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     Nic Barnard Member Username: Nic_barnard Post Number: 5 Registered: 06-2005 |
It’s been mentioned on the board before that Robert had started writing a regular music review for the Melbourne news magazine, The Monthly. I guess people will, like me, have been waiting to see if he would write something about Grant there. Well I picked up the July edition yesterday and it's there, a three-page “remembrance” of his friend. It’s a lovely, sensitive, considered piece. It’s too long to type out in full, but these are some of the highlights. Robert talks about their time at Queensland Uni. “Grant was a whiz-kid when I first met him. He was either going to be a director or the greatest film critic this country had ever seen…. At 19 he’d done his BA. It was as if he’d raced so hard, and with such brilliance that he’d got slightly ahead of himself. His application for the film and television school in Sydney was turned down on the grounds that he was too young Which is where I cam in, to fill a gap that was to be merely a year or two, before further adventures took us elsewhere.” “When Grant and I met, we didn’t know it, but we’d found each other. Rough mirror-images. And when … I saw his bedroom stacked with film books, novels and posters, I realised his ‘thing’, film wasn’t just an enthusiasm; it was an obsession. And I knew that was exactly how I felt about music.” Robert says forming the group was “a decision to pool our ambitions and resources and go for something greater than ourselves, and in this we were aided by one piece of luck: Grant was musical. He and a fantastic singing voice and a perfect melodic knack.” He started writing songs within six weeks. Of their friendship and working relationship over the years, he writes: “This is what he was like: I’d drive over to his place to play guitar and he’d be lying on a bed reading a book. Grant never felt guilt about this. The world turned and worked; he read … He’d offer to make coffee and I knew – and here’s one of the great luxuries in my life – I knew I could ask him anything, on any artistic frontier, and he’d have an answer. He had an encyclopaedic mind of the arts, with his own personal twist … erudite, logical, authoritative and never condescending. “… His place here is as a true hipster, in the 1940s and ‘50s sense of the word. Someone perched on the streets, in the saloons, on the lower side of life, possessing razor-sharp and deep knowledge of the cultural front – but never lording it in the traditional manner. Half jokingly, I one suggested he return to academia. He laughed the idea off, preferring to be the secret holder of wisdom ‘on a barstool throne’. “The break-up of the band in 1989 was savage and abrupt. Grant and I had had enough … (We) had planned to go on as a duo and do an acoustic album, but this got blown sky-high when his girlfriend left him on the day he told her that the band was over. The next weeks were chaos. Grant was destroyed… The duo idea hit the rocks when Grant informed the record company he wanted a solo career. The fact that he had told them before me hurt. But he had a girlfriend to try and win back, and this coloured many of his decisions over the next years.” Robert reveals they finally did write the film script they’d always talked about, over three months in 1995 in Brisbane. Called “Sydney Creeps”, and “not as good as it should be. The wrestling over each line and plot twist robbed it of flow and a strong voice.” Of the reconvened Go-Betweens, Robert says the band in recent times felt “on the cusp of something”. “We were still up for the championship, and we had a growing audience willing us on to bigger and better things. And we had new songs: Grant had a fantastic batch for an album we were going to do next year…. Number 10 was going to be something special. “Yet he wasn’t happy. He was proud of the band’s success … he was in love and most content and up I’d seen him in a long time. But deep down there remained a trouble, a missing piece that was always trying to find but never did. … When Grant was four, his father died. Perhaps it stemmed from this. The missing father, the anchor that would have kept him in friendlier waters and, maybe, on narrower paths through his life. He cut a lonely figure. He was sad. Sometimes I would visit him and it would take me an hour to pull him out. Twice in his life I was there with him when hew as totally shattered. And there were many years I missed when we weren’t in the same city. “I can remember being hit by the lyrics he p[put to his first songs. I was shocked by their melancholy and the struggle for joy. I’d known the happy-go-lucky university student … He didn’t parade it, but it’s all over his work and it was in his eye. “His refuge was art and a romantic nature that made him loveable even if he did take it to ridiculous degrees. Here was a man who, in 2006, didn’t drive, who owned no wallet or watch, no credit card, no computer. He would only have to hand in his mobile phone and bankcard to be able to step back into the gas-lit Paris of `875, his natural home. I admired this side of him a great deal, and it came to be part of the dynamic of our pairing. He called me ‘the strategist’. He was the dreamer. We both realised and came to relish the perversity of the fact that this was an exact reversal of the perception people had of us as artists and personalities in the band – that I was the flamboyant man out of time and Grant was the sensible rock. In reality, the opposite was true.” Finally, he talks about the last time he saw Grant, two weeks before he died, meeting as they had for almost 30 years “to play guitar together and do the catch-up with an old friend.” As he left he saw a copy of the New York Review of Books in Grant’s letterbox. “He told me he had a subscription. As I walked to the car and got in, I wondered how many singer-songwriters or rock stars in the world got the New York Review of Books delivered on subscription. Not many, I thought. Maybe just one.” Please don’t tell me someone’s scanned this in and put it on the Go-Betweens website … | ||
| Nic Barnard Member Username: Nic_barnard Post Number: 6 Registered: 06-2005 |
I should have added this, I guess: http://www.themonthly.com.au/ | ||
| andreas Member Username: Andreas Post Number: 79 Registered: 04-2006 |
driving to work this morning,listening to horsebreaker star and now reading this wonderful thoughts of robert about grant. thank you very much, nic, for giving us the opportunity to read some of the highlights of this article. greets andreas | ||
| Cichli Suite Member Username: Cichli_suite Post Number: 124 Registered: 08-2004 |
Thanks very much for taking the trouble, Nic. Robert's words about his friend are heart warming. Did he really say that about the Go-Between's web site ?! Perhaps, with Robert's permission, Jonathan could get a copy of the full article and post it on the website | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 451 Registered: 03-2005 |
Thank you so much, Nic. I hope they do post it on here; I want to read the whole thing. This clearly reveals Robert as much as it does Grant. | ||
| spence Member Username: Spence Post Number: 487 Registered: 05-2005 |
Yeah cheers Nick, nice one. | ||
| Nic Barnard Member Username: Nic_barnard Post Number: 7 Registered: 06-2005 |
No, Cichli, that was my postscript! Actually, Robert does mention the website in the piece, referring to the 1500 tributes and how so many of them had talked of meeting Grant and coming away with some insight on some topic or other. "Since his death, his role as inspirer and informer has come out strongly in remembrance," he says. Thanks for the kind words, guys. I just knew people would want to read this. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 390 Registered: 05-2005 |
Just read Robert's article on Grant in The Monthly. It is wonderful. If you live in Australia you really ought to buy it. Those of you abroad will be able to order it from the magazine. Details on contacting them are at www.themonthly.com.au/pastIssues/index.html | ||
| Michael Bachman Member Username: Michael_bachman Post Number: 122 Registered: 01-2005 |
Thanks for the snippets from the article Nic. | ||
| Duncan Hurwood Member Username: Duncan_h Post Number: 47 Registered: 05-2005 |
I contacted them for posting this issue to Britain, and they seemed friendly enough. | ||
| Matthias Treml Member Username: Matthias Post Number: 94 Registered: 05-2005 |
Thanks for transcribing some of the article. I hope to read the whole of it. | ||
| fsh Member Username: Fsh Post Number: 80 Registered: 05-2005 |
Pádraig Collins wrote: "Just read Robert's article on Grant in The Monthly. It is wonderful. If you live in Australia you really ought to buy it. Those of you abroad will be able to order it from ..." Who do I contact if I don't want the magazine but would like to live in Australia? | ||
| Duncan Hurwood Member Username: Duncan_h Post Number: 48 Registered: 05-2005 |
I received the magazine from Australia, and can recommend it (and not just the Robert article). | ||
| jerry hann Member Username: Jerry_h Post Number: 189 Registered: 07-2005 |
Nice to see it's available in its entirety on the board,fascinating and sad. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 484 Registered: 03-2005 |
Very touching. Many thanks to Jonathan or whoever posted it on here. | ||
| spence Member Username: Spence Post Number: 575 Registered: 05-2005 |
AS RANDY SAYS, VERY TOUCHING. ROBERT REALLY DOES AND ALWAYS HAS, (oops sorry dint realise caps lock existed anymore,) had a way with words. Even this article transported me to a sun-going-down type of existence, that srtpied sunlight thing, its always there, it must be the hope that was always shining from grant's meloncholy. | ||
| Little Keith Member Username: Manosludge Post Number: 541 Registered: 03-2006 |
Robert has a flair for that style of writing, doesn't he? Whatever you want to call it: essays, reviews, long form prose, etc. I've really enjoyed the handful of pieces I've read by him. And this was just beautiful - it really dropped the veil a bit to let you see the heart, the beating pulse, behind their friendship and artistic partnership. Funny that Robert, who seems to have his own bohemian and insular streak, was the "strategist" of the two. Long may that striped sunlight spirit live on! | ||
| Michael Bachman Member Username: Michael_bachman Post Number: 145 Registered: 01-2005 |
Grant sure was a "man out of time". He reminded me somewhat of a Dashiell Hammett type from the 1940's. Getting up when he wants, churning out great works that comes naturally to him. Having a favorite bar/restaurant that he would hang out at (Dash used to hand around John's Grill in San Francisco). A smoker and a drinker. Maybe Grant would have been a novelist had he not met Robert. I agree that Robert wrote a great article about Grant. I hope Grant's spirit resides in Robert and that Robert may write tunes eventually that have a little bit of Grant in them. | ||
| mingus Member Username: Mingus Post Number: 46 Registered: 06-2005 |
I subscribe to The Monthly but was just wondering where the full article is posted on the message board ? Can't seem to see it ? | ||
| Svein Inge Saether Member Username: Springrain Post Number: 3 Registered: 08-2006 |
It's on the front news page of go-betweens.net now, as a pdf download. Beautiful reading! | ||
| Guy Ewald Member Username: Guy_ewald Post Number: 173 Registered: 02-2005 |
Very beautiful, indeed. Robert is a fine writer. | ||
| mingus Member Username: Mingus Post Number: 47 Registered: 06-2005 |
D'oh. Got it. Thanks. | ||
| Little Keith Member Username: Manosludge Post Number: 546 Registered: 03-2006 |
Good on you, Grant, for pulling it off. I don't begrudge him for it in the least, but I'm extremely envious of Grant's lifestyle. Good for him for not having to work, drive, wear a watch, as I've, sadly, found it necessary to do... I'd love to have to have a bar to hang out in, too, and hold forth, bond with all the local Damon Runyon types, but all that seems to be around me is friggin' sports bars with zillions of TV screens. They have their place, but I can't see having a salon, an Algonquin round table, at Wings N' Things! I can see it now: "Excuse me, buddy, can you turn that game down?... We're discussing Proust over heah!". | ||
| Michael Bachman Member Username: Michael_bachman Post Number: 346 Registered: 01-2005 |
My first issue of The Monthly arrived this week. Not to many issues get mailed to Michigan I bet! |