In this week, 13 years ago, Grant McLennan died. Suddenly, shockingly. It brought an end to a band he’d formed with Robert Forster in 1978, but more importantly permanently severed a partnership which had survived penury, rivalry, a decade apart, and a reunion which flourished as if reborn. In this interview, conducted a few months prior to his death, as McLennan and Forster relived the past for an arts festival and prepared to create the future for themselves, the two men ta

Picture by Bleddyn Butcher A couple of late middle-age blokes are bantering about obsolescence, the realisation when the return calls take forever to come and the invitations dry up, that you may be yesterday’s man and better get used to it. Without rancour, the far more talented and accomplished of the pair, Robert Forster, says “I’ve been yesterday’s man a couple of times, I know. I just put my head down and thought I’m just going to do the best work I can and keep doing it

Go Betweens - five piece credit Peter Anderson The new documentary about The Go-Betweens, by Kriv Stenders, Right Here, opens in a week. One of the most important, if forever under-sold, Australian bands of all time, deserve it. Last week Stenders explained the drive to tell the band’s story, and finding a way through the myths and legends. Now, what about the people? PART COMPANY Kriv Stenders wanted to make a “meta story” about creativity. But the sometimes-brutal truth of

Go-Betweens by Bleddyn Butcher As we near the release of Right Here, a documentary tracing the many lives and many versions of the much loved by fans/much ignored by the rest of the world, The Go-Betweens, here is the first of a two-part interview with the film’s director Kriv Stenders. This week, the myths and legends, and how to get around them; next week, the people, and how to survive them. SEND ME A LULLABY, OR A HYMN No matter what everyone who loves the band might thin

The G Stands For Go-Betweens box set is a cracker. I wrote a review of it which for, well, reasons, had to share space with a far less interesting release. This is what I originally wrote when all I was writing about was the Go-Betweens. Yes, I know I had an interview with Robert Forster recently. Too much? Sorry, I don’t understand the point. Go-Betweens G Stands For Go-Betweens vol 1 (Domino/EMI) Can we have a few minutes first of all to talk about beauty? Not in this case

As I said in an earlier post, I had to pick 50 songs from 50 years to mark a landmark that we don’t need to go over again here thank you very much (cos I still feel like the 13-year-old and I sure act like him often enough). Only one song per year, one song per artist, each with some significance for me. There was a CD, so along with the songs these are excerpts from the liner notes. (Of course there were liner notes.) The first tranche takes us from 1965 to 1989. 1965: The

There was, as ever when talking to Robert Forster, a lot to say when we spoke about the Go-Betweens and the release of a substantial box set which covers the first tranche of their recordings. There was in the end, not as much room to say it as had been planned, even for the smaller than I would have liked story. And of course I thought every word was sacred, its loss tragic. So here is a fuller version of the story which ran in the SMH Spectrum section on January 31. The sou