40 years on, we can get together
A LIVE ICEHOUSE ALBUM RECORDED JUST BEFORE LOCKDOWN REVISITS CLASSICS
Iva Davies, like many musicians, has found himself with a lot of spare time in 2020. The Icehouse frontman has used the forced break from scheduled gigs to do some long overdue maintenance.
He’s had guitars repaired, getting the vintage Prophet-5 keyboard on which he played Great Southern Land restored (it’s now worth $13,000), and has digitised old cassettes that were gathering dust in storage for decades.
“I found the original demos of Great Southern Land and (the song) Icehouse,” Davies says. “There was a whole Flowers song that never got finished, bits of Love In
Motion before it turned into a song. It took me right back to my desperate attempts to write songs. I was clutching at straws for anything I could turn into a song.”
A classically trained musician, Davies launched his career as Ivor Davies – his stage name came from a misspelling – with a 7-inch single from 1975, Leading
Lady, that he’s also had digitally preserved in lockdown. “I hadn’t heard the song in 40 years,” he says.
By 1977, juggling two cleaning jobs, Davies formed Flowers, who mainly relied on cover versions – including new wave-inspired takes on The Kinks and The Easybeats.
“Our setlists were fashionably out of fashion, almost anti-punk,” Davies says. “I’d never been into a pub before Flowers, but I realised the guys were there for the girls and the girls were there to dance. If we could get the girls to dance, we’ve got the whole room. That was the basic principle of Flowers.”
When Davies formed Flowers at age 22 he’d only ever written four songs as a teenager. The iconic songs from the 1980 Icehouse album – including hits Can’t Help Myself, We Can Get Together and Walls – were the first he’d ever penned as an adult.
“It amazes me they turned out how they did,” he says. “After the first album there was a record contract that said you have to deliver a new album every year, and you had six weeks to write it, so it got even more desperate.”
Flowers would be forced to change their name to Icehouse due to a Scottish band called Flowers. They simply upgraded to the title of their debut album which, confusingly, is now referred to as Flowers.
The album saw Icehouse gain international attention, which they’d later follow up with huge UK hit Hey Little Girl from second album Primitive Man and two US hits with Crazy and Electric Blue from the million-selling Man of Colours album.
The Killers recently covered Electric Blue for an Australian radio livestream, while Trent Reznor’s pre-nine Inch Nails band Option 30 covered the song Icehouse during studio sessions from 1983 leaked on Youtube.
“Dropping names, but David Bowie said to me, ‘You never know who’ll be listening’,” Davies says. “That’s how we ended up touring with him; he’d heard Hey Little
Girl. Trent Reznor must have been really young when our first album came out, but it was a college hit in America.
“We toured the US college circuit with a very young U2, who were just a college band in America at that point.”
While Icehouse’s debut album is considered a classic, Davies – who still struggles to write songs – views it in a different “bookcase” to all other Icehouse records.
“The songs on the first album were the first songs I ever really wrote and they all got really well roadtested over three years,” he says.
“That process never happened again. There was no time. Everything I did with Icehouse since then was a product of me writing in a home studio with a whole bunch of gadgets, trying to fill a quota a songs.”
In February, Icehouse headlined the St Kilda Festival to more than 100,000 fans – playing a set that included all but two songs from their debut album, to celebrate its 40th anniversary. A live album from the show, Icehouse Plays Flowers, has just been released (including Bowie, T.rex and Sex Pistols cover, inspired by early Flowers).
While the “tricky to play” Sons and Nothing to Do from the album were left off the setlist, Davies tackled Not My Kind, a song he hadn’t played live in over 40 years.
“I had to teach myself how to play and sing it again,” he says. “I was terrified. And a lot of that first record is breakneck punk. I played Skin, Sister and Boulevard to my son, who is 24, and he said, ‘This is full-on punk’. I know – I nearly had a coronary on stage in St Kilda!
“You can hear me joking on the record I was about to have a heart attack. It was physically an incredibly taxing set to get through. When you crank up songs to that tempo, it’s fun but really hard work. It’s the territory of a 23-yearold, not a 65-year-old!”