Elsie: "I think
that the last time I talked to you, I got the feeling that it was a little bit of a dream
come true touring America. Is it?"
Darren: "I love America. Travelling around in this bus,
it's like something from the Partridge Family. There's a shower, and a toilet, and a
kitchen, there's two kitchens I think."
Elsie: "And how many of you are
in there?"
Darren: "There's 8 in this bus."
Elsie: "8 in one bus?"
Darren: "We call my bed the 'monkey bunk'."
Elsie: "The 'monkey bunk'?
Why?"
Darren: "Because we think my new haircut makes me look
like a monkey." (sticks his ears out)
Elsie: "Ha ha! Do that
again."
Darren: (does it again) "The 'monkey bunk'."
Elsie: "Is it important to you
that your music lends itself to a theatrical setting?"
Darren: "Yeah, because I would get bored if it didn't. I
am nowhere near where I want to be as a performer, I've just scratched the surface. It's
almost like we've started going down one road and we changed our minds. We already have a
CD out and we've sold about 10 million copies but we thought, 'Oh.' We wanted to be a bit
more than that. I think I told you last time, some of my favourite performers are people
like Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, and Bono from U2. I'm interested in using an image and
visuals live, in intelligent ways."
Elsie: "Is it difficult to keep
the contact with the audience when you're playing live?"
Darren: "I don't understand people who are obnoxious, or
big-headed, or whatever. But I think that we were made to play. I kind of, I feel big.
Everything is large, the set's large, I'm large, the clothing's large, the sound is HUGE.
It's a lot more rock and roll than before. It's a lot more theatrical in parts than you
would think.
Elsie: "Can we take a look at
your wardrobe?"
Darren: "Sure!"
Elsie: "Let's go have a
look."
Darren: "For sh*ts and giggles!"
Elsie: "Oh yeah that's right,
you like Austin Powers."
Darren: "I love it! Viva Las Vegas baby, yeah!"
Darren: "There's a section of our show when we perform a
song called 'All Around Me', it's totally tongue-and-cheek and a lot of it's based on a
section of Austin Powers."
Elsie: "And this is yours,
right?" (pointing to the dress)
Darren: "This is for the girls, not me, hello. The are
called the fembot outfits and they wear these little skirts, and the glasses and stuff,
and these are kind og neglige (?) outfits. And I wear this. You'll never catch me in
white, ever, except on stage in this beautiful silk, bright white, you'd probably wear
this with bright white leather shoes.
Darren: "It's funny because at the start of this tour I
had a lot of control over fasion, in Australia I did a lot of this with a team called
Sambero, and it made sense for about three months. It was all sort of Battlestar
Gallactica meets Duran Duran. It's just in context with the show, the backdrop was sort of
based on Bladerunner and that kind of thing and the costumes were like that. But I just
sort of grew out of it, I didn't feel like that anymore. A lot of this stuff is very
Street Wear, I wear Buffalo boots on stage. it's all pretty Street Wear, and I got that
from America. I spent a lot of time in New York and I was looking at the kids and I was
watching t.v., and I wanted to be relateable, I didn't want to be larger than life. I just
wanted to relate to you. a lot of it is clubby and streety and it makes sense, and it's
comfortable."
Darren: "I'm always so excited about the future that I
sometimes forget to live in the present. I don't know what it's like to have sold 10
million albums, and we've just done it. I don't know what it's like to have a #1 in
America even though I've achieved it becaue I've never actually afforded myself the luxury
of celebration."
Elsie: "Because you want to go
further."
Darren: "Yeah! It doesn't mean better, it doesn't mean
more, it doesn't mean get more awards, it just means I just want to impress myself, I want
to impress the band, I want to impress other musicians. I want to make a record that the
band wants to play next time around."
Darren: "It's become a hurricane. And we're in the middle
of the hurricane, and I watch cows flying past and I go 'normal, normal'. We were in
Delaware, which is upstate, way out of New York, and we played at this state fair with
pigs and cows and people who had never really seen a band before came to see us. We went
to a restaurant and this woman said to me, 'What do you think of Delaware?' and I said,
'Oh, it's really cool' and she said, 'Have you been to New York? That's really weird, did
you think New York was wierd?' and I said, 'New York is normal.' I think it's normal,
because to me, that pace, and the craziness of the city life, it makes complete sense to
me."
Elsie: "Has your perception of
fame changed?"
Darren: "It's just bull sh*t. I just, you know, before
you've got it you want it, when you've got it you haven't got enough, and no one wants
you, you feel rejected. It's just got a fear of commitment."
Elsie: "Can you foresee what
kind of record you're going to be making?"
Darren: "Well, the great thing about the next record is
that it will be made for personal reasons. I've sold enough records. I don't need to sell
any more. I come from a poor family, I never had any money. I never knew what it was like
to own things like a car or a house or whatever, and I do now. So I could work in a bakery
for the rest of my life and financially I'd be okay. It will be a darker record. I just
turned 26 and a lot has happened in my life, so I don't know. I don't think it will be a
'happy' record."
