myself, the four Go-Betweens –Robert, Grant, Lindy and Robert–and tour manager John Lever.

It is, it seems, an annual ritual that the Go-Betweens enact on returning to Australia. They consider themselves an international attraction, and they know you can't look back, but they enjoy coming where they come from. I am sent to cover the prodigals' return to Brisbane, where the band was born eight years ago. Absolute Confessions: The Go-Betweens and I have been best of mates all that time but objectivity be damned–it may make me one of their true champions, but also their harshest critic.

Old folks from the south come to the Gold Coast to die because there are no death duties and because it's a sunny paradise in which to spend your twilight years out walking the poodles at surfers wearing little enough to be arrested for in Melbourne.

Wouldn't want to die here myself but it's a great place to visit. Love the warm water surf and all the high tack. So yesterday was spent swimming and shopping, and then in the evening we hit the new casino; Jupiter's open (King Of Gods = Money?!), and permitted ourselves to be fleeced by black jack machines; well unlucky at cards, lucky in … other things.

Michael Crawley, head of True Tone Records (The Go-Betweens' Australian label) calls early in the morning, just as we're about to board the mini-bus for Gatton, to say the single's started to take off. But even before that, there was already an air of supreme confidence and optimism within the camp. It's this time around.

The Go-Betweens are no longer content to be pop's great never-quite-were's. Despite having made at least one classic album, 1982's Before Hollywood (their second) and two classic singles, Cattle And Cane and Part Company –both as near to perfect as pop songs get, the public hasn't yet been given the opportunity to assess the Go-Betweens for itself.

Which is most likely due to the fact that the Go-Betweens have jumped from record company to record company. After signing to the maverick American label Sire, their 1984 album Spring Hill Fair was a major disappointment and a low ebb; since being dumped by Sire and surviving on ill-fated liaison with Elektra, the Go-Betweens have now signed to Beggars' Banquet in England/True Tone in Australia and bounced back with Liberty Belle And The Black Diamond Express, which marks not only a return to form but the opening of a new phase.

"I think for the first time in our career there are a list of people working for us within the industry, which we've never had before," says Grant McLennan. "So I guess it's just up to us, the songs..."

"I think we've got our timing right this time," capitulates Bob Forster. "We almost had it before with Cattle And Cane and Before Hollywood, and then, we got virtually thrown out. I mean, we were in the wilderness for a long time after that. We just had to make a very, very good record, and I think we have."

"I say without doubt that this is the best record the Go-Betweens have made," crowns Lindy Morrison. "But I will add, it's just the beginning. We've just now begun to grasp hold of our power."

Grant McLennan has a tape of Barbra Streisand's new Broadway album, which has become a favourite on this road. So much so that one of its tracks, Putting It Together–a Stephen Sondheim song from An Afternoon In The Park With George–is what the Go-Betweens are using as a stage entry cue.

At first impression, there's only the heat; air that's scorchingly dry. Gatton's situated not on the fertile Darling Downs, as is nearby Toowoomba, but on the plains, which suffer for one of the driest Queensland summers ever. The fields are parched, prickly yellow, and even the blue of the sky is washed-out by an intense, hazy white sun.

Just outside tiny Gatton, the college campus–if that's what you could call it–consists of a number of brick veneer classroom blocks surrounded by barns and stockyards and paddocks where horses search for shade. And on the side of one slope, a theatre.

Grant McLennan, a country boy himself yet now poet finds familiarity here. Robert Forster, however, is in a state of paranoia there are rednecks and inbreds and maybe even bikies out there, and they all want his blood. Just give 'em some country, I suggest–which is part of what the Go-Betweens do anyway–but Bob opts to drop a few of the ballads and just give 'em rock'n'roll.

The tactic transpires to be as successful as anything could. The young crowd ain't so abnormal after all, but they sure as hell are pissed — blindly rolling around the floor in the possible hope of that way coming across the opposite sex.

The Go-Betweens put on a performance full of rough edges, but also full of spirit. They play nearly all the songs off the new album, plus — after opening with Unkind And Unwise — a selection of the enduring older material, including Cattle And Cane and Part Company, By Chance, That Way, Even One Thing Can Hold Us, but not Hammer The Hammer, despite cries for it from fans at the front who look more like Hoodoo Guruettes.

I have to start to wonder what it is about this band that musically retains my interest…nay, even may passion. To begin with I suppose, it's the songs, such great songs. Every time I hear a new set of Go-Betweens songs — as I am now — they are as fresh as the first time I heard the band itself.

The songs that make up Liberty Belle are something else again; although the once clear stylistic delineation between the band's two songwriters, Bob Forster and Grant McLennan, has now become blurrier–some of the most commercial cuts on the album are Forster's–both of them have by now also sharpened a finer edge.

That the Go-Betweens' language is unlike anyone else's in rock is undeniable, now, it is totally at ease with itself stepping out boldly. The deceptively simple pop songs contain a whole world, which is skilfully rendered and mounted concisely. They are lean and lithe and they take turns around corners that can't be anticipated. This is the beauty of the band–instrumentation that is economic, never overstated, one that's bound by an empathy, a unit of all the elements.

Onstage, it's obvious that the Go-Betweens simply en joy playing, and dearly love what they play. Precious perhaps, but it transmits, and they do have a sense of humour about it. I giggle consistently at a Go-Betweens ' gig–especially at Robert Forster, who has developed into an arresting performer as he calls himself, 'a stage animal' which is the sort of remark he would make and you'd laugh at.

And still, the Go-Betweens can elevate me like no other outfit. If I haven't been able to explain how, then I can't. Call it intangible. But it's real. Ask everyone else who mouths all the words to the songs. If rock is a man and the Song a woman, the Go-Betweens are both.

As the first encore of Man O'Sand To Girl O'Sea closes, I step outside. Here, now, the air is crisp and the rich black sky full of stars.

Inside, a couple is reunited after a tiff, to the sumptuous, swirling tune of Apology Accepted. Now that's real.

"I HATE them!" Lindy Morrison shrieks, as she's wont to do, referring to the half of the band that basks in most of the media attention. Lindy doesn't really hate them of course, but she has a point.

Because every little detail plays a part, I will eventually talk to all four Go-Betweens about putting it all together. And so Lindy Morrison, possessed of bluster in abundance, insists on making her point.

"We've got the nicest, most non-confronting, passive men leading this group, so it's fine how I am, because you've got to have a scapegoat in every band. And how convenient that the scapegoat is not only the drummer, but also a woman!"

Lindy, for obvious reasons, is an active feminist–as opposed to an activist feminist, or a merely theoretical one. After all, it's quite possible that her playing–which gave the Go-Betweens their idiosyncratic rhythmic base –was so often criticised simply because she is a woman.

"The trouble was," she said, "people misunderstood me. They still do. Here was I thinking I was providing some quality to the band, and everybody thought it was because I couldn't play drums, I didn't know how to play 4/4 time.

"Now I'm playing that a lot, and if only people knew how easy it is for me.

But of course, this is symptomatic of the broad shift of emphasis in the Go-Betweens .

"I've learnt the dictum that Grant McLennan pushed down my throat for so long, and that is Simplicity is Beautiful. Well, hey, yeah!" Lindy lets out a gale of hysterical laughter, again, as she is wont to do.

"Last year there was quite a fundamental musical change in the band", says Grant, "towards simplification. Something we've been accused of in the past, of being almost a pop band, almost an art band, you know, we've always been approaching something, but never completely getting there. Often people said our songs were anti-climactic, and I think in some ways that criticism was accurate, we'd do too much in a song. Now we're simplifying. Thinking more of 4/4."

"People just reject strange time," says quiet Bob Vickers. "They listen to that instead of the melody of the song, which is what you want them to listen to. Like, Send Me A Lullaby has got some beautiful songs on it, but a lot of them are really confused by arrangements that just weren't necessary."

"But even in our art school moments," Grant goes on, "basically we've got a principle–we're devoted to melody–so as long as there's that, there'll always be the chance you'll hit on what people want."

Sire Records wouldn't even release Spring Hill Fair in America why did that record turn out the way it did?

"We did it in circumstances that were all wrong," Bobby F. volunteers. "That was our period in the wilderness. We made a lot of bad moves. It's almost blackout territory for me."

"It was the first time we'd ever been with a major label," said Grant, "and like it or not we felt that pressure. We bowed to a lot of demands we shouldn't have. Robert and I were manipulated, against the rest of the band. But we know now we made mistakes, and I regret it."

"The reason Spring Hill Fair was such a disaster," Lindy assesses, "was due to the relationships in the band at the time. They were fucked. There were little power struggles going on all over the place. We were a neurotic mess. It was a horrible experience, and it shows.

"This record was different, and one of the main reasons it was different was because we were getting on, and the boys were strong enough to say, 'We can produce this ourselves'.

"When Spring Hill Fair was done," Forster continues, "I got a series of revelations, about what was wrong and what was right. I thought some of the songs on it were very, very good. The two songs of mine we still do off that album are Part Company and Draining The Pool, and they're what made me realise–I realised what my strengths were, and I thought, 'Right, that's all I have do'."

Which was what?

"I think it's just... letting it flow. I'm writing a lot less complicated music, and it's giving me space to put myself into it. I couldn't put a label on it. I mean, I haven't been able to come up with a good definition for the Go-Betweens ' music. There was maybe a time when I could reel off a clear, concise statement. Now... I just think it's... I mean, I almost think it's life itself."

"WE demoed quite a few of the tracks for the album," said Grant, "so we knew basically what we wanted–we knew the sounds we wanted, we knew the approach to take."

The Go-Betweens began recording Liberty Belle in London last year, for America's legendary Elektra Records. Then the label's European division dissolved into air, and the album was completed with money from the band's publishing company.

"That was just funny," recalls Grant. " It was disappointing in one sense... I mean, we hadn't signed anything, we were halfway through making the album which might have come out on Elektra, might not have. So we just decided to soldier on, make it ourselves, and sell ~t. Producing it yourselves was o courageous thing to do.

"Well, it was the next step. And it was divine."

"It's ridiculous," says Robert Forster, "because, I mean, we live with the songs 52 weeks a year; why bring someone in for four weeks who is from outside? I think when a producer comes in, a band goes on auto-pilot. It's a trap that's easy to fall into. No-one can tell me how the Go-Betweens should sound."

I'm of the opinion, though, that the songs on Liberty Belle actually sound better live–fuller, more focussed. The somewhat erratic production is perhaps the biggest hurdle–and it's not that big a hurdle–in front of the album's market potential. But even if it isn't the album that will provide the Go-Betweens with a real breakthrough, it will certainly pave the way. It is in itself an assertion of a right to life.

"I think the album reflects that, yeah," says Robert. "I think we are addressing…probably one of the big issues in our own continued existence. In songs like The Wrong Road, Twin Layers of Lightening, Bow Down.

"There's a couple of really personal songs, but I don't want to write six Part Company's per album. I want to give a more complete picture, than just…my love-life. Because I think that's an indulgence. So there's songs like Spring Rain.

Grant concurs: " I'm wary of putting too personal an interpretation on the songs. Something I tried to do, and this is something Robert did too, was not be obscure. There's always a certain amount of obscurity in talking about personal things, so you just have to use your craft to get past that. For a while, I had trouble, because I used to try to put too much in a song, too many points of view. That, I think, is where the criticism of obscurity came in. In songwriting, you've really got to focus on one thing. For it to be effective.

"You see, first and foremost, I'm dedicated to clarity. I want clarity, simplicity, depth–they're the things I want."

The phrase 'Black Diamond Express' is an Americanism meaning to take a whistle-stop tour of the underside of life, among the lonely and forgotten, the dispossessed and derelict, but Liberty Belle (another two L's in the album title) will take the Go-Betweens further, longer, higher than they've ever been before. And they're prepared for the ride.

'Don't you know Jack, I'm a STAR!' declares Robert Forster in Twin Layers Of Lightning, and you have to hand it to him.

"All I can do, as far as the band is concerned, as long as I can look at myself in the morning," says Grant.

"We would be–I know this–very responsible stars, if people made us stars. They would not regret it."

And so after a gig at Noosa Heads–a good show, coming together stronger all the time ("Thanks for coming back!" someone cries out of the crowd)–the Go-Betweens end up, for the third gig of the tour, back where they began eight years ago at the University of Queensland.

They play a Joint Effort (what else?). John Lever is convinced it's going to be big, and even if he wasn't he's too much the pro to let on. But then the band don't beg much encouragement anyway. Their star is on the ascent. By the time we reach the Holiday Village in Brisbane messages have come in from Michael Crawley "Additions in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth". At least if Spring Rain's getting airplay, it's got on even chance.

Brisbane changes, but it stays the same. A new bridge across the river is up, but the lovely Cloudland Ballroom's gone. At worst it's a grubby, greedy little town but worse still is how small–and small-minded–it really is. Brisbane's hungry sons and daughters leave. Now a group of them called the Go-Betweens are back, and there's not a lot of love lost.

But Radio is spinning Spring Rain, and Brisbane's escapees of tomorrow do turn out for the Joint Effort. For these kids, who are mostly too young to remember Lee Remick or Eight Pictures as they were, this is a homecoming.

And the Go-Betweens –because they are responsible stars?–don't disappoint. It hasn't rained all summer apparently, but tonight, as the Go-Betweens hit town, a big electrical storm comes tumbling down. Twin layers of lightning indeed.

The Go-Betweens play with gusto and commitment with a passion to reach out. The set shifts around a few songs for better effect; and when the crowd demands three encores, the band plays their current cover– Jimmy Cliff's You Can Get It If You Really Want–and ore even prepared to haul out Karen, B-side of Lee Remick, one of the first songs Forster and McLennan ever wrote. This is a band with a sense of occasion. To which they rise up. Their emotional impact, on record as well as on stage, reverberates after the event. Theirs are songs that won't let you forget.

"When people come to see us play", says Robert Forster, having the last word, "They might expect something quite controlled — you know, thoughtful, romantic Go-Betweens, Grant and I out there mooning wistfully — and what they get is, invariably as the set progresses, something takes over. I like surprises. ("…just like Spring Rain"). One moment we can be quite tender, and then we can be brutal.

"I think the other thing is, from us you get variety — which has probably been our downfall all along." Well, not so much a downfall, more like a liability.

"Yeah. Actually, that was one band I had in mind. It's almost my own complete stupidity–I never realised that you just take that one thing and plunder it. That's about the best way to become successful. It's something that I will probably never be able to do."

That won't stop the Go-Betweens now, though. No, they never took the Wrong Road, simply stalled briefly; but now they're back on the track, and quickly picking up speed. There is a faith and hope behind this band that cannot be undermined. What is You Can Get It If You Really Want but a defiant statement of intent, of determination? And now, finally, all the elements are in alignment.

If there is a place left in pop for purity, then let the Go-Betweens fulfil it. You would not, as they would hasten to assure you themselves, be sorry.

The next day, the band is in the van and on the way to gig number four–at Bombay Rock, again on the Gold Coast. Brisbane is behind them now. The road ahead is wide open.