Speaker 1: Hi, Christy Casters, and welcome to another episode. I'm excited
Speaker 1: about this because I spun the wheel and today we've
Speaker 1: landed on music makers and joining me as one of
Speaker 1: the most fashionable men in the music biz and responsible
Speaker 1: for some of the defining songs of mine probably your generation.
Speaker 1: It is you am I frontman Tim Rogers. Twelve albums,
Speaker 1: five solo albums, an amazing book. My god, please put
Speaker 1: your hands together, and welcome to the Christy Cast, the delightful, intriguing,
Speaker 1: elegant Tim Rogers. Welcome to the Christy Cast. Tim Rogers. Hey,
Speaker 1: great to see you. Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 2: Ye, it's a wonderful privilege.
Speaker 1: Now see you. I have spun up originally the music
Speaker 1: makers and that's where you come in. And then we've
Speaker 1: spun up the diary entry. I found my old diary.
Speaker 2: That brand must have been on eighty five. Yes, you know,
Speaker 2: when this came there was a prospect of us talking
Speaker 2: about diary amongst the other things, which horrified me.
Speaker 1: Ha ha ha ha.
Speaker 2: But in one of the lockdown's sort of a time
Speaker 2: well let's not talk about it again. But I went
Speaker 2: back to my old study books, law books and literature
Speaker 2: books from university, which I hadn't opened in thirty seven years,
Speaker 2: and because I thought how embarrassing it would be, because
Speaker 2: I'm one to take little notes in the marginalia, in
Speaker 2: the margins, in the marginalia, in the marginalia, which is
Speaker 2: possibly a misuse of a term, but what others called pretentious,
Speaker 2: I call aspirational. So I'll use it. And I found
Speaker 2: a bunch of books and looked and all the encryption
Speaker 2: little annotations thank you that I'd taken, they sounded exactly
Speaker 2: like me now, so the eighteen year old didn't sound
Speaker 2: that different to the fifty four year old, however old
Speaker 2: it was then, And it brought me quite a lot
Speaker 2: of peace for a while, because I disparaged that younger
Speaker 2: me as being a twit, and reading the annotations, I
Speaker 2: thought another time it was in Kenneth's lesser poetry books.
Speaker 1: It's a really interesting observation because I think that we
Speaker 1: are born exactly the way we are, and I feel
Speaker 1: the same as I always have. It's only my body
Speaker 1: that's older.
Speaker 2: I was wondering about this yesterday because I began reading
Speaker 2: Richard Flanagan's new book Question seven. Oh yeah, and he
Speaker 2: was good by the way so far, it's sexual exceptional.
Speaker 2: I'm a very big fan. I've never been more starstruck
Speaker 2: meeting anyone than Richard Flanagan in the Hope Ark pub
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen. And or maybe it's for that, because
Speaker 2: we talked and I met his daughter Rosie, and the
Speaker 2: next day he had to break a date that we
Speaker 2: had because he said, I've got an idea for the
Speaker 2: last paragraph of the book I'm finishing. And it must
Speaker 2: have been before that, because the book was The Narrow
Speaker 2: Road to the Deep North, and so I went off
Speaker 2: to American tour the day after. But this Richard Flanagan's
Speaker 2: got a new novel coming out, was just reverberriting in
Speaker 2: my mind the whole time. And it was Narrow Road
Speaker 2: to the Deep North, which is easily one of my
Speaker 2: four favorite novels all time.
Speaker 1: And you were instrumental, not majoring. It happened because you
Speaker 1: didn't crack the shits when he canceled your date.
Speaker 2: I'm used to people cancel it. I mean, look at me.
Speaker 2: It was just quite something being in the presence of
Speaker 2: a novelist and that fiction writing has always intrigued me,
Speaker 2: and I've tried it and I'll try it again, but
Speaker 2: just that mind. Anyway, Richard was writing about how a
Speaker 2: not near the experience, but a death experience at the
Speaker 2: age of twenty one, how that did actually change him
Speaker 2: and who he was before that, and then this great trauma.
Speaker 1: What do you mean a death experience?
Speaker 2: Well it was. It involved canoeing kayaking in extremely treacherous waters.
Speaker 2: And I think my memory of the way he wrote
Speaker 2: about initially was trying to do the best straight I
Speaker 2: could be very wrong, or at least a section of it.
Speaker 2: And he was again just from memory, and I do
Speaker 2: apologize to Richard dead for a little while and was revived,
Speaker 2: and wow, he feels that his life since then is
Speaker 2: not a palimpsest but a version of himself. And so
Speaker 2: of course then I was thinking, I wonder if because
Speaker 2: feeling that I'm the same as the King Algolu at
Speaker 2: the age of two as I am at fifty five,
Speaker 2: just bodily a little different. Yeah, but my nose has
Speaker 2: stayed the same.
Speaker 1: You would talk about having to go at fiction. I
Speaker 1: read your memoir Detours.
Speaker 2: I got that to pay a hope.
Speaker 1: You just crossed your eyes.
Speaker 2: Well, it was an interesting experience. I met a lot
Speaker 2: of really wonderful people, my agent Melanie and Catherine Milne
Speaker 2: at HarperCollins, and met a lot of authors through that experience.
Speaker 2: So I'm really grateful for that experience. But I finished
Speaker 2: the book to pay a hotel bill in Calgooley. I
Speaker 2: went out there with my dad in about twenty fifteen
Speaker 2: to watch some footy and dad was very sick by
Speaker 2: that time, and we thought let's go out and see
Speaker 2: the footy finals because he was an umpire out there,
Speaker 2: and we racked up quite the tab at a number
Speaker 2: of cal Gooley's finest establishments. And when I came back,
Speaker 2: I started writing about it, and my agent, Melanie Ostell, said,
Speaker 2: You've really got to pursue this, and I thought, well,
Speaker 2: if I get a tiny advance, I can pay that
Speaker 2: bar tab and no hotel wow, Chalgoley. And so look, I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure novelists have done and writers have written books
Speaker 2: for less noble means than paying bar tabs.
Speaker 1: Well, I signed a contract for a very regrettable job,
Speaker 1: and that was to get me out of a let's
Speaker 1: talk about it or no, I mean I can. So
Speaker 1: it was for like a must, you must. It was
Speaker 1: like a weight loss, you know, I think it was
Speaker 1: years and years ago before I worked out how I
Speaker 1: felt about that sort of stuff, you know, And now
Speaker 1: I don't talk about my body at all. It's not
Speaker 1: open for discussion.
Speaker 2: Was there a date that you had the point where
Speaker 2: you went yes and no, or just a feeling.
Speaker 1: It was part of kind of a raft of changes
Speaker 1: that I made in my life when I really started
Speaker 1: to interrogate how I felt about things, and you know,
Speaker 1: where I stood on things and what made me comfortable
Speaker 1: and uncomfortable, and that was that was one of them
Speaker 1: that I just went along with so many things because
Speaker 1: that's what's expected. And when you do that and it
Speaker 1: doesn't really fit you, you get you get sad, like
Speaker 1: very it's.
Speaker 2: Awful and anxious as well.
Speaker 1: I'm very anxious.
Speaker 2: Yes, you're representative of something that you don't have a
Speaker 2: belief in. And of course, gee, throughout history, haven't we
Speaker 2: just been you know, Look, there's a person looking this way.
Speaker 2: Oh you're a female. Yeah, that's it, let's pass comment. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I will remind you that you said that I'm taller
Speaker 2: than you thought it.
Speaker 1: Was you are taller than you that and I don't
Speaker 1: know why I thought you were tired because of the whole.
Speaker 1: I thought you were a tiny fellow.
Speaker 2: Well, the Rolling Stones are a classic example of that.
Speaker 2: Anyone who's ever met them will say humongous personalities. But
Speaker 2: my lord, they're diminutive.
Speaker 1: Which you are quite fine. So when I you is
Speaker 1: you are so fun No, like you're elegant. So, because
Speaker 1: I've never seen you in person, I just assumed that
Speaker 1: that elegance came in a smaller package.
Speaker 2: Which is a year and a half ago. It was
Speaker 2: very brief. It was at radio, and I remember it
Speaker 2: very finely.
Speaker 1: It was in and out, but we haven't like communed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yes, the cliches of the modern musician, I do
Speaker 2: grab many of them because I think that the cliches
Speaker 2: are being the wrong cliches. Are there that image of
Speaker 2: if you're an rock and roll band, you're supposed to
Speaker 2: be disrespectful and perennially lascivious and on the take, And
Speaker 2: there's elements of that that are fun and good to share,
Speaker 2: particularly if you can do all that and not trash
Speaker 2: a hotel room because that means hard to work for
Speaker 2: someone the next day, and as an ex hotel room
Speaker 2: cleaner and respectful and so people get hurt and so
Speaker 2: I think there's a way of being interesting and being
Speaker 2: inverted commas rock and roll, but doing it in a
Speaker 2: way where no one actually gets hurt or necessarily offended,
Speaker 2: because being offensive isn't part of being rock and roll.
Speaker 2: I think the only essential thing about being a rock
Speaker 2: and roll apart from the music, is just to be interesting,
Speaker 2: because we're supposed to do the things that others who
Speaker 2: thankfully edit themselves and think twice about their behavior. Where're
Speaker 2: supposed to be the ones who just jump And.
Speaker 1: Do you think you're an interesting person?
Speaker 2: I'm interested, and I've been in interesting circumstances, but at
Speaker 2: the core, I don't think I've met interesting people who
Speaker 2: have lived through horrific experiences and traumas and gone lived
Speaker 2: through it. I find that of incredible interest. And then
Speaker 2: met very very bookish, intelligent people. And I've met people
Speaker 2: who aren't bookish, but I have a brilliant human intelligence,
Speaker 2: and I'm not one of those, but I do. I think, listen, yeah,
Speaker 2: And I enjoy studying and learning, and so that's where
Speaker 2: the interests lie.
Speaker 1: How important is curiosity to you essential?
Speaker 2: And when, particularly with my father, when he got sick
Speaker 2: and before he died, and you were sick for a
Speaker 2: very long while, but he seemed to lose some of
Speaker 2: the curiosity that he lived with. And I found really
Speaker 2: intriguing about him. And it was mostly through pain because
Speaker 2: he was in a lot of pain, and when you're
Speaker 2: in pain, it's very difficult to see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't think of anything else.
Speaker 2: No, with all great respect and love to him, I
Speaker 2: just thought, I just need to keep my curiosity up
Speaker 2: and not scleroticize and yeah, just kind of close up.
Speaker 2: And of course, with the good fortune that I've had
Speaker 2: health wise, as long as that lasts, the curiosity is
Speaker 2: there because just so much to learn. I picked up
Speaker 2: a book off a friend in Malmsbury the other day.
Speaker 2: We get together and drink and play records. And this
Speaker 2: was actually drinking tea and playing records, which was an anomaly.
Speaker 2: But he had a book on quantum biology. Now I've
Speaker 2: never started science. I'm interested in it, but this book
Speaker 2: on quantum biology is frying my brain with wonderful information.
Speaker 2: I didn't even know what existed. But it's about all.
Speaker 1: Those neuropathways getting forged through. I love that feeling too.
Speaker 2: It's just wonderful. I need.
Speaker 1: Oh No, sometimes I hate that feeling. Actually, I've just
Speaker 1: realized I had to learn about accounting, and it was
Speaker 1: like dragging a dead body over a fence in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night, Like I just it was so hard,
Speaker 1: and then frustratingly a week later it was like I'd
Speaker 1: never learned the thing. Yeah, there are some things that
Speaker 1: I do not like to create new neuropathways.
Speaker 2: For was the attempt to study accounting so you could
Speaker 2: become accountable?
Speaker 1: Well, no, it was just so that I knew about money.
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about money, and I'm scared of it,
Speaker 1: and I thought he's a good thing. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're scared of something, get to know it. I tried
Speaker 1: to get to know it. And I prefer ignorance to
Speaker 1: be honest if I end up, you know, in jail.
Speaker 1: Then you heard it here.
Speaker 2: First. I've said that to my accountant, who may may
Speaker 2: not be my mother, just last week.
Speaker 1: You're lucky.
Speaker 2: Well, yes i am. She's a wonderful woman and a great,
Speaker 2: great friend apart from my mother and possibly my accountant.
Speaker 2: But she said, haven't you been on the road all year?
Speaker 2: You haven't been home in four months? Said yep, you
Speaker 2: know you're broke. Oh no, okay, Okay.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could write the other book at the advance.
Speaker 2: Catherine Milne of Collins.
Speaker 1: What brings you joy? Tim Rodgers?
Speaker 2: Other people's happiness? I think I love. If I'm not
Speaker 2: struck by a blue I won't call it depression. That's
Speaker 2: another thing completely. But if I'm blue and other people's happiness,
Speaker 2: sometimes I take that as I get envious of it.
Speaker 2: But at daylight today, we're feeling very good and balanced,
Speaker 2: seeing other people happy, people out having a cup of tea,
Speaker 2: sitting outside and having a beer and laughing with each other.
Speaker 2: That's about it, I mean, apart from the big ones.
Speaker 2: My daughter's eternal happiness is my eternal happiness. And I
Speaker 2: was with her in New York just a couple of
Speaker 2: weeks ago, and we were sitting there just smashing tins
Speaker 2: in the East Village, and she just looked so happy
Speaker 2: and healthy, and she was telling me about her latest relationship,
Speaker 2: which she was a little cagey about telling me for
Speaker 2: reasons I won't going to because it's her story. And
Speaker 2: my response was, well, you're an intelligent young woman. You're
Speaker 2: an intelligent woman. It doesn't matter what I think. You're
Speaker 2: twenty three. You make good decisions. And you just seem
Speaker 2: really great and so it doesn't matter what I think.
Speaker 2: I know the guy he's a little too good.
Speaker 1: Looking, and well they do say that, you know, we
Speaker 1: end up with our fathers, So what's a gal to do?
Speaker 1: My god, ah.
Speaker 2: That's Nightmereville. Although I did get contacted by someone recently
Speaker 2: who was romantic with when I was very young, and
Speaker 2: she contacted me the first time in forty years, and
Speaker 2: my first response was I'm so sorry and I just
Speaker 2: knew nothing about anything, and she said, you're actually really lovely.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I was going to say, I bet that
Speaker 1: was not her memory at all.
Speaker 2: Have you had that experience?
Speaker 1: Yes, I have. Yeah. Yeah. It reached out to me
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, my god, hi, how are
Speaker 1: you And he said, oh, look, I've really I've been
Speaker 1: feeling so bad about how it ended. And I was
Speaker 1: I was like, what do you mean and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: I acted like a real dick, and lah lah, And
Speaker 1: I said, honestly, what a waste of time for you
Speaker 1: to spent all these all these years feeling guilty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel no badness towards you, And that was not
Speaker 1: my memory at all. I don't even know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about isn't that interesting? Yeah, So never hang on
Speaker 1: to that sort of stuff. I don't think.
Speaker 2: Hang on to I think it's worth examining. And I
Speaker 2: look forward to meeting up with this human and talking
Speaker 2: about it because and talking about that and whether the
Speaker 2: obfuscation of memory is that just that obfuscation or there's
Speaker 2: something in that. I don't particularly just want to give
Speaker 2: myself a free pass yet because I haven't always been
Speaker 2: noble and probably won't in the future at times, and
Speaker 2: just want to kind of check myself, you know. Geez.
Speaker 2: People can justify a hell of a lot, can't they.
Speaker 2: And the more you read history, you see people the
Speaker 2: way people can justify their actions. It's just historically always been.
Speaker 1: But don't you think that maybe I think this is
Speaker 1: what happens in those situations. What you're feeling inside is
Speaker 1: maybe diabolical towards that person. But because we're human beings
Speaker 1: and we've learnt to communicate in a way that gets
Speaker 1: us what we want without completely annihilating the other person,
Speaker 1: I think you've manipulated the situation to your advantage without
Speaker 1: overtly brutally tearing it out of her chest. And while
Speaker 1: it's still beating, taking a white out of it. So
Speaker 1: you know how you were feeling and it wasn't great,
Speaker 1: and that you're ashamed about that. But this is how
Speaker 1: I sort of worked it out with this guy that
Speaker 1: reached out to me. The way he was feeling was
Speaker 1: not great. He didn't tell me that, but he knows
Speaker 1: how he felt and he doesn't feel that way anymore,
Speaker 1: and he's ashamed of it. And he sort of assumes
Speaker 1: that I knew that that's what was happening.
Speaker 2: I didn't, because if you don't enunciate it. Yeah, we're
Speaker 2: not mind readers, that's right, unless you are actually my
Speaker 2: mind reader.
Speaker 1: How are you with compliments? Because I've read all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff about you before this chat, and my god,
Speaker 1: people just say the nicest thing of things about you, like.
Speaker 2: Not today, Yes they do. It sort of gets leveled up.
Speaker 1: With wordsmith, a poet, a bon vivante, op shop dressed dandy.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just love that. Anyway.
Speaker 2: I do buy secondhand clothes, but never from opportunity shops.
Speaker 2: I buy things for opportunity shops to keep the opportunity
Speaker 2: shops going. But I'm also a germiphied, So if I
Speaker 2: buy something that hasn't been thoroughly.
Speaker 1: We are a match made in heaven because I am
Speaker 1: mad for the laundry. Yeah, so I could give you
Speaker 1: that wonderful peace of mind to just go crazy wherever
Speaker 1: you want, and then you would hand it to me
Speaker 1: and the next day twenty four hour service. Tim Rogers.
Speaker 2: I'm big on doing my laundry and not God, I
Speaker 2: love it done. But I was just in Europe last
Speaker 2: month with the heart Ons. We're doing this tour and
Speaker 2: one of my bandmates is similar to me in the
Speaker 2: fastidiousness of you know, what we call mysophobia and germophobia.
Speaker 2: And when you're in a group like the hard Ons,
Speaker 2: you at least two dozen times a day confronted with
Speaker 2: situations where that you're challenged and so would have to
Speaker 2: just navigate that. But once we express to each other
Speaker 2: that we're of a similar way of thinking, we look
Speaker 2: out for each other in kind of silent ways because
Speaker 2: we just don't everyone doesn't need to know.
Speaker 1: So what does that look like to look out for
Speaker 1: somebody who shares that germophobia? Like do you just with
Speaker 1: out a little sanitizer and mortar.
Speaker 2: And the soap, you know, because the other thing to
Speaker 2: do is to not exacerbate the condition because it's a
Speaker 2: drag and would love not to be that way, and.
Speaker 1: Because you like that way your whole life.
Speaker 2: From about fourteen or fifteen, developed what now I guess
Speaker 2: would be diagnosed as in an anxiety disorder. It was misdiagnosed.
Speaker 2: I was heavily medicated for it from about sixteen, but
Speaker 2: it was just an anxiety disorder. And in that I
Speaker 2: was having attacks that were so psychedelic I thought they
Speaker 2: were drug related because I was a fledgling drug taker
Speaker 2: at fourteen fifteen, thirteen, and there really wasn't the language
Speaker 2: around it or that. Maybe I'm sure the knowledge was there,
Speaker 2: but it's just not something that you talked about, and
Speaker 2: so because I couldn't talk about it, then it just
Speaker 2: tumbled and tumbled and tumbled and grew and grew and
Speaker 2: grew until it became incapacitated, like twenty at law school
Speaker 2: in Canberra, and then I got asked to join a
Speaker 2: rock band. The circumstances where you're confronted as a German
Speaker 2: in a touring rock band, it's just everywhere, and particularly
Speaker 2: if you fall into the whole romance of it, where
Speaker 2: you're supposed to be this free wheeling lass, a fair bohemian.
Speaker 1: A Flanner, which is one of my favorite words.
Speaker 2: Walking is the greatest of all exercise.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is. It's changed my life.
Speaker 2: There's a great book called Flanouse. Yes, because Flanner has
Speaker 2: been typecast as a gentleman and Elk can Lauren Elk
Speaker 2: and I think her name was, write this great book, Flanous,
Speaker 2: And it's about being an observer as a woman on
Speaker 2: the streets. And she looks back because women are generally observed.
Speaker 2: You can get by being looking like someone like maybe
Speaker 2: she's saying as a young woman, as a middle aged woman,
Speaker 2: to be an observer gets looked at differently. That you
Speaker 2: can't just walk around and cast any and everything. When
Speaker 2: I asked my friends, can you go out to a
Speaker 2: bar or a cafe and take a book and be
Speaker 2: left alone? And one hundred percent of my friends, who
Speaker 2: aren't sort of sisters that would males, say no, it
Speaker 2: just doesn't happen. It's not worth what happens. They get
Speaker 2: approached and or get asked or you know, are you oka?
Speaker 2: Is there something wrong? Whereas someone like me can take
Speaker 2: a book to a bar and finish ulysses in an
Speaker 2: eight hour sitting and.
Speaker 1: Not well, well, I'm the one person that you're going
Speaker 1: to ask that question too that says yeah, I would
Speaker 1: absolutely be left alone and have been my whole life.
Speaker 1: You yeah, really absolutely.
Speaker 2: Bloom with theory, Scott.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry to sorry.
Speaker 2: I'm glad.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's some and I love to do it too.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: Taking a book two or a notepad.
Speaker 1: Doing anything on your own is my favorite thing.
Speaker 2: A really really good friend of mine who's a singer,
Speaker 2: a woman it said, do you go out to barsa
Speaker 2: a couple by herself? She said, you can't because she
Speaker 2: can't stand people looking at her as if she's a
Speaker 2: She used loser. Oh no, mean myself out somewhere as
Speaker 2: you are a winning absolutely winning.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love being by myself and I
Speaker 1: need it to like maintain who I am.
Speaker 2: So can you be left alone even being you bes
Speaker 2: those out in the world?
Speaker 1: I mean, ah, pretty much? Yeah. Yeah. I've had a
Speaker 1: very good experience of being recognizable, and I enjoy the
Speaker 1: little exchanges I have with people that I don't know.
Speaker 1: I love that. It gives me a little burst because
Speaker 1: I still never expect it, even though it does happen
Speaker 1: every day. It's a real delight because I remember, I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, I've got a radio show and I've been
Speaker 1: on Telly and do you know what I mean. I
Speaker 1: just I get so thrilled by it. But in terms
Speaker 1: of when I, you know, go to the movies on
Speaker 1: my own or grab a you know, bowl of pasta
Speaker 1: at Mario's on my own, Oh, nobody ever, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, just nobody ever contacts approaches me or I've
Speaker 1: never been asked out. I've never been I haven't had
Speaker 1: that experience that I know a lot of women do,
Speaker 1: where they feel, you know, annoyed that they're always a
Speaker 1: sexual object. That you know, men are always like, hey,
Speaker 1: can I buy you a drink or whatever? That question
Speaker 1: has never been asked of me. I've got this lovely
Speaker 1: kind of human experience in the world.
Speaker 2: It's nice perhaps that as you're now known to the public,
Speaker 2: but may pre to that because you could do that,
Speaker 2: and you wanted to do that to be alone that
Speaker 2: you I can't think of a better to and then
Speaker 2: give off in aura of I'm absolutely content being here
Speaker 2: by myself. And when someone gives that off, I tend
Speaker 2: to kind of leave them alone. I was at my
Speaker 2: favorite baron since killed Jelina, and.
Speaker 1: Oh I loved Jelena.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's my office for a while, best people in
Speaker 2: the world, and Lloyd Cole, the English singer songwriter, Oh
Speaker 2: my god, sitting there and I was nearing the end
Speaker 2: of my shift writing and drinking at chitchen. Looked over
Speaker 2: and took there's Lloyd Cole, one of my lifetime heroes.
Speaker 2: And so I bought him a whiskey. Send it over, darling,
Speaker 2: dear departed. Patrick gave him a whisk in and he
Speaker 2: looked over and Lloyd motioned to me, and I just
Speaker 2: went and said, I don't want I'm not going to
Speaker 2: take any of your time. I'm going to vacate now.
Speaker 2: And he said, but why don't you sit and have
Speaker 2: a drink And I said, I've got nothing to give.
Speaker 2: I love what you do, I love your songs. Bye.
Speaker 1: I have a Lloyd Cole story. Oh yeah, I saw
Speaker 1: him at the airport back, you know, when Rattlesnake's thround.
Speaker 1: I just love him. And I've always been very respectful
Speaker 1: of famous people. I wouldn't exactly the same as you,
Speaker 1: and that you go. I don't actually don't need to
Speaker 1: tell you that I love you. What I need to
Speaker 1: take any of your time, but you know I'm thrilled
Speaker 1: to see you anyway. On this occasion, I thought I
Speaker 1: just really want it when was Rattlesnakes and you know
Speaker 1: he grussed herself as you put on her forest Fire.
Speaker 2: She is the absolute apex of that record, last one.
Speaker 1: I've got goosebumps everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm with you.
Speaker 1: She don't calm down. She will burn herself anyway. Doesn't
Speaker 1: that make a smart and then it changes?
Speaker 2: I believe in love.
Speaker 1: Oh, I got amazing anyway. I wanted an autograph because
Speaker 1: it was back in the what is it late eighties,
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, And I did approach him and I
Speaker 1: got him to sign my anset ticket.
Speaker 2: And set that had the best sandwiches and the best
Speaker 2: now is.
Speaker 1: And I've asked two people for their autographs in my
Speaker 1: whole life. One was a Looid Coal at the airport
Speaker 1: and one was Noah Taylor at a tram stop in
Speaker 1: Model Tree Ride, and that is it. They're the only
Speaker 1: two I've ever got, and both in the late eighties,
Speaker 1: so well, no.
Speaker 2: One I didn't get to know Noah and we're not friends,
Speaker 2: we're acquaintances. But we're in this party in Lancaster Gate
Speaker 2: in England and there were loads of party drugs around
Speaker 2: and got this wonderful opportunity to be in a corner
Speaker 2: with Noah and talk about anything that anyway he wanted
Speaker 2: the direction to go.
Speaker 1: And what's he like? Magie's gorgeous?
Speaker 2: Yeah, really gorgeous.
Speaker 1: And have you seen the year my voice broke him?
Speaker 2: And Benison twenty four times? Oh Ben mendlssn still owes
Speaker 2: me two hundred and forty dollars by the way, why
Speaker 2: I can't tell ha ha for twenty five years and I.
Speaker 1: Keep remind I loved that film so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's And she was a girl who.
Speaker 1: Played Freyer Loween Carmen Rowan.
Speaker 2: Carmen's an excellent songwriter.
Speaker 1: Yes, she's writer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, her daughter Holidays side Winder is killing it in
Speaker 2: England at the moment. She's an excellent songwriter as well.
Speaker 2: But Loweing, yeah, wonderful when she wrote a great book
Speaker 2: about four years ago, Lovers, Dreamers Fighters, Yeah, about her upbringing,
Speaker 2: really Boho upbringing, and yeah, how Lowing kind of just
Speaker 2: survive that and became a wonderful mother and wife and friend.
Speaker 1: And but it's muhing more important really than those three things.
Speaker 2: I actually think you're right, and she's she's got them
Speaker 2: all was along with the character that Saskia Post played
Speaker 2: in Dogs in Space, so Frey was our big sister,
Speaker 2: loween comment, and then Saski Post's character in Dogs and
Speaker 2: Spas she was our other big sister for all my family,
Speaker 2: for my brother and my sister. We just watched this song.
Speaker 2: We want these women as our older sisters, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And then getting to meet I didn't get to meet Suski,
Speaker 2: but she died a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: I was just, yes, I know it happens. You wrote
Speaker 1: something beautiful about your girlfriend at the time, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure whether you're still together. The hurricane. She's a
Speaker 1: little like the past, a little like the future, a
Speaker 1: little like home, and a lot like a holiday. That
Speaker 1: is like the most beautiful thing I've ever read.
Speaker 2: We're not still a good unfortunately, but we're very good friends,
Speaker 2: very close friends.
Speaker 1: And yeah, people understand that how you can do that.
Speaker 1: I'm very good friends with my ex father of my
Speaker 1: three kids, and so many people say, oh, I couldn't
Speaker 1: do that, and it's not.
Speaker 2: Hard on the circumstances. Of course, I have a relationship
Speaker 2: with the mother of my daughter. We're geographically very distant,
Speaker 2: and it was it was an upsetting how it ended,
Speaker 2: very much so, but we have a relationship, I think
Speaker 2: respectful hypet Anyway, Look, the same holds true, I wrote.
Speaker 2: I mean people, unless something sort of traumatic happens, or
Speaker 2: a truth is uncovered that you didn't know and it
Speaker 2: seems to blow that trust out of the water.
Speaker 1: Or if she'd been tricking you the whole time, like
Speaker 1: a Netflix stocko.
Speaker 2: Like a Netflix s dooco. Yeah, we are in the
Speaker 2: modern world, aren't we, says says me watching the new
Speaker 2: Elvis sixty eight Comeback special on the Netflix. The other Elves.
Speaker 1: You know. I did a pilgrimage to Graceland. It was
Speaker 1: all I ever wanted to do. And I went and
Speaker 1: I cried the whole way there. Just there last month
Speaker 1: for the first time.
Speaker 2: No, no, but we were in Memphis. My partner was
Speaker 2: doing a ballet in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and she finished that
Speaker 2: for the Tulsa Ballet Company and a beautiful, beautiful piece.
Speaker 2: And then we went to Memphis for my fifty fifth birthday.
Speaker 2: And where did you eat Elsenia's Southern Isle restaurant in
Speaker 2: the I think it was South Memphis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Alas it's a funny old place. It feels like
Speaker 1: it hasn't got enough people in it, like it's so
Speaker 1: big and grand and Memphis streets. Yeah, and then there's
Speaker 1: just there's nobody there.
Speaker 2: We're in the neighborhood in the suburbs, and I love
Speaker 2: that because you just there's cookouts and house parties and
Speaker 2: you just and then when we walked to past the Peabody.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I started Peabody, Oh you stated the people?
Speaker 1: Yeah wow. Yeah, and it had that gorgeous shop still
Speaker 1: there where Elvis would get his suits. Yeah. I could
Speaker 1: just go to Graceland every single day for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life and just look at it.
Speaker 2: This time I didn't go to Graceland really. Yeah. It's
Speaker 2: one of my big heroes is the photographer called William Eggleston,
Speaker 2: who's a Memphis native. He's still alive in his late eighties.
Speaker 2: And why I got into him was through the music
Speaker 2: of Big Star and Alex Chilton, and there was this
Speaker 2: whole kind of bohemian Memphis scene in the sixties and
Speaker 2: early seventies surrounded in this part of the town called Canton,
Speaker 2: and it seemed to be everything was under the shadow
Speaker 2: of early rhythm and blues and blues scene and of
Speaker 2: course Presley. So this sit of bohemian underworld. This Demimond
Speaker 2: felt that they could exist because no one was paying
Speaker 2: attention in any of the big cities, and everyone came
Speaker 2: to Memphis wanting to know what it's about bb King, Rufus,
Speaker 2: Thomas or Elvis. So that was my fortnight of research,
Speaker 2: was into that.
Speaker 1: Kind of your hyperfixation for that particular trip.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they happen, they do, haven't.
Speaker 1: They happened to me too.
Speaker 2: And now because we live in the country, coming in
Speaker 2: the Melbourne is like, ooh, hyper fixation, right, going to
Speaker 2: go to Mario's. When you mentioned Mario's for a bowler pasta,
Speaker 2: I got on my knees almost.
Speaker 1: But I know, and if you if you do end
Speaker 1: up there on this trip, make sure you get they
Speaker 1: do this cake only sometimes it's like a coconut coconut cake,
Speaker 1: I think, And actually I think I introduced it to
Speaker 1: a friend of all, Scott Ryan.
Speaker 2: So don't know, Scott, I'm a massive man.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you would love him. I can't believe
Speaker 1: you're not friends with him.
Speaker 2: No, Texs had dinner with him recently though, actually talking
Speaker 2: about it. It's about a work thing, and I was
Speaker 2: so excited.
Speaker 1: Because oh he's magical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and well, my daughter told me about Scott Dad,
Speaker 2: have you seen this? And she sent the series on.
Speaker 1: It's just the finest television show, Like it's extraordinary.
Speaker 2: I'm completely knocked out by it. Yeah, that my twenty
Speaker 2: three year old New Yorker daughter told me about it
Speaker 2: just exacerbated the whole experience.
Speaker 1: But he's a genius, and he loves the coconut cake
Speaker 1: from Marios. I will tell you I've dropped over a
Speaker 1: whole half. I bought a half and took it over
Speaker 1: his Like, what the lanning hell is going on here?
Speaker 2: I think it accepted.
Speaker 1: Haha, we didn't get your diary entry. Let's finish with
Speaker 1: the diary entry that we started to talk about. Sure,
Speaker 1: all those many moons ago, take it away.
Speaker 2: I'm not a regular diary entry.
Speaker 1: Oh I love the John Lennon glasses.
Speaker 2: That's a look, dude. Fourteen dollars brought in.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's sort of Truman Capoti, you know me.
Speaker 2: John Lennon, thank you for mentioning Truman. I was hoping
Speaker 2: for James Joyce, pathetic. He was a direcy old man.
Speaker 2: This was a little, tiny directory. It was only four
Speaker 2: years ago when one of my one hundredth attempt to
Speaker 2: curb my drinking until this century is called the one
Speaker 2: hundred pages a Day project. Because the only thing that
Speaker 2: stops me thinking about drinking is reading fiction. And so
Speaker 2: I thought, if I read one hundred pages a day,
Speaker 2: I'll not start on the tens first thing I wake up,
Speaker 2: so diar Entry, January twenty two, two thousand and twenty one.
Speaker 2: It's not the first thing that comes to mind when waking.
Speaker 2: The first is wonder slash worry. Wonder when I'm alive,
Speaker 2: and worried that I'm alive, not in the wonder and
Speaker 2: worry that must come with for example, serious illness or warfare.
Speaker 2: But I wonder at how I sidestep tragedy or injury,
Speaker 2: and worry at how I possibly did. Then the second
Speaker 2: is it third thought is a question when can I
Speaker 2: start again? Because starting again is the only thing that
Speaker 2: will tranquilize the beehive, delirious in chest and mind, that industrious,
Speaker 2: frantic desperate rabble of drones dot dot dot, and I
Speaker 2: probably then went to the fridge.
Speaker 1: Please write another book, Tim Rogers, do us all a
Speaker 1: bloody favor. Yeah, oh my god, do you know who
Speaker 1: you look like with those glasses on? Put them back on?
Speaker 1: They completely changed your look. John Waters.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a massive compliment.
Speaker 1: Yes, you look exactly. I want to get a photo
Speaker 1: of it. It's uncanny.
Speaker 2: I love that man, and I.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're going to be You're going to love this sick.
Speaker 1: I'm going to send a photo hang on, Oh okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to send you that.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much because to be comparing anyway to
Speaker 2: John Waters, the thinking and non thinking person's crumpet. Daha.
Speaker 2: I went in Sorries Lennon Show twenty eighteen and yeah
Speaker 2: it was I knew i'd be just torn your glass onion. Yeah,
Speaker 2: just wonderful.
Speaker 1: That voice extraordinary.
Speaker 2: All the butter in my pockets melted completely.
Speaker 1: Hey, Tim Rogers, we are out of time. What an
Speaker 1: absolute joy. Will you please come back when we're not
Speaker 1: so rushed for time? I got so much more I
Speaker 1: need to talk to you about it next time. I
Speaker 1: promise to bring in some stories and I promise to
Speaker 1: bring in some Marios coconut cake, because if it's good
Speaker 1: enough for Scottie right, it's good enough for Tim Rodgers.
Speaker 2: I'm inching closet.
Speaker 1: Thank you.