An interview with Mark Seymour about Throw Your Arms Around Me and Holy Grail.

Author:  Paul & Lise, 96FM.

Date: 30 August 2018.

Original URL: http://www.96fm.com.au/shows/paul-lise/hunters-collectors-holy-grail-was-almost-never-recorded

Article Text

They’re one of the country’s most loved bands: Hunters & Collectors.

That means, by default, frontman Mark Seymour is a straight-up national treasure, and Paul & Lise jumped at the chance to have him on the show.

While Seymour was promoting his latest tour, he also cleared up one great Aussie mystery…

We all know how Throw Your Arms Around Me goes, right?

I will come for you at nighttime
I will raise you from your sleep
I will kiss you in four places
As I go running along your street

Thing is, Paul brought up the one question that we’ve all had at one time or another: “What are the four places?”

“Umm, Warracknabeal…” Seymour said, referring to the rural Victorian town.

“Bathurst, Kalgoorlie and, uh, Port Hedland.”

Lise remarked on the WA towns he mentioned.

“Is that how you like to kiss? In hot and sweaty places?”

“Oh, look, there are levels of intimacy I can’t divulge in the public space, which is where we are now,” Seymour replied.

Paul jumped in saying he was happy to settle on the geographical answer.

We also learned something completely unsettling about the Hunters & Collectors’ staple, Holy Grail.

The track almost never made the cut.

“I really had to battle to get that song recorded, to be honest,” Seymour admitted.

“I remember when we made the album, that [song] was well down the list and there was a lot of debate as to whether or not it should be on the record.”

Seymour said that some people, including other band members, who didn’t feel comfortable with it being on the list.

“But I always thought that the lyric was very colourful,” he said.

“And it doesn’t have a chorus either, I like the idea that it was a big radio song that didn’t have a chorus,

“I just thought, ‘suck that one up boys’.”

Mark Seymour & The Undertow, Encore Tour By Demand, October 27, Astor Theatre

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