| Rolling Stone, Aug 14, 2000: Russell Crowe Takes Texas Actor plays rock star in Austin From the moment he walked on stage, Russell Crowe was the master of all he surveyed. Things could not possibly have been more in his favor if the whole thing had been a carefully scripted scene from a movie: the Oscar-winning actor playing the role of a roguish rock star, his climactic performance rapturously received by several hundred professional extras paid to faint, scream and cheer on cue. But this wasn't a movie. This was real life, or at least a bizarro world variation in which the gravelly voiced Australian actor best known for his brooding lead performance in Gladiator is worshipped like a rock & roll sex god in the heart of Austin, Texas, the self-proclaimed "Live Music Capital of the World." Last August, Crowe and his band Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts ("TOFOG" to diehards) flew into town to record their second album, B------ Life of Clarity, and perform a one-off show at the mini-shed-like venue, Stubb's Bar-B-Q. The sold-out show drew rabid female fans from all over the world, with scalped tickets fetching hundreds of dollars. A sequel was inevitable, resulting in TOFOG's triumphant return to the same venue Friday and Saturday, the first two nights of the band's maiden U.S. tour. (Crowe, an honorary Texan, will play a third Austin show this coming weekend -- a charity concert the in honor of Governor Rick Perry's daughter). Although the multiple nights and cities this time around killed the promise of high scalper profits (many a ticket to Saturday night's sold-out show could be bought for face value day of show), fans were still wrapped well around the block waiting for admission hours before show time. Once the gates were opened, they were submitted to nearly three hours of veritable Oz-fest vaudeville before the main event: an instrumental guitarist, an Aussie comedian, an Aussie beat poet and a mostly naked Aborigine dancer were all brought out one after another to buy time for the band, with Aussie hits like Men at Work's "Land Down Under" intermittently piped through the sound system for anyone not yet hip to the night's theme. By the time TOFOG hit the stage -- Crowe last, of course, dressed in jeans, dark work shirt, floppy hair and trademark stubble -- the crowd exploded in a show of roaring enthusiasm not unlike what one might expect at opening night of an 'N Sync tour, or -- given the median age of the women in the audience -- at least a Beatles reunion. The differences between Russell Crowe, actor, and Russell Crowe, rock star, were apparent from the get-go. Crowe the actor smiled less -- if at all -- in all nine hours and change of L.A. Confidential, Gladiator and The Insider -- than he did in the first ten minutes of his smirking, but overall jovial TOFOG performance. And Crowe the actor would likely never stoop to a script that would saddle him with Ron Jeremy ready lines like, "I hope you guys can keep up with us tonight -- We're in the mood for sweating!" and "I'm getting that sticky underwear feeling -- how about you?" As revealed by the above, Crowe the rock star is also much more good spirited about his notorious reputation in the wake of his exhaustively documented affair with Meg Ryan (who's ex-husband Dennis Quaid, incidentally, performed with his own band the Sharks earlier that afternoon sixty miles south of Austin at a Willie Nelson Family Picnic festival just outside of San Antonio). "There must be a lot of nervous husbands and boyfriends out there," Crowe cracked as he surveyed the predominately female crowd. "But we all made a policy that tonight there will be no womanizing!" He also flirted generously with the fans in the front, reading aloud one's sign ("Hey, Russell, is that an Oscar in your pocket, or are you just happy to see us?"), and pointing to several "familiar faces" he recognized from last year, having spent a lot of time putting together the live concert DVD which was sold at the merchandise booth for $50 (or $100 signed). He justified the high price by explaining it was limited to 10,000 copies, with the rights soon to revert to Miramax for release as a feature film. (It was the first of two plugs during the night, the second announcing the band's recent signing to Danny Goldberg's Artemis Records in the United States.) The music? Certainly nothing that would ever draw this much attention to itself without a built-in draw like Crowe, but relatively more interesting than most actor-fronted bands (Quaid's included, it pains to say). Granted, the Grunts don't offer anything that the Wallflowers haven't done better before them; there's little melody to speak of, fewer memorable hooks and not near enough rough and tumble attitude to back up the kick-ass name. But Crowe's lyrics hold up remarkably well under close inspection, particularly the sad character study "Wendy" and the wistful "Sail Those Same Oceans," and there's a certain understated, gruff magnetism to his delivery. He can't sing for shit, except for the brief passages where he sounds vaguely like David Bowie, but most of the time he doesn't really even try -- instead favoring the same gruff, low monotone that he used to deliver his "My name is Gladiator..." speech in his most riveting on-screen moment. Put to music, it sounds not entirely unlike Pulp, albeit a Pulp fronted by a guy that could conceivably kick your ---. For all his rakish charm, though, Crowe's performance frequently bordered on, of all things, overacting. He plays the cocky, roguish rock star almost too well, much like Pierce Brosnan's subtlety free take on James Bond. Shy of performing bare-chested in an armored skirt, he seemed all too willing to play up to every cliched fantasy his most ardent female fans came looking for. "Such a tease? Me? In that case, there will be womanizing!" he quipped during the first of several encores. Then, inexplicably -- promising to do "something special" for the crowd in honor of "TOFOG Day" -- he unveiled his Best Actor Oscar for Gladiator and held it above his head to screams of delight. It's hard to imagine Russell Crowe the actor stooping to such "King of the World!" stunts, but for Russell the rock star, it was in character. RICHARD SKANSE (August 14, 2001) |