Icehouse frontman Iva Davies says the initial reaction to Great Southern Land on Double J left him ‘absolutely shattered’

Icehouse frontman Iva Davies said the initial reaction to his classic hit Great Southern Land left him “absolutely shattered” and he thought he’d destroyed his career.

It was August, 1982 and Icehouse frontman Iva Davies was sat expectantly at his Sydney home with a finger hovering over his cassette player’s recording button.

A few minutes later, after his sparkling, synth-driven new tune Great Southern Land was aired for the first time to Australian ears on Double J’s drive time shift, giddy anticipation had been replaced by gut-churning disappointment.

Back-announcing the song, popular DJ George Wayne was so unimpressed with what he’d just heard, he could barely muster a word of acknowledgment.

“He played it, and at the end of it, the unthinkable … it was just dead silence, and the dead silence went on for about 20 seconds,” Davies told the NT News.

“It was just interminable. And then he simply groaned, more silence, and then he said: ‘I don’t know what I think about that’.

“That was the global debut of Great Southern Land on radio.

“I was absolutely shattered, I thought that’s it, I’ve totally blown up my whole career with one song.”

Davies remains mystified by the success of Great Southern Land. Picture: Serge Thomann.

Fortunately, Wayne’s ear for a classic, enduring tune was out of whack on this occasion.

Icehouse’s biggest member of their back catalogue turns the big 4-0 this year, but Davies admits the tune’s appeal still remains a bit of a mystery to him, all these years later.

Like other unofficial national anthems – like John Farnham’s You’re The Voice to Men At Work’s Down Under – it’s become tightly knitted within the social fabric of the country it so powerfully captures.

But Davies thought for many, many years after GSL’s release, he’d be best known for 1987 number one hit Electric Blue instead.

The first song he wrote after a difficult six-month world tour – where he got “unbelievably homesick and exhausted” - with the band formerly known as Flowers, Davies threw up an early vision of GSL up to his management and record company merely as evidence he’d actually been working on the band’s difficult second album.

“This was completely new territory for me and I was in an absolutely state of panic and I was also homeless because I’d given up the flat I’d been living in,” he recalls.

“They all reacted to it straight away.”

Davies admits the song has a “very strange” history; the result of wanting to “paint the soul of Australia”, harnessing a cliche-free, nonlinear, ambiguous narrative while knowing full well it could easily go “very badly wrong”.

Davies performs with Icehouse at the Adelaide Festival this year. Picture: Andrew Beveridge.

For starters, it was one of only a handful of Icehouse songs – from around 120 – where he wrote the lyrics first; embracing the “cut up method” of William S. Burroughs by bunching unrelated words in small groups, which ultimately had a connection to Australia.

“I literally cut the pieces of paper up and put them down on the floor and shuffled them around in three-word phrases,” he says.

“Instead of trying to write a cohesive but ultimately unsatisfactory narrative about Australia, I simply just served up a palette of colours, really.”

Like many great works of art, Great Southern Land carries a multitude of meanings for the listener, owing to the varying interpretations of Davies’ hand-picked phrases.

However, two other key things had to happen to ensure its entry into the National Film and Sound Archive’s Sounds of Australia registry, 32 years later.

Davies’ vision of transcending the ordinary, four-piece band Icehouse initially had been, was inspired by a “life changing moment” as a teenager at a house warming party where he heard an album which “kinda blew my head off”.

After walking in, he was struck by particular sound beckoning him towards a dimly-lit lounge room, thoughtfully dotted with bean bags, candles and burning incense.

“I just sat down in a beanbag and listened to this album,” he says.

“It was an import copy of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.

“It was that moment in my life where I went: “If you can do this in a recording studio, that’s where I want to go.

“It was kind of a life-changing moment.”

Davies never thought he’d be talking about Great Southern Land 40 years after its inception. Picture: Cybele Malinowski.

The song, and the album, Primitive Man, were also ultimately “dictated” by then two pieces of modern music equipment: the drum machine LM-1 and the synthesiser Prophet 5.

“Great Southern Land is directly a product of (the Prophet 5),” he says.

In fact, Chrysalis Records demanded Davies reinsert the LM-1 take, after an LA producer replaced it with his own drums, much to their furious objection.

The final product was eventually recorded and mixed in a Hollywood studio in four hours, a window of time Davies calls “ridiculous”.

“You would (normally) take at least a day recording and spend another day mixing,” he says.

“To this day it remains a complete mystery to me what happened… I dare say I’ll go to the grave with it being a mystery.

“I didn’t see talking about it 40 years down the line as something we’d be doing (laughs). I didn’t see it coming at all.”

Icehouse play the Darwin Amphitheatre on May 28.

Mike Elrington is back for a six-date NT tour

Sometimes a little flutter can pay off in more ways than one.

Big, sometimes brash but never boring Victorian rock, folk and blues master-craftsman Mike Elrington enjoyed a nice little payday late last year after putting down a few bob on Melbourne claiming the AFL premiership, who were paying close to $4 on the eve of the finals

It was too tasty for the statuesque Lakes Entrance muso to pass up.

And with his bank account suddenly bulging, after the Dees beat up the Dogs in an utter blitzkrieg, the 2016 Singer/Songwriter of the year (Australian Independent Music Awards) decided to invest the cash in creativity rather than the next sporting punt.

On the eve of a six-date Territory tour, Elrington tells the NT News his father Robert, who was also all-the-way-in on the Demons wager, always wanted his son to record a version of the Frank Sinatra classic My Way with a big, bulging brass band.

Elrington had always baulked at the idea due to the cost.

So, after assembling more than a dozen musicians at Croydon’s Highway 9 Productions, he smashed it out in just one day.

“(The payday) was just enough to pay for the whole thing, I had to hire 13-14 musicians, recording, video, mastering, we did it all in a day, there was no rehearsal,” Elrington says, who has supported the likes of Diesel, the Black Sorrows and Russell Morris over his 20-year career.

“I had to get charts for all the players… which was hard because I can’t read music.

“(Dad) always wanted me to record a version of that song for him, but with a whole band.

“It was a bit of a mission… but it came out great.”

Elrington admits the production was a “little out of character” for an uber passionate performer known for his sweaty, high octane live shows.

“It was something different for me and a good lesson in vocal restraint, not straining the sh*t out of it,” Elrington says with a laugh.

However, the imposing musician, who stands at nearly two feet tall, will inject his more familiar, furious blend of music into NT ears once more later this week, including cuts from his latest album, 2020’s Aftershock, kicking off in Katherine on Thursday.

The big man of Aussie blues has been a regular face at NT venues for almost a decade, having toured up north every year from 2011 to 18.

“It’s a totally different world up there (in the NT), it’s not like any other state or territory in Australia,” he says.

“The Territory’s always had its own vibe, its own identity ... a certain lifestyle.

“It’s not like anywhere else. I just love how different and laid-back it is. And I love the people up there (too).”

Elrington admits, like so many other musicians across the globe, it’s been a joy to be back out on the road after two years of routinely booking, then cancelling, gigs.

Although he did appreciate having some down time.

Elrington, a prolific writer and tourer, clocked up 132 gigs in 2016 alone, while supporting The Doobie Brothers at Brisbane’s The Tivoli the following year.

“I sort of took it as a bit of a break from music,” he says of the forced hiatus.

“I liked putting the guitar down and having a rest from it.”

Elrington was one of the more fortunate Australian performers who was able to access a range of grant funding during the worst of the pandemic, especially from Support Act: “It’s probably going to be the only time I’m going to be forced to take a break and get paid for it.”

Mike Elrington plays Goodinymayin Yijard River Arts & Culture Centre, Katherine East (May 12), Noonamah Tavern (May 13), the Lodge of Dundee, Dundee Beach (May 14), Darwin Railway Club (May 15), Totem Theatre, Alice Springs (May 17 and 18).