Darren Hayes Interview

DARREN HAYES

Affirmative Action
by Craig Ablitt

Much has been written about Darren Hayes in the media over the last decade. As one half of multi-million selling duo Savage Garden, significant solo success was to follow after the band split in 2001 thanks to his debut album Spin and the worldwide hit ‘Insatiable’. Despite sales of over two million copies, his label Columbia/Sony dumped the Australian singer following second album The Tension and The Spark, after combined sales failed to replicate the lofty figures of his former band. However, Hayes was suddenly a liberated man. Free from the shackles of being chained to a major label he decided to set up his own, publicly announced he was gay, entered into a civil partnership with long-term boyfriend Richard Cullen and released an ambitious double album last year with This Delicate Thing We’ve Made. Just before he embarks on an unusually intimate jaunt around the UK, we spoke to Hayes about his feelings over the album, releasing records independently and how it felt to come out in public.

“This album says that I dared to go it alone and say no to the majors, plus I did it before Radiohead!” Hayes laughs, verbally sticking two fingers up at the big labels. “It was released in August 2007 and was finished for a year before that so I’ve had a lot of time to absorb it and I’m enormously proud of it as an ensemble record. So many people played a part in its creation and as a record that dared to be individual I think it stands apart in the musical climate we experience today. I think it’s a true one off,” he says confidently.

With the album reaching what many would term a disappointing chart position of fourteen, many unaware of the mechanical workings of the music industry would point to the fact that without the backing of a major label to splash out on promotion; the album was doomed to fall short of the high ranking chart positions Hayes has become accustomed to in his impressive career thus far. However, it is of Hayes’ own opinion that the record is in a lot of respects his most successful to date.

“I’ve made about four times as much money from this album than my first solo record because I own the master,” he explains. “Sony charged me to make my albums and once I’d paid them back and the cost of massively expensive pop videos I was left with nothing. This way, I have kept 100 per cent creative control and earned some cash so I’d say I’ve got my cake and I’m eating it to be honest,” he remarks, somewhat analytically.

An aspect of his career that isn’t up for debate is Hayes’ continued public appeal as a live performer. Already he has seen a date at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall sell out with ease during the first leg of this tour and this month sees him take the unchartered territory of performing at remarkably smaller venues, which sold out so rapidly around the country; more had to be added quickly to meet demand.

“I’m ready to have the opposite experience to playing the Royal Albert Hall,” he shares. “My tour last year was a huge production and I wanted to have one last run of shows where I got to totally break things down and explore rarer songs and things I didn’t play on the big tour,” he explains, no doubt nodding towards some of the twenty five tracks from the latest album yet to be aired. “You can only do that in an intimate setting where people are willing to let you be a bit experimental.”

What wasn’t intimate however, was the way Hayes’ ‘coming out’ and subsequent civil partnership was big news in gossip rags and public domains. Although far from shocking news to his legion of fans, it became of curiosity to his followers how the usually guarded singer would take to being spotlighted by the numerous celebrity obsessed publications so many Brits appear to live their life by, but for Hayes there were more positives to be had than annoyances at the outcome.

“I think gossip magazines are the definition of hell to be honest, so I avoid them like the plague,” he says sardonically. “I pretty much despise celebrity culture so I think a lot of people’s reactions were like ‘well, duh’, plus I’ve never been ‘in the closet’ really and I told my friends and family the minute I worked it out and it’s been a process of acceptance ever since,” he points out. “I think fundamentally being true to yourself can only be a good thing anyway, so on that level it’s improved my self esteem tenfold and in the public eye it’s been very rewarding emotionally because I receive many letters from gay or questioning young people and they are so supportive and thankful of my decision to live my life openly.”