The Go-Betweens - what's it all about?

BYOB's problem, I told Forster when I interviewed him in 2006, was the self-production wasn't up to the band's increasingly ornate arrangement ideas. They'd regained their confidence and needed a producer up to the task.

i've been wanting to buy Oceans Apart but now i'm a little gunshy, don't want to wind up with the first version. sounds like the remaster was out only a few months after the initial version?

we'll create an ad hoc listening committee for you

i expect a report on my desk by Friday

BYOB's problem, I told Forster when I interviewed him in 2006, was the self-production wasn't up to the band's increasingly ornate arrangement ideas. They'd regained their confidence and needed a producer up to the task

I'm sure he appreciated your input and took it into account

Oceans Apart still sounds like shit on Spotify, notably the digital distortion on the chorus to This Night's For You. I'd otherwise rep for this album being top 3 GoBs but no, the lousy mastering is just too deflating.

He did mention in hus memoir how dull BYBO sounded.

Xpost

Oceans Apart still sounds like shit on Spotify, notably the digital distortion on the chorus to This Night's For You. I'd otherwise rep for this album being top 3 GoBs but no, the lousy mastering is just too deflating.

― doug watson,

I still own the original shit version, still love it. I've never let shitty mixing affect my enjoyment; it's the songs. That same year Sleater Kinney released a similarly shit-sounding album that happened to be mediocre because half the tunes were retreads.

I envy your tolerance of overly loud mastering.

where can we stream the doc btw?

Oceans Apart is great. Sadly, as it's Grant's last recorded work, I think Robert is strongest here. Grant's tracks stray a little too close to the middle of the road for my taste. Whereas Robert comes out with all cylinders firing on Here Comes A City. And I have a particular soft spot for Darlinghurst Nights, as I was living in Darlinghurst at the same time as they were and I'd see them round. I even know what restaurant Robert means when he's talking about gut-rot cappuccino and spaghetti...

Forster has been the strongest writer since 1988, but McLennan rose to the challeneg in OA.

The Statue is my favourite Go-Betweens song.

ABC (Aus) is streaming the documentary for another week or so, though one might need to convince the server you're in Australia.

http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/go-betweens-right-here/

just for info that ABC link is actually a 60min TV cutdown of the full doco which is about 90 minutes

what got lopped i have no idea

Oceans Apart is definitely a Top 3 Go-Betweens LP for me

XP: re 60 vs 90 minutes, there is (or was) a good half an hour of 'extras' on the site too, in maybe ten installments, which may or may or not make up the balance.

I just dug out BYBO and OA for reappraisal while driving. Perhaps today is the day they become adorable.

any reason why a few but not all of their albums are on spotify? were they all on different labels originally?

Been on a BYBO binge recently, have grown to love it as much as any other GBs album with the exception of the peerless Liberty Belle. I think it's a better record than this thread would have you believe.

I have been digging it as well and concur that it is being undersold

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P5ymx-Iz5k

^ Gosh! I must only have heard the other Peel session.

BYBO *is* good! I listened to it several times this week. The overall sound of it is preferable to Oceans Apart, I think, whereas I would initially have agreed that it seemed a tad under-cooked.

I've been reading Forster's book, and not only is it extremely well written but it's making me think about the band in ways I've never really thought about before. That's partly because of how mysterious I've always found the Go-Betweens, which in the past made me as wary of revelations as leaning in too close to pick out discernible song meanings and specific lyrics - too special for scrutiny. All I know is that playing the band's albums on shuffle right now, it's kind of unbearable, especially those songs like "Spring Rain," "Cattle and Cane," Finding You" and "Clouds" (to name four songs shuffle has just given me in succession) that are almost too pretty for words.

god "Finding You" and "Clouds"

The Go-Betweens is also one of the few bands which got back together years later (well Robert and Grant did in any case) and produced stuff that is as good as their earlier incarnation.

Wishing Glen Campbell had done "No Reason to Cry." Forster says it could've happened--did Julian Raymond play it for Glen? Who had just come in from the golf course?

Finished the book, which handles Grant's death in a really touching way. Something that surprised me - and I must admit to being attuned to this since the conspicuous exclusions in the Tom Petty bio(s) - is that there is very little specific stuff about substance abuse until the end, when Robert admits to casual needle use as the source of his Hep C. Apparently heroin (assuming that's what it was) abounded in the Aussie underground scene, maybe more than in most places - everyone from Nick Cave to Steve Kilbey to Paul Kelly (!) had heroin problems - but what surprised me is that I thought it was *Grant* who had been a longtime heroin user. But the book never brings it up at all, despite painting him as a pretty serious drinker, implied to be his excess of choice (though the book never blames alcohol for bad behavior or anything, just as a health concern, which indeed implies some heavy drinking). I guess I don't mind the missing bits, it's just curious.

the anecdotes about McLennan nursing huge Long Island iced teas were depressing

There's a lot about him left (intentionally I think) vague. Plus revelations that, for example, Robert only met Grant's mom once before his funeral, and that Grant's mom never saw the band perform.

Robert does hint at his own excesses throughout, with the quiet admission toward the end that in the scheme of things he was just another "bad" boy, a bad influence, that Grant hung around. But at one point Robert does say something about having been sober for a week. No casual drinker would ever tout their weeklong sobriety except someone for whom that stands as an exception to the rule.

everyone from Nick Cave to Steve Kilbey to Paul Kelly (!) had heroin problems

Cave was in Berlin and London, Kilbey was in Sydney, and Kelly (in Melbourne) didn't have problems until he'd been using occasionally for two decades, at which point he gave up for good.

(By Kilbey's accounts, McLennan never had a problem either, which leaves a grand total of zero examples cited in the Australian underground, as Kilbey was a major-label charting artist. Kelly, too, for that matter.)

David Nichols (The Cannanes; author of a 90s book on the GBs) was amongst quite a few expressing frustration re Forster's vagueness on the heroine issue. eg. half of his review dealt with it:

https://www.theliftedbrow.com/liftedbrow/twin-layers-of-lightning-a-review-of-robert

Kilbey spoke at some length in last year's documentary (or more likely the extra material, come to think of it) about them both using after McLennan introduced him to opiates. I think he said that McLennan mocked him for falling more deeply into dependence, such that the friendship disintegrated.

xpost Fine. A few semi-popular Australian peers of Forster/McLennan, then.

xpost Hmm, yeah, that Nichols review gets at my objections. Re: what I said before, I was absolutely shocked when that third Tom Petty bio came out, after a 4 hour movie and another interview book, only to finally learn that not only was he into heroin, it was a serious problem for a while - in the '90s, no less. How could that have been omitted? Similar to when I saw the Paul Kelly doc and learned of his own use. As someone who more or less only knows about heroin from accounts like these, neither artist struck me as the type I associated with the drug (almost always in the Keith/Iggy, er, vein), and while I chalk that up to my own naiveté (esp. since I know regular folks who have died or gone to jail related to heroin), it was still eye-opening to learn about Forster/McLennan.

It seems reasonable that Forster chooses to focus on his artistic partner's art, vs what he might see as gossip -- especially as McLennan's main heroin period was when they were estranged? Perhaps the specific area of various health-neglects that ended his life isn't directly known, too, and thus even less relevant.



(I'm sure there was plenty of heroin use in the underground btw! - but people living 16,000 km apart are not sharing dealers, and the sheer cost of drugs in Australia, combined with the scantier opportunities to earn money as a musician, make it likely to be used less than in other continents-lumped-together-as-a-scene. if someone OCRs Blunt I'll do a ctrl+f.)

My (by no means first-hand) understanding was that heroin, particularly, was cheap and of high quality in the early to mid 1990s Australia, which coincides with the time period under discussion. It was coming in from South-East Asia, not that far away (whereas the American junk was coming from Afghanistan iirc).

I was living in inner-city Sydney in the late 80s/early 90s, in social circles that (very slightly) overlapped with those of the Go-Betweens. I can confirm that the scene was awash with drugs! Although by that time, I'd say everyone was off their faces on ecstasy rather than heroin.

McLennan did allegedly develop a taste for certain substances while hanging with The Birthday Party during either the Melbourne period (circa Send Me A Lullaby and Tuff Monks collaboration) or in shared London accommodation. They may well have shared sources at various times!

I can't comment on the relative incidence or the precise patterns of heroin usage but if you add the likes of David McComb (The Triffids) and Tim Hemensley (God, etc) -- both dead in their 30s -- the list certainly gets more depressing the longer one dwells on the matter.

It seems reasonable that Forster chooses to focus on his artistic partner's art, vs what he might see as gossip -- especially as McLennan's main heroin period was when they were estranged?

It's implied Forster's own heroin use was from back when the Go Betweens were still a going concern (the first time around). Forster is unclear about this, though, but you'd still think they were using at the same time. Maybe they were both casual users, but McLennan's got more serious? At the least, you'd think Forster would know when McLennan started, given the closeness of their relationship. I suppose one theme of Forster's narrative is that there were always things about Grant that were unknowable, but that through line could be in there as an out.

Either way, as far as focusing exclusively on art goes, Forster does not shy away from gossip, whether the romantic sort or talk of McLennan's drinking. There are bits late in the book where Forster is worried about McLennan, or worried about the state he's in (set up for his surprise death) that he always chalks up to drinking specifically, and he doesn't shy away from doing so. I have no idea when McLennan's main heroin period was, because it's not in the book at all. So clearly that was a choice on Forster's part. Perhaps the family didn't want it in there and he left it out out of respect?

I got the impression that neither was using in the 2000s and Forster had only flirted with it in the mid '80s.

Forster was in a German farmhouse drinking beer

From the book it scans that for all their close collaboration and relationship they were often in different places/countries. Anyway, I guess lots of people have pointing it out:

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/lunch-with-robert-forster-i-wouldnt-write-about-anyones-drug-use-but-my-own-20161108-gskq72.html

"I gave myself very few guidelines or rules when I went into writing the book, but one of them was that I was going to write about no one's drug experience but my own," he says. If not for having to deal with the hep C issue, he says, "I wouldn't have written about my own drug use in the '80s because it really didn't affect anything – there was no heroin in the recording studio, or on the road.
"For me it was an occasional thing, almost a social thing. I wasn't a sort of junkie who, as soon as I got in a city, needed a connection."
In terms of their relationship, writing about the hep C mattered because it was why he stopped drinking, and alcohol had been an important part of their lives.
"After shows, after a day of recording, I didn't go to the pub any more. I went to bed. And Grant was the one going out till 3 or 4am every night. A lot of things get said at midnight after you've had a bottle and a half of wine that don't get said over a cup of tea at 2 in the afternoon. That didn't happen any more, and that changed the dynamic. Our friendship was strong but a crucial thing was gone and I think Grant missed that."

So the takeaway there - which is only implied in the book - is that both (or at the very least Forster) were casual heroin users, but heavy drinkers. When Forster stopped drinking and McLennan didn't - later in the interview Forster admits Grant may have been an alcoholic - that affected their personal and professional relationship more than anything else, and may have amplified Grant's depression. Which is so extra tragic to me, since I find his solo records so full of life and spirit.

I don't know much about the Go-Betweens. I downloaded an album years ago and kept "Lee Remick" on my hard drive--not sure if it was a studio album or compilation. A friend gave me a mix-CD a few weeks ago (multi-artist--we still do things like burn mix-CDs) that I got around to playing today. It starts off with "Streets of Your Town"--instantly loved it, and ended up playing it three times. Even better, I was on a road trip of sorts that took me through the town I grew up in, a blueprint for every dead-end town that people leave. I was at the opposite end from where I lived, but (as the song played) I did pass by the golf course I worked at as a teenager, and the town works department where I worked through university. Gave the song some extra resonance.

Welcome!

that's what it's all about

and hey, i heard the upcoming Goon Sax album (with Forster's son) and let's just say the apple falls very close to the tree. good stuff.

'Streets of Your Town' is indeed an amazing song, and you can't really go wrong with the album its from (16 Lovers Lane) ...

I think everyone who likes this band has that one album in their discography that means slightly more to them than the others, and for me that album is Before Hollywood.

Turrican OTM? Well about "Before Hollywood" anyway. Goon Sax... the name makes it difficult.