Colin Hay – Men at Work Frontman’s Steady Solo Journey

Photo credit: Beth Herzhaft Photography

Colin Hay, best known for his tenure with the 80’s hit-makers Men At Work, has been enjoying a new phase of his career, returning to his roots as a solo artist. Hay has been touring, relentlessly to promote his favorite album to date – Gathering Mercury. His lengthy Finding My Dance Tour has sent him to Australia, North America and the UK. This grueling expedition is paying off with positive reviews and new fans in every city in which he settles for the evening. After some uncanny technical difficulties in New Hampshire, Glide Magazine caught up with this legendary singer-songwriter whilst in Manhattan after his stop in Boston in which he dazzled the audience with many Men at Work hits like “Down Under”, “Who Can It Be Now”, “Overkill” and the deep cut “Down By The Sea”. Colin also performed a plethora of songs from his solo career including “Beautiful World” and “Waiting For My Real Life To Begin”.

Colin, your music has certainly evolved over the years. Your catalog with MenAt Work catalog and the music from your solo albums are naturally very different. Has your songwriting process evolved as well? Can you compare how you created a song or album in the 80’s to how you go about it now?

Evolution is evolution. You don’t really notice the changes over a period of time. It depends on whether you’re writing songs by yourself or if you’re co-writing and ultimately how you’re writing the song. Back then it was really just writing songs on an acoustic guitar, stumbling along trying to find some kind of idea that you like and then coming up finding some kind of stumbling, lyrical process and groove. In many ways it hasn’t changed that much, that’s still what I do. You have different tools, sometimes you can work with machines. Sometimes it’s good and I might come up with a good song by the end of the day. And then if you co write, which I don’t do very much of, but if you do that, then it’s a different dynamic as well where you’re bouncing ideas off of each other and it tends to be a different kind of process. The whole idea is to try to come up with something that you feel has substance, you know? And something that makes you feel good when you play it.

What inspires you to write a new song?

Well, I don’t necessarily believe in the idea that you need to be inspired to write a song. It’s my job really. I just like doing it. I was always drawn to doing it. If I had some time to just sit around, filling in the time and space with playing a little guitar and an idea would pop up and hopefully you’d end up with a song after a few hours or a few days or a few years depending on the song. Sometimes you get moments of inspirations but their all clichés now of course. They tend to happen more when you’re working or active in some way, you’re moving and already trying to be creative in some way, shape or form. And there’s an argument for creating some kind of stillness – which I like. By that I mean, something like making sure your bills are paid, because that can create some kind of chaos, you know? So I like having an emptiness, I don’t like having things come in that are intrusive and that are boring. It’s mainly like creating time. What I usually do is, when I’m traveling, I get little ideas. And as I’m sitting around playing guitar or when I’m doing sound checks, just trying to get my fingers moving a little bit – I put them down on a little tape recorder, listen back to them later and try to finish them if they’re worth finishing.

Is there an album or specific song that you are most proud of and if so, why?

I like the last album that I did, Gathering Mercury. I think that was a good one.

Was there any specific inspiration behind that album?

I wouldn’t call it so much inspiration, but an emotional context in a way. My father had just died and it didn’t matter if I was consciously trying to write about that or not, that’s what was surrounding me inside and out, with the fact that he was gone. He was a great singer and a great dancer and an unfulfilled artist in some ways, I feel. And so in many ways, when he went, I felt that I was helped by him – in another worldly fashion. Or maybe I created that, but it doesn’t really matter. It was only me, bringing him back to life. When I was recording, I was thinking about him a lot. I wasn’t really thinking about the fact that he was dead. I was really thinking about his life and the decisions that he had made that affected us all, even geographically – like moving to Australia.

“Dear Father” is obviously quite personal and special. When you performed it at the show, it was quite clear that you were getting choked up and emotional.

Yeah, we all share the fact that we’re going to die. It’s that thing in the back of your mind that this is all going to end at some point. You wonder what are we going to do at this point and what are we going to do to fill in the time. Time becomes a bit more precious when you lose people too. You just think, well – this is it. This is all they have to offer.

How did you become interested in becoming a musician?

Well, my mother and father had a music shop from when I was five until I was fourteen and music was always surrounding me. It must have been in my DNA, you know? My father could sing and dance. My mother could sing. And being in Scotland, a lot of musicians come out of there. I don’t know. It wasn’t something I was ever consciously thinking of – it was just something that I was always going to do.

Do you remember your first live performance as a solo artist after Men At Work initially disbanded?

Well, the thing is Men At Work was really the punctuation mark. I started playing solo many, many years before Men At Work. I was on my own and really only briefly in a band in a way. I started playing when I was fourteen years old, solo guitar and singing. I did that for about, oh – fifteen years before the band even happened. That was really my natural game and the band was really the punctuation when we got really famous. I still have bands. I still work with them sometimes. I like it and I still record with musicians, but it feels very natural for me to be on my own, you know?

 You give a very humble nod to Zach Braff and how enthusiastic he was about incorporating your music into his projects, Garden State & Scrubs. Do you consider this a pivotal point in your solo career?

Yes, because you have to figure out how to stay alive. That was really an organic thing. It wasn’t part of my plan. I was playing live and just trying to survive because I wasn’t being played on the radio at all, except for the Men At Work tunes – and I wasn’t going to get anything new played on the radio. So when Zach came along and put that stuff on the television, it was an amazing promotional device – organically. It was very important for me.

“Waiting For My Real Life To Begin” kills me every time I listen to it. There’s a kind of magic with that one.

The story behind that one was simply that back in 1993 I was trying to figure out how to still have a career of sorts. I was freshly dropped from MCA records and I didn’t have and could not get a manager. I couldn’t get an agent and no agent was interested in booking me. I was just on my own and sitting around and working with a friend of mine – sitting around waiting for something to happen and I realized that nothing does happen if you’re just sitting around. So you have to actually do something to create your own destiny. So the song is about what a lot of people actually do, that they think about the past and think about the future – feeling that everything is going to be fine if I can win that hand or whatever. Everyone is always looking for the easy win you know? (Insert more laughter.) You know what I mean? People don’t intend to actually inhabit the moment. They’re always thinking about what’s around the corner or what’s behind – so, they miss out on the resonance or the fullness of the moment.

The music business has changed drastically since your first album was released over 30 years ago. How do you feel about it? How has it changed the way that you operate?

Oh I don’t know. I don’t really think about it that much. It’s not something I thought about much back then. It’s not something that I find particularly interesting. I just like writing, recording songs and trying to get them out there. I mean, I’m signed to a label and I guess you have to come up with different ways of marketing, promoting and so forth. You know, some people are every good it. They’re good at all that social media stuff, but look, writing song is writing a song. You have different tools to do it with. Sometimes it’s fifteen writers or one writer with real instruments, but ultimately you’re just trying to write something that is memorable.

Record labels are what they are. You could talk for ages about them. But I don’t find it particularly interesting. You know, they fucked up because they didn’t understand the power of the internet and hoped it would go away. It was a very inefficient industry and now a lot of those record labels that were there are gone now and they’ve had to figure out something else to do. Record labels still perform functions.

I don’t know about radio. You see, I’m not really involved in radio. I don’t know what radio does anymore. I don’t get played on the radio very much, and so I have a very old-fashioned approach – which is really to go out and try to find my audience and go to them. It’s taken me about twenty years to build up an audience of about 1,000 people – like you saw the other night. It’s taken me twenty years to do that. Maybe it’ll grow more, maybe not. Maybe I’ll get played on the radio, have a hit song – or maybe this is it. In many ways, this is the only way that I know. It’s not particularly efficient, but it’s real – you know what I mean. I know that I can come back to Boston and there won’t all of a sudden just be ten people in the audience, because you build up a solid foundation of real fans, triggering real shows and you build up a connection and that doesn’t tend to go away.

What do you enjoy most about being an artist? Is it the craft, the songwriting, recording or performing?

Well, the fact that I’ve never had to be part of the straight world – I like that. Growing up, in a way – I never really had to do that. It’s a simplification I suppose. I never really wanted to be a banker. I don’t have to go and deal with people I don’t want to deal with. I don’t have to turn up and talk to some guy I don’t want to talk to or do something that I don’t want to do. I pretty much get up in the morning and do whatever the fuck I want, whenever I want to – you know? And so, I really like that!

How are you feeling about the current leg of the tour?

Well it’s done. So I’m feeling great. I did ten shows in eleven days. You know, that’s pretty full-on with five six hour drives every day. So it’s not for the feint-hearted.

You perform quite a few shows, night after night – and you’re up on stage by yourself. What keeps you going? How do you keep your stamina up?

You just have to get your sleep and pace yourself and just staying healthy, you know? That’s really the main thing. Finding and eating good food is very difficult.

What are your plans for after this tour?

Well, I’ve only got a couple of weeks off and then I go over to the UK. Then I’ll be done in December. I’m going to write new songs and go into the studio and hopefully have something new by the start of 2015.