Colin Hay is and forever will be “Colin Hay of Men at Work.”
That’s how he’s marketed. That’s how people refer to him. And that’s factually who he is: Colin Hay, the former lead singer of Men at Work, the Australian new wave band that exploded into worldwide stardom in 1981 and quietly faded away five years later.
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But I don’t care about any of that. I’m not into nostalgia for its own sake, and frankly, new wave – the early-’80s punk offshoot for people who thought punk was too punk – doesn’t do much for me. Men at Work had a couple of catchy songs (the Aussie rallying cry “Down Under,” the paranoia classic “Who Can It Be Now?” and the quintessentially ’80s pop hit “Overkill”), but that was 30 years ago.
What’s much more interesting is that Hay, who didn’t find much initial success in his solo career, nevertheless continued writing and performing new music. He played to near-empty rooms for years. He developed perspective and became a great storyteller.
Hay’s new album, “Next Year People,” is a plainspoken but fully felt reflection on the human condition. It is remarkably well-written. He believes it’s his best work, and he’s probably right.
He’s at The Seasons Performance Hall on Saturday, following a two-day stint at Seattle’s revered Benaroya Hall. And this summer he’s headed out on tour with Violent Femmes and Barenaked Ladies.
“Every tour has gotten better,” Hay said in a phone interview earlier this week. “The numbers of people coming have gone up. … It’s heartening and very fulfilling in that regard.”
It happened slowly, though. He remembers playing for crowds of 35 or 40 people.
“They looked like they were slightly embarrassed for me,” he says.
But he focused on those 35 or 40, made them feel like they were all part of the same team. He shared his new songs with them. He told funny stories from his days as a rock star.
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“It was funny, and people started responding to it,” Hay says. “Now it’s woven its way into the show without me really trying to do it. … The whole idea of it is also to try and realize, when you’re up there on the stage performing, the show is really about the audience.”
He worked on writing better songs with each new solo album, transitioning from rock star to craftsman. Word of mouth circulated about his humorous and thoughtful performances and material. His solo work began to gain the following it deserved. Light appeared at the end of the tunnel.
Hay, who has lived in Los Angeles since the 1980s, started getting bit-part acting gigs after Men at Work broke up in 1986. And, as he slowly rebuilt his musical career as a solo act, he got some help from film and television. He appeared three times on the TV show “Scrubs,” and his unrepentantly (and winningly) sentimental song “I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You” was included on the soundtrack of “Scrubs” star Zach Braff’s indie hit “Garden State” in 2004. Those appearances and that soundtrack, which went platinum and won a Grammy, introduced Hay to a new generation.
That’s not to say he’ll ever be the kind of star he was in the early 1980s. Men at Work’s 1981 album, “Business as Usual,” sold more than 6 million copies in the United States alone. The 1983 follow-up, “Cargo,” sold more than 3 million in the U.S.
“It is an interesting thing to have had that and then for it to just go away,” Hay said. “It’s always tinged with sadness in a way. We were five or six guys and we didn’t really know what had happened to us in a way. What happened to us was extraordinary.
“And then it kind of turned into ‘Spinal Tap’ without the gags. … I like the music we made. I like the records we made, but it wasn’t a band that was made to stand the test of time.”
He wishes they’d negotiated a better record deal. But he’s never gone hungry and he doesn’t resent the band or its success.
“We still were kings of the world for a few days,” Hay says.
The 20 years or so after the breakup were difficult at times, commercially and creatively. But that’s part of the life experience that created the new “Next Year People” album. There are themes of deep, soul-searching regret on the album in songs such as “If I Had Been a Better Man,” “I Want You Back” and “Lived in Vain.” But there is also a through-line of hope, especially in the title track.
“Next Year People,” inspired by Ken Burns’ documentary “The Dust Bowl,” is a testament to the power of hope in the face of hopelessness. The bittersweet chorus reflects that:
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“Next year, everything will come good./The rains, they will fall and we’ll dance on the hood./We’ll fill up our bellies with plentiful food./We’ll eat drink and be merry./Yeah, next year, people, wait and see./We are next year people, you and me.”
Left unspoken is the knowledge that maybe next year won’t be better, that pressing on against the odds doesn’t always yield results. But the key to the song is in its first line, “You can’t live without hope that things will change for the better” – the idea that hope itself is a sustaining force, buried deep in the human condition.
It was inspired by the Burns documentary, but it’s an apt metaphor for Hay’s post-Men at Work years.
“In a much, much smaller way in my own life, I kept on thinking to myself, ‘Why?’ as I continued to go on the road all the time, and it’s not getting any better,” Hay says. “Is it just habit? In the end you just continue. That’s some kind of testament to tenacity or something.”
If you go
WHAT: Colin Hay
WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday
WHERE: The Seasons Performance Hall, 101 N. Naches Ave.
TICKETS: $25 in advance, $32 day of show
INFORMATION: www.colinhay.com, www.theseasonsyakima.com, 509-453-1888
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHO
