Once a Man At Work, now a man at work. Colin Hay talks to Paul Colbert about his first solo album.

"A FEW years ago Men At Work had a bit of sponsorship with Yamaha," explains Colin Hay, then their singer, and now a solo artist. "I think we got the better part of the deal. They gave us a load of stuff and then we broke up." Who said being an instrument company was easy?

Hay penned 90 per cent of the Australian band's material, including the triple platinum "Business As Usual" album. When the Men ceased working in '85, he slipped off with the drummer and bass player to work on his first solo LP, which he describes as "still a collaboration of sorts", and has now arrived as "Looking For Jack".

Some habits do die hard. The foundations of the songs were laid very much as a band would — everyone in the same room at the same time — but this was Hay's first experience at recording direct to digital on a Mitsubishi machine.

"People say that using digital equipment is very cold, but that's because they record with a lot of machines," he warns. "It's cold music to start with.

"You have to get what I call a hi-tech/low-tech combination — the hi-tech being the equipment and the low-tech being the people. Because people are low-tech, they have frailties and idiosyncracies. It's a good way to do it."

So for all the fuss, is digital recording better? "Not better, it's just different. I enjoyed it more because you get used to not hearing any tape hiss in the studio. It's fantastic when you're recording because every time you hear the song it's exactly the same as when you put it down. There's no problem with generation loss or things like that. It's really exciting to hear it dead clean."

The songs date from 1978 to two weeks before recording began. "The most important person for me to find was the producer and that was the excellent Robin Millar. We had a shortlist of 18 songs, and ended up recording 16 — an album and a half. Ten ended up on the record."

Millar came in early, flying out to Los Angeles to sit in on a week of band rehearsals. Was that unusual? "It depends on the producer. With some of them, the first time they hear something is day one in the studio. I think it's important that the band or act meet the producer before they start working together."

Hay called in two notable guests on "Looking For Jack" — Herbie Hancock for a piano part on the title track ("very flattering, he agreed to do it without even having heard the track, then finished it in two hours"), and The Pretenders' guitarist Robbie Macintosh.

"He is one of the greats," enthuses Hay, "one of the most underrated guitarists in the world, though I don't think that will last for much longer: he'll soon get the recognition he deserves. Chrissie Hynde lucked out there. I don't think she could have wished for anyone better. He's the perfect complement for her songs."

What did he do for you? "Oh he just made the coffee for us."

In fact Macintosh handled a solo on the second side, and contributed some chordal rhythm work, though most of the guitar on "Looking For Jack" is Hay's own — a departure from the Men At Work practices.

"I had a really great time on this record playing all the guitars and stretching myself to come up with lots of different parts. During the rhythm track period I just played one part for each song, but in six different ways — some were clean, some distorted, some with lots of different effects. It all went down to tape so that later I could do a small mini mix of just the guitar — it cuts down on the amount of overdubs you have to do. It sounds like there are three or four guitars playing when there's only one, but it doesn't come across cluttered because it's just one part."