Men At Work – Down Under

Richmond Recorders, 1981: flute, Vegemite, number one

Men At Work released Down Under in Australia on 1 October 1981, then in the US and UK in mid-1982, from their debut album Business as Usual. Peter McIan produced; David Price engineered. Recording ran at Richmond Recorders in Melbourne in August and September 1981. Colin Hay and Ron Strykert had written the song years earlier; when Greg Ham joined in 1979 he added the alto flute riff that became the track’s calling card. Columbia / CBS pressed the single worldwide after Who Can It Be Now? had already opened doors.

The rhythm sits between ska and reggae: steady drums, bouncing bass from John Rees, guitars from Hay and Strykert, Ham’s flute and later sax colour. Hay sings a travel comic about fried-out Kombis, Vegemite sandwiches, and a land where beer flows. The joke lands because the band treat the postcard seriously as a groove. Ham later said he wanted something that sounded Australian, a pastoral motif; the four-note flute phrase stuck in the room on the first takes. Jerry Speiser’s drums keep a danceable step without rushing. On US and UK radio the track followed Who Can It Be Now? so closely that many listeners met both singles as one Australian wave rather than separate releases.

By January 1983 the band held a number 1 album and a number 1 single in both the US and Britain at once, a rare double. Down Under spent four weeks at number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and three weeks at number 1 in the UK. Business as Usual sold in the multi-millions and spent fifteen weeks atop the US album chart. In 1983 Men At Work won the Grammy for Best New Artist. The flute line later faced a 2010 Australian court ruling that it infringed the children’s song Kookaburra; Ham took the judgment hard. The chronicle here stays with the 1981 session and the hit that carried Australian pop onto US and UK radio.