August
20th 2004 - Courier Mail Australia
After
achieving his musical ambitions, Darren
Hayes
will return home to be a dad,
writes Rodney Chester
For a
man who has ridden the wave of pop
stardom
to international fame, former
Savage Garden performer
Darren Hayes's
dreams are remarkably ordinary.
"My
dream is I want to be a father,'' he says,
speaking
to The Courier-Mail from a hotel
room in London to
promote his new
upcoming album The Tension and The
Spark.
"I
want to have kids and I would raise them in
Australia.''
"I
think I'm ready for a change now. I got myself out
of
my country at the peak of my
celebrity, and I hate using
that word, and
I did that to keep my feet on the
ground.
"I didn't
really know how to cope with it. I'd spent all
my
life in Brisbane and suddenly I
couldn't go to the mall
without feeling
like I was under a spotlight.
"The
truth is I'm actually quite a shy person. I'm
a
performer, and when you put me on
stage I'm someone
else, I become
the complete cliche of what you think
an
entertainer should be. I'm an egomaniac, I'm big
and
bright and bold and I want your
attention. But that
compensates for
the other person.
"I get
home to Australia more than you would know,
but
I just do it quietly. His
long-term ambition sounds simple
enough, but there is something he has to do before
he
leaves San Francisco, which has
been his base for the past
five years, and
heads home to Queensland.
"That
is ultimately where I want to be, I just think at
the
moment I can't even dream about
that part of my life
because I'm so
married and committed to at least this
record and really making a mark for myself in this
part of my
life.''
It is
only 8am in London, but already Hayes is into his
fifth
hour of press interviews promoting
his album and the
single Popular,
having only arrived in the city from Oslo
just
the day before. "I don't
think I've worked this hard since my
first
ever promo trip with Savage Garden,'' he admits. "It's
just
been a blur.'' So, why do
it, when the royalties from the songs
he
wrote with his Savage Garden partner Daniel Jones
still
ensure that he can lead a
lifestyle that "comfortable'' probably
doesn't come close to
describing?
"It's
beyond money. I've made enough money,'' Hayes
says.
"I'm proud of this and I'm proud
of where I'm going and what
I have to say.
"Without dissing my own past, my last
album
(Spin ) wasn't the high point in
my life. I was so exhausted,
I had
come off the back of Savage Garden and literally
ran
straight into a
studio.
"I was
out promoting that record and I really wasn't
that
happy. I knew that I had an album
like the one I've just
made in me, and
I knew that it was a much more personal
record and a much more sincere album. "This
record is
painfully
autobiographical, and in terms of musically
how
much I've changed and evolved on
this record, I'm proud
of it. I would
have no sleep tonight if it meant I could
sit
down and talk to people about it
because I feel like I'm
18
again.
"And
that feeling is like I have to fight for the music
and
fight for what I believe
in.'' The music he is fighting for
is,
in parts, pretty grim or at least
gritty. One track, Unlovable,
which
details his response to the break-up of a
relationship
says "you make me feel like my
father never loved me, you
make
me feel like my mother abandoned
me''.
"Popular is definitely the lightest track on the
record, at
first glance, because the rest of
the album is quite moody
and
emotional,'' he says. "It spans my life as a child
all
the way to relationships today,
and it's not always in a
happy light.
I'm admitting that I've been sad before,
I'm
admitting that I have definitely
had demons that I've dealt
with in my
life.
"But
Popular was my way of saying `how do you get
the
most personal record of your life
on the radio'. Look at
the state of
fame, the state of media, the state of
our
obsession with pop culture and how
far we're willing to go
as a culture to
be famous.
"It's
almost like killing off the pop star in many
ways
and saying `I applied for the job
of hero and I took it
not realising
it's designed to self-destruct'. "When
you
fall from that pedestal it really
hurts, but it's also
amazing to be
on this side of the experience, and I
would
never apply for the job of hero
again.
"In
general Popular is really about our society.
I
meet kids these days,
18-year-olds, who ask me
how to be
famous. We have TV shows where anyone
can
juggle a carrot and suddenly they're famous
for
10 minutes. It's a vocation now,
that people train for,
just to be a
celebrity, and I think that people don't
realise it's designed to
self-destruct.''
Hayes
felt that destruction when his first solo album,
Spin,
sold two million records but
achieved greater success
out of
Australia than in his home market. He was
plagued
by stories that
were not so concerned about his music
as
they were his hair colour.
"The
experience of that album almost broke me,''
Hayes
says candidly. "It was likely a
trial through fire, and I'm
so proud of the
fact that I just kept walking, I kept my
head
up high. "On that record, I underestimated
the
general public, I underestimated
myself because I
thought I could
skate through that experience
unscathed.
I thought I
could just go through the motions, I could
hit
all the right notes, write the pop
songs, do everything to
the best
because I'm a perfectionist but I didn't
really
open up."
"I
learnt a big lesson. First of all, any bit of
arrogance
I had about myself was just
completely whipped out of
me. That's what
you've got to love about Australia
and
the Australian media, you just get slapped
right
down to size if you think you're
going to be Mr Big Shoes.''
While
Hayes is seeking to connect with his
audience
in a new way, he does not want to
shun his past, describing
his Savage
Garden years as "such a happy and
beautiful
experience of my life''. "I
was so proud last week,'' Hayes
says. "I got an
e-mail from Daniel who said `congrats on
making the album you've always wanted to make'.
''
When
Savage Garden came to an end, Hayes says
he
gave up trying to explain to
people that the creative boys
from Logan were
still friends. "It's difficult when you
leave
a known entity. It's like a public
divorce really, and the
kids never want
to see the parents apart,'' he
says.
"But
throughout it all, we have the utmost respect
for
each other. His opinion is still
the one that makes my
knees shake. If
I don't know what Daniel thinks of my
record, I don't know if it's good. "He's just like my
big
brother in some
ways.''
And
there are some things that he can still learn
from
"big brother'' Jones, who lives in
Brisbane with his fiancee,
Hi-5 star
Kathleen de Leon, a performer who Hayes
says
is a far bigger celebrity than
either Savage Garden
member to many
young Australians.
"I
don't always want to be this busy. I think Daniel
has
the right idea,'' Hayes says. "And
when I'm ready to do
that, I would
want to come home.''
