{"id":30366,"date":"2016-09-08T07:30:11","date_gmt":"2016-09-07T21:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/?p=30366"},"modified":"2016-09-07T22:38:22","modified_gmt":"2016-09-07T12:38:22","slug":"iva-davies-of-icehouse-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/2016\/09\/iva-davies-of-icehouse-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Iva Davies of Icehouse"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Iva<\/a>
\n\u201c\u2026I was a skeptic for a very long time and it wasn\u2019t until I was handed the first royalty check from the Flowers album by the management accountant that it sort of dawned on me that we were going to make any money out of it, and even after that I didn\u2019t think we\u2019d last very long *laughs* so it took a very long time to convince me that this was any kind of real job at all. *laughs*\u201d<\/p>\n

From Bio: ICEHOUSE\u00a0started as a pub rock band called\u00a0FLOWERS\u00a0performing their first live show to a crowd of around 30 in Warriewood beginning three years of local residencies and non-stop shows around the country. In 1980, they scored a record deal with Regular Records and released their first singles,\u00a0Can’t Help Myself<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0We Can Get Together<\/em>. The band’s debut album,\u00a0ICEHOUSE<\/em>, was released in the same year to critical acclaim and reached multi-platinum status in Australia and New Zealand.\u00a0ICEHOUSE<\/em>\u00a0soon became the highest selling debut album by any band in Australia, a record it was to hold well into the 1990s. In 1981,\u00a0FLOWERS\u00a0changed their name to\u00a0ICEHOUSE\u00a0for use in the overseas market. With their new name, the band embarked on their first overseas tour taking on the USA, Canada and the UK in their stride.<\/p>\n

ICEHOUSE\u00a0has sold over three million albums locally, more than nine million internationally, and have achieved 28 platinum album sales in Australasia. They have had eight Top 10 albums and more than 30 Top 40 singles.\u00a0ICEHOUSE\u00a0and Iva Davies have won many awards, including the Countdown Award for the Most Popular Male Performer and ARIA Awards for the Best Album and Highest Selling Album for\u00a0Man of Colours<\/em>. The band was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2006.<\/p>\n

Icehouse are about to turn 40! So ahead of the big celebration, we gave Iva Davies a call at home and while he was staring at the ocean we talked about Icehouse\u2019s 40th anniversary, touring, beginnings, memories, new music possibilities and much more\u2026<\/p>\n

Great to talk to you again, Iva, we spoke just about a year ago, so let’s catch up, how has the least year been for you?<\/strong>
\nWell, lots of highlights and it\u2019s actually strange how much I forget fairly quickly believe it or not. We did a whole bunch of shows early in the year and they were great fun, we\u2019ve also done a couple of big ones more recently too, the last crowd we played to believe it or not was twelve thousand people in Townsville which was a V8 car racing event and that\u2019s something that\u2019s new and we\u2019ve done two this year, so very interesting.<\/p>\n

Now of course Icehouse turns 40 coming up in 2017, so an early happy birthday and what a milestone. <\/strong>
\nVery good, thank you!<\/p>\n

Looking back what do you remember most about the band’s beginnings?<\/strong>
\nIt was an interesting time because I taught myself to play an acoustic guitar when I was around thirteen over one summer school holidays my big brother had taken off for London and foolishly left behind his classical guitar and a book called Cole\u2019s Spanish guitar method, and that was how I learned to play the guitar. So I met a couple of guys and played folk music for quite a few years and as I was in a parallel life to be a professional oboist and it wasn\u2019t until I was in my very early twenties that I decided that there was no way I was going to end up playing in an orchestra and on my twenty first birthday I bought my first solid body electric guitar. So I was in the process of learning how to get a good sound out of this contraption when I met Keith Welsh who was the bass player and co-founder of Flowers and I\u2019d never ever been into a pub at that point and I remember quite clearly for the first time going to a pub with Keith and seeing a band playing and taking the whole thing in and thinking wow this is a whole kind of social dynamic that I wasn\u2019t aware of, and of course in my early twenties I was a fairly hermit like creature so I didn\u2019t get out much *laughs*.\u00a0 So the whole experience of getting out to a pub to see a band was completely foreign to me, but I guess that was probably the overarching memory that I have really, the kind of strangeness of being on a stage in a pub which was as I say a completely foreign environment.<\/p>\n

You’re heading back out on tour so when you put together a celebration like this how do you plan a set list to cover the entire career of the band?<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s tricky, what we\u2019re doing is we\u2019re rehearsing some extra songs so it\u2019s probably going to be a little more fluid than it has been in the past. There are obviously certain stand out landmark songs that we will always play, and those will remain but within that as I say we\u2019re rehearsing a number of other songs but also a couple of cover versions as well because it does hark back to the kind of beginnings of the band. We started out like most bands, playing other people\u2019s material and those are days that are probably well beyond a lot of our audience that joined us at \u2018Man of Colours\u2019 which is our fifth album, but some of our audience will go back to those days where Flowers were simply a covers band in the Northern Beaches.<\/p>\n

For me being one of those ones that really found you with \u2018Man of Colours\u2019 as you were just talking about, can we hear \u2018Heartbreak Kid\u2019 maybe?<\/strong>
\nOh wow, we have played that quite a bit in the last four and a half years but we haven\u2019t played it for a while, so that\u2019s actually a very interesting suggestion. I\u2019ve got a bit of a soft spot for the song I\u2019m not quite sure why but it\u2019s a great thing to play and we were doing an acoustic version of it earlier on which we may revisit.<\/p>\n

It feels like Icehouse has been a lot more active of late with many live shows. Has it been fun getting out there and playing?<\/strong>
\nWell what happened was I kind of really retired after the tour in 1994 I think it might have been, and it coincided with the birth of my first child I think Brynn was six weeks old when we did the last show and I kind of decided at that point that I\u2019d had enough to be satisfied with and to move on to the next chapter which was being a father. That kind of persisted for around sixteen years believe it or not\u2026 we didn\u2019t really play at all publically. Then something strange occurred, our tour manager who is still our tour manager and he goes back to 1986 with us so we\u2019ve been working together for a very long time, and he happened to be general manager of the largest production company in Australia, largest audio production company where people like The Rolling Stones will get their PA from and their lighting from when they do a tour of Australia. He rang me up and said I\u2019ve just come up with an idea, I\u2019ve invented this thing called \u2018Sound Relief\u2019 and it was two shows, one in Sydney and one in Melbourne to be a benefit for what was a dreadful disastrous bushfire in Victoria and also flooding in Queensland at that time and by the way I\u2019ve just volunteered you to headline the Sydney show\u2026 *laughs* and we hadn\u2019t played for sixteen years, so we rehearsed and we did play that show and it was extraordinary, and it was the first time that my children who were then about fourteen and twelve it was the first time they\u2019d ever seen us play a show and they were absolutely gobsmacked. We looked at each other after that and thought hmm maybe we should do this again, and it was kind of the beginning of the renaissance as it were of the live band.<\/p>\n

Not only are you doing your own shows but you’re headlining a few festivals with some amazing Aussie talent, is there anyone on the bill you’re specifically looking forward to playing with?<\/strong>
\nLook they\u2019re all great artists and very experienced ones at that, and there\u2019s a lot of history there too, our lead guitarist Paul who has been playing with me for nearly thirty years, and for a long time he played with James Reyne\u2019s band so of course there are connections throughout, and we also share in common that early pub era where we got to sort of learn our craft as it were and they were incredibly lucky times. So if you were sitting down all of those artists in one room they would probably all agree that we were very lucky to be involved with the pub music scene of that time because it was incredibly vibrant and productive.<\/p>\n

So when you started the band did you have an idea or thought that 40 years later you’d still be doing this?<\/strong>
\nAbsolutely not, in fact I was probably the world\u2019s largest skeptic and I was a skeptic for a very long time and it wasn\u2019t until I was handed the first royalty check from the Flowers album by the management accountant that it sort of dawned on me that we were going to make any money out of it, and even after that I didn\u2019t think we\u2019d last very long *laughs* so it took a very long time to convince me that this was any kind of real job at all. *laughs*<\/p>\n

Over the years members have come and gone, a lot of people involved, how has each incarnation or member helped you personally to continue to shape the band?<\/strong>
\nLook, I guess most of the time I just simply followed my nose and it led me to some great places. A lot of what shaped the band early on was an incredible explosion in music technology, there were what seemed to be monumental inventions happening on almost a weekly basis, so we went from a period when we recorded the very first album there was no such thing as a drum machine, to within what seemed like minutes the evolution of a number of drum machines concluding in a remarkable piece of work called the Linn drum machine in which was the basis of the second album, I bought one when we were doing our first international tour and brought it back to Australia and it kind of became the backbone of my writing process, and the first thing I wrote with that particular machine was the first song of the second album \u2018Primitive Man\u2019 and the song was \u2018Great Southern Land\u2019 and from there on I can kind of map just about everything I did with the invention of some kind of technology. So I just got to play with a whole lot of toys *laughs*.<\/p>\n

Every decade musically has changed and a band like Icehouse remains loved, what do you think it is about the band that people latch on to and stay with?<\/strong>
\nI think there are sort of certain common denominators I think in any music of quality and hopefully we have at least some of those and there is no going past really a good sense of melody, but also the kind of framework within which most of those recordings and pieces of music were made was one in which I was very acutely aware and it sort of goes back into that conversation about technology too, because when the very first synthesizers were coming out there were loads and loads of bands who were jumping on these things but they were kind of treating them as a novelty a lot of the time, and I remember very clearly having a thought process that went along the lines of hearing a particular new song that had come out from some English new wave band with a synthesizer very prominent and thinking you know what\u2026 that sound is going to date really badly *laughs* and being aware of that even back then when the thing had only just been invented meant that I was always very careful to avoid things that I thought were going to be very of the moment. That included every sort of fashion item and every piece of artwork that we produced and so on, it was all somewhere at the back of my thought process regarding all of those things was how will this look in twenty years time, or how will this sound in twenty years time. I\u2019m glad I sort of went through that process because we did manage to avoid, not all, but a lot of the kind of pitfalls what was very music fashion driven at the time.<\/p>\n

You forgot to say haircuts\u2026<\/strong>
\nUm\u2026 haircuts aside I think *laughs*<\/p>\n

I have to ask, are there any plans for new music from Icehouse in the foreseeable future?<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s not on my immediate radar and when I say my immediate radar that\u2019s not really a satisfactory answer because my immediate radar tends to be fairly short term *laughs* so for example a number of people asked recently what\u2019s on after this 40 year tour and I say I haven\u2019t even thought about that and I\u2019m not going to think about that because my immediate focus is on what the demand of that will be. So ask me that question again in May of next year when that tour is over\u2026 and then I might have some possibility of giving you an answer *laughs*.<\/p>\n

Has there been a moment in the 40 years that you look back on as an absolute favourite?<\/strong>
\nThere\u2019s been loads of highlights and they are some extraordinary moments, things like performing for the bicentennial royal command performance at the entertainment centre and being aware that it was going out on television to three and a half billion people\u2026 no pressure there.. so there are things like that. Even things that some people don\u2019t know about, like being one of the last, if not the last live band on Johnny Carson\u2019s show, iconic television show out of Hollywood and I remember thinking at the time \u2018wow, we\u2019re on the Johnny Carson show\u2019 and there\u2019s not too many Australian bands that can boast that.<\/p>\n

With a broad catalogue is there one song from your body of work that you would want people to remember you for?<\/strong>
\nWell I think whether I like it or not, \u2018Great Southern Land\u2019 will probably be the song that is a very defining one and it\u2019s actually quite ironic to me in sorts f ways because what happened was, and you might not have an understanding of this because it\u2019s a fair while ago, but by the time we got to the 90\u2019s at least I was absolutely convinced that \u2018Electric Blue\u2019 would be the defining song because it had been our only number one song and by far a bigger hit than anything else, and it achieved top ten status in the USA and it was THE song. Then something very strange happened\u2026 we got to 1999 and I was approached by the collective creative team who were in charge of the Sydney Millennium celebrations, and they came to me and said \u201cwe have the Sydney symphony orchestra, we have a group of Japanese taiko drummers, we have the forecourt of the Opera House and we would like you to turn \u2018Great Southern Land\u2019 into a twenty five minute extravaganza using all those elements.\u201d I did, and it took me nearly a year to create that piece of music, and then of course in the twenty five minutes leading up to the countdown on Sydney harbour we performed the piece which was called \u2018The Ghost of Time\u2019 and culminated in an orchestral version of \u2018Great Southern Land\u2019, and that in turn was seen throughout the world by four billion people, and from that moment on \u2018Great Southern Land\u2019 suddenly came to life and ever since then it\u2019s kind of been the defining song. That whole performance is up on YouTube, so if you search \u2018The Ghost of Time\u2019 you\u2019ll find it.<\/p>\n

Lastly let’s look ahead to the future, so finish this sentence for me, by the time the band turns 41 the one thing Icehouse wants to do is…<\/strong>
\nHave survived the tour\u2026 there\u2019s no getting around the fact that I\u2019m not getting any younger, so for that reason we are very selective about the pacing of what we do and the sorts of shows that we do, and so there\u2019s always and always has been since I was a very young man an element of physicality that\u2019s very demanding and when you tea, that up with a whole bunch of adrenaline then they\u2019re very high energy shows. So it\u2019s always nice to get to the end of it and know that you\u2019re still standing. *laughs*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Catch Icehouse on their 40 years live shows\u2026<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Saturday, 7 January 2017<\/strong>
\nRed Hot Summer Tour – Mulwala Waterski Club, Mulwala, NSW<\/strong>
\nTickets on sale\u00a0now\u00a0from
\nTicketmaster 136 100 |\u00a0www.ticketmaster.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

Friday, 13 January 2017<\/strong>
\nEnmore Theatre, Enmore, NSW<\/strong>
\nTickets available from Ticketek 132 849 |\u00a0www.ticketek.com.au<\/a>
\nPresented by WS FM101.7<\/p>\n

Saturday, 14 January 2017 \u2013 2nd\u00a0and Final Show<\/strong>
\nEnmore Theatre, Enmore, NSW<\/strong>
\nTickets available from Ticketek 132 849 |\u00a0www.ticketek.com.au<\/a>
\nPresented by WS FM101.7<\/p>\n

Saturday, 21 January 2017<\/strong>
\nSummer Concert Tour – Gibbston Valley Winery, Queenstown, NZ<\/strong>
\nTickets available from through www.ticketek.co.nz<\/a> (0800 ticketek)<\/p>\n

Saturday, 28 January 2017<\/strong>
\nSummer Concert Tour – Taupo Amphitheatre, Taupo, NZ<\/strong>
\nTickets available from through www.ticketek.co.nz<\/a> (0800 ticketek)<\/p>\n

Sunday, 29 January 2017<\/strong>
\nWhitianga Open Air Venue, Whitianga, NZ<\/strong>
\nTickets available from through www.ticketek.co.nz<\/a> (0800 ticketek)<\/p>\n

Wednesday, 1 February 2017<\/strong>
\nCrown Theatre, Perth, WA<\/strong>
\nTickets available from Ticketmaster 136 100 |\u00a0www.ticketmaster.com.au<\/a>
\nPresented by 96FM<\/p>\n

Thursday, 2 February 2017 \u2013 2nd\u00a0and Final Show<\/strong>
\nCrown Theatre, Perth, WA<\/strong>
\nTickets available from Ticketmaster 136 100 |\u00a0www.ticketmaster.com.au<\/a>
\nPresented by 96FM<\/p>\n

Thursday, 9 February 2017<\/strong>
\nThebarton Theatre, Adelaide, SA<\/strong>
\nTickets available from Ticketmaster 136 100 |\u00a0www.ticketmaster.com.au<\/a>
\nPresented by Cruise 1323<\/p>\n

Saturday, 11 February 2017<\/strong>
\nRed Hot Summer Tour \u2013 Old Mount Gambier Gaol, Mt Gambier, SA<\/strong>
\nTickets on sale\u00a0now\u00a0from
\nTicketmaster 136 100 |\u00a0www.ticketmaster.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

Saturday, 18 February 2017<\/strong>
\nRed Hot Summer Tour – Country Club, Launceston, TAS<\/strong>
\nTickets on sale\u00a0now\u00a0from
\nTicketmaster 136 100 |\u00a0www.ticketmaster.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

Friday, 24 February 2017<\/strong>
\nBrisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, Brisbane, Qld<\/strong>
\nTickets available from Ticketek 132 849 |\u00a0www.ticketek.com.au<\/a>
\nPresented by 4KQ<\/p>\n

Saturday, 11 March 2017<\/strong>
\nRed Hot Summer Tour \u2013 Mackay Park, Bateman’s Bay, NSW<\/strong>
\nTickets on sale from 9.00am, Monday 29 August from
\nTicketmaster 136 100 |\u00a0www.ticketmaster.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

Friday, 17 March 2017<\/strong>
\nWrest Point Entertainment Centre, Hobart, TAS<\/strong>
\nTickets available from\u00a0http:\/\/tixtas.com.au\/Home.aspx?psid=iceh2017<\/a>
\nPresented by 7HOFM and WinTV<\/p>\n

Saturday, 18 March 2017<\/strong>
\nWrest Point Entertainment Centre, Hobart, TAS<\/strong>
\nTickets available from\u00a0http:\/\/tixtas.com.au\/Home.aspx?psid=iceh2017<\/a>
\nPresented by 7HOFM and WinTV<\/p>\n

Saturday, 25 March 2017<\/strong>
\nRed Hot Summer Tour – Roche Estate, Hunter Valley, NSW<\/strong>
\nTickets on sale\u00a0now\u00a0from
\nTicketmaster 136 100 |\u00a0www.ticketmaster.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

Saturday, 1 April 2017<\/strong>
\nRed Hot Summer Tour – Harrigan’s Drift Inn, Jacob’s Well, Qld<\/strong>
\nTickets on sale\u00a0now\u00a0from
\nTicketmaster 136 100 |\u00a0www.ticketmaster.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

Saturday, 22 April 2017<\/strong>
\nRed Hot Summer Tour – Bendigo Jockey Club, Bendigo, VIC<\/strong>
\nTickets on sale\u00a0now\u00a0from
\nTicketmaster 136 100 |\u00a0www.ticketmaster.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2016,\u00a0ICEHOUSE<\/strong>\u00a0will also be performing at the sold out\u00a0One Electric Day<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>concert at Werribee Park, Vic, on Sunday, 27 September as well as headlining:<\/p>\n

Great Western Hotel, Rockhampton, Qld<\/strong>
\nSaturday, 1 October 2016<\/strong>
\nTickets available now from\u00a0here<\/a><\/p>\n

Caloundra Music Festival<\/strong>
\nMonday, 3 October 2016<\/strong>
\nTickets available now from\u00a0here<\/a><\/p>\n

Bondi Beachfest<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>
\nSaturday, 12 November 2016<\/strong>
\nwith James Reyne & Mark Seymour, Josh Pyke, Rogue Traders,
\nAsh Grunwald and William Crighton
\nTickets available now from\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Essential Information<\/u><\/strong><\/h2>\n

From:<\/strong> Sydney, Australia<\/p>\n

Band members: <\/strong>Iva Davies<\/p>\n

Website:<\/strong> \u00a0http:\/\/www.icehouse-ivadavies.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Latest release: <\/strong>Icehouse \u2013 In Concert \u2013 (Universal Music Australia)<\/p>\n

\"iTunes<\/a><\/p>\n

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