On Stealing Inspiration From (And Doling It Out To) His Younger Contemporaries

It's been a fair while between drinks for inveterate Brisbane singer-songwriter Robert Forster, whose new solo album Songs To Play trails seven years behind his previous long-player, The Evangelist (2008). Seven years does seem like a fair gap, but it's not as if it's been time spent idly from a musical perspective — Forster worked closely in production capacities with a number of bands, including The John Steel Singers and Halfway, and also curated the early career of his seminal first outfit The Go-Betweens in the form of extensive anthology G Stands For Go-Betweens: Volume One 1978-1984. Forster always seems to have numerous irons in different fires, so it should be no surprise that it took a while to complete the new album — no more surprising, indeed, than the fact that it's a requisitely fantastic collection, up there with his best work in many a year.

"I've been extraordinarily busy," he smiles. "I've never worked so hard as I have in the last 10 years — the amount of things to do and the amount of opportunities to come had me working very, very hard. Very hard. I have been [enjoying it], especially now that things are starting to come out. There was a time when I was working on a number of projects and no one knew I was doing them, I was just working from home for years and not having the satisfaction of them coming out — basically just sitting at home. So the fact that The Go-Betweens' Volume One anthology came out, and the fact that my album is finally coming out — this is fantastic, and I feel a lot better now that things are starting to come out into the light and it's not just me at home working on these things. A certain amount of frustration came into it, wanting to get things out of the house."

"I wanted the musicians to play in a room and then come back inside and not stare at a screen."

During this time spent working away from prying eyes, Forster knew what he was working towards, explaining that he had a pretty firm idea from the outset how he wanted Songs To Play to sound and feel.

"I did, I knew a couple of things that I had firm ideas on," he continues. "First of all, I wanted to record on analogue — that was very, very important. I wanted it to be analogue, I didn't want a screen. I wanted the musicians to play in a room and then come back inside and not stare at a screen, not huddle around a screen. I wanted it to be that you came in and looked at the wall or you looked out the window while you listened to what you'd just done. So I wanted that atmosphere, I wanted that openness in the studio. And I like the sound of analogue as well.

"That was one thing, and another was that from very early on I wanted to work with Scott [Bromiley] and Luke [McDonald] from The John Steel Singers. I had most of the album written by about 2010 or 2011, and I had them over to the house and I just said, 'Look, I'd love to work with you on the next album, and you take the songs where you want to take them. I'm not just having you over here to play bass and guitar — go with it. Bring your sensibility into the songs and we can work together on them'. So that was another thing. And I worked with my wife Karin [Baumler] — she's on the record and that was something that we've wanted to do for a long time, work together. There were times that we'd been close to making it happen but then we had children, The Go-Betweens started [their second career phase] — we were always going to do this one day and this was the day. So these are the things I brought to the record."

Songs To Play is a bright and breezy album, utilising the skills of Bromiley and McDonald in both band and production roles, which is all quite reminiscent of when Forster first returned to Brisbane in the early '90s after years spent living abroad and hooked up with the Custard cabal to work on 1993's solo effort Calling From A Country Phone.

"I like working with younger musicians — they think they're getting the experience and all the benefits of working with an older musician and they don't see that I'm pinching ideas from them." 

"Yeah it is, it reminded me of that of course," Forster concurs. "Both albums were done in Brisbane. I like working with younger musicians — they think they're getting the experience and all the benefits of working with an older musician and they don't see that I'm pinching ideas from them and that I get as much of an exchange out of working with Dave McCormack, Glenn Thompson, Robert Moore — those musicians I was working with on Calling From A Country Phone — I got as much from working with them as I did with Scott and Luke. And I like being around them; I produced the first John Steel Singers album [2010's Tangalooma] and I got as much out of working with them, just seeing how young people work.

"Suddenly they're in the practice room and they're starting to record things with their phones — I don't even have a mobile phone! You see working methods and they talk about what they're listening to in the room — or you ask them — and so you hear what they're listening to now, and then they'll start enthusing about Todd Rundgren or Harry Nillson, people that I didn't investigate in the '70s, and suddenly you see their awareness of it and their enthusiasm for it. And that opens doors to thinking — you see a younger generation of musicians appreciating music of your time that you let go. It's all interesting, and you've got to keep yourself open to fresh ideas and fresh blood and I saw that immediately in the talent of Scott and Luke — they're both extraordinary musicians."

Forster believes that The John Steel Singer boys left a massive footprint on the finished product, to the point where he bumped up their respective roles in the album credits.

"They left such a good impression, to the point where the credit on the album was going to be 'Produced by Robert Forster', and now's it's 'Produced by Robert Forster, Scott Bromiley and Luke McDonald'," he enthuses. "They did a lot of work on the mixing of the album; they're credited as co-mixers. I think for them, they'd only worked in the digital realm and they've worked within a band situation, so suddenly they were out of their band and they were working with a singer-songwriter and that freed them up in a way. And also they were working on analogue, so all those albums they love from the '60s and '70s like The Zombies' Odyssey And Oracle (1968) and [Scott Walker's] Scott 4 (1969) are done on analogue and suddenly they're working in that realm.

"Suddenly they're working in a thing where you've got to go into the studio and do a take and you can't go out afterwards and mess about with it in ProTools. You've actually got to perform in the rooms — you can overdub of course, but the performance aspect and the sound of analogue they got excited from that, they got stimulated from that and they enjoyed working in that environment a great deal. It was a perfect working relationship."

Songs To Play was recorded at Wild Mountain Sound studio at Mt Nebo — about 30km north-west of Brisbane's CBD — and Forster tells that they did quite a few trips up the mountain during the process.

"[We recorded] off-and-on for four or five months," he offers. "The good thing about it was, with every album I've ever done — or with every Go-Betweens album — we always had to go somewhere. We'd have two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, sometimes eight weeks and you never got to go back — you had one shot at every album I've ever made. In 2010 I did think of recording up at Mt Nebo with another guy called Neil Coombe who had a studio up there and I did a couple of tracks there for a 10-inch record that accompanied the release of my book [The 10 Rules Of Rock And Roll] overseas — they wanted me to record some tracks and cover versions which I did in 2010 — and Scott was on that and Matt Piele the drummer, so two of them who were on this album.

"I really learned a lot from that, because I really enjoyed how I'd come back from Mt Nebo and I'd go, 'That's not right, I like that, I like that', and then I'd go back! I'd drive back and fix it! We did four songs up there and one of them I didn't like so I said, 'Let's do another one' and I just sort of really enjoyed this process where I could go back. The guys have jobs and stuff, and we recorded over four or five months but if you added up all the time that we recorded it would probably be about six weeks. Jamie [Trevaskis -  engineer] was working at the Junk Bar doing sound so we had to work around that, or the boys would be working or I was doing something, so we had an intense period around Christmas and then we just staggered it up until about early-April."

Songs To Play's upbeat tone is almost the polar opposite of the sombre The Evangelist, which arrived in the aftermath of the sad passing of Forster's long-term partner in The Go-Betweens, Grant McLennan.

"It's the songs and the feelings that bounced out of The Evangelist," Forster reflects. "I really came out of that record — which was a very intense and at time sad record with its own atmosphere, which I totally stand by and like — but as soon as we went on tour with that I found myself writing these songs and starting to work on these songs, and it was almost as if unconsciously they were a lot more upbeat and a lot more playful. I was really happy that these types of songs were coming to me, they really feel like the songs I needed after The Evangelist and after Grant's passing; there was an initial sense of shock and grief, and then a couple of years went by and then I could feel that a new phase in my career — a whole new phase in my life - was coming along, and these songs were the product of it. I really love the lightness of some of it, and they're a group of Brisbane songs too.

"There's a sort of lightness to Brisbane as well — we're not living in Berlin, we're not living in Warsaw, we're not in Brooklyn. It's not that type of music that inspires me here; it's more of a melodic, poppy feel that I get here at times. It's like driving through [Brisbane suburb] Bardon — that's what the album's like."

It's almost as if the album represents a return to the mythical "striped sunlight sound" that runs through so much of the Brisbane music of yesteryear (and today), and which to an extent became The Go-Betweens' calling card.

"It's interesting because I didn't even notice it — I didn't even think about it — but one or two people have mentioned this," Forster chuckles. "Not journalists; friends that I know, and it's like I can see it but perhaps I'm too close to it to really know. But there is something there, especially with Let Me Imagine You — there's a certain naivete and charm to it I guess. It's a folk-rock sound — it's a Brisbane folk-rock sound — and I described it like that many years ago, and I can still see how it applies to what I do at times. It's still there, it's just in my DNA."

The album is also quite diverse, touching upon a lot of musical styles (albeit without straying too far from the unique musical template that has long been Forster's stock in trade).

"Well, the musicians that I had could navigate all of that — it was just a group of songs that I had and I just followed them," he ponders. "And I had the musicians, so on Love Is Where It Is where it has a bossa nova feel Scott and Luke just immediately followed it and could do it, and Karin's vocal and Matt's bongos just gives these songs a vibe and the band went with it — it's not like they're this stiff rock band where it's got to be Strokes-y rock'n'roll and that's all they can do. Being up on the mountain recording there helped that atmosphere too — I felt like I could bring any kind of material and the band and the studio would be able to handle it.

"Also really going back to the very early Go-Betweens, which is strange to say this, especially in the very early years of the band in '78 and '79, Grant and I did a lot material — there's a vast array of stuff, we almost did comedy numbers. We'd do a vast variety of sounds — we'd do our pop songs, and then we'd do something dirgey and Doors-like and then we'd do some Tex-Mex-y things that were quite funny.

"It was only later, around the time of [1983 second album] Before Hollywood or something that we started to hone in on a sound — before that, we weren't afraid to mess up and wander through many, many things and I think that's always just been a part of me and my songwriting. I just see a possibility and go with it."

The 10 tracks on Songs To Play represent the bulk of Forster's writing for the project, although he tells that there's a couple of spare numbers which may or may not pop up down the track.

"Because it was seven years, I'm not a prolific writer but we recorded 12 songs and left two off," he explains. "It worked out quite well because it was two that I never thought we got — they were two very strong songs, which I think I'll definitely record if and when I make another album, they're really good. I was also aware of the 37- or 38-minute rule for vinyl, but because I had them it was, like, 'Let's do 12, maybe we'll get a 12 song album out of it? I don't know how we'll handle that with the vinyl but let's do them anyway, and it gives us 12 to choose from'. But those two cancelled themselves out in a way because we didn't quite get them, no matter how many trips up the mountain and going back to them or whatever. We didn't really get it, which is okay."

"Whenever you say that something's 'lighter', people think that quality control has dropped, [but] a lot of my favourite records or favourite books or favourite films are very light in a way, and I love them."

Naturally, given Forster's writing style, the lyrics give Songs To Play a lot of its unabashed strength, but he doesn't believe that there's any sort of thread tying the songs together or uniting them in any way.

"No, I just think they're perhaps a little more... it's hard to tell, I was going to say a little more playful at time — which I think they are — and lighter, but whenever you say that something's 'lighter' people think that quality control has dropped," he muses. "A lot of my favourite records or favourite books or favourite films are very light in a way, and I love them. But as I say, I was bouncing out of a mood, I was coming out of a mood with The Evangelist and I just struck a purple patch of songwriting between 2008 and 2010-11 that I think I was really happy with. I wrote Let Me Imagine You and I Love Myself (And I Always Have) quite quickly, and I just thought, 'These are really good melodic three-minute songs that are concise and poppy, the likes of which I haven't done in years'.

"But there was a part of me that also after The Evangelist wanted to go in that direction as well — The Evangelist was a heavy album and I couldn't do too many of the songs live from it — so I wanted to have material that I could play virtually on an acoustic guitar and that was entertaining, if only for myself. I wanted to be able to walk onstage and play these ten songs and they'd be really strong — I really came back to singer-songwriter basics. And that was in the mood of those years too when I was writing the record."

During the songwriting process, do the words or the music take up the most time?

"I have to work very, very hard on the music," Forster concedes. "Words are never a problem for me. It's finding the tunes, and coming up with a tune that's original and good. I'm a natural lyric writer but I'm not a natural melody writer. Grant was a natural melody writer. I'm not really a great musician, so normally the music I write in one go - like I'll get a chord-change and a riff and then I can do it - but I'm not someone that can piece a song together, I'm not a workman-like Paul Simon or Paul Weller. If you said to Paul Weller, 'Write me ten songs', he'd write you ten pretty good songs because he's a workman, whereas with me inspiration just hits and it only hits two or three a year. Although I try a lot. It's just the way it's always been, nothing happens until something clicks but I'm trying all the time. It's hard, it's hard. Songwriting's hard, it always has been."

It doesn't get easier with experience?

"No," Forster states emphatically, with the hint of a smile.

In the album track Let me Imagine You there seems to be a discernible reference to social media, the last thing you'd expect from a writer yet to embrace even mobile phone technology.

"Yes, that's Twitter — I wrote that back in 2009 and I was scared that Twitter was going to go out of fashion," Forster laughs. "That was one of the frustrations of the album taking so long, I was thinking, 'I'll write this and by the time the album comes out Twitter will be dead and people will think that I'm some kind of technology dinosaur!' But fortunately Twitter hung around, so it's still sort of relevant. But I don't use Twitter at all — people have asked me but I've always said 'no'."

What about the fascinating narrative Disaster In Motion, that seems to be based in a more esoteric setting than Brisbane?

"My wife is German, and I wrote that when we were staying in 2008 for a few months in a small German village — I wrote it there," the singer tells. "You've got to imagine a little village, a little hill with a church on top, the steeple, houses around it, farmland around it, and we were staying in a place like that for about five months and I wrote that there. That's where it came from."

"Younger singer-songwriters tend to have this idea, 'I've just got to ... tell you everything that's happening about me', and it becomes very quickly boring. Save some of it for yourself."

Forster has always said that his songwriting is inherently autobiographical — is that still the case?

"On the album? Yeah, it is," he posits. "I'm not terribly good at doing characters, putting myself in someone else's shoes. Well, I can put myself in someone else's shoes, but there's just not lots of characters in my songs — perhaps I should do more of it. I sort of pick up things around me.

"One of the songs that didn't make the album was completely outside myself and about other people, and Disaster In Motion is too — although it's me writing about that, it's me projecting into that village. It's all made up. It has to be autobiographical for me, because I don't have much imagination with characters and stuff like that, but I don't want it to be too confessional. I find that a lot of songwriters give away too much information — you can only wear your heart on your sleeve for a certain amount of time before it becomes wearying and too much for an audience.

"I find that myself, especially younger singer-songwriters tend to have this idea, 'I've just got to be completely naked, and I've just got to tell you everything that's happening about me', and it becomes very quickly boring. Save some of it for yourself, and save some of it for your mother or your therapist or your girlfriend or your boyfriend. We don't need to know - you're on your fourth album about it and we don't need that much. If you've got to do it and it's powerful and it's good then fine, but you've just got to be careful with it."

"I sort of underestimated us as a three-piece around that time and how good we were live, how good we were as a band."

The Go-Betweens anthology is an incredibly exhaustive look at the early career of the great band and must have been painstaking to assemble - did partaking in that process shine a light on any aspect of his own band?

"I developed a greater appreciation of the band from 1980-1981," Forster offers. "Because Before Hollywood was such a golden album - our breakthrough album with Cattle & Cane and all those songs, that album established us around the world and I still think that Before Hollywood is an amazing album. And because our Able Label singles and the Postcard single were so good and that was sort of between '78 and '80, '80 and '81 sort of fell through the cracks a bit in my estimation - and Grant's too. It was like our dark time when we were getting things together to re-emerge. And I especially appreciate the live album from '82, it sounds quite amazing - I sort of underestimated us as a three-piece around that time and how good we were live, how good we were as a band. That was a good thing to rediscover.

"And the other thing that I got from the anthology was just how odd we were as a band right from the start. It started with just me with a couple of songs teaching my best friend the bass: there's no years in pubs, there's no rock apprenticeship, there's nothing — we just start. We're over in Toowong in a house, and it's just a very unusual and unorthodox beginning for a band — it was very un-rock'n'roll right from the word go. It was otherworldly, dreamers in a house - no 30 Chuck Berry songs we could play, nothing. And in a way that went all the way through the band, so when people later would ask us, 'Why didn't you do this?' or 'Why didn't you do that?' or 'Why didn't that work?', it was, like, 'Well, it was really in us from the start - we weren't a standard band'.

"And then Lindy [Morrison] joined and she's like a social worker who had been an actress and then taken up drums, she's in her late-twenties, a feminist and heavily politicised, so there's another thing - it's not like she's a 22-year-old guy. She's something else altogether, which fits the otherworldliness of the band. Again we don't even start to bring in elements which would normalise the band in anyone's eyes, it was just built on these very odd, very unusual, very un-rock'n'roll elements right from the get-go."

These days Forster's son Louis is co-frontman of burgeoning indie outfit The Goon Sax and the proud father can occasionally be spotted watching them from the shadows of Brisbane venues - how is that been as an experience?

"I'm really enjoying it," he beams. "It's amazing watching Louis up there singing and playing songs - I'm really happy for him. It's going well for their band. They're very young, but in a way it probably looks like a little bit more of a surprise to the outside world than it does to me because he's been at home playing guitar and singing since he was about seven or eight. It's something that we've seen that has suddenly left the house after almost ten years, although he's only seventeen. I'm very proud of him, and I think the band's great. I think it's odd me being there and seeing he's doing something that I do in my hometown, but I think he's handling himself remarkably well. I'm very, very proud of what he and the band are doing, and I don't find it odd - I find it natural and enjoyable. They've got a great sensibility and they're very dedicated towards it - they're certainly getting lots of gigs. Good on them."

Incidentally, The Goon Sax's three-piece line-up — comprising two guys up front swapping vocal duties with a female drummer holding it all together — is eerily reminiscent of what early incarnations of The Go-Betweens must have looked like, especially as the younger Forster looks strikingly like his father.

"Yeah, I know," Forster says. "It's weird, I watched them come together and they came together in a very natural way, and I think that's something that Louis has got to factor in — if he'd have deliberately gone out and looked for four guys to start a band just so that it was different to what I did, you can start to make false decisions. You can start to make calls so that you're only doing it in an artificial way to separate you from someone else.

"But I think that his band has come together very naturally — I watched the pieces fall into place magically — and I'm just glad that he's gone with it."