Who Magazine Online (Australia)
Darren Hayes Exclusive
Excerpts from Darren Hayes' exclusive interview in London with WHO's Natalie Trombetta.
BY NATALIE TROMBETTA
Note: The Online Article is different from the paper copy of the magazine so I'll post them separately
Posted Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Caption: Darren Hayes and Richard Cullen

Former Savage Garden frontman Darren Hayes, 34, has had a personal and professional rollercoaster year. On June 19 he married Richard Cullen, 36, a British animator, and on July 9 was dumped by Sony BMG.

Now recording a double album in London without the backing of a label, he's also about to launch a new DVD Too Close For Comfort, which is a fly-on-the-wall insight into Darren's last four years—fights with waitresses, tantrums, anguish over his sexuality. The story appears in this week's WHO; here is more of Darren's exclusive interview.

Do you feel like you are now a campaigner for same sex marriages?
I'm proud to be. I think our relationship is so beautiful and wholesome. There are so many letters that I've got from young people, who have cited my marriage as something that changed their life or helped them come out and I just thought it's not a bad thing to be associated with. I am happy to stand up for the fact that gay people aren't just one stereotype. There is a whole spectrum of different kinds of people who just happened to have been born gay. I was born gay, I resisted it for many, many years, because I believed that it was a choice, and that it was a sin. But now that I've worked out who I am it's such a relief.

How did you cope with the years of speculation about your sexuality?
I definitely copped a lot of flak over the years when people would ask about my sexuality and the truth is that I was still working it out. So I never ever lied about it, I remember just thinking I don't know. I left my first marriage because I thought that I was gay but I didn't want to be. I'd never lied about my sexuality, but I'd also never made a declaration about it partly because I think we give gay people such a hard time about fitting into society's little boxes. In many ways, I know for me as a young kid, it took me a long time to realize who I was, because the things that were important to me were denied to gay people. For example, the idea of having kids and getting married. And I think very subconsciously I really delayed my development in that area because I didn't want to be the cliché that is reported to us.

How are you feeling about the release of your DVD?
Great, actually. It's called Too Close For Comfort. It was a real bitch to make to be honest. It was going to be just some behind the scenes footage as an extra edition to the live concert. It was a young film student, a friend of mine, and he came out on the road and he was very ambitious about what he filmed, and it sort of became a film. That was 2002, at the time, what he was capturing wasn't very flattering, which is a lot of stuff which is on the film. At the time it was kind of heartbreaking, because at the end of the tour we watched it and it wasn't just me, but my American managers at the time were like, you can NEVER release this. For me it wasn't even that I minded people seeing a darker side to me, but I think I had a sense that what we'd recorded was the beginning of a story but it didn't really have an ending. If I had have released that film during that period it would have been really depressing because I didn't really have any lessons that I'd learnt. It just captured me in this crunch. So it's been a real battle to finish it. In the end, I remember Sony actually passed. They referred to it as my "other project", and just said, no. I don't think they even saw it. I kind of just kept funding it and I kept working with the director and every couple of years we would sit down and I would talk about where my life was today in relation to it. It's been an amazing year of my life, the last 12 months, just a lot of stuff makes sense. As a film, it was finished when I realized, ok, this is what I've learned. It sort of documents the beginning of a period of heartache, and the ending of that period, when I was really content.

You mention that it features some unflattering moments, were you tempted to edit them out?
I was the person who would fight for them to be in actually. And the great thing about doing this on my own was that I had complete control over putting in what ever I wanted. Certain scenes, like the fight that I had with the waitress, and just little tantrums like in the back of the car, none of it is at all axle rose territory but when you've made a career out of being a nice guy, they might have been things I didn't really need to show. Maybe I've just lost the vanity of seeing it so many times, or maybe I just don't see myself as a celebrity per se. For me it's almost like a sociological experiment because I can look at the film objectively and see, this was a person who was supposed to become something. This was a person who everyone was saying you're going to be Justin Timberlake or Ricky Martin or whoever the big male heartthrob pop star was at the time, and I was just clearly not made for it. So I kind of look at it and find it fascinating rather than upsetting.

Did you cringe watching some of your tanturms?
Sure, god yeah. I went to a screening with my mum my dad, my sister, about 20 fans and some high profile journalists from Australia and it was the first time that I'd seen it from beginning to end at a theatre. And when I was watching it I was thinking, have I made a huge mistake here, is everyone going to come up to me at the end and say, what were you thinking? Or worse still will people not like me anymore. That kind of fear of what people think of me, in some ways was something that I was attacking or addressing with the film. In admitting that and letting go of that, even the cringing, the fact that I cringe when I watch it just reminds me that I've made the right choices in my life. If someone filmed me today and I still behaved the way that I did in some of those moments, I'd be disappointed. I feel like I've grown up and I've learned from those experiences, so it's easier for me to look at it.

You seem to have come a long way, how do you view that person you once were?
I have a lot of compassion for that person. There were a lot of things going on. A lot of the time I was actually depressed. My sister finds it really hard to see the opening montage, because she said to me, oh my god I know that face, it's that face of you've woken up late, you haven't had enough sleep and you're depressed. And it's something as her brother she recognized in the footage. She knew that I was depressed at the time. And it's definitely hard to recognize that now. There were so many other things going on. There was a bit of a pr nightmare going on with the band breaking up. I think the lowest point for me was I got locked out of a very prominent radio station [wouldn't name]. I was on my way to an interview and I was something like two minutes and it was literally traffic. And they locked us out. And I remember standing there in the lobby, the garage essentially, and my manager at the time was crying, she was really upset for me. It was quite a degrading moment; it was one of those moments to just remind you that you weren't hot. I kind of had this weird Zen like attitude, it didn't upset me, I remember just thinking even back then that a career is full of peaks and valleys. And I knew that that was a valley. That I was in this period where I was getting blamed for all sorts of things, blamed for the band breaking up or blamed for not being number one or blamed for not living in Australia, whatever the reason was. There was a lot of pressure. And my personal life at the time was a nightmare. That was the period when I was really dealing with my sexuality. So most of the time that you see me in that film I was really lonely. I was really missing Australia, really missing my wife really. Because I'd left the marriage as a noble thing, I'd left going, I would never cheat on you and I would never want to be the person who has kids one day and the marriage falls apart. I felt like I'd given up a lot, I'd given up the safety of home, I'd given up a marriage, and there I was traveling around the world, and all I seemed to be doing was disappointing people. Or at least that's how I saw it in my mind. It wasn't happy times at all.

Was it difficult facing a solo career after the huge success of Savage Garden?
It's so weird. I've always felt the same. I've always felt that money was not important to me. The family that I grew up in, having money today has always been a bit of an embarrassment because it's not something that I ever strived for. When I made money from making records the first thing I did was try to level everyone else around me so that I wasn't above them. So that part of it, whether I'm selling records or not hasn't really changed. Because I never really expected to earn the kind of money that I did. I think the hardest part was the ego, the blow to the ego when situations like that radio station situation happened, where you realize that people were just being nice to you because you were successful and then suddenly phone calls don't get returned and everything was just made more difficult for you. But I think that happened really quickly. When I released my first record alone, maybe I just braced myself for the worst, but I knew that I had been a part of a phenomenon. And that even if I'd stayed in the band that wouldn't have continued. I think maybe it's been my fascination with Hollywood or famous lives. I read a lot of biographies. I think I've always understood that the people who really suffer in this business are the ones who don't know how to adapt. There are so many famous people who continue with their careers and yet aren't in the peak of their careers, you could choose a model, a pop star, an actor. But the people who seem to do it with sanity and dignity are the people who accept that you just have to evolve. And I think the people who really struggle with it, who are intensely famous and then they are suddenly living in the street or have a drug problem. I don't know, maybe I never really believed it when it was happening; the airbrushed photo was never really me. The stage persona was never really me, I looked like a different person. I had this barrier between me and all of it, not because I was pyhcic, but I think subconsciously I didn't want to become attached to it. Therefore it wasn't really part of my identity. But I wont say that it hasn't been difficult because it has in it's own way. I don't ever expect to sell as many records as I did, I never did. And it's hard when you are judged for something that you did. And sometimes I want to stand up and say hang on fucker, I already did that. What have you done?

How do you look back on the Savage Garden split?
It's so talked to death. I've definitely made my peace with that. I think we both agreed that we probably should have just had a press conference and said this is what we decided to do. It was messy, I've said this in the film, and I think that it could have been handled much more simply. But I'm over it. I'm definitely over it.

Are you in contact with Daniel Jones?
No.

You talked about evolving, what initiated that change?
I think falling from grace; I think it was a blessing in disguise. For whatever reason I was on this path where I could have become a major egomaniac and the carpet was kind of pulled out from underneath me. I remember flying home from Japan from the end of the tour [in 2002] feeling really deflated. And it's ironic because now, that record sold over a million copies and that year I think it was only me and kylie minogue as Australian artists who sold that many records, but you never heard about me. You just never heard about me because I was not cool, I wasn't considered newsworthy. And the perception that was always feed back to me was that I'd failed. I remember flying home from Japan and really just thinking, I've apparently lost everything. The relationship I was in had completely burst into flames and was a really destructive relationship, it was my first gay love and it ended very suddenly, my parents were divorcing, I had this big black list on my name. I was as single as single could be, and I didn't want to be gay and I was flying home to nothing and yet I felt like a solider. I felt so brave and it's ironic because the next record I made sold less copies than anything I'd ever done in my life, it's the best thing I ever did. It's called the tension and the spark. It's the best record I ever did. It's probably the reason why I'm not at Sony BMG anymore, I think we both realized with that record we didn't get each other anymore. But that period, the two years I spent promoting that record, I only associate it with joy. But it wasn't commercially successful. At the end of that concert tour and I'd hit zero. I didn't really have anything to lose. I remember thinking, what am I afraid of. Am I afraid that someone is going to give me a hard time or write something bad about me? A similar thing was going on with my sexuality, what am I afraid of that I am going to like somebody and it wont end up as the love of my life. And I just adopted this I don't give a fuck attitude. And I've had it ever since. I firmly believe that that is the reason why I met Richard, just having that intention and coming away from... sort of like the failed prodical son. Coming away that role and thinking I don't want it anyway.

So it was liberating?
It was really liberating. I knew making the next record, thinking, oh the record label is going to hate this record and I didn't care. To finish a record and to deliver it to them and to know essentially that there were no ballads on there, there was no love song, I kind of knew what I was walking into but it was just really joyful. It was beautiful. There's a moment in the film Jerry Maguire that I've always loved and it's that moment when he quits, and he leaves his job and everyone thinks he's crazy. I really feel like I went through that. And it's just such a beautiful feeling to just go, oh, all the things that I was afraid of and all the things that I thought mattered to me, all the accolades and the records on the wall. I don't have one gold record in my house, Daniel's got them all, all the arias, and I've never seen them. Those things really never meant anything to me anyway, but today I wouldn't have them in my house because they remind me of the past, and I don't mean that my past wasn't happy, but they remind me of past glory and I would much rather just look towards the future. I guess I feel like I quit my job, like I said, take this job and shove it and I've kind of walked down the street clicking my heels. The reason why this film is so important to me because it documents that moment, that very moment in my life when I just went, no I'm not going to be this person for you.

Were you upset when you were dropped by SONY BMG this year?
God no it came as a blessing, it came as a prayer that I prayed for every night. I mean I think we are both honest about that. I did not want to get into litigation but I did not want to have another record on that label. And to be honest I couldn't have. I'm making a double album half of which is a concept record, you know. You don't have to imagine how that scene would have been. I think it saved both of us a lot of grief. I think their tack with me was that I've sold them a lot of records and they weren't going to give me a hard time, and my tack with them was that they helped me sell a lot of records and wasn't about to get into a George Michael situation. It was a relief. I think in many ways I felt like, how am I going to get out of this deal. But it was one of those situations where it was like, you want to break up too, ok cool. Oh, thank god. That was literally what it felt like. It was kind of sad because the person who signed me isn't even at the company anymore. I was signed by Donny who was the president of the label. And I loved Donny, and he was a real supporter of me. I've actually laughed so many times because a couple of people suggested that I left Sony and then I came out and that those two things were related but they weren't at all. From the very beginning, I'm sure they all thought that I was gay, but when Donny realized I was gay, instead of shaking my hand, he was so uncomfortable with it all that he gave me a kiss on the cheek. I remember just thinking oh my god. It was almost like David Brent trying to be pc. They never gave me a hard time at all. But it's fair to say that Donny signed a pop group. And I think when savage garden ended and I continued, they kept me on because they felt they owed it to me and I've got to say that I respect them for that. But I started changing as an artist and even the idea of a record deal at them moment terrifies me. I know I eventually will probably have to get one but the idea of somebody else having the power to say no, I don't know if I want to give in to that.

What direction are you going in now with your music?
It's an electronic record and it's really colorful and cinematic and a lot of it started around the fairlight synthesizer and I started looking at some of the pioneers of that instrument like Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush. And I looked at those kind of records that they made and just said this is the period of my life where I continue to be brave and I'm making an artists record. It's a double record, there will be singles on it, I'm not an idiot, and I want to be played on the radio too. But it reminds me of everything from queen to ELO. It's just what I do, it's the best of what I do.

How do you think your fans will receive it?
With relief to be honest. Amongst the die-hard fans, the last record I made is their favorite thing ever. And we have this joke, at my shows I used to play this regurgitate song at the start of the show, and the lyrics are 'I like your old stuff better than your new stuff'. By the end of the tour they were holding up placards saying 'I like your new stuff better than your old stuff'. But I think they are smart. I think the record buying public are smart and they want an artist to evolve and for me, I'm not interested in people who want me to make the same records that I've made before. If it means that I have a smaller audience because of that, I'm going into it 100% accepting that. I don't need the money, this job is a blessing. It's the best job in the whole world, I adore coming into the record studio every day. I think a new label, I have a whole new team around me, I think it's very symbolic about starting again and I kind of have a good feeling about it. I don't expect to sell the kind of records that I used to but I think it will sell more records than the last one because it will be with a label that loves it for starters. And there are no assumptions about me any more, I'm not apologizing for something that I'm not, and I'm not just talking about sexuality, but with this record I'm not starting off saying, I know you really want this, but I'm that. If there were people in the audience who secretly hoped they could marry me one day, if I've lost those people, it's cool. Because I don't think they are in it for the right reasons anyway. I still want people to find me attractive, I still want to be flirtatious and I still want to be an artist in every sense. I'm an entertainer and I'm desperate for attention just like every pop star is but maybe now if feels like there is a lot less pressure.

Filming the DVD was obviously a cathartic experience, but why did you decide to release it to the public?
Probably to clear away the cobwebs in a lot of ways. Savage garden, I'm so over it and yet in the film it's probably the first time I've ever publicly really commented and it's the last time I ever really want to comment on it. But it was kind of nice to say, definitively, this is what happened. Move on. The same thing with that period of my life and that darkness and the same thing with Sony. I've had all these things on hold that I couldn't do that I wasn't allowed to really, and ever since I parted ways with them, I planned a tour. I played to 30,000 people here this year, without a record out, without a single, without a label, just because I said, I want to go on tour. I played the Sydney opera house because I went, I want to play the SOH. I released this film, I started recording this album. All of these things have happened in my life since I parted ways with not just Sony, but the stigma associated with the band, parted ways with anyone's preconceptions about me or what they thought about my life. In many ways it was just clearing of the desk. Next year, it's no accident that it's been ten years. I probably wont be playing hits for a while. I wont be, I've done it to death. I'm definitely moving into that period. I look up to Neil Finn and Nick Cave.

You and Richard recently attending Elton's John's wedding, how was it?
Beautiful.

Was that before or after your wedding?
After we got married, but before we signed the civil partnership. We went there sort of married but no one knew. I told Elton. For somebody so famous, he was incredibly personable. He was greeting every guest that came. Great, it was the first time Richard had hung out with me in those circles and I wasn't quite sure how that would be. Everybody was sweet to us. It was surprisingly romantic, and it had a similar feeling, slightly more flowers than our wedding. But it had a similar feeling, it was very much a celebration, it cost them a fortune, and their speeches were quite politically charged and emotional and affirming.

How do you know Elton?
I know Elton because he went out of his way to support my record the tension and the spark. When Sony were flaccid about it, he wrote a piece in billboard, and I think in interview magazine. I sent it to him and I had this voicemail on my phone, saying, Darren, it's Elton, now listen, I got your record and it is fucking fantastic. I love it. I'm so proud of you. I couldn't believe it. I played the message to all my friends. He invited me to Vegas and in front of a room full of famous people he said ladies and gentlemen this man has made the best record this year, and I just blushed. I can't say that it did much to help the label's perception of the record, but to my heart as an entertainer, to know that this person stood up for me in the industry it made a huge impression. Elton has a reputation for.. He's got a reputation, but he's got balls, and he stands up for things that he believes in.

Disappointed that gay unions still aren't recognized in Australia?
Yeah, I am. I'd like to be able to say to Richard, if we ever felt like it we could move home to Australia but I can't. Here in this country, I can apply for British citizenship because I married him, I get all of the rights that Richard gets, I have the health care rights, I have the pension, if I was dying in hospital in an emergency ward he could come and visit me. There are so many basic human rights that you inherit when you get married and yeah, I think it's disgraceful actually. I'm just thankful that I met an Englishmen. It's disappointing. The thing that I'm starting to realize is that, by making it a part of the legislature that a marriage is between a man and a woman, you are actually saying to society that this relationship I'm in isn't valid. And that's a really hard thing. How do you think my mum feels about that? This is a pretty progressive society. I think myself very lucky to be Australian, I think we are very forward thinking, and I quietly think it will be something that changes. I was born in a country where aboriginal people couldn't vote until well into the sixties, can you believe that. I'm not comparing sexuality to race but what will compare it to is discrimination. It's legalized discrimination.

From the Nov. 13, 2006 issue of Who Magazine

Return to Articles Menu Page

Return to Darren Hayes Fans Homepage