They were on the same scene as we were,” says Forster. They were each outsiders in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, and each signed to Rough Trade. (Coughlan died at 61, after a long illness.) The Go-Betweens had become close to Coughlan’s first group, Microdisney, in London in the 1980s. He had heard Coughlan was unwell – and was then shocked to learn the seriousness of the diagnosis. And you’re going to put it all into one thing.” And then there were the things you really disliked. There were things that you intensely liked about your city – you felt romantically connected. But the fact you could build an artistic vision out of the city you lived in was absolutely fascinating. “Obviously Dublin is not as isolated as Brisbane. “When I went to university it was like every other writer was Irish,” says Forster, whose Dublin concert will feature material from his raw and heartfelt new solo record, The Candle and the Flame. If they could do that with a rainy city on the edge of Europe, what was to stop The Go-Betweens from similarly embracing obscure, provincial Brisbane as their muse? All the inspiration they needed was, they realised, right there on their doorstep. They had made it the centre of their world. Photograph: Frans Schellekens/Redfernsįorster and McLennan had been struck by the confidence with which James Joyce and others wrote about Dublin. The Go-Betweens: Robert Forster and Grant McLennan playing in 1988. This isn’t guff: when he and his late Go-Betweens foil, Grant McLennan, were at Queensland University in the late 1970s, they were fuelled by an obsession with Irish literature. There are no two ways about it: he was very talented.”įorster says it’s an honour to speak to The Irish Times as he prepares to return to Dublin for a show at the Button Factory tomorrow.

“He was a very powerful person to have fronting a band. “Cathal was an inspiration and a great, powerful performer,” says Forster in the same thoughtful cadences that are the defining quality of the 65-year-old’s singing voice. When life comes at you, it comes at you hard. Then, in May 2022, his friend Cathal Coughlan, the Irish musician, died. Towards the end of the pandemic, the singer-songwriter, best known as one-half of the great lost indie band The Go-Betweens, watched as his wife of 30 years was diagnosed with cancer. In the sunshine of Brisbane, Robert Forster has been holding back the darkness.

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