It seems fitting that with the release of the final three albums, Treeless Plain, Beautiful Waste And More Songs and The Black Swan, in a series of re-mastered and extended albums by Australian band The Triffids, came the announcement that the band was to be inducted into the ARIA Hall Of Fame. Hailing from WA, The Triffids moved to Sydney in the early ’80s before venturing to London where they graced the front cover of New Musical Express (NME) twice. Mainstream success was not forthcoming however – their most well-known song, Wide Open Road, didn’t even dent the charts – and the band eventually returned home to pursue other projects. And, in 1999, many were saddened when lead singer and main songwriter David McComb, who had undergone a heart transplant three years earlier, passed away just shy of his 37th birthday.
When the telephone conference operator connects and then introduces me to Graham Lee, the band’s pedal steel player, he also announces that the interview is scheduled for 15 minutes. I laugh and say that a mere quarter of an hour is hardly long enough to discuss The Triffids.
“I know,” Graham agrees as he comes on the line, “but you’re my last interview for the day so we can go longer if needed.”
Graham has spent much of the last couple of years overseeing the re-release of The Triffids’ entire back catalogue.
“It’s a huge amount of music, especially The Black Swan, but it had to be done.
David McComb always envisioned The Black Swan, the band’s final album as produced by the UK’s Stephen Street, as being a sprawling double album but it was only ever released in single form. With the addition of five songs, it has now become what it was intended to be.
“How close we’ve come to that I don’t know,” Graham muses. “We never set down in stone at the time what we did intend but it was meant to be a very varied album and not a bunch of songs that sat well together either thematically or sonically. It was meant to be as incoherent as The Beatles’ White Album. Understandably, Island Records, our label at the time, wasn’t keen on that idea but it was only in the process of putting all these releases together that I came across David’s notes.
“My initial intention was to put out The Black Swan with its original running order restored because the Australian release was different to the UK. And then I stumbled across David’s notes which reminded me that The Black Swan was supposed to have been a double album. So it’s now become the sprawling, messy thing it was always supposed to be. Or a thing like it. So, like the original album, that’s the one that’s going to divide fans the most.”
I’d always enjoyed the fact that The Black Swan became darker and darker towards the end with songs such as Blackeyed Susan, Clown Prince and Fairytale Love. But How Could I Help But Love You is now the final offering.
“Well Fairytale Love is still the closing song,” Graham points out. “There’s a dotted line between that and How Could I Help But Love You. And on the actual CD, there’s an extended silence between the two songs. And the thinking behind that was when The Triffids toured around that time, How Could I Help But Love You was always the encore song. So just treat it as an encore.”
The Raining Pleasure mini-album, which features on Beautiful Waste And Other Songs, has come up a real treat in its remixed form.
“It has hasn’t it?” Graham quickly agrees. “The fact is that the original release was mixed in no more than two and a half hours and then released. At the time, Nick Mainsbridge, who produced it alongside David McComb, was quite green in the studio – and Nick won’t mind me saying that – and even though they’d put down some great tracks between midnight and dawn, they ran out of time to mix it properly. So while the songs were fantastic, as were the arrangements and playing, there was something to be desired about the final, rushed mix.
“So we had the master tapes and were able to dump them onto a hard drive and send them up to Sydney, along with David McComb’s production and mixing notes, for Nick to mix it properly. And that’s a difficult thing to do – trying to make something that still sounds like the original but sounds better. But he did a brilliant job. The songs aren’t jarringly different, they’re just bigger, fuller and brighter.
“And I think it’s my favourite because I didn’t play on it so I’m not continually hearing all my mistakes,” Graham adds with a laugh.
The intro to Embedded – a drumstick continually hitting a cymbal - sounds longer and somewhat louder than before.
“Quite possibly,” Graham says. “I thought that was a mistake at first because it’s a very weird start. Looking back at David’s notes, I think it was there to trigger something else. But I went back and listened to the original release and the drumstick hitting the cymbal was there – that chk, chk, chk, chk sound – but you may be right. It might go for a bit longer now. That’s one for the trainspotters.
“It’s a bit like the wood saw at the beginning of Hanging Shed [on Treeless Plain]. That’s Rob McComb doing the sawing and I think it was the first time a saw had been used on a record for rhythmic purposes rather than being bowed as a musical instrument. Rob was actually sawing some wood with it.”
Beautiful Waste includes the half a dozen songs recorded surreptitiously one night at a studio inside Sydney Opera House and released soon after as the country music side-project Lawson Square Infirmary. It wasn’t until reading James Paterson’s liner notes, however, that I realised that David McComb had borrowed quite heavily from Summertime Blues for the opening song, Figurine.
“Me too,’ Graham, who played dobro on Figurine, admits. “It’s just so obvious now. That connection had never crossed my mind either until I read James’ notes for the re-release.”
James Paterson, who was never a playing member of The Triffids but who co-wrote some of their songs with David McComb, was one of many guest vocalists (Rob Snarski, Steve Kilbey and more) when The Triffids recently reconvened and performed as part the Sydney Festival.
“Those shows went incredibly well,” Graham says and then hints that something in a similar vein may just possibly be in store for Adelaide in early 2009.
“We do intend – and I’m in the process of doing this at the moment - of playing some shows in Sydney and Melbourne and also Adelaide early next year. And there’s a documentary being made. The Sydney Festival shows were filmed using six cameras and recorded in glorious 40-track.”
The band will perform at the ARIA Hall Of Fame as The Triffids have recently been inducted alongside acts such
“I’d known about that for a while now,” Graham admits, “although it only became official recently. It was a surprise to all of us when it was first suggested because we had never thought of overseas as being part of the mainstream. But I guess times are changing as 10 years ago, bands like us wouldn’t have got a look in. The head of ARIA is actually a huge Triffids fan as well as being a fan of some of the more obscure Australian bands. So I suppose that helped.
“So we’ll be doing two songs at the ARIAs but, at this stage, I’m not allowed to say what they will be and not allowed to say who’s going to be singing them in David’s place.”
I’d recently been having email conversations with Rob Snarksi (of The Blackeyed Susans) and when I said I was interviewing Graham, Rob had suggested I ask about people wearing hats on stage.
“Oh, we’re not going to go there,” Graham laughs. “Let’s not talk about that.”
Is it some kind of in-joke?
“Well, let’s just say that the next time Rob and I play on stage together he’ll probably be wearing a hat and leave it at that.”
Beautiful Waste & Other Songs boasts a long silence between the country-esque Lawson Square Infirmary mini-album and The Triffids’ abrasive Fields Of Glass EP.
“That needed to be done so that people didn’t get the wrong idea that the Lawson Square stuff and Fields Of Glass stuff was recorded at the same time. They are just so far apart in sound but only a matter of weeks in chronological time. It’s amazing that the same singer and most of the same musicians could sound so different in such a short space of time.”
Beautiful Waste, a song that Youth Group now cover, also boasts a long silence between the country-esque Lawson Square Infirmary mini-album and The Triffids’ abrasive Fields Of Glass EP.
“Once again, that needed to be done so that people didn’t get the wrong idea that the Lawson Square stuff and Fields Of Glass stuff was recorded at the same time. They are just so far apart in sound but only a matter of weeks in chronological time. It’s amazing that the same singer and most of the same musicians could sound so different in such a short space of time.”
Graham concludes by saying that there is plenty more Triffids material left in the vaults.
“Even the Jack Brabham cassette is salvageable. That was done by dubbing from one cassette to another so it was really rough. But the Jack Brabham master tapes are actually quite acceptable.
The Triffids’ Treeless Plain, Beautiful Waste And Other Songs and The Black Swan are out now via Liberation.