Kicking off with a showcase at Splendour in the Grass this weekend, The Beautiful Girls are set to embark on a farewell tour (Dates Here). Larry caught up with the band’s lead singer Mat McHugh to talk about his solo career, the tour, the decision to call The Beautiful Girls a day and a look back at the last ten years with the band…
Hows the morning treating you?
Matt: Its pretty good, getting up early, checking out the surf, getting some coffee, blah blah blah…
Doesn’t sound too bad…
Could be worse!
You’re about to head off on a massive tour, it’s so many dates in so little time, but i don’t imagine it’s the worst you’ve done
By worst do you mean amount of dates? Nah, it seems massive… like you talk about an Australian tour having 26 dates and it’s like, whoa, so huge, but really in comparison to some of those American tours we’ve done, especially since we’ve first started, when we were literally on the road every day, and thats like 150 days you know… so it’s big for Australia but it doesn’t even seem big at all… it’s like yeah cool 26 days let’s go!
I understand the shows you’re gonna be doing are gonna be unique… they’re gonna be a 2 part show, can you talk about that?
Yeah we’ve kind of struggled as our careers have evolved as a band to fit everything into the one set, because it’s pretty wide ranging in terms of the early albums were more acoustic, then they kinda got into rock for a bit then dub, kinda reggae stuff… so it’s always been kind of a challenge to juggle those in a set. If you come out guns blazing it’s hard to drop it down again and mellow it out, and it’s hard to come out too mellow, so that’s why we’re going to split it into 2 bits and have an intermission, make it that old school vibe where we have one half is acoustic, then have a break with a dub DJ then the second half pick up the electric guitar and step into that territory, so yeah it’s challenging because we’ve got all of our songs to choose from and to get them all down and play songs we haven’t played for a while, that’s gonna be the biggest mission I think…
I mean you’ve got so many fans and so much to choose from you’ve gotta make sure they get a good last go at it…
There’s been so many tours you know the last thing I wanna do is go out on the road and do similar tours that we’ve done before. I want to kind of put an effort into it, to put the rarities and the old songs that people have come and heard but might not have heard live because we played them right at the start of the band, and dig through the archives… there’s a lot work involved and getting a list down of potentials, we’ll probably have a list of 40 or 50 songs to choose from and that’s quite a few to rehearse.
That should keep you busy until the tour!
I mean we’ve already been setting out back and forth you know potential set lists, hopefully it’s not too painful, rehearsals start next week!
Well we look forward to seeing what comes of it every night. I’m sure everyones been asking you this but it is the end for now at least, what brought the decision that you, Paul and Bruce sat down and said “we’ve gotta call it for now”?
I don’t think anyone wants to have a point where you sit down and decide I can’t take it any more, but it didn’t happen like that… it was more of a gradual thing picking up steam. I never had any intention (for TBG to last as long as it did). The Beautiful Girls just started as a name that I used to release my songs over the years, but now I want to keep the legacy and the body of the work and pay respect to it. I don’t want to just be releasing music from The Beautiful Girls all my life, it’s moving into releasing things under my own name and I’ve done two albums now and the last free download album has been ridiculous in terms of how many downloads it’s had and it’s kinda moving in this way… we’ve talked about it a few times over the last few years, there’s been a lot of touring downtime for the band, so it’s not all of a sudden we’ve been touring and I’ve pulled everyone aside and said lets break up, it’s been kind of an evolving thing.
The relationship between us is really good, it’s really strong. I talk to the boys all the time. I do think we’re gonna keep working together all the time, but that’s not what people want to hear… they want the idea of like the band hates each other… it’s not like that though. Some people get hung up on the name and some people know that the importance of the name isn’t that important at all. I feel like I’ve just kinda got to a point where I want to use my own name for a while. It might not be forever, I’m not clairvoyant, I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I don’t have any plans at the moment to release anything else as The Beautiful Girls or do any more tours as The Beautiful Girls, but who knows. Life’s not a press release, it’s shades of grey and who knows.
Well at the end of the day it;s the end of a very important musical period and it’s what has taken you to this point… so it’s a celebration of that.
Yeah absolutely thats the thing, people are like “it’s time to commiserate and mourn” but its like no “it’s a celebration!”, and I refuse to be defined by any particular moment in the past, it’s like you are this guy now, this is how we first knew you and this is how we knew you in 2002, and we took a mental photograph and good luck escaping, but I refused to be trapped in that figurative frame. You kind of have it in your past but you refuse to let it burn you or bring you down.
For sure. But a couple of questions that are bit reflective of your time on The Beautiful Girls, looking at your life in a press release, one sentence I like, you “spent thousands of nights in hotel rooms”, and I like that it’s probably true… whats the worst hotel room you’ve stayed in?
There’s been literally thousands, no exaggeration, but that’s a hard one, cos there’ve been some shockers, especially in the early days. But we played in this town in Germany where we changed hotels cos we wanted to be further downtown and we got into this hotel, and everyone was crazy. It’s the kinda hotel where you pull the bed sheets back and there’s blood stains, it smelled like someone seriously threw up in my pillowcase 5 minutes before I checked in. The guys all had allergies to something in the room… it was like something from a horror movie, you know, we couldn’t get any other rooms in the town, and we were there for 2 or 3 nights with the rooms all booked out. I would’ve preferred to go to prison! There’ve been some more along the way like that but that kinda sticks out, we’d probably all say unanimously the same thing.
When you look at your tours overseas, are there any particular places that stick out for you in terms of support? I know Canada has always been great to you guys.
Yeah Canada… I kind of have regrets about not spending enough time in Canada, we spent a lot of time in America and it was always… ah well let’s go to Canada too. But every time we go there its such a breath of fresh air, it’s such an amazing place and you know coming across the border from America is like stepping into a parallel dimension you know.
Japan’s pretty amazing as far as how much of a trip it is, and probably Brazil because I think the band is bigger in Brazil than anywhere in the world, bigger than even Australia, and the passion that people in South America have, particularly Brazil… the people are so hospitable and crazy just the amazingly vibrant, that place, if i had to pick one overseas place it’d probably be Brazil.
Will you be getting back there as The Beautiful Girls before the end of it?
Nah, nah that’s it. But we did a tour this year a couple months ago, I’ve done a tour there under my name and i’ll go back and do another tour in my name, relatively soon before summer.
We’ll have to see you out there for the World Cup!
Yeah will be pretty hard to get a hotel room I think *laughs*
Yeah might end up with another blood-ridden hotel room!
Yeah I dread to think how bad it could get in Crazil…
Well congratulations on a wonderful 10 years, and we can’t to see what happens next for you.
Yeah thanks man I really appreciate it, and I appreciate all the support. You know, the one thing that’s kinda stuck out is being independent and doing all the work and not throwing all our money around and not using our weight or anything, just being an independent band that grew off of nothing, the thing that’s stuck out has been the support you know, the independent press and just the people… still to this day I’m baffled that people give a shit to do an interview, so thank you.
It’s always a pleasure, and we’ll see you up at Splendour!
See you up there!
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All the farewell tour dates can be found HERE.
Transcription by Ross Hetherton.
