Hilltop Hoods on hangovers, home crowds … and bats under the bed

Middle age hasn’t slowed the Hilltop Hoods’ Suffa – but it’s made him realise the “debt” a big night out comes with. That hasn’t stopped him keeping a bat under his mattress.

Hilltop Hoods perform during the 33rd Annual ARIA Music Awards in 2019. Picture: AAP / Brendon Thorne

Matt Lambert – aka Suffa – remembers going to the Adelaide Entertainment Centre as a kid to see New York hip hop legends the Beastie Boys.

On Saturday night Suffa and the Hilltop Hoods will sell out the same venue, and not for the first time.

The group – Suffa, Dan Smith (Pressure) and Barry Francis (DJ Debris) – have cemented themselves as the biggest drawcard in the nation, packing the country’s biggest stadiums and claiming more No1 albums than any band in Australian history.

At the end of the day, though, it’s still all a bit surreal for the lads who still call Adelaide home.

“For me, playing the Entertainment Centre is like a kid going to the MCG when they were little and then getting to play there for the Demons or something,” Suffa says.

“It’s part of our history, part of our past, and that makes it more special.”

Pressure says he and Suffa do occasionally stop and pinch themselves and give thanks for their good fortune.

“At the end of the day it comes down to avoiding day jobs,” Pressure laughs.

“When we started we’d have conversations like, ‘there’s no way we’re going to be doing this in another five to 10 years’. Ten years later we were like, ‘there’s NO WAY we’re going to be doing this in another five to 10 years’. We know it’s not going to last forever, but it just keeps going.”

The Hilltop Hoods – Barry Francis (DJ Debris), Matt Lambert (Suffa) and Dan Smith (Pressure) above the rooftops of Adelaide. Picture: Matt Turner

Suffa agrees, adding he did more than enough day jobs before making it in music to last him a lifetime.

“I’m done,” he says. “The worst job I ever had was probably in London where I had a job peeling off the giant advertising stickers on the side of trains. They didn’t give you gloves or tools or anything, and you’d peel off layers of skin. You lost a layer of epidermis for every toothpaste ad, then they threw you, like, a couple of shillings or something.”

The Hoods’ new single – A Whole Day’s Night – is, sonically, a sister track to their party anthem What A Great Night. Lyrically, though, it’s a different kettle of fish, reflecting a new reality – two dads in their mid-forties with a very different attitude to a big night out.

“It’s not that we can’t party anymore, it’s more that we shouldn’t. I wrote it and I was like, ‘this is What A Great Night Part 2’. And I realised I didn’t want to write that anymore, so I scrapped it rewrote it,” Suffa says of the track which features lyrics like:

Hopin’ I don’t make the news or The Betoota with the lunatics

Only came for a couple, we escalated to doubles

My credit card is ablaze and what did I gain from my troubles

But a day of struggle?

“It’s the biological debt,” Suffa says.

“Whatever you take out of yourself on a weekend or a celebration, you owe. You have to pay the ferryman. The best way to look at it is everything in moderation, except moderation. There’ll be no moderation in Adelaide though.”

Pressure performing at the 2019 ARIA Awards. Picture: AAP Image/Brendon Thorne

A Whole Day’s Night is the second single from the Hoods’ upcoming album, scheduled for release in the new year, the first being Show Business – a track that provided an interesting insight into the private lives of group.

Suffa raps:

Well, nowadays fans have too much access

To the point I had a man come to my address

To the point I hid a bat under my mattress

To the point I had to lance this rancid abscess

So … is there still a bat under the mattress?

“Yeah, it’s still there,” Suffa says.

“That verse in particular was about people who come in to your orbit when you’re in music or media or whatever, and I have had … let’s put it this way, one of God’s Children … show up at my doorstep.”

It’s symptomatic, both artists say, of the modern erosion of privacy.

“People know details about your life that they would have never had before,” Suffa says.

“Over the past 20 years everyone’s fourth wall has come down. We all – not just us – had this perimeter around us of privacy around us. Not any more.”

Pressure agrees.

“I hope that track didn’t come off as to cynical,” he says.

“But everything you do that’s connected to your career needs to have an off switch or it takes over your life.”

Back in the day – Pressure and Suffa with the Black Eyed Peas before the 2004 Big Day Out.

The Hoods, though, are famous for giving back to their legion of fans – provided they don’t show up on their doorstep – and have made a point of staying in their hometown when relocating to the east coast may have made sense from a career perspective.

“There’s nothing like playing at home,” Suffa says.

“Having the family there, the close friends.”

Pressure says there were actually two new Hoods records in the pipeline – a new studio LP set to drop in the new year and a “restrung” record that will feature tracks from that record and the last album, The Great Expanse.

The Hilltop Hoods, Adelaide Entertainment Centre, Saturday night (SOLD OUT) and Handpicked Festival, Lake Breeze Wines, November 12 (SOLD OUT, with the exception of some premium packages)