Before Hollywood

Before Hollywood is 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 license both the album and the new single for UK release, then also invited the Go Betweens to London to record a follow up album. As they rehearsed for the upcoming album, the band discussed with Travis possible options for its recording: the band was unenthusiastic about Travis's proposal that they work in New York with Chris Stamey of power pop outfit The dB's, instead suggesting they book a studio in Tennessee with Jim Dickinson, who had earlier worked with The Byrds and played keyboards with Ry Cooder. The decision in the end was to go with John Brand, an engineer who had worked with XTC and Magazine and was making the transition from engineer to record producer. Forster rated the songs on the album as the best set he and McLennan had ever written, most flowing "in a gold rush over a warm English summer". He said his songs were mostly built out of "By Chance" (which Brand re recorded for the album) and that his improved guitar riffs were the foundations for "Before Hollywood" and "On My Block." He said "As Long As That" was written as an ode to his then partner, drummer Lindy Morrison. Forster described McLennan's five songs as "enormous an exciting set of pop songs built on his greatest strength—melody, which he could spin by the yard". Among McLennan's contributions were "Dusty In Here," directed to the ghost of his father, a doctor, who had died when McLennan was aged six, and "Cattle and Cane", a part autobiographical song inspired by his childhood in far north Queensland. Forster wrote of "Cattle and Cane": "It proved difficult to put chords to, so I doubled his part; then Lindy arrived with her drumsticks and announced that the song was in some incredible time count 13/8 or something, which theoretically only Charlie Parker could play, and to her credit she didn't try to straighten it, only preserved its oddness, in turn making one of the most distinctive beats in rock." Another McLennan composition, "That Way," was written about his musician friend Peter Walsh, a former member of The Apartments, who had left Brisbane to move to New York.