15-05-2025
Heartbreaking story behind famous Aussie song revealed
Eskimo Joe's lead singer Kav Temperly has revealed that one of the band's most famous songs was inspired by the tragic death of Australian actor Heath Ledger.
The 46-year-old musician took fans on a trip down memory lane on Monday as he sat in a garage studio to explain how he wrote Foreign Land.
The hit song peaked at number 13 on the ARIA charts in 2009, and the following year won Most Played Australian Work and Rock Work of the Year at the APRAs.
In a video shared to TikTok, Temperly said he'd been inspired by a CD called The Sounds of Turkey, purchased from a local music shop.
'I found this little sample in the middle of one of these big long 10-minute instrumental jams,' he began.
'And I put it onto my computer and I made a little loop and put the microphone onto my drums and did my best Led Zeppelin impression.
'I had this cool little idea but then we had to go away to New York to do this amazing gala performance at Lincoln Memorial Centre. It was big deal because we were going to be performing in front of a whole lot of dignitaries and we were on the red carpet when a very official-looking came up to me and said, "Just to let you know, Heath Ledger has just died."
The news of the Hollywood star's death left the entire band grief stricken.
'We were pretty taken aback because he was this young, very talented guy from Perth, Western Australia where we were from,' Temperly said.
'It turned out he'd died streets away from where I was walking that day [in New York]. We were pretty affected by it - as was everyone at the ceremony.'
When he and the band returned to Perth, Temperly was still thinking about Ledger in the recording studio and changed his mind about the song they originally had planned.
'We were going to write this big rock'n'roll record and I pressed play on my little tune with Turkish drum beat and my little loop and they said, "cool idea but that's not really a song."
'I just started to sing this very sad A-minor, C, F progression over the top of this sample and lo-and-behond it worked.
'This idea of Heath Ledger was going around in our heads, so I stood in front of the microphone and Joel said, "Just go for it, just sing anything that comes into your head."
'And this is what came into my head, "I smell the blood of an Australian. Try to understand me if you can",' he sung.
Ledger died from an accidental overdose of prescription medications on 22 January, 2008, in the New York neighbourhood of SoHo.
Specifically, he died from a combination of painkillers, anti-anxiety drugs, and sleeping pills.
