Hoodoo GurusHere’s a Hoodoo Gurus song you might not know. A B-side from 1989’s Magnum Cum Louder, the instrumental Spaghetti Western is a love letter to Ennio Morricone’s iconic scores for the titular film genre.
As Hoodoos singer/guitarist Dave Faulkner recalls, the band used synths and samplers to replicate dramatic string and horn parts.
“I love soundtrack music and classical music,” he says, “so it was just me indulging my penchant for that.”
Now he and the band get to do the real thing, deploying the almost 90-piece Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for a one-off concert at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl on January 29th.
The veteran Sydney rock quartet will revisit the orchestral arrangements they developed with composer Alex Turley for a similar show with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra in 2024 – only this time the number of players is even larger.
“Obviously as a musician and a lover of classical music myself, it’s always been a fantasy,” Faulkner admits. “I just never particularly thought it was gonna happen.”
But don’t expect your usual greatest hits run, buoyed by orchestral elements as a mere afterthought. As signalled by the inclusion of a track like Spaghetti Western, the concert will transform often lesser-known Hoodoos material in new and surprising ways.
That meant digging through the band’s 40-plus-years of material to find songs that had room to grow in this context.
“It was [about] developing songs that would change with the new flavour of an orchestra,” says Faulkner. “A conversation between the rock band and the orchestra. I didn’t want to just be sugaring up a rock song by adding pretty strings. I found that banal. I wanted them to get their teeth into it, and then we would be really pushed by what they were doing.”
Dynamic Range
It adds to the intrigue of this project that very few Hoodoo Gurus songs have featured orchestral embellishment in the first place.
Sure, some strings provide a fun bit of misdirection before the stoner rock bluster of Big Deal – the opening track of 1995’s Blue Cave – and a few tunes from 2010’s Purity Of Essence benefit from intermittent strings and horns, but those are rarities in the band’s robust, celebrated discography.
More so than the big radio singles that helped propel the band to Australian mainstream and American college-rock success in the mid-1980s and beyond, Faulkner looked to their ballads and more cinematic fare.
That includes Zanzibar, a soft, shimmering outlier amidst the brasher garage flashbacks of Hoodoos’ classic 1984 debut, Stoneage Romeos. Also making the cut is My Caravan, a moody dirge from 1987’s Blow Your Cool!.
Again, it was all about identifying tracks that were ripe for new elements.
“When you’re just blasting away on a punk song,” Faulkner explains, “it’s not certain how much an orchestra can fit into that without basically reiterating what you’re already doing.
“Because through distortion units, guitars’ tonal spectrum is pretty all-consuming [already]. So you have to find things where they can really be heard – and be impactful.”
As another example, he cites 1991’s 1000 Miles Away. It may be one of the Hoodoos’ most popular songs, but it’s also a fairly muted, wide-open ballad that sees Faulkner lean into his sensitive side.
“It’s obvious that would just open up with extra colours and the expansiveness of an orchestra,” he says. “An orchestra is just the ultimate version of an old recording studio: the colours and tones can be balanced and added and subtracted to create all of these incredible effects.
“It’s ancient technology that replicates everything we try to do with modern trickery. And of course, the dynamic range of an orchestra is just ludicrous, from the quietness of a piccolo by itself up to them going hell for leather.”
Falling firmly into the latter camp will be Mind The Spider, a 1996 track that Faulkner describes as a prog pastiche. “If we’re gonna do the Spinal Tap thing, let’s just go all the way,” he says.
“We can turn that one into the full Jethro Tull or Genesis over-the-top prog epic. It even has a baroque moment in it, so it’s natural that the orchestra should eat that up.”
The newest song featured in the concert will be the title track of the band’s 2022 album Chariot Of The Gods. And don’t worry, they’re going to play their eternal sing-along – 1987’s jittery What’s My Scene? – in the encore, though it won’t be overhauled too much. “But it works,” quips Faulker with a laugh. “Y’know, orchestras play hits too.”
Dream-Come-True Stuff
Having already done this once before, Faulkner and his current bandmates – guitarist Brad Shepherd, bassist Richard Grossman, and drummer Nik Rieth – should be pretty confident this time around. But they’ve been given demos both with and without click tracks, so that they can rehearse at home.
As much as the MSO will add to the band’s songbook live, the quartet’s internal arrangements haven’t changed much. That said, Faulker will play acoustic guitar instead of electric on a few songs, and vice versa.
In a couple instances, he even sings without the band and just lets the orchestra unfold behind him. There’s also a moment that he doesn’t want to spoil by naming the song, where the orchestra takes over completely in the middle and weaves in an excerpt from a famous classical piece.
Such is the joy of adaptation for Faulkner. “The song doesn’t change,” he says, “but what does change is the subtlety and the experience of hearing it this way. Hearing the melodies and countermelodies translated through an orchestra, it’s just beautiful.
“That’s the only word I can use. It becomes more poignant in many ways. The subtlety and sophistication of it all is just incredible. As a songwriter, it’s dream-come-true stuff.”
The sheer mass of the Hoodoo Gurus back catalogue makes this preparation process double as a retrospective of their whole career. But for a band who have released multiple compilations over the decades, that’s nothing new for them.
“I’m kind of always doing that,” admits Faulkner. “We are a working outfit, so our whole history is always ever-present with us. It’s not like I forgot songs or ignore them; they’re always there.”
He adds that if the Hoodoos get a chance to do another orchestral concert down the track, he would love to swap out a few songs and add in others that would flourish with this treatment. Likewise, he mentions the satisfaction of seeing some of the orchestra members really cut loose at the Canberra show, thanks to playing with a proper rock band.
One thing he would love to correct since the Canberra show, however, is getting a decent recording of the live show. Technical gremlins intervened last time, so he’s hoping the Melbourne concert will be captured with crystal clarity.
And if all goes well, Faulkner wouldn’t mind releasing it at some stage. Whatever way, at least he’ll have a copy for himself – especially considering all the hard work that has gone into it.
Laughing, he confirms: “I definitely want a record of it, that’s for sure.”
Hoodoo Gurus perform with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at Sidney Myer Music Bowl on January 29th. Tickets are on sale now.
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
