Men At Work front-man Colin Hay tells about the start of the band in Melbourne and the success of the song 'Down Under'. A short documentary by Top 2000 a gogo (Dutch Public TV) from 2007.
OG TRIPLE TRIPLE when I went to Darwin,Australia while I was in the Navy in 04 they played this song so much on our ship it might as well have been the national anthem.
As an American, I'll confess that I don't know anything about the America's Cup or that Australia won it then, or that it was a big deal to Australians. I just remember Men At Work being one of my favorite bands back then and how amazing they were. I visited Sydney in 2000 for the Olympics and loved seeing at least a little bit of Australia. Such a beautiful place!
I was 7 in 2000, I wish I could travel now. but I think I first heard this on the radio as a kid and my mom liked it. I remember downloading the album on a torrent and played the album to death. I remember my dad pretended not to like the song but I think it was just because he heard it so many times.
I'm glad Hay brought it around at the end to saying the song is ultimately a celebration. Hearing him say that he was writing about real estate development and the death of whatever I was getting pretty bummed out there for a second..... "Down Under" is simply one of the best, happiest songs of all time. I cannot hear it without feeling better, no matter how bad I'm feeling. It doesn't really matter what the songwriter "meant" when he/she wrote the song, once it's out in the world then it's totally open to the interpretation of the listener, but I'm still glad he said it.
Yeah. Also it's not like the lyrics have anything implicit or explicit that you could draw that conclusion of the death of Australia. Only in the video you could draw those conclusions.
RIP Greg Hamm - an underrated musician. Lots of great 80s bands from that Great Southern Land: Men At Work, Icehouse, INXS, Midnight Oil, Crowded House, Kylie Minogue, The Church, Dead Can Dance.
When I was last down under, I was travelling on a bus somewhere for a couple hours, this song came on the radio. I remember looking out into the bare landscape and was passed by a road train. I will never forget the image.
My best and believe this watched this at our Grandparents’ house. We slept in the only room with a window AC unit and TV. WE absolutely laughed HYSTERICALLY in the part of video with the koala on the rope. In ‘83, we were 14 yo and 15 yo. Grandma told us that we were too loud which made us laugh even more. Such a fantastic memory for both of us…and…we were not drinking. As Americans in Missouri, it just brought us JOY! Thank You Men at Work!
Down Under was justifiably a worldwide smash hit...taken from the debut album 'Business As Usual' which was top quality from start to finish! A great decade for Australia in many ways, & bands like Men At Work having success in the USA & UK helped start that.
@@williamwilkinson381 that’s what music has been about for the longest time. Artists talking about real world issues and situations into music poetry. Don’t be such a ignorant snob.
@@TheMorningtrain The "plundering" continues as middle class Australians (and other 1st worlders) go abroad, spend their money, and undermine the land and cultures of the 3rd world.
I was living in a small town in Hawaii (Kailua Kona) and the local movie theater would show Surf Movies every once in a while . We would be psyching so hard for movie night . Dress up in your best trunks and T-shirt and slippers and cruise up and froth with all your classmates and friends , get rowdie throw popcorn till the movie started hooting and hollering at every ride . Men at Work had a couple songs in an Aussie surf movie that had Gary Kong Elkerton , Wayne Rabbit Bartholomew and Chappy Jennings called Kong’s Island . Best time of my life and every time I hear Men at Work it takes me back to 7th grade Kona Town
Business As Usual was the first "grown up" album that I used my own money for to buy. I was so excited. I saved for awhile. I was probably around 11 years old or so. Still have the LP and cassette both (somewhere) and also Cargo on cassette.
Never get sick of this tune, from first day to now, the middle of 2019 and beyond, great work Coline and the team, awesome job, greetings and best regards from Down Under.
The flute, minor key, rhythm, enigmatic lyrics, vocal tone all combine to give me goosebumps. Why? Don't know. Don't care. Glad to have this recorded in my energy field. Not just sound, but cellular memory response. Modern, New at the time, but threads reaching way back in human collective consciousness. Bizarre effect of songs, different from pure instrumental.
Genius song, very, VERY well played and produced. I LOVE the pan-flute. Not just the solo-bits but also the tiny bursts in the chorus. Very VERY great song. One of my favorites!
I saw men at work in London at the Brixton Academy in 1983 with the B52S as the support band. Very good gig and a great night out. I when with my brother phill and his mate Ian and girlfriends. Nice one.
One of the defining songs of MTV, my youth (like so many others) and one that instantly takes me back to the 80's. Such an incredible and immediately recognizable voice. Have to admit, having a flute as a "lead" instrument was totally radical considering where pop/rock music was at that time.
One of my all time favorite songs, not just the vocals & lyrics but the actual music gets into you and reverberates in sync with your soul! Of course its got the unique Aussie humor embedded in it as well!
Wonderful song...one of my favorites...I remember MTV used to give new songs/videos a sneak peek, and I remember seeing the sneak peek of Down Under, and the little I heard got me so excited and pumped for it....still holds up perfectly today .....a true classic....maybe one day I will get to visit there...I heard it's wonderful!!!
Interesting to hear Colin Hay describe what it's about. I always thought it was about travelling as a young man, discovering his national identity by encountering the other, and by running into other Australians who were also travelling.
One story I heard before. When the band was going to pitch themselves to the record company. They dressed up like painters or workers. And brought in a big ladder into the board room. Because nobody had heard of the group ‘men at work’ before
J Gunn Springsteen is not Jewish, has Dutch, Irish and Italian background and was raised a Catholic. Doesn't sound particularly Jewish, you stupid fuck.
Yes, people think Born In The USA is an anthem when the song is actually a wry and somewhat caustic commentary on the hypocrisy of patriotism. The tune recognizes the plight of unfortunate foreign peoples suffering in a questionable war; while paying tribute to Vietnam veterans who served their country, some of whom were Springsteen's friends and some of whom did not return from the conflict.
@@scorpiorising3741 I love its message. You have to have the balls to construct a song to attack such issues of the government as well as much of society ignoring the purge of strangers suffering in a strange land and likely to not return, all for a sardonic remark against patriotism. Not being able to maintain a home or appropriate healthcare that you have been promised before, in the throes of the Reagan era, the second most corrupt administration in recent memory. Reagan used the song in his re-election campaign and Bruce got angry for him completely misconstruing the song's subject and turning it into a ra-ra patriotic anthem. It's like your warden ripping up and burning your diary in front of everyone.
Dick Tater: ~ In the U.S., the song "Who Can It Be Now" was a "hit" a few months before "Down Under" - , and the band preformed both of those tunes when they made an Oct. 23, 1982, appearance on the highly-popular TV-series _Saturday_ _Night_ _Live_ . The songs "Overkill" and "It's a Mistake" were two other "hits" by Men At Work that I recall from 1983. According to the Wikipedia "discography" for that band, there were also the songs "Be Good Johnny" and "Everything I Need" that broke into the U.S. Top 40 charts, but I personally don't recall those.
charliebe28 - I have been a musician for a long time, and I liked Men At Work's album right away...I still answer the door sometimes, singing "Who can it be, now?"
Well Kevin Bacon refers to Men at Work in Footloose so at least one person knows more than just this song lol Ofcourse the irony about doing these sort of songs is the band usually intends it to be some sort of social commentary on how society is fucked up but then society takes it and starts using it as an anthem unironically.
I heard this song way back on MTV in India way back in the early 90s, when MTV was the coolest thing on Indian television. Listening to it, in Sydney today.
The irony how a song about short term gains was taken out by a sad copyright fight where the flute riff was lifted from the Kookaburra song. Sadly this video tells no story behind the song. Maybe that's because that story is very very sad.
There were just a lot of immigrants to Australia from Britain in the 1950's it was a scheme known as the "ten pound poms" a generation of British people who came to Australia paying only ten pounds for the privilege, this scheme was supposedly part of a white Australia policy because after WW2 white Aussies felt scared about Asians starting to settle here so as a result of all this Colin and Bon Scott and lots of others are the kids of those immigrants, Jimmy Barnes is another Scott but you probably don't know him if youre not Australian. @@cmkimciago9602
had the pleasure to catch colin at a solo gig in Rutland, Vermont a couple of years ago. wish i could have seen the rest of the band, especially the sax player, he played an amazing sax; great band!
This is one of my favourite songs ever since I heard it in Nigeria in 1984. I heard it again today, and for the first time realised this is the only MAW song I know. Shame on me.
The way the video is shot makes it so easy to love. Just acting out the literal lyrics in time with them. He sings, "He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich" and that's exactly what you see. It's a very naive way to stage a video, but charmingly so.
3:48 Here's a bit about it. The rest is on Wikipedia. The lyrics to Down Under depict an Australian man travelling the globe, who meets a number of people who are interested in his home country. The story is based in part on singer Colin Hay's own experiences, including a prominent reference to a Vegemite sandwich (a popular snack in Australia), which derived from an encounter, during Hay's travels abroad, with a baker who emigrated from Brunswick, Melbourne.[7] Hay has also said that the lyrics were partly inspired by Barry Humphries' character Barry McKenzie, a comically stereotypical Australian who tours abroad.[9] Slang and drug terms are featured in the lyrics. They open with the singer travelling in a fried-out Kombi, on a hippie trail, head full of zombie. In Australian slang "fried-out" means overheated, Kombi refers to the Volkswagen Type 2 combination van, and having "a head full of zombie" refers to the use of a type of marijuana. Hippie trail refers to a subcultural tourist route popular in 1960s and 70s which stretched from Western Europe to South-East Asia. The song also contains the refrain, where beer does flow and men chunder. To "chunder" means to vomit. Speaking to Songfacts about the overall meaning of the lyrics, Hay remarked: "The chorus is really about the selling of Australia in many ways, the overdevelopment of the country. It was a song about the loss of spirit in that country. It's really about the plundering of the country by greedy people. It is ultimately about celebrating the country, but not in a nationalistic way and not in a flag-waving sense. It's really more than that." The promotional video comically plays out the events of the lyrics, showing Hay and other members of the band riding in a VW van, eating muesli with a 'strange lady', eating and drinking in a café, and lying in an opium den. The band are moved along at one point by a man in a shirt and tie who places a 'Sold' sign in the ground. The exterior shots for the music video were filmed at the Cronulla sand dunes in Sydney. The band are seen carrying a coffin across the dunes at the end. This, Hay has explained, was a warning to his fellow Australians that their country's identity was dying as a result of overdevelopment and Americanization. Hay has also stated that the same ominous sentiment lies behind the choral line, Can't you hear that thunder? You'd better run; you'd better take cover.
the ending did.. a bunch of people dressed in white leading around a bunch of people dressed in black being whipped and made to carry a large object like slaves.
Oh my god, I was living there for a couple of years, down Marine Pde. St Kilda is a phantastic place, still one of the best times I ever had! Very inspiring!
I can still remember seeing Men At Work in Edmonton in the early/mid-80s on their first big North American tour - Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble opened for them . . . which was a pleasant surprise to me, although the crowd in general didn't really like them much. Both bands were amazing.
I was born in 1975 and I can remember when MTV only had a few videos that they played over and over..."Video Killed The Radio Star" was another one of them.
I truly hope Colin and the rest of that band understand that, I asked for that album when I was 11 years old…I’m fkn 50 now… and what I hope they know is this: I lean towards listening to music from ALL deferent countries and THEY STARTED IT ALL FOR ME! I’m not just stuck in an AMERICAN box…. Listening to Motley Crue…… and I’d like to Thank him for opening my eyes!
Not even close to Colin Hay's best song, this dude has written so many amazing songs. Just listen to his album Going Somewhere and songs Children On Parade, Waiting For My Real Life to Begin, and Circles Erratica.
