When cryptic billboards began popping up last week hinting at a potential reunion tour from Powderfinger, 16 years after they broke up, the frenzy from fans was instant. To some, it wasn’t so surprising.
“For as much as they made that grandiose declaration all those years back that they’d never, ever play again, I could see this day coming,” says Dino Scatena, author of Powderfinger: Footprints: The inside story of Australia’s best-loved band.
“Let’s put a question mark next to Silverchair, but is there any band that hasn’t reunited at this stage? It’s sort of inevitable. And I imagine this tour is going to be as wonderful and euphoric as the last one.”
Following the viral campaign, Powderfinger – Bernard Fanning, Ian Haug, Darren Middleton, John Collins and Jon Coghill – confirmed the speculation on Friday, then, on Monday, announced a series of shows in Brisbane, Sydney, Cairns, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide.
Scatena, now based in Los Angeles, travelled with Powderfinger during their 2010 farewell tour. For an act on the verge of giving it all up, he’d noticed a renewed camaraderie around the band.
“There had been a lot of friction in the band much earlier, but by the time they came to actually breaking up they’d sort of got over those problems,” he says. “That last tour was all love.”
In the authorised book, Scatena described the tensions and jealousies that arose around frontman Bernard Fanning’s solo career following the success of his solo debut, 2005’s Tea & Sympathy. In interviews after the band’s breakup, Fanning had insinuated the final straw was when band members demanded he return to Australia to play a series of gigs just days after his wife, artist Andrea Moreno, had heart surgery in Spain.
They’d also reached a ceiling professionally and personally. “At that point in their careers, they’d achieved everything that Powderfinger was going to achieve,” says Scatena. “They were all in their 40s and most of them had just started young families, and the feeling was, ‘OK, let’s put that chapter to rest and look towards the next phase of our lives.’”
But any animosity had already evaporated by the time of their 2010 farewell tour. “They were very close, and it was almost an exaltation that they were wrapping it up so wonderfully. They played to something like 300,000 people, and each stop in every city was a joyous event. There was so much love for the band. It was a massive way to go out.”
It begs the question, when the band’s members have their own projects going – Fanning is now in Dempsey National Park with Something for Kate’s Paul Dempsey, and earlier this year completed a successful 20th anniversary tour of Tea & Sympathy, while guitarist Ian Haug is now a permanent member of The Church – why come back, and why now?
In an exclusive interview with The Big Issue (released on Tuesday and available from your local vendor) guitarist Darren Middleton said offers for national tours and grand final gigs began arriving within months of their breakup in 2010. He also said the band’s children – 13 in total – had been “pestering us for years” to reunite. “We’ve finally given in,” he said.
In the same interview, the band’s drummer Jon Coghill pointed to AC/DC’s tour last year as an instigator. “I’ve really started to understand the joy of rock’n’roll and what that can do for a big crowd,” he told The Big Issue.
He also suggested that time had healed any lingering wounds. “Seventeen years later, all those little things that annoy five brothers hanging out together aren’t annoying any more. We enjoy the friendship. We realise how important that friendship is to all of us.”
Scatena points to the influence of the band’s former manager of almost 20 years, Paul Piticco. Piticco is now director of touring and venue development at Live Nation Australasia, which is presenting and running the tour.
Speaking to The Age in 2010 ahead of the band’s farewell tour, Piticco suggested the band “could easily have continued for another 10 years. But there’s nothing worse than seeing bands on stage who don’t want to be there.”
Piticco was “literally like a member of the band,” says Scatena. “I can just imagine Paul chipping away at this idea for years, maybe letting a decade go past, and then being like ‘OK, boys, when are we gonna do it?’ He’s always been that driving force.”
Piticco was approached for comment but did not respond before deadline.
If the band had been reluctant to reform over the past 16 years, the frenzy around their reunion has highlighted the demand, from casual fans – presales for the tour next October and September started on Wednesday with buyers noting general admission tickets were priced around $200, an inflationary shock since their heyday – to state economies.
On Monday, Queensland Premier David Crisafulli took credit for securing the band’s tour opening in Brisbane, as well as the tour’s only regional shows in Cairns, “through a targeted and strategic bid”. The premier’s office did not respond to further queries around their involvement.
There are already wishful rumours that the band are set to perform at next year’s AFL Grand Final, due to a conspicuous gap in their touring schedule next October.
More generally, reunion tours are big business. Oasis’ Live ’25 Tour - which included 41 shows and around 320,000 fans across their five shows in Sydney and Melbourne last year - pulled in over $US405,000,000 with over two million tickets sold, according to trade publication Pollstar.
Individually, the tour earned the Gallagher brothers so much money – reportedly £50 million ($95 million) each – that Liam was able to buy his new £4 million ($7.6 million) Cotswold mansion in cash, The Sun exclaimed.
On a more local scale, Cold Chisel’s 50th anniversary tour in 2024 sold over 250,000 tickets across 27 dates in Australia and New Zealand, and was followed a year later by a live CD, vinyl and DVD release celebrating the shows.
It’d be enough to convince any popular band to get back in the rehearsal room. Considering Powderfinger will be performing in a “stadium-sized big top” that will set up in venues such as Brisbane’s Showgrounds, Melbourne’s Park Oval and Sydney’s The Domain, which boasts a capacity of 50,000, the expected income will be gargantuan. But Scatena isn’t so sure those endless zeroes were a motivating force for Powderfinger.
“Money? No. I imagine they’d all be pretty well-off already,” he says. “They were such a successful band. That last tour broke something like $30 million. I can’t imagine they’d be short for a dime. I think Paul Piticco probably went in there and just made a good case for why they should get out there for old times’ sake.”
It’s natural to be cynical when an old band returns like guitar-wielding zombies, but Powderfinger have long proven their integrity, says Liz Giuffre, a specialist in Australian popular music at the University of Technology, Sydney.
She points to the band’s past gigs supporting Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Reconciliation Australia, the Queensland flood disaster, and their one-off “virtual reunion” in May 2020 to raise funds for Beyond Blue and Support Act. She was also there at the Sydney Opera House Steps in 1996 when Powderfinger opened for Crowded House during their Farewell to the World concert, a charity event for Sydney Children’s Hospital.
“I’m not saying they’re doing it for free, but I don’t think it’s just a cash grab and nothing else,” says Giuffre. The band announced that the reunion shows are a partnership with Mission Australia, but have not yet outlined specifics of their arrangement with the homelessness charity.
For fans, it’s never too early to start pondering what lies beyond the reunion tour. In The Big Issue, which is sold by people experiencing homelessness and other economic challenges to earn an income, Coghill joked that the band’s members will “just go back to our personal lives and not talk for another 17 years”.
But Cold Chisel’s original reunion spawned a whole new phase of their career, including several new albums. Could we see the same with Powderfinger?
“I can’t see why not. They’re musicians, don’t musicians make records?” says Scatena. Musically, the band went out on a high with their last album, 2009’s Golden Rule after 2007’s pilloried Dream Days at the Hotel Existence, he adds.
“Once they’re back in the rehearsal room, which I imagine they’re doing as we speak, if they find the magic is still there or at least rekindled, then why not? I’m sure there’s an audience for their music.”
Live Nation presale tickets go on sale Friday October 16, general public tickets are on sale from Monday October 19.
