"Cattle and Cane" is a song by the Australian

alternative rock Alternative rock (also known as alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative) is a category of rock music that evolved from the independent music underground of the 1970s. Alternative rock acts achieved mainstream success in the 1990s w ...

band

The Go-Betweens The Go-Betweens were an Australian indie rock band formed in Brisbane, Queensland, in 1977. The band was co-founded and led by singer-songwriters and guitarists Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, who were its only constant members throughout ...

, released as the first single from their second album ''

Before Hollywood ''Before Hollywood'' is the second album by Australian rock band the Go-Betweens, released in May 1983. The album reached No. 2 on the UK Independent Charts and a single, " Cattle and Cane" reached No. 4. In 2001 "Cattle and Cane" was voted as ...

''. It was released as a single in the United Kingdom by

Rough Trade Records Rough Trade Records is an independent record label based in London, England. It was formed in 1976 by Geoff Travis who had opened a record store off Ladbroke Grove. Having successfully promoted and sold records by punk rock and early post-pu ...

in February 1983 and reached No. 4 on the UK Independent Chart. The single and album were both released in Australia on Stunn, a small label allied with EMI. The Stunn pressings were of poor quality and their distribution limited. Vocalist and bass guitarist Grant McLennan wrote the lyrics for his mother as an autobiographical description of his return home to a

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_ ...

farm when a boy. He used

Nick Cave Nicholas Edward Cave (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian singer, songwriter, poet, lyricist, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional actor. Known for his baritone voice and for fronting the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, C ...

's acoustic guitar while staying at Cave's London apartment. Vocalist and guitarist

Robert Forster Robert Wallace Forster Jr. (July 13, 1941 – October 11, 2019) was an American actor, known for his roles as John Cassellis in '' Medium Cool'' (1969), Captain Dan Holland in '' The Black Hole'' (1979), Abdul Rafai in '' The Delta Force'' (198 ...

co-wrote the song. Drummer

Lindy Morrison Belinda "Lindy" Morrison (born 2 November 1951) is an Australian musician originally from Brisbane, Queensland. She was the drummer in indie rock group the Go-Betweens from 1980 to 1989, appearing on all of the band's releases from their first L ...

also supplied backing vocals. The single and album both failed to appear on the relevant Australian

Kent Music Report The Kent Music Report was a weekly record chart of Australian music singles and albums which was compiled by music enthusiast David Kent from May 1974 through to January 1999. The chart was re-branded the Australian Music Report (AMR) in July ...

Top 50 charts. In May 2001, "Cattle and Cane" was selected by

Australasian Performing Right Association APRA AMCOS consists of Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (AMCOS), both copyright management organisations or copyright collectives which jointly represent over 100,000 songwr ...

(APRA) as one of the Top 30 Australian songs of all time.

Background

"Cattle and Cane" was recorded by Australian rock band

in October 1982 at I.C.C. Studios in

Eastbourne Eastbourne () is a town and seaside resort in East Sussex, on the south coast of England, east of Brighton and south of London. Eastbourne is immediately east of Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in Great Britain and part of the l ...

, United Kingdom with John Brand producing. Formed in

Brisbane Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the states and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland, and the list of cities in Australia by population, third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a populati ...

in 1977, the band signed with Missing Link Records in 1981 with the line-up of

on vocals, lead guitar and rhythm guitar; Grant McLennan on vocals, bass guitar and guitars; and

on drums and backing vocals.McFarlan
'The Go-Betweens'
entry. Retrieved 8 April 2010. Their debut album, '' Send Me a Lullaby'', was released as an eight-track in Australia in November. It was expanded with four bonus tracks when released in UK on

in February 1982. The Go-Betweens released "Cattle and Cane" in late February 1983, ahead of their second album, ''

,'' which appeared in May. The single and album were both released in Australia on Stunn, a small label allied with EMI. The Stunn pressings were of poor quality and their distribution limited. The B-side on the Stunn recordings was "Man O'Sand to Girl O'Sea" with newly joined bass guitarist Robert Vickers on board, which freed McLennan for lead guitar work. The group recorded a video for the single in May, six weeks after its UK release. It was filmed in an antique shop in

Fulham Fulham () is an area of the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham in West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, bordering Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea. The area faces Wandswo ...

, with Vickers miming playing the bass guitar, to portray group solidarity, even though he didn't play on the actual recording.

Song development

"Cattle and Cane" is an autobiographical story of McLennan as a schoolboy embarked on a journey home, evoking memories of a "house of tin and timber," the train edging him closer to the past "through fields of cattle, through fields of cane." McLennan wrote it while using

's acoustic guitar in Cave's London apartment in 1982, whilst Cave was comatose after injecting heroin. In 1983, McLennan described writing the song: Lindy Morrison later said:

The Canberra Times ''The Canberra Times'' is a daily newspaper in Canberra, Australia, which is published by Australian Community Media. It was founded in 1926, and has changed ownership and format several times. History ''The Canberra Times'' was launched in ...

noted, "The three verses by McLennan cover three phases of his life to date in a series of images – the primary schoolboy scrambling through cane fields, the adolescent in boarding school losing his late father's watch in the showers, the young man at university discovering a bigger brighter world – and then the fourth phase of his life: Robert Forster, playing himself." A feature of the song is the unusual

time signature The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western culture, Western musical notation to specify how many beat (music), beats (pulses) are contained in each measu ...

used in most it, which is explained by Morrison in a radio interview: "Grant had written that song and ��he wrote it in that time signature. It's a bar of five, then a bar of two, then a bar of four, so the phrase is eleven beats ��but when you get to the chorus it goes to four-four. The final section is ��over the verse chord ��back into the eleven pattern." McLennan had already acknowledged the importance of Morrison's drum part on the song: "It had a great rhythm which I don't think any drummer in the world could've played except her. That rhythm never ceases to amaze me." Forster later said, "Grant managed to create something new in the Australian songbook with 'Cattle and Cane.' When he first played me the riff I thought it was like one of a number of his that were good, but it was the lyric that did it. The music is quite sort of post-punky, but the lyric is just like

Slim Dusty Slim Dusty, AO MBE (born David Gordon Kirkpatrick; 13 June 1927 – 19 September 2003) was an Australian country music singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer. He was an Australian cultural icon and one of the country's most awarded stars ...

, it's

Banjo Paterson Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, (17 February 18645 February 1941) was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the d ...

or something."

Reception and influence

"Cattle and Cane" reached No. 4 on the UK Independent Charts in 1983. The single and album both failed to appear on the relevant Australian

Top 50 charts. However, "Cattle and Cane"'s popularity saw it reach No. 11 in Triple J's Hottest 100 for 1989, No. 27 in

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...

and No. 96 in the

1991 File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, elected as Russia's first president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated by Soviet hardliners; Mount Pinatubo erupts in the ...

. The song was also selected by '' NME'' writers in their '100 Best Indie Singles Ever' in 1992. In

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the dat ...

's review of ''Before Hollywood,'' Ned Raggett described the single: Fellow Australian musician Paul Kelly recalled hearing the song for the first time while driving in Melbourne: In May 2001 "Cattle and Cane" was selected by

(APRA) as one of the Top 30 Australian songs of all time. "Cattle and Cane" was covered by British

indie rock Indie rock is a Music subgenre, subgenre of rock music that originated in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand from the 1970s to the 1980s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the mu ...

group

The Wedding Present The Wedding Present are an English indie rock group originally formed in 1985 in Leeds, England, from the ashes of The Lost Pandas. The band's music has evolved from fast-paced indie rock in the vein of their most obvious influences The Fall, ...

as a B-side to their 1992 single "Blue Eyes" and by

Jimmy Little James Oswald Little, AO (1 March 19372 April 2012) was an Australian Aboriginal musician, actor and teacher, who was a member of the Yorta Yorta tribe and was raised on the Cummeragunja Reserve, New South Wales. Little started his professi ...

on his

ARIA award The Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards (commonly known informally as ARIA Music Awards, ARIA Awards, or simply the ARIAs) is an annual series of awards nights celebrating the Australian music industry, put on by the Austr ...

winning 1999 album, ''The Messenger.''

Track listing

UK release # "Cattle and Cane" (McLennan, Forster) – 4:12 # "Heaven Says" (McLennan, Forster) – 4:06 Australian release # "Cattle and Cane" (McLennan, Forster) – 4:12 # "

Man O'Sand to Girl O'Sea "Man O'Sand to Girl O'Sea" was originally released as a stand-alone single by Australian indie group The Go-Betweens. It was released as a 7" vinyl record on the Rough Trade Records label in the United Kingdom in October 1983, with "This Girl, Bl ...

" (McLennan, Forster) – 3:24

Personnel

The Go-Betweens members *

– vocals, lead guitar, rhythm guitar * Grant McLennan – vocals, bass guitar, guitars *

– drums, backing vocals * Robert Vickers – bass guitar on "Man O'Sand to Girl O'Sea" Additional musicians * Bernard Clarke – organ, piano Production details * Producer – John Brand * Engineer – John Brand,

Tony Cohen Anthony Lawrence Cohen (4 June 19572 August 2017) was an Australian music record producer and sound engineer. He worked with Nick Cave's groups the Birthday Party, and then the Bad Seeds from 1979 to 2001. In mid-1986 he had followed Cave to L ...

* Mastering – Ian Cooper * Tape transfer – Ingo Vauk * Studio – I.C.C. Studios,

, England

Releases

References

;General * Note: Archived n-linecopy has limited functionality. * ;Specific {{Authority control 1983 singles APRA Award winners The Go-Betweens songs 1983 songs Rough Trade Records singles Songs written by Grant McLennan Songs written by Robert Forster (musician)