A pair of reunion shows aim to shine the spotlight on Glide’s William Arthur, probably the greatest Australian songwriter you’ve never heard of, writes DARREN LEVIN.

Unless you’re AC/DC, the prospect of reforming without a frontman is always fraught with danger. But for the remaining members of Sydney’s Glide replacing their late singer William Arthur is not what a pair of upcoming reunion shows is all about.

The band will perform back-to-back concerts in Melbourne and Sydney this weekend with Youth Group’s Toby Martin on vocals as a tribute to Arthur, who died tragically in 1999 aged 34. The one-off shows aim to draw attention to the re-release of Glide’s back catalogue, which has been made available through iTunes for the first time in more than a decade.

“It’s really just about putting William’s songs in the spotlight,” says former Glide bassist and Ivy League founder Andy Kelly on a conference call from Sydney with drummer Jason Kingshott. “It’s a shame they weren’t.”

One of the great unheralded talents of early- to mid-1990s guitar pop, Arthur was born in England, but spent his formative years in New Zealand. He relocated to Sydney with guitarist Tim Scott in his early 20s, before forming Glide in 1991 with Kingshott on drums and Marc Lynch on bass (replaced in 1996 by Kelly). The band’s three EPs and four albums, including 1999’s posthumously released Last, serve as a stark reminder of Arthur’s songwriting gifts. Drawing inspiration from Flying Nun’s second wave, particularly Straitjacket Fits, and Manchester’s “baggy” sound, he wrote evocatively and melodically, but was never conventional. Kelly says he still can’t put his figure on what made the Glide sound.

“The great thing about the band, from being outside the band, was that I couldn’t unravel what made the songs great,” he explains. “It maintained a kind of mystery.”

So what’s prompted the reunion?
Andy Kelly: As the years go by, we’ve been really struck by how great William’s songs were – and still are. I’m pretty objective about it – because I’ve played on one-and-a-half albums – but I felt that William’s songs were striking right from the start … It feels like William’s the greatest Australian songwriter no one has ever heard of. Last year was 10 years since he died, so that started us talking, but it didn’t feel very celebratory to do the reissues around that. But Jase [Kingshott] pointed out that this year was 20 years since the band formed. We felt that those songs deserved to be heard. We’d really like it if we were able to get some reappraisal and recognition of how good his songs were, that’d be fantastic.

Jason Kingshott: Having the time away from the band, and being able to do this with all the original members again, we can really concentrate on getting those songs back out there to the people.

I guess the timing’s good too with all the other ’90s bands reforming.
Andy: Everyone’s got the same idea as us, don’t they? [Laughs] It’s probably just a logical passage of time. Twenty years is about the right amount of time for people to start reappraising things … It’s probably a kind of cycle, I think. We’re not The Pixies or anything.

Jason: It’s probably a coincidence, but at the same time we are hearing younger bands coming through referencing Glide. Maybe their parents were into it? [Laughs] I don’t know.

Andy: Surely not their parents.

Jason: Probably not their parents. It’s their older brothers and sisters. Thank god for that. I know it’s easier for me to say, but we still sound fresh now, just in terms of how it was recorded and the sounds we were getting. Other bands around the same time were ahead of their time, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne, so I’m not surprised some of those bands are reforming.

There was something quite pure about the kind of music being made at the time. Maybe that explains the nostalgia.
Andy: That’s a good point. It’s 20 years ago, so that’s 20 years’ less knowledge. When you formed an indie-rock band in that period – Glide really were an “alternative” band – you formed it purely for the act of just doing it, and hopefully making a recording. Twenty years on there’s such a system and a way of doing things. This is not a criticism, but when you form a band now, you have a certain idea of how things might pan out. Twenty years ago, there was less of what could happen. For William it was very pure. I’m not trying to suggest that he didn’t want to be successful, but it was very personal and an expression of who he was.

Jason: There seems to be more pressure to have worldwide success. When we first got together we were obsessed with making music with each other. I just remember how exciting it was to go back to rehearsals back then. Every time we got together something special would happen. We knew we were onto something good, but we weren’t driven by the hunger of [getting signed to a] major label.

Did you experience the same feeling when you got back into the rehearsal room?
It’s definitely the same buzz. Every time we rehearse at the moment, we just can’t wait to get set up and start going. It’s getting better every time. For me, in particular, because I was there from the inception, so many memories came back. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Andy, but I have been closing my eyes. I really can conjure things.

How’s Toby working out?
Andy: He’s a very pure character and he was a fan of the band, growing up in Canberra. One of the first times I met him was at a Glide show in Brisbane. He knows everything, he knows the songs, and he’s really participating in it in such a fantastic way. I drive him home from rehearsal and he talks about the songs coming alive for him. It’s really great, because it really means something for him. But it absolutely goes without saying that you’re never going to replace William, and that’s not the idea at all. These shows are supposed to be a signpost to people checking out the old albums and the reissues.

Jason: It’s homage in the most respectful way. It was as simple as us wanting to get back into the rehearsal studio with each other, to play and get those memories going again. But then I had a conversation with Andy where I said, “I can’t stop thinking about doing something in honour of William, and having Toby sing on it.” And Andy said, “I’ve been thinking the same thing.” Toby is friends of both of us, but he definitely seems the right person for it.

Did he have any reservations?
Andy: Yeah. I think he was surprised to be asked. It’s a big thing to ask someone to step into someone else’s shoes. We had to tell him we weren’t expecting him to try and replicate William’s nuances and vocal delivery … Obviously I can’t answer for Tobes, but he’s embraced it so much. He pretty much said yes straight away. He just thought about it for a minute.

Ultimately, it’s about the old material that was recorded and it’s about William. I know myself as a music fan that people will inevitably find the concept of playing [these kind of] shows not quite right. I totally understand that, and we thought about it a lot, but the thing that tipped it was speaking to William’s parents … They were so amazingly supportive and delighted. They’ve been so fantastic. We sent them Youth Group albums so they could hear Toby.

Jason: That reaffirmed it for us.

Andy: We didn’t want to do it if they didn’t want us to … They saw it the way we intended: as a celebration and a tribute. They wrote us a really fantastic letter and that’s been the thing that’s made it really worthwhile.

I’d hate to bring it up, but someone claiming to be William’s partner has posted on Mess+Noise that she doesn’t like the idea.
Andy: I think that’s totally valid. I completely understand.

Jason: What were her reservations?

She said he wouldn’t have liked it and that Andrew Kentler [guitarist in the last incarnation of Glide] should’ve been involved.
Andy: Well, he will be involved in Melbourne. I totally understand that though, and that’s just one of the things that we have to wear. It won’t be to everyone’s tastes, and we appreciate that. It may be so that William wouldn’t have liked it, but we went ahead hoping that he’d like the recognition and the intention is to put focus on his songs.

Jason: Absolutely.

Andy: It’s not about us. Who cares about the bass player and the drummer? It’s about trying to get William’s songs out there, and absolutely in no way are we trying to be disrespectful to him or his partner.

Jason: William’s parents being so supportive helps in that sense. If they were, in any way, in two minds about it, we absolutely would not have done it.

I think those recent Triffids reformation shows were a good example of how you could pay homage the right way.
Andy: It’s the spirit of how you undertake it. Those Triffids shows were amazing, and Toby was part of those … The shows are simply a way of pointing people back to the reissues. It’d be very hard to reissue them and try and get people interested in them without having some kind of focus. They are one off and I hope that even if people don’t like the shows, it points them towards the albums.

Jason: This is also the most tasteful way of us trying to do this. You’re talking about the original members from those early EPs to the albums … It’s not about us, but if none of us were agreeing on it, then none of us would’ve continued with it. We’re just a vehicle for his memory … If we could do it Gorillaz-style with everyone in black and footage of him [William] playing, we’d do it. But I don’t think it’d work. We’d prefer that. Wouldn’t we, Andy?

Andy: [Laughs] I think so!

Will the shows draw equally from all four albums?
Andy: Yeah, right from the very first thing the band recorded – a song called ‘Fade’ on one of those rooART compilations [Young Blood] – to the albums. We’re trying to get an even spread.

Are you hoping it paves away for physical releases?
Andy: Yeah, that was always the absolute dream. We would’ve loved to have done it, but to physically reissue everything – the cost of doing it is so prohibitive. But our preference would always be to reissue them physically, but that’s the great thing about iTunes. It does make it easy for people to be able to do stuff like this now.

Early Years

How did the band form?
Jason: Back in 1990 I had just got back from England, I was living there for a little while with my folks. I came back and was heavily into English pop at the time, particularly the new Stone Roses album [The Stone Roses] … I wanted to be in something that was new and progressive. I looked in a magazine at the time called On The Street [the precursor to Sydney’s Drum Media] and saw the ad for William and Tim [Scott’s] band. There were some great influences in there – The Go-Betweens, The Smiths and a few New Zealand bands like The Bats. I wasn’t the first drummer to audition. Mark Tunaley, the first drummer for You Am I, had given it a crack. Funnily enough, he said it was too loud for him.

I went over to William’s house for a jam and we sat around listening to records. He was impressed that I turned up with a Billy Bragg T-shirt on. I’ll never forget that. I said, “What’s impressive about that?” He’s like, “There’s no drummer in Billy Bragg.” I was like, “So what?” He’s like, “I thought all drummers only liked bands that had drums in them” … That’s how we came together, in the early part of the 1990s, and we didn’t stop rehearsing for six months. Before you know it we were supporting some fairly big bands. Marc [Lynch] was the same. He met them through an ad in On The Street. Obviously, Tim and William had come over from New Zealand together, so those two were already working on songs. William had played me some demos that he recorded straight into his little boombox, which I’ve kept.

So Glide was essentially William’s band?
Jason: It was William and Tim’s band. William was into the idea of a band. As much as the focus was on him – and it should’ve been – he liked to be around people that inspired him as well.

Did he have all the arrangements worked out when he brought the songs to you?
Jason: Yeah, for sure. He even had drum parts worked out before. He would turn up to rehearsals having programmed how he wanted the drums to go. I’d invariably twist it and turn it to something that I would do … He had incredible vision of how he wanted the drums to sound. The pre-production would have to be painstakingly good before we went into the studio.

“Regardless of whether we were playing big or small venues, or putting a record out or not, we were still part of something very unique that William was driving through his songs.”

Was he a difficult person to work with?
Jason: No, he was a challenging person to work with. He constantly kept me on my toes. We all had our own personalities and way of doing things. He was an incredibly creative guy that could inspire all members of the band. I’ve worked with much harder people since that are nowhere near as talented. He was just focused and knew exactly what every instrument should do to make a certain song sound right.

Andy: Having gone on to do a lot of things within music, I can tell you with a large degree of certainty, that on a scale of difficult, he was not difficult. [Laughs] He was really unique, and could be challenging, but by the same token there was complete freedom in terms of playing. He would know how the song was structured, put together, how every section would go, but he’d bring it in and we’d work on it together. It took a bit of time to get your head around how he wrote songs. There were so many things in those songs that were really unique. Like, you’d have a part in a song that would happen once, but never happen again. It was like a tapestry. The way it was all woven together was really interesting.

Jason: William was also very eccentric, but in a really charming way. That was part of the genius about how he wrote music. He was old-fashioned as well, in a sense … He’d put things together organically. Can I say anything more cliched?

Andy: Do you want to say “moving forward”? [Laughs]

Andy, do you remember the first time you heard Glide?
Andy: I remember hearing them on triple j. It was ‘Thin Faced Man’. It really really jumped out. It’s so melodic that song, and quite driving, but really shimmering and beautiful. I went and saw them play at The Hopetoun [in Sydney]. It really was amazing, and one of the best shows I’d ever seen. It must’ve been around 1991. I remember being there with my girlfriend at the time and saying, “This is the best band I’ve ever seen!” I may have been slightly under the influence, but it really struck me. I loved the EPs and [first album] Upon Up & Croon. The great thing about the band, from being outside the band, was that I couldn’t unravel what made the songs great. It maintained a kind of mystery.

Jason: I don’t think we sounded “Australian”. It’s not like we were trying not to sound Australian, it’s just that we melded so many influences into what we were. Maybe that’s what made us unique?

So the influences at the time were The Stones Rose and also New Zealand bands like The Bats?
Jason: And Straightjacket Fits. William was a little bit into the baggy [Manchester] stuff, but before I get there him and Tim were listening to bands like [Boston’s] Anastasia Screamed, My Bloody Valentine, early Sonic Youth, Hüsker Dü, The Church. Tim and William were really into Straightjacket Fits when I joined.

Do you remember much of the first gig with The Clouds at The Annandale?
Andy: I booked it actually … The booker, Darcy, asked me, “How many people do you think you’ll be able get through the door.” I just pulled out of my arse, “35 people.” And he said, because I’m quite good friends with him now, “I’ll never forget Jason, but you had exactly 35 payers. That just fucking amazes me.” [Laughs]

We were shit scared. The stage was on the other end of the bar. We played pretty awfully, really fast, but with lots of spirit. We won lots of people over. I think there was an encore. Triple j were playing our demo, and ‘Thin Faced Man’ was getting to be known. We kept playing with bigger and bigger bands until we became the booking agents’ support band of choice at the time. We had a ball.

So you did the Blur and Swervedriver tours?
We only did one show with Blur, Andy was with us then. We did Ride, Swervedriver, Juliana Hatfield, a couple Big Day Outs. Ride was a fantastic experience. Other than having similar sounding names we were well matched.

[Jason Kingshott leaves the conversation for another phoner]

The Mid-1990s

So Andy, were you part of the band that toured the states in the mid-1990s?
I was. Tour is probably too strong a word for it now when I think about it. We went over and did South by Southwest I think in ’97 after we released Disappear Here. We also did some shows in LA and New York. I remember it being really good fun … This was really pre-internet, so every idea you had as a band, about how it would be in the states, was predicated on not much. We played South by Southwest and that was a really good show. We had label interest from Columbia and Atlantic, and I remember we were very excited because A&R people were coming to our shows. God, it really was the mid-’90s.

Well, A&R people actually came to shows back then.
Totally. We were going to lunch with these guys, and obviously they had big expense accounts. It was like a kitten playing with a mouse, really. I guess one thing about the band is we had a pretty good talent for shooting ourselves in the foot. In New York we made Classic Band Error #1 and went out and had a massive night before our show. We were so excited to be in New York. William disappeared and we ended up in some gay bar in the West Village having the greatest night of our lives singing show tunes with these chaps around the piano. Then of course the next day, William had lost his voice and our amps had blown up. We didn’t put on the best show, but we had a good time. William and Andrew Kentler went back a few years later and did a few acoustic shows … In some ways we committed every band error, but it was certainly enjoyable.

And then you came back and took 18 months off?
We had another album written. We came back and worked on all those songs and a lot of them ended up on [posthumous album] Last. At that time the line-up was me, Jason, William an Andrew Kentler. We couldn’t convince Shock to put out a whole new album, so we did four new songs and songs from the first EPs as a compilation.

And that was [1997’s] Shrink Wrapped Real Thing?
Yeah. When I think about it now, that was a pretty bad time. I don’t really know what was going on, because I really just was the bass player, and we were all really ignorant. But when a label says to you, “We don’t want to put out an album, just four new songs and we’ll tack some old songs on the end, it’s a pretty good signpost to where their heads are at.” I really like those four songs and would’ve loved to have done a full album. The band was playing really well together at that time.

So Last was never really a complete album?
Jason and I left the band after Shrink Wrapped Real Thing, but as I understand it some of them were demos and some were recorded at Charring Cross [Studios, Sydney], so I’m not sure what the intention was.

So you weren’t involved at all in that record?
No.

What did you think of the record? Did it help with the grieving process?
It helped. I really like listening to it. It’s another indication that he was an amazing songwriter. Even though it’s bits and pieces pulled together, I still think it’s a really great collection of songs. I’m sure he would’ve liked to have recorded the demos in the studio, but his demos always sounded really fantastic. They stand up really well.

And Wayne Connolly was heavily involved in that project?
He mixed it, yeah. He had produced and mixed Disappear Here and Shrink Wrapped Real Thing and he also worked on Open Up & Croon with Paul McKercher. He was an important part of the band’s recorded history. Listening back to the albums, I’m not 100 percent subjective, but I think they’ve dated really well. I think the production is good on those records.

They’ve got the Wayne Connolly sound.
[Laughs] Well, that was a time when I think he was getting really confident [as a producer].

Disappear Here was around the same time as [The Underground Lovers’] Rushall Station, wasn’t it?
That’s right. I think when we did Disappear Here he had just done [You Am I’s] Hourly Daily and then he did Rushall Station. It’s not a bad trilogy! Imagine knocking those three in a row out now … He was a big part of the band’s history. Him and William got on really well, and he really knew where William was coming from.

The Making Of ‘Disappear Here’

Disappear Here was your first record with the band. When did you officially join?
It was 1995, I think. After Open Up & Croon. Like Jason, I had just come back from overseas and saw an ad in the Drum Media and just could not believe it. [Laughs] To me, Glide were famous! I got so nervous just thinking about getting in touch. I had to ring Joe [Ryall], our manager, and leave a message on his answering machine. He’d call me back and I had to fax him a resume. I got the OK to learn the songs and turn up for an audition … I feel so fortunate to have played in a band with someone like William. That was my first experience playing with someone uniquely creative. It was really educational. When you play in knockabout bands with friends from school, you really don’t get to be in the presence of someone like that. He really was the first experience I had with someone like that. He had an aura, a natural charisma. It’s so rare.

What do you recall about making Disappear Here?
We recorded it in a studio that used to be Rhinoceros in the ’80s, then it became Q. You Am I had just done Hourly Daily there. It’s in Darlinghurst, right next to what used to be the Greyhound bus station. I walked past the other day and saw it had been knocked down and apartments were going up. Because it had been Rhinoceros, this ’80s colossus, the recording and mixing room was really big. We had really worked hard on the songs, really really hard. We demoed them and had played a lot of those songs live as well. We had a pretty strong idea of what we were going to do.

It was pretty fun. We had a massive Scalextric set in the mixing room courtesy of Wayne … I remember adding lots of stuff on the spot. I remember Wayne joking that we were singlehandedly going to ruin the melotron for everyone, because we kept putting melotron tracks on. [Laughs] We’d work really late as well, till about four or five in the morning. It was an experience that we were so happy to be part of. William was so driven by it, consumed by it … When I listen to the album now it has a sense of mystery about. The songs have a texture that I can’t quite get to the bottom of.

Do you think it was misunderstood?
No. Maybe a lot of people didn’t hear it … but it seems to me that the people who liked it, really loved it.

I was asking because your website said that critics weren’t sure what to make of it. That they didn’t have a yardstick for it.
I think critics just say what they think. If they don’t like something, they just say it. It’s not about not understanding it, necessarily … That record meant everything to us and we were definitely proud of it. But when you’re caught up in the middle of it, you don’t have any perspective, so it was very hard to tell what it was. I just can’t believe I was part of it really.

In retrospect, do you think it’s stood up the best out of the other records?
I do love Open Up & Croon, I must say. That was my favourite for a very long time. Some of those songs – ‘Something’ and ‘Why You Asking?’ – were just amazing. Now I lose my objectivity about which ones stand up best.

Legacy

I guess you’ll also look at the band as an outsider, having joined late in the piece.
Well, exactly. The first couple months were like, “What am I doing here? How am I going to get away with this?” [Laughs] I’ve always had the outsider perspective, even though I was in it.

And you’ve had to re-learn the songs on guitar for these shows?
Yeah, William’s parts. [Laughs] It makes me appreciate even more how ridiculously talented he was. So many songs sound like they’re in alternate tunings, but so few of them are. Songs like ‘Something’ … I’ve never known someone to use those shapes. There’s strings ringing out all the time and in order to do that you have to stretch four frets. One of the little known things about him was that he was quite a big metal fan as a teenager. So from time to time he’s pull out a bit of finger-tapping for people’s amusement. He was a very skilled guitar player. Going back and trying to work out what he was playing has made me admire him even more.

Can you tell me a bit more about William’s past. He came from New Zealand?
He was born in England, actually. He lived there as a kid and then the family moved to New Zealand. He spent his teenage years there. He went travelling when he was 18 or 19, and then moved to Australia with Tim in his early 20s. He was an interesting mix. He was quite English, but coming from New Zealand was definitely part of who he was, certainly musically. That Straightjacket Fits influence is the strongest one, especially on those early EPs.

Was he in any other bands?
None of any note. He came to Australia to start Glide … Thinking about it now he started Glide at the right time of his life. He was able to put everything he knew – his musical and life influences – into a band at a slightly later age. That’s why I think the songs sound so unique and mature. If I heard ‘Thin Faced Man’ or ‘Waterfalls’ on the radio now, and found out it was a band from Sydney, my head would explode. [Laughs]

How old was William when he died?
34, I think.

Do you remember where you were when you found out?
Joe, our manager, called us. I had left the band at that point. He called very early one morning. It made me very regretful of having left the band too. It sounds stupid, but I would’ve liked to have stuck it out. But people leave bands for reasons. I didn’t want to be on the breadline anymore and in huge debt, and feeling like we weren’t going anywhere. When I think about that now I get very annoyed with myself. It’s not about whether you’re fucking going anywhere, it’s about what you’re creating. Regardless of whether we were playing big or small venues, or putting a record out or not, we were still part of something very unique that William was driving through his songs. You get that opportunity, if you’re lucky, once in your entire life. I certainly feel regretful that we didn’t finish up as a band together.

Now, through doing the reissues and the reformation and talking to William’s parents, it’s really joyous. It’s good because it makes it all normal. It feels completely natural to all be talking and as a result you remember all these great and funny stories. Selfishly, that’s the point of it. If it just turns like three or four people onto some of those songs, and how talented William was, that’d be great.

So you’ll be just reforming for these two shows?
Yeah. Like I said that [reforming] was the hardest decision: do you do it or not? Is it respectful? Anyone who feels that this isn’t appropriate, I can respect that. But we were part of it and we’re trying to direct people to William’s songs.

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GLIDE WITH TOBY MARTIN

Friday, August 13
East Brunswick Club, Melbourne, VIC

Saturday, August 14
Annandale Hotel, Sydney, NSW