When he wrote about romantic entanglements, it was with a freshness and specificity that the term "love song" doesn't quite capture. In fact, he eventually emerged as the more prolific partner: during the band's 11-year hiatus, he released four solo albums, including the 17-song double-disc Horsebreaker Star, and collaborated on two with The Church's Steve Kilbey as Jack Frost. (He switched to guitar when the band became a quartet.) But he quickly found his feet as a songwriter: from 1981's Send Me a Lullaby to last year's Oceans Apart, every Go-Betweens full-length was evenly split between the leaders' compositions. In 1977, McLennan was a film-and-literature-obsessed arts student who had never played guitar he first picked up the bass to learn the songs that the slightly more seasoned Forster had begun writing. As for me, not just my musical endeavors but probably my personal life would be unimaginably different if not for the 20-plus year relationship I've had with The Go-Betweens' music, so I'm grateful to Alex for inviting me to contribute this note.
![grant mclennan watershed rar grant mclennan watershed rar](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-oJPc32HaLs/hqdefault.jpg)
Many are from fellow musicians, ranging from Luke Haines (of The Auteurs, whose debut album New Wave is audibly indebted to The Go-Betweens mid-'80s recordings) to Bikini Kill's Tobi Vail. In the brief interval since the news appeared on the band's official website, nearly 1,500 fans and friends have posted condolences and tributes to the site's message board. He had been making preparations for a party that evening, complained of not feeling well, went to bed, and never woke up. But here's the main text of it, without the MP3s.Īs many readers already know, Grant McLennan, who co-founded and co-led The Go-Betweens with Robert Forster from 1978 to 1990 and, in their second incarnation, from 2001 until two weeks ago, died in Brisbane on Saturday, May 6th, at the age of 48. The piece, on Moistworks, comes with 4 songs to download, and you can link to it here. Franklin Bruno, author of our excellent Elvis Costello book, has written one of the best pieces I've read so far about Grant McLennan.