On Saturday 6th May 2006, legendary Australian singer-songwriter and member of The Go-Betweens Grant McLennan died in his sleep at his home in Brisbane. He will be deeply missed by all who knew him, whether personally or through his music.
All at Beggars Banquet wish to extend our thoughts to Grant's family and friends.
Download Fingers by Grant McLennan (mp3)
BELLAVISTA TERRACE
Best of The Go-Betweens
1. Was There Anything I could Do?
2. Head Full Of Steam
3. That Way
4. Part Company
5. Cattle And Cane
6. Draining The Pool For You
7. The Wrong Road
8. Bye Bye Pride
9. Man o’ Sand To Girl o’ Sea
10. The House That Jack Kerouac Built
11. Bachelor Kisses
12. Streets Of Your Town
13. Spring Rain
14. Dive For Your Memory
- Initial copies also include an additional, limited bonus CD of live USA radio sessions which is sold out! If you missed out on these, the bonus CD is now available seperately from the mail order link below.
these sessions are aural snapshots, unedited to retain the atmosphere of the occasion; more informal, intimate, spontaneous and relaxed than a concert performance.
acoustic session
1. Introduction
2. Rock ‘n’ roll friend
3. Dive for your memory
4. Quiet heart
5. Clouds
6. Love goes on
recorded 10 november 1988
electric session
7. Introduction
8. Bye bye pride
9. Bow down
10. Right here
11. The Clarke sisters
12. I just get caught out
13. Twin layers of lightning
14. Cattle and cane
15. Apology accepted
recorded 11 september 1987
There is a great audio interview on REAL AUDIO G2 with Robert and Grant where they discuss the Go-Betweens' history, interspersed with song snippets. It lasts around 55 minutes, so get yourself a drink, get comfortable then ...
Q REVIEW and RATING - 4/5 stars - (Excellent. Definitly worth investigating)
"Longer (memories) still will remember the delicate contemporary joy that was the Robert Forster / Grant McLennan songwriting co-op. From castrated Jonathan Richman beginnings, they and big lady drummer Lindy Morrison nailed beat poetry to skinny, angular guitars and shy melodies. Then they moved to London, turned up the oboe knob and the sweeter-voiced, more wistful McLennan overtooh the dark, gnarly Forster. Even from here, Bachelor Kisses, Cattle and Cane and Bye Bye Pride stand shoulder to shoulder with the best songs of the 80's."
- Danny Eccleston
BACK FROM THE FRINGES
Dust off your suede jacket--the Go-Betweens are back
Some bands enjoy short-lived affection. Others, like Australian jangly guitar-band the Go-Betweens, have inspired the obsessive devotion only a person who owned and operated a suede fringed jacket in the '80s could understand. Since their 1990 split, the mercurial partnership between songwriters Grant McLennan and Robert Forster has inspired a tribute album by fellow Antipodean admirers, an exhaustive 1998 biography, and a yearly convention where where fans dress up as their favorite band member (just kidding about that last part). This spring, their pining cult will be blessed with a retrospective CD, an acoustic tour that will reunite Forster and McLennan, and some newly unearther 20-year-old recordings.
The new best-of compilation, "Bellavista Terrace," picks up the story in 1982, when the Go-Betweens reinvented themselves as the airy. literate band beloved by---well, hundreds. Forster, who sequenced the album with "Creedence Gold" and "The Best of the Bee Gees" in mind, say wistfully, "I wish it could've been called "24-Karat Solid Gold Hits." In some ideal world, it would have been that."
- Douglas Wolk - Request magazine
For starters, The Go-Betweens were bloody bloody bloody fantastic. Unfortunately, not enough people realised it at the time. If you were to look up 'tragically ignored' in the rock'n'roll dictionary, they'd be there, staring right back at you in all their technicolor glory. And by all rights, they should be snarling.
No-one deserved worldwide success more than The Go-Betweens. They were a pristine synthesis of rock'n'roll greatness: adroit songwriting and musicianship, a mesmeric personal presence and an
underlying enigmatic quality. Perhaps that's the explanation - they were too good for their time.
It's fitting then that the world should get a second chance to embrace The Go-Betweens in their most primordial phase: as the songwriting duo of Robert Forster and Grant McLennan.
Brisbane audiences have already enjoyed several Forster & McLennan shows, but they've been rare events elsewhere around the globe. For this reason, and to coincide with the release of a 'best of...' album and a 'lost album', the decision was made to re-ignite The Go-Betweens flame with a Forster & McLennan tour.
"Back in December our manager in London said 'What should we do with the records coming out around the world?'," Robert recalls. "I thought it'd be nice to do a six to eight week world tour, if possible. Just Grant and I playing acoustic guitars under our own names and to draw as much attention as we could to the records in a short time span.
"I think the shows are also going to be quite varied. We'll do Go-Betweens songs but hopefully solo songs and I'd also like to do some new songs. Grant and I playing acoustically, it allows great flexibility. We can decide to do a song half-an-hour before we go on stage and just rehearse it in the dressing room, which you can't do with a band. The occasional shows are fantastic, but we always feel like if we'd played the next night, we would have dropped that song and put this song in.
It'll be nice to be able to work on it - not to do a lot of preparation for just one night. They have a special magic, but to be able to put all the same preparation into it and then to be able to develop and run with it over a set time, will be great.
"We're sort of mainly playing small clubs... woody sort of jazzy clubs. Just Grant and I arriving in a taxi, getting outof the taxi, playing, getting back in the taxi and the next day getting on a plane. That type of tour. I'm expecting acouple of old ghosts. I think there will be old ghosts in every corner. A whole variety of people."
Robert hopes the two new albums - Bellavista Terrace: The Best Of The Go-Betweens and 78 'til 79 The Lost Album - might procure a new audience.
"I still believe that The Go-Betweens aren't well known enough. This record gives us a [new]opportunity - not that it's going to be #1 in the Billboard Charts in August. If we've got the chance to just spread a little bit of light and bring a little bit of attention to what the band did, I think it's fantastic."
As Robert explains, he and Grant believed a 'best of...' album was long overdue.
"It was completely needed," Robert deadpans. "It's a way for some people to get into the band. I know the first BobDylan album I bought was Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits. I'm thinking of the Best of the Bee Gees. That old gold albumthat I used to have where it's just all classics. I'm thinking of Creedence Gold. I'm thinking this record is the equivalent of those records. Perhaps there's 17 or 18-year-olds who go The Go-Betweens... don't understand them. What's happening? People say they're great, where do I start?'. Walking into Rocking Horse and being confused - as a lot of people who walk into Rocking Horse are - and going 'The Go-Betweens, everyone's talking about them, I need something I can understand'.
"There's also dozey 50-year-olds who've got their classic 200 records and go 'Go-Betweens, everyone says they'regreat, I need one up on my wall next to my Jimi Hendrix records, what do I get? I just want one.' They can get this. I still think the band, for the quality of the music, is criminally unknown. Sure you can say it's a marketing ploy orwhatever, but we have to use it try and get the word across.
"78 'til 79 The Lost Album, that's coming out too. It's very very different. It's very different to what we did on ourfirst album. It's not like a precursor to what we did on our first album Send Me A Lullaby. It's not like a dry run forSend Me A Lullaby. It's very much in the vein of 'Karen', Lee Remick', 'People Say' and 'Don't Let Him Come Back'.It's very much in the vein of the two Able Label singles. It was recorded by Gerry Teekman who was a very good friend of Grant and I, and it was recorded in my bedroom over in Toowong. A lot of people say they try and go for the bedroom sound, but this is the bedroom sound. The songs are really great; very very poppy. Songs that I wrotewhen I was 20/21. They're the work of a crazed, demented 21-year-old."
Any chance that you'll record together again?
"I always think it's a possibility. I think we'll see with the tour. I think if it's going to happen, this is an ideal
opportunity. I've got six or seven classics sitting right here in the suitcase. But Grant and I have never done this:we've got two acoustic guitars and we're out on the road doing a headline tour. God knows what's going to happen.There's going to be times where we're sitting in the back of aeroplanes, cabs... we've got to talk about something."
TIME OFF magazine
The full, illustrated DISCOGRAPHY with reviews
A Go-Betweens interview
Grant McLennan and Robert Forster
Go Betweens - Biography - 1997 live reviews
For album / 1999 tour reviews from around the world check out Sean Brady's
GO-BETWEENS site
Other site for The Go-Betweens
A fine Grant McLennan site