The Go-Betweens' Robert Forster on How Writing Took Him Forward

The Go-Betweens' Robert Forster has spoken of how a move into journalism has helped him come to terms with the death of his late songwriting partner, Grant McLennan. McLennan passed away at the age of 48 in 2006, after suffering a heart attack.

The singer-songwriter was speaking after his first collection of rock reviews and features for Australian magazine, the Monthly, had been published. Entitled 'The Ten Rules of Rock 'N" Roll,' Forster casts a wry eye over the world of contemporary music with such acute observations as "Never follow an artist who describes his or her work as dark," and, "The band with the most tattoos has the worst songs."

"The editor asked me if I wanted to write something about Grant, which meant, for the two months after he died, I was actually just sitting on the veranda, with a duty to write this piece -- which was so therapeutic. It helped me a great deal," Forster told The Guardian.

The move has seen Forster recognised as an honoured scribe. Within a year of taking up his new-found career, Forster was awarded Australia's highly prized Pascall award for critical writing.

The belated recognition of Forster and that of his former band -- the Go-Betweens had a bridge named after them in Brisbane, Australia -- comes after a career of relative obscurity. Despite releasing a host of critically acclaimed and highly influential albums in the 1980s and three post-reunion albums in the last decade, the Go-Betweens failed to take their music to the wider audience that it so richly deserved. Maybe now is the time for a new appraisal...