Grinspoon Reflect On Their 30th Anniversary & Bonanza Tour

It’s been thirty years since a young Lismore band broke onto the Australian music scene winning the very first triple j Unearthed competition. That young band have gone on to release eight studio albums, numerous singles, received thirteen ARIA Award Nominations, an ARIA Award for Best Rock Album (2005) and garnered an arsenal of fans to whom they’re affectionately known as ‘Grinners’.

To celebrate this salubrious landmark, Grinspoon are taking their 30th Birthday Bonanza! Tour around the country starting in Adelaide’s AEC Theatre on Saturday, 1 November before heading to Perth’s Red Hill Auditorium on Saturday, 8 November, NEX in Newcastle on Saturday, 29 November, Canberra’s UC Refectory on Friday, 12 December finishing up at Melbourne’s Forum on Friday, 19 December. The band have also confirmed they will be appearing at Night at the Parkland series in Brisbane on Friday, 12 September and Night at the Barracks in Manly/Sydney on Saturday, 4 October.

Grinspoon’s trajectory over the past thirty years has included over half a million records sold, countless Platinum accolades and an enviable live reputation. The 30th Birthday Bonanza! Tour will be the ultimate celebration of their career, featuring tracks from their debut album, Guide to Better Living (1997) as well as Easy (1999), New Detention (2002), Thrills, Kills & Sunday Pills (2004), Alibis & Other Lies (2007), Six to Midnight (2009), Black Rabbits (2012) and Whatever, Whatever (2024). Pat Davern talks to Hi Fi Way about the anniversary.

Thirty years of Grinspoon, that’s a staggering thought. Have you had much time to get your head around that milestone?
I’ve had about thirty years to get my head around it, to be honest with you. Yeah, I mean, it’s a bit of an achievement, I think, same four guys from the day dot. From that first rehearsal to our next rehearsal, that’s an achievement. If nothing else, to stay in business with the same three other people, through trials and tribulations, ups and downs, or whatever it is. I think I’ll probably reflect on it more when we’re doing the shows. We want it to be a celebration. I think I’ll get into the celebrations, hopefully along with everyone else.

Absolutely, it seems to get bigger and bigger every time you play here in Adelaide. Playing the Arena at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre is massive.
Yeah, Adelaide’s been really good for us, especially since 2017, since we came back with the Guide to Better Living tour, the twentieth anniversary of that record. We had a break, obviously, from 2013 to 2017. I think certain places have really embraced it, Perth and Adelaide in particular. I don’t know if it’s the fact that bands don’t always go there, but we always have. We’ve always put in the effort to go to South Australia and Western Australia, wherever, really. I think people appreciate it. We’ve had a great run of shows in Adelaide. I think we did New Year’s Eve before last, like four shows over two weeks.

Yeah, and you probably could have done more. The demand was that strong.
Yeah, it was great.

The same four guys over thirty years, what is the secret of longevity when so many other bands just don’t last? There’s got to be a really strong bond there, something that rises above everything that gets thrown your way.
Yeah, it’s funny. There’s never been any issue. No one’s ever really expressed any desire not to be doing it and we’re definitely all mates, but we’ve had the opportunity not to live in each other’s pockets outside of touring. It’s been quite a few years since anyone’s lived in the same town. Really, since we were in Lismore those first few years, that was the only time we all lived in the same place. Since then, it’s been more of a logistical nightmare to get us together. As I’m sure you can imagine, over that period of thirty years, all the in-jokes, all the stories you probably wouldn’t want to tell anyone else, we’ve all got too much on each other! You couldn’t sack anyone, they might spill the beans. There’s that kind of entrapment angle on why we’re still together after all these years.

Do you have any advice to younger bands that are teetering on the edge of calling it quits?
I don’t know. It was very different when we started in the industry compared to now. My teenage daughter wants to be a singer, and I don’t even know where to begin telling her how to navigate things these days. It was simpler when we started, no internet, no mobile phones to speak of. There wasn’t as much outside noise. Back then, it was get signed, put out albums, and go on tour. Now, in the band world, there’s just so much more noise. So many more distractions. So many more difficulties.

Everyone having the scope to do their own thing outside of the band must help as well?
That’s right. From 1995, when we started, until we took a break in 2013, we were really focused on the band. That was our main thing. We signed a five-album deal with Universal, then another deal for two more records. We had work to do, a job to complete. We wanted to fulfill everything that came with that. There was also the dream of trying to break America. Since then, the opportunity’s been there for people to do things they didn’t have time for before. Phil does a lot outside the band. I’ve done a few different things over the years too and that’s definitely conducive to a happy camp.

When you talk about things like America, do you still feel like that’s an important thing, to crack it over there?
No, I think those days are behind us. I mean, who knows? Maybe the algorithm will force us to the top of some playlists, and people will discover, or rediscover the band for the first time. You’ve got to think about when we were trying to crack America, there was no Spotify. It was get in a van, get a deal (which we did), and just tour relentlessly. We ate shit for a long time. If anything was going to break up the band, it was probably that period. We came from Australia thinking we were pretty good, had some success, then went over there and had nothing.

Getting on the radio was tough. Radio over there was so fragmented. For a band like us trying to get onto college radio, it was a different world. It was a different approach to success over there, one we weren’t used to. We weren’t very good at playing the game, I guess. Maybe we’d be better now because we’re older, but I don’t think that game exists in quite the same way anymore.

Do you get nostalgic with a tour like this being focused on such a big anniversary? What kind of highlights from the journey stand out?
There are a lot, to be honest. Making records was always a highlight for me, especially when we were churning them out consistently. I really loved doing that. Live shows, so many great memories, it’s hard to pick. Someone asked me recently about the biggest show we ever played. That was actually in Minnesota, not Indianapolis, it was a radio show back when we were trying to break America. It was like their version of payola. Bands would play for free in return for airtime. There were so many acts, us, Offspring, Cake, Motörhead, Paula Cole, it was wild. There were about one hundred thousand people there. Lemmy headlined. He got on stage and asked, “How many of you have bought our latest record?” The crowd went wild. Then he goes, “You’re all a bunch of fucking liars.” That always stuck with me.

Has doing it your way been a big part of your story?
As much as we possibly could, yeah. There have been compromises, sure, in a band with four people and no set leader, democracy rules. But we wouldn’t be where we are if we didn’t have a clear vision.

So with the tour, are you looking at playing for three to four hours to cover the Grinspoon legacy in one set?
We’re working that out. We’d love to play cuts off every record, that’s the goal. It might even become an intermission-style show, but we’ll have to see if our drummer can handle that! I’d love to do it, but I might be the outlier. We’ve got time to think about it. We might even ask fans online for input, make it as fun and memorable as we can.

Did you handpick the support acts?
Yeah, it’s a great lineup. We wanted to create a mini-festival vibe, great bands, ones our fans will love, and good people to be on the road with. That’s really important too.

Are there any commemorative releases or special projects tied to the tour?
There’s stuff in the works. I’m not sure how much I can say right now, but yeah, Universal’s still with us after all these years. We signed with them in ’97, and they’ve been good to us. Hopefully, we’ve been good to them too. They’ve still got our back.

Do you get a gold watch for that long with the label?
Maybe we should ask for a gold-plated car! It’s funny, none of the people who signed us are still there. They kind of see us as part of the furniture now. We’re just… always there.

Looking back, it’s been over a year since Whatever, Whatever came out. Still proud of that one?
Absolutely. I loved the process of making that record. If we’ve got the material to do another, I’d love to. That album was great for us, we did probably the biggest tour we’ve done in years. It was really well received, and we hit a lot of regional areas we hadn’t been to in a long time. But it wasn’t just the album, it was everything that came with making it. It felt like going back to our roots, touring like we did as kids. It was a lot of fun, and I’d love to do that again.

Touring with a band like Regurgitator, do you expect any tour hi-jinks there?
We haven’t played with those guys for a long time. We’ve always been big fans, like since the beginning. They’re probably a couple of years older than us, chronologically, maybe just a year. They’ve been around about a year longer. It’s like their thirty-first anniversary. But from day dot, like the Hamburger EP onwards, everyone in Grinspoon has been a huge fan of that band. We’ve never done a tour with just the two of us on the bill. We’ve done festival runs like Hotter Than Hell and things like that. But this will be the first time. Obviously, we’ve known those guys since we were kids, and they’ve known us since we were kids. It’s going to be great. I’m looking forward to it. I don’t know what kind of hi-jinks they get up to, though.

How are you going top a tour like this next time? This just seems like next-level stuff!
I think we’re going to get Powderfinger out of retirement. They’ll go on first. Then Silverchair will be the next warm-up act. Then we’ll come out after that. It’ll be like the best of Australia in the ’90s and early 2000s. I mean, that sounds big, right? I’m sure both of those bands would be more than happy to support us on a tour like that.

Hard to know with Silverchair, with what you read. It sounds like all love is lost there.
Yeah, I don’t know. Hopefully, never say never, I guess. I’m sure there are certain sections of the band that wouldn’t have a problem going back out and reliving a bit of glory and others who couldn’t think of anything worse and in that kind of situation, there’s not much you can do.

So what’s next? Are there plans for more music? Or is it more about focusing on this tour and then see?
I think there have been a few changes in the camp. We’re going to get through this, and then we’ll probably look at what lies ahead after the tour. At the moment, the focus is the tour. We’re putting together things like merchandise, packaging, all that kind of stuff. There’s a lot going on in that world. But we’re never too far away from planning the next step.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Grinspoon on the following dates, tickets and tour info at https://grinspoon.com.au/tour