A brief disclaimer. The year was 1988 and When Will I Be Famous had just been released. Bros posters were on my bedroom wall. I played Push, their debut album, to death on my radio cassette player.
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Fast forward a few decades and Bros are back – minus Craig Logan, who is a successful record company executive who once managed Pink.
Twins Matt and Luke Goss will play one Australian show on November 4, 29 years to the day since they performed at Sydney Entertainment Centre at the height of Brosmania.
At the time Bros rewrote the pop history books. They played 19 shows at Wembley Arena and were the youngest band to ever headline Wembley Stadium. Push went platinum seven times over and topped the charts in 20 countries. And, Bros were one of the first bands to have a pay-per-view live televised show.
Matt began his solo career in 1995 and since then has sold more than 5 million albums and played a Las Vegas residency at Caesar’s Palace. His current single Gone Too Long is out now.
Luke is enjoying a successful acting career in both film (Hellboy 2, Blade 2, The Man, Deathrace 2 & 3) and TV (Red Widow and Emmy award-winning mini-series Frankenstein). His directorial debut Your Move will be released in October.
They want to make it clear that this nostalgia tour is all about the love, not the money.
“At the end of the day yes, it will be a beautiful nostalgic moment but the stage will be a contemporary experience for the fans,” Luke tells Weekender.
“That wonderful melee of nostalgia and contemporary is going to create memories that we will carry with us into the future. So anyone who wants to put a spin on it, they can do it but I won’t be listening.”
Matt agrees.
“The reality is we have both done really well in our lives and we’ve managed to establish ourselves as individuals and men and businessmen and artists. Trust me, there was a time when we lost everything but we came back and turned it all around.
“I can honestly say that our first thought when those lights go down at Qudos Arena will be that we hope every single person there has goosebumps. That’s the motivating force for us. We are perfectionists. Money has nothing to do with this, we both have good lives.”
The brothers didn’t have much choice but to include an Australian date on their comeback tour. The fans demanded it – and loudly.
“It was incredible to watch the momentum that the Australian fans built. And as you quite rightly said, it was impossible to ignore,” Matt explains.
“There’s a lot of moving parts to get a band like Bros to Australia and we did it solely because of the energy that the fans created. We have massive love for Australia and the memories we have made there.”
Luke promised that the Sydney show would by no means be a “budget, scaled-down version of what London is getting”.
“At the end of the day, as artists, Matt and I have to make a decision about the production. We want to be proud of our show and we will take less profit to do so because the fans deserve it. Everyone on stage with us at our London shows will be coming with us to Sydney.”
As for the prospect of recording new material, Luke says it’s a case of watch this space.
“This is new for us, we haven’t done it in a long time. It’s going to evolve day by day.”
Media attention though, Matt says, has been a constant in their lives.
“I think we’re strangely used to it. But we don’t feel entitled, we are normal people and we live in a place of gratitude,” he explains.
“Bringing this band back to life, well, it’s not just a button you push and it happens. There are a lot of people involved. We want to make sure that the live shows, which we can control, come into fruition in a beautiful way and then we shall see what happens.”
