Colin Hay
Colin Hay
Colin James Hayis a Scottish Australian musician and actor who made his mark during the 1980s as lead vocalist of the Australian band Men at Work, and later as a solo artist. Hay's music has been frequently used by actor and director Zach Braff in his work, subsequently leading to a career rebirth in the mid-2000s...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth29 June 1953
CountryAustralia
character soul lines
There's a fine line between character building and soul destroying.
running strong people
It strikes me there's a bunch of people in power who have really strong intentions of running the world and adjusting the world to exactly how they see it.
trying get-better want
Sometimes there's a general arc that you want to try and get better the longer you do something.
years dust goes-on
I got very famous for a minute and then it just all went away, you know? And for the last 20 years - you've got to pick yourself up and dust yourself off and then go on your merry way and start again, in a sense, and that's what I've been doing.
mean years careers
I had a very strange career. I mean I went from playing to 150,000 people in 1983/84. Three or four years later I was playing to four people, you know, in Melbourne. I thought - bit strange, you know bit odd, bit erratic.
drinking used shows
I used to drink a lot. I had to stop drinking because it was getting the better of me, and I replaced that with really doing shows.
song play kind
I like to let the songs speak so that they can go through some kind of rebirth as you play them.
musical style different
I feel pretty comfortable in a lot of different musical styles. I like rhythm, and I like melody and so forth.
writing thinking years
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.
guitar singing sitting
In certain ways I still feel like I'm finding my way. I feel pretty comfortable playing acoustic guitar and singing, but then I feel pretty good sitting on a reggae groove as well.
add figure life weeks
I don't walk off and come back for encores. I figure I can add four weeks to my life that way.
change
I don't think I'm going to change jobs at this point.
australian-musician honest
I can't remember too much about the '80s, to be honest with you... I wish that weren't true, but it is.
australia california dreams happiness heroism people realize thoughts
Well, my thoughts about California are kind of mythological. To me, as well as being a real place, it's a place where people go to find something - to find happiness or to realize their dreams. So it has that kind of quality of heroism and heartache, and Australia has that, as well.