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Below
is a partial transcript of the interview.
EN:
What happened on Capricornia? Did you sit down and say "We'll
do this type of record, we won't point any fingers this time?"
RH:
No. The songwriting process with Midnight Oil is a lot more
organic and usually more non-tangential and chaotic than it
appears at the end of the day, even though it might appear
that we pick up The Age or Sydney Morning Hrald and say "Oh,
let's write a Hollingsworth song".
Originally
the songs come from Jim and myself and then take on this Midnight
Oil process with Pete coming in with extra lyrics. Then they
go on this torturous process with Martin and Bonesy stepping
back from the songs to get that extra distance and then the
songs change and become Midnight Oil songs. And the songs
can take on completely different meanings to how they were
originally conceived. It's the maturity of quite a torturous
process and can be quite difficult, particularly for the writer
who had a particular idea about the way it was going and it's
become something else.
Ultimately
that's the strength of a band. You get people coming in who's
ideas and talent you respect, unlike a solo artist who has
to rely on himself and whoever he's playing it to at home.
Everyone's pulling on this idea and it goes through this unspoken
tortuous process ending up with a song. Most of the time it's
stronger than the original. Sometimes it's not.
EN:
When you have a central notion like the Capricornia theme
do certain songs end up on the cutting-room floor?
RH:
To give you an example. This band loves the idea of being
a pop band. We love listening to good pop bands and sometimes
we even think we can be a pop band. And in actual fact we've
tried this - both Jim and myself have put forward obvious
pop songs - and occasionally we record them. In this case
we even got to the point of recording it at Festival as one
of the designated songs and after having completely finished
it and having mixed it we rejected it again. So there's a
wishful thinking side to the band as well, but we always err
on the side of something that's tougher and rockier.
I think
the difference between Capricornia and some of the other albums
is the strength of the band - where you get enough melody
from the backing singers, myself and Bones and Jim doing the
harmonies, with the attack and compelling quality of Pete's
vocal dead centre, combined with the urgency of the arrangement
and the melody of the guitars. That's the right blend that
works for us. If it veers too much it becomes either really
hard to listen to at home, but maybe really exciting on stage,
or it becomes something too flaccid for the band.
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