On the Sunday 22nd September, supergroup AUSTRALIAN ROCK COLLECTIVE (ARC) featuring members of Spiderbait, Powderfinger, The Wrights and You Am I, will perform the ‘Best of ARC’ with two blistering sets of their favourite hits from iconic artists such as Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Neil Young, The Easybeats, Jet, Powderfinger, Pink Floyd, The Beatles and Midnight Oil. The location? The Stunning North Head Sanctuary, Manly, will host some of the finest artists in Australia who will be taking to the stage over four weekends. Icehouse, Pete Murray, Jon Stevens, Xavier Rudd and Birds of Tokyo will all be performing with tickets and info available at https://nightatthebarracks.com.au/.
We caught up with Powderfinger’s Darren Middleton to find out more about Australian Rock Collective, and what fans can expect for a very special night from Messrs Middleton, Kram, Lane and the rest of ARC.
Sean: How are you, Darren?
Darren: I’m good, mate. I can’t complain. Yeah, I’m pretty good.
Sean: I must say, before we start, a huge congratulations on the Led Zeppelin shows. I caught the one at Perth Concert Hall and it was just breath-taking, mind-blowing stuff.
Darren: Yeah, thanks, Sean. We put a lot of work into that and we were excited to get it done, to get started on it, and then we were pretty happy with how it all turned out. So, yeah, I’m glad you enjoyed it. I think anything we tackle, we really sink our heart and souls into it. It’s not a show as such. It’s really us playing music that we just really love. So, yeah, I’m really glad you liked it because we really enjoyed that too. It’s such fun music to play, you know, the energy of that kind of music.
Sean: And you gave it such credence. It was wonderful. But it’s not the last we’ll hear of ARC this year because, of course, you’ve got the Barracks show, which is another great night of music. But this time you’re tackling a lot more than just one band.
Darren: Yeah, we’re looking forward to it. I think it’s maybe our second last show for the year. So, yeah, what we’re going to do with this Barracks gig is we’ve got two sets to play for everyone. And we’re going to play a set of what we’ve done for many years in ARC is we just play Australian songs. So we’re playing songs from the 60s and 70s and the Easy Beats, Masters Apprentices, ACDC, Split Ends, New Zealand Band. But yeah, and we’re going to do a second set, which is a bit more inclusive of the shows we’ve done over the last five years, which includes Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Neil Young’s Harvest. Yeah. And yeah, so we’re going to sort of try to make this odd shape out of all of this great music that we’ve inspired us, really.
Sean: Well, I’m very jealous being in WA because that weekend you’ve got our very own Birds of Tokyo, as well as Jon Stevens, on the Saturday and then you guys on the Sunday, which is just an incredible weekend of music, such diversity, but something that everyone could enjoy every night they go to and that’s just one weekend out of four.
Darren: Yeah, totally. It’s a really great event. It’s a really great event that the Barracks puts on in Sydney. And like you’re saying, it’s got a real kind of diverse flow of artists doing their respective things. So, you know, we sort of naturally, particularly in this time, we encourage people to get out there and go and see some live music and obviously support the industry because, you know, we need you there. And we’re going to give you what you want.
Sean: It’s been wonderful since the dreaded C word, but the response since has been incredible to see so many festivals and shows selling out around the country. I know we’re seeing some cancelling for whatever reason but some of these big, big shows are just getting incredible turnouts, which is wonderful.
Darren: Yeah, well, look, I think throughout history, you know, people have always had a real thirst for live music in times of trouble. You know, I think because it is essentially it’s a form of escapism as much as anything else. It’ll pull you out of your life situation. You just go and see something live, some live music. And it’s a real connection back to the very kind of primal thing that we all have, which is sharing stories and sharing our lives with each other. And that’s what we do on stage. You know, we sing songs and tell stories and you get to put yourself inside that story as much as well. And that’s what we do when we’re performing it. So, yeah, it’s like you’re saying, Sean, there are certainly some events that have, you know, suffered and but hopefully people still have that thirst to get out there. And I think they do.
Sean: Yeah, definitely. Well, interesting question. I’ve always wanted to know, how do you get into the ARC, into the collective? Because I see we’ve got one of the Wolfgramm sisters joining you on the On The Barracks show. Is there a secret handshake to get in this group? [laughs]
Darren: [laughs] You know, that’s a pretty cool concept. We should come up with something like that. I mean, Talay being involved is, look, Talay has worked with Jet before. So Mark Wilson from Jet is a connection. She’s played and sung on my records and done live shows with me. So and also with Davey, she’s she’s known Davey for a long time. So it’s one of those circumstances where, you know, we’re sitting around going, OK, we’re going to tackle Pink Floyd. Dark Side of the Moon. We’ve got great gig in the sky. Who the heck can we get to sing that? And, you know, Talay pops up straight away. It’s like, oh, well, we know her and we know how she sings and it’s like, OK, great. So secret handshake, whatever that might be, she’s in.
Sean: So how do you begin to even pick the subject matter for the next ARC Ideas? Because as you say, it’s been very diverse from Neil Young through to Zepp. How do you even sit down to think of the next one?
Darren: Well, I mean, we really just throw ideas into the ring and beat them up a little bit and see how we could possibly tackle them. You know, every band that we’ve chosen, including The Beatles and Neil Young and everybody else, every one of them has played a big part in our own band’s lives, you know, aside from being hugely successful acts on their own. We really love them. You know, they sort of they had a big impact on Powderfinger and Jet and Spiderbait and You Am I, so all of our considerations are very close to home. I remember when we sort of started looking at Zeppelin, it was like, oh, how the heck are we going to do this? You know, Robert Plant and the guitar parts. That’s certainly challenging, but we could get our heads around them. But we worked at it… you saw the show. So the way we always do things with that ARC is we split the vocals into various roles for people and we don’t try to be Robert. No one tries to be Robert Plant or we don’t adopt the characters of whatever sort of style of band we’re doing. We just give it our own thing. So that makes it a bit easier for us to choose a band because it’s like, well, if we chose Queen, for instance, no one’s going to try to be Freddie. We’re going to pay homage to it as best we can. And we’ll put a lot of work into it if we go down that road, for instance.
Sean: A bit like when Paul Rogers stepped up to the plate for Queen. I thought he absolutely nailed it. I’m a big fan of Paul Rogers. And to hear his voice tackling some of those big songs was just fantastic. Really, really good. Obviously, you mentioned Powderfinger, who have been a huge part of your life, but taking you back well, well before that, what was your first memories of music as a kid growing up?
Darren: Well, for me, as a kid growing up, I mean, my first memory of music… well, one of my uncles gave me some early ACDC stuff, so I was okay with that. But for my first musical purchases, it was like ‘1982 with a Bullet’ and these kind of compilation vinyls that were coming out. So it wasn’t a very cool, early foray into music loving for me. But at the same time, those compilations were pretty awesome. So there were Split Ends, The Church, and they had all this cool stuff on them. But that kind of died. Once I picked up an instrument at about the age of 15, then I started to kind of narrow my focus. And I was listening to a little bit more ACDC and a bit more Pink Floyd. And then Neil Young entered the picture when I started writing songs. I really liked that kind of 70s folk song-writing vibe. So yeah, so I said, and you know, I used to talk to Bernard about this, Bernard from Powderfinger, is he’s a great singer. He always kind of had older brothers to kind of help guide him through, you know, like “that’s shit. You know, you don’t want to listen to that, listen to this.” [laughs] But I was the oldest brother. So I just stumbled my way into it.
Sean: So you were the influencer, you were the one influencing the younger siblings?
Darren: Yeah, but my influencing skills were not very good in the early days [laughs].
Sean: So was there a light bulb moment when you kind of woke up one morning and thought I want to have a career in music?
Darren: I don’t know if there was really a desperate moment of like, “this is what I’m going to do”. It was more. I loved it. I loved it for years when I was seventeen up to twenty-one. And then I joined Powderfinger in the very, very early days of Powderfinger and, and then I remember we had a meeting, a band meeting one day and we sat down with our new manager who was a friend of ours, Paul Piticco, who didn’t really know anything about managing. So we were all learning the ropes as we went. And we had a meeting. We went, look, should we try to make something of this? You know, should we do this? Put all our eggs in this basket. And yeah, that was probably the moment, you know, after quite a few years and even then we still kind of went, okay, well, let’s see how we go. Let’s give it a crack.
Sean: You must be pretty proud of Powderfinger. Even though they’ve not been active for so long, they are still such a current name on everyone’s lips. When you talk about Australian bands, it’s an incredible footprint the band left on this, on this country’s music.
Darren: Yeah, it is incredible. It’s, you know, I dare say for the other guys as well as myself, it’s, it’s not something that we think about daily by any means. But we will certainly run into people. People who will bring up a memory they had of the band or they, you know, we’ll walk into a shop and there’ll be some of our music playing for instance. But yeah, the legacy that we kind of were very fortunate enough to have is really positive. You know, I think we’ve found a place inside people’s hearts that you can’t buy. No amount of promo and record company money is going to do that to you. It’s the combination of everything. We found our way inside people’s hearts and we’re, you know, yeah, it’s amazing. It blows me away. I’ve got all the time in the world for people who want to sit down and talk about that because it was like, wow, that’s totally flattened.
Sean: Well, I’d love to catch up another time to talk about the Powderfinger years, and the stories about that period.
Darren: Anytime Sean. Anytime.
Sean: One other thing I was about to say was that obviously you’ve touched on a bit of solo work as well. Do you ever get much time to write even now? I know ARC obviously takes up a bit of time. But is there anything coming out in the future possibly?
Darren: I have just written and recorded a few new songs that are really built around acoustic guitar, piano and cello. So I would love to do something that’s a little spacious in that arena. So I’ll, you know, I’ll finish those and see if someone wants, people want to listen to them and maybe I’ll look for a venue that has an actual piano because I’d like to do sort of more kind of in the round. I’m all about kind of bringing things closer these days, you know, Powderfinger was very big, but I like the idea of things being quite intimate and small.
Sean: We’ll look out for those. That’s great, Darren. I’d just like to finish with a couple of general questions, if I may. I really appreciate the later interview as well tonight. Thank you for that.
Darren: You’re all good Sean.
Sean: My restaurant question: if you could invite three musicians dead or alive to join you for a bit of dinner one evening, who would you have sat with you?
Darren: Well, I’d have Neil Finn because I’m just a massive fan of his work, Jimi Hendrix and maybe Jimmy Page, actually, just having done a lot of Zeppelin stuff.
Sean: That’s cool. Page isn’t a regular to the restaurant question, but Hendrix is – Page not. That’s great.
Darren: Yeah. I mean, Jimmy, when you dig into some of these players like Jimmy Page, he was just a powerhouse. Songwriter, riff writer. So yeah, Jimmy would definitely be at the table.
Sean: Another element of that Zepp show was Kram because I’m a huge Bonham fan. It was just incredible. Some of those double drum sets he was involved in were fantastic.
Darren: Yeah. Krammy did a great job and also with his singing. He put a lot of work into sort of his music. He did a great job with his vocal parts as well. We all did. It was like, yeah, it was really impressive. Brilliant.
Sean: What was the last album you listened to?
Darren: Ooh, I’m not too sure. I mean an album from start to finish, maybe it was a Damien Rice album. Over like dinner preparation a few days ago, I think, you know, my wife and I had one of his records on.
Sean: I’d forgotten how beautiful that song ‘The Blowers Daughter’ was. So I went to find the album, couldn’t find it and thought, oh no. So I went and bought the album again [laughs].
Darren: [laughs] Impulsive! Yeah, man, he’s amazing. We saw him play live maybe six months ago. He’s incredible, I reckon.
Sean: Well that leads me to my final question. If you could be credited with writing any song ever written, what song would you choose?
Darren: Oh boy.
Sean: You can’t have a Powderfinger one. You’ve already got those [laughs].
Darren: [laughs] Yeah. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a Jeff Buckley song. I mean, I would just say ‘Grace’… I’ll say Grace. Grace by Jeff Buckley. I mean, that’s a deep question to throw at me. [laughs] Especially this time of the evening. I mean, look, it’s because, you know, when you stew on that, it’s like, oh my God, there’s Beatles songs. There’s just, there’s so many songs, but I’ll just say, I’ll say Jeff Buckley for tonight.
Sean: Done. It’s yours for 24 hours, Darren. Thank you so, so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I’d love to catch up again one day to talk a bit more about music, The Powderfinger years and all that, because I’m so interested in that, but we wish you all the best for the ARC stuff. The barracks shows look incredible. We’ll put the ticket link up and hopefully we get to see it back in WA at some point.
Darren: We will definitely be at WA in WA at some point. And for all the Sydney siders, we’ll see you on September the 22nd at the Barracks.
Sean: Thanks Darren.
Darren: Pleasure mate. See you. Bye.
