Before Hollywood
| Before Hollywood | ||||
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| Studio album by The Go-Betweens | ||||
| Released | May 1983 | |||
| Recorded | ICC Studios, Eastbourne, England, October 1982 | |||
| Genre | Rock, alternative rock, indie rock | |||
| Length | 39:00 | |||
| Label | Rough Trade Records | |||
| Producer | John Brand | |||
| The Go-Betweens chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Before Hollywood | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   |
| Robert Christgau | B+ |
Before Hollywood was 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 one of the 30 all-time best Australian songs in an Australasian Performing Right Association poll of 100 music industry personalities.
The album, recorded in the UK, was the first to have a 50-50 split of songs written by Robert Forster and Grant McLennan. In a 1996 radio interview McLennan nominated Before Hollywood as one of his two definitive Go-Betweens albums, describing it as a "nice combination of our skewered and classic songwriting, but with a heavy underground feeling".
An expanded version was released in 2002 featuring a second disc of eight bonus tracks and a music video for "Cattle and Cane."
Songwriting for the album began with Robert Forster's "By Chance," which was written in Melbourne in December 1981, a month after the Australian release of the band's debut album, Send Me a Lullaby. Forster admitted he had disliked much of what he had written in 1980 and 1981 and had been in "a hole". But "By Chance" marked the turnaround. "I was away again, my songwriting driven by the simple logic that if I could write one strong song, I could write another." The song was used as the B-side to the Grant McLennan composition, "Hammer the Hammer," which was released as a single in March 1982.Missing Link label boss Keith Glass, who had funded the recording and distribution of Send Me a Lullaby, told the band he could not finance a second LP, but began shopping the debut album overseas. Geoff Travis, owner of Rough Trade Records in London, agreed to licence both the album and the new single for UK release, then also invited the Go-Betweens to London to record a follow-up album.
By the time the band arrived in London in May 1982 they had a new song, McLennan's "A Bad Debt Follows You," which was followed soon after by Forster's "On My Block." In letters back to friends in Brisbane, Forster wrote that they had "a wealth of songs" for the as-yet unnamed album. Apparently fascinated by a recently aired documentary TV series on the history of Hollywood, he wrote of his sadness over the death of actor Grace Kelly and his concern that "so much of Hollywood is dying".
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