Colin Hay a committed learner, thanks to online guitar lessons
Scottish-Australian singer-songwriter Colin Hay’s musical goal in isolation is simple: ‘I just want to learn how to play the f..king guitar properly.’
The newest entry in our Isolation Room series of unique video performances comes from Colin Hay, the Scottish-Australian singer-songwriter best known as the frontman of Men At Work. His choice of song is beautifully apt: the title track from his 2015 album, Next Year People, which is an optimistic ode to looking forward to tomorrow, regardless of the pitfalls of the past.
Earlier this week, I spoke with Hay from his home near Los Angeles, where his only break in a housebound routine is walking his dog, Rico. Despite a postponed US solo tour and the uncertainty of whether gigs later this year will go ahead, he was upbeat about his time in isolation as he’s been using it to improve his guitar playing, thanks to lessons from truefire.com.
“There’s no real excuse for not being able to advance, in whatever way you want to, with playing guitar,” Hay told me. “But it does take a time commitment, just to practise and to stay with something; to commit to actually staying with it on a daily basis, in whatever style you’re interested in. I’m interested in all these different styles, and that was always my problem: I never really played any jazz guitar, or blues guitar, or any kind of guitar particularly well. I would dabble in different areas and then I would write songs around them. But that’s really where I’m at right now. Quite honestly, I’ve got lots of songs running around in my brain in the past month, and I wish they would all f..k off right now,” he said with a laugh. “I just want to learn how to play the f..king guitar properly, and learn about turnarounds, and 2-5-1 [chord progressions], and sequences that I’ve always been intrigued by.”
As we spoke, I eyed off the acoustic guitar that sits on a stand in a corner of my home office, always in sight and always tempting me, but not touched as often as I’d like amid my daily responsibilities. I’ve been playing the instrument on and off since I was 16, and one of my new year’s resolutions of 2019 was to learn to play one new song a month, a task that felt small enough to be manageable. Yet while I failed to keep myself accountable to that monthly goal, I remain hopeful — or perhaps, as Hay might put it, I’m an optimistic Next Year Person, just like him.
A few days before we spoke, I had learned to play a great R.E.M. song titled Near Wild Heaven, whose chords ring out with beautiful open strings amid sunny vocal harmonies. When I proudly told Hay of this minor but significant personal achievement, he replied, “Excellent! And also, your guitar’s very patient. Whenever you’re ready to pick it up, it’ll be there for you.”
To watch Colin Hay’s Isolation Room performance, visit theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/isolation-room
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