Reflecting On 30 Years Of The Go-Betweens' Game Changing Record, '16 Lovers Lane'

In 1987, the Brisbane-formed, London-based indie band The Go-Betweens returned to Australia, moved to Sydney and released 16 Lovers Lane, their sixth album, in 1988.

In 1988, I was 20 and moved to huge and sunny Sydney from mousy-quiet Adelaide. I'd left my arts degree and was living my own pop song by working as a waitress in a cocktail bar. My soundtrack was 16 Lovers Lane; played over and over on a portable cassette player. I still know every word. 16 Lovers Lane (16LL) is lauded as one of the greatest Australian pop albums and countless artists claim the band, and especially this album, as an inspiration.

It's so loved that a concert version of the album, featuring Lindy Morrison, Amanda Brown and John Willsteed - three of the five band members on 16LL - supported by a who's who of local singers, is almost guaranteed to sell out at the Melbourne Festival. Talking to Amanda and Lindy - fans always call them by their first names - about the concert was like chatting to old friends. After all, I'd known them for over 30 years.

I first saw The Go-Betweens in 1987 in an Adelaide pub where age was never questioned, wine came in schooner glasses and no one was brave enough to step barefoot on the carpet.

There was the pretty-boy singer and guitar player in a blue and white striped t-shirt and denim jacket: Grant McLennan. The other lead singer and guitar player was tall and lanky and his paisley shirt, and encore black dress oozed flamboyant rock-god masculinity: Robert Forster. They were joined up front by a young woman in coloured frills, lace tights, and shiny patent heels playing oboe and violin: Amanda Brown. The bass player was quieter and so damn cool with a long-fringe combed-forward and worn better than any Beatle ever did: Robert Vickers. And the drummer had long, crimped, blond hair and her a short dress punk sensibility instantly dismissed any notion that drummers should be blokes: Lindy Morrison.

The Go-Betweens didn't look or sound like an '80s Australian band. As Amanda said, "It just wasn't the typical Australian music of the era - to put it mildly." I saw them again the next night. And many times since. When I told Lindy this story, she said, "You lucky thing. The classic line up. That's so great that you saw us then. I just loved that period when Amanda joined. It was just - ahhhh - it was just so special."  

Grant McLennan and Robert Forster met at university and founded the band in Brisbane in 1978. Lindy joined in 1980, Robert Vickers in 1983 and Amanda in 1986. Vickers didn't return to Australia with the band and was replaced by John Willsteed in 1987.

At first listen, Grant's music sounds like catchy pop without a saccharine aftertaste. But his genuinely sweet melodies twist with chords so achingly melancholy and lyrics so full of yearning and frustration (and forced rhymes) that they can leave you "crying for...you don't know what for" (Right Here, 1987).

In counterpoint, Forster's songs are like beat poetry that's written to the melody rather than the beat. His more obscure lyrics often sound dark but are always supported by a belief that the world's going to be alright.

Amanda tried to explain why this band are still so loved: "Music, along with filmmaking, is probably the most collaborative of the arts. There's some inexplicable chemistry with bands that happens and it's not dependent on musical prowess. It's a real personality thing, which I think is why when you hear a lot of bands when people have incredible session musicians and the best in the world, but there's something missing.

"The Go-Betweens sort of exemplified the complete other end of the spectrum from that. We weren't top session players by any means. We just had a certain musical chemistry and a personality that created something really unique."

Lindy said something similar: "We developed as this incredible unit. We were playing exactly the same things, we were just locked in rhythmically and that gave us such a unique band sound. We were so inexperienced as players and we all just grew through the original ways we approached the songs and the instruments."

There have already been 16LL concerts in Brisbane and Sydney. The idea was suggested by Katie Noonan, from George, when she was collaborating with Amanda on a different project. Amanda thought it "seemed timely and fortuitous" being nearly 30 years since the album and ten years since Grant's death. Grant died of a heart attack in 2006. He was 48. Fans will tell you where they were when they heard.

"I mentioned it [the concert] to Lindy. She was very 'Do you think we can do it?'. I was 'Yes we can!' and it all slowly came together from there." Robert Forster was invited and has happily spoken about his decision not to join them in other interviews. Lindy said there are "stupid stories about this" and "whispers that Robby wasn't happy" but "that's just old stuff". "He gave us his blessing and was thrilled we were doing it. He came to the Brisbane concert and he said the highlight for him was to see Amanda do Devil's Eye. That's incredible for him to say that because Devil's Eye was written about her. So, for him to say that..."

"I am going to sound like a bit of an arrogant wanker now, but I always felt that 16 Lovers Lane was pretty close to being a perfect record."

I squeaked when she told me this story. Fans know the "old stuff", which includes interpersonal relationships, a miserable break up in 1989 and a 2000 reformation by Robert and Grant that didn't include former band members. The old stuff was also their ongoing issues with labels and that, despite the critical acclaim of 16LL, "it didn't sell a bean". Grant said this when I interviewed him in 2000:

"We were playing pub gigs just to pay ourselves wages." I was at the Sydney pub gigs; up the front, gazing at Grant and singing every word.

Amanda laughed as she talked about the "kind of classic that it has become, even though it doesn't sell like a classic album." Maybe it's been long enough to be able to laugh and to love going back to 16 Lovers Lane.

Talking about 1988 and 1989, Amanda said, "It wasn't perfect by any means, but that time of living and working with Grant was incredibly prolific productive and creative. It was a really wonderful time. We really did live and work together very harmoniously."

Of the new concerts, she says, "Having the guest singers has brought a whole other level and depth to it and something new for people. Otherwise why would you go to a concert, you might as well just listen to the record."

"We wanted to work with singers who had a connection to The Go-Betweens in some way. Either people we knew who had covered The Go-Betweens and we liked their versions or who had mentioned the band as being an influence, or simply came from a like-minded sensibility of that tradition of literate pop. Pretty much everybody on the bill from Melbourne has a connection in some way."

Melbourne-based singer/songwriter/indie legend Jen Cloher is one of the guest singers. She said she "nerded out" on The Go-Betweens when she discovered them ten or so years ago and was a bit jealous that I'd seen them in the '80s. She's since covered Love Goes On! from 16LL, wrote about the band in her song Great Australian Bite, and said: "It's great to celebrate wonderful records and get the opportunity to step inside of songs, as an artist, and experience the genius of the songwriting."

For the concerts, the original members are joined by Dan Kelly, Danny Widdicombe, Luke Peacock and the Melbourne special guests are Alex Gow, Dave Graney, Laura Jean, Paul Kelly Clare Moore, Rob Snarski and Romy Vager.

They're playing the whole album as well as some Go-Between's favourites. Lindy quietly told me that Paul Kelly asked to sing Robert's Spring Rain, and Amanda said she's "dragging out the oboe" which "I've have not really played since the band broke up" for Grant's Bye Bye Pride.

Back in 2000, I asked Grant about the consistent praise for the band and 16LL and he said, "If I answer kind of positively about it, I could sound kind of arrogant." Years later, Amanda is more forthcoming: "I am going to sound like a bit of an arrogant wanker now, but I always felt that 16LL was pretty close to being a perfect record."

"You can't say that of your work very often. I really wouldn't have done anything differently. It was a really - from the start - a beautiful collection of songs, and the arranging and the production. Everything just came together."

It's an album about love. In his 2016 book Grant And I, Robert says how on 16LL he and Grant were finally writing songs about love; "a word that both of us, two songwriters obsessed with relationship songs, had conspicuously avoided."

Love is also something that Robert and Grant received in buckets when they re-formed and released three more albums. They saw the fans, now in their 30s and 40s, come to every gig and sing every lyric. I know; I was there. They finally won an ARIA award in 2005 for Oceans Apart, their final album, and continued to have the gushing love of critics.

When I said to Grant that I thought their first new album sounded like Forster and McLennan but didn't sound like The Go-Betweens, he said, "I take your point; I just disagree".

But something was always missing.

The 16 Lovers Lane concerts are an opportunity for fans, now in our 50s and 60s, to let the other members of the band know how much they were loved and never forgotten. Lindy said, "That's why this period is so nice because I realise just how much we are loved and, yeah, let's not talk about '88 and '89 again."

She said the reaction to the concerts had been "unbelievable. It's massive and it's just filled with so much love. People have expressed so much love for the band and the songs and I'm forever grateful for Robert and Grant. And I say that on stage. It's their songs we're doing. But their love for us - John and I and Amanda - and also the musicians who help us out. The audience's love has been incredibly uplifting for me. It's really helped my confidence and it's made me feel so proud of the work. It's been an extremely positive experience for me."

"It's been incredible - incredible - to know that people get me. That's the hardest thing and the most incredible thing that I began to realise was that people actually got me that they understood me. They understood that I can be gauche, and I can be magnificent. I can be both those things and people can still like what I do and get what I was trying to achieve musically."

Lindy, we always knew you were magnificent. You all were.

Melbourne International Arts Festival presents 16 Lovers Lane 6 Oct at Arts Centre Melbourne