Spiderbait: Black Betty’s Big B’Day
According to Spiderbait’s Kram, their fast and furious cover of ‘Black Betty’ birthed a second era for the Aussie alt-rock royals. Alongside their sixth studio album, Tonight Alright, the single sent the three-piece globally stratospheric. As the band prepares for their 20th anniversary ‘Black Betty’ tour, the drummer/vocalist reflects on the madness of the last two decades.
Words by Zara Richards | Image by Ian Laidlaw
It’s been 20 years since you released Tonight Alright and ‘Black Betty’. What does this album mean to you today?
It’s a wonderful thing to celebrate a milestone like this. One thing about [‘Black Betty’] is that it’s never stopped [having] momentum. It’s a real trip when a song gets that big worldwide [because] it never goes away.
It doesn’t feel like it’s been 20 years since we recorded that [album]. We have really good memories of doing it, particularly considering we weren’t sure what would happen after [‘Black Betty’]. It was a bit of a throw-the-dice going with that song as a first single. But we were in a situation... where the record prior wasn’t as big of a hit as we would have liked. So, we took a bit of a chance. [‘Black Betty’] was the beginning of the next phase of existence. [This tour] is almost celebrating that as much as anything else.
What changed for the band during the build of your sixth album, Tonight Alright?
I think the writing process was similar. There are all these different machinations of how [Spiderbait] songs are written. But I think the big difference with this album was how it was recorded. [We went] to Northern California and worked with Sylvia Massy, who is this legendary producer that we had never met but developed this wonderful relationship with. She used to work for Prince, Tool and Smashing Pumpkins! [We] had a finite amount of time to get the tracks down and that can sometimes be fraught with danger because you’re never quite sure if you’re happy with the result. But it was one of those things where we had to throw a lot of things at the wall and hopefully stuff would stick. As long as we were sticking together... Janet only finished the artwork for the album with five minutes to go before the deadline!
‘Black Betty’ went stratospheric. There’s a storied history behind the song that stretches back to the original 1930s track by Lead Belly. You covered the ’77 Ram Jam version. Why did you feel such an affinity with it?
I remember wanting to cover the song because I felt like we needed a hit on this record. I went back to my childhood when I used to love Countdown. We were all country kids in Finley, a small town near the Murray River in southern New South Wales. Nothing is going on music-wise, except commercial radio and Countdown on a Sunday, and this song was No.1 in the late ’70s.
There’s just something about [‘Black Betty’]. I always loved it. It’s sick – all the riffing, drumming and catchy vocals, which is the Lead Belly vocal early African American blues singers were so good at writing. These are the guys who invented rock and rock!
We did our version of it and to our great surprise, it became this huge phenomenon and set our band on a course which we’ve never really changed. It’s quite a sentimental and emotional celebration for us with this tour.
What are some stand-out gigs you have from the time of releasing Tonight Alright?
There are so many! I remember playing Big Day Out. We were on the main stage before Foo Fighters every day and would look over and see Dave Grohl checking us out. It was really cool. And the crowd! Huge songs like that, when you play them to massive crowds just cut absolutely sick, partially because there are so many thousands of people there. [There’s] power in that size of audience and if the song can equate to that, then you have this dichotomy of madness. People just lose it. It’s so exciting to be at the centre of that on the drum kit and sort of guiding it.
[Last year], we played with Dom Dolla because he’d remixed [‘Black Betty’] and all his fans were going nuts for us playing together as a trio, it was trippy. There’ve been so many examples of the euphoria of the song live. I’m sure this tour will be the same. It doesn’t feel like it’s going to stop.
Your friendship has been the biggest stabiliser throughout the Spiderbait journey. Three decades into the gig, what’s it like to tour like this?
It’s wonderful. In a way, [bands] can benefit from getting older. If they stay on top of their game, the relationship with fans and people in the scene gets richer. You become part of the cultural makeup of the country and that is a very pleasurable experience because music can be a very fickle existence. It’s difficult – lots of highs and lows. There are so many people I know in the scene who suffer from extreme anxiety – and they’re successful people! It’s all part of making a living out of your own thoughts, ideas and feelings – which is what being an artist is – but it’s fraught with strange inequities and unknown factors.
You have to just roll with that. Janet, Whit and myself are great examples of keeping strong. You win together, you lose together. But if you stay together, then you can be with the audience as well. The band I see as my family, and it’s a very strong platform to take on the rest of your life with. And if you’re open emotionally like that on stage with the crowd, they can give it back. We feel very connected to our audiences in that way. I think that’s one of the reasons we are still as we are.
But the other factor, I think, is the style of our music. There’s something about playing heavy, fucked up music that’s just a real raw expression. It sets you free from whatever shit you cope with in life. Just for that one hour, you can strip yourself emotionally naked. That’s one of the other things I really love about it.
What else should we expect from the tour?
We’re trying to celebrate ‘Black Betty’, all our hits and the legacy of our band – the fact we’ve been around as long as we have. So it’s going to just be a mixture of all those energies in one show. We can’t wait to get started.
Spiderbait play Hindley Street Music Hall on August 16. Tickets on sale now via Moshtix.
