Colin Hay Thinking Quotations

I suppose ever since I was about 14, I remember listening to "Sgt. Pepper's," and I remember thinking, "how do you possibly write songs like that?" I remember starting to try and write songs around that age, but just sitting around with an acoustic guitar, and try to come up with ideas for songs, and that's just what I've done ever since. I just never really stopped doing that, I suppose.

It's frustrating to do albums that you think are worth listening to, but it's just so difficult to cut through.

The Men at Work thing is always there, it's always going to be there. It's not something I consciously think that much about anymore. The thing that stays with you is the songs, which is a good thing for me, because the songs are the things that stand the test of time.

As you get older you don't want to just do the same thing, otherwise there's not much point. I think it's more or less trying to write things that, perhaps, say more by doing less, or you're always trying to refine things, make things a little simpler, a little more essential.

I tend to write pretty much by myself. I always did that anyway. I used to write with Ron Strykert 'cause he was the only guitarist and we played well together. We lived in the same place. I would play a certain style and he would kind of dance around what I did, in a sense. I learned from him and also vice-versa. With this band, I think I bounce ideas off everybody. Perhaps on the next album they'll be more collaborative stuff, but for the last 2-3 years, I've been pretty well writing by myself.

There were only a couple of people I would really trust, which has a kind of sadness to it. It doesn't really have anything to do with you, just to do with other people's perceptions of what's happened to you. It mainly had to do with people thinking you had untapped sources of wealth.