Sydney Morning Herald (AU)
Coming up roses after the Savage days
By Bernard Zuel
October 16, 2007

Picture caption: Better times ... Darren Hayes says his arrest after allegations of racial abuse - no charges were laid - was degrading and humiliating. Photo: Steven Siewert

DARREN HAYES'S Whore's Bath. Look out for that perfume in the future.

Hayes, the only genuine pop star we have created in Australia since Kylie Minogue, has got his pop career back on track with an indulgent but impressive double album this year (This Delicate Thing We've Made) and a recent sold-out show at the Royal Albert Hall. He runs his own label and has financed his concert tour, the most spectacular thing he has done since the heyday of his first band, Savage Garden.
He is rich, famous and maybe even a veritable mini-mogul.

"All I need is a perfume," he jokes, in the bar of a boutique hotel on Sydney's waterfront.

Detecting a strong aroma on Hayes, I ask if he is wearing his signature range.

"No, that's a whore's bath," he responds, before realising the appeal of such a name.

"I like that. I'm glad I thought of that. I may use that in the future."

Apart from smelling fragrant, Hayes is looking tired but well, which is pretty good for a man who describes himself as a professional hypochondriac.

"If I could take away all the years of worrying about not singing, I probably would have had a much more enjoyable life," the 35-year-old laughs.

"I just bought a book on Howard Hughes, because he is my idol. I do, I do, I relate to him."

Hughes's mania for retaining control led to his germ-phobic madness. Any similarities there, Mr Hayes? "In a sense, don't you think most performers are like that?" Hayes asks.

"Left unchecked, of course you become Howard Hughes or Michael Jackson. You become someone that nobody says no to."

Declaring himself well aware of this tendency, Hayes says he surrounds himself with people who are prepared to say no, from staff to the designer of his big flashy stage show (the U2 associate Willie Williams) to the producer of his album, who would send him back to the microphone to redo what Hayes thought was a perfectly good vocal.

There is democracy, then, although Hayes remains in control. But recently he watched as some things went out of control. An evening at a Thai restaurant in London mid-year led to accusations of racial abuse from a waiter, an arrest and police interview and the kind of newspaper headlines around the world that no quantity of Whore's Bath could make smell sweet.

The fact that police dismissed the claim and laid no charges was, not surprisingly, given far less coverage.

"The truth is boring," Hayes says. "I have two examples of this. One is that racist allegation, the other is the break-up of Savage Garden. In both instances I wasn't guilty of what I was accused of. In both instances I said that from the get-go. In the [Savage Garden] instance it took four years before it became fact that I didn't break up the band.

"In the second instance the reality is that Richard [Cullen, whom he married in London late last year] and I went to a restaurant and were horribly treated and I was not allowed to stand up for myself because I'm a public person.

[The arrest] was degrading, the most humiliating thing that's ever happened to me ... The way I've had to put it to rest though is to let it go. This tour for me, if it was to be the last thing I did, is what I'd want to be remembered for."

Darren Hayes plays at the State Theatre tomorrow night.

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