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 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 recent phone interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution from his home in Los Angeles. “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.”
