The Wiggles bring the giggles to children

By Nicole Arthur
The Washington Post

The Wiggles from front to back: Jeff Fatt, Anthony Field, Greg Page and Murray Cook. The group is the most successful children's act in Australian history, and they're catching on in this country, too.

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There are two kinds of people, those who've never heard of the Wiggles and those who know all the words to "Fruit Salad." There's a word for those in the latter group: parents.

The Australian children's group, long enormously successful at home, is increasingly ubiquitous in the United States. Even if you've never seen the band's top-rated show on the Disney Channel, chances are you've run across its DVDs, CDs, books or toys. The four guys in the primary-color turtlenecks? That's them.

The Wiggles are a classic four-piece pop combo — except for the fact that their infectious, upbeat songs are about things like teddy bears, ponies and looking both ways before you cross the street. Now in their 13th year, the band is the most successful children's act in Australian history — the Wiggles are the country's fifth-highest-paid entertainers (Nicole Kidman tops the list). Their live performances are a hot commodity: Last fall they played 12 sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden, besting a record held by Bruce Springsteen.

For those who think of the Wiggles — Greg Page, Murray Cook, Anthony Field and Jeff Fatt — as four grown men who are known to share the mike with a polka-dot dinosaur, the band's rock 'n' roll credibility can come as a surprise. Both Field and Fatt played in the Cockroaches, a moderately successful '80s band that scored Top 10 hits in Australia and toured with quirky Aussie rockers Mental as Anything. Field, speaking by telephone from Sydney with his infant daughter, Lucia, cooing in the background, recalls those days. "We played all around the coast of Australia, the surf clubs and things like that," he says. "We had a great time."

After the group disbanded, Field enrolled in Sydney's Macquarie University to study early childhood education. It was there that he embarked on a portentous class project with fellow students Page and Cook. Later, as the class project — writing and performing songs for children — morphed into a professional concern, Field recruited former band mate Fatt to join the group. (All four members play instruments and have a hand in writing the group's material.) Their first CD, "The Wiggles," came out in 1991. "We were going 'round Australia selling cassettes and CDs out of a suitcase backstage, which is how we started at first, then we started selling videos," Field says.

As for performing, Field says it isn't substantively different than the job he trained for at university. "Three of us are early childhood teachers, preschool teachers, and as soon as you become a preschool teacher, any self-consciousness you had just goes out the door because you're educating, but basically you're also entertaining a class of 30 3-year-olds." Does he feel silly when called upon to, say, walk like an emu? "It's funny — you don't," he replies. "You never get self-conscious making funny faces. It's like doing different voices for your own child. You've got to be a little larger than life and a little happier than you would be talking to one of your peers. It would be a bit strange if you were bouncing around saying, 'Hey!' "

The group's transition from moonlighting preschool teachers to touring band to multimedia entity was not instantaneous. Fields says the group spent five or six years on the road before it broke through to a wider audience. (The band tours heavily, averaging 500 concerts a year.)

"It was really strange because we were playing little places, and then we did a show in Australia called 'The Midday Show' ... it's like 'Oprah,' I suppose. After that, people started recognizing us as the Wiggles in the street, and it sort of changed things.

"The good thing about doing what we do also is that when people recognize you they're very nice because their children are happy and you've contributed to it a little — for 10 minutes or half an hour."
 
The Wiggles' TV world is color-coded: Field wears a blue shirt, Fatt a purple one, Page yellow and Cook red. In addition to being readily identifiable by color, each Wiggle is distinguished by a few simple behaviors: Greg does magic, Murray plays the guitar, Anthony eats too much and Jeff perpetually falls asleep (hence the show's catchphrase, "Wake up, Jeff!").

As it happens, Jeff's sleepiness is no accident. "Jeff is not early childhood trained," Field says. "When we first started to do shows, he came out of the Cockroaches with me, and he had no idea what to say to a preschool audience. We put our heads together and thought, 'If you really want to be popular with the children, you've got to give them power over you.' And he is the most popular because they get to wake him up."

Like their lyrics and their look, the Wiggles' live show is uncomplicated. "The sets are really simple, what we say is really simple. If we put too much in, we might scare the kids," Field says. "We have the lights up in the audience a little higher than you would at an adult show, so they aren't scared of the dark or anything like that. We think if we put in too many pyrotechnics you're going to startle some kids, and it'll be their first experience of a show.

"It's a concert, but mainly we hope children move their bodies, have a laugh and join in the fun." The big special effect being unveiled on the band's current tour is: trampolines. "It'll be lots of laughs," Field promises.

Parents may be gratified to hear that Field sometimes finds the Wiggles' material as maddeningly catchy as they do. "When we first wrote 'Fruit Salad,' I couldn't go past fruit salad without that song going in my head," Field says. "Sometimes it still does, 12 years later." That may be part of the reason it's arguably the band's most popular song and a showstopper in concert. "I think it's a fun song," he says. "It's a great world we enter into on that stage. I think it's a good place — where people can get excited about a song about fruit salad. With all the trouble in the world, why not?"