James Reyne Reclaims The Legacy Of Australian Crawl

An old radio mate of mine always thought that James Reyne’s solo single Fall of Rome was about the demise of his band, Australian Crawl.

But the singer was surprised when that proposition was put to him.

“Wow, I’d never thought of it like that,” he said, “but I love hearing different interpretations of songs.

“People will always ask, ‘What’s that song about?’ And I’ll reply, ‘Well, whatever you get from it is as valid as anything I might say.’”

Australian Crawl announced their split 40 years ago this week. It was the lead item on the 4 pm news bulletin on EON-FM. I was rocked. Australian Crawl were my favourite band.

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Four days later, they became the first band I ever saw at a pub. I was 16, but I snuck into The Palace in St Kilda, clutching my mate’s ID.

Reyne reflects on that time as he prepares to embark on “The Fall of Crawl”, his tour marking “the derailment of Australian Crawl”.

“It was a wrap. It was time. A wind-up. A sign-off. A relief. A joy. Funny. Sometimes slightly sad but resolute. A swansong. A kiss-off; a sign-off; under the belt, on the wagon and headed for the barn. Put to bed, wiped up, wiped out, cleaned up, mopped up, polished and polished off.

“That was all, folks, that was all she ever wrote.”

Well, all these dragons are just a’draggin’ me down

“When we made the final Australian Crawl album, we knew the band was over,” Reyne reveals.

“That’s why the record was called Between A Rock And A Hard Place. I just wanted to get the hell out of there. Things had become tense and unpleasant. When you spend a lot of time with certain people, these things happen.

“I was sick of James Reyne, really.

“I had to get away from ‘James Reyne! Boys Light Up! Boys Light Up!’ I will go to my grave, and someone will still be saying, ‘Boys Light Up!’

Like a trackless tram, I’m Bondi bound.

“It was absolutely liberating leaving the band,” Reyne continues. “I had no real ties. I lived in a little flat in Albert Park, which I rented, and I was not in a relationship. So, I just packed up and left.

“For the first time since leaving school, I felt free.”

Reyne headed to America.

“All I had was a box of cassettes and a few names and addresses. It was great not knowing what was around the next corner. I was open to anything and everything. I used to joke that I could end up being a greengrocer in Arkansas.”

In LA, Reyne contacted Roger Davies, Sherbet’s former manager, who had become one of the biggest managers in the world after orchestrating the remarkable return of Tina Turner.

Roger and his business partner, Lindsay Scott, loved Reyne’s demos, and they got him a deal with Capitol Records.

He was not going to become a greengrocer in Arkansas.

When Reyne finished making his first solo album, the Capitol president took him out to lunch. The Fall of Rome video had a big budget. The label remixed the album in London. And spent a lot of money on the artwork.

“This is really going to happen,” Reyne thought. “I’ve got Roger Davies managing me, the Capitol president is taking me out to lunch … they’re really committed.”

The label was buzzing in the lead-up to the release of Fall of Rome. “We’re going to get 350 adds first week,” they confidently told the artist, which meant that 350 radio stations across America would be playing the song.

This is going to happen.

But in its first week on the radio, Fall of Rome didn’t get the anticipated 350 adds. It was more like 25. The label gave it one more week, when the song received an additional 15 more adds. And that was that.

This is not going to happen.

Reyne reflected on those days in A Little Ol’ Town South Of Bakersfield, a song on his most recent solo album, Toon Town Lullaby.

“Maybe opportunity opened its doors, and I didn’t recognise it, or maybe it didn’t open its doors,” Reyne ponders.

The song mentions David Allan Coe and Jimmy Buffett. “Capitol didn’t know what to do with me. Was I David Allan Coe or Jimmy Buffett? They didn’t really know what I was.”

Reyne remembers visiting the Capitol office, where the staff were in the boardroom watching the video for Poison’s Every Rose Has Its Thorn. As they exclaimed, “This is a smash!”, Reyne thought, “This is the biggest load of shit I’ve ever heard.”

“Whether they wanted me to be more like that … Well, I can’t do that.”

And everybody said, ‘What’s that sound?’

The legendary local critic Ed Nimmervoll said James Reyne’s voice “is as familiar to us as the taste of Vegemite, as essentially Australian”.

His diction is often derided, but even Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is a fan, highlighting what a great frontman he is, with a distinctive Aussie accent.

In her 1992 book Your Name’s On The Door, Tracee Hutchison noted that Australian Crawl “boldly explored an ‘Australian-ness’ that was unique at the time and which broke a lot of ground in the development of an Australian ‘sound’.”

From the very first Aussie Crawl release, I was hooked. I still reckon that Beautiful People is one of the greatest debut singles of all time. All nervous energy and magical one-liners.

The Crawl catalogue is the sound of surf, sun, sand and sex. These songs are timeless.

Still thinking ’bout the fall of Rome.

Fun fact: Australian Crawl had just one Top 10 single (1983’s chart-topping Semantics EP featuring Reckless), whereas Reyne has had five Top 10 solo hits.

Not-so fun fact: The Australian Crawl story is tinged with tragedy.

Singer and guitarist Guy McDonough died of viral pneumonia in 1984, just as the band was about to embark on an American tour. He was only 28 years old.

When there were rumours of a reunion tour in the mid-’90s, guitarist and keyboard player Brad Robinson was struck down by lymphoma. He died two weeks after the band was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1996. He was 38.

And guitarist Simon Binks suffered a brain injury in a car crash in Sydney in 1995.

When Brad died, Reyne paid tribute to his best mate at the memorial service. “Australian Crawl went for about seven years – that was just seven years of our lives. His life encapsulated so much more than just that.”

Brad’s passing triggered a memory of something he told me at the end of the ’80s. Speaking about his old bandmate, Brad predicted: “One day he’ll make the Great Australian Album.”

But you know what? I’d argue that Reyne and Australian Crawl had already made two Great Australian Albums – The Boys Light Up and Sirocco. This is suburban satire that never ages.

I grew up in a working-class town where it was compulsory to like Cold Chisel. Sure, I dug Chisel, but I always thought that Australian Crawl were cooler and smarter.

Critic Craig Mathieson reflected on the band’s legacy in his excellent book Playlisted.

“Like Joseph Stalin, popular culture can obliterate history,” he wrote. “Bands truly cease to exist not when the final gig is played, or the last lawsuit is resolved, but when no one remembers them.

“Nowadays, it appears that Australian Crawl are on the cusp of disappearing.”

Mathieson asserted that the band’s legacy was being kept alive by one song – Reckless. “The song is Australian Crawl’s life-support system.”

When Ryan Adams heard Reckless, he tweeted: “HOLY CRAP – consider me obsessed.” And Mathieson called it “as haunted and impervious an Australian classic as you will ever hear”.

Reyne has clearly struggled with the shadow of his old band.

“James is his own worst enemy,” younger brother David says, “and I’m proud of him for that. He’s unbelievably uncompromising, and all that matters to him is recording, writing and performing.”

He doesn’t enjoy looking back.

But something has shifted in the past few years. Reyne has now embraced Australian Crawl’s legacy.

I saw him do his traditional Cup Eve show at the Corner this year, and he opened with The Boys Light Up. What followed was a crowd-pleasing set. As well as his solo hits, Reyne played Beautiful People, Daughters Of The Northern Coast, Lakeside, Downhearted, Reckless, Oh No Not You Again, Errol and Things Don’t Seem.

He even engaged in a good-natured exchange with one punter who requested Hoochie Gucci Fiorucci Mama.

As Reyne describes the Fall of Crawl tour, “It’s everything you know and love, celebrating things been and gone; and how time really does fucking fly!”

Just one more hit before I can die

Forty years after the fall of Crawl, James Reyne remains a remarkable singer and songwriter.

I’m reminded of what Wilbur Wilde says when people tell Joe Camilleri, “Oh man, I saw you 20 years ago, you’re just as good.” Wilbur will step in and say, “Hey mate, he’s 20 years fucking better!”

If I have a criticism, Reyne has not released enough records. In five frantic years, Australian Crawl released four studio albums, a live record, a chart-topping EP and a best-of compilation. In the past decade, Reyne has released just one studio album, an EP and a couple of live records.

But the quality remains high. The EP, 2015’s The Magnificent Few, featured a gem that only James Reyne could write.

This year, Reyne released a sparkling new single called Going Back To Nashville. Despite the title, it’s a classic driving Reyne rock song.

The AI-assisted clip features some subtle shout-outs to Reyne’s past and present, including the RKNHARDPLCE Bar, the Hammerhead Ranch and the Mt Eliza School “for waywood kids”.

And the clip concludes with the star with both arms in plaster, a nod to Reyne’s memorable Countdown debut, after he’d been hit by a car crossing Swanston Street in Melbourne.

Each last thrill, the penultimate high

Whether or not you believe that Fall of Rome is about the end of Australian Crawl, James Reyne actually wrote the song for a film called Pandemonium, directed by Haydn Keenan.

Keenan had made a movie called Going Down at the start of the ’80s starring Reyne’s girlfriend, Vera Plevnik, who had won a Logie for Best New Talent for her performance as Nadia in The John Sullivan Story, a telemovie spinoff of The Sullivans.

Tragically, Vera died before Going Down was released – she was killed in a car crash near Batemans Bay.

Reyne wrote two songs for Going Down, which also starred Tracy Mann and David Argue. Australian Crawl recorded the songs – What’s It Like and Ah, Fuckit – but were listed in the credits as The Park Rats.

A few years later, Keenan asked Reyne if he could write an up-tempo rock song for Pandemonium. “The script was pretty out-there, telling the tale of a young woman raised by dingoes who was now looking for her real family.”

Reyne presented the director with Fall of Rome. Keenan made the movie but didn’t use the song.

Whenever he bumps into the director, Reyne relishes in reminding him of the fact that a lot of people heard Fall of Rome, but not many people have heard of Pandemonium.

The IMDb review of the movie called it:

“Farcical slapstick supernatural dark sex comedy with a touch of Shakespeare spoof.”

There is a lot in that one sentence, but that would be just one part of the Australian Crawl story.

And the Crawl story comes with a much better soundtrack.

James Reyne will tour ‘The Fall of Crawl’ across the country in 2026. Tickets are available here.

Presented by Triple M