Today it's easy to recognize internationally successful Australian artists — Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Iggy Azalea, Vance Joy, and Gotye, for starters — but the Australian rock scene did not garner the same attention 40 years ago. While AC/DC became the country's prime global export by 1980, and Men at Work had a multi-platinum crest here from 1981 to 1984, it was much harder then for rock bands Down Under to spark serious international attention.
That all changed in 1987.
A boom year for Aussie artists, the music released in '87 didn't have a specific sound as much as it did an attitude and desire to push boundaries. Their distinct musical identities, diverse lyrical content, and fequent disregard for the popular zeitgeist (at home or in America) resonated globally, creating an Aussie music revolution that impacted generations of artists as eclectic as Bono, the 1975, Maroon 5, and the Killers. This era of Australian artists didn't present as an easily identifiable in a sonic scene in the same way as British metal or Seattle grunge — and that is part of what made it fantastic.
Marrying funk with high energy rock, INXS became international superstars with Kick. Midnight Oil’s socially conscious message resonated loudly with Americans and Europeans. Icehouse’s atmospheric rock broke the Top 50 in the U.S., producing two hit singles, "Crazy" and "Electric Blue." Dragon opened up for Tina Turner in European stadiums for several months in 1986 and 1987. Crowded House’s debut album from 1986 broke big with the hit ballad "Don't Dream It's Over" in the spring of 1987. John Farnham released the stirring, prideful "You’re The Voice" which many have called Australia's unofficial national anthem.
To an outsider, it might have seemed like an overnight Aussie invasion, but it was far from that. Many of this "new wave" of Oz artists were on their fifth or six albums, and had done a decade's worth of hard work around the globe.
"By the time we get to ‘87, [many of] those bands including us had done so much live work that they were machines," says Icehouse frontman/composer Iva Davies. "They could play at such a quality level and had already performed to so many Australian audiences that they knew exactly what they were doing."
"You Really Had To Rock Your Ass Off"
In order to understand the chronology of this Aussie ascension, one must first look back at Australia in the 1960s. While homegrown acts like the Easybeats and the Seekers amassed sizable followings in their country, British success was commonly considered to be a gateway into America — get hits in the UK, then break the U.S.A. British Invasion bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Animals became idols to emulate, especially after many of them came over for rare mid-1960s tours that left an impression on the masses.
"[Then] in the 1970s, Australia develops what I call self-consciousness where it's not about what's happening in America and England anymore," explains Andrew Farriss, guitarist and main composer for INXS. "Suddenly we start to develop our own music culture here. And lo and behold, young people start going to pubs and out to clubs and community halls or whatever and start getting into bands like AC/DC. They used to play all over the place."
Groups like the Little River Band, Cold Chisel, the Angels and Dragon (who originally came from New Zealand) were among the early artists making a living from album sales and the prolific and profitable pub rock scene. In cities like Sydney and Melbourne, venue capacities could reach 1,500 to 2,000 people — a more than sizable audience for burgeoning acts on the verge of breaking through. They often played multiple sets in one night, sometimes at more than one venue.
"Amongst the pub years, which were really big booze barns, often there’d be fights," recalls Farriss. "Everyone smoked cigarettes in these rooms, and they crammed [in] too many people. There wasn't really a fire marshal. So you have these places you could hardly breathe in with this sort of aggro thing that ran through it. Everyone's drunk. You really had to rock your ass off to maintain the respect from the audience. Too many ballads and too many crooning, sweet, harmonious songs, they'd go, 'Get off, we want to rock.'"
The pub rock scene that dominated in Australia in the ‘70s and ‘80s helped forge a national musical identity through the aforementioned groups and the likes of Rose Tattoo, the Radiators, and Australian Crawl — even if it did not quite translate to the rest of the world. (Incidentally, Australian Crawl’s 1981 song "Unpublished Critics" sounded like a template for Guns N’ Roses "Sweet Child O’ Mine".) Aside from the bombastic AC/DC, mainstream Aussie artists who generated international buzz by 1980 were on the softer side — Little River Band, Air Supply, and Olivia Newton-John.
But many groups wanted to make that big international leap. Having cut their teeth in the rough and tumble pub rock scene, they were already seasoned veterans ready to take on the music world at large.
"I Had To Have A Bodyguard, That Was How Massive It Was"
New wave, post-punk, and synth-pop sounds from the U.S. and UK had arrived on Australian shores by the late '70s. Often pulling from those sounds, local bands began to see more wide-ranging success: INXS, Flowers (who became Icehouse), the Church (who got a gold album in America in 1988), Pseudo Echo, Models, Machinations, Divinyls (who later got a Top 10 hit, "I Touch Myself," in America in 1991), the genre-blending Hoodoo Gurus (who would establish a cult following in America and Europe), and the synth pop-flavored Real Life (who scored two Top 40 U.S. singles in 1983).
Established groups like Dragon and Midnight Oil also persevered into the 1980s. In early 1983, nearly five years into their career, Men At Work became the first Australian band to simultaneously have a No. 1 album (Business As Usual) and single ("Down Under") in America.
INXS were already popular in their homeland by 1987. Their 1985 album Listen Like Thieves had certified gold and a single from the record, "What You Need," became a Top 5 hit Stateside for its blend of funky verses with heavy rock choruses. INXS doubled down on those artistic choices on Kick, released in October '87. The album produced four massive hit singles (including the No. 1 "Need You Tonight"), sold four million copies in its first two years of release, and launched a 16-month world tour.
INXS saw a larger audience for themselves out in the world. They sought an American market that understood their music.
"We left Australia to tour overseas more because we found that the Australians back then loved eighth [notes]," says Farriss. "There was no funk in anything, and we were like, ‘What's with the lack of groove here?’" (Notable exception: the underrated Machinations.) "That's one of the reasons we started to experiment more and more and how we ended up working with Nile Rodgers [in 1983], how we ended up working with people who we admired that were more funky. Daryl Hall sang on ‘Original Sin’ because Nile asked him to come in as a special guest."
Midnight Oil drummer Hirst recalls his band playing up to about 180 shows a year between late 1977 and the early 1980s, graduating from pubs and clubs into bigger venues. The band later found a lot of support early on from maverick radio stations like WLIR in the United States and Canada, which "played us relentlessly because they had the freedom to do that back then."
Midnight Oil’s career did not follow a traditional trajectory, and every album saw them assimilating different influences. Their early releases had an edgy rock sound, while Japanese influences can be heard on 1984’s Red Sails In the Sunset. "It was entirely experimental…because Japan at that time was just bursting with color and money and art and culture," says Hirst.
On 1987's socially and environmentally conscious Diesel and Dust, Midnight Oil took inspiration from their Australian desert touring experience with the Warumpi Band, a First Nations band. "We camped out under the stars," recalls Hirst. "We started writing a different song. We were writing songs which were simpler, more melodic, but very Australian songs still. They spoke more of an ancient history of Australia rather than the recent colonial history."
Fueled by songs like "The Dead Heart," "Put Down That Weapon," and the global hit "Beds Are Burning," Diesel And Dust sold over 3 million copies worldwide, hitting No. 1 Down Under and in Canada, Top 20 in five European countries, and went platinum in the U.S. For the American leg of their global tour, Midnight Oil brought along two First Nations bands from Australia — AKA Graffiti Man and Yothu Yindi, the latter of whom released the album Tribal Voice in America in 1991. "The weird thing was the more time we spent overseas touring, the more Australian the material got in many ways," notes Hirst.
Like INXS and Midnight Oil, Icehouse made headway from the start, first performing in 1977 as Flowers in the same Sydney pub circuit as Midnight Oil and INXS. Their new wave/pub rock sound on their 1980 debut racked up over 250,000 album sales, and they took on more synth-pop influences by their second album Primitive Man. Icehouse toured the U.S. on the same club circuit in the same early ‘80s period as the then-fledgling U2; they opened for Simple Minds in Europe and North America, then vice versa Down Under on that reciprocal world tour. Their Top 20 UK hit, "Hey Little Girl," (also Top 10 or 20 in 9 other countries) led to both David Bowie and Peter Gabriel asking Icehouse to open their 1982 European tours. They went with Bowie and played before 70,000 people a night, Davies recollects.
After releasing two more studio albums and regular touring Down Under, in Europe, and America, Icehouse achieved massive success at home with their fifth album, 1987’s Man Of Colours. The record went seven times platinum in Australia (490,000 copies) and its second single, "Electric Blue," (which was co-written with John Oates) spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the country's charts and hit No. 7 in America. The album's first single, "Crazy," (No. 14 in America) was only kept out of the top spot in Australia by Kylie Minogue’s debut single.
"Everything changed," declares Davies. "I had to have a bodyguard, that was how massive it was [there]."
Davies says the big success of Man of Colours spawned 14 months of touring, seven alone in the U.S. They supported the Cars on their final tour in arenas like Madison Square Garden. Their own tour landed at places like San Francisco’s Warfield Theater.
"It was a lot of work," admits Davies of the tour. "In the middle of it, I had a kind of breakdown. I kind of fell apart in San Francisco and missed a show. But I got back on the trail a couple of days later and kept hammering away. It was a very intense 14 months."
On the flip side of Midnight Oil or Icehouse, Dragon had a good time band vibe with some serious songs tossed into the mix. They topped the Oz charts in the '70s with Running Free and O Zambezi, and single "Are You Old Enough?" and "April Sun In Cuba." Dragon embarked on their lone North American tour in late 1978, opening for blues guitar legend Johnny Winter throughout the south.
Frontman Marc Hunter’s purposeful antagonism of audiences went over well with wild 'n' wooly crowds in Australia, but in the American south and Texas in particular, it provoked hostility. "Marc would really push it as far as he could," recalls bassist Todd Hunter. "It was wild. You had to be there, but I'm glad you weren’t."
Marc was fired from the band for three years, but when Dragon reunited for 1984's Body and the Beat (which produced their big Aussie hit "Rain" that broke the U.S. Top 100) it "was a very different band" with a more modern sound. "It had more of ‘80s pump and big keyboard things, which is fun to play live. You can play stadiums and it just works," Hunter says. "We always had this tradition of bright, poppy choruses and [then added] dark elements to those songs."
Dragon landed the opening slot for Tina Turner’s European tour for six months total in 1986 and 1987. (If that sounds like an unusual fit, Turner had a fair number of rock tracks in her high energy repertoire back then.) They played coliseums and bull rings with her, although they changed their name to Hunter for the tour and international release of the Todd Rundgren-produced album Dreams Of Ordinary Men in 1987. (The temporary name change occurred because their label thought Dragon sounded too metal. Ironically, the European press thought Hunter was a metal name.)
The other big group to emerge from 1987 was Crowded House, formed by former Split Enz members Neil Finn (vocals/guitar) and Paul Hester (drums). Their 1986 self-titled debut album took a little while to pick up steam, but by spring of 1987 the gentle ballad, "Don’t Dream It’s Over" hit No. 2 in America and No. 1 in Canada and the UK. It also charted in the Top 10 in four other countries and Top 20 in two more. They even re-recorded Split Enz’s "I Walk Away" for the Crowded House debut.
Pop singer John Farnham scored Australian hits in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, but experienced a true career revival with the rock anthem "You’re The Voice." Co-written by then-Icehouse keyboardist Andy Qunta, the 1986 song was a No.1 hit in Australia. In 1987, it also went No. 1 in Sweden and West Germany, Top 10 in the UK, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, and Switzerland and Top 20 in four more countries. The album the song was from, 1986’s Whispering Jack, was also a massive hit for Farnham in his homeland where it has since been certified 24 times platinum.
A Lasting Legacy Of Aussie Artistry: "We Were Certainly Going To Make Hay"
The aftershocks of the 1987 Australian rock ascension continue to reverberate today, with multiple generations of bands taking influence from or covering that year's biggest hits. It also opened a wider door for talent from Down Under, some of which was covered in a previous GRAMMY.com feature nearly a decade ago. "We don't even know what the Australian sound is. A lot of people associate it with AC/DC, punk rock type of stuff," Cut Copy’s guitarist Tim Hoey said in the piece. "But there's an amazing bunch of bands that have come out of Australia that I wouldn't necessarily claim have an Australian sound."
INXS has been cited as an influence on the likes of Maroon 5, the 1975, and Savage Garden.Dua Lipa echoed the chorus of their "Need You Tonight" for her 2020 single "Break My Heart," bequeathing co-songwriting credit to Farris and INXS singer Michael Hutchence, the magnetic singer who died 25 years ago on Nov. 22. Documentaries on both the band and vocalist have come out in recent years.
Midnight Oil’s music impacted artists as diverse as Billy Corgan, Pearl Jam, Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, and Bono (who paid homage to the band during their ARIA Hall Of Fame induction). "Beds Are Burning" has been covered by Patti Smith, Imagine Dragons, AWOLNATION, and the Killers, among many others. The group wrapped up its global farewell tour in October 2022.
Frontman Peter Garrett served in Australian government posts between 2004 and 2013; Hirst has seen a lot of First Nations groups thrive and continue the type of tradition that Midnight Oil helped popularize. The band continued taking such artists on tour.
Icehouse continue to headline shows and festivals Down Under. Popular 2000s Aussie alt-rock band Eskimo Joe are fans of the band and even brought Iva Davies onstage at a 2010 festival to perform Icehouse’s "We Can Get Together" to a warm reception. The Killers covered "Electric Blue," and singer Brandon Flowers has acknowledged that they love many Icehouse songs. Davies has also composed for film, TV, and dance, and most notably he co-composed the score to the 2003 Russell Crowe film Master and Commander: Far Side Of The World.
Although Dragon singer Marc Hunter passed away in 1998 from throat cancer, his brother, bassist Todd Hunter, reformed the band in 2006. They have toured regularly with vocalist Mark Williams and released new music, including 2014’s Roses. Many younger Aussie bands have covered "Rain," and legions of fans continue singing along to the tune at Dragon shows — its theme of love and friendship overriding the storms of life feels eternally fresh, and the song has topped 37 million plays on Spotify. Oddly enough, the single was big in Peru then and now, as evidenced by numerous covers from that country. One Peruvian YouTuber uploaded "Rain" 12 years ago, and it has received 5 million views. The 1,200+ comments confirm the Peruvian adulation.
"Don’t Dream It’s Over" by Crowded House is a beloved ballad that has been appreciated by everyone from Rob Thomas to Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine. Chris Martin and Eddie Vedder performed it at the Global Citizen Festival in NYC in 2016.
John Farnham’s career Down Under grew immensely following "You’re The Voice" (now at 154 million Spotify plays). The song was covered live by Heart in 1991, and the singer has since performed the song live with Coldplay, Queen guitarist Brian May, Celine Dion, and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He recently has been recovering from life-saving surgery that removed a cancerous growth in his mouth.
All sixof these artists, and many others mentioned in this feature, have been inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in Australia — further cementing the global impact of what came from the pub rock scene.
"I cannot emphasize how important that whole scene was," says Icehouse's Davies. "'We better make these people happy, or else they're going to start throwing stuff at us.’ That was the real world all those bands dealt with in lots of weird, different ways."
The sounds of 1987 proved that the music coming from Down Under could have a lasting impact that pushed talent beyond the borders of their homeland.
"We couldn't believe our luck because for the first time ever in Australia's musical history, the eyes of the world turned on [us]," recalls Hirst. "It didn't last long, only a couple of years. But we were certainly going to make hay."