Tallulah by the Go-Betweens
(Beggars Banquet/ 1987)

Firstly, it’s only fitting that at the beginning of an article which details the not-insignificant impact of the Go-Betweens on my life, I should use this opportunity to express my sadness at the untimely death of the band’s co-frontman and co-songwriter, Grant McLennan.

Grant died of a heart attack in his sleep in May 2006, aged 48, at a time when the band were at last reaping the financial rewards that had long been their due on the back of a critical reputation which had burgeoned since their original split in 1989. But as well as feelings of sorrow, McLennan's passing serves to remind me that I am at an age now where increasing numbers of the musical heroes of my salad days (Joe Strummer, John McGeoch, Killing Joke’s Paul Raven and most of The Ramones to name but a few) are succumbing quietly to natural causes rather than the ravages of rock ‘n’ roll excess. Not that one can really imagine Mr McLennan snorting cocaine from the pert posteriors of naked groupies or driving cars into hotel swimming pools.

Dispiritingly, having become increasingly smitten with the band since first hearing the gorgeously plaintive, "Part Company", on the John Peel show back in 1984, the Go-Betweens have been one musical tipple I’ve been forced to imbibe alone down the years. Or at least out of earshot of the modest number of girlfriends I’ve shared my life with since that time: women of vastly different character and temperament who, without being aware of it, have presented a united front in their withering indifference to the achingly romantic songs of these troubadours from down under.

Take, as a case in point, the reaction of she who is now my wife. In any new relationship, alongside the fevered physicality comes the no less important process of cultural disclosure, whereby you endeavour to cement your union by finding common currency in such things as films, books, art, favourite types of cuisine etc. And so, recognising that the new lady in my life was a voracious reader but wasn’t quite as clued-up about music as I felt she ought to be,
I was convinced that she’d fall hook line and sinker for the passionate, literate pop of The Go-Betweens. After all, wasn’t the
B-side of the band’s first single, "Lee Remick", all about the singer’s love of a female librarian who, "Helps me find Hemingway/ Helps me find Genet/ Helps me find Brecht/ Helps me find Chandler/ Helps me find James Joyce/ She always makes the right choice"?

And so, by way of an introduction to the band, I bought her a copy of Bellavista Terrace: Best of The Go-Betweens imagining that she’d play it and instantly smile at how in tune we were with each other in terms of our tastes and outlook on life. How wrong I was… She eventually confessed a few weeks down the line that she didn’t actually like the album.
‘Why does the guy have to sing in such a whiney middle class accent?’ she asked of the slightly fruity vocal delivery of Robert Forster.
‘He’s not middle class — he’s Australian,’ I answered sulkily.

Since that time, I’ve reluctantly had to conclude that chicks just don’t dig the Go-Betweens and that perhaps the band’s natural audience really are the kind of shy, yearning, painfully sensitive blokes whose spirits are regularly crushed by witnessing their willowy muses eschew their poetry in favour of throwing themselves at some inarticulate lunk of the sports field who’s probably also mean to animals. Oh, cruel, cruel world!

I even asked a former rock critic female friend her opinion of the band, and she confirmed that in her opinion, there was indeed something a little limp about the Go-Betweens. And yet, even now — whilst acknowledging that Robert Forster’s vocal delivery can occasionally sound a little whiney — I maintain that she, my wife and all of my former girlfriends are simply wrong. For although this particular album was recorded in 1987, the year following the NME’s era-defining C86 cassette compilation, it’s a world away from the consciously fey constructs of many other indie bands of the time such as The June Brides, Close Lobsters and the early Primal Scream. For in spite of the undoubted poppiness of many of the band’s tunes, there’s an underlying gravitas to the music of the Go-Betweens.

Certainly, there’s a manifest sensitivity within Forster and McLennan's lyrics, particularly in their willingness to portray women as fully rounded characters rather than simply as objects of lust and desire. But there’s a distinct darkness in there too. For rather than being simply about love, more often than not the songs of the Go-Betweens deal with the jealousy, destruction, psychic violence and personal desolation that often accompanies falling in and out of love. Not for nothing did the band take their name from LP Hartley’s novel about the psychological scars which accompany a premature loss of childhood innocence. And the attendant sense that the past is indeed a foreign country is evocatively encapsulated in Go-Betweens’ songs such as "Cattle and Cane", "River of Money" and "The Clarke Sisters" which to my mind capture something of the rural gothic of the writer William Faulkner, or the ‘dirty realism’ of Raymond Carver.

And if that weren’t enough, The Go-Betweens — or more specifically Robert Forster — just happen to be responsible for one of my all time favourite lines in a song: "In La Brisa De La Palma/ A teenage Rasputin takes the sting from a gin."
Even now, two decades after first hearing it I can’t decide whether it’s a brilliantly ripe piece of descriptive poetry or just plain preposterous. But I guess ultimately it doesn’t really matter.

When I went to see the Go-Betweens play in Manchester on 1 May 1987, I’d neither thought nearly so deeply as to why I liked the band or realised that my initial liking for the Go-Betweens would develop into such an enduring passion. I was at college at the time in an unprepossessing town situated roughly halfway between Manchester and Liverpool. And unable to convince anyone else to come with me, I went alone. Not that I was displeased to be doing so.

Earlier in the week I’d read a review of a Go-Betweens gig in London which made reference to a fan having travelled alone all the way from Scotland to see it. Duly impressed with what I considered to be a heroic act of devotion, I sought to capture something of that same spirit. But even though I’d travelled less than 20 miles,
I wanted other gig-goers – and better still the band themselves – to acknowledge my solitary presence and credit me as a fan apart. Instead, I spent an otherwise enjoyable gig getting slightly sloshed as a way of overcoming my feelings of self-consciousness. And afterwards I made an unconvincing, tongue-tied attempt to engage Robert Forster in a meaningful dialogue at the merchandise table. Unfortunately, Forster just looked at me a little puzzled so I just got him to sign the cover of the single I’d bought and left.  
     
Having missed the last train home, I avoided a night on the streets through being lucky enough to find a friend of a friend at home in his digs in Whalley Range. And though a little surprised to find me on his doorstep at gone midnight, he was good enough to offer me the settee for the night. Which left me feeling sufficiently refreshed to give a reasonable account of myself in the annual Sporties Vs Radicals college football match the following afternoon. This was an annual end of year grudge match in which old scores were often settled with such vigour that participants were frequently carried bloodied from the pitch.

These informal non-college sanctioned games always followed the same pattern. The radicals (dressed in black and comprised of a motley bunch of anarchists, arty types, indie kids and the odd lesbian) would surprise their opponents by displaying some dazzlingly individual skills while racing into a 3-0 lead in the first 15 minutes. Unfortunately, this would encourage all of the team to then go in search of solo glory. Following which, lacking the stamina and defensive discipline of the sports students, the score would usually end up something like 11-4 in favour of the sporties.

And so, 21 years since it was released, it strikes me as somehow incongruous that an album co-written by such a pair of romantic outsiders as Grant McLennan and Robert Forster, should become inexplicably linked in my mind to a rough and tumble game of football — albeit one which was played with an appropriately maverick spirit by our team. But then, such are the vagaries of memory.

Picture of the Go-Betweens courtesy of LO-MAX Records.

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