EUROGLIDERS

Rip It Up, Issue 89, 1 December 1984, Page 6

EUROGLIDERS

Steve Spencer

Eurogliders wasn’t much more than a funny name on this side of the Tasman until the release of the single ‘Heaven’. Then, all of a sudden, they were that Aussie band with the catchy song ... The story was similar in the band’s home territory. It had been a full two years since the single 'Without You’ from their first album Pink Suit Blue Dayhad gone Top 10, their old record company had dropped them and the new one, CBS, was pinning all its hopes on the album being recorded in England with Police producer Nigel Gray. The rest, as they say, is history. Guitar/synth player and chief songwriter Bernie Lynch cheerfully agrees that things are going well for the band since the release of the second album, This Island But it's not as if success was by any means a foregone conclusion during the recording. For one, they didn’t get on particularly well with Gray ... “Eurogliders seem to live and learn and I think we’re fast learning that we’re never going to be completely happy with any one producer and I think in the future we’re going to have to maintain as much control as we can over every-

thing, including the recording process. I think a fair percentage of the album is the result of our input rather than sitting back and relying on Nigel to come up with the goods.” So would he consider doing away with a producer completely for the next album? “No, but I think from the start we will establish ground rules that the band does not sit back and be told what to do. Which is not quite what Nigel did but producers can tend to just take over the whole process. That’s particularly true in England, where in the past few years producers have just taken the whole business over, the musicians are secondary. It’s not the case in Australia." Not satisfied with the final product from Gray, the band took the tapes to Australian producer Mark Moffat for remixing. The main changes were in replacing the drum machine tracks with real sampled drum sounds from an AMS digital machine. “That makes the whole thing sound more live and Eurogliders are a very live band.” Did that make it sound more specifically Australian? “I guess so, yeah. The Australian

producers do tend to record with a much more live sound than you'd get from producers in England, or more particularly America. I personally think and I very much hope that it does have some Australian flavour to it. We are Australian and I hope we continue to be considered as such.” Lynch warms to a comment that This Islands a pretty varied bunch of songs. “Yeah as people we like records with variety and that’s also the way we write. Our first album was the same and it will continue I hope.” Eurogliders are nearing the end of a 16-week tour of Australia, one that has seen 80 per cent of gigs in under-age venues. “We now very much enjoy playing to receptive kids rather than drunk adults playing pubs and clubs you come on around midnight and the people there have been drinking since eight o’clock.” Next come some dates in this country early in December and Eurogliders next turn their attention to America. They intend to attack the States as much the same way as Midnight Oil did, in a publicityorientated way, with lots of club

dates. Lynch admits to being a little concerned with controlling the way the band is presented in the States, especially after the record company there didn't wait for the band’s approval before remixing several tracks on the American version of This Island "We were given the impression we'd be given the opportunity to say yes or no to these new mixes they wanted to try. And then lo and behold the buggers went and pressed the bloody album with their mixes on it! And they're mixes we do not like ” But the band has employed independent publicists for the USA and keeps in contact to make sure Eurogliders are being promoted primarily as "a very good live rock 'n' roll band.” And then there’s Europe but won't the name cause some confusion? "Yeah, I think we're going to have a little trouble explaining to people in Europe that the name doesn't bear any relation to anything European. In fact a Euro is a type of little kangaroo we didn’t actually find that out until we'd made up the name.”