Unloveable
Darren Hayes
Penguin
I love a celebrity memoir. In recent times I’ve read ones from Boy George (his third), Genna Davis, Debbie Harry, Elton John, and Moby. Musicians, actors, dancers, comedians, TV personalities, I’m here for them all.
There’s something fascinating about finding out more about these people who we already usually know a lot about already, discovering the details and challenges of their journey to fame and fortune. Often a period of losing said fame and fortune, a career ‘second wind’ is commonplace and some deep insights into the realities of fame.
I’ve never been a fan of Savage Garden, and while I own a massive CD collection, there’s no Savage Garden CDs amongst the thousands of albums stacked up across many bookshelves. Hayes first four solo albums are also absent from my shelves.
Darren Hayes memoir Unloveable is in a different class. It’s a deeply personal, moving and profound tome in which Hayes strips back the trauma of his childhood and draws very clear lines about how it has affected his adult life, and no level of fame, fortune or public adoration is going to soften the blows.
Growing up in Suburban Brisbane in the 1980s Hayes and his siblings lived under the shadow of “the secret’. His father was an alcoholic, who Hayes describes as tormenting his children and brutally beating his wife.
There were times his mother would escape with the children for short periods, and at one stage she leaves her husband for several months, but the couple always reunited, sometimes amicably, other time saw violent confrontations.
Amongst this backdrop, young Darren fights to keep his classmates from finding out about his family life, and he struggles to make friends. Like most kids in the 1980s he loves Star Wars figures, Madonna and Michael Jackson.
He’s learned all the choreography from Madonna’s Virgin Tour, but oddly the other boys in his class don’t seem as eager to learn the steps or watch the concert from start to finish.
As he gets older, he has to confront another challenge, homophobia. He doesn’t know yet that he’s gay, but adults and fellow students begin to bully him.
He gets a job at his local record shop, which allows him to fulfill his love of music. After finishing school, he trains to be an early childhood teacher and falls in love with girlfriend Colby. He also answers an ad to be the singer in a covers band.
Soon Red Edge are a success playing pubs across Queensland performing songs by INXS, Cold Chisel and John Mellencamp. Darren makes a bold move. He asks bandmate Daniel Jones to quit the group so they can form their own band. Soon they are off making original music, Daniel creates the tunes and Darren adds the lyrics.
They make hundreds of cassettes of their demos and send them off to record executives. Nobody is interested in them. At first, they call themselves Crush, and then Bliss.
They get a breakthrough when producer John Woodruff signs on to develop them, recording their songs professionally and helping them create a distinctive sound. While the album is being recorded Darren and Colby get married, and not long after they land a record deal. A quote from the Anne Rice novel The Vampire Chronicles gives them their new name – they are Savage Garden.
While all off Darren’s dreams begin to come true – or at least something close to them, he realises more about who he is. He’s gay but recently married. Staff in the record company question his sexuality too, and there’s discussions about how he looks and presents himself.
But a roller coaster ride has just begun, straight out of the gate Savage Garden are a huge pop success, not only in Australia but globally. Dareen Hayes is off on the journey with all the baggage of his traumatic childhood, hidden sexuality, and a serious lack of self-confidence.
Hayes recounts those heady days of suddenly being one of the most in demand band in the world, the pressure to record a second album, and being floored when Daniel Johns announced he wanted to quit the band and return home to Australia.
Halfway through reading this excellent book I was standing a few feet away from Troye Sivan photographing his humping and gyrating at the Spilt Milk House Party. Sivan’s performance is unashamedly gay, provocative, and very sexual.
As I try to take as many photos as I can in the short time allotted, I wonder what year Sivan was born, how much of his career is allowed because artists like Madonna pushed boundaries in the early 1990s.
At the start of the 1990s Madonna was talking about sex, dancing provocatively, as it was captured in her Truth or Dare: In Bed with Madonna documentary. But for male artists, record companies were worried about them looking to gay in photo shoots, they stressed over their clothing choices and were questioning their haircuts.
Darren Hayes clearly just wanted to be like his idols, Troye Sivan is having the career Darren Hayes dreamed about. What a difference a couple of decades makes.
What makes Hayes’ memoir so engrossing, is it’s not his journey through fame and fortune – although that is included and it’s fascinating – it’s how he deals with is past.
The underlying trauma that shapes his life, his realisation of his own repressed homophobia, his relationships, mental health journey and commitment to counselling and rebuilding his life. It’s a hard read – but also one you won’t want to put down.
I do have one Darren Hayes album, his most recent Homosexual. It’s been on high rotation since it came out two years ago. It’s a very honest album, made solely by Hayes himself. The journey to true himself has been epic, but it’s been worth the wait.
Unloved by Darren Hayes is available now.
