Thanks heaps to Jeanette Glacken and Carolyn Farley for sending these. They have heaps of info on Bernie and also some stuff on the other brothers as well.
Bernie Hayes - Jan2000 Juice.
Bernie Hayes - June 28 1999 Revolver
Bernie Hayes - Newcastle. [this is a graphic.. be warned].
Article by Simon Wooldridge.
Sydney singer/songwriter Bernie Hayes is making the move from stalwart to star.
Pension day was kicking in bigtime at the Marrickville Golf Club, a '70s styled room which looks like something from a kitsch, overcooked Australiana film, thanks to the gathering of old dears who chat amiably as they play cards at small tables with a shandy in one hand and a fag in the other. The club is prematurely bedecked in tinsel, and as local hack Bernie Hayes ambles past the throng to the bar, he notes that the decorations have been up since early October. You get the impression that time moves slowly in this untouched corner of Sydney's biggest multicultural mish-mash. It's strangely comforting to see Dave Gleeson of the Screaming Jets sitting across the room, having a quiet one with a mate playing the pokies, his black rinse amongst the blue.
Hayes has no handicap, but it's not as if he plays regularly any more. When he's not off playing shows, his golfing partners are. He comments about the strange convergence of success that's happened in the last year. After around ten years treading the same boards, a few bands have started to gain some notice. There's a new energy to his writing, thanks in part to his being bolstered by consistent rave reviews for his solo debut, 'Every Tuesday, Sometimes Sunday'.
Tim Freedman of The Whitlams was having a jovial boast about having to re-press his new album 'Love This City'. While Hayes has also had to do a re-pressing, the divergence in figures (Hayes has pressed another thousand, Freedman another 36,000) does indicate the depth of The Whitlams' success. They're now figureheads of a scene which could well have gone the way of the dodo but for the dogged perseverance of those playing the music. "It's strange to see Freedman doing so well," says Hayes, "and the Gadflys, and Brendan Gallagher (of Karma County), all these people who have been around for so many years."
He's been around a few years himself. Hayes is the oldest in a musical family. His brother Pat came up with one of the classic bass lines in Australian '90s pop on the Falling Joys' "Lockit", and now plays in Stella One Eleven. Younger black sheep, Justin Hayes, who performs under the name Justin Credible and Stanley Claret in the long term drunk punk outfit Whopping Big Naughty, is a long term staple on the Sydney scene.
Stevie Plunder was a Hayes boy. Plunder's suicide came just a few months before the band he fronted with Tim Freeman, The Whitlams, started to finally kick off thanks to some notice from Triple J (three albums into the band's career).
Like Freedman, Hayes can be counted as a 'lifer'. He's been playing in bands for almost 20 years, starting in the once vibrant scene in home town Canberra in the '70s and '80s, and becoming a perennial voice and presence in Newtown throughout the '90s. If God drinks at the Sando, then Bernie Hayes must sit at his right hand.
The album title, 'Every Tuesday, Sometimes Sunday', refers to the fact that he shared long term residencies on Sunday arvos and Tuesday evenings with Stevie as the Gruesome Tuesome, and with a variety of brothers and friends in the Shout Brothers.
And now he's receiving the most ever interest of his long career. His solo debut has pricked the ears of local critics, thanks to the fine production, his mature outlook and his songwriting depth. The combination has seen him compared to everyone from Van Morrison to Elvis Costello and Ron Sexsmith. The sound has also impressed programmers at ABC Radio National, scoring airplay in regions all over Australia.
"That was one of the most weirdly exciting things," he recalls. "I got a cheque from APRA, and for the first time ever I had money from radio play... so someone must have been playing it." While his car radio is tuned to something in the classic and AM, Hayes admits he can't bring himself to listen to 2BL long enough to hear his own songs played. The sound is mellow, and suits an older crowd. But he doesn't necessarily consider these listeners to be "his people", laughing as he shrugs and reconsiders. "I guess they're my people if they buy the record.
"I would dearly love Triple J to pick up something and give it a bit of a run," he says later. "And maybe if it was uptempo, they might do that. Having all the other ABC stations play the songs has been great as well, it really could have gone either way."
It may seem a strange thing to say, but he's right. There was an irony that a band so classic rock oriented as the Shout Brothers could draw a consistent crowd of otherwise Too Cool crusty inner city types amongst the BBQ loving Aussie cliches who made the band's Sunday arvo audience. Who'd expect that a venue which so long supported the crazier vanguard of Sydney music could also be a haven for what would often be seen as the Devil in those circles - a covers band.
But the combination of the straight-up songwriting skills learned through performing a million classics in punk rock style, and the journeyman performance ethic, which sees Hayes' effortlessly captivate a room this far into his career, is the legacy of those days. Even if they were often genially pissed to the point that any rock would have served as a decent backing to a friendly pool game, the younger fans who rubbed shoulders with Sando stalwarts who'd been there for a decade did see the depth in Hayes' work. Which could also seem more uptempo.
Back then his guitar work owed as much to Dinosaur Jr's J Masics as it did the '80s rock of yore. Bernie was known as a mean electric guitarist, but 'Every Tuesday...' involves no electric guitars at all.
"I'm suffering a bit at the moment," says Hayes. "I love the album, but sometimes it feels a bit laid back when I play it live. It shouldn't be a problem, I love seeing mellow bands live. If they've got the nerve and can pull it off, I think it's brilliant. But I get really edgy playing laid back stuff like that. Especially in the band format. When I'm on my own, it's fine." "It's not just the band thing. It's when I'm in a bigger room with more people, that lowest common denominator thing. You think 'What are they going to respond to?' It's always been loud and fast."
I point out that there are plenty of bands trying to be Jebediah out there who fulfil that role, and people who come to the shows would be after something else. "Yeah," he admits. "I need a psychologist there before every show just to remind me what it's all about. If the next single is 'Falling Over Backwards,' I'd be happy because it's got a little more pep."
"Falling over backwards, just to keep some stranger pleased/Make a strong man weak, makes a good mind slow/Well it's one thing I don't need/If the answer's no, please forgive my being rude/Cos I found out, time in this world can be too short, so I'm saving what I ought."
The opening tune on the album and a potential next single, "Falling Over Backwards" follows the Charlie trilogy on the Whitlams' ground-breaking Eternal Nightcap album as a song inspired by Stevie Plunder. Plunder touched those around him deeply, and as a close brother, it's not surprising Hayes has written songs like this, and previous single "Mission in Life" in tribute. Last week for the first time, Hayes actually listened to his Whitlams back catalogue. He explained that he's seen the band so many times he felt no need to hear the albums Plunder game him. "The other thing is it's very hard to listen to Stevie's stuff without suffering a bit," he admits.
"'Falling Over Backwards' stems from the time Stevie died, and I had a full time job," Hayes recalls. "It was the first time I'd had a full time job in years, and I really felt that I'd left him on his own a bit, that everyone was too busy to notice what he was going through. I think it started with that, and then it's always too hard to say exactly what you feel so I usually homogenise an idea a little bit to make it easier to actually sing," he laughs.
"That was the spark for it, not wanting to do something really tedious at the expense of something more important."
So, with his career on the up, is Bernie Hayes looking at going back to working a day job? "It was nice having money," he admits. "Ah, but it's good be broke again."
WHO HAS BEEN INVOLVED WITH YOU ON THIS?
The usual suspects, members of the Shouties came along and did backing
vocals, the playing was Andy Lewis on double bass, Jess Ciampa on percussion
and vibes, John E. orchestral arrangement, Lara Meyeratkin on backing
vocals, Julia Richardson does a duet, Andy Travers played some drums and
some harmonies via Bill Gibson.
AND WHO DID THE PRODUCTION, OVER WHAT SORT OF TIME?
Paul McKercher did the recording and mixing, Nic Dalton did the production.
It must have taken a year and a half because I went overseas in the middle
of it and then came back to finish it, I wanted to go on a holiday through
Spain and Europe.
HOW DID YOU TAKE UP PLAYING?
When I started, I just tried to learn every song I loved on the guitar. I
guess there was Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul and Mary as well. I was
probably about 10 when I first got hold of a guitar, a teacher at school was
offering to give Guitar lessons at lunchtime, only two of us turned up.
HOW DID THE RECORD COME ABOUT?
When Stevie and I used to do the Gruesome Twosome. We'd talked for about 10
years about, Gee, we should do a record, people seem to like the stuff and
the more we played over the years we seem to end up with our own repertoire
as much as we were playing the old faves. What was an outlet for having a
bit of fun on the side, became through selfishness or whatever, became more
of an outlet for our tunes and we were sort of on the verge of recording
something, though we may never have got around to it. So, when Stevie died,
Nic approached me about 12 months later and said Bernie, are we going to
make a record? and I said well, that would be lovely. I'm not a prolific
songwriter, if I get a song out every six months I'm feeling pretty happy.
It's not that I'm lazy, I just don't have a lot of ideas and I can't
manufacture a song out of nothing.
SO, ITS SORT OF A SIMPLE LEGACY?
Yeah it is to a certain extent, well that's how we set out to do it. We
thought we'd make it nice and acoustically, maybe a bit of bass on a few
tunes, then it all blossomed into strings and horns. We had that idea for a
couple of songs and were so pleased and impressed that we thought we could
take this a bit further, and that's where John E stepped in, because my
skills with the manuscript paper went out the window in 5th grade, so I sat
down with him and gave him a very broad outline of what I was thinking and
he came back with a magnificent, thorough arrangement, completely notated
and well beyond anything I could have envisaged, I mean it's just amazing
the amount of skill that was mustered to make this record, in that regards
it's just very fortunate, and it all seemed to happen without too much fuss
and bother.
AND WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT NOW?
I think it's an achievement. Everyone involved has really had an input, but
it's largely an achievement of Nic and Pauls, that they've taken all the
bits and pieces and ended up with a real finished product, I don't want to
make comparisons generally, but I think of things like Wichita Linesman,
just songs that have a nice sense of space, and have something to offer
initially, in their rawest form and that are treated well and it also helps
that I'm doing the brothers songs: you know Pat's and Justin's and Stevie's
and that I was able to, from a distance say, I like that song.
WAS IT DIFFICULT TO GET EVERYONE TOGETHER?
I was a bit amazed actually, you don't like to ask too many favours of
people, but everyone I called said Yes and When, in that regard, everyone
was very generous and it's amazing how much of that is Stevie's legacy,
because he was such a giving, do anyone a favour person that you'd ever
meet, whereas I was always a bit stand offish. Seen as he was doing that, I
never really had to.... Yeah, so there's a shit load of goodwill there and
I've been lucky enough to reap the benefits of that.
