Models

If the name rings a bell for you, it's probably because of Models' string of hits in the 80s – most notably the brass-heavy ‘Out Of Mind, Out Of Sight' which took them to the top of the charts in 1985. For a while there they seemed poised to be the next INXS (and, for a while, were managed by INXS's manager Chris Murphy) which seemed extraordinary given their roots in Melbourne's late 70s punk scene and the relentless experimentalism of their early records. 

The change in sound was at least partially down to changes in line up. Aside from the ubiquitous Sean Kelly, around 20 people have been a Model at one time or another (including RocKwiz bassist Mark Ferrie, broadcaster/saxophonist James Valentine and keyboardist Roger Mason, now one of the country's top soundtrack composers), although the most commercially shrewd addition was the addition of bassist/singer/songwriter James Freud in 1982. Aside from being the most photogenic Model, he was behind most of the band's most successful singles: ‘Out Of Mind Out Of Sight', ‘Cold Fever', Barbados' and ‘Hold On'. A version of the band featuring Freud, Kelly and several hired guns (including James' son Jackson on guitar) did a tour of The Hits in 2008, and he and Kelly also played the Countdown Spectacular tour together.

However, it's the early albums that have aged best and contributed most to Models' legacy. 1980's Alphabravocharliedeltaechofoxtrotgolf, 1981's Local &/Or General, and especially 1983's ...The Pleasure Of Your Company showed a band prepared to play with form and structure, from 60s pop (‘Atlantic Romantic') to Birthday Party angst (‘Drive & Reflex') to chilly electrofunk (‘I Hear Motion').

Homebake 2007 saw a never-actually-extant line up of the band congeal to celebrate this period with Kelly joined by his long-time creative foil, keyboardist and sound manipulator Andrew Duffield (1979-83, with a couple of splits in between) and rhythm section of Ferrie (1978-82) and drummer Barton Price (1982-88). It's this version that will be performing at Oxford Art Factory with Bret Easton Ellis.

First up Sean, how many versions of Models are there at the moment?
What I've done for quite some time, just to get my head around it, is that I've always thought of it as a "Sydney" line-up and a "Melbourne" line-up. See, when the band sort of peaked with James [Freud] in the band we were based in Sydney and we lived up there for about five years. Which is ironic because the Melbourne line-up is the one that we will be doing in Sydney.

Last you were here was with James, but without any other "proper" Models.
Well, it's kind of awkward having two bands and people being not too sure which line up they're going to get. Basically, I think there's increasingly more demand for this sort of Melbourne-centric line up, but working with James a year or so back I saw this opportunity to do something with him – because basically this line up was unavailable due to Barton living in New Zealand and having commitments over there. So we just did those shows with James the year before last and he announced he was retiring so that put a full stop to that one [laughs] and since then, the good ol' line-up has formed again. I haven't seen James lately but I've heard that he's considering coming out of retirement: he's very unpredictable and, er, not the easiest guy to work with. But I'm just kind of happy that I've got a band to perform with.

I was hoping for more shows around Homebake, but it never happened which was a shame, since a) it was a great set, and b) it was such a miserable day. The rain was torrential.
Yes, and there were a few hooded figures hanging around the stage. It looked so bizarre, seeing these plastic ponchos that were hardcore and others bolting for the trees, like hundreds of them [laughs]. But it was great; I loved doing that show. It was a bit nerve-racking with all that water around, with all those electronics. If one of us had got zapped by a mic we certainly wouldn't have been the first to get badly electrocuted just trying to perform some music.

I remember Andrew trying to play and wipe water off the top of his Emulator at the same time.
That's right! He had something that was meant to be catching the water but it ended sending it in a cascade onto his equipment.

Leaving aside the line-up changes, it does seem like Models had one reasonably coherent identity up until The Pleasure of Your Company and [single] ‘Big On Love',and then after Out of Mind Out Of Sight it became something else – it seemed to stop being based around your voice.
Yeah, I think we were kind of more electronic and experimental [to that point], even though we had that heavy dynamic with the guitar, bass and drums. Whereas towards the end... I mean, we've never been a bland rock band, but towards the end we were kind of more "rocky".

When you started working with James again after the Homebake show, was there any bad blood between you and Andrew, Mark and Barton?
Not really. Realistically, there are artistic differences of opinion – I think we won't be playing ‘Out of Mind Out of Sight' or ‘Barbados'. I think ‘I Hear Motion'will be the cut off period, which is about ‘84 or something. I don't know, a while back we considered trying to combine eight people in the band and morph into different profiles from different time frames, but that's not realistic.

I must admit, when Sydney Festival had the Laughing Clowns and The Scientistsdoing their ‘Don't Look Back' album-length sets, I was thinking that I wouldn't mind seeing ThePleasure Of Your Company start to finish.
Actually, on the same tour as Homebake we performed Local&/Or General at the Gershwin Room at the Espy. I must admit that when it was suggested I wasn't too crazy about the idea because, naturally, one likes to choose their own repertoire but it went really well. I mean, we played songs from Local &/or General that we'd actually never played before and if we were to perform The Pleasure of Your Company in its entirety it'd be the same thing. But who knows? We don't have any bookings along those lines but certainly interested in trying stuff.

There was loose talk of Models doing new material around Homebake too.
That would be optimum for me, but I got used to the fact that people are interested in what we used to do - but of course as musicians you're always toying with new ideas. Hopefully we will actually get into a studio in the not too distant future and have a crack at some new stuff as well.

Is anything written?
I'm not sure what the other guys have been up to but I've been writing a lot and indeed just trying to finish a few songs off that I could perform either with my solo outfit or Models. So yes, I'll have two or three that I'll be trying to force on the band. I'm not sure whether we'll actually preview anything new when we do our Bret Easton Ellis support but we might. I'm trying to think if we've got one on mayhem and murder! [laughs] No, we don't really have any murder ballads but there's still time for us to come up with something new and appropriate and warm up Brett's audience with something.

Models play at Oxford Art Factory on Tue 10 Aug with Bret Easton Ellis

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