COVER STORY: MURRAY COOK
MURRAY COOK TALKS WITH AUSTRALIANGUITAR ABOUT SKIVVIES, REDISCOVERING HIS SOUL, AND HOW THE WIGGLES MIGHT JUST TURN OUT TO BE THE UNEXPECTED SAVIOURS OF LIVE MUSIC.
Murray Cook talks with AG about skivvies, rediscovering his Soul, and how the Wiggles might just turn out to be the unexpected saviours of live music.
There are rock stars, and there are legends. And then there’s Murray Cook. Like so many starry-eyed guitar nerds, Cowra-raised Cook spent his youth playing in bands which went nowhere – including one foreshadowing his future signature move, The Finger Guns. And while he loved the experience, with his 20s rapidly running out, he realised that stardom hadn’t seemingly come a-calling, and probably wasn’t on its way anytime soon.
And thus, he decided to get into early childhood teaching at Macquarie University, where he stood out for being a) male, b) older, and c) six-foot, four-inches tall. Fortunately, there were a couple of mature-age students with him at the Australian Institute of Early Childhood, one of which – none other than Greg Page – was also of comparable height.
He, Cook and fellow student Anthony Field – who had tasted stardom with The Cockroaches before deciding on a less shaky career following a family tragedy – came up with the idea of makin g a record of children’s educational music as part of their coursework. Field invited his bandmate Jeff Fatt to play keys for the project, and after a few tweaks to the lineup, The Wiggles were born.
Unless you’re a parent, you can’t possibly understand just how important The Wiggles were to Australian kids. The colourful uniforms! The infuriatingly catchy songs! The finger guns (a move Cook saw cricketers use and thought would be a perfect greeting for the Wiggles to use around children to avoid any suggestion of inappropriate touching)! They’re a global juggernaut, turning over millions of dollars a year and spawning a merchandising empire – and for a while, Cook, Field, Page and Fatt were household names. At least, in households with preschool-aged kids in them.
What’s funniest for Cook – who is still involved in The Wiggles in a managerial and directorial capacity – is that the “new” line up of Field, Emma Watkins, Lachlan Gillespie and Simon Pryce has now completely captured the imagination of young people.
“Y’know, at Christmas I went to the big show they had here at one of the arenas. And I walked through the audience and none of the kids knew who I was. But the parents were pointing me out to their kids, and their kids were looking at me like, “Who? Who are you?” “The... Red Wiggle? Mum, that’s not Simon!” “Exactly! I quite like that though. Y’know, I’m really happy that it’s continued on with a new lineup, and that a new generation of children are accepting it – in some cases, even more so. At the moment in Australia, they’re probably bigger than we were.”
However, there’s something very precious about being the original Red Wiggle, and it’s this: several generations of musicians can trace their obsession with playing the guitar down to seeing Cook and
thinking, “Whatever that happy looking man is doing, I want to do that too.”
In fact, that passionate fandom was what saw Cook take the mainstage at last year’s sold-out Splendour In The Grass festival.
“I played with DZ Deathrays,” he laughs. “I just played two songs, but I walked onto the stage and the audience just went nuts, because they’re all in their 20s and they all grew up with The Wiggles. And backstage, there were quite a lot of these young bands getting photos with me and saying, ‘You were my first musical experience, and you turned me on to music.’ (Side note: Australian Guitar’ s editor Matt was one of those people – he was incredibly chuffed).
“That’s incredibly rewarding to me. Anthony [Field, who is now the guitarist in the Wiggles] and I talk about it sometimes, and we always that was one of the goals we hoped to achieve was that we would inspire children to get involved in music. And yeah, lots of them do. Did? Do? Whatever the verb is.”
Amazingly enough, that wasn’t the case for Cook’s own offspring. “They were obsessed with music, but my son, who’s 22 now – when he was younger, he did start playing the guitar, but he kind of rejected music. He did actually articulate that. He said, ‘I’m not interested in music because that’s what takes Dad away.’”
Oh. Oh god. “Yeah. It was awful.” There’s a pause, and a sigh. “He’s alright now, but… Yeah.”
What do you even say to that? “It’s pretty full on, isn’t it?” Cook answers with a low laugh. “I was surprised because he was still fairly young, so y’know, it was a fairly articulate thing to say, and quite emotionally mature for him to be able express that, I thought. But also, I was totally wounded. What are you going to do?”
That was part of what made him decide that it was time to hang up the skivvy and concentrate on being a dad to his teenage boys, which rather left him with a music-shaped hole that he attempted to fill with classic guitars.
However, fate then intervened in the form of another ridiculously tall person: Lizzie Mack. Cook started playing with her rhythm and blues band, and things just creatively clicked, leading to the brand new Soul Movers album BonaFide. The LP was recorded in part at the Muscle Shoals studios in Alabama, home of legendary session crew The Swampers. And as with so many things in Cook’s life, it began with a little bit of Wiggles magic…
“Lizzie and I had been to Muscle Shoals the y ear before,” he explains. “We were doing a bit of a road trip and thought we’d have a look in the studio, but someone was using it so we couldn’t actually go into the studio itself; it was late in the day, and they were closing up anyway. They had a huge shop at the front, though, and Lizzie was just kind of hanging
“ONE OF THE GOALS WE HOPED TO ACHIEVE WAS THAT WE WOULD INSPIRE CHILDREN TO GET INVOLVED IN MUSIC “
out. She’s got the gift of the gab, a bit, and this man came out and asked – in a friendly way – ‘Um, what are you doing here?’”
It was then that the true international power of Wiggledom came into play.
“I was just sitting in the car, and she came running over to grab me – apparently he had grandchildren, so he knew The Wiggles, and he came over to meet me. And it was Gene Chrisman, who was one of the Memphis session guys who played on [Dusty Springfield’s classic album] DustyInMemphis, and drummed for Elvis and everything!”
It’s not every day that the man who laid down the beat for “Son Of A Preacher Man” and “Suspicious Minds” comes to chat about Australian children’s entertainers, but this turned out to be the chanc e meeting of Mack and Cook’s dreams.
“And to see him... He just looks lik e an old guy you might see in Walmart, but then he said, “Would you like to come in? I’m recording with Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys.”
Y’know, as you do. “So we went in and David Hood – who was one of the Swampers – was in there with all of these musicians. We were just chatting away, and then Dan said to us ‘ So, you thinking you’ll come here to record?” And Lizzie and I looked at each other and thought, ‘ Well we actually weren’t, but that’s a good idea!’ And so we just got our heads down and spent about a year planning it all, and finally went over in August [2018].”
So the lesson here is to always chat with friendly old men, just in case it ends up bein g an in with getting recording time in legendary R’n’B studios? “Yeah, pretty much.”
The new album turned into a mini-tour of classic American studios, too. “Initially we just thought we’d record at Muscle Shoals,” Cook explains, “But we ended up in Fame as well, and in Memphis we went to Royal, which was Willie Mitchell’s studio that Al Green recorded all his early ‘70s albums at. Marko [Simec, late of Waiting For Guinness] was over the moon because nearly all these studios have these beautiful Hammond B-3 organs in them, and they just let us loose. And then of course, at Muscle Shoals, we actually recorded with [bassist] David Hood and [keys legend] Spooner Oldham, and that was really quite mind blowing.”
Surely there had to be the odd moment of nerves, though, right? After all, those walls have heard a lot, and playing with actual Swampers would mean a little voice inside the skull going, “Oh dear God, don’t suck, don’t suck, don’t suck…”
“Yeah, there was something like that at first,” he confesses with a laugh. “It’s funny because at first, you’re just thinking that... Okay, you know Muscle Shoals’ sound. I’m a big Stones fan, and they recorded ‘Brown Sugar’ and ‘You’ve Got to Move’ and ‘ Wild Horses’ there. I’ve seen footage of them in there, and some of that’s quite overwhelming at first.”
So what do you do? “Well, once you get working, that kind of goes out of your head and you’re just thinking about the songs, and what you’re playing. So it was mostly more inspiring than overwhelming, I guess.”
It’s just proof of how far The Wiggles’ influence has travelled. It has to be weird to think that The Soul Movers made a record on hallowed blues-soul ground largely because of four guys in a big red car.
“It really is. It’s amazing how many doors actually do open because of that,” he laughs. “And there’s so much goodwill about The Wiggles, too, I think because anyone with children or grandchildren will have been through – or at least witnessed firsthand – the obsession that some children and parents have with The Wiggles. But I usually think fairly fondly of it. Y’know, in a lot of cases it’s opened their children up to music, so they’re usually fairly positive about it.”
In fact, now is the time to reveal the great Wiggle secret: they just might be the thing that saves live music in Australia.
As anyone who has been to a gig in S ydney knows, Cook is at a lot of shows – and he’s well positioned to point out that it’s not as ubiquitous an entertainment option as it once was.
“I know some older people who were kids before The Wiggles, and it just never occurs to them to go see a band, or head out to a f estival. I’ve met some people in their 30s who have come to see a band that I’m playing in and say, ‘Oh that’s the first band I’ve ever seen.’” He shakes his head. “And to me, that’s just so ridiculous, considering I started going to see bands when I was, like 11.”
And is that why The Wiggles have always been a band? “Absolutely. Another important thing to recall is that we were introducing live music to children as well – the concept of going to a concert and seeing musicians perform. I mean, when I finished school, everyone went out to see bands. It wasn’t just the people who were indie kids or something – it was just everyone. And I think the only place to get that now is just at festivals. It does seem like a lot of young people who wouldn’t go and see bands other wise will go to festivals.”
And, of course, right now festivals are under threat as governments pledge to crack down on drugs. “Yeah, I think this whole sor t of war on festivals is doubly troubling, because y’know, if they really crack down on those, where’s the culture going to come from? Where’s the music going to come from? It does certainly sound like it’s becoming a niche thing.
It could be entirely left up to children’s entertainment to keep live performance alive. It’ll be just The Wiggles, Justine Clarke and Lah Lah’s Big Live Band. “Exactly!” he declares. “We’re going to spearhead the new live music revolution!”
“WE WERE INTRODUCING LIVE MUSIC TO KIDS AS WELL – THE CONCEPT OF GOING TO A CONCERT AND SEEING MUSICIANS PERFORM “