Immediately, there was a crackle

Their friendship began at university in 1975. Grant McLennan was interested in becoming a filmmaker; Robert Forster thought they should start a band. After listening to a tape of songs Robert had written, Grant re-considered: ‘There’s something there for the future.’

Robert Forster has described his initial encounter with fellow arts undergraduate Grant McLennan as ‘like meeting a long-lost friend’. It was mid-70s Brisbane. Queensland’s government was led by ‘a cunning, right-wing, hillbilly dictator’ and Forster remembers himself as a ‘suburban boy’ who feared becoming trapped in banality. Robert was already in a band, but suggested to Grant that they form a new one. He agreed, and the Go-Betweens recorded their first single in 1978. In 1980 Robert’s then partner Lindy Morrison became the band’s first regular drummer, while Grant’s multi-instrumentalist partner Amanda also joined later. The Go-Betweens released six studio albums between 1981 and 1989 when, as Robert phrases it, he and Grant ‘eloped from their own band’ to pursue other projects – a separation that has become memorialised in Australian music folklore. After reforming in 2000, the band was on the verge of the commercial success that had mostly eluded them when Grant died, aged 48, in May 2006.