Forty-four years ago this week, on October 23, 1982, an Australian band played “Who Can It Be Now?” and “Down Under” on Saturday Night Live. One week later, on the Billboard Hot 100 dated October 30, 1982, “Who Can It Be Now?” was the No. 1 song in America. The band was Men at Work, and their nervous little song about a knock at the door had taken more than a year to travel from Melbourne to the top of the U.S. charts.
In this On This Day feature, we look at the tree house and the noisy apartment where the song was written, the saxophone hook that almost appeared later in the track, and how a record that Columbia’s U.S. office twice turned down ended up opening the door for a whole wave of Australian music. The official video is waiting for you at the end of the article.
▶️ Want to hear that famous saxophone intro right now? Scroll down. The official “Who Can It Be Now?” video is at the end of the article.
A Pub Band From Melbourne
Men at Work formed in Melbourne in 1979. Singer and guitarist Colin Hay had been born in Kilwinning, Scotland, in 1953, and moved to Melbourne with his family in 1967, when he was 14. His parents ran a small music shop, and his father, a piano tuner, had once been a stage singer and dancer in Glasgow.
Hay began as an acoustic duo with guitarist Ron Strykert, and the group grew to include Jerry Speiser on drums, John Rees on bass and Greg Ham on flute, saxophone and keyboards. The band name was thrown into a hat by Hay when they needed something to write on the blackboard outside the Cricketer’s Arms Hotel in Richmond. By the end of 1980 they had become, as one writer put it, the most in-demand and highly paid unsigned band of the year.
A Tree House and a Knock at the Door
Hay wrote the music for “Who Can It Be Now?” around 1979, in a tree house that he and his girlfriend had built in Bermagui, a small town on the New South Wales south coast. The words came later, in 1981, when he was living in an apartment complex in St Kilda, a seaside suburb of Melbourne.
His neighbors were drug dealers, and people kept knocking on Hay’s door by mistake. It made him so uneasy that he was scared to open the door at all, no matter who was there. He was also worried about money and his music career, which had not yet taken off. “It seemed at that particular time everyone who knocked on my door wanted something from me that I either didn’t have or didn’t want to give them,” he explained in 2015.
The Sax Hook Moves to the Front
In 1981 the band signed with CBS Records in Australia and began recording their debut album with American producer Peter McIan. The song opens with a saxophone hook by Greg Ham, but that was not Hay’s original plan. He had written the sax part to appear later in the song, and it was McIan who suggested moving it to the very start.
The solo came about almost by accident. McIan wanted a saxophone solo and told Ham to play anything just to get the sound right. That improvised part is the one you hear on the record. On the B-side was a jam-style instrumental called “Anyone for Tennis.”
A Hit at Home, Then a Long Wait
“Who Can It Be Now?” was released in Australia in June 1981. It reached No. 2 in August, stayed on the chart for 24 weeks and earned a gold disc. At the 1981 Countdown Australian Music Awards it won Best Debut Single. The album Business as Usual followed on November 9, 1981, and with “Down Under” it spent nine weeks at No. 1 in Australia.
America was harder. Even with an American producer, Business as Usual was rejected twice by Columbia’s U.S. parent company. Only after the persistence of manager Russell Depeller and CBS Australia’s Peter Karpin was it released in the United States and the United Kingdom in April 1982, six months after its Australian release.
Canada Opens the Door
The breakthrough came through Canada. By May 1982, “Who Can It Be Now?” was a top-10 radio hit in Winnipeg, and in July it peaked at No. 8 on the Canadian chart. That spurred an American release. In August the band toured North America opening for Fleetwood Mac, and the song began picking up top-40 airplay in the U.S.
One Week at No. 1
On October 23, 1982, Men at Work played both “Who Can It Be Now?” and “Down Under” on Saturday Night Live. A week later, on the Hot 100 dated October 30, 1982, “Who Can It Be Now?” reached No. 1, replacing John Cougar’s “Jack & Diane.” It spent one week on top before “Up Where We Belong” by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes took over. Men at Work were one of ten acts that scored their first No. 1 that year.
It was a song made for the early music-video era, too. The band’s offbeat official clip, which you can watch at the end of this article, came out in the young MTV era, the same era that a few years later turned a-ha’s “Take On Me” into a worldwide hit.
Down Under and a Grammy
The success did not stop there. In November, Business as Usual began a 15-week run at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. “Down Under” was released in the U.S. while “Who Can It Be Now?” was still in the top ten, and ten weeks later it was No. 1 too. By January 1983, Men at Work had the top album and single in both the U.S. and the UK, something no Australian act had done before. That year they also won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.
Critics were mostly kind. Rolling Stone’s David Fricke praised “Ham’s blowsy sax” and the “rousing chorus of voices,” while AllMusic later called it a “definitive new wave single.” Not everyone agreed: Barney Hoskyns of NME called it an “abomination.” But radio listeners clearly sided with the fans, in the same early-’80s years when artists like Phil Collins were also ruling the airwaves.
Still Knocking Today
Men at Work split in the mid-1980s, and Colin Hay went on to a long solo career, including memorable appearances on the TV show Scrubs. Greg Ham died in 2012. In 2019, Hay revived the Men at Work name and began touring again. “Who Can It Be Now?” remains one of the best-known songs of the new wave era and a fixture on 1980s compilations. For another band whose story is told through one famous song, read our tribute to Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Listening Tips
- Start with the first five seconds. That saxophone hook was moved to the intro by producer Peter McIan, and it is the reason many people know the song instantly.
- Listen to the lyrics as a story. Knowing about the St Kilda apartment makes every knock in the song sound more nervous.
- Play the whole album. Business as Usual opens with “Who Can It Be Now?” and includes “Down Under” and “Be Good Johnny.”
- Hear it live. A live version appears on the Men at Work album Brazil.
- Explore the decade. Browse more 80s Hits and Rock stories.
“Who Can It Be Now?” Quick Facts
| Artist | Men at Work |
| Written by | Colin Hay |
| Producer | Peter McIan |
| Album | Business as Usual (1981) |
| Australian release | June 1981; peaked at No. 2 |
| Hot 100 No. 1 | Chart dated October 30, 1982 (one week) |
| Before and after | Followed “Jack & Diane” by John Cougar; replaced by “Up Where We Belong” by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes |
| Other peaks | No. 8 in Canada; No. 45 in the UK; No. 45 in New Zealand |
| Award | Best Debut Single, 1981 Countdown Australian Music Awards |
Sources
- “Who Can It Be Now?” on Wikipedia (with its cited sources, including Billboard)
- Men at Work on Wikipedia
- Business as Usual (Men at Work album) on Wikipedia
- Colin Hay on Wikipedia
- List of Billboard Hot 100 number ones of 1982 on Wikipedia
- Billboard Hot 100, October 30, 1982
Photo Credits
- Featured image: Men at Work in 1983 by MTV, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
- Featured image: Colin Hay at the Pabst Theatre, Milwaukee, November 2, 2017 by John Begalke, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Featured image: The Blue Pool in Bermagui, New South Wales by Christallkeks, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Featured image: Colin Hay at the Pabst Theatre, Milwaukee, 2017 by John Begalke, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- In-article image: Greg Ham of Men at Work, 1983 by MTV, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
- In-article image: Bermagui Beach, New South Wales by Whats new? at English Wikipedia, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
- In-article image: Acland Street in St Kilda, Melbourne by Bidgee, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
