Encore: Colin Hay's wild ride to fame with Men at Work, and the heartbreak in the aftermath

March 12, 2026·45 min·3 clips

Colin Hay says the Kookaburra copyright lawsuit cost Greg Ham his life.

An ABC podcast frame opens the door. The host introduces Colin Hay as the frontman of Men At Work, a band once so unavoidable on radio that some US stations planned days without playing them. Then Hay plays Overkill, and the mood drops into something quieter before the talk goes back to the rush of a huge pop moment. Men At Work had already found people before the record business caught up. Hay remembers Melbourne crowds getting bigger even before the band had a record deal. That gave them nerve. They thought they sounded different, and the rooms they were playing gave them reason to believe it. Then a producer came in. Hay says the band did not know the studio, while the producer did, and that changed the songs and the players. Even so, nobody had much control over what happened next. Hay talks about 15 years of dreaming, plotting, and scheming before the first album began moving in ways the band could not neatly manage. He pictures it as small fires catching in different places, with America coming later. At first, it felt handleable. Looking back, he says they were mostly coping and trying to do the best job they could. The sharper part is his own confidence. He says he thought he knew everything, then found out he knew nothing. The host lets that sit and asks what he thought he knew. After three albums, the band broke up, the attention dropped away, and Hay had to build another life in music. The conversation ends in the present, with the 2018 interview tied to a US tour and concerts in Sydney, Melbourne and Wollongong.

As heard by us

Colin Hay on fifteen years of work, three albums at the peak, and what the long reckoning cost him.

Colin Hay, frontman for Men at Work, had one of rock's odder careers -- Melbourne crowds of a thousand before the band had a record, then so pervasive that some American stations were scheduling Men at Work-free days.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You remember Men at Work. Here is their frontman on what that level of fame actually feels like.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Conversations (ABC)