Aussie rockers Icehouse to drop live record as debut album turns 40

Icehouse is releasing Icehouse Plays Flowers, a live album recreating their debut from when they were still known as Flowers.

Out on Friday, October 30 (with a two-disc vinyl version set for November), the live album coincides with the 40th anniversary of Icehouse, which was released Down Under in 1980.

The album was recorded at their Icehouse Plays Flowers set at the St. Kilda Festival in Melbourne in February 2020.

The show was the idea of the festival’s promoters as a way to celebrate both 40th anniversaries together, with the band recreating the album onstage.

Leader Iva Davies brought out his Gibson Black Beauty Les Paul guitar, which he used in those days, and the band got stuck into rehearsing many songs they had not played for four decades.

Davies recalls of the show: “All of us, the band and the incredibly dedicated crew who have been working with us these last ten years, put an intense amount of work into preparing for this one very special show.

“I knew it would be a tough set to keep up with. But what I wasn’t prepared for was the explosion of energy that possessed the band that night.

“These were, after all, songs played by a band that had its roots in the hard and fast punk movement of the late ’70s. And we were only in our early 20’s, so we had plenty of energy.

“Listening back to the evening, and the succession of breakneck high-energy songs, I’m amazed at what happened that night on St. Kilda beach.

“I will always value the opportunity of revisiting that special time, and those early songs.”

Icehouse was an instant hit, going gold within weeks, and eventually reaching 300,000 copies.

It peaked at #4 and stayed in the charts for 45 weeks. It was the highest-selling debut album by any band in Australia for 10 years.

It also went quadruple Platinum in New Zealand and reached #68 in the US where singles ‘Can’t Help Myself’, ‘We Can Get Together’, ‘Walls’ and ‘Icehouse’ also had success.

Getting signed worldwide to UK label Chrysalis in 1981 forced a band name change as it was already registered by Scotland’s The Flowers.

The Australian sales success of Flowers should not have come as a surprise – even if Davies had a bet with Regular co-owner Martin Fabinyi that it wouldn’t make it into the charts.

When Davies and bassist Keith Welsh (later to co-found The Music Network) formed Flowers in 1977, their repertoire of glam, punk and new wave covers drew huge crowds.

Some of these, like David Bowie’s ‘The Jean Genie’, Marc Bolan’s ‘Get t On’ and The Sex Pistols’ ‘Pretty Vacant’ are included on Icehouse Plays Flowers.

The real success of Icehouse was that it was the first attempt at songwriting by Davies.

As an oboe player in orchestras, his background was not about original material but performing the works of the old classical masters.

The song ‘Icehouse’ was inspired by two houses on Tyron Road in Sydney. One was the unheated old two-storey share house he lived in for a time, at #18.

The other was an intriguingly creepy place opposite which had lights on all night and people shuffling in and out at odd hours.

It was after he wrote the song that he discovered it was a halfway house for psychiatric and drug rehab patients.

Through the years, Davies’ songwriting helped Icehouse music sell three million units in Australia and nine million worldwide.