The Hoodoo Gurus

Chariot Of The Gurus?  

Celebrating 40 years of rocking, The Hoodoo Gurus return with a cautionary tale  

By Lee Valentine Smith

Thirty-eight years ago this month, the Sydney-based band Hoodoo Gurus released their debut LP Stoneage Romeos. The first track (on the Australian version) was their self-referential “(Let’s All) Turn On,” a swinging litany of their collective inspirations.

Fast forward to today – the global pandemic has changed the band’s touring schedule a number of times but it certainly hasn’t diminished their rockin’ intensity or overall quality of songwriting. Despite the setbacks, cancellations and postponements of the Covid-19 era, the members of the beloved Australian band have released their 10th studio album.

Chariot of the Gods (Big Time Phonograph Record Co. / EMI) is injected with the band’s usual exuberance. The album’s current single “Carry On,” celebrates the steadfast determination of the human spirit. Likewise, Chariot highlights “World of Pain,” “Get Out of Dodge” and “Answered Prayers” deftly meld classic ingredients of pure pop, aggressive punk and delightfully off-kilter kitsch.

Originally conceived at a NYE party in 1980, the oft-lauded band currently includes Dave Faulkner (vocals, guitar), Brad Shepherd (vocals, guitar), Rick Grossman (vocals, bass) and Nik Reith (drums). Gurus founder Dave Faulkner recently called from his home studio to discuss the album.

The Hoodoo Gurus were off the road for a couple of years. Was the lockdown your longest downtime from the road?

Oh, absolutely. It was quite disorienting because music is to me like one of the main ingredients of life – not quite as essential as air, water, and sleep, but it’s right up there. So part of me was in a sense locked away in the basement and couldn’t come out. It was just bizarre. The only upside for us is we made an album, but everything else was really a negative. It kept us sane, making this album. We spent the last two years pretty much, or the better part of two years, making it. It was kind of ready by about the middle of last year, but then there’s all the other sort of things you’ve got to do, artwork and everything else. We were hoping it would be out in October, but another lockdown happened because of Delta. We ended up having to delay the record and our tour. As it happened, the vinyl wasn’t going to be ready anyway because the vinyl is a real problem these days. Plants around the world, they’re just overwhelmed with orders. It’s just been crazy. For us, at various points when we made this record, there were months when we couldn’t see each other. That kind of slowed things up. But at the same time, it was certainly good to have something to focus on.

Yet except for the topical Trump references [on “Hung Out To Dry,” available exclusively on the double-vinyl edition], it’s not an ‘of the moment’ kind of record.

We’ve always felt a little bit out step with the world at large. That’s kind of been our saving grace as well because we aren’t particularly influenced by what other people are doing or not doing – and what they may think about us or not think about us. To me, this record doesn’t sound like a band getting back together for old time’s sake. It’s literally us making the music that matters right now. That’s because we are still just as engaged and turned on by music as we ever were. It really means everything to us. We want to make music that excites us as much as the music we listen to from the people who inspired us.

Every one of the new tracks seems perfect for the live setting, especially the main singles. Even the little intro bit (“Early Opener”) could work onstage.

Yeah. That’s my slight nod to Sgt. Pepper’s in a sense, with the band warming up. I made it like a noisy pub and I’m in the corner playing one of our old hits like a desperado, an old has-been lounge singer.

You’re far from a has-been; your songs continue to be as vital as ever. Has your songwriting technique changed much over the years or do you still do it the same way as in the early ‘80s?

Same way! I mean, I might be going around, like on a morning walk or something, and a melody or a riff idea will pop into my head. But these days, I’ll just sing it into my phone, like a sketchbook in a sense for an artist, just as a little sort of an idea. When I come to write an album, I’ll take those little source tapes of ideas and riffs and the ones that still excite me, I’ll try to turn into a song. I’ll explore it and see where it leads me. That’s basically how I’ve always written songs. It’s almost a kind of process of discovery because you don’t really force this thing to happen. You just kind of follow your instincts and see where it takes you. Suddenly you’ve arrived somewhere quite exciting.

“Carry On” is a great example of pure pop songwriting. Was it inspired by the pandemic?

It wasn’t written about the pandemic but the video appeared to be about it. Actually I just used the idea of a nurse because my sister-in-law’s a nurse. I thought of that video before COVID struck, but the song’s actually about just sticking to your guns and holding on. Being true to yourself, even when people are giving you grief at work or whatever. So it’s a similar theme to what “Get Out Of Dodge” is, in a way. A lot of songs on this album are about basically holding through and not letting other people kind of drag you down to their level. People don’t get recognized for the contributions they make sometimes. You work and it’s unappreciated. So yeah, it’s just someone basically saying, ‘I see you.’ All you can do is know you’re doing your job the best way ya can. When you do your best, other people really have no cause to complain about it.

Before I let you go, I must ask you about the album title. Every time I see it, it reminds me of the Erich von Daniken book, Chariots Of The Gods?  

There you go. Well, see, we like bringing back these old culture references. We had songs like “Like Wow, Wipeout” on our second album, using that old hipster talk. We’ve done it a bit. As a teenager at high school, I remember that book was a bit of a huge success, a big, best seller. It was kind of like The Da Vinci Code of its day. Everyone thinking, ‘Oh, this must be true. Look at all this evidence, all the clues that you can see around the world.’ It was a theory about the aliens who came to Earth and built the pyramids, Stonehenge and the statues on Easter Island. All these different things. And there were paintings of space men by Aborigines in Australia, too. It was all nonsense, but people at the time thought, ‘Well gee, never thought that could be possible.’ We liked that idea, and the song itself actually is kind of using the metaphor of an alien invasion of earth. But I’m trying to actually have people who would never normally think this way, to kind of put themselves in that situation. What would it be like to have this superior race technology come in and just wipe out everything in your civilization, just destroy it and take over. I mean we see that in the world right now, with all the terrible global politics, but I was actually thinking of something much more ancient. In the case of Australia, 250 years ago when the Europeans brought the first fleet out here and colonized the place with their cannons and muskets and their foreign diseases that basically decimated the population of Aboriginal Australia. This country was changed forever – and their society has been trampled down ever since. That culture’s almost vanished. It’s been rescued and nurtured in places, but the dominant culture of Europe that took over has been refusing to acknowledge the damage that was done and the continuing problems that have followed from that whole terrible time. So it’s a metaphor for that. It would’ve been like a sci-fi story for the Aboriginal people in Australia when these crazy ships arrived with all this technology and these people dressed strangely with funny colored skin. People can hopefully see the parallels between the story I’m telling in this alien invasion story. I tried to make it more horrific than funny. It’s not a comic book story. I’m trying to make it a little bit like a horror story. Maybe it’ll make some people think twice about their preconceptions of primitive societies and how they were bound to fail next to modern European values. That’s the idea anyway.

###