Savage As A Dead Sheep

Considering that one of our nation's most famous rock icons sang "Highway To Hell" and choked to death on his own vomit, what was surprising about last week's ARIA Awards wasn't that Savage Garden won everything in sight. It was how sensitive, pleasant and just plain boring the duo is.

Rockstars are supposed to be rebellious, womanising and, well, "savage". Savage Garden are so nice that they don't even have a bad word to say about Triple J, despite the fact the radio station ignored them - an independent local band doing it tough as a new act, the very thing Triple J says it supports.

"That's fine - we don't fit their format," says singer Darren Hayes, above right, who's happily married to his childhood sweetheart, Colby.

"We're just doing what we believe in, and those who want to listen will."
There's plenty of people who do. Their self-titled debut album sold more than 1.5 million copies world-wide, was number one in Australia for weeks on end, several of their singles topped the charts, and last week they scooped eight ARIA Awards while their producer won a further two, see below left.

"We're really jazzed. This feels like I felt on my wedding day," says Darren.
But it wasn't that long ago that Darren and sequencer and guitarist Daniel Jones, far left, were just two friends with stars in their eyes.

"We sat in my bedroom for five years dreaming about this," Daniel says. "This has been the best year - we have been aiming for this for so long."
And they don't care about those who criticise them for being commercial. "We've come out of the closet and said we're unashamedly pop," says Daniel. "But this is the music we love. The worst thing we could do is pretend to be alterno-grunge like all the other Oz bands, because that's not us."

It certainly isn't. They're not even perturbed at being pin-ups for hordes of teenage girls.

"That's lovely, but I'd hope they identify with the music," Darren says. "We get letters from young girls wanting to discuss the meaning of our songs, not what we put in our hair or where we buy our clothes."

Very deep, but hardly savage.