November 12, 2024 • 11 mins
Lead singer of Savage Garden Darren Hayes talks to Clairsy & Lisa about pushing through adversity, the split of Savage Garden and meeting Stevie Nicks.
Darren's book 'Unloveable' is out now.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Darren Hayes from Savage Garden has just released his memoir
titled Unlovable. He joins us now, Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Darren, thank you so much for talking to me.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
This is not a let me tell you about my
rockstar moments throwing TVs out of windows kind of memoir.
This is pretty raw to say the least, and fairly
heavy stuff. But was it therapeutic to write?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I mean, of course. I mean it's funny because I
wouldn't even call the genre a celebrity memoirs. Yeah, it's
a book about a couple of things. It's a book
about how I grew up with domestic violence and a
lifetime of depression and trauma. And the back drop to
(00:46):
that was this extraordinary career. You just played one of
those songs. I'm so grateful part of my life. So yeah,
that career saved my life because it was this wonderful
thing to see world that I got to escape into
and as a young boy I dreamed of having. And
(01:07):
I was fifteen when I went to see Michael Jackson
in concert and decided that being a pop star was
the only way I could escape the world that I
was living in, which was, you know, without being Superdoom
and Gloom. It was very, very sad and very challenging,
and so I became somebody else for a long time
(01:29):
just to survive that. And that's really what the book
is about. How I did that and how I survived.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, there's a multi layer. There's so much in your
life there. I mean, even at the perth readA gig.
I went with my son as a huge fan of
your so we went to see your most recent perth
reader gig made me eighteen months ago. You even opened
up about discovering your sexuality and you're being honest and
talking about your marriage, breakup and the rest of it.
It was very raw. But you haven't said that on
stage man, Now it's on paper.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah, that was sort of the beginning of it. I
knew I had just been given this book deal, which
was such an honor. I don't think I ever would
have sought out to write a book. But when I
was promoting my last album, there's been an article that
I had written for a newspaper in the UK, which
(02:23):
is a childhood photograph of me when I was about ten,
and the subject of that interview was essentially, you can't
tell from this happy you know sort of people pleasing
little boy sitting on his bed, the horrors that were
going on at home, and then the horrors that were
going on at school being bullied for being gay. And
(02:45):
Penguin reached out to me and said, would you tell
that story because I know in our country, sadly you
know the statistics of violence women. Absolutely, and I'm so
grateful that my mother is still with us. She's obviously
no longer with my father. And I consider my life
(03:05):
story maybe it's a cautionary tale, but it's also a success.
I got through it, and I hope that this book
and me sharing those stories like I did in Perth.
Thank you for coming to that show. It was really
I love. I loved that tour and I hadn't toured
for so long. But I just hope by sharing these stories,
(03:28):
it's just removing the stigma of feeling ashamed when you
have been abused, when you have been traumatized, you know,
when you've been through those things, when you've experienced depression,
the statistics of male suicide, for example, it's just so
preventable if we just talk about it. So that's the
aim with my book. It's a really yes, it's just
(03:50):
sometimes it's uncomfortable to be this revealing, but it was
healing for me, and I would like hope it's inspiring
for anyone that's either been through or is experiencing anything
that they think they can't overcome.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
It's such a story of two extremes. I mean, something
that was awful to read was when you talk about
your father once leaving a hand shaped bruise on you
that lasted for a week. I mean the thought both
physically painfully and emotionally painfully that that does to a
little kid. And then the other extreme of the massive
(04:25):
success you have as a pop star. But depression doesn't
that it doesn't necessarily just because you have all that success,
it doesn't necessarily just go away. Did you find you
sometimes had to deal with people saying, well, come on, Darren,
look at your look at this life. You've got buck
up at all. You've got it all, mate.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yes, And that's a really common misconception about depression, because
my depression is it's in my DNA. If you read
my book, you know two members of my immediate family
sadly have committed suicide. And it's so sad, you know,
(05:08):
I like to describe it to people as you know
your brain chemicals, they're lying to you. I'm very lucky
that I early on was diagnosed, because it was just
like any other disease, you know, like if you're somebody
who is going to develop diabetes or you have a
(05:31):
higher chance of, say, developing cancer. It was just an inevitability.
My mother's side of the family, we all have a
tendency toward depression. And I, at the height of the
Bridge Garden fame, had people around me that loved me
so much that noticed I was having those very very
(05:54):
dark thoughts. And I got help very early on, and
I still bravely and I'm not ashamed to admit I
still have a psychiatrist and have you know, psychologists, And
no one should ever feel a shamed of that because
you don't have control over that. It's that easy to
just choose to be habit. It's not not a logical
(06:16):
It is as simple as a diabetic having a low
blood sugar count. My brain just doesn't produce those serotonin levels.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
And no one questions when a family has you know
that that gene that causes breast cancer, that you know,
and and it's happened to lots of women, and they
in the in a one line of family, no one
questions that or you know, so, yes, it is a
chemical imbalance in the brain depression for the most.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Part, sometimes yes, and sometimes it can be a circumstantial
I have a double whammy. Yeah, have PTSD. So I
had probably eleven or twelve of the years of witnessing
pretty horrific vineans at home and I could never really
admit that, couldn't really talk about that, didn't know how
(07:05):
to process that. And as many of us know, if
you don't deal with that, it's almost like your sorrows.
They learn how to swim. You can try to drown them,
but they they will haunt you until you really learn
how to deal with them. And so that that had
(07:26):
been a challenge in music and this wonderful career I've
been given, I'm so grateful for it. I'm so grateful
for the songs and fans and these moments that I
got to escape into, which I love. Yeah, you know,
I love being on stage. That's amazing you have that.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
You've got that credit moment, the talent.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
And it's the storytelling. I guess you learn to tell
stories as a coping mechanism when you're absolutely with that.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
I do at LISTA mentioned this is not a story
of excess and throwing TVs and pools or whatever. It's
a rock or pop star. There's also some really heartwarming stories,
and one of you not being a star but being
a fan of Stevie Nicks and huge. That sounded like
a big day there in Brazil outside at the Hilton
there in Brisbane.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yes, you're just a kid, right, Why? Yes? This is why.
I was fifteen and my big sister, who introduced me
to music, Fleetwood Mac were touring and we just love
Stevie Nicks and we, I guess, like creepers. We stood
outside the hotel at a very respectful distance all day,
(08:34):
all day, but we saw the limos come and go,
and her tour manager came over to us and he said,
who are you waiting for? We said, Stevie Nicks. And
I can share this now because Stevie has been very
public about this, and years later I've met her and
she's so wonderful. But at the time the world didn't
(08:57):
really know Stevie was struggling with addiction. Tour manager said, listen,
she's not having a great day. She's not leaving for hours.
Do me a favor. It will make her day if
you come and say hi to her. But go away
for a couple of hours and come back and you'll
make her day. So we laughed, and then we thought,
(09:19):
I think he just he did the switch to a
ruin us. She's probably gone out of the back door.
But we trusted him. Sure enough, two hours later we
went back to this hotel and he brought a very
frail Stevinnix out and she saw us, and she held
our hands and she looked into our eyes and I
(09:41):
felt seen when everything else in my life was chaos.
She looked at me. Not only did it lift her up,
but I gave her a gift. I gave her some
red rosary bees and she said, I'm going to wear
these tonight. She gave me a hug, She signed my album.
She got into a limo at drove off. Then it stopped.
(10:02):
It reversed right back in front of us. Her window
wound down and she said, wait, do you have tickets
to the show? And we said of course. She said okay,
and then she drove off. I never for Yeah, I
never forgot that kindness, and I feel that same connection
(10:22):
to fans today. I know what it's like to have
the power to do a little thing that can make
someone today, and I'm so grateful for that.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
That's an amazing, great story the book. We could talk
all day. We really have to let you go. It
really needs to be subtitled Lovable, by the way, and
I should point out it does cover the split of
Savage Garden. I want to. I mean, it's like, it's
the definitive story, isn't it of what went down there,
(10:52):
because there's been a lot of speculation and you've copped
it over the years, and I think it's it's good
that you've finally been able to tell that story about
how Savage.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
I just don't think it ever really got published.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
For me, he was just a chance to just kind
of so I don't have to keep talking about this.
Daniel Daniels unhappy he left. I got blamed for it.
I had always hoped that he would in the moment
say it was his decision. Years later, he eventually did,
but at the time when I really needed him to
(11:27):
own that, he didn't, and that was that was very unkind. Yeah,
you know, it did stick and it was very hard.
But anyway, it's all good. You know, life moves on.
I love my life, i love my job and I'm
really grateful for your time today, so thank you.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Catch up there the Lovable.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Darren Hayes's book Unlovable is out now. Darren, lovely to
catch up with you.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
We'll see the next Yeah, absolutely talking to me.
Darren Hayes from Savage Garden has just released his memoir
titled Unlovable. He joins us now, Hello.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Darren, thank you so much for talking to me.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
This is not a let me tell you about my
rockstar moments throwing TVs out of windows kind of memoir.
This is pretty raw to say the least, and fairly
heavy stuff. But was it therapeutic to write?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I mean, of course. I mean it's funny because I
wouldn't even call the genre a celebrity memoirs. Yeah, it's
a book about a couple of things. It's a book
about how I grew up with domestic violence and a
lifetime of depression and trauma. And the back drop to
(00:46):
that was this extraordinary career. You just played one of
those songs. I'm so grateful part of my life. So yeah,
that career saved my life because it was this wonderful
thing to see world that I got to escape into
and as a young boy I dreamed of having. And
(01:07):
I was fifteen when I went to see Michael Jackson
in concert and decided that being a pop star was
the only way I could escape the world that I
was living in, which was, you know, without being Superdoom
and Gloom. It was very, very sad and very challenging,
and so I became somebody else for a long time
(01:29):
just to survive that. And that's really what the book
is about. How I did that and how I survived.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, there's a multi layer. There's so much in your
life there. I mean, even at the perth readA gig.
I went with my son as a huge fan of
your so we went to see your most recent perth
reader gig made me eighteen months ago. You even opened
up about discovering your sexuality and you're being honest and
talking about your marriage, breakup and the rest of it.
It was very raw. But you haven't said that on
stage man, Now it's on paper.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah, that was sort of the beginning of it. I
knew I had just been given this book deal, which
was such an honor. I don't think I ever would
have sought out to write a book. But when I
was promoting my last album, there's been an article that
I had written for a newspaper in the UK, which
(02:23):
is a childhood photograph of me when I was about ten,
and the subject of that interview was essentially, you can't
tell from this happy you know sort of people pleasing
little boy sitting on his bed, the horrors that were
going on at home, and then the horrors that were
going on at school being bullied for being gay. And
(02:45):
Penguin reached out to me and said, would you tell
that story because I know in our country, sadly you
know the statistics of violence women. Absolutely, and I'm so
grateful that my mother is still with us. She's obviously
no longer with my father. And I consider my life
(03:05):
story maybe it's a cautionary tale, but it's also a success.
I got through it, and I hope that this book
and me sharing those stories like I did in Perth.
Thank you for coming to that show. It was really
I love. I loved that tour and I hadn't toured
for so long. But I just hope by sharing these stories,
(03:28):
it's just removing the stigma of feeling ashamed when you
have been abused, when you have been traumatized, you know,
when you've been through those things, when you've experienced depression,
the statistics of male suicide, for example, it's just so
preventable if we just talk about it. So that's the
aim with my book. It's a really yes, it's just
(03:50):
sometimes it's uncomfortable to be this revealing, but it was
healing for me, and I would like hope it's inspiring
for anyone that's either been through or is experiencing anything
that they think they can't overcome.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
It's such a story of two extremes. I mean, something
that was awful to read was when you talk about
your father once leaving a hand shaped bruise on you
that lasted for a week. I mean the thought both
physically painfully and emotionally painfully that that does to a
little kid. And then the other extreme of the massive
(04:25):
success you have as a pop star. But depression doesn't
that it doesn't necessarily just because you have all that success,
it doesn't necessarily just go away. Did you find you
sometimes had to deal with people saying, well, come on, Darren,
look at your look at this life. You've got buck
up at all. You've got it all, mate.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yes, And that's a really common misconception about depression, because
my depression is it's in my DNA. If you read
my book, you know two members of my immediate family
sadly have committed suicide. And it's so sad, you know,
(05:08):
I like to describe it to people as you know
your brain chemicals, they're lying to you. I'm very lucky
that I early on was diagnosed, because it was just
like any other disease, you know, like if you're somebody
who is going to develop diabetes or you have a
(05:31):
higher chance of, say, developing cancer. It was just an inevitability.
My mother's side of the family, we all have a
tendency toward depression. And I, at the height of the
Bridge Garden fame, had people around me that loved me
so much that noticed I was having those very very
(05:54):
dark thoughts. And I got help very early on, and
I still bravely and I'm not ashamed to admit I
still have a psychiatrist and have you know, psychologists, And
no one should ever feel a shamed of that because
you don't have control over that. It's that easy to
just choose to be habit. It's not not a logical
(06:16):
It is as simple as a diabetic having a low
blood sugar count. My brain just doesn't produce those serotonin levels.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
And no one questions when a family has you know
that that gene that causes breast cancer, that you know,
and and it's happened to lots of women, and they
in the in a one line of family, no one
questions that or you know, so, yes, it is a
chemical imbalance in the brain depression for the most.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Part, sometimes yes, and sometimes it can be a circumstantial
I have a double whammy. Yeah, have PTSD. So I
had probably eleven or twelve of the years of witnessing
pretty horrific vineans at home and I could never really
admit that, couldn't really talk about that, didn't know how
(07:05):
to process that. And as many of us know, if
you don't deal with that, it's almost like your sorrows.
They learn how to swim. You can try to drown them,
but they they will haunt you until you really learn
how to deal with them. And so that that had
(07:26):
been a challenge in music and this wonderful career I've
been given, I'm so grateful for it. I'm so grateful
for the songs and fans and these moments that I
got to escape into, which I love. Yeah, you know,
I love being on stage. That's amazing you have that.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
You've got that credit moment, the talent.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
And it's the storytelling. I guess you learn to tell
stories as a coping mechanism when you're absolutely with that.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
I do at LISTA mentioned this is not a story
of excess and throwing TVs and pools or whatever. It's
a rock or pop star. There's also some really heartwarming stories,
and one of you not being a star but being
a fan of Stevie Nicks and huge. That sounded like
a big day there in Brazil outside at the Hilton
there in Brisbane.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Yes, you're just a kid, right, Why? Yes? This is why.
I was fifteen and my big sister, who introduced me
to music, Fleetwood Mac were touring and we just love
Stevie Nicks and we, I guess, like creepers. We stood
outside the hotel at a very respectful distance all day,
(08:34):
all day, but we saw the limos come and go,
and her tour manager came over to us and he said,
who are you waiting for? We said, Stevie Nicks. And
I can share this now because Stevie has been very
public about this, and years later I've met her and
she's so wonderful. But at the time the world didn't
(08:57):
really know Stevie was struggling with addiction. Tour manager said, listen,
she's not having a great day. She's not leaving for hours.
Do me a favor. It will make her day if
you come and say hi to her. But go away
for a couple of hours and come back and you'll
make her day. So we laughed, and then we thought,
(09:19):
I think he just he did the switch to a
ruin us. She's probably gone out of the back door.
But we trusted him. Sure enough, two hours later we
went back to this hotel and he brought a very
frail Stevinnix out and she saw us, and she held
our hands and she looked into our eyes and I
(09:41):
felt seen when everything else in my life was chaos.
She looked at me. Not only did it lift her up,
but I gave her a gift. I gave her some
red rosary bees and she said, I'm going to wear
these tonight. She gave me a hug, She signed my album.
She got into a limo at drove off. Then it stopped.
(10:02):
It reversed right back in front of us. Her window
wound down and she said, wait, do you have tickets
to the show? And we said of course. She said okay,
and then she drove off. I never for Yeah, I
never forgot that kindness, and I feel that same connection
(10:22):
to fans today. I know what it's like to have
the power to do a little thing that can make
someone today, and I'm so grateful for that.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
That's an amazing, great story the book. We could talk
all day. We really have to let you go. It
really needs to be subtitled Lovable, by the way, and
I should point out it does cover the split of
Savage Garden. I want to. I mean, it's like, it's
the definitive story, isn't it of what went down there,
(10:52):
because there's been a lot of speculation and you've copped
it over the years, and I think it's it's good
that you've finally been able to tell that story about
how Savage.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
I just don't think it ever really got published.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
For me, he was just a chance to just kind
of so I don't have to keep talking about this.
Daniel Daniels unhappy he left. I got blamed for it.
I had always hoped that he would in the moment
say it was his decision. Years later, he eventually did,
but at the time when I really needed him to
(11:27):
own that, he didn't, and that was that was very unkind. Yeah,
you know, it did stick and it was very hard.
But anyway, it's all good. You know, life moves on.
I love my life, i love my job and I'm
really grateful for your time today, so thank you.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Catch up there the Lovable.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Darren Hayes's book Unlovable is out now. Darren, lovely to
catch up with you.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
We'll see the next Yeah, absolutely talking to me.
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