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Robert Forster
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What do Sarah Blasko, Silverchair, The Grates and Jimmy Barnes all have in common? Their latest albums were all made outside Australia using overseas producers. Other bands such as Powderfinger and Bridezilla brought in the overseas producer, while Tame Impala, The John Steel Singers and Dan Kelly...
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Part 1 | Part 2 At the Sydney Writers' Festival, Robert Forster (founding member of the Go-Betweens and music critic for The Monthly) talks to Toby Martin about his new book, The Ten Rules of Rock and Roll (Black Inc.) Forster talks about the difference for him between writing music and prose, tells... » play video
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Robert Forster | Books | July 2010 | Society & Culture | Arts & Letters
To read the New Musical Express (NME) in the ’70s was one of the great joys of the decade. It was an insider’s choice and the seriousness of any new acquaintance’s enthusiasm for music could be instantly gauged by whether they read it or not. The readership of the London-based weekly was...
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The big discussion has been about Ezra’s hair. Recent photos have had it fluffy and a little out of control. No problems tonight, though; it’s clipped and up over the ears, with a fringe that curls just above the left eye. He’s in old-school trainers sans socks, tight black trousers that don’t...
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The last White Stripes’ album, Icky Thump, came out in 2007. For a group operating under the normal touring and recording schedule, the middle of 2010 would be a reasonable point at which to release the next piece of ‘product’, even if it wasn’t a new studio record but a live album with an...
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When is Tasmania going to produce some great bands? It must be soon, if only through the converging of cultural forces, time and the fact that both Brisbane and Perth have had a fruitful past decade of breakthrough artists and bands and the frontier needs a new place to shift to. Writers such as...
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Robert Forster | December 2009 - January 2010 | The Monthly Essays | Music
The Beatles were formed in 1957 when John Lennon invited Paul McCartney to join The Quarrymen. Soon after, McCartney got his mate George Harrison into the band too. It’s important to remember, and Lennon never let the others forget, that he asked Paul and the others to join his group. Lennon is...
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David McComb, who passed away in 1999 at the age of 36, was the lead singer and songwriter of The Triffids. The band began their career in Perth in the late 1970s and broke up in 1989, and although McComb released a solo album, Love of Will, in 1994, and wrote and played with other musicians over...
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She’s a restless soul, Sarah Blasko, three albums in her recording career done: one in Los Angeles, one in Auckland, and now her latest from Stockholm. Each has been shaped by its location. From LA came the neat, crafted pop of her debut, The Overture & the Underscore (2004); from Auckland...
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"When did you write that? How did you happen ... to ... uh ..." The nervous and incredulous male voice stops there on the tape. It's 1954, and Connie Converse, the singer and songwriter who has elicited this response, has just recorded one of her songs onto the reel-to-reel. Fifty-five years later...
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Robert Forster | May 2009 | Society & Culture | Arts & Letters | Music
It's lonesome out there on the prairie. There are eagles up in the sky, and birds, lots of birds, and lakes, and wolves, plenty of wolves, and rivers, branches and trees, and even the odd bee. The songwriters that describe this landscape are urbanites who may not feel comfortable in nature, but are...
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It can seem futile trying to chase down biographical material on Paul Kelly because, just as he's ducked the glare of mainstream pop stardom, his self-effacement and unease with his past have left the songs to sketch the details, a situation he probably feels comfortable with. The bones of the...
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First there was First Take, one of the best debut albums of all time. It was recorded by Roberta Flack in 1969 for Atlantic Records, produced by Joel Dorn, with a backing trio that included jazz giant Ron Carter on bass. Flack was 32 when she cut it, coming late to a recording career after years as...
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Four years ago, while on a promotional tour for the last Go-Betweens record, I came across Antony and the Johnsons' second album. I was in Amsterdam and had asked our local record-company rep how our album was being received, to be told, in typically abrupt Dutch fashion, "Well - but the album...
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In the beginning, back in 1966, there was Harry Vanda and George Young. They were the songwriting team in The Easybeats, responsible for such riff-heavy pop classics as ‘Friday on My Mind', ‘Good Times'. George Young had two younger brothers, Malcolm and Angus, who in their early twenties wrote a...
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Robert Forster | November 2008 | Society & Culture | The Nation Reviewed
At 17 I could have become a hairdresser.In Brisbane in the early to mid '70s, the only places offering any kind of interesting shopping experience were in the inner-city arcades. Elizabeth Arcade, in particular, had a string of shops that not only offered goods found nowhere else in town, but also...
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Put yourself in Glen Campbell's shoes. You're 72. You've sold 45 million records. You've been married four times, most recently back in 1982. You have eight children. Your time is spent primarily on the golf course - there was the Glen Campbell Los Angeles Open on the pro-golf...
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Who knew the different ways to sing "Louis Vuitton", and that the French designer's name would appear twice in songs from young bands in the first half of the year? Susannah Legge, from The Hampdens, drawls and drags her Louis Vuitton, as she does many of the lyrics on her band's debut album, The...
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There are cult stars and then there are cult stars. Will Oldham, born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1970, is one of the great enigmas of music. His first five records, appearing from 1993 onwards, were released under variations on the Palace moniker - Palace Brothers, Palace Songs and Palace Music -...
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Less-is-more is an edict that has never gained much leverage in rock 'n' roll. More-is-more is the preferred option, with record companies (the majors, traditionally) willing to bankroll artists' excess in the studio and on the road. The change usually comes with the downturn of an artist's career...
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Robert Forster | September 2010 | Society & Culture | MusicWhat do Sarah Blasko, Silverchair, The Grates and Jimmy Barnes all have in common? Their latest albums were all made outside Australia using overseas producers. Other bands such as Powderfinger and Bridezilla brought in the overseas producer, while Tame Impala, The John Steel Singers and Dan Kelly...
Part 1 | Part 2 At the Sydney Writers' Festival, Robert Forster (founding member of the Go-Betweens and music critic for The Monthly) talks to Toby Martin about his new book, The Ten Rules of Rock and Roll (Black Inc.) Forster talks about the difference for him between writing music and prose, tells... » play video
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