It’s a common story, or is it? International pop star sells 20 million albums as member of a popular act, while romancing women and seemingly having it all. A decade later, he’s now a successful solo artist with his own album and upstart record label, and happily out of the closet and even more happily married. Sound familiar? No? Well, obviously it’s NOT Lance Bass.
Darren Hayes first captured attention as lead of the mega-popular Savage Garden, who ruled the charts with hits like “Truly Madly Deeply,” “I Knew I Loved You,” and “I Want You.” But just like Behind The Music has taught us, a good video is no indication of happiness. Hayes really came into his own once he shed a disastrous relationship with a major record label, and married last year-for the second time in his life. Small difference this time round was the gender of his partner. It is no coincidence that “This Delicate Thing We’ve Made” is the first record Hayes has made as an openly gay man, enjoying a wonderful relationship with partner Richard.
Hayes’ new music has caused cyber-riots on Myspace with over 60K listens in the first three days. His European tour has picked only two cities to grace while in the United States, and Philadelphia is lucky enough to be one of them. Considering the entire HX office was humming his new tunes, as well as getting misty to old stand-by “Truly Madly Deeply,” it was a no-brainer that we had to stalk him down to discuss his new album and his new attitude.
Associated Content: A double CD is a lot of work. What inspired you?
Darren Hayes: The biggest inspiration was creative freedom. This album was my first time independent from a major label. I had a chance to really go in a direction that I wanted to without interference. The whole CD is a look back at my life. Toying around with the ideas and the possibilities of change: What would you change? What would you keep the same? I wanted the CD to be like life flashing before your eyes, traveling back in time. I wanted it to be very reflective.
Associated Content: This album features a synthesizer, the Fairlight. Can you explain what it is and why you choose it?
Darren Hayes: It was one of the first real time samplers used by musicians like Peter Gabriel, Art of Noise, and Kate Bush. It shaped the sound of pop music in the 80’s, from Duran Duran to Depeche Mode, New Order to OMD. All that music was based around this thing that cost at the time as much as a house. In the 80’s it cost nearly 200K. I picked mine up for 4 grand on Ebay. It was a metaphor for me to take sound and to use it as a time machine – to go back to a different era. It served as my talisman, to remember growing up, remember coming out, remember a lot of painful experiences. I used it to fuse the sounds of the past with future technology and future emotions.
Associated Content: Was it difficult to learn to play the Fairlight?
Darren Hayes: It’s a fiercely competitive and temperamental instrument. It is definitely of another era, a bit of a dinosaur. It is the biggest hulking machine, but the sounds you get from it are really pure. Not like the imitations sounds from digital technology.
Associated Content: Critics are calling this album cinematic and theatrical, do you agree?
Darren Hayes: It’s right on the ball-and I am so glad that people got that. It is especially true when you see the show. The whole point is for you to go forward and to go back time and lives. It is so wonderful to see the show as a theater experience-too see it like a film.
Associated Content: This is not an album that could have been made with a major label…
Darren Hayes: I spent an enormous amount of time trying to figure out what record company executives and radio executives wanted. I spent time thrown together with big hit makers, trying to please the labels. While I liked them, these songwriters, I couldn’t have gotten a more ill-fitted match. These were people who wrote stuff for Lindsey Lohan and Britney Spears.
Associated Content: But that struggle was probably worth it in the end.
Darren Hayes: Working on this album, has been…. a tremendous evolution for me. I got my self-confidence back; I got my control and creativity back. Yes, I made a bit of concept record, but that was a very important thing. It had to be a difficult step; it was going to require certain sacrifices. Who makes a double album? Career suicide! Maybe and maybe not. My thinking was it was a rebirth.
Associated Content: So you record a powerful double album, and launch it on your own record label. Even more work!
Darren Hayes: {Laughs} Yes, it totally was…I had been with a major label for 10 years, but the experience at the end was traumatic. My last record on the label…well, the experience was awful. The record label hated it, they did nothing with it. I made this delicate thing and it sat on the shelves. It was crushing. After that, I didn’t want a record deal. I thought it was stupid.
Associated Content: Enter Powdered Sugar, your label. Has that been a challenge?
Darren Hayes: Absolutely exhausting, absolutely so hard to run it. Absolutely demanding, you have to do it all. I have a very small, dedicated team, but it is so tough. It means every morning and every night that I have 60 emails that need answered-yesterday. But it is incredible-it is all so positive and rewarding-the rewards are so much potentially greater.
Associated Content: Your fans have transitioned with you, from being ‘straight’ in Savage Garden to happily gay and married as solo Darren Hayes….
Darren Hayes: Oh sure, I was 22 when I jumped on the scene. There is beauty to being that young and naïve, then growing older, wiser, and happier. I see people in the audience that were at my first Savage Garden show, still following me. It is great to see a gay audience emerge from a fan base, to see what I say resonates with gay people. As a performer, I hope that I can share my traumas and happiness with my audience, and that they can understand.
Associated Content: You’ve been very supportive of the Trevor Project, the only 24-hour crisis and suicide help-line for gay and questioning youth. Does this relate back to your troubled childhood?
Darren Hayes: I grew up in a tough macho masculine town with a violent alcoholic father. Kids kill themselves because they are gay, and I identify and understand that in a weird wistful way. If there had been a phone line when I was young, that I could have called up and said “Guys are cute, am I going to hell?’-If their had been something for me to relate too….it would have made it so much easier. So, yeah…I can’t imagine a more worthy charity or cause to help support.
Associated Content: You haven’t been screaming “I’m Gay!” from the rooftops, but you don’t hide it either…
Darren Hayes: That’s me, I am the guy next door. I love gay people and I love my culture...I do. But I didn’t identify with Erasure or Cher, or many of the preconceptions the mainstream media throw out about gay people. For example, “Gay people are not monogamous.” That’s ludicrous. I want to grow old and be with my husband Richard for the rest of my life. These are things that people need to know-showing people that I am happy, and that I love my partner.
The biggest thing…the biggest misconception about sexuality is that you choose it. We “choose” to be gay, so we can be discriminated against because of that “decision.” I think right now we are in a similar phase as the civil rights movement. We are on the cusp of something so great and amazing, but we have to fight discrimination and intolerance. We legitimize discrimination, cause nobody famous talks about being gay or their gay friends or family.
Coming out…is a deeply psychological process. I am against the practice of “outing” someone. But I am also against lying about your sexuality as well. It’s not fair that we allow actors and musicians to lie about who they are; it reinforces the shame. You know, the American media is generally surprised that I wasn’t arrested in a toilet at some point. Sure, it didn’t come easy, coming out…but why wouldn’t I tell someone? It was incredibly rough for me, very traumatic. But now, I am literally in the sunset, in the “happily ever after” of my life. You have to embrace the truth.
