Savage
Garden, the electric pop machine highlighting the talents of
singer/songwriter Darren Hayes and multi-instrumentalist/songwriter
Daniel Jones is no doubt one of those remarkable modern-day
Australian success stories. To date, their self-titled debut
album has achieved worldwide sales of over 11 million records,
while the follow-up titled ‘Affirmation’ has already
surpassed the 4 million mark. The production for their current
world tour has been their largest yet, with production rehearsals
alone costing around 250,000 dollars. The light show features
100 moving lights, a backdrop controlled by 200 dimmers and
8 follow spots, while the sound utilises the latest X-array
system by EV. A production crew of twenty has been assigned
to full-time employment, with another forty casuals added on
to this line-up in each city. The production designers are Willy
Williams and Bruce Ramus (with credits including U2’s Zoo
TV and PopMart tours, as well as tours by REM and Bryan Adams),
while the sound department showcases the expertise of sonic
veteran Colin Ellis (previously on staff with the likes of INXS
‘1980 to 1992’, The Angels, The Divinyls, Ian Moss,
Killing Heidi, Hoodoo Gurus, Baby Animals and Midnight Oil,
among many). Australian Musician’s Adrian Pertout began
the night speaking with Daniel Jones.
How
have you approached taking what has been essentially ‘studio
music’ into the live environment?
DJ: "We
definitely changed arrangements to better suit the live audience.
We were trying to be too clever for our own good for a while
there, in taking the music too far away from the album. And
by the reaction we got from the audience, you could tell that
they weren’t that much into the change. So in the end we
decided to keep a lot of the first album songs relatively the
same, none of them longer than three minutes-forty. And with
the second album, just experiment a little bit — we added
dance rhythms in one song."
What
about sound-wise, would you say you beefed it up a bit?
DJ: "Well,
the second album was produced with a lot more tracks, a lot
more faders up, so we had to boost it up as much as we could
to keep it up on that par. And as much as we can, we get into
our sound guy’s ear and try to explain to him where we
want to take it from the recording; from how it sounded as we
recorded to where we want to take it live. And a lot of it is
up to him, how he does it that night. He’s pulled some
great sounds, guitar-heavy some nights, but also pulled some
great keyboard-heavy sounds other nights."
In hindsight,
do you feel that not having done the usual pub-thing for ten
years disadvantaged the band in any way, commercially or artistically?
DJ: "I
did the pub-thing for ten years as a fifteen-year-old, I started
in covers bands. I never got quite so technical about it, because
it wasn’t necessary to do that, but you know, the moment
you write your own songs, you break all the rules that were
ever made as far as how you want to do it. But this opened a
whole new world for me, as far as running some sequences live,
running some percussion tracks, things that we’d experimented
a little bit within the covers circuit, but not quite as intense
as what we are doing here. Like, the ‘Animal Song’,
when we finished recording it we had two 48-track Sony digitals
full of tracks of recording — and to try and get that sounding
as good live, we had to use some of those tracks, which were
mainly drum tracks."
Tell
me about your stage gear. How does it differ from what you would
normally use in the studio?
DJ: "The
way we are doing it this time is eliminating on-stage sound
as much as possible. And the reason we had to do this is that
we were having problems with Darren’s voice getting over
the level of the band. So the whole band has got in-ear monitoring.
There are no amps on stage; we’re all direct out of Line
6 PODS, little guitar units, which are fantastic! (The Line
6 POD emulates 28 Line 6 amp models, and has 16 digital effects,
including chorus, flange, tremolo, compressor, noise gate, rotary
speaker, delay and reverb.) They’re about four hundred
bucks, and they pull one of the best-processed guitar sounds.
So we’ve eliminated the stage sound, so that everyone can
hear themselves. Everything’s running direct. And I run
a Roland 880 basically as a hard disk player, to run some of
the percussion tracks. I’ve dumped down a lot of that info
from the original recordings, and transferred from Pro Tools
into the 880."
And
are there click tracks running?
DJ: "Yeah,
the drummer has a click track, and we also have a count, so
our drummer doesn’t have to sit there and click four sticks
together, we actually hear that, which is great to make the
show more effective — you can be dead silent, pitch black,
and then bang, all of a sudden the band kicks in and you didn’t
know how they all came in on time. And it’s triggered from
the Roland 880 with a stop/start switch."
The
production rehearsals are said to have cost around $250,000,
is it necessary to spend that much to be an international touring
band?
DJ: "It
was probably from Darren’s perspective of wanting to achieve
some certain amount of theatrics on stage. Now, in doing that,
you kind of have to go into intense rehearsal mode. And musically,
we had previous chances to rehearse, so we just stood up there
on the new stage, with the new backdrop, with all the new lights,
and with Darren’s theatrical ways, to try and create a
show around it. So a lot of that cost was basically just in
the fine-tuning of lights and costume, and where the follow
spot should go, here or there, or wherever. So it was just rehearsing
the show more than the sound."
Is the
music set in stone, or do you leave room for improvisation on
basic arrangements?
DJ: "It’s
pretty much set in stone. There’s not a great deal of room
to improvise, and because Savage Garden is a singles-based band.
That’s what our market is, people that buy singles. And
we don’t want to stray too far away into being a rock band
or some supersonic pop band, or whatever; we’re still about
songs and about putting on a show more than anything. So as
long as people are familiar with what they’re hearing,
then we will be happy to stay inside of that."
You
have always stated that being a celebrity is not what you are
about. How do you cope during tours, with all the hype of the
media spotlight?
DJ: "I
cope fine with it, so long as I bring something to do, some
productive work, because I find that there’s not a lot
of satisfaction for me personally from just doing a fifteen-hour
day of interviews. I don’t actually get a lot of satisfaction
from that at all, and actually find it quite a chore, and restrictive,
because what I really want to do is be able to be creative on
a day-to-day level, whether I write a shit song or a great song,
so long as I get a chance to do that. And Darren’s nearly
the opposite, which works wonderful, because he can take the
role as the spotlight, as doing all the press, whatever, while
I can be working in my time providing songs for him, so it works
really well."
So would
you try to get a lot of work done during these tours?
DJ: "As
much as I can, during the days, but you’ve gotta discipline
yourself. It’s easy to sleep until eleven o’clock
and get up out of bed at midday, then grab something to eat
and turn up to sound check, and off you go. But I’m up
at sort of eight, and I’ll be usually be doing something
on the musical level by about ten o’clock. And then I’ve
got all day to do that, in between a few other things, but I
make time."
What
do you take with you on tour?
DJ: "Basically
those two boxes there (pointing across the room), a completely
racked-up Pro Tools system, and a whole bunch of Roland MIDI
gear (The rack includes a Mac 9600 with 3 X 9 gigabyte removable
hard drives, Roland PC-160 MIDI keyboard controller, Mark of
the Unicorn midi express, Digidesign 882 I/O Audio Interface,
Mackie 1602 16-channel mixer, 2 Roland S-760 digital samplers,
Iomega zip drive and a Roland Super JV-1080). And that’s
all I really need, but if I want anything, I can always go and
grab it from the side of the stage, a guitar, or whatever. But
that’s as small as I could get it for what I need to actually
continue writing. I mean, you’ve got audio recording as
well as MIDI, and that’s all I need."
Where
will the current tour be taking Savage Garden?
DJ: "We’ve
done Japan, and we did it with a minimal production, we didn’t
carry what we’re carrying now. Then we’re heading
off to Europe, to the States, South America, and then possibly
a few Asian gigs. It should see eighty shows I would say, this
concert, which is quite a few, and through till about November.
And then we’ll be pretty much done with this album, and
done with the touring for a while. So we’ll hang the rock
guitars up and get out the songwriting instruments."
