Darren Hayes: Hey this is Darren from Savage Garden and I'll be with you later this evening on Open House with John Garabedian.

John Garabedian: Open House Party! It's getting exciting in here. Two things just happened. #1 Domino's just arrived with the pizza (Hello how are you doing? ) and #2 Savage Garden is on the phone, we talk to them next.

John Garabedian: Next! The doctor will see you now. Hello?

Darren Hayes: (laughs) Hey

John Garabedian: Is this Darren Hayes?

Darren Hayes: This is he.

John Garabedian: Of Savage Garden?

Darren Hayes: I'm speakin' to ya

John Garabedian: So The Animal Song..The Other Sister..We heard about this movie was coming out and we got this great soundtrack thing and there were two cuts. There was one that was like shortened for radio.."Hi, will you play this shorter version?" and then there's this long one that has this great drum thing on the beginning.

Darren Hayes: I love the drum intro.

John Garabedian: The drum intro makes it! It sets it all up!

Darren Hayes: It's the hook of the song!

John Garabedian: You're right! Why are the radio stations playing the short one?

Darren Hayes: Oh, I don't know. It's called "impatience"!

John Garabedian: Yeah, oh you can get more songs in per hour even though they aren't as good.

Darren Hayes: Yeah, well you know what? It's still fun. I prefer the long version but you know what if every artist had their way I'm sure there would be like a 13 or 14 version, you know, for every song so...

John Garabedian: Right, plus you could announce the winner of a contest and read the weather and all kinds of things there at the beginning.

Darren Hayes: (laughs) There you go!

John Garabedian: So, the drums, now those drums..I was reading the label very carefully because, to me, they sounds like an old Phil Collins like rift.., you know? The have this *makes a drum noise* this attack thing..

Darren Hayes: They're completely fake.

John Garabedian: uh, I saw that.

Darren Hayes: And they completely...they amaze me actually. It's funny I sat them..I sat this finally version down for people in our record company and a few people were like..."yeah you know the drum performance is amazing...who played that?" And we're like.."well, actually it's all programmed, it's all electronic. "

John Garabedian: It's the computer!

Darren Hayes: Well, basically you know... yeah. It's funny what you can do with technology these days.

John Garabedian: The album now is going to come along behind this first song?

Darren Hayes: Yeah, I mean really this song was...it was an amazing ride for us that first record uh and we took some time off..we took a long time off and started writing songs and we released "The Animal Song" really just to kind of say..."Hey, you know, we still exist. If you can be patient, hang in there.."

John Garabedian: How did the song get written and what's the inspiration for this whole like invigorating "I want to live" thing?

Darren Hayes: Well, you know what? To cut a long story short, we were on tour last year, Gary Marshall showed us this film called "The Other Sister" and said "would you like to write a song for it?" We thought it would be a perfect opportunity to do something in between records. And it's pretty much my take on Carla, a character from the film and I guess it's really the person I want to be sometimes when my day sucks basically. It's a piece of POP and I don't know where the hell it came from but I really enjoy listening to it. It picks me up.

John Garabedian: Now the line is "I want to live like the animals" there's something about cannonball? What's the cannonball thing?

Darren Hayes: (laughs) Actually everyone thinks it's called "The Cannonball Song", no at the start I say "when superstars and cannonballs are running through your head". That's the only time I say that word. The chorus basically is "I want to live, I want to be careless and free, run through the jungle, la la la la ..

John Garabedian: Yeah, like a..everyone thinks it's like a cannonball. Cannonball, I heard it and said "no it's animal..I want to live like an animal".

Darren Hayes: yeah, well you know (John was talking over him so I'm not sure what he said :)

(Drum beat starts for the beginning of "The Animal Song")

John Garabedian: Well, listen to those drums pumping under us right now Darren Hayes (Darren laughs). You have a wonderful weekend.

Darren Hayes: I will. Thanks for talking to me.

John Garabedian: No, thanks for talking to ME!

Darren Hayes: (laughs) Yeah.

John Garabedian: On Open House Party. Looking forward to seeing you real soon!

Darren Hayes: Cool.

John Garabedian: Over and out!

("The Animal Song" plays)

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Thanks to Sharon for the allowing me to use two of her great pictures of Darren that she took with her snappy

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