On Hunters & Collectors' "Destiny" & Learning To Stop Rejecting His Past

"I'm surprised, sometimes I have to slap myself that I'm still doing it," Mark Seymour — seated at Mushroom HQ's boardroom table in trademark black T-shirt — marvels of his 30-year songwriting career. "But I'm very dogged, like, I just know that this is what I'm supposed to do; I couldn't do anything else.

"I'd go nuts if I wasn't able to do this, and I would find a way and essentially that's what's happened. In fact, you know, I look back on the very beginnings of when I started with Hunters [& Collectors] — that hasn't changed. I mean, back then I was gonna do this no matter what happened: I was gonna be a singer and write songs — that's what I was gonna do."

If you've read Seymour's book/series of vignettes, Thirteen Tonne Theory, the author's fierce ambition definitely translates. "We really wanted to be big, we wanted to be as big as U2 or as big as Midnight Oil," Seymour allows. "There's a big amount of time in that book about the beginning of the band. But I believed that the way that band was conceived affected its destiny. And it was those intrinsic... that value system that we put in place, that affected the outcome, you know, unfortunately, and not necessarily for the best.

"I've got to own the songs that I love and I've gotta not reject where I've come from."

"With the benefit of hindsight and getting a lot older, I just sort of think about how much I wanted that band to be successful. And no one would begrudge me that. I mean, those guys would all have felt the same way."

To celebrate the longevity of his career, Seymour (together with his band The Undertow) is releasing a collection of 24 songs gleaned from 30 years. "Hunters made 13 albums," he marvels, before pointing out, "Of all that material, I play, like, eight [songs], ha!... that's something I only realise now, 'Okay, why do I keep playing those songs? What was it about them that made them endure?' And I don't have a definitive answer to that."

The evening before our conversation, Brian Nankervis facilitated a Q&A with Seymour at Southbank's Backlot Cinema, with the legendary singer-songwriter reflecting on his work and singing songs ably backed by his daughter, Eva. On one of the Hunters songs presented on the night, Seymour ponders, "That song Back In The Hole, [sings] 'When the day shift is o-o-ver...' I mean, that was an accident. That [Under One Roof] album's really dark and yet that song's got this lovely warmth to it — it's sad, but it's got this real connection, you know; it's a very, very warm, human song and they're the ones I do."

After discussing the various challenges he faced trying to find his voice as a solo singer-songwriter, Seymour concludes, "The way I got around that whole problem of going solo is that I thought, 'You know what? I've got to own the songs that I love and I've gotta not reject where I've come from, and that worked on a number of levels. It actually helped me write, and I went, 'Okay, so you wanna write songs? You've gotta live up to the quality of those songs'."