'It's us finding our identity': Hoodoo Gurus rock back to the Stoneage

So, luckily for his legendary rock band, The Hoodoo Gurus' debut album Stoneage Romeos wasn't embarrassingly brief or awkward, but rather a seminal statement with staying power.

Stoneage Romeos is often included on lists of the best ever Australian albums and the likes of You Am I, Frenzal Rhomb and Spiderbait have cited the record as a major influence.

Faulkner has been reflecting on the 11-track debut as the ARIA Hall of Famers prepare to celebrate Stoneage Romeos' 40^th anniversary with an national tour starting in November where they will perform the 1984 album in its entirety.

"We did it pretty well the first time," Faulkner tells Weekender of recording their debut album. "We took to it like a duck to water.

"It had a certain crazy character, that album, of being a summation of the years that led to the formation of the band and the coalescing of our identity. It's all captured in those songs. It's us finding our identity."

Stoneage Romeos featured some of The Hoodoo Gurus' most enduring songs like I Want You Back, Leilani, Tojo and My Girl. The latter was written five years prior while Faulkner was still living in his native Perth with the band The Manikins.

For Faulkner the album captured the spirit of the time. Many of the songs were written with founding members Roddy Radalj and Kimble Rendall "sitting around with a flagon on wine in the lounge room playing records and guitars".

Both Radalj and Rendall would leave the band before Stoneage Romeos was recorded. Radalj would go on to enjoy success with The Dubrovniks and as Roddy Ray'Da and Rendall would become an acclaimed music video director and worked on The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions films.

"None of it was done with a sense of this is our destiny or for posterity," Faulkner says.

"It was literally having some fun, expressing ourselves and capturing the feeling of music we enjoyed in other artists and translating it for ourselves."

When Stoneage Romeos was released in March 1984 it couldn't have sounded less trendy. At the time the Australian music scene was dominated by synth-heavy new wave bands like Icehouse and Pseudo Echo. The Hoodoo Gurus' '50s and '60s rock-revival sound stood in stark contrast.

"We thought it was the only album we were gonna make at that stage," Faulkner says. "We didn't know we'd have a future.

"Even the chance of getting a record deal was considered far-fetched for us by most people.

"When we signed up the record industry was sniggering, they thought 'Who is gonna invest money in these guys? They're not making the right kind of music'.

"We were playing guitars for a start, who does that? Everyone was playing synthesisers and drum machines.

"We weren't the next most likely and we didn't even care. We were having fun and making music for ourselves and that's why it sounds so joyful and still has flavour."

However, Stoneage Romeos proven a commercial success, reaching No.8 on the ARIA album charts and becoming a college radio hit in the US.

It also paved the way for greater mainstream success on subsequent top-five albums Mars Needs Guitars! (1985) and Blow Your Cool! (1987).

The latter featured the band's No.3 single What's My Scene, which would be famously re-appropriated in the 2000s as What's My Team for an NRL commercial.

The Hoodoo Gurus' track The Right Time was also used in the '90s and 2000s as the Newcastle Knights' theme song.

Faulkner says The Hoodoo Gurus' relationship with Newcastle runs deep. One of the band's earliest shows in 1981 was at the Cambridge Hotel, supporting Rendall's former punk band, XL Capris.

One of the final shows on the promotional run for Stoneage Romeos in January 1985 was also at Newcastle's Civic Theatre supporting New York rock icon Lou Reed.

"He [Reed] had a song called My Red Joystick which was pretty terrible," Faulkner remembers. "He was obsessed with his Atari, and he thought it was being very up-to-date and modern by writing a song about that.

"He was typical Lou, standoffish for most of the tour. Eventually at Newcastle he ordained to have a meeting with us and a chat after we played our final show with him."