Belinda "Lindy" Morrison (born 2 November 1951) is an Australian musician, activist and social worker originally from Brisbane, Queensland. After starting her career working for a new Queensland branch of the Aboriginal Legal Service in 1972, and starting to play drums at about the same time, she became the drummer for female-led punk band Zero in 1978 and then joined Robert Forster and Grant McLennan to become the third member of the Go-Betweens in 1980.
She recorded and toured with the band until their first breakup in 1989, drumming on all of their first six albums while also working on a number of side projects, including Tuff Monks (with Nick Cave and Mick Harvey), and with Nikki Sudden.
After the Go-Betweens, Morrison continued to work as a drummer but also started to take positions within the music industry, including as an artist representative on the board of the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia, a role she held for nearly three decades. Her careers in music and social work converged in 1998 when she joined Support Act, a benevolent association for Australian musicians, as their National Welfare Coordinator. Morrison has also worked as a lecturer at Sydney Institute of TAFE, and has been involved with various community music projects, including as musical director for the Junction House Band (for musicians with a mild intellectual disability) and with Bondi Wave (for high school children).
In 2003 and 2004 she tried to enter politics with the Australian Democrats, unsuccessfully standing for seats in the eastern suburbs of Sydney in state and federal elections.
Morrison completed a master's degree in legal studies at the University of New South Wales in 2010 and has subsequently expanded her writing (much of which has been on her and other women's experiences in the music industry) to include subjects related to copyright law. In 2013, she was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for services as a performer and advocate. In 2014 she received the Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Services to Australian Music.
Having turned 70 in 2021, Morrison continues to work as a drummer, and recently said: "I certainly will never retire from playing music, that goes without saying. I keep getting interesting gigs with all sorts of different people."
Morrison's most notable recent collaborations have been with Alex the Astronaut, more than 40 years Morrison's junior, and Rob Snarski, best known for his work with the Blackeyed Susans. After touring for 18 months, in May 2023, Morrison and Snarski released a mini album called Someone said that Someone Said as SnarskiCircusLindyBand. The band also consists of Shane O'Mara, Dan Kelly and Graham Lee.
Musicianship and performance style Writing about her in the NME in 1983, Barney Hoskyns said "Lindy Morrison's drumming remains great in the way that Levon Helm or Charlie Watts are great; precise, quirky, inventive."
Morrison is the subject of the book My Rock 'N' Roll Friend, written by the singer Tracey Thorn of Everything But The Girl and published in 2021. The two first met in 1983 at the Lyceum in London, at a time when female instrumentalists were rare; Thorn's book details the inspiration she took from Morrison, and attempts to redress her perception that Morrison hasn't received the acclaim she deserved for her work with the Go-Betweens.
Thorn's writing also captures something about the rhythmic eccentricities of the Go-Betweens: "Robert and Grant often unwittingly write songs in weird time signatures, and when they bring these songs to Lindy, she decides to try to reflect or capture honestly the oddities of their structures. She thinks the boys don't really know how to count their bars, and they have no real sense of timing or rhythm, so it's left to Lindy to literally drum it into them. She is determined not to 'play through' the quirky patterns, and not to straighten them out. She thinks that would be too nice, too boring."
Thorn describes Morrison as a transgressive performer, indiscreet and immodest with her legs wide apart, adding: "When she starts hitting the drums, all at once she's making more noise than anyone else in the room. It's not ladylike, this noise she's making. And she's in charge, whatever the guitarist or the lead singer may think."
As the title of his 2016 memoir ("Grant & I: Inside And Outside The Go-Betweens") suggests, Robert Forster's writing about the band mostly focuses on the relationship between him and McLennan, but it also indicates that he understands Morrison's importance to the band:
"Her drum kit sounded fantastic and she rode every queer-timed riff and rolled on every chorus we put to her. Before Hollywood [the second Go-Betweens album] is a master class in creative rock drumming; hers is the distinguishing instrument."
Speaking about Cattle And Cane, the lead single for Before Hollywood, McLennan said of Morrison's drum part: "It had a great rhythm which I don't think any drummer in the world could've played except her. That rhythm never ceases to amaze me."
Life
Early life and education Though born in Sydney, Morrison "grew up in Queensland, the daughter of an eccentric doctor father and a conservative stay-at-home mother". Her great uncle is the renowned writer Ion Idriess who is the brother of her paternal grandmother.
She attended Somerville House, an independent school for girls in South Brisbane, and then the University of Queensland, where she completed a Bachelor of Social Work in 1972. Her final-year tutor, responsible for arranging placements for social work students, was Roisin Hirschfeld, a member of the steering committee of the Aboriginal Legal Service (ALS)."Goss a political biography" by Jamie Walker, Uni of QLD press 1995 p. 32
Initial career in social work The Aboriginal Legal Service (subsequently known as ATSILS, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service) began operating out of the Uniting Church hall on Leichhardt Street, Spring Hill, in the winter of 1972,"Goss a political biography" by Jamie Walker, Uni of QLD press 1995 p. 36 and Hirschfeld approached Morrison about joining the service late in 1972."Goss a political biography" by Jamie Walker, Uni of QLD press 1995 p. 35"Goss a political biography" by Jamie Walker, Uni of QLD press 1995 p. 37 Morrison became the organisation's first social worker and second full-time employee.
In her role as Aboriginal Field Officer for the ALS, she worked alongside the radical Aboriginal activist Denis Walker. Walker had founded a local chapter of the Australian Black Panthers and "refused to accept the legitimacy of 'White man's Law". The job of field officer involved her going out late at night on "pig-patrol" which she described as: "... trying to stop the Police from picking up Aboriginal people coming out of the hotels, because they'd take them in a put them in gaol for drunkenness and the next morning I'd have to go to court, ask for bail, take them across to the legal service and the lawyers would then have to work towards stopping them being locked up or fined. So pig-patrol was the first way to stop them doing that so we'd go out on a pig-patrol every night at 10 o'clock."In an interview recorded for the ABC Radio National program "Pig City" Available at speechification.com (at 34:55 into the program material)
Theatre and activism During her time with the ALS, Morrison lived in central Brisbane, sharing a house with indigenous Australians, musicians and the actors Geoffrey Rush and Bille Brown. It was during this period that she would meet the people and become involved in the activities that set the tone of her life, and started playing drums. After "burn out" and leaving the service of the ALS, a two-year sojourn in England followed. On her return to Queensland, she moved into acting, believing that "the only salvation lay in art".
She was part of the Popular Theatre Troupe"The Go-Betweens" By David Nichols, Allen and Unwin 1997 p. 65 which protested against Joh Bjelke-Petersen's National Party government, performing their sharply satirical political street theatre around the state during a time when life in Queensland was felt to be strongly constrained by the government, select business groups, and political interests."No! No! to Joh" by Pete Thomas published by Building Workers industrial Union (Queensland Branch) dated February 1979.
Musical career
Shrew – Zero Morrison's first band, Shrew, performed in 1976 and 77. They were an all-girl acoustic band with members playing clarinet, saxophone, piano and guitar. Their repertoire consisted mainly of covers of 1940s pop songs.
In 1978, Morrison joined the band Zero. At the time, members included Irena Luckus, Nicki Nought and Deborah Thomas. The band started by performing Patti Smith and other punk covers before moving on to write their own material. Morrison said she left in 1981 because "They wanted drum-machines and synthesisers." On Morrison's departure Zero became Xero.
The Go-Betweens The Go-Betweens were formed in 1977 in Brisbane, Queensland, by Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, who initially played bass guitar. The group had a succession of drummers and travelled to the United Kingdom in late 1979. They returned to Brisbane in 1980, at which point Morrison joined on drums and backing vocals. Their first single with Morrison, "Your Turn My Turn", appeared in September 1981 and was followed by "Hammer the Hammer" in March 1982. They recorded 10 tracks as demos in Brisbane during 1981, which had a limited release as Very Quick on the Eye by Man Made Records in 1982. The tracks showed that Morrison's "drum abilities, always a deeply underrated part of the band's appeal, fit hand in glove with the arrangements". By this time, Forster and Morrison were lovers and Morrison was living in Spring Hill, an inner-city Brisbane suburb.
The band's first official album, Send Me a Lullaby, produced by the Go-Betweens and Tony Cohen, appeared in February on Missing Link Records in Australia. Morrison provided the album title, in preference to Two Wimps and a Witch, from the Zelda Fitzgerald novel Save Me the Waltz. Forster and McLennan wrote all the tracks, alternating lead vocal duties according to who provided the lyrics. A mistaken interpretation of the original album credits has seen Morrison credited with lead vocals on "People Know" when in reality she only ever sang backing vocals for the Go-Betweens. The only guest musician on the album was James Freud (of the Models) who played saxophone on "People Know". In 2002, UK label Circus released a 2CD version of Send Me a Lullaby which included "After the Fireworks". This was recorded as a collaboration with The Birthday Party's Nick Cave on vocals, Mick Harvey on piano and Rowland S. Howard on guitar. It had been released as a single under the band name, Tuff Monks in 1982 on Au Go Go Records.
The Go-Betweens returned to UK and recorded their second album, Before Hollywood (May 1983), with John Brand producing. It established them as cult favourites while "Cattle and Cane" was released as a single and was "[arguably] the band's absolute highlight of its earliest years". In 2001, "Cattle and Cane" was selected by Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) as one of the Top 30 Australian songs of all time.