Robert Forster
The Go-Betweens cannon. You must be very proud. Do you like the fact that it's an undiscovered treasure?
"(Excitedly) It has enormous plus sides. I tell to Beggars Banquet all the time. We are going to become the Velvet Underground, starting now until the year 2010. It's going to happen! I've read it in the papers: there were three groups in the 80's - the Smiths, REM, and the Go-Betweens, and that's it! I just asssume this will become apperent over time. (Laughs) It's definitely not known yet. But I'm very very happy because this is the first time that you can go into a record store and order all six albums together."
But no hits. It's still unfaithomable.
"I guess something that held us back was this two-pronged thing. We didn't have somebody who put down their guitar for most of the set and moved around the front of the stage. You look at Jarvis Cocker or the guy from Oasis or Blur, they're working in that way, down the front. It's an age-old formula, but it helps. We didn't have it. We thought, have two songwriters you double your chances of success. How wrong we were. Now it really doesn't bother me. I really wouldn't want it any other way."
Failure must've been galling at the time.
"Things like the Top of The Pops didn't make any sense at all. It was another universe, it might have well been The Max Bygraves Show. It was quite freeing to suddenly realize, our group is so good, and we are getting nowhere. After a while, the lack of recognition was so absurd, it was funny. Having been very uptight, I let myself go.
What your favorite Grant McLennan song?
"I really like 'Love Goes On'. There's nine chords in a row, which he doesn't repeat. It's so him. A lot of his best songs are on '16 Lover's Lane'. And 'Cattle & Cane' is a really good song. It was like 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' or something - a quantum leap, a break-through song."