It’s been over a year since Powderfinger broke up and since then frontman Bernard Fanning has gone to extraordinary lengths to assure people around Australia that the band will never ever reform “unless Kevin Rudd becomes the leader of the Liberal Party”.
Now other members have started to throw their 2 cents regarding the break up and the tensions surrounding the band that ultimately led to their undoing. A new book about Powderfinger called Footprints is coming out soon and in it guitarist Ian Haug expresses his sadness that his fellow bandmates had closed the door on reforming again in later life.
“Why break up? Why not just go on an indefinite hiatus?” he said. “Why make such a public spectacle of the fact you will never, ever perform together again? Why make such a promise?”. Now in an interview the the Sunday Herald Sun Fanning has opened up about the tensions within the group.
“Overall, it was about wanting independence and not being chained to the group any more.” Fanning said to reporter Nui Te Koha. “I wanted to make my own decisions about what I was doing – how, where and when.” Fanning was particularly irked when the band demanded he return to Australia to play a string of shows just days after his wife had heart surgery in Spain.
“There was no consideration that maybe we should cancel the show because my wife was in hospital on the other side of the world,” he said. “I was obliged to leave her when she was ill, It was definitely a contributor (to the split). I wanted independence and not to have to live up to the obligations sometimes bestowed on you.”
But the deepening of the rift between band members had really begun years prior in 2005 when Fanning pursued a solo career releasing his LP Tea and Sympathy. Although most other members had also made records it was the success of Fanning’s that cause jealousy and a sense of betrayal with the rest of Powderfinger.
When a label in the US offered to release Tea and Sympathy in the United States drummer Jon Coghill was particularly indignant angrily telling Fanning “Mate, if you want a f—ing solo career, then go and have it.”
“It was pretty uncomfortable for a while,” Fanning said. “It was made clear to me it was important I step back and don’t take a controlling role. That was difficult to deal with because everyone made a record except for Cogsy. Mine just did really well, but our motivations for making our own records were the same. We wanted to try other things.”
