Before Kevin Parker, Australia had Iva Davies. The ICEHOUSE frontman, like Parker many years later, would create a one-man musical masterpiece, one that would spread into all corners of the world.
On Primitive Man, a classy and enduring New Wave collection released back in 1982, Davies played every note, every instrument.
The second of eight studio albums from ICEHOUSE (the first, Icehouse, was released under the name Flowers in 1980), Primitive Man housed hits “Hey, Little Girl”, “Street Café” and signature song “Great Southern Land”, which Davies and Co. performed April 9th at the 2025 Rolling Stone Australia Awards.
Davies’ synth-infused sound caught the attention of music fans around the globe, and in particular two of the greatest to do it.
“We had an unfortunate choice because we had a hit in Europe with ‘Hey Little Girl’ and both David Bowie and Peter Gabriel heard that song and both of them invited us to tour with them. The tours clashed and I actually had the dreadful decision to have to choose between either touring with two of my great heroes. David Bowie or Peter Gabriel,” Davies recalls.
He chose Bowie, who was “right at the peak of his career at that point. He’d only just broken into North America with the song ‘Let’s Dance’. I knew it was going to be as big as it gets and out of sort of sheer curiosity I wanted to see what the madness was like at that level.”
And yes, “it was entirely mad. We were staying in the same hotel in Rotterdam; it was the first show that we did with him. Word must have got out, because the entire lobby was full of Ziggy Stardust lookalikes. People were camped literally on the floor of the lobby. I don’t know how they got past security, but it was extraordinary. I was literally stepping over people that looked like some particular version of David Bowie and some particular costume, just to get to the lift.”
ICEHOUSE opened for the Thin White Duke on various legs of his ‘Serious Moonlight Tour’, which kicked off in May 1983, a global trek that visited 15 countries for 96 performances, including shows in the big five Australian cities plus Auckland and Wellington.
“It was the first time I’d really been backstage kind of massive scale show of 70,000 people, three shows in a row. And I remember when we first arrived and went in the gates of the backstage area and there was a line of 10 coaches,” Davies says. All of them were for the crew. “From that moment the light bulb went off. Okay, this this is incredibly big. I was just sort of marveling really at the machinery going on.”
Davies was on hand at the fifth annual Rolling Stone Australia Awards, where he collected the prestigious Icon award, recognition of a 45-year career – and counting – during which ICEHOUSE landed eight ARIA top 10 albums and more than 30 ARIA Top 40 singles, including classics “Great Southern Land”, “Electric Blue”, “Crazy”, “Hey Little Girl”, “Street Café”, “No Promises”, “We Can Get Together”, and many others.
Though very much active on the touring front, ICEHOUSE haven’t dropped a studio album since the 1990s. Davies makes no promises, but maybe, possibly, more music will come.
“After 30 years, I’ve completely gutted my studio, and rebuilt it,” he told Rolling Stone AU/NZ ahead of the awards, presented at the ivy in Sydney. “And as we speak, it’s being completely fitted out. It’s looking amazing and I’m sure it’s going to sound amazing. And so I will have, in effect, a brand new studio and lots of things to play with. Most of my output has been directly as a result of having new toys to play with. I got the Fairlight back recently and had it fully restored. So that’s literally sitting in the studio waiting to be fired up. Who knows what will come out of all of that stuff.”
And is he caught up with the work of Kevin Parker and Tame Impala, perhaps this generation’s Iva Davies and ICEHOUSE? “I’m probably more aware of Kevin Parker through my son who’s been a massive fan for a long time,” he remarks. “It’s quite strange though, the only thing I listened to recreationally is classical music. And I do that almost daily.”
