How Hoodoo Gurus' Slump-Defying Second Album Became An Accidental Classic

Band: Hoodoo Gurus

Album: Mars Needs Guitars!

Label: Big Time

Release date: May 1985

The ‘difficult second album syndrome’ (aka DSAS or the ‘sophomore slump’) is a strange and wondrous aspect of the musical landscape.

So many bands who have seemed to effortlessly capture the zeitgeist on their debut album have struggled to ignite the same passion on the follow-up, falling victim to either massively altered life circumstances or the increased burden of expectation. Often, it’s because the band have been touring relentlessly since success came a-knockin’ and haven’t had time to write strong new material — often resulting in them resorting to trying to spice up songs that didn’t make the cut first time around — an occurrence at times exacerbated by labels and management breathing down necks, salivating for more ‘hits’.

The old cliché that ‘you have a lifetime to make your debut record and a year (give or take) to make the second’ is a sad truism; just ask a plethora of artists such as The Stone Roses, The Darkness or Franz Ferdinand (to name but a few) who have struggled on album number two to recapture earlier glory. Occasionally, history will amend originally scathing critiques (Weezer’s Pinkerton comes to mind) and bands can often recover and find their career feet on later efforts, but there’s little doubt that the sophomore slump is real. Also fairly unquestionable is the fact that its impact is directly proportionate to how successful the debut in question actually was — if the first long-player was a massive hit then the chances of suffering from DSAS is acute.

So spare a thought for Sydney-based rockers Hoodoo Gurus back in the mid-‘80s, when they suddenly faced the task of crafting a follow-up to their 1984 debut Stoneage Romeos, an album which has gone down as one of the greatest debut albums in Australian rock’n’roll history^[1]. Even though the Gurus were basically an underground proposition and playing music completely at odds with whatever else was happening at the time, that album sold over 50,000 copies (going gold in the process) and, as well as being critically acclaimed in Australia, it also became an underground hit in America (climbing to #1 on the College Charts).

Thinking of these early days, guitarist Brad Shepherd told The Sydney Morning Herald’s Martin Boulton^[2], “We just loved what we were doing and I suppose we felt we were on something of a mission to keep rock'n'roll alive. There were other like-minded bands around at the time but we'd been influenced by The Cramps, The Fleshtones, The Gun Club, as well as a lot of '50s rock'n'roll and glam rock. We loved Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers as well because it was just glorious rock'n'roll — that's where we were at in the early '80s; we weren't a synth-pop band.”

They also had a strong, distinct look unlike anything else going around at the time — all long hair and retro paisley attire — which helped them stand out from much of the relatively bland pack around them. Stoneage Romeos had been helped by the fact that the band had dropped a stream of killer singles over an 18-month period in the lead-up to its release — Leilani (1982), Tojo (1983), My Girl (1983) and I Want You Back (1984) — and they also possessed a killer live show at a time when the lucrative pub circuit was still king and music fans still voted with their feet. The album purportedly helped take the inner-city sound into the suburbs and spawned a host of young guitar bands, inspired by not only the Gurus' catchy music but also their irreverence and clear love of kitschy pop- and counter-culture. Nonetheless, the fact that their independent debut hit #29 on the Australian Album charts and scored them ‘Best Debut Album’ at the Countdown Awards^[3] meant that there was a lot of pressure on the young band leading into album number two, and a lot of external hurdles to navigate as well. So, how did they go?

It was the addition of Brad Shepherd to the line-up that really changed things, and Faulkner admits that he "dates the band from this point".

Firstly, let’s get some background information. The story really kicks off in the far-flung confines of Perth in the late ‘70s, where eventual Gurus frontman Dave Faulkner was raised and learnt his musical chops despite the city’s then-magnified isolation. He fronted short-lived-but-seminal punk band The Victims (as Dave Flick), whose drummer James Baker also became a founding Guru. After The Victims imploded, Baker had joined a fledgling version of Perth swamp lords The Scientists, alongside guitarist Roddy Radalj, and in due course these three keen musos found themselves in Sydney and teamed up with yet another axeman, Kimble Rendall (ex-XL Capris), and formed Le Hoodoo Gurus at the very onset of 1981^[4].

They were originally envisaged as a covers band but Faulkner’s songwriting chops were too strong for that to be a viable long-term strategy. Soon enough, they were having teething problems with their strange ‘three-guitar, no bass’ line-up^[5], and not long after the release of their debut single Leilani — a thumping, Gary Glitter-aping song about a Pacific Island princess, its name taken from a then-prominent racehorse — Radalj and Rendall left the band, replaced by guitarist Brad Shepherd (already a veteran of Brisbane acts The Fun Things and The 31st, as well as Sydney Radio Birdman offshoot The Hitmen) and bassist Clyde Bramley, thus ‘normalising’ the line-up. They dropped the ‘Le’ from the band name, becoming the more simple Hoodoo Gurus, and Shepherd soon took over lead guitar duties. After the aforementioned success of their debut long-player Stoneage Romeos in 1984 (which contained a vastly re-jigged version of Leilani) one final line-up change occurred; James Baker departed in somewhat acrimonious circumstances^[6] and was replaced by Mark Kingsmill (a veteran of The Hitmen, New Christs and The Screaming Tribesmen, among others), leaving Faulkner as the sole original member. Faulkner told Faster Louder in 2005 (Hoodoo Gurus Squaring Off) that, “in the early days you tend to be a bit glib about it [their leaving] and just sort of think, ‘Ah, we’ll just replace them,’ but it’s such a huge change. James [Baker] has a really unique style. He’s really fantastic, but unfortunately he lost interest in the band”.

Faulkner told how the clenching moment was Baker’s reluctance to use their collateral to fund a tour — he wanted to split it — and was also viewed by the band as ‘a bit of an audience snob’. He said that it was the addition of Brad Shepherd to the line-up that really changed things and admits that he "dates the band from this point", offering, “The band really crystallised then. Before that, it was sort of flailing around and having fun and a lot of the songs were on that first album, Stoneage Romeos, which had a lot of personality, but the identity of the band was a little bit unfocused”.

So, what would become to many the “classic Hoodoo Gurus line-up”^[7] had coalesced by late 1984, and it was this foursome faced with the unenviable task of crafting a follow-up to Stoneage Romeos. Towards the end of that year, they toured America with fellow US culture vultures Redd Kross^[8], yet nonetheless when it came time to start writing for album number two — which would soon hit the shelves in May, 1985 under the moniker Mars Needs Guitars! — mining that same pop culture vein that had worked so well first time around was the furthest thing from their mind.

Faulkner decided early on to ditch the lighthearted nature of their early work and try for a more emotional connection; in an online essay titled Pop And Punishment: Or Some Things You Probably Don’t Need To Know About The Writing Of These Songs, Faulkner espoused; “When we commenced the sessions for Mars Needs Guitars! we had a brand new drummer, Mark Kingsmill, who altered our lives forever with his distinctive explosive style. At the same time I vowed to myself that I would write less comic narratives and try to express my sentiments in a more forthright way.” In 2010, he told I-94 Bar’s Robert Calabro, “Mars Needs Guitars! was a turning point for me as a writer. I started being more personal in my lyrics, not just writing colourful stories.” He further explained to online site Mess & Noise’s Aaron Curran in 2013 (You’ll Leave A Convert), “I’d gotten tired of just humour and artifice, I wanted to write songs that came from a more real and genuine place. And in rehearsal, that stuff felt right for the Gurus too."

First single 'Bittersweet' showed a more mature and emotional side to the band, to the point where they were worried that fans wouldn't accept it.

The band went into Studio 301 and Trafalgar Studios in Sydney with producer Charles Fisher — who had previously worked with Radio Birdman and Midnight Oil, and would later co-produce Gurus albums In Blue Cave (1996) and Purity Of Essence (2010) — and then mixed the album at Studio 301. They hadn’t had the luxury of road-testing much of this new material, Shepherd recalling to 100% Rock’s Shane Pinnegar in 2013, “the recording of it was just kind of workmanlike, and we just went up there at 301 and got through it fairly briefly".

"My recollections are that we started playing that album, we started playing the songs a whole lot better actually when we were on tour for that album. That’s my strongest recollection, that we were very busy in the wake of Stoneage Romeos. That record did quite well for us. We were busy out promoting it and we were touring a lot, and we really just set aside a short amount of time to cobble songs together and record it — we didn’t really do demos as such, or even work too hard on our parts. We got the basics, but we were still sort of unfamiliar with the material, and just went in and recorded it. It worked out okay but I remember thinking, ‘I’m playing this a whole lot better now,’ a couple of months into the tour, and I wished I was this familiar with the material when we recorded it. That’s what I remember thinking. So [there’s] a little bit of regret that we weren’t afforded the luxury of more time to concentrate on our parts and the arrangements.”

Funnily, when Mars Needs Guitars! first appeared on shelves there was scant evidence of their previously stated desire to step away from the Gurus’ kitsch-loving inclinations of yore — the album artwork was a vividly colourful cartoon representation of the band, and the record was dedicated to Jonathan Harris (who played Dr Smith in Lost In Space)^[9], and the credits include shout outs to such cultural icons as The Way Outs (a faux-Beatles band from a 1965 The Flinstones episode), Phyllis Diller, Cheryl Ladd, Don Knotts, Lucille Ball and Cyril Jordan (Of The Flamin’ Groovies). Even the album title was lifted from a 1967 sci-fi flick Mars Needs Women, hardly a grab for mainstream cultural credibility.

Yet musically this new approach was evident from the get-go. First single Bittersweet showed a more mature and emotional side to the band, to the point where they were worried that fans wouldn't accept it coming from them (Faulkner even expressing doubts that the band would want to play it). Even though the psych-tinged track would go on to become one of the Gurus’ most enduring numbers — peaking at #16 in the Australian singles chart and topping the US College Radio Track chart — it in fact almost derailed the band’s attempts to crack the lucrative American market. Stoneage Romeos had been released through independent label Big Time in Australia, but its success had led them to being signed in the States to Universal subsidiary A&M Records.

Faulkner told Fred Mills of now defunct US publication Harp Magazine in 2007, “The final straw with A&M was for Mars…. We gave them that, and they were like, ‘Oh yes, Bittersweet, we love that song! But it’s completely wrong. You’ve got to have a chorus that’s fast enough and all that, so we’re gonna show you how it should be.’ The A&R guy took it into a studio in L.A., remixed it and chopped it up, and did this hideous abomination to the song. Because he thought he could do better than us, how to write a song. When we said, ‘Get fucked, you can’t release it like that!’ they dropped us. That was because it was his thing: he was going to make Bittersweet a hit record. Of course, to this day, people would laugh at the idea of you changing that song at all.” Sticking to their guns, the Gurus left A&M and Mars Need Guitars! eventually came out in America through Big Time (America) with distribution through Elektra, so the potential crisis was averted.^[10]

On the other side of the pond, the UK press was slightly less excited about the new Gurus single, judging by this contemporaneous Melody Maker single review:

Mars Needs Guitars!’ second single — the tribal-stomp Like Wow – Wipeout — also has a somewhat strange back story. Just last year Faulkner recounted to the ABC’s Diana Darmody (The Unlikely Hoodoo Gurus Hit), “Funnily enough [Like Wow – Wipeout] was meant to be a B-side. We had no idea it would ever be one of our sort of classic or a single even. It was just a track we did in the studio really quickly. The lyrics I wrote just that morning before I went to studio to finish them off. I was a bit annoyed that I'd been called in on a Saturday to do some more recording. The producer, Charles Fisher, has an incredible ear for a song and he just kept nursing it through and after our first single off the album — Bittersweet — was a hit, he said, 'This is the next single.' We thought he was out of his mind! We thought he was out of his mind when it went on the album in the first place. We loved it, we just didn't think it was something radio would ever touch in a million years. You can hear at the ending it goes for ages playing a wailing guitar solo. That's not what you do to make a commercial record and you wouldn't get away with it now either but we just did it for the fun of it.”

Despite its accidental genesis, Wipeout also became a radio staple for the Gurus, beating Bittersweet by one spot on the single charts as it peaked at #15, and also besting it in Brisbane community radio station Triple Z’s Hot 100^[11] of 1985, #21 to #49.

Two more singles would be lifted from the album, with diminishing chart returns: Death Defying (#43) and the scathing Poison Pen (#76). In the Pop And Punishment piece Faulkner wrote of the former, “One of my favourite songs I've written is Death Defying. I have vivid memories of shooting the video in Kakadu National Park after having woken to see the news footage of the Challenger Space Shuttle exploding during take-off,” and of the latter, “The Gurus’ first manager, Stuart Coupe, wrongly thought that Poison Pen was written about him, probably because of his notoriety as a rock journalist (often an oxymoron) and he had also recently been replaced by Michael McMartin, who happily remained with us for the rest of our career. The song was about the fallout from a relationship that had turned bitter (with no 'sweet' attached).”^[12]

See all music videos Hoodoo Gurus

Plus there was a depth to Mars Needs Guitars! that extended far beyond the singles: in the tome 100 Best Australian Albums (Creswell, Mathieson, O’Donnell), album track In The Wild is described as “The Gurus’ version of Born To Be Wild, a high speed ride down Highway One, inspired by Faulkner’s travels throughout the Kimberley region of Western Australia”. Hayride To Hell is a disturbing cowpunk horror story of innocence lost, whilst Show Some Emotion and The Other Side Of Paradise are pop gems — the latter showing Faulkner’s more earnest intentions for this batch of songs with lyrics such as, “We must believe that we can help if we can/Fight against our prejudice and try to straighten out this mess.”

Conversely, the Brad Shepherd-voiced title track positively revels in the frivolity of yore with lines such as “I'm a stone-age Romeo, I got a space-age Juliet/We make primitive loving ‘cause I ain't got a TV set”. It’s a great collection of songs, catchy as hell to the very end. There were, however, concerns about the production: in his 2013 book It’s Too Late To Die Young Now, Andrew Mueller calls the album, “brilliant, despite dreadfully pallid production”, with even Faulkner conceding to the Guestlisted blog in 2010, “Our early albums I think suffered a bit in that they didn’t really capture our sound as well as they could."

Fortunately none of that mattered once the album dropped, with ravenous punters buying it in hordes from the get-go. Mars Needs Guitars! went Gold within three weeks and Platinum shortly after, eventually reaching the glorified heights of Triple Platinum. It peaked at #5 in the Australian album charts and became the first Gurus album to bother the US Billboard 200 Album chart (peaking at #140 in early 1986). It again topped the College Chart in the States (as did their next two efforts). It was recently listed at #60 in 100 Best Australian Albums (well behind Stoneage Romeos at #28), which espoused, “in vinyl terms, Side One of Mars Needs Guitars! is damned near perfect, and certainly it represents the finest 18 minutes of the band’s recorded career. Of the first five songs, four are singles, all of a different shape and colour”. Faulkner is not so sure about the sequencing, laughingly telling Curran in You’ll Leave A Convert, “It’s a more diverse record than some might remember, with a few slow and moody tracks on it, not all upbeat stuff. I’m cursing [producer] Charles Fisher a bit, who wanted all the singles on side one!”

Reviews at the time were predominantly positive as well, feature write-ups from prominent publications including:

Rolling Stone (3½ stars): “…a joyful noise forged from ‘60s garage pop, daredevil MC5 metal and ‘70s pogo pop”.

Billboard: “…along with their boundless energy, Hoodoo Gurus seem to possess a bottomless bag of pop hooks, stage command and songs that stick.”

Melody Maker: “…whatever influences here is a fine, willful racket, hurtling across charging, teetering rhythms to magnificent effect.”

It seems to have stood the test of time, too, if more recent write-ups are any indication;

Allmusic (4½ stars): “…a second helping of Dave Faulkner's wonderfully skewed kitsch-pop confections. While the band's basic MO hasn't changed all that much in the interim — '60s-era pop, garage rock, and cowpunk remain their key musical reference points — Faulkner's skills as a songwriter have grown perceptibly: the opening Bittersweet is an absolute gem, with other highlights like Death Defying and Show Some Emotion trailing not far behind. Also commendable is the Gurus' sharp wit — from the hillbilly freakout of Hayride To Hell to the primitive B-movie stomp of the title track, their affection for the guilty pleasures of trash culture is infectious. Irresistible fun.”

Clearly Mars Needs Guitars! is a massively important part of the rich tapestry of Aussie rock’n’roll — and they obviously overcame the dreaded DSAS — but did the album in fact go one better than that and improve upon their auspicious debut? Obviously such matters are completely subjective, and charts can’t answer that question given the different stages in the Gurus’ career arc and profile when the respective records were released, but what do the ‘experts’ say? We already mentioned that Stoneage Romeos took the chocolates in 100 Best Australian Albums, and in triple j’s 2011 poll Hottest 200 Australian Albums Of All Time — a punters’ vote^[13] — Mars came in at #158 whilst Romeos was again higher at #95. The Age’s 2008 ‘Best Of The Best’ Top 50 had Romeos at #5 (the only Gurus entry), but Max TV’s Top 50 Greatest Australian Albums had Mars at #23 (this too being the Gurus’ only inclusion).

All one can surmise from all this is that they’re both classic records, and all involved should be immensely proud of both the music they made and what they achieved during these early stages of their storied career. I owned them both on cassette when they first came out, upgraded to CD in the ‘90s and in more recent times tracked them down on vinyl, and both records sound as fresh and inspiring to these ears today as they did three decades ago when I was enthralled by these brash young men with long hair and strange clothes, who made music which was so different to anything else I’d ever heard (at that time) but was still so warm and accessible and fun and inviting.

The Gurus would go on to make one more album with this Faulkner/Shepherd/Kingsmill/Bramley line-up — 1987’s Blow Your Cool! — and would achieve greater commercial results down the track than they managed with their first two albums (the band were eventually inducted into the ARIA Hall Of Fame in 2007). Nonetheless, most passionate fans will hold up Stoneage Romeos and Mars Needs Guitars! as their favourite records from the Gurus, a band who went on to create plenty more great music and remain to this day one of our finest live propositions (their sets still containing numerous songs from this prosperous era).

Tellingly, if you scan Oz rock's rich canon - or the history of rock'n'roll in general - a lot of bands achieved classic status with their first album or their second album, but not many managed the feat with their first album and their second album. Mission accomplished Gurus.

Tracklist

Bittersweet
Poison Pen
In the Wild
Death Defying
Like Wow – Wipeout
Hayride to Hell
Show Some Emotion
Other Side of Paradise
Mars Needs Guitars
She

Further Viewing

Watch Hoodoo Gurus interviewed and playing In The Wild and Like Wow – Wipeout on MTV’s The Cutting Edge in 1985.

Why Critics Still Love You Am I's Hi Fi Way, Even If Tim Rogers Doesn't

Twenty years after its release, Tim Rogers remains ambivalent about the strengths of You Am I's classic album Hi Fi Way, despite its ascension to the hallowed halls of Oz-rock lore.