The award-winning Eskimo Joe hit Black Fingernails, Red Wine was inspired by a toilet break

ESKIMO Joe have revealed how the call of nature gave them the title for their hit ‘Black Fingernails, Red Wine’. Vote for your fave ARIA song now.

Eskimo Joe win the 2006 ARIA Award for Single Of The Year. Picture: News Corp Australia.

EVEN songwriters gets bolts of inspiration in the bathroom.

Eskimo Joe were working on new songs for their third record when frontman Kav Temperley visited the loo, put his glass of red wine on a ledge and glanced at his varnished fingernails.

Black Fingernails, Red Wine would become the title of their breakthrough record but their biggest-selling single.

The song finished at No. 2 on the annual Triple J Hottest 100 but won the 2006 ARIA Award for Single of the Year.

It was a triumph for Temperley and band mates Stu MacLeod and Joel Quartermain, who often felt a tyranny of distance from the Australian music industry headquartered on the east coast as they remained based in the home city of Perth.

The band won mainstream success with their third album and its title track. Picture: Supplied.

“Being from Perth and Fremantle in 2006 was still a novelty to most people, and we felt like we really had to make a big noise to be heard by anyone,” Temperley said.

“At the time of recording the album we had split with our then management, we had a new record label and on suggestion had decided to self produce.

“It’s not that it all felt like a gamble, we just had this intense gut instinct that this is what we needed to do, so when we won the ARIA it felt really wonderful, a rare moment when all the stars seemed to have aligned.”

The band took a dramatic detour with the song from their alt pop beginnings when debut single Sweater got everyone excited at Triple J.

Temperley credits the band’s new sound to the influence of their predecessors including INXS and Icehouse.

INXS were an inspiration to Eskimo Joe. Picture: Supplied.

The Eskys also feel connected with Icehouse’s “dark rock’n’roll”. Picture: Fiona Harding.

During the recording they would remark about whether Temperley needed to be more or less “Hutchy” on a track.

“There was definitely a dark rock’n roll thing that was going around at the time Black Fingernails, Red Wine came out, and the song seemed to fit nicely into that world,” he said.

“I think there is something uniquely Australian in the way bands from this country do mysterious, dark rock’n roll.

“You can hear it in songs like Great Southern Land and Original Sin and maybe that’s what people connected with, whatever the reason I’m happy they did.”

You can vote for your favourite ARIA Song Of The Year winner from the past 30 years of the awards now.

Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head is leading your votes, followed by John Farnham’s You’re The Voice.

Originally published as The award-winning Eskimo Joe hit Black Fingernails, Red Wine was inspired by a toilet break