As The Go-Betweens release their most comprehensive retrospective to date, Quiet Heart: The Best of The Go-Betweens, Sean Sennett sits down with Robert Forster and asks the songwriter to discuss several Forster-McLennan jewels.
“Spring Rain”
I wrote that one in London in the summer of ’85. It was a turn in my songwriting in a way. It was a song that reminded me fairly quickly, especially the chorus, of Creedence Clearwater Revival. They had “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain.” If you’re going to write a Creedence song put the word rain in the song title.
“Bachelor Kisses”
I think it’s one of a number of songs from Grant trying to map out what’s going on in a romance and how it works. You’re in a band and you’re going from city to city and how do you build a relationship? All of that went into a lot of songs that he had, all the way through his career, but there’s quite a lot of them in the early ’80s, early to mid ’80s.
“Head Full of Steam”
I married the sort of feeling in my songwriting in the late ’70s with where I was then. I started to write more melodically again. I sort of had learned a lot. People who listened to our first couple of albums would have thought Forster’s this weird ballady guy and McLennan’s this super melodic guy. But then I was the super melodic guy in the late ’70s. I sort of went back to it.
“Streets of Your Town”
This is probably the most controversial song of the whole career. It was the one song Grant didn’t play to me before recording, which caused some tension at the time when we were putting together 16 Lovers Lane. Mark Wallace, the producer, had heard it and wanted it on the album. It was a weird thing, and I still don’t know to this day why Grant didn’t play it to me – no idea.
“Dive For Your Memory”
That’s a really good eight-chord progression for me for a change. That was the big ballad of 16 Lovers Lane. Again like quite a classic song. A lot of people could cover that. It’s a recognisable lyric and feeling behind the song, and it stays true to itself and melodically it’s strong.
“Cattle and Cane”
Grant knocked me out with this. This was something that I didn’t see coming and he just played it to me and it’s all to do with his childhood, which I’d heard no one really do in song anywhere in the history of rock. He just did it. Going back, there’s not a song so poignant and beautiful about when you are eight, 10 years old. You don’t see that song in Dylan’s catalogue or Paul Simon or Springsteen really. It’s something that he came up with and I recognised it.
“Quiet Heart”
Once Grant started a relationship with Amanda [Brown], he started to write a number of straight-out love songs that were obvious to me and everyone else in the band and probably people who were following the band. It really starts with “Right Here” and then there’s “Love Goes On” and “Quiet Heart” and to an extent “Streets of Your Town” are all written about Amanda, and “The Devil’s Eye”, that’s all about her too.
Quiet Heart: The Best of The Go-Betweens with bonus live disc Vienna Burns is out now through EMI
