Four years ago this month, few pop pundits were surprised when an Australian band called Men at Work walked off with the Best New Artist award at the annual Grammy ceremonies. The quintet`s quirky pop debut album,
”Business As Usual,” had spent an astounding 15 weeks at No. 1 the previous year, spawning two No. 1 hit singles and fostering a sudden (albeit brief) fad for such Down Under delicacies as the Vegemite sandwich spread mentioned in one of the group`s songs.
Fronted by lead singer and chief songwriter Colin Hay, Men at Work had rocketed from the Australian club circuit to international stardom virtually overnight. But even as the band set out on its first big American tour in the summer of `83, the rags-to-riches rock fairy tale was fraying around the edges. By the next year, things had turned completely sour. (”Musical differences, philosophical differences, personal differences–there were problems from Day One,” says Hay, who remains friendly with one-time working Men Ron Strykert and Greg Ham but no longer speaks to Jerry Speiser and John Rees or even mentions them by name, referring to them only as ”the drummer” and ”the bassist.”) By the end of 1985, after Hay`s misguided attempt to keep the band going with four new members faltered, Men at Work had passed into pop history.
These days, Men at Work is ancient history as far as Hay is concerned. He`s willing enough to discuss the old days–the ”overnight” success, the lingering bitterness and the failure of the final Men at Work album, which, he notes wryly, sold ”maybe 3 copies.” But he would, quite understandably, rather talk about something new–namely, his solo career, which he has launched with an engaging album called ”Looking For Jack.”
Hay`s sound this time around is noticeably more sophisticated than the music he made with Men at Work, but that isn`t the only thing that`s changed. For one thing, he now goes by his full name, Colin James Hay. ”I used to perform as Colin James Hay, but when Men at Work was formed, the rest of the band said, `Well, we don`t use our middle names, so why should you?` ” says Hay. ”It was just another one of those compromises that happens when you`re in a band and your identity gets submerged somehow into the mythology of democracy within the group.” He also has left Australia; while he ”still owns a piece of dirt” Down Under that he bought a decade ago, he and his wife moved into a New York apartment last fall.
”I could either make records and send them to New York, or I could make records and be in New York already,” says Hay, who`s signed to Columbia Records. ”It makes a lot more sense to actually be in New York. There`s not a day goes by that I don`t hallucinate wildly about Australia, though.”
But now, when Hay talks about musical influences, Australia plays second fiddle to Scotland, where he lived until he was 14.
His solo album, as Hay sees it, reflects–in some indefinable way–a return to his ”gaelic soul” roots.
”It`s not so much that I`m trying to play up the Scottish thing,” says the singer, who grew up Salt Coats, Ayreshire, a small seaside town where his father owned a music store. ”It`s just that most people aren`t aware of it, and for once, I`m talking about it.
”It`s hard to say just how growing up in Scotland influenced me,” adds Hay, who, during his pre-Men at Work days as an acoustic performer, occasionally performed in a kilt just for the sport of it. ”But I think that people`s musical influences go back centuries. That`s what I mean when I talk about gaelic soul. When I think of Scotland, I gloss over the realities–the economic depressions or whatever–and see it in this incredibly romantic and poetic way.”
Don`t get the idea that ”Looking for Jack” is some kind of Celtic folk album, though. Recorded in London with help from guest artists Herbie Hancock and the Pretenders` Robbie McIntosh and produced by Robin Millar (best known for his work with Sade and Big Country), it`s strictly a contemporary pop effort.
Hay, who acquired something of a reputation as an alienated pop paranoic after his ”Who Can It Be Now?” (”Is it the man come to take me away? Why do they follow me?”) was a No. 1 single for Men at Work, sees his current songs as ”a lot more open” than the ones he used to write.
”I don`t think that I`m as scared to let people know what I really think about anything anymore,” says the singer, who maintains that his outlook is
”basically positive” and insists that he is really ”a warm and cuddly”
kind of guy. ”Lyrically speaking, I think I`ve been getting better as a writer. I think that what I do best is tell stories in songs. Sometimes they`re fictitious, sometimes not.”
Hay`s debut single, ”Hold Me” (no connection with the new Sheila E. single by the same name) has drawn inevitable comparisons to Paul Simon`s
”Graceland” album for its use of a South African chorus. Hay, however, goes to pains to point out that he didn`t take his cue from Simon.
”We were totally unaware of the fact that he was doing it,” he says.
”What happened was that when we finished recording `Hold Me,` I was a little lukewarm about it. It sounded good, but it didn`t knock me off my chair. So Robbie suggested that we get some (African) friends of his to come in and sing on the song to give it an edge. I had sung the song with a vaguely African feel, anyway, and we had lots of percussion in it, so the African chorus put the icing on the cake.
”We were finishing my album around the time that Paul`s came out,” adds Hay. ”I was driving home from a recording session when I first heard one of his new songs on the radio. I stopped the car and thought, `Jeez, you can`t do anything . . . .”` Hay laughs.
”There`s something synchronistic about this kind of thing. It`s not really unfortunate, it`s just that people like to have a hook for things and so they say, `Oh, Paul Simon used Africans and you used Africans,` and I didn`t know he was doing it at all.”
At the moment, Hay is putting together a touring band, with hopes of hitting the road by May.
”I`ve got a drummer and bass player (Chad Wackerman and Jeremy Alsop, who played in the final Men at Work lineup and played on the ”Looking for Jack” album),” he says. ”Now I`m looking for a lead guitarist, a keyboard player and some horn players and background vocalists. I`m looking forward to touring.
”We should have called it quits with Men at Work a lot earlier than we did,” adds Hay. ”That way there wouldn`t have been all the ugliness, the
`lawyers at 50 paces` and all that. I wouldn`t have spent a year feeling more like a negotiator than a musician. It wasn`t a good time for me. At the end, when I was the only original member of the band left, I used to think,
`You`re a fool. Why are you doing this?` But I just wanted to keep going, keep moving, because I thought that if I did, it would become apparent to me what I should do.
”And out of that seemingly negative situation, I ended up taking Chad Wackerman and Jeremy Alsop and making this solo album, which worked out for the best. But Men at Work seems like something that happened a long time ago now. It`s exciting being on my own.”
