Do You Know Me?

John Schuman would seem a likely candidate for a reversed American Express advertisement. Everyone knows his face, but few know the name.

Schuman, 34-years-old, was the lead singer of Redgum, and even though he wrote many Australian hits – I Was Only 19, I’ve Been To Bali Too, Drover’s Dog among them – he says he has an identity problem.

He says since leaving Redgum he has had to re-establish an identity for himself, distinct from Redgum, and that’s been very difficult.

“I get into cabs and the driver will say; ‘Hey I know you. You’re Redgum’.

“Well, that was 18 months ago,” Schuman comments.

“And with Borrowed Ground [Schuman’s successful debut solo single], people were ringing up the radio stations asking to hear the new Redgum single.”

Why did Schuman leave the band he joined more than 10 years ago?

“We had a fair bit of success in Europe a couple of years ago and there was a movement afoot in the band to tour fairly incessantly here to fund tours overseas to work that market,” Schuman says.

“What that meant was that you had two hefty commitments which meant you had not time at home. And I’ve got a wife and two kids and it was more important for me to be home to chase my little boy around the lawn than to chase overseas success.

“Secondly there was a push from inside and outside the band to write more internationally flavoured songs and I think that was the wrong move.”

Aside being a songwriter, singer and performer, Schuman lectures at universities and colleges. Indeed, many of the songs Schuman has written are on the reading lists for uni’ and college courses in Australian literature.

Before Redgum, Schuman was a highschool teacher in English drama and outdoor eduction – not gym or PE, but bushwalking, camping, rock climbing and canoeing.

Being a teacher, is Schuman happy with the way our education system operates?

“Yes and no. Yes in the sense that I know that we have many thousands of dedicated and knowledgeable teachers who have the welfare of Australia’s children very much at heart, and no in the sense that I don’t think those teachers are given the time and resources to perform as effectively as they might.

“I don’t like the fact the corporate sector dictates the curriculum by virtue of business leaders going to the press and saying kids don’t know and they can’t read and they can’t write and they can’t add up. That’s bullshit. They can and all the research points to the fact that the kids are more literate and numerate and knowledgeable today when they leave School than they were 25-years-ago when they left school.

“Many people are hopelessly illiterate, OK, but I challenge you to go to any bureaucratic heads of department, any number of MPs, doctors, lawyers, upper-echelon business executives and ask them to write something literate and gramatical and I bet you find that the same percentage prevails.

“And the fact is they left school with false notions of the use of a semi-colon, raised to the dizzy heights of corporate success and sit behind their mahogany desks and try to dictate the curriculum when, as I said, they wouldn’t know the difference between a full stop and a hole in the ground.”

This excerpt originally appeared in Issue 63 of X-Press Magazine, published on Friday, October 13, 1987. Share your memories of this and other classic X-Press content by joining the Rewind Facebook group. Rewind: 40 Years of X-Press Magazine by Bob Gordon is on sale now in hardcover and softcover.