A chord, then A letter to you on a cassette. Thus begins one of the unlikeliest #1s of all time. I chose this song to start off my Tune Tag with
, which I encourage you to read.
The song did start with a letter on a cassette, one that Tim Freedman, the primary writer of the song, sent to his girlfriend. They lived in different cities and he was feeling lonely. Drinking heavily, he started noodling around the piano and out came this song. It’s a lovely romantic ballad that really stood out among the alternative rock and dance music of 1997. However, Freedman wasn’t happy with a sappy ballad so storyteller that he is, he turns it into a man’s descent into madness by the end.
Freedman’s notes on the song, which appears under the YouTube video:
I made this up quickly after drinking Irish Whiskey the night after I returned home to Sydney after visiting my girlfriend in Melbourne. I sent her the cassette (which she says she'll find some day). Two old friends Pinky (Beecroft) and Chit Chat (Von Loopin Stab) had just played me a demo of a song they wrote off their chops at the place I was renting in Thirroul and I thought their “classifieds section” (ie the “forty shaved sexy...”) would take the tune into a different dimension. So they let me borrow it.
After Stevie Plunder died in 1996 I was moving away from the roots sound of the first two albums. Here you can hear that change in one song, as Andy plays his double bass in the first half, and the electric in the second. The song took off on the radio and suddenly in October 1997 we had a Gold album before we’d even got around to shooting any film clips. It was voted ARIA Song of the Year, and just in time we could stop working cheap.
Rob Taylor and I mixed the album at Alberts in Neutral Bay. I remember the last hour of the recording with all the budget gone, I was singing the outro over the top of the completed mix, trying to find out just how deranged our protagonist should become. Deadlines can be liberating.
Pinky and Chit Chat are Matt Ford and Glen Dormand, who had a band called Machine Gun Fellatio (MGF) and were close friends of Freedman. I saw them when I was in Sydney and I don’t have the words to describe what they did. They had songs called Mutha Fukka on a Motorcycle and Butter My Arse with a Pigeon, so that should give you some idea. The lyrics Freedman is referring to is from Horny Blonde Forty and it’s those lyrics that initially endeared me to the song.
Forty, shaved, sexy, wants to do it all day
With a gun-totin', trigger-happy tranny named Kinky Renée
Tired teacher, twenty-eight, seeks regular meetings
For a masculine, muscular, nappy-clad, brutal breeding
While his wife rough wrestles with a puppy all aquiver
On a wine-soaked, strobe-lit Asiatic hall of mirrors
Oh, the 90s.
Here’s a great article looking back at the ascent of the song 20 years later. Basically, Freedman dropped off a bunch of cassettes of the song in record stations a few weeks before the Eternal Nightcap album dropped. (I wrote about another track off that album here.) It went into heavy rotation on Triple J, the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) and eventually went to #1 on the hottest 100 songs of the year, bringing the album with it. At the time it was the biggest selling independent album ever in Australia. Its success led Freedman to ink a distribution deal with Warner Australia, which meant there was plenty of money for the next one.
To my surprise, it actually did chart here in Canada briefly when a special version of Eternal Nightcap was released here in conjunction with the band opening for Blue Rodeo. That’s how I discovered them. (Wrote about it here.)
This is the famous “blue” video. The song was released without a video as Black Yak Records (Freedman’s record company) couldn’t afford one. When the song took off, there was a demand for a video so this was shot with Tim playing under moody blue lighting. I can find nothing about the director or where it was shot. The internet fails me again!
Enjoy your song of the day and enjoy my Tune Tag!
Absolutely love this song and enjoyed reading the story behind it. And great tune tag!