Powderfinger are one of the most successful Australian bands of the last couple of decades, selling millions of albums in their home country and picking up sixteen Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) awards along the way. They had the eleventh best-selling album of the last decade in Australia, which was also the fourth best-selling by an Australian band but, despite this fact, there’s a very good chance that you have never heard of them or listened to their music. Now, unless you had tickets for their UK tour which took place in the first week of June this year, you’ll never get to see them live. The band have revealed that their latest album, ‘Golden Rule’ will be their last. I caught up Jon ‘Cogsy’ Coghill, Powderfinger’s drummer since 1991, to discuss the split and the plans for their last ever Australian tour, the ‘Sunsets’ tour, which will also be their biggest to date.
Cracks in the fabric of the band have been appearing for the last few years (the band took a two year hiatus between 2005-2007 and were never truly satisfied with their comeback album, ‘Dream Days at the Hotel Existence’) and they toyed with the idea of carrying out their ‘Sunsets’ tour before announcing the break up. Deciding that it would be unfair on the fans not to let them know that they were attending the last few gigs Powderfinger officially announced their break up on April 9th 2010. After keeping it to themselves for so long I asked Jon how it felt now that the split was all out in the open. ‘Good mate, good’ came the reply. ‘I mean it’s been twenty years so I’m pretty keen to move on and do something else. I don’t know; it’s going to be different I suppose but I’m looking forward to it really’.
‘Different’ is perhaps an understatement as, for Jon and the rest of the band, Powderfinger are all they have known since they were in their late teens, you’d think the band would be scared of the unknown that awaits them. ‘I’d like to say it is, but I’ve sort of been preparing for it for a while because you just know when things are changing. I’ve been studying at Uni for the last two years; I’ve been part time so I’m loving that. So I’m not scared at all, I’m actually really looking forward to it. I’m yet to know what it’s like not playing drums very often but we’ll see what happens.’ It seems that Jon is a man firmly in control of his future and relishing the opportunities that will be presented in a life without music, especially with regards to his education, though he jokes that he could start ‘a covers band down the local pub or something!’
That would be a world away from life in a band who, with the release of ‘Golden Rule’, their seventh album and a return to form after what many considered to be the slightly disappointing ‘Dream Days at the Hotel Existence’, have confirmed themselves as a mainstay of the Australian rock scene. After recording three albums with producer Nick DiDia (1998’s ‘Internationalist’, 2000’s ‘Odyssey Number Five’ and 2003’s ‘Vulture Street’) they switched to Rob Schnapf for 2007’s ‘Dream Days…’, a change that produced a notable change in style and one that wasn’t totally welcomed when it came to the writing of the songs. The songs on ‘Dream Days…’ were written ‘in the studio, whereas on [Golden Rule] we decided we were going to go into the band room, the practice room and write the songs there. We made sure all the songs worked as a live band before we recorded them, whereas the last album we had to learn the songs after we’d recorded them.’ For a band that prides themselves on their live performances the change in writing style must have had quite an effect on the touring. ‘It’s quite weird. I mean it’s a subtle difference but sometimes you can feel it when you’re trying to put something together, especially if you tour afterwards. These ones came together really easily because they’d already been written like that.’
Recording ‘Dream Days at the Hotel Existence’ placed a strain on the band, taking them out of their comfort zone in terms of song writing and ensuring that they didn’t enjoy much of the creative process, resulting in an album that none of them found truly satisfying. Keen to avoid a repeat of this they teamed up once more with Nick DiDia for ‘Golden Rule’, a decision that Jon enthuses over. ‘He’s just a really nice guy. He’s sort of like another member of the band and he’s just one of those guys who’s really funny, he’s got a really good sense of humour. You sit there half the time just cracking up. Everyone’s just being idiots because he inspires you to be like that you know? I don’t know if it helps the music that much but when you need to be serious he’s serious, but most of the time you just have a great time.’ Working with someone who they obviously all get on with really well must also help a lot with the spirit of the band. ‘Yeah it does, definitely, because we tend to get really serious about stuff and trying to get our music right and he livens it up a lot, gets us to enjoy ourselves.’
Enjoying themselves took on a whole new meaning when it came to writing and promoting ‘Golden Rule’ with the band performing a series of publicity stunts, which fans of UK bands could only dream of experiencing. During the writing of the album the band took to the streets of Byron Bay, a couple of hours south of their home town of Brisbane, and did some busking to test out the new material. ‘That was good fun actually. Different. We only did the busking because we were starved of any attention from the public. So we were like ‘come on, let’s get out there and get in front of some people and perform again’’ The band then followed this up with a string of low key gigs along the East Coast from Brisbane to Martin’s Place in Sydney and finally ending up in Federation Square in Melbourne, letting their fans know the time and place only hours before via Twitter. It was the busking in Byron Bay that gave them the idea of doing the three gigs in one day. ‘That was really fun too, but it was funny too because we didn’t have any PA, we were just playing acoustic and singing without a PA. So you’d get about 1,500 people in front of you who, as soon as we started playing, realised ‘Shit! We can’t hear’, so they just went completely quiet and bunched up as much as possible. So it was quite an interesting thing you know, to see people do that.’ It takes a special kind of band to draw impromptu crowds of 1,500 people and the potential appeal of such gigs is not lost on Jon who asks if any bands had done anything like that in England. When I tell him I couldn’t think of anyone who had done so he replies ‘well someone should do it, it’d be great. We’ll tell Coldplay next time we see them but they’ll probably start a riot.’
Comparisons with Coldplay may seem a bit over the top to people in the UK but, in Australia, Powderfinger are greeted with similar levels of mania, a reaction that hasn’t transferred itself to crowds in the UK or the US. The unbelievable career that they have enjoyed down under hasn’t really translated to success overseas, an issue that Jon puts down to the different way in which music is consumed here. ‘I don’t think we’re very good at writing songs that appeal to the radio instantly, I think people like us because they warm to us sort of.’ This, coupled with the fact that they have not toured as extensively as they perhaps could have, means their music has not filtered through to the masses, a problem that Jon readily acknowledges. ‘I don’t think that we ever toured enough in the UK or the US for people to get to know us and I just don’t think our music… it’s a bit weird, it’s not too Australian because it just doesn’t sound like anything really. You can’t pigeonhole it or anything like that but I think it appealed to Australians because it’s about things that Australian people were going through politically or, I don’t know. I don’t know what it is really, I suppose if we’d worked it out then we would have been more successful in the UK and the US.’
You get the sense that the band are more than happy with what they have achieved in their career and aren’t too concerned by their lack of international success, especially in the US, which is notoriously difficult to crack. ‘I’m a big Oasis fan’ Jon continues ‘but they didn’t really crack the states either. It’s weird isn’t it because you listen to that stuff and you’re like ‘fuck, this is awesome music’. Then you get a load of lowest common denominator bands making it on both sides like Nickelback and stuff like that, which is just fucking disgusting so it’s really weird that that happens.’ Poor Nickelback seem to bear the brunt of a lot of people’s musical resentment and I point this out to him. ‘Haha, yeah, well they’re just a good example. They write stuff that you don’t have to think about and everything’s pretty much in a package that is not challenging to you at all. And you can see why it works though, it’s easy to consume basically. I mean nothing against them, that’s their thing; it’s just funny that that happens.’
Although a partnership with Nickelback was never on the cards, they are no strangers to teaming up with other bands or artists, having collaborated with the likes of Missy Higgins and Silverchair (two Australian acts who have managed to surpass Powderfinger’s popularity down under) and most recently with legendary rock artist Storm Thorgerson who designed the cover for ‘Golden Rule’. Thorgerson is of course most famous for creating Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ cover, though younger music lovers may be aware of his work on Muse’s ‘Black Holes and Revelations’, amongst others. ‘Pretty amazing eh?’ says Jon when questioned about his involvement. ‘Him and his team are just the nicest people. I mean we didn’t meet him, we met his second in command, Peter Curzon his name was, and we got a lot of emails from Storm so… He is a funny man, he’s the funniest guy. In his emails he’s got that wicked dry sense of humour and he’s always playing on himself in that kind of ‘of course the biggest rock artist in the world would know these types of things’. That kind of attitude where he’s just really taking the piss so he’s just a great, funny guy. That was the best part about it. I mean the artwork’s great, but just to hear the way these guys talk and how he thinks; that was like a show in itself.’
Whilst interacting with Thorgerson may have been like a show to the band it’s the shows in their upcoming ‘Sunsets’ tour that will be the main focus for everyone else. The bittersweet announcement that their most extensive Australian tour ever would also be their last prompted mixed feelings from their legions of fans, so how are the band coping knowing that they’re heading towards their final run of shows? ‘I haven’t really thought about it too much to tell you the truth’ replies Jon. ‘I’ve been just enjoying more the fact that I’m going to have life at home from now on. I’ll probably think about that stuff when it actually finishes.’ The end of the tour was another aspect that ruffled a few feathers from fans with the Brisbane based band scheduling the last show to take place in Ballarat (about an hour’s drive west of Melbourne and over a thousand miles from their Brisbane homes), so fans are desperate to know if there will be a special one off finale in Brisbane. ‘I think there will be yeah, we’re looking in to that now. I don’t think it will be a very big one though; it’ll just be friends and a few fans.’ The band have since confirmed that a small, relatively low-key gig will act as the bookend to their illustrious career.
A finale in Brisbane will be a fitting end for a band that formed in the city back in 1989 and have maintained close links ever since. The band all have families in the city so will the members be looking forward to spending more time with their respective families once the tour is over? ‘Yeah, families and I think Bernard’s going to do another solo thing and Darren’s going to keep on doing his music, he does a bit of production work. I don’t know what the other guys are going to do; they haven’t expanded on what they’re going to do just yet. I think they’re still getting used to the idea that we’re finishing up.’ This would seem to suggest that not all of the members of the band wanted the split to go ahead so I asked Jon what the reasons actually were… ‘Well I think in a band it just works on people being really passionate about what they’re doing’ came the reply ‘and it’s kind of tiring being like that, like to love something that much all the time. I don’t know, I think just some of us just fell out of love with that idea of doing what we’re doing. I mean we wanted to fall in love with something else and go and try something. It just seemed the right thing to do to say ‘Ok, this is how Powderfinger works and I don’t think it’s going to work like that again, so maybe we should say ok, that’s it’ so that’s how it happened.’ Despite the fact that Jon claims he’s not scared of going on to a life after the band there will undoubtedly be several aspects of being part of Powderfinger that he’ll miss once it’s gone. ‘I think I’m going to miss when you write a song that you think you like and you have this amazing feeling, sometimes you can get goose bumps. And I’ll miss playing to crowds and it actually working. When you put a set together and the crowd is reacting to it you’re sort of creating something together with the crowd and it’s a special feeling. So I’m going to miss those two things I think.’
Towards the end of my time with Jon I wanted to get him in a reflective mood and find out what aspects of his career with Powderfinger he was most proud of. With sixteen ARIA awards placing them fourth in the all time list behind Silverchair, John Farnham and Kylie, and a total of fourty-two ARIA nominations placing them second, again behind Silverchair and millions of album sales across their seven studio albums there’s plenty to choose from. I started off by asking Jon if there was a particular album that he was most proud of. ‘For me Vulture Street was the best album we had because, I mean I think Odyssey Number Five is a really great album that we did, but Vulture Street was good because we changed our sound and it actually worked. It resonated with people and for me that was a really hard thing to do and to pull it off, so I’m really proud of that.’ However, despite all of the awards and the album sales the achievement that Jon is most proud of is the one that many fans may overlook completely. ‘Probably just making it twenty years, that’s probably the best one. And actually breaking up and not being bitter about it. Being happy that we’ve done what we’ve done and then saying ‘OK, this is it we’re happy. You know we don’t hate each other; we made it to where we did.’
So the final chapter of the Powderfinger story won’t be played out until late 2010, by which point they will have completed their final UK tour, travelled across the length and breadth of Australia on the final tour of their home country, probably have seen ‘Golden Rule’ go double platinum in Australia and will have performed their final show in Brisbane. Any band who has had the longevity that Powderfinger have achieved deserve plenty of respect and that, coupled with success on the scale of which they have achieved in their native country, is more than any band could hope for.
