All grown-up boy band Human Nature returns for anniversary tour

Former boy band Human Nature is all grown up and the men are back in Australia for a 30th anniversary tour.

Michael Tierney, Toby Allen, Andrew Tierney and Phil Burton.

Since finding favour as one of Australia’s most popular “boy bands” in the 1990s with songs such as Tellin’ Everybody, Wishes and He Don’t Love You, vocal quartet Human Nature has forged a successful career here and in the US

Comprised of Toby Allen, Phil Burton and brothers Andrew and Michael Tierney, Human Nature formed in Sydney 30 years ago as the 4Trax when the four members were still in high school, originally performing doo-wop and Motown songs.

The group’s debut album Telling Everybody was a triple-platinum success, and was followed by Counting Down and Human Nature, both of which went platinum.

After the comparative commercial disappointment of their fourth album Walk the Tightrope, which attained gold status but not the platinum success of their previous albums, Human Nature embarked on a dramatic change of direction and recorded Reach Out: The Motown Record.

Human Nature celebrate 30 years with their Little More Love tour.

Featuring renditions of soul classics, including Reach Out I’ll Be There, You Keep Me Hangin’ On, I Heard it Through the Grapevine and I Want You Back, the 2005 album not only reinvigorated, it became the most successful album of the band’s career.

“It was a do-or-die moment in our career and it just happened to be something that everyone loved,” Andrew Tierney says of the album, which went six-times platinum in Australia. “We always had this idea we had discussed with (chairman and chief executive) Denis (Handlin) at Sony about doing an album of covers of the songs that inspired us, and that was Motown records.

“We thought what the heck, we’ll just do it, we love it, and if people don’t love it this could be our swan song, we were going to go out doing something we loved.

“We had no idea that it would be the success it was and would create this whole new part of our career.”

Human Nature followed Reach Out with Dancing in the Street: The Songs of Motown II, and Get Ready, which featured guest appearances from Motown legends, including Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, Mary Wilson and Martha Reeves, and in 2008 performed in the US for the first time. The following year, they began their first Las Vegas residency at the Imperial Palace Hotel and Casino and have been plying their trade there ever since.

“We basically rolled the dice and moved the families here and pretty much for the last 10 years, we’ve been performing kind of non-stop versions of that show and evolving that show here in Vegas, and also going back to Australia and still making records and things.”

As Human Nature prepare to return to Australia for their 30th anniversary Little More Love tour, which includes dates in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast, Tierney says he feels blessed by the duality of their career.

The boys are happy to be home.

“It’s been amazing to do both, to have this residency in Vegas but be able to come home and do the big tours we’ve been able to do and we’re looking forward to doing again. I think I get the best of both worlds. I get to come back home and be a tourist and see the beautiful country but I get to live here and be a full-time performer, it’s pretty great.”

Tierney says the group will perform songs from throughout Human Nature’s career on this tour, but jokes that they “won’t be doing any deep cuts from the first record or anything”.

“We do take ourselves seriously in the fact that we put all our heart and soul into what we do, but we can have a laugh at the sleeveless shorts and bleached blond hair and we’re not so precious about what we have been or who we are that we can’t laugh about it We’re not self-indulgent as entertainers and we always think about the audience. We’re doing the big hits and I think people will … be dancing and singing.”

Human Nature, Friday, April 26, Gold Coast Convention & Exhibition Centre, from $96.55; Saturday, April 27, Brisbane Entertainment Centre, from $98.50, ticketek.com.au