If you keep an eye out my hair's flatter on the first night...
November 28, 2008, 12:57 PM
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Tim Minchin is an angry man with an iron. Do men do housework when they’re angry too? It’s more likely he just wants to wear that shirt tonight but I am barely through the door before he’s letting off some steam (bad pun intended):
“If I would survive a fall off the top of a hotel I don’t think it’s good enough!” He’s talking about his latest lodgings on tour. I chuckle along as he continues to rant, “I just don’t like hotels that are low - hotels should be high things! - See I want to know that if I suddenly have an impulse to kill myself I can do it with the requisite amount of drama…Or if you want to be a rock star and throw a telly out the window you want to make sure it f**king smashes and not just lands on the ground and changes channels or something! That’s terrible!”
I can’t say I’ve ever been in a position where I have had to consider these things but I mean, gee the guy has a point.
I offer only what I can - my intellectual empathy - and it seems to make him feel a little better (phew, you never know which way things are gonna go with these Rock Star types)…
Of course in actual fact Tim Minchin is in great spirits, full of smiles and beans and said polite welcoming banter. We’re back stage at the Y Theatre, Leicestor, on his already highly successful UK “Ready For This” tour. I have plenty of questions to get through so tellies and rock stars aside, I begin to delve back into Minchin’s more innocent past:
Altsounds: When did you write your first song? Tim Minchin: I don’t really know, but everything I’ve done musically has been song writing driven. I basically learned to play piano and when I first learned three chords I wrote a song with those three chords…song writing’s always driven my learning. I can remember some early songs and they tend to sound a lot like Beatles songs because that’s what I listened to.
Altsounds: So you’re largely self-taught? Tim Minchin: Yeah, well I’m sort of self-taught at everything. Eventually I went and did that course at WAAPA (West Australian Academy of Performing Arts) but by then I’d written three or four scores for theatre shows. I’d gone quite a long way down the track of composing and song writing without it: I knew what it meant, I could write charts - like the dots - it’s just maths isn’t it. I love that. I was writing music for youth theatre and then I thought ‘I’m not a proper muso, I’ve got to get the discipline down’.
Altsounds: After WAAPA you started a band, Timmy the Dog, and recorded your first album. What came out of doing that? Tim Minchin: Well I decided I couldn’t sit around Perth, I had to go and live over east. But I was never part of the (original music) scene. I think it was because of the theatre background thing I thought, ‘I’ve written an album and we’ll do a show!’…So I didn’t do many gigs and all the record companies said, ‘you have to do gigs and start a following,’ ‘cos no one takes a risk these days; it’s not like the old days where they go, ‘oh there’s some potential.’ They wait until you’re almost a sure thing you know.
Altsounds: So when and how did your ‘musical comedy’ aspect evolve? Tim Minchin: When I was in Melbourne (‘over east’) I was playing in cover bands to pay the bills and with the whole original thing again I just never got into the scene. So although in my comedy I talk about being a failed rock star - at least that’s the kind of character - concurrently theatre’s been a huge part of my life all along. But I’ve always wanted to do everything and that’s kind of been my problem. Eventually because of that record company feedback I guess, and also just this trying to mix the song writing with my desire to do theatre - I was working with Eddie Perfect who was another cabaret guy - it motivated me to do my own show.
Altsounds: And yet, even with the strong theatre influence, I’ve heard you describe yourself primarily as a singer-songwriter. Tim Minchin: Well…yeah. It seems I’m pretty good with rhymes and words and I’m an ok solo pianist in terms of impressing people with my mucking about. I can wack the f**king thing and make people go ‘woo hoo!’ And the combination of that is this, what I do. And I’m not a good joke maker. I have never done five minutes of stand up at a club or whatever.
Altsounds: You draw a lot of subject matter in your songs from contentious issues, but particularly this issue of religion. What is it about you and religion? Tim Minchin: Yeah…what is it? (Long pause) I don’t have any respect for religious belief. I respect people’s right to have it. I am absolutely respectful of people’s right to do what they want but intellectually I don’t respect the conclusion they’ve drawn, I think it’s crazy. I just don’t even begin to empathise with being able to believe that stuff.
Altsounds: You’ve read a lot and searched about this haven’t you? Tim Minchin: Well, yeah I mean I studied philosophy and philosophy of logic at uni and stuff, and it just set me on a path…I’m really obsessed with critical thinking more than religion. My issue with religion is intellectual, but if you say, ‘do you think religion is bad?’ I can talk for an hour on the subject but it’s not, ‘yes religion is bad, let’s abolish all religion.’ It’s definitely bad in some ways and it’s amazing in other ways and it’s inevitable because humans have these instincts to fill in these holes and all that. However, if you ask me wether it’s the correct conclusion? I mean it’s not even a question to me, you know...so um, it’s an intellectual obsession.
Altsounds: Yeah I see, and your career has effectively given you a platform for all these ideas. Tim Minchin: Exactly and not just that but I have to keep coming up with (new) ideas. It’s like I’m forced to say what I think because what I think is all I’ve got….and I happen to think a lot about that stuff so that’s what comes out…It’s not because I’ve gone “I want to tell people what I think!” It’s because I’ve become a comedy performer that people want to watch and so I need to write new shows and when I write new shows it’s going to be based on ideas I’ve had….like this whole show culminates in a huge beat poem called “Storm”…that clarifies everything; it’s this huge rant and it finishes with the question ‘isn’t this enough, just this world?’ and it’s quite serious actually and I’m more proud of that poem than of anything I’ve ever written in terms of trying to clarify my own thoughts, you know. And people react very strongly to it, like people agree with me. It’s not anti-religion, it’s anti floppy thought, it’s anti psychics and….
Altsounds: And apathy. Tim Minchin: That’s right. Why do we need to….the world’s so exciting if you examine it, don’t get lazy and just say, “well I believe in ghosts and…homeopathy and…psychics and…. don’t, that’s fine, it’s fine look…Just don’t teach your kids that they should feel guilty about masturbating. It’s the ramifications that matter, apart from just the intellectual intrigue it’s the ramifications that matter.
Altsounds: You are so passionate about this… Tim Minchin: Yeah, off I go.
Altsounds: Do you feel some kind of responsibility - a social responsibility - to get these ideas out there amongst young people? Tim Minchin: I didn’t set out because I think what I have to say is important…my compulsion is to make silliness out of big issues…But I think that spreading the idea of critical thinking and scepticism is important in the world and if I have a platform to do that then I’m very proud that I’m doing that and not spreading sexism or racism or just f**k you-ism or prejudice.
Altsounds: Yeah, wow. Well…ok, let’s talk about your new DVD, “So F**cking Rock”. Can you tell us about it? Tim Minchin: It’s a two hour-long live show, from beginning to end at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London, in May this year. I did two shows and taped them both, but the vast majority of the DVD comes from the second show…there’s bits where it chops, you can’t tell except if you keep an eye out my hair’s flatter on the first night…
Altsounds: It combines some of your material from “Dark Side” and “So Rock”. How long did it take to formulate all the ideas that culminated in the DVD show? Tim Minchin: All the songs I wrote for “Dark Side” I wrote really before I had comic intent, well I was just writing silly songs and stuck them all together and that was “Dark Side” and “So Rock” was the next year which was some old songs and some new songs.
Altsounds: We’re talking 2005-2006? Tim Minchin: Yeah well a lot of the songs are 2003-2004 when I wrote them.
Altsounds: Wow, this is a pretty special release then, it’s basically everything? Tim Minchin: It’s everything up until this year.
Altsounds: What do you take a way from the experience of writing and making something like “So F**cking Rock”? Tim Minchin: Well, it’s a full stop on that material…it’s reached its’ conclusion and the day after I went, ‘right, new show.’ It was a real psychological end point because I hadn’t written for two years and I was really, really nervous about writing this show. Part of the joy of this tour is that it works you know, or well I think it works, at least I’m happy with it and my audiences seem to be…
Altsounds: You’re about to wrap up the UK tour of “Ready For This”. So what’s next? Tim Minchin: I’m doing a gig with Duke Special. He’s really cool. He’s a Northern Irish singer-song-writer. If I go somewhere in Ireland people always say, “you look like Duke Special.” And he gets told he looks like me all the time, so he rang me up and now I’m going to play with Duke Special in Belfast…I’m doing these huge shows at the QEH, the Queen Elizabeth Hall…and then I go to Australia and do this huge tour which will be brilliant!
I heard very good things about this man. I was very unfortunate not to be able to make the Duke Special gig, in which he was supporting due to family illness, but I've heard he is very funny!
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Trashing hotels is so blasé
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Tim Minchin: Hotels and Higher Things
Re: Tim Minchin: Hotels and Higher Things
