More than four decades have passed since Colin Hay’s Men at Work topped the Billboard Hot 100 with back-to-back No. 1 hits “Who Can It Be Now?” and the Australian anthem “Down Under.”
The band’s prominence during the early MTV era with its cheeky videos and Hay’s charismatic charm didn’t last in part because the band splintered in 1986 after just three studio albums.
Hay, now the only original member of the band, wishes he hadn’t been so headstrong in his younger years.
“It was really ‘Spinal Tap’ with all the problems,” said Hay in a phone interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution from his home in Los Angeles ahead of the upcoming Men at Work show at the Fred in Peachtree City on Saturday, Oct. 12. “Men have very limited communication skills when you’re younger. I think if we had sat down and communicated our issues, we could have figured it out and stayed together. Instead, the band disintegrated.”
The good news is Men at Work’s brief but distinctive catalog survives and endures. And Hay, now 71, hits the road often to play many of those hits along with cuts from his 15 solo albums. Since 2021, he has made stops in Atlanta at Buckhead Theatre, City Winery and the Eastern. He also performed with Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band at the Fox Theatre a year ago.
Starr has been holding his supergroup-style concerts with 14 different iterations over 35 years. Hay first joined Starr in 2003, came back in 2008 and has now been touring regularly with the former Beatle since 2018 along with a band that includes Edgar Winter, Hamish Stuart (Average White Band) and Steve Lukather (Toto).
Credit: Ryan Fleisher
Credit: Ryan Fleisher
During those shows, Hay gets to sing some of his Men at Work output.
“When you play something like ‘Who Can It Be Now?’ and you turn around and Ringo is playing the drums, it’s quite a surreal moment,” Hay said. “He’s told me, ‘I really like that one!’”
Starr’s latest band iteration, Hay said, has become more cohesive over time. “We sound like a true band, not just a band of hired guns,” he said. “We pick up the nuances of the songs. We listen to each other and make the music sound as one.”
Hay said his favorite song to play with Starr is “With a Little Help From My Friends.” “That has special meaning for me because when I left Scotland and arrived in Australia in 1967, ‘Sgt. Pepper’ had just been released. I remember that album vividly. I arrived in a new country and spent a lot of time listening to that record.”
Hay, who has released 15 solo albums over the years, also decided to bring back Men at Work as a band in 2019. “I kind of stole musicians from my wife,” he said, referencing his Peru-born Latin musician wife Cecilia Noël.
For the current 20-city tour, Hay decided to book venues in the 2,000 seat range.
“This is still experimental to find out if the band still has an audience,” he said. “We wanted to play it conservatively and fill the rooms and see if it’s something we want to do on a more regular basis.”
So far, at the Fred, which seats about 2,500, Men at Work has sold more than 90% of the seats as of Oct. 10, two days before the concert.
IF YOU GO
Men at Work with the Producers
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 12. $70-$75. Frederick Brown Jr. Amphitheater, 201 McIntosh Trail, Peachtree City. freshtix.com.
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