Breakfast Bonus: Iva Davies of Icehouse

Welcome to the Breakfast Bonus Podcast - an exclusive online only chat released each weekday.

Ever wondered what the song 'Electric Blue' is really about? We find out this and more in our chat with Iva Davies ahead of the Greenstone Summer Tour 2025!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Coast Breakfast Bonus Podcast with Tony Jason Sam Do
you love these songs?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
And she takes shoes.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Friends, Electric ice House? How good are they?

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Are?

Speaker 3 (00:42):
They going to be on tour for the Greenstone Summer
Concert Tour with Cold Chisel, Ever Clear and Big Longer
Tee you more about it, just to tick. But the
man behind those songs, the voice behind those songs as
ither Dabies, we're lucky enough to catch up with him.
And so you started out as a band called Flowers, right,
but then there's another Scottish band that kind of made
you change your name. What was that out about?

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yes? And American and English International record Company they had
a competition within the company to rename us when all
of that legal business happened, and they came up with
the fabulous name of Industrial Chile, so you can go there,
which fortunately I said no to, and we adopted the

(01:22):
name of our first album, which had already been released
by then. That album, of course, was called ice House,
and so that's the name that we've had ever since.

Speaker 4 (01:30):
I'd love you to talk me through the song electric
Blue and what that was inspired by, because I have
read something and I had no idea it was based
off a woman.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
So I wrote this with John Oh's from Hall and Oates,
and he's got a completely different story than I have
about you know where that title came from. And he's
I think he tells the story about going down to
the Australian beach because he was out obviously visiting from
America and seeing some young woman who was topless on
the beach at that particular point of time because that

(02:01):
was a sort of fashion back then, and being mesmerized
by her blue eyes. I don't know whether that's correct
or not.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
He's looking at her eyes?

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Was he? And my story is completely different. When we
when we were starting out, we started out that had
a lot of bands to it as a covers band,
and one of those very early slightly obscure songs was
a song called Jewel in It and we used to
play this song and in that set of lyrics, her
eyes are electric blue. And that was what I gave

(02:34):
to John Oates when we were kind of scratching our
heads at the point where you know, we've got to
find a title for this thing, and you know, what's
it called? What's it all about? Blah blah blah, And
so that's what I came up with, and that's my
story and I'm sticking to it.

Speaker 4 (02:46):
I kind of liked the idea of the whole topless woman,
electric blue white. We might try and hunt her down.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
I was saying with Ivor Davies from Icehouse or on
the way soon the Screenstone Summer Concert tour. But you
know you mentioned David Bowie before, Iva, and I know
that you guys have toured with David in the past,
and you think back to those memories there, right and
again you guys have been doing this since the late seventies.
Is there a moment that you can remember you stood
on stage you thought, how you know we've made it?
This is us now, this is our time to be
as big as you are now.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Well, we were incredibly lucky because we were invited to
go on tour and we did his European shows and
we arrived in Britain and I've got a photograph of
David Bowie in a canary yellow suit, amazing color and
looking out up this hill at seventy thousand people. Who

(03:35):
but you can't actually see the end of the crowd.
You know, it's a massive crowd. And I've got it
up on my kitchen wall, and every time I look
at it, I think, well, I was standing exactly where
he was standing about half an hour ago. Playing these
huge crowds was quite a bluff for us. You can imagine.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Did you turn into each other and say it's got
to be crazy baby?

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Oh yeah, well it was long long before that song.
It was so massive, it was incredible.

Speaker 4 (04:04):
Yeah, I'm interested to know, over all these years that
you've been touring, how has what you do changed in
terms of between concerts and what do you do in
your downtime? Has it changed quite a bit over the years.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Look, I've certainly got more time on my hands than
I used to have. But no, no, it's it's it's
interesting because I've in my garage at the moment, I've
got my entire live, duplicate set of exactly what I'm
using at the moment trying to get the guitars sound
better than it's ever outed before.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
And this is in your garage. Your poor neighbors have
over Thank you very much. Lucky you're a free con today,
so you come into this great Southern Lands. He did
it again. Coulture Icehouse, big, longer and everclear. We're talking
Queenstown topal and fifth younger. Details at Coast online, dot co,
dot in Zen.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Thanks for listening to the Coast Breakfast Bonus podcast. Get
your days started with Coasts Feel Good Breakfast, Tony's Street,
Jason Reeves and Sam Wallas