PR.com: How did you get started with Savage Garden?

Darren Hayes: It was a really quick trajectory. Essentially, I answered an ad in a paper for a band that needed a singer. That’s how I met the other member of Savage Garden, Daniel Jones. He and I met and we were only a band together for about a year. We sent out demo tapes and got a record deal. It was sort of unheard of, and ten years later I look back and think, “God that was really easy!” But at the time it just seemed like a natural progression. Our first record had a Billboard #1 on it. It was just very fortunate timing.

PR.com: I never knew that Savage Garden was just two guys. I don’t know why, but for some reason I thought it was a group.

Darren Hayes: Bad marketing (laughs). To me it was honestly like a nineties version of The Eurythmics or Hall & Oates. It was definitely an equal songwriting partnership, but just one person who sang, which was me. So it was the singer and the guy on the keyboards, which is quite an eighties thing to do.

PR.com: You guys had a lot of really big hits. Why did you split up when you were having so much success?

Darren Hayes: We had two albums and sold twenty million of them. At the inception of the second record, Daniel sort of had a change of heart in his life and decided he didn’t want to be a public person. At the time it seemed like a crazy decision, but I kind of knew, so when we were at the peak of our success we knew the band was ending. It’s not like the band faded out or became a contestant on The Surreal Life or something (laughs). We just made two very big records and he went off to become a studio owner, and I continued on making records.

PR.com: Do you mind the constant travel from city to city and country to country and the packed schedules?

Darren Hayes: I don’t think there is any other job in the entertainment industry that is as physically demanding as music. Actors, they’re in one place; they’re on location or they’re in the studio. Whether its two years or two days making a film, they’re always going to the same place. Whereas with musicians, you physically have to take yourself to every city that you want people to listen to you in. And physically it is tough. I’m kind of lucky now. I married my boyfriend last year in England and I have a wonderful stable home life, so it’s kind of nice to be away and miss each other a bit and know that someone’s there. Before I had a great relationship it was hard.

click to read entire interview with Darren Hayes