Way back in my bachelor boy days, a group of friends and I formed an international cooking club. Each month we would select a country and then we would each make an appetizer, entree, a dessert, etc. as assigned through the luck of the draw. In this way, we got to have a social outing once a month at someone’s home that involved being exposed to types of food that we may not have normally eaten if we had been left to our own devices. I mention this because after a few months of doing this, we were joined by an actual international person. One of the members of our group was participating in an international teaching exchange programme in which they would trade jobs with a teacher in another country. They would leave for a year and the other teacher would come to Canada and assume their position. So, after a few months with the original group, suddenly one member left and a bubbly young lady from Australia appeared in our midst. Because our mandate was trying international food, she introduced herself to us by inviting us to try some native Australian foods. One of the food items she brought out was vegemite in a jar. I am not sure how she had gotten it into the country but there she stood with the jar in her hand. We all agreed to have some spread on a cracker. I gobbled it down and, in the interest of being honest, I have to admit that it was one of the grossest things I have ever tasted. Yuck! But that was not her fault. We are all used to things that are unique to our culture and personal history. Vegemite was no exception. Our new Aussie friend snacked on vegemite and crackers that night the same way that I might eat chips and salsa. To each their own, I suppose.
I mention this as a way of introducing today’s featured song, “Down Under” by the Australian band called Men At Work. I don’t know about you but it was their early 80s hit song that first made me aware that vegemite was even a thing.
“Buying bread from a man in Brussels
He was six-foot-four and full of muscle
I said, “Do you speak-a my language?”
He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich…”
-Down Under by Men At Work
Like most new bands, when Men At Work first formed they were basically a local bar band. Prior to landing a record contract and recording their debut album Business As Usual, Men At Work was actually just a duo made up of lead singer/songwriter Colin Hay and guitarist Ron Strykert. Together they performed acoustically and wrote their first original songs, one of which was a stripped down version of “Down Under”. In time the band expanded to include drummer Jerry Speiser, bassist John Rees and keyboardist/flautist, Greg Ham. In this new iteration, Men At Work reworked some of their older songs, broadening their sound with the addition of the extra musicianship now working in the fold. In the specific case of the song “Down Under”, Greg Ham was to add a bit of flute work to the song that was to give it a distinctive air which helped elevate the song, making it a worldwide hit when it was eventually released. Along with the song “Who Can It Be Now?”, Men At Work went from playing in local saloons to headlining the main stages of the world’s biggest cities almost overnight. Both “Down Under” and “Who Can It Be Now?” hit the top of the worldwide charts, as did the album itself. The band has sold over 30 million albums over the course of their career and are justifiably rated as one of the most successful and beloved Aussie bands of all-time, with “Down Under” often being referred to as Australia’s unofficial national anthem. So how exactly did this song about “hippie trails” and “vegemite sandwiches” manage to strike such a responsive chord in listeners, especially in Australia? Well, the answer to that is sometimes a song just happens to appear at the exact moment in time when a confluence of events all conspire to lift it to the stratosphere. That is sorta, kinda what happened here. “Down Under” by Men At Work, by all accounts, gives the impression of simply being a fun little ditty about what it is like to be Australian while touring the world. But the real story of this song turns out to be that it was a product of its times, and those times were historic and global in nature, as you will soon see. Here we go!
When Colin Hay and Ron Strykert originally sat down to write the lyrics for “Down Under”, they did so with two goals in mind. First of all, they wanted to create a song about Aussie pride. Thus, the story that is told through the lyrics in “Down Under” is of an Aussie traveling through the world, encountering strange and exotic people along the way but always ending up in the welcome company of other ex-pat Australians who know exactly what our weary traveller needs, such as that yummy vegemite sandwich. It is good to be proud of where you came from, in terms of your culture and history so, in that regard, Hay and Strykert managed to capture the joy of being Australian in the great big world very well.
However, as the 1970s drew to a close and the 80s were set to begin, something historic was happening in the political arena in Australia. Like many countries of the world, Australia’s history was built, in many ways, on a foundation of colonization. The Indigenous Peoples of the continent were systematically removed from their land, their language was replaced by English terms and they were discriminated against in terms of how the law worked and much, much more. As the 1970s moved along, a feeling took hold in Australia that, coupled with political will, saw the government issue formal apologies to all Indigenous Peoples, as well as enter into negotiations to return some land to the control of various Indigenous groups (the most famous case being Uluru or Ayer’s Rock, as it had been called by the colonizers). In addition to this, American imperialism was being perceived as a threat to the culture of the country. In this political climate, several musical acts stepped up with songs that offered some form of commentary about it all. Among the most famous examples are Midnight Oil with their songs including “The Dead Heart” and “Beds Are Burning” *(which you can read more about here), as well as the worldwide super hit “Let’s Dance” by David Bowie *(which you can read about here). Before any of those songs were written, Colin Hay and Ron Strykert wrote “Down Under” which contains a warning in the chorus about the dangers of colonization, whether you are the colonizer or the ones being colonized. The chorus goes:
“Do you come from a land down under
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can’t you hear, can’t you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover”
The chorus changes slightly throughout the song but the warning that is described as thunder rumbling (Americanization) and the urgent plea to take cover are consistently placed all throughout the song. When I think of the best political songs of the past while, I don’t usually think of “Down Under” by Men At Work but, just the same, the combination of invoking pride in what it means to be Australian out in the world while stating that a threat to this great culture is howling at the shores of the land, helps to pack a potent 1-2 political punch. “Down Under” became a song that spoke to the hearts, minds and souls of all Australians without becoming preachy or somber in the process. “Down Under” being at the top of the charts worldwide and in the hearts of those of which it sings is what you get when a fun song to sing by yourself becomes an important anthem for everyone.
In “Down Under”’s chorus, Hay and Strykert warn of the impending threat of American imperialism to Australia’s culture. However, other than raising awareness, they didn’t offer a way forward. In a most fortuitous act of timing, “Down Under” was to grow beyond the shores of Australia and become a worldwide phenomenon precisely due to two events beyond the band’s control that happened, ironically enough, on the other side of the world in America. The first of those lucky examples of perfect timing was the launch of MTV in the U.S. In the very early days of MTV, the television network was thirsting for music videos to air. With their album Business As Usual freshly released, the music videos for “Down Under” and “Who Can It Be Now?” came along just at the right time to answer MTV’s demand for fresh content. The fact that the band and the songs they sang possessed an international flair only added to their appeal. Both songs went into heavy rotation and became staples of MTV’s early offerings to the world.
The second lucky piece of timing that had nothing to do with the band concerned something called The America’s Cup yacht race. For over a century, yacht clubs (primarily in the US) would stage a series of races on the open sea. The winning crew would become the keepers of the America’s Cup trophy. As trophy holders, those crews would be honor-bound to defend their title against all comers, every few years or so. For over one hundred consecutive years, the America’s Cup had remained in American hands. As luck would have it for Men At Work, not long after their album was released, the reigning America’s Cup champions were officially challenged by a crew from Australia. The Aussie crew, skippered by John Bertrand of the Royal Perth Yacht Club, raced against the American champion Dennis Connor in a series of races that were broadcast live on TV. The Aussie crew used “Down Under” as their theme song, with the lyrics taking on a reverse meaning as the Aussie’s crept up on the Americans and ended their century-long reign as holders of the America’s Cup. Back in Australia, national pride surged with Bertrand’s great yachting victory, cementing the legacy of “Down Under” as a nationally significant piece of music in the process. Things could not have been going better for the band and their hit song. But, as often happens, life has a way of always returning to a state of equilibrium. Those mighty heights lasted only so long for Men At Work before something happened that shook the band, and to a certain extent the country, to its core.
I mentioned off of the top that when the band expanded its membership from the original two musicians to the five that existed when “Down Under” took off, that one of the things that the three new musicians brought to the band was the ability for the band to reinvent their old songs. Well, for “Down Under” one of the most important and distinctive additions to that song was the flute work played by new member Greg Ham. When Ham first played his flute parts for the band, everyone agreed that his music made the song better. When “Down Under” is talked about, even all these years later, many people still point to Ham’s flute playing as one of the reasons they are attracted to the song. As “Down Under” rose up the charts and became the theme song for the America’s Cup race, as well as appearing in heavy rotation on the newly-minted MTV music video channel, the song was heard everywhere people went, especially in Australia. Sometimes a song can be overplayed, as we all know. In this instance, it wasn’t a case of people becoming tired of the song that caused a problem. Instead, it was that because it was being played everywhere, all of the time, people began to take greater notice of its construction. One day, on a nationally syndicated television show (of all places), it was mentioned by a guest of the show that Greg Ham’s iconic flute melody bore a striking similarity to the melody of the classic Australian children’s song “Kookaburra”. The song “Kookaburra” had been part of Australian culture for decades. When people first began noticing that the flute melody in “Down Under” was similar to that of “Kookaburra”, they gave credit to Ham and the band for embedding such an iconic piece of culture within a song about preserving and celebrating Aussie culture. But in the very early 1980s, music sampling wasn’t yet a thing. Many people just assumed that a song as old and respected as “Kookaburra” must have, by then, been in the public domain when it came to copyright, thus making its melody free to be used by anyone, including Men At Work. But that is not what happened. As it turned out, the copyright was actually still privately owned. A lawsuit was soon launched accusing Ham and the band of using the melody to “Kookaburra” without permission. As a result, the lawsuit demanded sizable back payments and future royalty payments that threatened to almost bankrupt the band. Colin Hay objected strongly that “Kookaburra” had never entered into the band’s thoughts even once during those initial rehearsal and recording sessions for “Down Under”. Greg Ham, in particular, sought to defend himself from charges of musical plagiarism. In time, a judgement was rendered that did acknowledge the similarities in the two melodies while exonerating the band of willful intent. However, the stress of the trial took its toll on Ham and on the father of Colin Hay, both of whom suffered stress-induced heart attacks that claimed their lives. As for the people of Australia, they went from the highest of highs after the America’s Cup victory and all of the attention the world seemed to be paying toward their efforts at Indigenous reconciliation, to having to watch as the copyright owners of that country’s most beloved children’s song tried to rip the heart out of the band who had produced that country’s most popular pop song. It was suddenly all ugliness and rancour in the Land Down Under.
In the fallout of the trial, Men At Work slowly began to disintegrate as a band, eventually splitting up completely. While there have been attempts at reunions, Business As Usual remains their most well known and popular album, even after all these years. Despite releasing several more albums, “Down Under” and “Who Can It Be Now?” also stand as the band’s shiniest musical moment in the sun. To add insult to injury for Australians, the very next time the races were held for the America’s Cup, the U.S. reclaimed the trophy. An Australian yacht has never managed to win again. In Australia, itself, the political winds have changed course several times since those heady days of the Uluru transfer of ownership. In that time, many Indigenous reconciliation initiatives have stalled or been discontinued. To make matters worse, the effects of Climate Change have been particularly pronounced in Australia, with massive, out of control, forest fires being an ongoing issue for years now. As for me, I have never tried vegemite again after that first encounter with the Australian exchange teacher. I can still taste its grossness all these decades later. Mannnnn! But our story doesn’t end there. At one point, this lady announced to the group of us that she wanted to make the most of her year in Canada and wanted to dive into the culture of our country. Among the things she wanted to experience was going to a hockey game. Being a hockey fan, I volunteered to take her to see my Toronto Maple Leafs when they were still housed at Maple Leaf Gardens. She agreed to go. As the date of the game approached, she asked for advice on what to wear. I had no idea what to tell her but I did say that most hockey arenas were chilly so to err on the side of warmth. Well, our seats were in the nosebleeds, three rows from the top of the old Gardens building. She wore a Scandinavian knit heavy sweater. As soon as we made it to our seats we felt the stifling heat of 18,000 fans rising to the rafters where we were sitting. It was sooo hot there. We were both way overdressed but, at least, I could remove my coat. She could not remove her sweater, surrounded as she was by drunken louts on all sides. To make matters worse, the game was unusually boring and uneventful. I felt so badly for my friend. It was a lousy experience for her. But, then again, I didn’t enjoy the vegemite, either. I guess it just goes to prove the validity of the saying that we know what we like and like what we know. I have no idea whatever became of that Aussie teacher. I can’t even remember her name, truth be told. But I will never forget the taste of her Aussie cuisine. I can taste it even now as I write these words.
The link to the video for the song “Down Under” by Men At Work can be found here. The lyrics version is here.
The link to the official website for Men At Work can be found here.
The link to a video of a news report that discusses the copyright lawsuit between “Down Under” and “Kookaburra” can be found here.
The link to a video for the children’s song “Kookaburra” can be found here. The lyrics version is here.
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