The Collapse Board Interview: Gareth Liddiard
Gareth Liddiard is an Australian singer, guitarist and songwriter best known as the founder and frontman of the Drones. The Drones were formed in Perth in 1997 before relocating to Melbourne in 2000. Over the course of six studio albums, the band became one of the most critically acclaimed and revered Australian bands, winning the inaugural Australian Music Prize in 2005 for their second album, Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By, with the opening track, ‘Shark Fin Blues’ voted by contemporary Australian songwriters as the greatest Australian song of all time in October 2009.
After the Drones went on hiatus in 2016, Liddiard formed Tropical Fuck Storm with fellow Drones member Fiona Kitschin, releasing four albums between 2018 and 2025, and performed with the trio Springtime alongside Jim White (Dirty Three) and Chris Abrahams (The Neck, with the band releasing their eponymous album in 2021.
After a ten year sabbatical, the Drones have reformed for a one-off tour of Australia in 2026. We spoke to Gareth Liddiard about the band and its reformation, being a modern-day guitar hero, and the genius of Van Halen.
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The Drones played a couple of shows last year in Melbourne at the Croxton, was that the catalyst for this year’s tour?
Yeah, pretty much. It was a benefit for a friend who’s sick, so that’s why we did it, but then it was just fun, so we thought, “Yeah, let’s do it proper, do a tour.”
You did a Reddit AMA a while ago, and someone asked about the Drones, and I think you said you hadn’t broken up and no one breaks up anymore. Was that what you were feeling at the time or was that a diplomatic response?
No, that’s true. No one does break up, and even if they do break up, they always get back together. It was just getting to a point because members of the band were getting mortgages and having kids, and it was just getting harder to do. It was getting harder to plan and then execute big overseas tours, which is kind of what it’s all about, really. So yeah, it was just getting fucking impossible to organize anything. We’re all good mates, so it’s just like you could sort of see what’s coming next, which would have been tension. So me and Fi said it’s just hard running this, this weird small business, so let’s just give it a fucking rest. That was eight years ago, 10 years ago. But we just hang out all the time anyway, so it’s been rehearsing. The only difference with rehearsals now is that we’ve got our instruments. Usually we’re just all holding a beer these days at a pub,
The last Drones album, Feelin’ Kinda Free gave a lot of pointers to what you’ve done with Tropical Fuck Storm, there was no desire or consideration about just keeping the Drone’s name and bringing new people in?
We could have done that. It would have been a bit kind of weird, but I wouldn’t like to do that. But at the same time, keeping the Drones name means you keep having to be the Drones, so getting a new name was liberating in that way. It was just good to have a clean slate and just do something completely different, like have a band that’s mostly girls rather than mostly boys was one, you know, try that out for once.
You mentioned about it being a small business, how much of a risk was it to start afresh with a new name, a new band? Did you worry about it?
Yeah, you do worry. I mean this is how we make a living. But you do have to roll the dice every now and again. Even something like Feelin’ Kinda Free, that was a roll of the dice, chucking the whole classic guitar rock thing out the window and trying something new. We’ve always been happy to take risks and we’ve always wanted to make a living out of playing music, because who wouldn’t, if you’re a musician, but it’s not like we ever compromise the music, it’s always been pretty crazy, and that in itself is risky. It was a little bit of a worry, but we just thought, “Fuck it, you only live once.”
You talked about the risk of Feelin’ Kinda Free. Did the response to that give you confidence that Tropical Fuck Storm and what you wanted to do there musically would work and people would be interested in it?
Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if it’s the same for everybody’s audience, but our audience always seems to be pretty open minded. It was a great response to that record and people were ready for something as well. It’s funny because if we’re kind of getting a bit bored of something, and it’s not like we’re this sort of amazing, singular, unique bunch of people, we’re just like anyone else. So it turns out when we get bored of a certain sound or something we’ve been doing, you bet that most of the audience is feeling the same way. So, yeah, it works. It’s good.
Is it just the timing and availability of everyone that’s pulled you back into the Drones? You’ve just spent the last decade building up Tropical Fuck Storm and now you’re being pulled back to the Drones?
Yeah. I mean, you just got to roll with it. There is timing, but you just have to use your intuition, I guess, and certain situations, they just present themselves. Like there was the benefit last year with the Drones and then we thought, “Well, that was fun. Let’s do it again.” It does take about a year to plan a tour, so that’s why there’s been a year in between. But, it just happened just naturally. You just got to roll with it. I think if you try and plan things, if you have a master plan, nothing ever goes to plan anyway, so just feel it out. It was like with the TFS thing, that was probably just the right time to do that. It was definitely the right time with regards to stuff like playing in the States. Americans had finally accepted that there’s a thing called Australia and it has Australian bands outside of AC/DC. They’d finally become curious about that.
So when TFS started, we sort of rode that wave, with King Gizz, Porn Crumpets, Courtney Barnett, Tame Impala and all that shit, like Amyl and the Sniffers. Suddenly there was a lot of acceptance for Australian bands, where in the past there wasn’t so much. There was a bit of hostility, especially in places like the UK. For decades it was really fucking hard to play in the UK. Like a good thing to do was shut the fuck up between songs because if the audience hears you’ve got an Australian accent, they walk out the fucking door, and that’s an old thing from the Birthday Party days, like just shut up, all the way up to us. But now you’re allowed to be Australian in the UK. And then to a lesser degree, but it still happened, the American people were the same. So it’s just timing, you just roll with it.
Has there been anything you’ve particularly missed about not being in the Drones for the last decade?
Anything I miss about not being in the Drones? Yeah. Not having to sing everything. It’s fun having a band where I’m not the only singer. I never wanted to be a singer. I wanted to be a guitar player but I couldn’t find anyone to sing, so I had to do it myself and just wound up doing it. With the Drones, I got to do everything, and it’s fine, but it’s more fun for me to have Erica and Fiona singing, so I can just be a guitar player, because it’s really easy. I hear guitar players whinge about touring, and I’m just like, “Shut the fuck up.” The hard shit is singing and drumming, they’re the people that walk off stage in a puddle of sweat just wanting to fucking die after a gig.
I’ve seen you play a lot over the years – the Drones, TFS, Springtime and also solo shows. I always get the impression being in TFS is more fun than being in the Drones. Was there a weight of expectation when it came to the Drones and the music you made?
Yeah, to a degree. We were younger and you’re a bit more serious when you’re young, even though everybody in the Drones is hilarious. We have a fun time, backstage is just silliness. But part of that Drones thing was the young thing, you do take it way more seriously, and you feel like you have to, to make it work. The older you get, you realise you don’t, it’s fine. As long as you’ve done the hard yards as far as songwriting goes, and a bit of practice, it’ll work, you don’t have to take it fully seriously. And with the girls, they’re just, I don’t know, they’re just fun anyway, and they bring it on stage, whereas with the Drones, historically, we have fun, but when you went on stage, it got a bit serious. It’s different in that way. There’s all sorts of things about it that make it different, but, yeah, TFS is a lot of fun. They’re very, very funny, funny people.
It’s been 10 years since you last played with the Drones but there’s been massive interest in this tour, why do you think the music of the Drones still endures?
Just songwriting, really. It’s just good songwriting. I think you can do anything, any kind of music, as long as it’s got some sort of song, it doesn’t necessarily have to have singing. You could have something like Dave Brubeck, the ‘Take Five‘ thing. You know, that’s a song. It’s got a catchy, horrible tune and if you’ve got songs then it’ll last. That’s why something like Albert Ayler isn’t as famous as John Lennon. Because Albert Ayler, as great as he was at his crazy jazz shit, he didn’t have any songs. I think people forget that. They put the cart before the horse and they think, “Well, we’ve got to have the look and we’ve got to have the sound and we’ve got to have the attitude or this, that.” It’s like, “No, get some fucking catchy songs.” And catchy in any way. Slayer has catchy songs because they’re so fucking evil. It’s not like it’s the Beach Boys where it’s an earworm, but it’s, say, ‘Angel of Death’ is so ridiculous, it’s so over the top that it’s memorable because of that. It’s fucking so absolutely outrageous.
The Drones has that kind of songwriting. The Drones, in the 2000s, it was really hard. There weren’t any kind of really nasty sounding bands, and we were a real outlier. We were outsiders. We were just this sort of self-contained little war machine that we didn’t have any friends. We didn’t make friends with bands. Over the years, we slowly did, but it’s interesting that people we actually made friends with people were from, you know, Black Flag and Jesus Lizard and Shellac. They’re all just outsiders too. They’re the only people we ever socialised with, it’s not like we ever became friends with our peers or people our age, because everyone thought we were fucked in the head. I think that these days people are a bit more open to crazy shit. Everyone’s feeling crazy, so they like really angsty, fucked up music, or they’re willing to accept it a bit more.
I think this tour started with six dates and now it’s about 18 or something. Has the response surprised you?
Yeah. I mean, we don’t take it for granted, you don’t expect that. I’m always surprised that anyone likes us. I don’t assume anyone likes us. I can see what it is, whether it’s TFS or The Drones, it’s pretty crazy. It’s not Ed Sheeran, you know, so I’m not expecting that kind of mass acceptance. So when we do something like this Drones tour, yeah, I was really fucking surprised, but happy too because it’s fun. It’s like in Australia, it’s hard to do long tours and long tours are good, as tiring as they are. You get really good as a band and I like that. I like being able to walk up on stage knowing we’re about to kick some ass. So that was fun too. So it’s great in every way. I’m really happy.
You mentioned just before about wanting to be a guitar player before, but, at least according to Wikipedia, which might not be true, you started out playing the saxophone. What got you into wanting to play the saxophone?
I liked jazz. You’d hear Top 40 and you’d hear a lot of good stuff. You’d hear New Order and Blondie and Madonna and, you know, just some good Top 40 stuff. Dire Straits was pretty good. I think you’re allowed to admit that now. So I always liked guitar stuff, pop, whatever. But the main reason was that there was a library near us growing up. We lived in Perth City. I grew up on the beach but then we moved into the inner city with my mum for a while, and there was the main library and they had this section where you could go and borrow cassette tapes, and it was all just jazz. Whoever stocked it was a jazz nut, and it was really good. It was Herbie Hancock kind of shit, but it’d be live albums, and Ornette Coleman and Thelonious Monk, but it was like all the deeper cuts, all the live stuff, which I like.
And there was no other way to get music, because I didn’t have the money to buy it. So I did that and then really liked jazz. I liked Sonny Rollins and all that stuff. So I ended up getting a sax, but then it was just really hard. It’s not like it’s a hard instrument. I think guitar is probably harder than a saxophone and saxophone players will have a sook when they hear that, but it is because it’s polyphonic. Your sax is monophonic. The problem with saxophone is that the whole competition is stiffer. You hear Charlie Parker and Coltrane just when you’re starting out on sax, you just go, “Fucking hell, how am I going to do that?” And then eventually I heard Hendrix, and what I heard was the early Hendrix, which was loose and crazy, even though it’s fully virtuosic, it’s still sloppy and out of control, and I kind of thought, “Ooh, I probably have a better chance of being able to do that than do fucking, you know, this Charlie Parker stuff.” So then I sold the sax and did that. It was good, I’m happy I did.
I assume you did formal learning with the sax?
Yeah, and it was kind of confusing for me because it’s very technical. It’s all scales and blah, blah. It’s quite mathematical, so it was kind of challenging. My brain wasn’t ready for that because I was like 13 or 14. I wasn’t ready for the concepts and, you know, learning modes. It’s like doing algebra for someone that young, or for me at least. Whereas with guitar, you don’t really need to know that much technical shit. In the end, you do, you end up learning it, but just to get started, you don’t really, you just need to learn, you know, ‘Foxy Lady’ and learn a couple of Nirvana songs and some Black Flag, and you’re off and racing.
Going back to that Reddit AMA, it was funny how there were a load of guitar nerds asking you about your pickups, your pedals, how you record stuff, tunings, all that stuff. And I kind of thought about it and then I realised that you’re probably a modern day guitar hero. And how does that feel?
I’m not Slash, but yeah, I mean, it’s in a very small way. But you know, someone like Roland Howard, he was definitely a touchstone for more underground sort of guitarists, but he was a guitar hero, I guess. I don’t know, it’s hard for me to gauge how popular I am, but I’m a guitar nerd. I love Jimmy Page and I love Jimi Hendrix. I love guitar solos. I like Mahavishnu Orchestra, that kind of prog stuff. I love John McLaughlin. I love the flamenco stuff and classical stuff, I just really nerd out. I like learning about scales and stuff. I like pickups and I like the electronics. It’s fun. I like modifying guitars and then sort of bastardising, trying to do it the wrong way. I like Slash, I like Guns n’ Roses, I like all that shit. I like Joe Satriani, I like Eddie Van Halen.
Talking of Eddie Van Halen, someone on that Reddit AMA asked you about the cover versions that TFS had done, and Fi said she wanted to cover ‘Why Can’t This Be Love‘ by Van Halen…
Oh yeah, it’s great.
…Did that ever happen?
No, no, we never got around to that. I forgot she said that. Yeah, the Sammy Hagar era, there’s some hits, they were good.
Oh, there is. I’m always saying 5150 belongs in with all the David Lee Roth albums that come before it and then it gets a bit patchy after that.
There’s two camps with Van Halen and they seem to hate each other. But I mean, that shit just blows my mind. It’s so clever. I can totally see how people wouldn’t like it, but he just made up this incredibly unique way of doing it, and he’s like, mind bogglingly. The older I get as well, the more I realise just how virtuosic he was. And it’s still pretty raw. It’s dirty and rough and ready. It’s really fucking raunchy. The people who don’t like it, they don’t get that it’s not meant to be taken seriously, it’s for fun. It’s like just big, big circus music, it’s meant for stadiums. It’s not the first Bob Dylan, you know what I mean? It’s not meant to be incredibly serious.
I always think with him, the people that don’t like it always see that as widddly, widely hair metal guitar solo music, but there’s so much more to it. His rhythm playing is so good too.
Yeah, amazing. And Alex Van Halen, his brother is just the most amazing drummer, like really awesome drummer. They’re great, man, I love it. And David Lee Roth is so stupid. It’s so silly. It’s great. You know, it’s how could you take that seriously and then dismiss it? It’s like, you just missed the joke. The joke went over your head if you do that. So, yeah, I’ve always just been a real guitar nerd. I mean, that’s not unusual, a lot of people are.
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The Drones 2026 Tour Dates
With Guests The Mess Hall
Tix on sale now
Saturday, 8 Aug Darwin Festival Darwin NT
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Friday, 14 Aug SOLD OUT Thornbury Theatre Thornbury VIC
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Saturday, 15 Aug SOLD OUT Thornbury Theatre Thornbury VIC
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Friday, 21 Aug SOLD OUT Thornbury Theatre Thornbury VIC
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Saturday, 22 Aug Thornbury Theatre Thornbury VIC
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Wednesday, 26 Aug Crowbar Brisbane QLD
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Thursday, 27 Aug SOLD OUT Crowbar Brisbane QLD
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Friday, 28 Aug SOLD OUT Crowbar Brisbane QLD
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Saturday, 29 Aug SOLD OUT Factory Theatre Marrickville NSW
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Sunday, 30 Aug SOLD OUT Factory Theatre Marrickville NSW
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Friday, 4 Sept SOLD OUT The Gov Adelaide SA
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Saturday, 5 Sept SOLD OUT Rechabite Perth WA
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Sunday, 6 Sept Rechabite Perth WA
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Friday, 11 Sept SOLD OUT Theatre Royal Castlemaine VIC
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Saturday, 12 Sept SOLD OUT Archie’s Creek Hotel Archies Creek VIC
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Friday, 18 Sept SOLD OUT Hamilton Station Newcastle NSW
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Saturday, 19 Sept Factory Theatre Marrickville NSW
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Friday, 25 Sept SOLD OUT Altar Hobart TAS
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Saturday, 26 Sept Altar Hobart TAS
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Oct 3& 4 Yours & Owls Festival Wollongong NSW
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