Davies Adds Classical Touch to the Aussie Group Icehouse

“I have a bad history of being a little erratic, career-wise,” insisted Iva Davies, the seemingly reliable mainstay of the Australian pop group Icehouse.

Not that he called in for this phone interview from San Jose in a drunken stupor, or is prone to taking detours to Las Vegas, or is otherwise likely to skip out on Icehouse’s headlining gig tonight at the Santa Monica Civic.

It’s not that kind of ill-disciplined rock ‘n’ roll erraticism. Whatever unpredictable impulses might crop up in this cultured and calm sort would be born out of boredom, not booze or bad manners.

“I’ve always warned anybody who’s been associated with me in this area that one of these days I’ll just quit,” Davies said. “I was a professional orchestral musician for longer than I’ve been doing this, and I’ve been doing this for 10 years. And I left the orchestra (the orchestra of the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music) with no warning. One day I just decided--after having spent 11 years’ training to get there--that I just didn’t want to do it anymore, and I simply walked out. That may happen again.”

Should such a walkout occur, Davies’ record company is bound to be far more upset than the New South Wales orchestra was over the loss of an oboist a decade ago. For after years of success in Europe and at home, Icehouse is finally clicking with mass audiences in a big way in America. The irresistible “Crazy,” from the group’s fifth album “Man of Colours,” made it to No. 14 on the national singles chart in January, and a follow-up, “Electric Blue” (co-written by John Oates), is now on its way up the same path.

Such swirling romantic ditties would seem tailor-made for the American Top 40 audience, especially compared to the slightly artsier tone of earlier Icehouse records. Fishing for that long-awaited American hit this time around, was he? Davies pleads ignorance.

“I’ve never been very market-minded, I’m afraid,” Davies said. “Obviously, we’re based in Australia, and I spend most of my time working there, and I have absolutely no idea what makes the American music business tick, and I certainly don’t know what American radio’s about, and I don’t know what Americans like to listen to. So it would be absolute suicide career-wise for me to be trying to produce something that was going to be successful in America.”

It’s possible to believe Davies’ claims of marketing ignorance, given his past history of obliviousness. During his decade as an oboe player, beginning at 11, he was virtually unaware of popular music. Then came discovery of the morbid joys of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” a couple of years after its release, followed in quick succession by David Bowie and T. Rex--and probably Roxy Music, judging from his vocal and even sometimes instrumental resemblance to Bryan Ferry.

“I really was kind of closeted,” Davies explained of the classical years. “Doing that kind of thing is like being an Olympic athlete or something--I mean, it’s an exclusive process. You spend every waking hour training or practicing or performing. I used to play the oboe nine hours a day, and that was Baroque music.”

For the “Man of Colours” album, Davies recruited as producer David Lord, another one-time classical music pro turned pop caseworker.

“I’d often found myself a bit stranded in the rock ‘n’ roll arena, speaking a language to rock ‘n’ roll musicians and engineers who don’t really understand what you’re talking about,” Davies said.

“I always make the analogy with self-taught musicians that they really are trying to describe something with sign language, you know what I mean? You find a garage band and the process by which they teach each other songs is very slow, because they have no kind of identification tags and they can’t describe a unit of time or a pitch or whatever.

“So I found myself speaking in arrangement terms again with David Lord, using things like the word anacrusis --and of course the engineer would look at us and go ‘What?’ Well, an anacrusis is kind of a little bit before we start where you sort of hop off.” Sign language--or Greek maybe? He laughs. “It’s really hard to describe. . . . “

Davies has satiated his less mainstream instincts by doing the score for the film “Razorback” and co-writing an Australian ballet, “Boxes.” In the meantime, his long-haired, sexy good looks are being cultivated for rock videos and the like, and his attitude about the pop-star processing system--if still far from condescending--is at the least bemused.

“Probably every musician you ever spoke to has said they just want to make the record and give it to the record company and then disappear. If I had an ideal situation, that would probably be it. But”--an erratic chuckle--”it’s been an education.”