A fond farewell to an old friend
Saturday April 19 2008
What do you do if you're one half of a magisterial songwriting team enjoying a creative Indian Summer after many years apart ... only to then lose your partner out of the blue. This is the position that Robert Forster found himself in when his lifelong friend and creative foil Grant McLennan passed away long before his time of a heart attack on May 6, 2006.
Amongst the indie pop community, the news was greeted with shock and sadness, and thousands of fans from all over the world posted their messages of support on the Go-Betweens' website. It was clear, reading the forum, just how wide the Brisbane band's reach had been; from Dublin to Dusseldorf to Darwin, heartfelt condolences and fond reminiscences flowed in.
Robert Forster says he found the fans' reaction "enormously touching" and inspirational. After retreating for a period to grieve and take stock, Forster this week releases his first album, called The Evangelist, since the demise of the Go-Betweens; it's also his first solo record in 12 years ( the last was Warm Nights in 1996).
Yet Grant McLennan remains a real presence on this record. Three of the songs were co- written by the late Go-Between, while at least two -- It Ain't Easy and From Ghost Town, which close the album -- are clearly about him. Speaking down a phone line from a London hotel, Forster -- who celebrated his 50th birthday last June -- says he is proud of his new album.
"I always knew I'd make another record, if only to record some of the songs that Grant had," says Forster. "They weren't complete, though. Grant had the melody and the song structure. And he had the choruses. And on one song, Demon Days, he had the first five lines of the lyric.
"I'd also had some songs at this time that I'd written before he passed away. And then I wrote some songs in the last year and a half.
"They come from a variety of times and so the album is sort of a combination of those."
Indeed, there is a certain degree of continuity: the musicians who made up the last incarnation of the Go-Betweens, Adele Pickvance and Glenn Thompson, are also present here, and producer Mark Wallis, who helmed the band's glorious swansong Oceans Apart (2005) as well as the evergreen 16 Lovers Lane (1988) is once again behind the controls, along with Dave Ruffy.
The most striking song on the album is Forster's lament for his lost friend, From Ghost Town, a haunting (and haunted) elegy in blue played on piano, harmonica, cello and violins (with wonderfully ethereal backing vocals) that fairly chokes you up. Grant is remembered in all his complexity, warts and all. It's an extremely moving tribute, and a brave one.
"It was the last song I wrote on the album," he says. "It really just fell out of the sky. I thought the album was going to have nine songs. And then I wrote From Ghost Town and it struck me as an extraordinary song.
"It was almost like I could just stand outside myself and look at the song. And it just seemed so big. It made me very, very happy. It was a very difficult song to write lyrically; musically, it was easy. Normally, it's the other way around for me. Normally the melody is the hardest thing. But I went through about three drafts and used a combination of those three writings."
Another standout song on the album is the title track, where Forster ponders his family's move from his wife's native Germany back to his native Australia.
"In 2001, what drew me and my family -- my wife (Karin) and my children -- to a large extent, was re-starting the Go-Betweens with Grant (the group had disbanded in 1989). To me, if the Go-Betweens were to exist, then Grant and me had to be in the same town. Grant felt this too. The Go-Betweens could never be done by correspondence.
"We had romantic notions about the band that were too high for something like that. We had to be experiencing the same weather, seeing the same things over a year, before we go into the studio. It had to have that commitment."
Were your family understanding about that?
(Laughs nervously) "For the most part, yes," he says. "It's a constant theme with relationships where the people are from different countries: Where should we live? Whose parents are going to be disappointed? Who's going to have to leave their friends behind? -- all of these questions.
"Obviously with the passing of Grant, what I thought life was going to be like there -- I thought that we'd be making more albums for at least another six or seven years and so you plan that into the city and into the life of those around you. And you think, 'Okay, this is what it's gonna be like. Grant's happy, I'm happy. We'll make great music together. We're strongly into a second wave of albums here ... ' That's now gone.
"But Brisbane and the way things have panned out recently has been very heartening, and it feels good." 'The Evangelist' is out now on Tag5
- Nick Kelly
