Colin Hay Revives Songs From 80's Superstars Men At Work

Charismatic Front Man Bringing the Hugely Popular Aussie Band's Songs out of Retirement

Colin Hay and his band of merry Men At Work were ubiquitous in the first half of the 1980’s. The “Men” were everywhere: MTV, billboards, giant posters in record stores, and AM and FM radio dials, from alternative stations to classic rock to Top 40.

A clever band from Melbourne, Australia with a working-class ethos, Men At Work's music resonated with a wide swath of music fans. The band sold 30 million albums in a few short years before dissolving prematurely, and much to my dismay, in 1985.

Men at Work rose to the top of the charts very quickly. Signing with CBS Records in early 1981, the band first entered America as an opening act for Fleetwood Mac. In October of 1982, "Who Can It Be Now?" reached No. 1 on the US singles charts and the band’s debut album "Business as Usual" began a 15-week run at No. 1 on the Billboard 200.   

While "Who Can It Be Now?" was still in the top ten in the US, "Down Under" was released, and by January 1983 Men at Work had the top album and single in both the US and the UK. 

During that time span I saw the band in concert four times, including an energized show at the Santa Barbara (California) Bowl, and the band’s biggest-ever gig: The US Festival in 1983. The band played in front of a couple hundred thousand sweating, smiling faces in an enormous natural amphitheater about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, near San Bernardino.  

It was “New Wave Day” at the now-legendary but largely forgotten festival, whose lineup included The Clash, INXS, Oingo Boingo, A Flock of Seagulls, English Beat and The Stray Cats. But Men At Work was the clear fan favorite. That’s when it really hit me just how popular this band had become in such a short time.

And the reason was Hay, who wrote and sang the songs and had a quirky but accessible stage presence that you just can’t fake. He was a star whose abundant wit and charisma were matched by his musical gifts. He was, and is, a brilliant songwriter and singer.

Hay, who grew up in Scotland before moving to Australia, effortlessly connects with audiences. He loves telling stories both in his songs and between them. He does it with humility, gentle sarcasm and self-deprecating humor, sometimes the R-rated variety.

But what is most remarkable about Hay is what he voluntarily, willfully walked away from. He seems perfectly content now strumming an acoustic guitar in front of a couple thousand fans. A career as a singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar has brought out the real Colin Hay, a thoughtful and gifted if still wisecracking artist.

Despite fronting one of the most popular bands in the world in the 1980’s, Hay was clearly the architect of his own remodel. He calls on an abundance of musical styles in his songs – everything from Americana to reggae to hard rock to latin to Irish. His music is a favorite of such disparate bands as Metallica, the Lumineers, Mastodon, and the Infamous Stringdusters.

Post-Men At Work, Hay has recorded 13 solo albums, including the last five of them on Compass Records, a small, terrific Nashville-based independent record label co-founded in 1994 by musicians who defiantly and courageously clutch to the notion that people still care about records.

Hay’s solo work is exceptional. His post-Men At Work songs, which include new classics such as “Beautiful World” and “Waiting For My Life to Begin,” have appeared countless TV shows and movie soundtracks. And he may have saved his best solo work , for his most recent: Fierce Mercy, an emotional tour de force.

The record is a gentle wake-up call for those of us who are getting older and in denial. The song, “The Last to Know,” gives us a large clue as to what the album’s all about

“When you’re in your 20s, you think you’ve got all the time in the world,” Hay said recently. “You get older, and you go through a quickening. Everything seems to get faster. With the changing weather patterns, or the polar ice caps melting, we’re getting all of these warnings, and a lot of them are incredibly fierce. But they still feel somewhat merciful — they’re not destroying us totally. We’re all being told, ‘Listen, you can still maybe address this, and it won’t get to the point where I have to take you all out. You’ve still got a shot.’”

When it was announced that Hay would be appearing again here in San Diego at Humphrey’s, I bought tickets and was genuinely excited about seeing him again and hearing him sing some of the songs off of Fierce Mercy. I always find time to see Hay in concert, and I love his solo work, as does my wife.

But each time we see him, in the back of my mind I futilely hope that this will be the night in which he plays a few more tunes from his former band. Don’t get me wrong. I understand the need for an artist to stay vital and creative and to continue growing and writing and not just become an oldies act doing an impression of his or her younger self singing 30-year old songs. I get it.

But we love those Men At Work songs with a passion. We are all hungry to hear them. And now we are apparently about to be fed. Colin has finally decided to bring Men At Work back. The tour begins next month in Europe. But the recent setlist of Hay’s solo tour suggests he has already begun to break out and break in some of the old songs. 

I counted six Men At Work songs on one of his most recent gigs: Down by the Sea, It’s a Mistake, Who Can It Be Now, Overkill, Down Under and Be Good Johnny. I’m hoping for perhaps even one or two more tonight. Mind you, I still want to hear some of his solo stuff tonight. But for longtime fans like me, this is a rare opportunity to finally get to hear these classic songs performed live. 

Here’s how it came about. In a recent announcement, Hay said that while touring Europe last year with Ringo, the audience’s appetite for the classic Men At Work tunes was “insatiable. I started to wonder about the feasibility of mounting a European tour with my band to play primarily those dear old songs.”

Hay noted that for the last three decades, he has spent the bulk of his time making solo records and touring the US, building an audience playing his new music, and he intends to continue doing that.

But, he said, “I know how much a lot of fans love the old Men At Work hits, and I do enjoy playing them. In short, that’s what I’m going to do in the summer of 2019. I’ve decided to take on a short tour in Europe playing the Men At Work material." 

Hay said the band will consist of himself and a group of top LA-based musicians with whom he’s worked over the years.

“The set list obviously will feature all the known and even lesser known Men At Work songs, perhaps with a couple of later songs thrown in, but make no mistake, it will be a Men At Work show, billed as such so that the people know they will be coming to hear a Men At Work set list,” Hay said.

He added that he will miss his good friend Greg Ham, an original member of Men At Work who played the sax, the flute and much more who sadly died in 2012.

“He is gone but never forgotten, and his contribution to the sound and personality of the band is forever,” Hay said. “I loved being in Men At Work. I had a plan. I loved writing those songs, and I am in awe of what we managed to achieve in such a short time. It was powerful, though short lived. So, I’m going to stage a Men At Work tour in Europe for a few weeks next summer, and see what happens. Hope to see you then!”

When he said “we’ll see what happens,” I’m pretty sure he is telling his fans that a subsequent American tour will happen if all goes well in Europe, which it undoubtedly will.

Still Under The Milky Way

Steve Kilbey, Lead Singer and Songwriter Of Australian Rockers The Church, Is Still Crafting Ethereal, Majestic Masterpieces

I’m enjoying a phone chat this morning with Steve Kilbey (left), co-founder, lead singer, bass player and chief songwriter for The Church, the hard-to-categorize Australian neo-psychedelic band that is still hypnotizing American audiences nearly 40 years after forming in Sydney.

Kilbey, who’ll be performing with the band at the Belly-Up in Solana Beach on Tuesday, May 7^th, is sitting in a Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, sharing his thoughts about life, music and the bittersweet taste of rock & roll success and excess.

I’ve been a Kilbey loyalist since I first heard the jangly yet atmospheric opening guitar riff of The Church’s Almost With You from the band’s brilliant 1982 album The Blurred Crusade. It was a cross between the Byrds and David Bowie, but with a dream-like vibe all its own.

For most of the 1980’s, Kilbey and his bandmates enjoyed critical acclaim and a loyal following in the United States among the alternative music crowd and anyone who appreciated atmospheric, poetic music that rocked.

But the Big Hit eluded them. That is, until 1988, when the band released Under the Milky Way, the first single off its heralded Starfish album. When MTV began airing the video for the song, it rocketed The Church to the rock-star heights the foursome had dreamed about growing up in Australia.

In its 38-year history The Church has recorded an astonishing 26 albums. But Milky Way is the band’s signature song. It is a near-perfect musical creation, an evocative, ethereal piece of sonic art, with a touch of 60’s psychedelia that is also melodic, accessible and even hummable.

The combination of the haunting 12-string guitar progression, which I determinedly taught myself to play on my 12-string the first day I heard the song, and Kilbey’s mystical vocal delivery of some very cosmic lyrics just blew me away. The song, written by Kilbey and his then-girlfriend Karin Jansson of the band Curious (Yellow), has never left my head. It’s one of the very few tunes of which I have never grown tired.

Kilbey has written or co-written hundreds of unique and enchanting songs. Each one is a unique and complex soundscape that ebbs and flows from verse to chorus and reaches levels of power and poignance and a lovely weirdness that few other bands reach.

The Church -- now comprised of original members Kilbey and Peter Koppes, longtime member Tim Powles, and relative newcomer Ian Haug -- can best be described as a combination of ethereal and majestic, which one might think are incompatible.

How can a band be both eerie and earthy? How can a band be both trippy and clear-minded? How can a band be elegiac and otherworldly yet still be fun and rock your socks off? Perhaps the real greatness of The Church’s artistry in fact lies in that seeming contradiction.

“I think the greatest thing art can do is present contradiction, or paradox. Majestic and ethereal, happy and sad, soft and loud, people are very attracted to that idea,” says Kilbey, who explains that when he hears a sad song, it makes him happy.

“My heart and mind open up. Ideas rush in because of that contradiction,” he says. “You can be majestic and ethereal at the same time. Not only in music, but in film and in painting. Give them the universe in a three-minute song, with ups and downs and happiness and sadness.”

Kilbey says the enormous success of Milky Way and the follow-up single, Reptile, which is equally surreal and infectious, gave him the clout in America for which he and his mates longed.

“If you’re in an Australian band, you naturally want to make it big in America. It is where rock and roll began, it has the most big cities, the audiences, the venues, the record labels, the busses and highways and planes. Everybody wants to be big in America, that is the number one mission,” he says.

But Kilbey was not prepared for the realities of fame or fortune, which altered his universe and scrambled his brain.

“I became a proper little rock star for five minutes,” he recalls. “I made a lot of money. I was away from home. My relationship broke up. And it all sort of happened at the same time. Imagine it: all the good and the bad, girls, fame, money, travel, misery, tedium, waiting around, and addiction. The whole gamut. It was just like, ‘bang,’ my whole life changed.”

Kilbey says the band had attained success in America, but at an enormous cost.  

“It happened. Wow, it was a dream came true. But now what?” he says. “We were struggling for eight years, got famous, and we fell out with each other. We became disillusioned, and when we came back for the next record the wind had gone out of our sails. I don’t think we handled it well. I did not handle it well personally. It made me become cynical and then, you know, I just thought it would go on forever.”

Kilbey says he had a big chip on his shoulder in those days: “I wanted to prove something. It was a long process. I went off the rails and become a heroin addict in 1999 and 2000. But I stumbled out of that a better person.”

By the time his heroin nightmare was finally over, Kilbey’s moment on rock’s A list in the United States had largely waned. But it proved to be good for his soul, if not his wallet.

“I was back at the bottom, struggling again. I had gone back to the start. I started all over again,” he says. “After that experience, I was humbled. Whether you have humility or not, life humbles you. You need to have some humility.”

Kilbey has gone on to reclaim his spot in rock and roll as a unique and gifted artist. He’s been prolific, both writing and touring. If you are not familiar with The Church beyond the Milky Way, I recommend you give a listen to such songs as Metropolis, for which all four members of the band in those days were credited with writing.

An epic, life-affirming song that brought a tear to my eye the first time I heard it, Metropolis best exemplifies the majestic side of the band. It’s as exalting as anything recorded by U2. There were in fact many in the music industry who predicted The Church would be the next U2.

Meanwhile, in the New Millennium

The Church’s recent recordings are just as good as the vintage stuff, if not even a little better. And how many 1980’s bands can say that? Of all the newer material, my favorite song is Laurel Canyon, which has a pure 60’s hippie ethos but with The Church's surreal touches. Like so many Church songs over the years, Laurel Canyon haunts me like me a friendly ghost. The song is simply beautiful, and it happened, as so many great songs do, kind of by accident. 

“We were in the studio and I went out to buy a sandwich, and when I returned Ian [Haug] and Peter [Koppes] were just sitting strumming a chord progression, and they recorded it,” Kilbey explains. “Ian joked about it being a Laurel Canyon song, it had a hippie, CSN [Crosby, Stills & Nash] vibe. The title was already there. All songs get a nickname, and sometimes it sticks. It was a starting point. I sat down and listened to the music, and put a bass on it. It’s about a couple that was once together in Laurel Canyon and is now broken up. It’s just a feeling.”

The most recent album is Man Woman Life Death Infinity. It’s the second with the rejuvenated line-up of Kilbey, Koppes, Tim Powles and Haug, who was formerly in another popular Australian band, Powderfinger.

Man Woman Life Death Infinity has the band performing at a very high level. Songs such Before the Deluge, I Don’t Know How I Don’t Know, and Another Century show that the band is still on top of its game.

"This is The Church's water record," Kilbey recently said of Man Woman Life Death Infinity. "I guess water is my element. I've always marveled at the sea and rivers and rain. It wasn't conscious of it at all but on reflection, it definitely is a preoccupation on this record. What that means, I don't know."

In A Just World…

In a just world, Kilbey and his bandmates would have already given their acceptance speeches at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. There’s no reason other than luck or lack thereof that The Church isn’t breathing the same rarefied air as U2, Pink Floyd or The Cure, all rightful members of the RRHOF.

But Kilbey, who cites glam rock legends David Bowie and Marc Bolan as his biggest influences, has expressed misgivings and mixed feelings about fame. A serious artist in the largely frivolous world of popular entertainment, he’s not always looked comfortable in the skin of a pop star.

But he’s demonstrably more content than he was at the height or his rock star daze. Dare I say Steve Kilbey is happy? He’ll be the first to tell you that he’s a nicer person now than he was back in the day. The cold-shoulder, F U attitude was standard operating procedure for art rockers and punk rockers back in the day.

Kilbey is a more loving and attentive person now and seems at peace. It took a hellish ride through the very darkest corners of life to get here, but Kilbey’s discovered something that on some level he has probably always known: music makes him happy, and sad, emotionally layered music makes him happiest.

Still residing in Australia, he enjoys coming to America now and is grateful that people still come to the band’s shows and show their love for the songs.  This time around, he continues to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the “Starfish” album and “Under the Milky Way” song by playing the album in its entirety, along with a second set filled with gems from the band’s ridiculously deep catalogue. The tour began last year and is attracting enthusiastic crowds and positive notices across the USA.

“We have a nice following, and I love it,” says Kilbey, the subject of a recent documentary, Something Quite Peculiar:The Life and Times of Steve Kilbey.  

“If you have an old car and you buy it and keep it for 20 years, and you hold onto it another 20 years, it is a vintage car. It becomes a whole other thing,” he says. “It’s not for me to say, but what I’ve observed is that we have reached the point where the audience venerates us.”

Kilbey says people who come to see the band play now are like family. They grew up with the band. 

“We are part of the soundtrack of their lives. It is nice to receive that feedback, to get all that love. We pour it into our instruments, this reciprocity is a wonderful feeling,” he says.

The Church has what you might call a maturing, grown-up fan base. But I should add that when my daughter, who is 19, recently heard one of my homemade CD’s of favorite songs from The Church, she fell in love with the band and it became one of her favorite CDs.

Evidently, ethereal and majestic are in again. But superb music and great art, which The Church has always combined, never really go out of style.