Episode 181 - Tim Minchin

In two thousand nine he was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company to write music and lyrics for a stage adaptation of Rald Dahl's Matilda, The show opened in twenty ten and went on to become one of the most successful musicals of the last twenty years, garnering a slew of awards including seven Olivier's and five Tonies. It's been performed worldwide, enjoyed a four-year run on Broadway, and still runs in the West End.

better at. But in terms of the world and what people think of it, I I I am so out of time and out of place. Like I don't really listen to much music and I've never made an album before, so I'm carrying all this nineties sensibility and shit and it's kinda shameless. But um It's big, you know, it's a big record with lots of instruments and stuff in in an era where you're hearing a lot of stuff with um you know, fantastic digital solutions. I've just um blown all my money on players.

I was playing in bands and writing original songs from fifteen and made an album with my band that was called Arnold when I was about seventeen. And when I say an album, like a few mics in a school hall and then then a a big record in my house with my brother was always in these bands with uh Timmy the Dog in two thousand and that record was demo quality but fine and I shopped it round and

People took interest and I moved to Melbourne and around that area I changed the name of the band to Rosencrantz. So cool. And I was just really struggling to get anywhere in Melbourne because I was trying to pay bills by paying cover bands and it's just that. that trap you get into where you're doing the money jobs and and in all of that, the thing that I was really earning money doing as always was being an M D for cabaret acts and doing theatre and doing a bit of acting.

And then that became my cabaret career and that became my comedy career and then Matilda and I'm sure we'll talk about all that at some point. But really I just got distracted and I finally just finished it.

And there's a few others that I didn't record, but I still think there's no harm in'em and that they might have a life. I certainly don't attempt to take twenty years to make my next album, so I I sort of feel like this has just broken the seal and I hope I can just turn around and make a better one without so much hoo-ha. So there's a couple of old songs, but I mean I've got hundreds, maybe not hundreds of songs that I would proudly release.

But I've got dozens that I could go back and have a look at. But I was really trying to reflect the headspace I was in in the last couple of years, which is a very different headspace from any place I've been before, just by virtue of age and experience and few batterings and I wanted to try and get that down.

You shouldn't touch it, you know. Mm-hmm. And I I hate redundant pianos and I hate pianos that are treated like a necklace, you know, like uh look what I can spend money on. God forbid you use it. So I always think I should sit down and play one of them, but I'm not that much of a wanker. Um I'm fucking close. I'm right up at the edge of that much of a wanker.

But this notion of writing a song it's just a phrase came in in my head. But actually the phrase women in SUV Porsches always look miserable was something I wrote down a couple of years ago when I was living in LA. I thought that was funny and something about that phrase just screamed Latin to me. So when first couple of times I tried to sit down and write that song it was like women in SUV portion are trying to go down. Maybe it's it like it's like a fucking Sambrus.

And I thought, Oh kill me and that's I put it aside and then I came up with this other idea and realized that perhaps they were the same idea. And it's very rare because usually I set about with a mission with a song, I get a hook line and go, Right, I know what this song's gonna be about. All I have to do is fill in the information, I know what my intent is, I know what I want to make.

Yeah, something like I'll take lonely tonight, which has this journey, I knew what journey I wanted to take people on. Airport piano is written a lot more like as I understand it, most songwriters write, which is I just sort of found my way into it.

And it wasn't until quite l late in the process that I realised what I was writing about, that I was really that these two ideas, that wealth doesn't make you happy and that you need to take fleeting moments to when your flights delayed, a good thing to do is try and use that time to do something creative or

And then of course it spills into a full blown midlife crisis at the end. And I realized I was sort of writing about a slightly midlife crisis y sense of depression of the meaninglessness of acquisition and constant, you know, trying to achieve and get goals and looking at the people around me and, you know, because I'm so spoilt, I've got to live in

quite nice areas in Hollywood and now in Sydney and everyone around me is like bankers and shit. And I I mean it's a boring subject'cause money doesn't buy you happiness is pretty well trodden. But I like to think airport pianos are a version of that well trodden path that um is pretty me. There's a lot of words. And like a lot of my songs, you think you know what it is and then it's like, nah, it's more story to come.

And I just threw him the demo without the words and he just stuck it into the session. And I just sang it I think I sang it twice and that's what's on the record. I basically improvised I improvised the tune really. I sort of had an idea of it, but the kids are on drugs, where they're at all those all that was just um uh you know, seeing how I went at the time. And I I really like that because my my process is usually not very organic, it's very intellectual. Mm-hmm.

We were reflecting on where we first met and he was like, Yeah, I was shitting myself. I wish I could do his accent. Anyway, I'm name dropping because I'm proud that Hans liked my work, so uh fuck you all. Um

So, you know, as sports people are like, Oh they're my lucky socks, I have to wear them every time I play. I don't know why he's from Birmingham, but um uh it's like you know, it's the origin of all false belief systems, you know, superstition. What was his name with the pigeons?

Skinner when he studied pigeons and he's like he just put food in a thing and they all develop superstitions. So some of the pigeons that like do weird things with their heads and Yeah, a friend of mine sent me that study recently.

Anyway, we are superstitious pigeons and I decided I didn't want any of that'cause I found especially with performing when I was anxious about the performance, especially during the Jesus Christ superstar years and when I was singing right at the top of my range night after night, I

found myself conflating warming up and process that's useful with process that's basically superstition, like, you know, I need this much time and I need to have this drink. And it's not really superstition, but most of this shit doesn't work. You warm up well for five minutes and you should be able to just go on. And the rest the things you suck and the things you the things you suck, the biography of dimension, um the things you drink and the and the stretches you do, most of that

trying to fool yourself, uh, trying to manage your anxiety. So I decided I wasn't and with comedy as well, I decided I just wanna be able to fucking walk straight from a chat with the bass player on the stage. And I so I just

Sorry, I talk too much. Um with my songwriting I try to do the same. I'm like So I wrote most of Matilda in a scanky room at the Pleasants in Islington on a out of tune piano and I wrote most of Groundhood Day in an underground dressing room that I was borrowing at King's Place. And some of it at a rental on a keyboard above a cafe in Sydney and I think the answer is I try to disconnect. the craft from any semblance of process, you know. What about you guys?

I mean Rald Dale's writer's hut is the thing I always come back to. Like it's not really about I need a space with my incense burning and a view of the lake. And actually I don't think many people think that. I think uh writers of novels tend to need to go bucolic or something, but I think for most of it it's about not being able to hear the fucking kids. And just being out of focus at any time of day. My problem is I've never really had a room.

And at the moment I I'm in the spare room in my house and my wife just like, You've got to get a studio. I c I can't it's not like I give a shit about the noise, although I do get distracted by the kids having meltdowns, but um But it's more that uh it's annoying for everyone around me'cause the way I write is just uh repeat phrases seventeen tim I don't know how you guys write together. I can't write in front of me on although I know it's a slightly different vibe. But um

The last time I really did was when I first moved to London and did a lot of corporate gigs and I'd literally write a song for the photocopy paper company or whatever. And it would shat me. Um but I've really enjoyed writing this record. I've really enjoyed not having too much of a deadline, although it's important that you have something. And I thought I was hating it. I was writing these songs and going, This is shit, I'm my music's dated and no one cares about this middle class crap and it

And what is it anyway? Am I a cabaret guy? Am I Randy Newman? Am I fucking so I think I'm Muse with summer romance? What the hell am I doing? I'm just a

I d I have no focus because I've written in so many styles for so many reasons and I've written from the point of view of five-year-old girls and evil headmistresses. And one thing that that I've loved is Daniel Denham, who produced this record, is just Sydney guy that's worked with a lot of you know, really great artists, but he's not some LA superstar producer.

My manager said you should work with this guy and just realizing that your songs as you write them at the piano don't have to be they're not the end, actually. I've always been so independent. I've never had a publisher, I've never had a record deal. I'd I've always just gone, this is how it's gonna sound, apart from working with my orchestrator Chris Nightingale on on the musicals.

And realizing that you can hand these things over and if and once they go through the filter of a producer with a good brain. And through the filter of the recording process and you build them up and let the producer say, you know, let's not start with the piano, let's start with this or whatever. Then suddenly you realize there is sonic cohesiveness. And of course, there's natural cohesiveness because it's my voice.

uh not just my singing voice, which is one reason it all coheres, but also my voice in the metaphorical sense. And I wrote the songs mostly in a two year period, so there's natural cohesiveness in the fact that you're in a mental state that pulls them together. And actually now I think it's a particularly Album album. I think it actually does work as a suite of songs in the order we've

We've offered them and it does tell a story. So yeah, I guess my there's no such thing as a short answer, but my short answer is I've really enjoyed writing not to a brief because it's sort of upside down. You discover What your intent is in hindsight, what your intent was. And I'm so sort of controlling that I've sort of learned something about just. not being too hard on yourself and not discarding stuff until until you've gone through the process.

And of course, all through my comedy career, which by the way was only six years in the thirty years I've been writing songs. I really went from Edinburgh 2005 to Royal Albert Hall twenty twelve and went, Okay, did that and that was it until last year when I started touring again and it's a comedy show, I guess, but it's definitely not.

As punchliney. But all through that six years I was still doing You Grew On Me Like a Tumor, White Wine in the Sun, Beauty as a Harlot, The Fence, Rock and Roll Nerd, Dark Side, they're actually just pop some. I made them funny by the way I performed them and by surrounding them with real punchline songs like Kant or Fuck a Pope or whatever. But really it's just a cabaret show. And so

What I realized with this record is that I I don't have to switch something off. I just have to not pursue laugh. But my natural writing style is of course whimsical. And um even if I think of the most serious songs on the record, I mean summer romance is just a big pop song, but it has coatless, I'm heading out even though I know it's hopeless. I'll take this battle to the streets, umbrella less but undefeated. I mean it's like it's playful all the time or in I can't save you

you know, it's meant to make you cry. It makes me cry because I've got subtext about who that song's for but um, you know, if you lose your passport in a country where no one speaks English, I'll call the consulate for you. Is it not a normal serious line. Not a line written by a person that anyone's ever gonna take seriously. But it's become my thing. That teetering on the knife edge between sentimentality and quirk has become my thing. And I'm very

Pleased that that's become my thing. It suits suits me. Yeah.

uh pop artist does except the title we put above our names at the festival, you know. Mm. But the songwriters I grew up with, that we grew up with, I'm a bit older than you guys obviously, but um but the Kinks never had a problem. with the fact that they wrote dedicated Follower of Fashion and Waterloo Sunset in the same period. I mean and the Beatles, every second song was taking the piss. And and you look at the footage of those boys

Turing before it all got ridiculous, and all they're doing is having a laugh. And their disintegration was literally correlated with when they stopped having a laugh. When they got hassled by the Christians and

That started the slide when they went to America and everyone started taking them seriously and they were like, Hi, we're just having a laugh. And and they just fucking And they just went, Well fuck this, not fun anymore and then of course it's very hard to not take yourself seriously when you're the biggest act ever, but fuck I am really struck by the footage of those boys and how much they're just

Just banter, they're brilliantly free of the weight of things until they weren't and then it went kaput. And Queen, I mean, you fucking kidding me. So there was that, the bands I grew up with. And when people say what are your comic influences, I always say Beatles, King's Queen, you know? And then you jump forward and you hit my or you hit Grunge and the Seattle and suddenly if you're not trying to kill yourself, you're not cool.

And that sounds flip. I'm not making a joke about people who are suicidal. I'm making a joke about how we consume that, how we want to feed on it culturally. Maybe that was the turning point, but there's absolutely no doubt that I built a comedy career on the fact that I was a post grunge songwriter. I was writing about, well, I play piano instead of guitar. I I wasn't beaten up as a kid. I don't have a drug addiction. There's no place for me.

then gave me a career and ironically was the solution, so I found my place. But you're right. What do you think about the Seattle hypothesis as the thing that broke irony in music?

Telling stories, you know, and then the next song is A letter to you, on a cassette,'cause we don't write I mean very both those acts came along at a time where I went, I don't suppose I get to be a muser, I'm a piano player and I don't take myself seriously enough and both Other reason I kept crafting.

But it's one of of a lot of songs on the record that's uh structurally A little bit unconventional in that it goes incredibly long verse, almost like a sort of prologue to a novel. And then the chorus, which is really simple after a long meandering examination of this scenario. And then a trumpet solo. Never goes back to the verse. Just picks up on the B section of the verse, like a bridge, and goes back to the chorus just one more time.

And somehow still manages to be four fucking minutes long. I can't write a short song. I thought, well, we'll just keep this one short and they're like, Yeah, it's still four minutes and four and a half minutes, whatever. I just cannot write a short song. I just feel like there's more to be done.

But that trumpet solo that trumpet coming in sort of unexpectedly is like probably my favourite moment on the record because it's Matt Drudrell who is this um incredible player that was at the Conservatorium when I went there and I wasn't shit on his shoe. I was just some kid trying to learn to read music. And he was, you know, I think he played at Carnegie Hall when he was 18 or something. Beautiful player. Mm-hmm.

what's been made before or you shine a light on a very, very common topic in a slightly uncommon way. And I'm not I'm not John Cage. I'm not trying to reinvent what music is. I'm just within the genre of pop, which is really what I'm writing or singer, songwriter, you know, whatever.

I think a a victory is just taking a slump on it that that makes people go, Oh yeah, it is like that and I haven't heard that before and and I I'm not judgmental about music. I I I'll listen to anything, you know. I don't listen to music very much actually, but I'm very happy to go to a gig from any genre really, as long as it's not too loud. And uh

If anything annoys me, it's that people are fucking lazy with their words. You just go, You're not trying to say something, you're just trying to sell a record. So you just

picking tropes off the trope board and sticking them in in a slightly different order. And I really resent that more than just the fact that nearly all pop songs are the same four chords. I kind of get that and, you know, a nice different melody over the same frickin' four chords. But this This cut and paste of lyrical concepts just shits.

almost a bit uncool it's so romantic. I mean it's all very uncool. But um if I didn't have you and Lonely Tonight are are very much the same thesis, which is that Love is more valuable when you look it in the eye. I actually think life is more valuable when you look it in the eye, as a part together shows what what I was saying earlier. So I do believe that the beauty

of life is in acknowledging that we live in a meaningless universe and and you have to construct meaning based on whatever stories you want to tell about yourself. And the story that we're soulmates will last forever and it's going to be beautiful.

is just wrong. You're not fated to be together. You're not soulmates. It's not all gonna be beautiful. It's gonna be shit. You're gonna decay together. And if you wanna stay together, you're gonna have to choose it again and again and again, especially if you're a freaking Touring muse, or you go, you're a carpet salesman who travels for work, you're gonna get yourself in situations where you're drunk in a hotel room and you're gonna have to make a choice.

And I think Lonely Tonight's really romantic and it very deliberately plays with those romantic tropes. It it puts the woman on a house on a hill almost like a sort of iconic Jane Austen novel or some sort of romance. And the bridge, the middle eight, deliberately leans into these big ideas of Jesus and temptation and And the Greeks and Odysseus being called onto the rocks by beautiful women and it's deliberately overblown and heightened.

in order to acknowledge that temptation is an idea that has launched ships or at least sunk ships and it is at the center of some of the greatest literature, not just because we're born in a patriarchy, but also because uh

It transcends cultures and time, this idea of temptation. So it's a big subject, and I'm trying to acknowledge that it's a big Ancient subject, but at the same time, where the rubber hits the road in a life in 2018 or whenever I wrote it, it's in Pringles and Snickers, in shitty hotel rooms. on mornings with a hangover. It's tawdry. It's small. It's uh banal and domestic. And so the clash between the grand and the domestic is the point of that song.

And even just the phrase with only the rappers of Pringles and Snickers for which to atone with that sort of formal syntax and the formal word atone. clashed against rappers of Pringles and Snickers, which is a lovely little imperfect rhyme. Um you know, that that this the stuff that gives me a boner and and I almost don't care if it doesn't give anyone else a boner. It's like it's my jam.

I don't particularly like my music, I certainly don't really like my voice, but if some other fucker wrote that line, I'd be like, that's a good line and and that's my version of pride. That didn't suck. If someone else did that, I wouldn't hate them.

In LA, hey, and the actors of gratitude drinking undrinkable juice, and the agents taking ten percent in their sneakers and suits. And across in the captain, tryna fight up turn back on and home on the one-one in the relentless on the sun and the needy and the greedy. And so it's constantly turning upside down.

And I've I did it in Groundhog Day a lot and I I've just become addicted to it. And I don't know if anyone's noticing this is a thing I'm doing or if anyone cares. Or maybe loads of people do it and I just don't listen to enough music. I'm not quite sure where it came from but I really li it's my it's uh fetish, you know. Um and what's hard is you when you try and teach people they just

They don't notice that it's hard until they try and learn it. And then they're like, you know, I got my drama trying to sing things and it turns upside down. They go, Well, I've made a mistake. And I'm like, no, no. You just have to not believe it. You just have to sing as if the upside down hasn't happened. And follow it through.

And um yeah Matthew's slightly less cynical than me or or less uh edgy. Uh sounds ridiculous. A bit uh less um sharp edged in his humour and stuff and I think he really enjoyed my show, and I think he was convinced when he saw that show that my songwriting ability was um sort of advanced enough. and that the theatricality of my songwriting was good and that the dark humour could be turned to roll dahl. I don't think he was worried that I wouldn't be able to stop swearing or anything.

But he he says he got to the end of the show and went, There's just no sign of any heart. A musical theatre needs a big unashamed heart, almost without exception unless you're writing musical theatre parody like the South Park boys did with Book of Mormon. But even Book of Mormon has that incredible beautiful what they call in musical theatre I want song with um Salt Lake City. It's you know, you just can't really sustain a narrative musical over two hours without

Making people want to cry or whatever. That that's the task. Anyway, Matthew had sort of decided he was standing up ready to leave. thinking maybe we could get Tim to write some of the songs and get someone else to do the heart. And yeah, I and then I came back on for my encore and did what I've always done for my encores all through my comedy career, which is Just do zero irony, sentimentality, and uh play white wine in the sun.

And everyone cried the way they do'cause it's a very manipulative song and uh and he went Oh shit that bogan Aussie foul mouth fuck might be able to do it after all. So that's what happened.

a woman, in the case of many songs. And I love that. I I don't really believe I don't think you need to have experienced things, because it's a craft. It's not a diary. Art is not It can be, but is not only spewing your experiences. It's a craft. and Quiet in Matilda is a pretty reasonable fist at writing a song from the point of view of a genius who's five, who's uh A very, very strange mind and a huge amount of

sadness in her life and yeah. I love that. It's my favorite thing, is that challenge. And uh one of my songs from Groundhog Day, playing Nancy is from the point of view of what it's like to be a beautiful woman who's sort of

judged only for that and I reckon it's um I it's a good good tape. So uh I don't think you need to have experienced stuff. You you need to I read a lot of books and I don't know if I'm hugely empathic, but I think I'm reasonably emotionally intelligent as in I I get what people are you know, that's my that's our job, right, as artists is to try and see the world from other people's points of view and

Sorry, I'm I'm on a bit of a tangent'cause it's something I think about a bit, especially in this age of um, how dare you write from this point of view that you haven't experienced yourself and I I do understand. There are lines where it turns into appropriation, but I I think about it a lot. I think we've all been kids, so we can always write about what it is to be a kid, you know, unless you've forgotten, which I almost have because I drink too much wine.

You've made a decision about you think this character or these characters should sing now about this topic. And that's the biggest decision for a composer of musicals. You've got to make a decision that it's time to sing, and and it's time to sing when there's something happening, you're in a moment in the story where you think, well, this is a great time to expand on the ideas in this area and to say more about how the character feels about it that you wouldn't necessarily get out of dialogue.

And also it's an opportunity to talk about the world because musicals you only really sing if you've got a subject that you can play with that reflects on the audience's experience, not just the experience of the characters. So you're trying to forward the story. illuminate where the character is at and illuminate us, illuminate the human experience. They're the three things I believe you're trying to do. I I watch a lot of musicals where I don't think the composer lyricist has even

Considered that that possibly is what they should be doing. But that's what I think you should be doing. I don't know shit. That's just what I've decided. I'm sure someone else has written a book about. But um I just have a sense. All I'm thinking about is what will the audience be feeling when they get there and how do I make them feel the way I want them to feel and and make them think a bit.

And the melody is in service of the lyrics and in service of the environment. Do we want the audience to feel tense or released or amused or suspended? The melody is not there to sell records. Ground up days a it's not a it's a bit of a head fuck of a record. Any given tune is like

fine but a bit weird. But as a piece of musical theater which you start at the beginning and end at the end and go on a journey, I'm super proud of it. I think it's one one of the most complex and interesting things that I've been involved in.

Even after Matilda, critics uh several critics went, Well, they they're lyrically funny, but you don't come out humming a tune And ten years later, with When I Grow Up and Revolting Children and Naughty, you'd have to say there's hummable tunes in there. It's just that The only way you make people walk out humming a tune is relentlessly repeat it.

No, I don't that's fine. You can do that if you want. But coming out humming a tune isn't something I give a flying fuck about. I do not care if you don't remember a single tune as long as in the moment it got you where I wanted you to be. Humming a tune.

I mean you could and I might if I put my mind to it, I guess I I could come up with a good top line, but it's just not. I don't think that's my gift by a long, long shot. I if anything, I'd say it's probably a weakness. But I sort of It's a weakness, except that to improve on my melodies would come at the cost of something else I care about potentially, you know.

I don't know. No, I'd like to get I could work on my top lines. I I do think I'm really obsessed by harmony and like Matilda's all so much of it is built on this movement up that's in Bruce and it's at the beginning of The hammer throwing song and it's in this this da da da z all with this moving harmony and all these Weird shit and um no one cares. It's like for me it's like a oh, this is amazing. It moves up through this, you know, and I I probably need to get over myself.

Yeah. And then when I'm not really interested in the harmonic basis of things, I go, Oh, fuck it, I'll just use the four chords and kind of just throw my toys out of the pram and go all the way to the most simple thing ever. There's probably a middle ground I should get better at occupying.