There are few bands in Australian Rock history that have enjoyed as robust and colourful career as the Hoodoo Gurus. Releasing eight studio albums and six collections over two decades, without doubt, the Hoodoo Gurus is one of those bands that live on in the national psyche. Anthems like What’s My Scene, Miss Free Love, My Girl and 1000 Miles can’t help but be entangled somewhere in the memories of a whole generation of Australians.

Talking to front man and founding member Dave Faulkner, I embarrassedly admitted I was confused as to the current status of the band. Are they together or not??

In 1997, when the band set out on their second Brazil tour, they had already announced their break up, but it was during this tour, Faulkner admits, they actually began doubting the decision, “they [the Brazilians] said ‘you just can’t break up, it won’t work…you must come back to Brazil’”. According to Faulkner, that was the moment he felt a real yearning for what they were about to give up, “That was the only thing. Even though we were having a fantastic time and had never played better I thought, it was a feeling of satisfaction that ‘yeah, we did it right’ rather than waiting until people didn’t like us anymore or whatever and sort of whimpering away…it was just right and I was really happy with that”.

And so in 1997 the band embarked on a huge top to tail farewell tour of Australia called Spit the Dummy, ending in January 1998. And that was it – for the moment. “Of course we all did other things afterwards – I did the Antenna thing and Brad did The Monarchs... we were moving on.”

But that was all to change. An offer they received in 2001 was to prove too difficult to turn down. And around four years since calling it quits, they were back, at the 2001 Homebake Festival. The band was as shocked as anyone:

“They just called us out of the blue, and you know we’d never been asked to do any of those sorts of shows before… Homebake or Big Day Out or anything…in a way we had a question in our minds as to why we weren’t good enough or we weren’t in their sort of demographic. We didn’t understand it.”

Faulkner describes the performance, after years of being overlooked, as a “bit of a vindication” but also a challenge. No band wants to be a failure in a post break up performance – even if it is a one off, but I got the feeling that what really drove the Hoodoo Gurus out of retirement was more than an offer “too hard to knock back” but the initial doubts the band had experienced back in Brazil, along with the realisation that they could do other things if they wanted (because they had).

So they embraced the challenge, playing a few warm up gigs in Perth before banging it out in front of a massive Homebake crowd, alongside a mostly new generation of music talent. They nailed it. Anyone who suggested they’d had their day was way off the mark.

”...people are starting to write you off and say ah yes the new breed is where it’s at and the Gurus – who are they?...and So we thought to come out there and sort of square off in front of the cream of Australian talent and see how we hold up – I thought it was a pretty big challenge.”

It was during the time of Homebake that the band realised they “really hadn’t lost a thing”. Faulkner remembers the moment he seriously questioned the break up:

“Why am I depriving myself of this much enjoyment? What’s the reason? And the reason was that I thought ‘well you said you’d broken up – that’s it. You can’t go back on your word’”.

Faulkner had written a collection of songs that just weren’t working with other musicians: “It was obvious they were Hoodoo Gurus material, but they weren’t written with the Hoodoo Gurus in mind so that was kind of nice too”. Those songs, which initially gave Faulkner the impetus to reform the band, became the bands first studio album in over eight years, Mach Schau. On their ‘comeback’ Faulkner is philosophical, “Who cares what the public or critics say about it. If you don’t like it, don’t go…”

Strangely, in an interview with ABC radio last year, guitarist Brad Shepherd attributed the break up to “musical differences” with reference to Faulkner’s “disappearing into club land” while Faulkner maintained that he felt “written out” and had gone through a “mini midlife crisis”. Perhaps it was the pressures of such a lengthy artistic relationship and the need to have more external personal projects, which instigated the end of the band that had catapulted them to fame individually. In any case, whether they are or aren’t is irrelevant believes Faulkner,

“Now we’re not going to do anything like announce a break up or anything like that because it’s just not relevant anymore. If we play we play if we don’t we don’t – no big deal…We’re together if we feel like it”

It’s an interesting point. In an industry where marketing can take over there is certainly a pressure to be all there or not. One can’t help but wonder if Faulkner’s desire to ‘leave on a high’ actually reflected a possible terror of falling out of favour with the public, a public that in reality wasn’t ready to let them go. It’s the kind of fear that no doubt increases with time. I asked him about the song Sour Grapes from their last album – he admits to having written “a few songs about the evil business in one way or another.” Was the song about the tall poppy syndrome, about the flack that comes part and parcel with the industry?

“Yeah, a bit of that – and also about ageism as well, because there are people judging you on how old you are rather than what your music sounds like. Saying someone’s a brilliant writer because they’re young, or someone’s a shit writer because they’re old, it makes no difference – it’s still wrong.”

In fact, it seems that the Hoodoo Gurus have never been too concerned with fitting a mould. Musically they came from the ‘80’s vibrant Sydney pub scene with their first gig being played at the University of Technology. Faulkner enthusiastically recalls the energy of that period:

”...it didn’t matter how inept a musician you were if you had an idea for a band and some sort of…need to get up there and make a fool of yourself, go ahead…There were bands twinkling out of existence at a daily rate and just this feeling that anyone could do it and there were all these influences and styles. It was really a great, great period”

The music scene was also notoriously incestuous with musical headhunting commonplace. The four original members came from Perth, had rich musical pasts; Dave Faulkner in The Victims, James Baker (drummer) also from The Victims and The Scientists, Kimble Rendall in XL Capris, and Roddy Radalj in The Scientists and The Rockets, just to name a few. The ‘Gurus evolved from Sydney’s inner city suburb, Surry Hills forming their own answer to what they saw as a gap in the Australian scene at that time:

“The two big scenes in Sydney as far as the new music goes…it was kind of like all the bands that want to be Radio Birdman inheritors (and the Hitmen were one of these bands), and then all these other bands that were more art rock playing all these weird synthesisers and stuff which…eventually morphed into the dance music scene. But there wasn’t much in between as far as the mainstream goes”.

The Hoodoo Gurus were kitschy punk, garage rock, pop, ‘60’s glam and trashy as hell and they didn’t give a damn about the marketing wheels of the music game. High priority was given to reaching as many people as they could and they toured extensively throughout Australia. In a sense Faulkner identifies this was spurred by his own beginnings in the city of Perth, which tended to get skipped on the musical tour circuit. He initially moved to Sydney “because there was no way on earth I was going to get a record deal from there”. Thankfully that’s not the case today he notes, “it doesn’t matter where you come from now, you can still get a record deal and develop in your own space”.

Over such a long career, there have been many changes. In fact only Dave Faulkner remains as a founding member. It’s not always easy, he concedes, “in the early days you tend to be a bit glib about it [their leaving] and just sort of think ah we’ll just replace them but it’s such a huge change.” Things didn’t work out with drummer James Baker, “James has a really unique style. He’s really fantastic, but unfortunately he lost interest in the band”. According to Faulkner the clenching moment was Baker’s reluctance to use their collateral to fund a tour – he wanted to split it. He was also viewed by the band as “a bit of an audience snob”. Mark Kingsmill took over after his departure.

Kimble Redall left also to forge a successful career in film making. And after Roddy Radalj left, they replaced him with bass player Clyde Bramley (prior to this they had been bass-less), however just before their tour, he quit. It was the addition of Brad Shepherd on guitar that really changed things for Faulkner who admits he dates the band from this point.

“The band really crystallised then. Before that it was sort of flailing around and having fun and a lot of the songs were on that first album, Stoneage Romeos, which had a lot of personality, but the identity of the band was a little bit unfocused.”

Now in 2005 we see a DVD called Tunnel Vision, “It’s something we’d be talking about for quite some time”, a retrospective DVD on their two decades of work including video clips, vintage material capturing the vibrancy of the pub scene and other live shows, and a documentary called “Be My Guru”:

“Emi just took us by surprise with the whole documentary thing – we didn’t know they were making it…I mean they wanted to interview us, but I thought it was for some little sub menu or something”

Members of You Am I, Spiderbait, The Scientists and the Bangles, among many others, speak glowingly about what The Hoodoo Gurus have meant to them. “Hearing things like that was great. Obviously you don’t ask people, ‘Hey what do you think of me?’ Don’t you love me?” (laughing)

Viewing today’s scene in a positive light Faulkner believes that underground music now takes a real place:

“I reckon our side won. The battle of music was being fought – when we started it was all bands like The Thompson Twins and crap like that which were the mainstream and record companies were waving cheques…by and large the underground music has become the mainstream. Bands that were like us were virtually invisible back then, but now they’re everywhere”.

On the way bands are being marketed today in Australia he is firm, “We could only come from Hoodoo Guru world really…I just want bands to stay true to their personality…as long as their identity is from the music rather than the marketing…”. If anyone is qualified to give advice on musical integrity it’s the Hoodoo Gurus. In their twenty year career the biggest personality in the band, maintains Faulkner, is still the band itself. Nobody sounds quite like them.

So what now? What’s planned for the Gurus?

“Whether we do stuff in the future, I don’t know…whether it’s the occasional gig or a full fledged tour. If someone that we admire rings us up and says come and support us on a tour we’d probably jump at the chance – it’s really an open question”

Tunnel Vision - DVD is three hours on the couch with one of the world’s greatest rock & roll bands.Check out the review of the DVD HERE