Ever had any Say Anything slipups?
DH:I walked into a clear glass pane at my favourite Thai restaurant back home. I was wearing lip balm, so I left lip marks. The restaurant owner still tells people, "The guy from Savage Garden walked into our window."
Back to Top
Savage Garden has no illusions about reasons for its success
Vancouver Sun - July 4th, 1998
By: Shawn Ohler
"Savage Garden is a young pop band without any credibility."
A nasty shot from a jaded critic? Harsh words from a disgruntled ex-fan?
Nope. That little condemnation comes straight from the mouth of Daniel Jones, Savage Garden's guitarist and resident realist.
Jones, who co-founded the suddenly huge Australian duo with heartthrob singer Darren Hayes, makes no apologies for courting a teenage audience with unashamedly pop songs.
"It's true. I don't have a problem with it. The right way to do it is to pick up a young audience, which we have, and then grow with that audience," Jones said recently from his home in Brisbane, on a break from a world tour that hit Edmonton Coliseum Thursday and comes to Vancouver's GM Place on Sunday.
"Hopefully, in 10 years' time, some of our 15-year old fans will be 25 and a little bit more matured. Then we can be more matured in our music. If you pick up a 35-year old audience first up, a lot of those 35-year olds don't grow up with you. They're still listening to the Eagles.
"I don't think it's a bad thing to be a young pop band without any credibility. I think we'll grow into ourselves."
Jones said critics who attack his band for its middle-of-the-road sound and fast climb up the charts have got it all wrong.
"Music is fun. We're not trying to save the world or find a cure for cancer," he said. "We're just playing music and if it works, great. And if it doesn't, it's not the end of the world."
You could say it's working. Five years ago, Hayes and Jones were playing smallish venues around Brisbane in a "dodgy" band called Red Edge. The pair quit the group and started to strictly write songs with each other, incorporating more of a keyboard-based sound.
Savage Garden was born. The band's self-titled debut album, fuelled by the success of the gushing, Europop-inspired single I Want You,exploded all over the world, hitting seven-times platinum (700 000 copies sold) in Canada alone.
Jones, the band's shy guy instrumentalist, and Hayes, its charismatic frontman, found themselves playing arenas in front of several thousand people.
"It's hard to actually comprehend what's happened to us in a lot of ways. It's been 24 months of very hard work, and in that time you actually forget what you're actually achieving. It's a little surreal," he said.
"It has been a short, scary ride, which may have some consequences for the next record."
Jones said fans can find clues in what Savage Garden's next album will sound like from the band's live show.
"Our show is a lot more energetic than the album, a lot more revved up, a bit louder and more aggressive and in-your face. It goes through sections where it lets its hair down. I think those things will apply to the next album," he said.
"We'll have a lot of balance, as well, with the pop ballads that we do. But a 12-song set of pop ballads can get pretty boring. For us, music is a pretty physical thing, so you have to get up there and bash it out."
Ideally, Jones said, that will set them apart from bands like Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys, both acts to which Savage Garden's often compared.
"I think there's more to our band than those bands. We have to prove that. We have to have consistency again on the next album and in our performances," he said.
"And if we don't then we weren't up for it in the first place."
Back to Top
Elegant Articles Part One
Elegant Articles Part Two
Elegant Articles Part Three
Elegant Articles Part Four
Elegant Articles Part Six
Back To ELEGANTLY SAVAGE!!! |
