When was the first time the Go-Betweens went into the studio?
We went to a studio in Brisbane that's now called Sunshine Studios. It was a 24 track studio we just found in the directory. We didn't know anyone that had done any recordings. Now, it's easier to put out a CD. Records were harder to put out, it was a more difficult process and people didn't record as much. There weren't as many studios and we didn't know anyone that had actually ever been in a studio to recommend us one.
Did you have friends that were in bands?
When we started, no one. We didn't know anyone in bands. We soon met people at gigs and met other bands, but when Grant and I started, we didn't know anyone in bands. We only met other bands and musicians through playing.
What was the studio like? What was the experience?
It was a good experience. It was sort of doing a little bit of country and jingles. The Saints had recorded their first album there... I don't know if you've ever heard of a band called the Saints.
Oh, yeah, I like that band.
They recorded their single there.
"I'm Stranded?"
"I'm Stranded" was recorded there, but we didn't know that!
That's great!
We just had an engineer and were in and out in like four hours. Recording and mixing.
Was that just the first single?
We were overwhelmingly happy, you know it's the first time we had ever played with headphones on, it's the first time we ever played and went back and heard our music over big speakers. It's a very overwhelming experience. It's a wonderful experience. It's an experience that you never forget. It was not a big room, but it was big enough, it was a one-room studio where you're paneled off from the control room so it's just two rooms, but the desk was quite good and they had a decent mic collection. The guy that recorded us was a hippie guy, and hippie guys in the '70s, most times, knew what they were doing, know what I mean? It could have been a lot worse. We could have had some hideous rock guy or some guy that wanted to turn us into a top 40 band. We walked in off the streets, had money to pay for the session, and he was good. He actually engineered our first three sessions because we went back to the same studio. We went back in October, '78 and we recorded a song called "The Sound of Rain" which is on The Lost Album and then we went back and recorded "People Say", which was our second single.We did all of those at the same studio using the same engineer and then, many years later in 1992, I went back to Brisbane after recording my first solo album in Hansa Studios in Germany.
The one you did with Mick Harvey?
Yeah. It was a huge big studio in Berlin. You know, Bowie did Low and Heroes there and Iggy Pop did Lust for Life. After I was in there, U2 went in there and did Achtung Baby. Very famous studio. After that I went back to my hometown in 1992, I went back to the same studio and it hadn't moved and it was the same desk that I recorded my second solo album, Calling From a Country Phone. It was a little bit like Sun. I always imagined it was a little bit like those studios that Buddy Holly did his first recording... you know, sort of a small studio, come in and do a bit of country, we do jingles and it's not the best gear but it's got a certain sort of little funkiness about it.
Those things sound good too. For a very young band that you were at that stage they don't sound like you were being dragged along in the wrong direction; it just sounds like you sounded.
Exactly. Not a particularly polished sound but almost a funky sound.
The other songs that are on the lost album are two track recordings in your bedroom or something. Did you have a friend that brought a deck over or something like that?
Yeah, exactly. It was a little mixer on cassette and he had microphones. He was a friend who had been in a studio and it was really, "Wham-bam" you were on the mat. This was done in my bedroom where we used to practice and write all of the songs. It was like having a friend come over and just go, "Hey, I'm gonna tape. Just set up, I'm gonna tape your whole set." Which was really good, for a songwriter like myself, to hear back all of the songs I'd written. I just got to that one step removed that was really nice and I've always liked that way of recording. Just sort of playing live.
I've heard there were some other bootlegs or something of even more early stuff that was unreleased.
There's a bootleg record as well, that our record label put out and that was put out extensively in the states and it was quite embarrassing because it was like our first album, which is not particularly strong anyway and we were so hungry, this is fast-forwarding to 1980 or 1981 but we were doing demos for our album and we recorded the album in July and we threw a number of songs we didn't put on the album and so he sort of had this other recording in a way. It was all just done in one day. It was done at a studio in Brisbane. More of a demo studio.
Not very professional? After that, you worked with Tony Cohen in Australia.
