A two-bar flute phrase from a children's campfire song became one of the most recognizable melodies in pop music. That strange journey belongs to Greg Ham, born September 27, 1953, the saxophonist and flutist who gave Men At Work their signature sound. His wind instruments turned a Melbourne new wave band into a global phenomenon in the early 1980s.
Men At Work arrived just as post-punk was shedding its angular aggression for something brighter. Their sound fused rock, pop, and new wave, but it was the unusual instrumentation that set them apart. Ham's flute and saxophone weren't decorative flourishes; they carried hooks. The group's debut album 'Business as Usual' topped charts in both the United States and Australia, powered by two number-one singles in those countries.
The two hits that defined the band
The first hit was 'Who Can It Be Now?', built around Ham's saxophone riff and a paranoid lyric about someone knocking at the door. The second was 'Down Under', where his flute line became the song's emotional core. Ham wrote that part himself, a jaunty counterpoint to Colin Hay's vocal. It sounded like a beer commercial, a travel poster, and a national anthem compressed into a few seconds.
The Grammy for Best New Artist followed, confirming what the chart positions already suggested. 'Business as Usual' and its follow-up 'Cargo' made Men At Work the most visible Australian band on the planet. Ham's stage presence matched the music: eccentric, theatrical, unpredictable. He played keyboards on some tracks too, but the saxophone and flute remained his public identity.
The third album and the split
The third album didn't hold. 'Two Hearts' arrived in 1985, landing after the momentum had shifted. It failed to repeat the commercial performance of its predecessors, and the band dissolved in the middle of that decade. Ham moved into session work, collaborating with other Australian artists and building a reputation as a reliable, inventive sideman. He also taught music, passing on the craft that had carried him worldwide.
A reunion tour in 1996 brought Men At Work back to stages they had once commanded. The catalog still worked live, because those early songs had not aged into nostalgia; they remained functional pop. Ham's parts were still essential. You could remove almost anything from 'Down Under' and keep the song, but not that flute.
You could remove almost anything from 'Down Under' and keep the song, but not that flute.
The lawsuit over 'Kookaburra'
Then came the lawsuit. In 2010 a court ruled that the flute part in 'Down Under' had been taken from 'Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree', a song written decades earlier for Australian schoolchildren. Men At Work lost the case and were ordered to pay royalties. The decision caused public uproar in Australia and damaged the group's reputation. Ham spoke of his anxiety about the financial consequences.
Two years later, on a day in 2012, Greg Ham was found dead at his home in Melbourne. He was 58. The cause was a heart attack. The timing, so close to the plagiarism judgment, invited speculation about stress and its toll. The band's story now carried a shadow that complicated any simple celebration of those early hits.
In 2013 Men At Work entered the ARIA Hall of Fame. The induction came after Ham's death, and his bandmates used the ceremony to honor him. 'Down Under' remains an unofficial anthem for Australia. The flute line that started as a children's tune and became a pop hook now carries a heavier history. Greg Ham's legacy in Australian music is tangled, but it is unmistakable.