April 18, 2025 • 42 mins
In this episode, we talk to Tim Rogers. Best known as the frontman for rock band You Am I, Rogers was born in Kalgoorlie, WA, but lived all over the country growing up, spending time in Adelaide, Sydney and Canberra, and now, rural Victoria. The 55-year-old has lived a big life so far as a songwriter, raconteur, talking head and author. He's had his struggles and his joys but has remained, as always, sartorially splendid. He speaks with Good Weekend senior writer Konrad Marshall about addiction, mental health, footy, cycling, gardening, and his current tour with the band, celebrating the 30-year anniversary of its seminal sophomore album, Hi Fi Way.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:08):
Hi, I'm Konrad Marshall and from the Sydney Morning Herald
and The Age. Welcome to Good Weekend Talks, a magazine
for your ears, featuring in-depth conversations with fascinating people from
sport and politics, science and culture, business and beyond. Every week,
you can download new episodes in which top journalists from
across our newsrooms talk to compelling people about the definitive
(00:30):
stories of the day. In this episode, we talk to
Tim Rogers, best known as the front man for rock
band Umi. Rogers was born in Kalgoorlie, WA, but lived
all over the shop growing up, spending time in Adelaide,
Sydney and Canberra and now rural Victoria. He's lived a
big life so far as a songwriter and raconteur, a
(00:51):
talking head and an author, a husband and father and
mate to many. He's had his struggles and his joys,
but has remained, as always, Sartorially. Splendid. I was lucky
enough to go along and see him perform last night
at the Forum in Melbourne, as part of a Umi
tour for the 30 year anniversary of their seminal sophomore album,
Hi Fi Way. And it's my distinct pleasure to have
(01:13):
Tim here in the studio for a chat between shows.
We'll just have to keep the chat alight to protect
his voice so he can blow the roof off the
joint again tonight.
S2 (01:22):
I thought you meant with content to give it light.
S1 (01:24):
It can be both.
S2 (01:25):
Absolutely not. Not too good on small talk, but I
am discursive, so it could go anywhere. We'll find if.
S1 (01:33):
We get in.
S2 (01:33):
Dark. If we get into libellous territory, let me know,
because I'm. I'm very broke.
S1 (01:40):
Welcome, Tim. Now, I always tell people when I'm trying
to get them to host an episode of Good Weekend
talks to kind of start off with something a little
bit quirky, maybe even like try to draw some personal
connection to the question. So I'm going to get my
bit of self-indulgence out of the way here. I had
the briefest interaction with you once, 16 years ago. Completely one.
S2 (01:59):
Way. These stories never end.
S1 (02:01):
Well, this one is. This one is beautiful, I promise.
My big brother Cameron was getting married to his wife, Danni.
I had to give a speech for him. And to
do so, I started reaching out to a bunch of
famous people to just see if I could get a
little well-wish. You know, something. Something from people that Cameron admired.
So he loved Paul Keating, but the ZPM wouldn't respond.
(02:23):
He very politely declined.
S2 (02:25):
He sends his best, by the way.
S1 (02:26):
Exactly. Um. Horse racing. He was a big fan of, like,
the trainer Lee Freedman. So Lee Freedman got back to
him and was like, sounds like you've backed a winner. Um,
which I thought was great.
S2 (02:37):
Yes. The equine types always draw the, um, less subtle
of of metaphors.
S1 (02:42):
And then he loved you, am I? And so I
reached out through your record company, and I didn't expect
anything back, but.
S2 (02:50):
As did I, because we've been on so many different
record companies, we've been dropped by more record labels than
I've had hot dinners. But anyway. Proceed. Conrad.
S1 (02:56):
Well, here's what arrived in my inbox, like only days
later to Cameron and Danny. I love, love, I love 12%
of the songs. It inspires 4% of the poetry and 27%
of the great crochet works. I love the way it
makes beefy blokes quiver and ladies accept invitations to hardcore
punk gigs. It really is all that matters. Along with
(03:19):
pistachio nuts and chianti and the smile of a child
and puppies. I wish I could extend my well-toned arms
around you both in hearty congratulations on your marriage, but
I am shackled in a well-appointed dungeon near Mount Macedon.
My monkey captors and I, in a rare moment of
understanding and clemency, are considering early release in both your
(03:39):
honours congratulations and onward, young lovers, into the greatest chapter
in the book. Love, Tim Rogers.
S2 (03:47):
Well, that's. That sounds like me. Hmm.
S1 (03:49):
Fucking. Thank you. Thank you so much. Like, truly, that's
just an insanely kind thing to do for someone that
you've never met, have no connection with. Random request through
through a PR. And I guess the question I wanted
to ask is where does that kind of generosity come from? Like,
did your parents instill a certain, I don't know, politeness
(04:11):
or kindness in you as a child? Did something shape
the way that you are? Because I'm assuming that's not
the only random act of kindness or giving.
S2 (04:20):
Um, I think erring on the side of kindness is
a good start, and that's the only real edict I
have for living. I guess my parents were kind. They
occasionally weren't kind to each other, but they were actually. Yeah,
they were f they were inquisitive people. They admired intelligence
(04:44):
and humor above all. And social standing wasn't at all
important to them. And when because my parents are from
suburban Melbourne Uh, when we moved to Kalgoorlie just before
I was born, they were confronted with a new hierarchy.
You know, the western frontier, the Wild West and and
(05:05):
within the mining community out there. So all their, uh,
the social with their bureaucracies or just, um, hierarchies that
they grew up with were thrown out of the water
and now the new kids in town and had to
navigate that. And I guess I do have I don't
guess I do have strong memories of them socially. And
(05:27):
they were good. They asked questions and they were they
were funny. They were really funny people. And my mum
definitely still is. My dad was a very funny fella
until bad health kind of took over. Um, extracted all
that from him. So, yeah, I'm glad you asked that question,
because I'll think about that at least today and possibly
a bit of tomorrow.
S1 (05:49):
I always wonder about it because you often hear footy
players will say something like, you know, they they will
stick around, uh, sign every autograph, take every selfie for
ages because some player did that for them when they
were eight and they're like, I've got to replay it.
I've got to repay it.
S2 (06:05):
You know, having a chat with your mates. Um, Shane
and Jackie Riewoldt yesterday about that, um, sensation where you
can't walk a couple of meters without somebody asking something
of you as sporting folks and folks on television particularly
do in this town, in this country. And, uh, a
(06:27):
couple of young friends of mine who play for North, uh,
we talk about it a bit because the demands on
their time and their attention and their patience are so
wildly more than anything I've ever had to deal with.
And I do keep that in mind that, uh, just
(06:47):
as a little discursive aside, last night, because of my
recent lifestyle changes, I need to leave venues straight away.
I just can't be around, um, people. And so I
race out of there. And after the 2.5 hour show
last night, some folks found a way of communicating with
(07:09):
me through social media. Really angry that I didn't have
the time to talk to them after the show, and
I felt that I should reply to them all, which
is not what you should do. Any person in entertainment
will tell you or in the public eye at whatever level.
But I said, look, I actually have to do it
(07:30):
for to stay living. And the three minutes I would
have given you could have 30 hours later, I'd be
in some room taking drugs. So it's not going to happen. Um,
but generally during the day, if it's not a threat,
(07:51):
and if it's not a threat to work, it takes
very little. And there's levels of it, definitely with sports people, actors,
people on television where there's a real familiarity with you
that strangers will approach you because they feel that they
know you. And to a point they kind of do.
(08:11):
But with someone, at someone at my level, you just
look a little weird. People look at you oddly because
I look a little Dickensian and just sort of smile
and and if people want to chat, that's absolutely fine
during the day, but move on. It doesn't take very much.
S1 (08:27):
Yeah. Just to protect that space. I wanted to go
back just in your life briefly to the teenage years,
because when you're reading through a bio of Tim Rogers,
two little things stand out as kind of incongruous with
the person that I assume you are.
S2 (08:44):
Good use of incongruous Conrad.
S1 (08:46):
You're the shaggy, flamboyant troubadour. And then I see these
bio points and it's like school captain in high school.
And then off to off to uni. Not just uni
but Anu in Canberra and to study law. Yeah. Did
you ever kind of think that you were really going
to stick to that studious, formal path in life?
S2 (09:07):
Oh, I wanted to because it just was attractive and
it was performative because I wanted to be a barrister
and music, which was my one overriding love. It just
didn't seem possible that you could do anything but play
every couple of weeks at university bars for parties. Yeah.
(09:28):
Making a career out of it or a pursuit just
seemed complete fantasy, right? So I went into law school
because my mum met a young woman on a bus
who said that she studied Japanese studies and law at Anu,
and I jumped on that Preceding all that, though, in
(09:49):
year 11, I got kicked out of school for getting
drunk at school, smoking pot and also getting in fights.
And so I was thrown out of school at the
start of year 11, and for a couple of weeks
I was looking for jobs around Castle Hill, Baulkham Hills
in north western Sydney where I lived, and I just
(10:10):
didn't have any skills at all. And so I begged
to get back into school and really studied hard. The
school captaincy thing, I still think was a bit of
a joke. Um, but, uh, I'd only been at the
school for two years previous, so I was used to
being a bit of a people pleaser. Um, a little
(10:32):
bit of a rascal element, which was maybe more to
do with the friends than the company I was keeping.
But that was all based around music. All my friends
were through music or through musical theatre. So the incongruity
of being school captain and Captain study. I actually don't
see them as being incongruous, because I think there's a
cliche about rock and roll musicians or folk musicians, country musicians,
(10:53):
as being lascivious and, um, reprobates and a bit thick
and wrecking hotel rooms and all that. Which is is
a cliche for a reason, but I think that your
duty as a performer is just to be interesting and
to be interested, because if you're going to write about living,
(11:14):
you need to understand how other people live to make
your art better. And if you're not trying to make
your art better. Well, I personally, I think you should
get out of the way. It would appear that most
performers don't think the same way, because there's a level of, uh,
(11:37):
people make a living doing it. And a lot of
performers think, well, this is our catalog that we love
and people love. And so we'll go out and play
this and go and eat nice meals and staying nice hotels. And, um,
even though we're doing a 30th anniversary tour of a
second record at the moment, uh, we we actually can't
(11:59):
do that. And we have to keep creating because that's
the reason pretty much why I'm living. It's I can
be a better parent, a better partner if I'm creating.
And we're completely broke. And so. Um, why I mention
that is that we're extremely grateful to be doing this
(12:21):
tour and where the perception is with the rock and
roll musician that you're blasé about everything. But, you know,
most musicians I know are worth their salt. The ones
who I really respect are so grateful to be able
to be playing, because rock and roll music's kind of
marginal as far as popular culture goes these days, you know,
I mean, people will own a couple of Foo Fighters
(12:42):
records and and good on them. Wonderful people. But for
nerds like us, um, we feel that it's always potluck,
that we managed to play the forum a couple of nights,
or play the tote or play anywhere. See, I told
you I can get discursive.
S1 (13:00):
Absolutely you can. Well, let's.
S2 (13:02):
Tell you about my recent trip to Afghanistan.
S1 (13:05):
No, um, you left school? Of course. Um, struggling with
ill mental health.
S2 (13:12):
I left university.
S1 (13:13):
University? Yes. I heard you talking about that on an
excellent podcast with Richard Kingsmill. Um, about, uh, I guess
how you felt like you were likely misdiagnosed as schizophrenic.
Bouts of hospitalisation, panic attacks, anxiety, um, kind of later
recognition of what would be obsessive compulsive disorder. Um, really
(13:37):
just a lot of stuff that the world probably didn't
have a good lexicon for at the time and sorta
does now.
S2 (13:45):
Particularly the diagnosis, because I thought then that's that's life
over for me. I was 20, quit my second university
law course, and just got on all the meds for
what was diagnosed as as schizophrenia, and I was just
zombified for a couple of years while the band was starting.
(14:06):
And really looking back at it now, it was it
was an anxiety disorder, which snowballed because I was living alone,
studying a degree that was really above me. Uh, I
was surrounded by a lot of drugs just because university
life at that time and probably eight, three times a year,
(14:33):
you know, it was just all this perfect storm of,
of very bad mental health. And but there was that.
And now I'm kind of at peace with it because
I go back to Canberra or go back to the
University of New South Wales or Macquarie Uni, and, and
I can walk through and think, well, maybe one day
I'll come back to, to study and it'll be really
enjoyable and lay all those, you know, those horrible, horrible times. Well,
(14:59):
I've kind of laid them to rest, but I talk
about it only because, uh, when I heard about other
people's experiences with that kind of sensation and those episodes,
it was the I didn't need medication after that. Well,
I did, but to know that other people that I
liked had had similar experiences meant so much to me.
(15:21):
I'm not an alien.
S1 (15:25):
Um, you alluded to it in the show last night.
Like I took note of it. You at least one
of the lines that you said to the audience was,
when you're having those strange thoughts, please bear in mind
that everyone has them. Some people are just better at
hiding them. Yeah.
S2 (15:41):
It's, uh, we do get the children of folks that
shows who write letters to me and want to talk
about mental health stuff, and it shows, and it always
seems to be at 4:30 a.m. in an all nighter somewhere.
And I'd noticed someone really wanting to have a chat
(16:02):
about it. And I thought, 430 when you got a
nose full and a belly full is probably not the
best time to talk about it. But, uh, yeah, it
seems to a lot of people out there who who want,
if not advice, because I don't have a lot of
advice to give, but I can just talk about my
own experience and that there is. Uh, you can get
(16:23):
through it. And in my case, I did get through it,
although I'm still have rigmaroles that you won't notice. Yeah,
for my ways of getting through. Um.
S1 (16:35):
Do you have methods?
S2 (16:37):
Oh, yeah.
S1 (16:37):
Yeah. Like routines or habits.
S2 (16:39):
Counting things I avoid, situations I avoid and but not
crippling as they used to be. And I just view
them as idiosyncrasies at this point and need to explain
to people when it is perceived that I'm being rude
or nasty, when really I just have to explain, excuse me,
this is my way of getting through a day or
(16:59):
getting through the next five minutes. So with folks who
have the bad fortune of worse conditions and worse afflictions,
that's that needs to be treated differently. And so why
I talk about is that there's a very big difference
between being blue and being melancholy and depression. And there's
(17:23):
a very big difference between being nervous, which we all
get nervous and we should. It's a it's a good
response and anxiety. And I think that, uh, referring to
everything as being an anxious situation or a depressive situation
is really dangerous. And to understand what the difference is,
(17:44):
I think is important and I don't know the lexicon
of of mental affliction or mental illness, but, um, we
can kind of when there's the opportunity to talk about it,
I think it can be helpful for someone who's at
least perceived. And I do feel as if I've climbed
(18:06):
a hill or crawled up a big hill and and
coming down the other side. And that that only happened
three months ago, you know, going into hospital rehab because
for decades, the only way I dealt with it was
to drink myself into complete oblivion. Um, and that was
(18:27):
the only way of dealing with it. Wake up in
the morning. You're anxious. Get straight to the bottle if
you didn't have to drive. I hate flying, so anytime
I get on a plane would just get absolutely poleaxed
fully on a plane. And, you know, of course, what's
going to happen next. It means bad shows, means you're
just putting stress on your body and your mind. And
so you're you're completely buggered. And so I admitted myself
(18:52):
to hospital three months ago, uh, on a free programme
that my GP suggested because he said, Rogers, you're you're
you're buggered. And, um, so it happens every if it
happens every couple of years where there's a wake up call,
tap on your shoulder, be it from a deity or,
or a medical professional saying you need to change the
(19:13):
way you do things. Take that advice on and don't
try and tough it out.
S1 (19:17):
Good advice. Let's talk about something fun. The footy. You're, uh.
You're a North Melbourne tragic.
S2 (19:33):
There's nothing tragic about passion. Conrad. Okay, let's. I don't
like that term. Pretty tragic. I understand what you mean. Yeah,
but it's passion and enthusiasm.
S1 (19:44):
I used to call myself a long suffering Richmond supporter,
but now I'm. Now I'm an insufferable Richmond supporter, you know. Good. Yeah.
S2 (19:51):
The the. Because working in the arts, I get people
who will on their first meeting with me, go. You know,
I'm not into footy and I go, I actually don't care,
I get it. Why you're not? Because when you're surrounded by,
particularly in this town, I get it. You don't have
to be my best friends. Most of them aren't. Wouldn't
(20:14):
even watch a game with me. However, it's a footy
is a wonderful conduit to great things. I mean, being
at games and you can have your your meth dealer
on your left and your brain surgeon on your right.
You know, the socio fluidity of Australian rules football and
It's really unique in world sport.
S1 (20:35):
Surgeons often behave like the meth dealers as well when
you get them in a close game, you know.
S2 (20:41):
Isn't it funny? Yes. Your question.
S3 (20:45):
I beg your pardon?
S1 (20:46):
That's all right. So I think in your book you
said that until you were 13, all you wanted to
be was a footy player. And then from the time
you were 14, all you wanted to be was in
a band. Yeah. So I guess it was just a
long way of asking, like how you fell in love
with footy and what changed at 14?
S2 (21:01):
Uh, well, my dad was a footballer and then a
footy umpire.
S3 (21:04):
Right? Yep.
S2 (21:05):
He became an umpire when I think when I was
born because, uh, he needed to get some extra scratch. Uh,
great player. And I think my love was from him. Um,
Kalgoorlie as a kid. It was just all around Perth.
It was all around Adelaide. Uh, I wasn't I'm a
(21:25):
better footballer now than I was as a kid. But dad,
even though he was an Essendon Senescence. Porter. Uh. I
didn't find out that he was until I was about 13.
Because he was very quiet about it. Just wasn't very, um. Uh,
think of the word at the moment. It wasn't all
(21:47):
about the team. It was about the beauty of the game.
S3 (21:49):
Right.
S2 (21:49):
And the humor of it. Even though he was a
very big kind of tough guy. Send half or two
and a half back. He only told the funny stories
about it, or stories with pathos about it, as did
my mum, because she'd tag along and see games and
she'd talk about people in the crowd and and same
with cricket teams. And that's carried over because I still
(22:11):
play cricket now. And always looking for the opportunities for
one to play well because there's a I've got a
competitive streak and I like to win games. But that's
kind of I acquiesce that desire to perform well with
(22:31):
Let's all have a wonderful experience together, particularly now. And
so when I've got a 17 year old sledging me
at silly mid-on and I'm striding out to bat, I
am just like someone just took the rug out of it. Really?
You're going to sledge grandpa here, you know, and get
(22:51):
really personal and nasty and. And then after the game,
really want to ask about, you know, what were Oasis
like or what was Kurt Cobain like and like. Yeah.
All right, kid, let me tell you. Just can you
apologize for everything you said when I was out there?
S1 (23:06):
So if you could zoom back in time, would you
be the the footy star or the. And you just
you flat out had your choice. Would you be the
the footy star or the rock star. Would you be
the the frontman or the full forward?
S2 (23:20):
I think I'm better suited at being a musician, um,
being a creative person. Not to say that you can't
be creative as a as a sports person. I've been
mean really, really knocked out a couple of players I'm
become friendly with in the past couple of years who
are got these wonderfully creative minds and yet see him
on the ground and it's there just seem like automatons
(23:44):
or these sort of competitive beasts, but then one on one,
beautifully creative. Um, no. I never had the body for
playing competitive sport. I'm quite breakable, although my last game
of footy for Wood End Masters, it was last year. Um,
and it was an intra club game, and I was
(24:06):
surprised that I actually still had a bit of toe
and could find space and take grabs and and really
loved it, but I just cannot afford to bust a
finger at the moment.
S3 (24:17):
Yeah, of course.
S2 (24:18):
And then one of my great mates, captain of the club,
busted his knee last week and he's out of work
for months. And so, um, rock and roll is ruining
my sporting career again.
S1 (24:30):
So you're on tour right now celebrating the 30th anniversary
of Hi Fi Way.
S3 (24:34):
Which.
S1 (24:35):
Was released in 1995. Just prior to recording that you
were touring with, um, Soundgarden in America just before Soundgarden
blows up and becomes Soundgarden, sort of. As we.
S3 (24:46):
Were really.
S2 (24:47):
Big on that tour, they, um, they could have been
we heard every venue they were playing, 20,000, 15,000 seat arenas.
But the whole talk was that they could have been
doing 50 or 60,000, but they were that kind of band.
They wanted to they didn't want to play bigger venues.
They wanted to play. That was the biggest they wanted
(25:09):
to get. And it was a real it was conflictual
for them because there were four of the smartest, funniest,
most generous people I've ever met in my life. And yet, um,
they had a real struggle with the band getting bigger,
and it was always that they'd look out in the
crowd and see jocks and as as jock ish, as
(25:32):
someone like Chris looked like, and Matt Cameron and Ben
and Kim, this stocky big dudes. But they were very
lack of a better term, art artists, and they just
wanted to talk about anything other than us bro kind
of stuff or jock kind of stuff. And so they
(25:55):
had a real problem with looking out and seeing those crowds.
And that was a big lesson for us, because it
taught us really early that no amount of success is
going to make you happy. I mean, the whole specter
of those tours was Cobain over everything, because we keep
running into friends of Kurt's, and we play with Nirvana
a couple of times, but it was running into friends
(26:15):
of his at the Screaming Trees or Mudhoney dudes, or, um,
a lady actually, who was at our show last night,
flew out from Seattle to see our show last night, and, uh, Duh.
It was part of that music scene in that time and, um,
even that whole town's music scene. What we got from that,
because we were hanging out there quite a bit and
(26:37):
made some lifelong friends, was that ethics is is kind
of on par with how great you are musically.
S3 (26:44):
Mm.
S2 (26:45):
Ethics, humor and your musical ability or just your musical shtick?
S3 (26:52):
Yeah.
S2 (26:53):
And the rest, as far as climbing up the ladder.
You know, as we know, some of the most successful
people we know just find it unbearable and have topped
themselves or harmed themselves. And what's the lesson there, kids?
You know, it's dangerous to to think of it as
a competitive as a sport. The creation of art. And
(27:18):
it's a real worry. My daughter, who's about to put
out her first record in New York City, where she's
lived since she was ten and her worries how it's
perceived and that's another part to it. Climbing up the rungs.
I'm sure she'd love to get 300 shows and play
with her favorite groups and get her songs on radio,
(27:39):
but her main concern is the criticism that comes with
her being extraordinarily talented, very intelligent young woman who also
happens to have a mother's gorgeous good looks and that
she's she's got a target on her back, you know.
S3 (27:54):
Mhm.
S2 (27:55):
And she's 24 and I just love her to be
able to just write her brilliant songs and make them
in her stepdad and her mom's studio and, you know,
just destroy the world. But she's got that extra concern
on her. And that's a burden I don't think is
it's really unfortunate.
S3 (28:13):
When.
S1 (28:14):
When you released Hi Fi Way, it went to number
one in the Australian charts and.
S3 (28:19):
For.
S2 (28:19):
About a second.
S3 (28:20):
Mhm.
S1 (28:21):
And about 18 months later is hourly daily, which also
goes to number one. Many of the sort of charts
that try to, um, rank the great Australian albums of
all time sort of have both of them up there
quite high. No one can really settle on which one's better.
But what strikes me about it is it's just amazing
(28:44):
that you were able to produce these two things within
such close proximity to one another. And I just wondered,
is that like. It surprised me. But is it actually surprising?
Or when you're in a kind of state of flow
and the juices are are going, should you expect great
things to come in clusters like that? Like, were you
(29:05):
guys just on a run?
S3 (29:07):
Ah.
S2 (29:09):
I think mating. Well, rusty joining the band opened up
everything for me. My brother, who was the first drummer
in Umai, was an incredible musical brain, but he we
were also still not very close at that time. And
so I wasn't introduced to his record collection, unfortunately, because
it was the best of all time. And Ex-drummer Marc
(29:32):
was a phenomenal musician and he's a phenomenal musician, but
we just didn't have that kinship. When I met Russ,
and he was such a encyclopedia of popular culture that
my learning and my ability to and my chutzpah and
putting in little hooks and changes accelerated enormously because I
(29:58):
just felt this real great freedom. And Andy was developing
as a player equally as quickly. We were playing so
many shows and meeting so many people and having odd
experiences generally overseas. That was where because you'd play a
toilet one day and then a stadium the next, and
it couldn't help but feed into that and it will
(30:23):
feed our creativity. Was exposed to a lot of records,
a lot of literature, and and just my demands on
myself went up. The lyrics were the big ones. For me.
Musical performances was one thing, but the pursuit of actually
writing something of substance around about the time of our
third album, that's when it became important to me on
(30:45):
Hi Fi Way. I just didn't even think about it
because I thought, no one listens anyway. They just want
windmills and rusty drum fills and Andy's bass runs and
a bit of screaming and angst. And I'm a Berlin chair.
Lean on me until I break I still don't know
what it means, but the it doesn't strike me as
being very insightful. Or for the time. I mean, you
(31:08):
listen to a Joni Mitchell's For the Roses or Hejira
and it doesn't quite stack up. But now the demands
on myself as a lyricist are his ERA, or Don
Juan's Reckless Daughter. And not just angst and screaming.
S1 (31:25):
You're playing both of these albums, of course, in full, um,
on this tour. Um, so you're probably more familiar with
them right now than you've ever been?
S3 (31:35):
Yeah.
S1 (31:36):
Do you have a favorite musically or personally, like can
you choose between your children?
S2 (31:42):
Oh, I feel like someone else's children on this tour.
They're not. Um, I wrote them, but this tour is
very much about people still coming to see us. Now,
why I say that? I guess the experience of going
off and singing with the hard ons for the past
five years has been such an adventure, and one day
it'll be an education, but sort of stepping into their
(32:05):
lives and their history and and definitely with crowd expectations
for them and feeling so much hatred from a very
small part of the crowd, each night has been really something.
And it's it was enormously upsetting to me at the
start because I love the hard ons and I just
(32:25):
have loved them for so long. And when they asked me,
I thought, I get a chance to play with my heroes,
and then getting vitriol from people right to my face
was some I don't get it. I absolutely get it.
But I didn't want to experience it because I love
those dudes. And so coming back to you and me
is a bit like, okay, this is where I grew up.
(32:49):
This has given me everything I have in life. And
but these songs are mean more to other people than
they do to me. But I in this kind of, um,
echo chamber, even though I can't see ten feet in
front of me, I get the feeling that people are
really enjoying it. And you can actually feel that on stage. Uh,
(33:10):
and with the benefit of not having a bottle of
whiskey down my throat in a couple of albums, I
can really feel it Before this year, I've always just
felt enthusiasm as some kind of antagonism, which is maybe
my immaturity or drunkenness or whatever it was. And but
now you just feel this, um, rush of and whether
it's sentimentality for those folks, and if it is, then
(33:32):
that's wonderful. But I can assure you, it's not sentimentality
for us, even though we're playing these old songs, because
our friendship within you and I is a lot stronger
in 2020, whatever year it is five than 1995. It
was a very giddy and silly and and drunky and
druggy and exhilarating back then. But it's it's a lot
(33:58):
deeper now. And there's, um, sometimes it's an obligation to
get to an airport or you're not really feeling like
getting somewhere, but we really look out for each other.
And any decision, if any decision, was going to really
threaten our relationship as friends. We wouldn't do it. And
(34:20):
I do love that about us. And I'd like that
to be perceptible, because in a time where there's very
few people you can sort of trust in a public forum,
I've always put my trust in rock and roll bands,
for better or worse, because it can lead you down
terrible paths. But, um, you just brought into this very
(34:45):
passionate and intimate circumstances, and then you're cast adrift, and
then you're back together again, and then you're cast adrift
within a group or within your relationship with an audience
and with your muse. It's all very intense and then
very dull and very intense, very dull. And you've really
got to keep your soul. And so you really do
(35:05):
lean on each other. It's a wonderful little microcosm I
think it should be.
S3 (35:10):
I got a.
S1 (35:11):
Gearshift question here, quite literally, actually. understand you're a cyclist.
S3 (35:16):
Ah.
S2 (35:17):
I like cycling. Just socially, I'd not. I don't, um,
don the gear and and I don't have a a
racing bike.
S1 (35:25):
Oh.
S3 (35:26):
Damn it. Yeah, I.
S1 (35:27):
Had read that you wrote the, like, cover story for
the inaugural issue of.
S3 (35:33):
Life magazine.
S1 (35:34):
Ten years ago or so. I was convinced, like, at 56,
that you were a mammal. A middle aged man in Lycra.
S2 (35:40):
I'm 55.
S3 (35:40):
Riding.
S1 (35:41):
Around.
S3 (35:41):
Through the country roads.
S2 (35:43):
And I'm a bit. I just don't like the shouting
and shouting.
S3 (35:46):
Yeah.
S2 (35:47):
And I'm a solo rider. I don't ride with anyone else.
I ride with my wife sometimes. But where we live,
there's so many hills, it's a little treacherous. And also you,
if you ride at any pace, there's a high possibility
you'll be taken out by a seven foot gray kangaroo.
And the irony being a North Melbourne supporter would just be, too.
It's it's too great. Um, one day I might, uh.
(36:09):
But no, I don't I don't enjoy it. Just when
cyclists shouted at each other, it was like, please, you know,
can you just talk when you're sipping your lattes and
your but I don't I'm not someone who slags people
getting up in that gear, because I have a collection
of 440 guernseys and baseball jerseys, and I love sporting memorabilia,
(36:32):
so I can't really say anything about people in Lycra.
But you'll see me in corduroy shorts and and inappropriate footwear.
S1 (36:40):
One final one. So the the creative life is obviously
a privileged one in many ways. You work with music
and words and performance. You speak, you opine, um, but
there's chaos and crisis probably in all of that too,
because you're always trying to make the most of this
sense of freedom, artistic freedom that you've got. I'm just wondering,
(37:02):
what do you do outside of all of that, that
sort of centers you or grounds you? Um, are there
things that you do to keep calm, to.
S3 (37:13):
Keep yourself steady.
S2 (37:14):
Just day jobs. Really? Um, landscaping and lawn mowing and dishwashing.
Occasional bar work. That's. That's pretty grounding. You know, when
you're cleaning toilets at 2 a.m.. That's pretty grounding. Um,
reading fiction is my big love. It's difficult to maintain
a day job when you do what I do. Next week,
(37:37):
I was going to start a job at home, and
I got a TV acting gig in sight, which I'm
very grateful for. It's a great part, but the I'll
have to go and do that. And I couldn't take
the the job. Um, why did I mention that? I
think I'm just vaingloriously sort of name dropping, but, um,
(37:57):
you stay pretty grounded. Just being middlingly unsuccessful. You know,
the living where I do, I think helps, because no
one really cares what you do. It depends if you've
got something to contribute to the community. and they're interested
for a couple of seconds, you know. Oh, yeah, playing
a show. But, you know, you've got a good story
(38:18):
to tell. That's. No one really cares. And, uh, but
I do notice it, particularly with my wife, who. Works
in ballet. She's a choreographer. After being a dancer for
so long with the Australian Ballet, and now she's traveling
the world, and, uh, we talk about it a lot
about where our creative life fits with just living. But
(38:45):
it does fit because that is our life. We view
going for a walk in the morning as a creative act.
What is not a creative act is, I think, is
accepting the news cycle, um, kind of going spending a
lot of time on social media. I don't find there's
much creative about that. There could be. I'd be happy
(39:08):
to be proven wrong because it gave me an excuse
to scroll, you know, to Google myself this afternoon. But
but we just have made our creative loss part of
our everyday life, even in our little town. Population 499.
Going for a cup of tea with a neighbour. You
(39:31):
make it fun and and creative, and anyone who wants
to join in on that, they can. I think it's
it's not difficult to be perceived as being one eccentric
or an idiot these days, because, I mean, even the
walk here, you kind of get looked at because you've
got a bit of a jaunt in your step. But
(39:52):
I'm just happy to be alive and out walking. Got
a bit of sun on my face and not plastered in.
It's midday, it's great. And I might even have a
sandwich before the show tonight. And I think that's kind
of creative because it's not just sitting and receiving information
or tidbits or gossip or vitriol from elsewhere. You're kind
(40:16):
of forging your own path. And I think there's something
creative in that. And then stepping out on stage and
I got asked last night, you're very calm before you
go out on stage. And I said, well, it's just
part of the day, really. You just ramp it up
a little.
S3 (40:32):
Huh?
S2 (40:32):
Just please don't grab my shoulder as I'm trying to
leave the venue, because there's a reason I need to
get out of there. A dear friend grabbed me by
the elbow last night and almost clocked him up on
Russell Street, and I turned almost with a fist, and
he just. Rogers, you just don't do that. But I
was so desperate to get out of there because I
could smell drugs in the room. And I just thought,
I've got to get out of here. And I made
(40:55):
it home, and I had a sandwich and a cup
of tea, and I watched my Olivia Colman film, and
I was in hog heaven.
S3 (41:01):
For rock.
S2 (41:02):
And.
S3 (41:02):
Roll.
S1 (41:04):
Tim Rogers, thank you very much for joining us on
Good Weekend Talks.
S2 (41:08):
Thanks, Conrad.
S1 (41:11):
That was you, am I frontman Tim Rogers on the
latest Good weekend talks coming soon, we'll chat with Corrs Samaras,
the political commentator and pollster, about the Labour Party's changing
relationship to working class voters. If you enjoyed this episode,
please remember to subscribe, rate and comment wherever you get
your podcasts and keep tuning in for more compelling conversations.
(41:34):
Good Weekend Talks is brought to you by the Sydney
Morning Herald and The Age proud newsrooms powered by subscriptions
to support independent journalism. Search, subscribe Sydney Morning Herald or
The Age? This episode of Good Weekend Talks is produced
by Konrad Marshall and edited by Tim Mummery, with technical
assistance from our executive producer Tami Mills. Tom McKendrick is
(41:56):
head of Audio and Greg Callahan is the acting editor
of Good Weekend.
Hi, I'm Konrad Marshall and from the Sydney Morning Herald
and The Age. Welcome to Good Weekend Talks, a magazine
for your ears, featuring in-depth conversations with fascinating people from
sport and politics, science and culture, business and beyond. Every week,
you can download new episodes in which top journalists from
across our newsrooms talk to compelling people about the definitive
(00:30):
stories of the day. In this episode, we talk to
Tim Rogers, best known as the front man for rock
band Umi. Rogers was born in Kalgoorlie, WA, but lived
all over the shop growing up, spending time in Adelaide,
Sydney and Canberra and now rural Victoria. He's lived a
big life so far as a songwriter and raconteur, a
(00:51):
talking head and an author, a husband and father and
mate to many. He's had his struggles and his joys,
but has remained, as always, Sartorially. Splendid. I was lucky
enough to go along and see him perform last night
at the Forum in Melbourne, as part of a Umi
tour for the 30 year anniversary of their seminal sophomore album,
Hi Fi Way. And it's my distinct pleasure to have
(01:13):
Tim here in the studio for a chat between shows.
We'll just have to keep the chat alight to protect
his voice so he can blow the roof off the
joint again tonight.
S2 (01:22):
I thought you meant with content to give it light.
S1 (01:24):
It can be both.
S2 (01:25):
Absolutely not. Not too good on small talk, but I
am discursive, so it could go anywhere. We'll find if.
S1 (01:33):
We get in.
S2 (01:33):
Dark. If we get into libellous territory, let me know,
because I'm. I'm very broke.
S1 (01:40):
Welcome, Tim. Now, I always tell people when I'm trying
to get them to host an episode of Good Weekend
talks to kind of start off with something a little
bit quirky, maybe even like try to draw some personal
connection to the question. So I'm going to get my
bit of self-indulgence out of the way here. I had
the briefest interaction with you once, 16 years ago. Completely one.
S2 (01:59):
Way. These stories never end.
S1 (02:01):
Well, this one is. This one is beautiful, I promise.
My big brother Cameron was getting married to his wife, Danni.
I had to give a speech for him. And to
do so, I started reaching out to a bunch of
famous people to just see if I could get a
little well-wish. You know, something. Something from people that Cameron admired.
So he loved Paul Keating, but the ZPM wouldn't respond.
(02:23):
He very politely declined.
S2 (02:25):
He sends his best, by the way.
S1 (02:26):
Exactly. Um. Horse racing. He was a big fan of, like,
the trainer Lee Freedman. So Lee Freedman got back to
him and was like, sounds like you've backed a winner. Um,
which I thought was great.
S2 (02:37):
Yes. The equine types always draw the, um, less subtle
of of metaphors.
S1 (02:42):
And then he loved you, am I? And so I
reached out through your record company, and I didn't expect
anything back, but.
S2 (02:50):
As did I, because we've been on so many different
record companies, we've been dropped by more record labels than
I've had hot dinners. But anyway. Proceed. Conrad.
S1 (02:56):
Well, here's what arrived in my inbox, like only days
later to Cameron and Danny. I love, love, I love 12%
of the songs. It inspires 4% of the poetry and 27%
of the great crochet works. I love the way it
makes beefy blokes quiver and ladies accept invitations to hardcore
punk gigs. It really is all that matters. Along with
(03:19):
pistachio nuts and chianti and the smile of a child
and puppies. I wish I could extend my well-toned arms
around you both in hearty congratulations on your marriage, but
I am shackled in a well-appointed dungeon near Mount Macedon.
My monkey captors and I, in a rare moment of
understanding and clemency, are considering early release in both your
(03:39):
honours congratulations and onward, young lovers, into the greatest chapter
in the book. Love, Tim Rogers.
S2 (03:47):
Well, that's. That sounds like me. Hmm.
S1 (03:49):
Fucking. Thank you. Thank you so much. Like, truly, that's
just an insanely kind thing to do for someone that
you've never met, have no connection with. Random request through
through a PR. And I guess the question I wanted
to ask is where does that kind of generosity come from? Like,
did your parents instill a certain, I don't know, politeness
(04:11):
or kindness in you as a child? Did something shape
the way that you are? Because I'm assuming that's not
the only random act of kindness or giving.
S2 (04:20):
Um, I think erring on the side of kindness is
a good start, and that's the only real edict I
have for living. I guess my parents were kind. They
occasionally weren't kind to each other, but they were actually. Yeah,
they were f they were inquisitive people. They admired intelligence
(04:44):
and humor above all. And social standing wasn't at all
important to them. And when because my parents are from
suburban Melbourne Uh, when we moved to Kalgoorlie just before
I was born, they were confronted with a new hierarchy.
You know, the western frontier, the Wild West and and
(05:05):
within the mining community out there. So all their, uh,
the social with their bureaucracies or just, um, hierarchies that
they grew up with were thrown out of the water
and now the new kids in town and had to
navigate that. And I guess I do have I don't
guess I do have strong memories of them socially. And
(05:27):
they were good. They asked questions and they were they
were funny. They were really funny people. And my mum
definitely still is. My dad was a very funny fella
until bad health kind of took over. Um, extracted all
that from him. So, yeah, I'm glad you asked that question,
because I'll think about that at least today and possibly
a bit of tomorrow.
S1 (05:49):
I always wonder about it because you often hear footy
players will say something like, you know, they they will
stick around, uh, sign every autograph, take every selfie for
ages because some player did that for them when they
were eight and they're like, I've got to replay it.
I've got to repay it.
S2 (06:05):
You know, having a chat with your mates. Um, Shane
and Jackie Riewoldt yesterday about that, um, sensation where you
can't walk a couple of meters without somebody asking something
of you as sporting folks and folks on television particularly
do in this town, in this country. And, uh, a
(06:27):
couple of young friends of mine who play for North, uh,
we talk about it a bit because the demands on
their time and their attention and their patience are so
wildly more than anything I've ever had to deal with.
And I do keep that in mind that, uh, just
(06:47):
as a little discursive aside, last night, because of my
recent lifestyle changes, I need to leave venues straight away.
I just can't be around, um, people. And so I
race out of there. And after the 2.5 hour show
last night, some folks found a way of communicating with
(07:09):
me through social media. Really angry that I didn't have
the time to talk to them after the show, and
I felt that I should reply to them all, which
is not what you should do. Any person in entertainment
will tell you or in the public eye at whatever level.
But I said, look, I actually have to do it
(07:30):
for to stay living. And the three minutes I would
have given you could have 30 hours later, I'd be
in some room taking drugs. So it's not going to happen. Um,
but generally during the day, if it's not a threat,
(07:51):
and if it's not a threat to work, it takes
very little. And there's levels of it, definitely with sports people, actors,
people on television where there's a real familiarity with you
that strangers will approach you because they feel that they
know you. And to a point they kind of do.
(08:11):
But with someone, at someone at my level, you just
look a little weird. People look at you oddly because
I look a little Dickensian and just sort of smile
and and if people want to chat, that's absolutely fine
during the day, but move on. It doesn't take very much.
S1 (08:27):
Yeah. Just to protect that space. I wanted to go
back just in your life briefly to the teenage years,
because when you're reading through a bio of Tim Rogers,
two little things stand out as kind of incongruous with
the person that I assume you are.
S2 (08:44):
Good use of incongruous Conrad.
S1 (08:46):
You're the shaggy, flamboyant troubadour. And then I see these
bio points and it's like school captain in high school.
And then off to off to uni. Not just uni
but Anu in Canberra and to study law. Yeah. Did
you ever kind of think that you were really going
to stick to that studious, formal path in life?
S2 (09:07):
Oh, I wanted to because it just was attractive and
it was performative because I wanted to be a barrister
and music, which was my one overriding love. It just
didn't seem possible that you could do anything but play
every couple of weeks at university bars for parties. Yeah.
(09:28):
Making a career out of it or a pursuit just
seemed complete fantasy, right? So I went into law school
because my mum met a young woman on a bus
who said that she studied Japanese studies and law at Anu,
and I jumped on that Preceding all that, though, in
(09:49):
year 11, I got kicked out of school for getting
drunk at school, smoking pot and also getting in fights.
And so I was thrown out of school at the
start of year 11, and for a couple of weeks
I was looking for jobs around Castle Hill, Baulkham Hills
in north western Sydney where I lived, and I just
(10:10):
didn't have any skills at all. And so I begged
to get back into school and really studied hard. The
school captaincy thing, I still think was a bit of
a joke. Um, but, uh, I'd only been at the
school for two years previous, so I was used to
being a bit of a people pleaser. Um, a little
(10:32):
bit of a rascal element, which was maybe more to
do with the friends than the company I was keeping.
But that was all based around music. All my friends
were through music or through musical theatre. So the incongruity
of being school captain and Captain study. I actually don't
see them as being incongruous, because I think there's a
cliche about rock and roll musicians or folk musicians, country musicians,
(10:53):
as being lascivious and, um, reprobates and a bit thick
and wrecking hotel rooms and all that. Which is is
a cliche for a reason, but I think that your
duty as a performer is just to be interesting and
to be interested, because if you're going to write about living,
(11:14):
you need to understand how other people live to make
your art better. And if you're not trying to make
your art better. Well, I personally, I think you should
get out of the way. It would appear that most
performers don't think the same way, because there's a level of, uh,
(11:37):
people make a living doing it. And a lot of
performers think, well, this is our catalog that we love
and people love. And so we'll go out and play
this and go and eat nice meals and staying nice hotels. And, um,
even though we're doing a 30th anniversary tour of a
second record at the moment, uh, we we actually can't
(11:59):
do that. And we have to keep creating because that's
the reason pretty much why I'm living. It's I can
be a better parent, a better partner if I'm creating.
And we're completely broke. And so. Um, why I mention
that is that we're extremely grateful to be doing this
(12:21):
tour and where the perception is with the rock and
roll musician that you're blasé about everything. But, you know,
most musicians I know are worth their salt. The ones
who I really respect are so grateful to be able
to be playing, because rock and roll music's kind of
marginal as far as popular culture goes these days, you know,
I mean, people will own a couple of Foo Fighters
(12:42):
records and and good on them. Wonderful people. But for
nerds like us, um, we feel that it's always potluck,
that we managed to play the forum a couple of nights,
or play the tote or play anywhere. See, I told
you I can get discursive.
S1 (13:00):
Absolutely you can. Well, let's.
S2 (13:02):
Tell you about my recent trip to Afghanistan.
S1 (13:05):
No, um, you left school? Of course. Um, struggling with
ill mental health.
S2 (13:12):
I left university.
S1 (13:13):
University? Yes. I heard you talking about that on an
excellent podcast with Richard Kingsmill. Um, about, uh, I guess
how you felt like you were likely misdiagnosed as schizophrenic.
Bouts of hospitalisation, panic attacks, anxiety, um, kind of later
recognition of what would be obsessive compulsive disorder. Um, really
(13:37):
just a lot of stuff that the world probably didn't
have a good lexicon for at the time and sorta
does now.
S2 (13:45):
Particularly the diagnosis, because I thought then that's that's life
over for me. I was 20, quit my second university
law course, and just got on all the meds for
what was diagnosed as as schizophrenia, and I was just
zombified for a couple of years while the band was starting.
(14:06):
And really looking back at it now, it was it
was an anxiety disorder, which snowballed because I was living alone,
studying a degree that was really above me. Uh, I
was surrounded by a lot of drugs just because university
life at that time and probably eight, three times a year,
(14:33):
you know, it was just all this perfect storm of,
of very bad mental health. And but there was that.
And now I'm kind of at peace with it because
I go back to Canberra or go back to the
University of New South Wales or Macquarie Uni, and, and
I can walk through and think, well, maybe one day
I'll come back to, to study and it'll be really
enjoyable and lay all those, you know, those horrible, horrible times. Well,
(14:59):
I've kind of laid them to rest, but I talk
about it only because, uh, when I heard about other
people's experiences with that kind of sensation and those episodes,
it was the I didn't need medication after that. Well,
I did, but to know that other people that I
liked had had similar experiences meant so much to me.
(15:21):
I'm not an alien.
S1 (15:25):
Um, you alluded to it in the show last night.
Like I took note of it. You at least one
of the lines that you said to the audience was,
when you're having those strange thoughts, please bear in mind
that everyone has them. Some people are just better at
hiding them. Yeah.
S2 (15:41):
It's, uh, we do get the children of folks that
shows who write letters to me and want to talk
about mental health stuff, and it shows, and it always
seems to be at 4:30 a.m. in an all nighter somewhere.
And I'd noticed someone really wanting to have a chat
(16:02):
about it. And I thought, 430 when you got a
nose full and a belly full is probably not the
best time to talk about it. But, uh, yeah, it
seems to a lot of people out there who who want,
if not advice, because I don't have a lot of
advice to give, but I can just talk about my
own experience and that there is. Uh, you can get
(16:23):
through it. And in my case, I did get through it,
although I'm still have rigmaroles that you won't notice. Yeah,
for my ways of getting through. Um.
S1 (16:35):
Do you have methods?
S2 (16:37):
Oh, yeah.
S1 (16:37):
Yeah. Like routines or habits.
S2 (16:39):
Counting things I avoid, situations I avoid and but not
crippling as they used to be. And I just view
them as idiosyncrasies at this point and need to explain
to people when it is perceived that I'm being rude
or nasty, when really I just have to explain, excuse me,
this is my way of getting through a day or
(16:59):
getting through the next five minutes. So with folks who
have the bad fortune of worse conditions and worse afflictions,
that's that needs to be treated differently. And so why
I talk about is that there's a very big difference
between being blue and being melancholy and depression. And there's
(17:23):
a very big difference between being nervous, which we all
get nervous and we should. It's a it's a good
response and anxiety. And I think that, uh, referring to
everything as being an anxious situation or a depressive situation
is really dangerous. And to understand what the difference is,
(17:44):
I think is important and I don't know the lexicon
of of mental affliction or mental illness, but, um, we
can kind of when there's the opportunity to talk about it,
I think it can be helpful for someone who's at
least perceived. And I do feel as if I've climbed
(18:06):
a hill or crawled up a big hill and and
coming down the other side. And that that only happened
three months ago, you know, going into hospital rehab because
for decades, the only way I dealt with it was
to drink myself into complete oblivion. Um, and that was
(18:27):
the only way of dealing with it. Wake up in
the morning. You're anxious. Get straight to the bottle if
you didn't have to drive. I hate flying, so anytime
I get on a plane would just get absolutely poleaxed
fully on a plane. And, you know, of course, what's
going to happen next. It means bad shows, means you're
just putting stress on your body and your mind. And
so you're you're completely buggered. And so I admitted myself
(18:52):
to hospital three months ago, uh, on a free programme
that my GP suggested because he said, Rogers, you're you're
you're buggered. And, um, so it happens every if it
happens every couple of years where there's a wake up call,
tap on your shoulder, be it from a deity or,
or a medical professional saying you need to change the
(19:13):
way you do things. Take that advice on and don't
try and tough it out.
S1 (19:17):
Good advice. Let's talk about something fun. The footy. You're, uh.
You're a North Melbourne tragic.
S2 (19:33):
There's nothing tragic about passion. Conrad. Okay, let's. I don't
like that term. Pretty tragic. I understand what you mean. Yeah,
but it's passion and enthusiasm.
S1 (19:44):
I used to call myself a long suffering Richmond supporter,
but now I'm. Now I'm an insufferable Richmond supporter, you know. Good. Yeah.
S2 (19:51):
The the. Because working in the arts, I get people
who will on their first meeting with me, go. You know,
I'm not into footy and I go, I actually don't care,
I get it. Why you're not? Because when you're surrounded by,
particularly in this town, I get it. You don't have
to be my best friends. Most of them aren't. Wouldn't
(20:14):
even watch a game with me. However, it's a footy
is a wonderful conduit to great things. I mean, being
at games and you can have your your meth dealer
on your left and your brain surgeon on your right.
You know, the socio fluidity of Australian rules football and
It's really unique in world sport.
S1 (20:35):
Surgeons often behave like the meth dealers as well when
you get them in a close game, you know.
S2 (20:41):
Isn't it funny? Yes. Your question.
S3 (20:45):
I beg your pardon?
S1 (20:46):
That's all right. So I think in your book you
said that until you were 13, all you wanted to
be was a footy player. And then from the time
you were 14, all you wanted to be was in
a band. Yeah. So I guess it was just a
long way of asking, like how you fell in love
with footy and what changed at 14?
S2 (21:01):
Uh, well, my dad was a footballer and then a
footy umpire.
S3 (21:04):
Right? Yep.
S2 (21:05):
He became an umpire when I think when I was
born because, uh, he needed to get some extra scratch. Uh,
great player. And I think my love was from him. Um,
Kalgoorlie as a kid. It was just all around Perth.
It was all around Adelaide. Uh, I wasn't I'm a
(21:25):
better footballer now than I was as a kid. But dad,
even though he was an Essendon Senescence. Porter. Uh. I
didn't find out that he was until I was about 13.
Because he was very quiet about it. Just wasn't very, um. Uh,
think of the word at the moment. It wasn't all
(21:47):
about the team. It was about the beauty of the game.
S3 (21:49):
Right.
S2 (21:49):
And the humor of it. Even though he was a
very big kind of tough guy. Send half or two
and a half back. He only told the funny stories
about it, or stories with pathos about it, as did
my mum, because she'd tag along and see games and
she'd talk about people in the crowd and and same
with cricket teams. And that's carried over because I still
(22:11):
play cricket now. And always looking for the opportunities for
one to play well because there's a I've got a
competitive streak and I like to win games. But that's
kind of I acquiesce that desire to perform well with
(22:31):
Let's all have a wonderful experience together, particularly now. And
so when I've got a 17 year old sledging me
at silly mid-on and I'm striding out to bat, I
am just like someone just took the rug out of it. Really?
You're going to sledge grandpa here, you know, and get
(22:51):
really personal and nasty and. And then after the game,
really want to ask about, you know, what were Oasis
like or what was Kurt Cobain like and like. Yeah.
All right, kid, let me tell you. Just can you
apologize for everything you said when I was out there?
S1 (23:06):
So if you could zoom back in time, would you
be the the footy star or the. And you just
you flat out had your choice. Would you be the
the footy star or the rock star. Would you be
the the frontman or the full forward?
S2 (23:20):
I think I'm better suited at being a musician, um,
being a creative person. Not to say that you can't
be creative as a as a sports person. I've been
mean really, really knocked out a couple of players I'm
become friendly with in the past couple of years who
are got these wonderfully creative minds and yet see him
on the ground and it's there just seem like automatons
(23:44):
or these sort of competitive beasts, but then one on one,
beautifully creative. Um, no. I never had the body for
playing competitive sport. I'm quite breakable, although my last game
of footy for Wood End Masters, it was last year. Um,
and it was an intra club game, and I was
(24:06):
surprised that I actually still had a bit of toe
and could find space and take grabs and and really
loved it, but I just cannot afford to bust a
finger at the moment.
S3 (24:17):
Yeah, of course.
S2 (24:18):
And then one of my great mates, captain of the club,
busted his knee last week and he's out of work
for months. And so, um, rock and roll is ruining
my sporting career again.
S1 (24:30):
So you're on tour right now celebrating the 30th anniversary
of Hi Fi Way.
S3 (24:34):
Which.
S1 (24:35):
Was released in 1995. Just prior to recording that you
were touring with, um, Soundgarden in America just before Soundgarden
blows up and becomes Soundgarden, sort of. As we.
S3 (24:46):
Were really.
S2 (24:47):
Big on that tour, they, um, they could have been
we heard every venue they were playing, 20,000, 15,000 seat arenas.
But the whole talk was that they could have been
doing 50 or 60,000, but they were that kind of band.
They wanted to they didn't want to play bigger venues.
They wanted to play. That was the biggest they wanted
(25:09):
to get. And it was a real it was conflictual
for them because there were four of the smartest, funniest,
most generous people I've ever met in my life. And yet, um,
they had a real struggle with the band getting bigger,
and it was always that they'd look out in the
crowd and see jocks and as as jock ish, as
(25:32):
someone like Chris looked like, and Matt Cameron and Ben
and Kim, this stocky big dudes. But they were very
lack of a better term, art artists, and they just
wanted to talk about anything other than us bro kind
of stuff or jock kind of stuff. And so they
(25:55):
had a real problem with looking out and seeing those crowds.
And that was a big lesson for us, because it
taught us really early that no amount of success is
going to make you happy. I mean, the whole specter
of those tours was Cobain over everything, because we keep
running into friends of Kurt's, and we play with Nirvana
a couple of times, but it was running into friends
(26:15):
of his at the Screaming Trees or Mudhoney dudes, or, um,
a lady actually, who was at our show last night,
flew out from Seattle to see our show last night, and, uh, Duh.
It was part of that music scene in that time and, um,
even that whole town's music scene. What we got from that,
because we were hanging out there quite a bit and
(26:37):
made some lifelong friends, was that ethics is is kind
of on par with how great you are musically.
S3 (26:44):
Mm.
S2 (26:45):
Ethics, humor and your musical ability or just your musical shtick?
S3 (26:52):
Yeah.
S2 (26:53):
And the rest, as far as climbing up the ladder.
You know, as we know, some of the most successful
people we know just find it unbearable and have topped
themselves or harmed themselves. And what's the lesson there, kids?
You know, it's dangerous to to think of it as
a competitive as a sport. The creation of art. And
(27:18):
it's a real worry. My daughter, who's about to put
out her first record in New York City, where she's
lived since she was ten and her worries how it's
perceived and that's another part to it. Climbing up the rungs.
I'm sure she'd love to get 300 shows and play
with her favorite groups and get her songs on radio,
(27:39):
but her main concern is the criticism that comes with
her being extraordinarily talented, very intelligent young woman who also
happens to have a mother's gorgeous good looks and that
she's she's got a target on her back, you know.
S3 (27:54):
Mhm.
S2 (27:55):
And she's 24 and I just love her to be
able to just write her brilliant songs and make them
in her stepdad and her mom's studio and, you know,
just destroy the world. But she's got that extra concern
on her. And that's a burden I don't think is
it's really unfortunate.
S3 (28:13):
When.
S1 (28:14):
When you released Hi Fi Way, it went to number
one in the Australian charts and.
S3 (28:19):
For.
S2 (28:19):
About a second.
S3 (28:20):
Mhm.
S1 (28:21):
And about 18 months later is hourly daily, which also
goes to number one. Many of the sort of charts
that try to, um, rank the great Australian albums of
all time sort of have both of them up there
quite high. No one can really settle on which one's better.
But what strikes me about it is it's just amazing
(28:44):
that you were able to produce these two things within
such close proximity to one another. And I just wondered,
is that like. It surprised me. But is it actually surprising?
Or when you're in a kind of state of flow
and the juices are are going, should you expect great
things to come in clusters like that? Like, were you
(29:05):
guys just on a run?
S3 (29:07):
Ah.
S2 (29:09):
I think mating. Well, rusty joining the band opened up
everything for me. My brother, who was the first drummer
in Umai, was an incredible musical brain, but he we
were also still not very close at that time. And
so I wasn't introduced to his record collection, unfortunately, because
it was the best of all time. And Ex-drummer Marc
(29:32):
was a phenomenal musician and he's a phenomenal musician, but
we just didn't have that kinship. When I met Russ,
and he was such a encyclopedia of popular culture that
my learning and my ability to and my chutzpah and
putting in little hooks and changes accelerated enormously because I
(29:58):
just felt this real great freedom. And Andy was developing
as a player equally as quickly. We were playing so
many shows and meeting so many people and having odd
experiences generally overseas. That was where because you'd play a
toilet one day and then a stadium the next, and
it couldn't help but feed into that and it will
(30:23):
feed our creativity. Was exposed to a lot of records,
a lot of literature, and and just my demands on
myself went up. The lyrics were the big ones. For me.
Musical performances was one thing, but the pursuit of actually
writing something of substance around about the time of our
third album, that's when it became important to me on
(30:45):
Hi Fi Way. I just didn't even think about it
because I thought, no one listens anyway. They just want
windmills and rusty drum fills and Andy's bass runs and
a bit of screaming and angst. And I'm a Berlin chair.
Lean on me until I break I still don't know
what it means, but the it doesn't strike me as
being very insightful. Or for the time. I mean, you
(31:08):
listen to a Joni Mitchell's For the Roses or Hejira
and it doesn't quite stack up. But now the demands
on myself as a lyricist are his ERA, or Don
Juan's Reckless Daughter. And not just angst and screaming.
S1 (31:25):
You're playing both of these albums, of course, in full, um,
on this tour. Um, so you're probably more familiar with
them right now than you've ever been?
S3 (31:35):
Yeah.
S1 (31:36):
Do you have a favorite musically or personally, like can
you choose between your children?
S2 (31:42):
Oh, I feel like someone else's children on this tour.
They're not. Um, I wrote them, but this tour is
very much about people still coming to see us. Now,
why I say that? I guess the experience of going
off and singing with the hard ons for the past
five years has been such an adventure, and one day
it'll be an education, but sort of stepping into their
(32:05):
lives and their history and and definitely with crowd expectations
for them and feeling so much hatred from a very
small part of the crowd, each night has been really something.
And it's it was enormously upsetting to me at the
start because I love the hard ons and I just
(32:25):
have loved them for so long. And when they asked me,
I thought, I get a chance to play with my heroes,
and then getting vitriol from people right to my face
was some I don't get it. I absolutely get it.
But I didn't want to experience it because I love
those dudes. And so coming back to you and me
is a bit like, okay, this is where I grew up.
(32:49):
This has given me everything I have in life. And
but these songs are mean more to other people than
they do to me. But I in this kind of, um,
echo chamber, even though I can't see ten feet in
front of me, I get the feeling that people are
really enjoying it. And you can actually feel that on stage. Uh,
(33:10):
and with the benefit of not having a bottle of
whiskey down my throat in a couple of albums, I
can really feel it Before this year, I've always just
felt enthusiasm as some kind of antagonism, which is maybe
my immaturity or drunkenness or whatever it was. And but
now you just feel this, um, rush of and whether
it's sentimentality for those folks, and if it is, then
(33:32):
that's wonderful. But I can assure you, it's not sentimentality
for us, even though we're playing these old songs, because
our friendship within you and I is a lot stronger
in 2020, whatever year it is five than 1995. It
was a very giddy and silly and and drunky and
druggy and exhilarating back then. But it's it's a lot
(33:58):
deeper now. And there's, um, sometimes it's an obligation to
get to an airport or you're not really feeling like
getting somewhere, but we really look out for each other.
And any decision, if any decision, was going to really
threaten our relationship as friends. We wouldn't do it. And
(34:20):
I do love that about us. And I'd like that
to be perceptible, because in a time where there's very
few people you can sort of trust in a public forum,
I've always put my trust in rock and roll bands,
for better or worse, because it can lead you down
terrible paths. But, um, you just brought into this very
(34:45):
passionate and intimate circumstances, and then you're cast adrift, and
then you're back together again, and then you're cast adrift
within a group or within your relationship with an audience
and with your muse. It's all very intense and then
very dull and very intense, very dull. And you've really
got to keep your soul. And so you really do
(35:05):
lean on each other. It's a wonderful little microcosm I
think it should be.
S3 (35:10):
I got a.
S1 (35:11):
Gearshift question here, quite literally, actually. understand you're a cyclist.
S3 (35:16):
Ah.
S2 (35:17):
I like cycling. Just socially, I'd not. I don't, um,
don the gear and and I don't have a a
racing bike.
S1 (35:25):
Oh.
S3 (35:26):
Damn it. Yeah, I.
S1 (35:27):
Had read that you wrote the, like, cover story for
the inaugural issue of.
S3 (35:33):
Life magazine.
S1 (35:34):
Ten years ago or so. I was convinced, like, at 56,
that you were a mammal. A middle aged man in Lycra.
S2 (35:40):
I'm 55.
S3 (35:40):
Riding.
S1 (35:41):
Around.
S3 (35:41):
Through the country roads.
S2 (35:43):
And I'm a bit. I just don't like the shouting
and shouting.
S3 (35:46):
Yeah.
S2 (35:47):
And I'm a solo rider. I don't ride with anyone else.
I ride with my wife sometimes. But where we live,
there's so many hills, it's a little treacherous. And also you,
if you ride at any pace, there's a high possibility
you'll be taken out by a seven foot gray kangaroo.
And the irony being a North Melbourne supporter would just be, too.
It's it's too great. Um, one day I might, uh.
(36:09):
But no, I don't I don't enjoy it. Just when
cyclists shouted at each other, it was like, please, you know,
can you just talk when you're sipping your lattes and
your but I don't I'm not someone who slags people
getting up in that gear, because I have a collection
of 440 guernseys and baseball jerseys, and I love sporting memorabilia,
(36:32):
so I can't really say anything about people in Lycra.
But you'll see me in corduroy shorts and and inappropriate footwear.
S1 (36:40):
One final one. So the the creative life is obviously
a privileged one in many ways. You work with music
and words and performance. You speak, you opine, um, but
there's chaos and crisis probably in all of that too,
because you're always trying to make the most of this
sense of freedom, artistic freedom that you've got. I'm just wondering,
(37:02):
what do you do outside of all of that, that
sort of centers you or grounds you? Um, are there
things that you do to keep calm, to.
S3 (37:13):
Keep yourself steady.
S2 (37:14):
Just day jobs. Really? Um, landscaping and lawn mowing and dishwashing.
Occasional bar work. That's. That's pretty grounding. You know, when
you're cleaning toilets at 2 a.m.. That's pretty grounding. Um,
reading fiction is my big love. It's difficult to maintain
a day job when you do what I do. Next week,
(37:37):
I was going to start a job at home, and
I got a TV acting gig in sight, which I'm
very grateful for. It's a great part, but the I'll
have to go and do that. And I couldn't take
the the job. Um, why did I mention that? I
think I'm just vaingloriously sort of name dropping, but, um,
(37:57):
you stay pretty grounded. Just being middlingly unsuccessful. You know,
the living where I do, I think helps, because no
one really cares what you do. It depends if you've
got something to contribute to the community. and they're interested
for a couple of seconds, you know. Oh, yeah, playing
a show. But, you know, you've got a good story
(38:18):
to tell. That's. No one really cares. And, uh, but
I do notice it, particularly with my wife, who. Works
in ballet. She's a choreographer. After being a dancer for
so long with the Australian Ballet, and now she's traveling
the world, and, uh, we talk about it a lot
about where our creative life fits with just living. But
(38:45):
it does fit because that is our life. We view
going for a walk in the morning as a creative act.
What is not a creative act is, I think, is
accepting the news cycle, um, kind of going spending a
lot of time on social media. I don't find there's
much creative about that. There could be. I'd be happy
(39:08):
to be proven wrong because it gave me an excuse
to scroll, you know, to Google myself this afternoon. But
but we just have made our creative loss part of
our everyday life, even in our little town. Population 499.
Going for a cup of tea with a neighbour. You
(39:31):
make it fun and and creative, and anyone who wants
to join in on that, they can. I think it's
it's not difficult to be perceived as being one eccentric
or an idiot these days, because, I mean, even the
walk here, you kind of get looked at because you've
got a bit of a jaunt in your step. But
(39:52):
I'm just happy to be alive and out walking. Got
a bit of sun on my face and not plastered in.
It's midday, it's great. And I might even have a
sandwich before the show tonight. And I think that's kind
of creative because it's not just sitting and receiving information
or tidbits or gossip or vitriol from elsewhere. You're kind
(40:16):
of forging your own path. And I think there's something
creative in that. And then stepping out on stage and
I got asked last night, you're very calm before you
go out on stage. And I said, well, it's just
part of the day, really. You just ramp it up
a little.
S3 (40:32):
Huh?
S2 (40:32):
Just please don't grab my shoulder as I'm trying to
leave the venue, because there's a reason I need to
get out of there. A dear friend grabbed me by
the elbow last night and almost clocked him up on
Russell Street, and I turned almost with a fist, and
he just. Rogers, you just don't do that. But I
was so desperate to get out of there because I
could smell drugs in the room. And I just thought,
I've got to get out of here. And I made
(40:55):
it home, and I had a sandwich and a cup
of tea, and I watched my Olivia Colman film, and
I was in hog heaven.
S3 (41:01):
For rock.
S2 (41:02):
And.
S3 (41:02):
Roll.
S1 (41:04):
Tim Rogers, thank you very much for joining us on
Good Weekend Talks.
S2 (41:08):
Thanks, Conrad.
S1 (41:11):
That was you, am I frontman Tim Rogers on the
latest Good weekend talks coming soon, we'll chat with Corrs Samaras,
the political commentator and pollster, about the Labour Party's changing
relationship to working class voters. If you enjoyed this episode,
please remember to subscribe, rate and comment wherever you get
your podcasts and keep tuning in for more compelling conversations.
(41:34):
Good Weekend Talks is brought to you by the Sydney
Morning Herald and The Age proud newsrooms powered by subscriptions
to support independent journalism. Search, subscribe Sydney Morning Herald or
The Age? This episode of Good Weekend Talks is produced
by Konrad Marshall and edited by Tim Mummery, with technical
assistance from our executive producer Tami Mills. Tom McKendrick is
(41:56):
head of Audio and Greg Callahan is the acting editor
of Good Weekend.
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