Thanks to Zell:

Hunter Live -- Crowe's songs no Cinderella stories by Michael Gadd

19 January 2006 - The Newcastle Herald

RUSSELL Crowe paints himself as the everyman he can never be.

In his album, My Hand, My Heart, he relates his own stories, or stories of those close to him, as if they could be anyone's.

When he croons about Danielle Spencer, his wife and mother to his child Charles, in the opening track Weight of A Man, he sings "I'm so hard to handle" and marvels at his fortune to have found her.

"That could be anyone's wife," Crowe says. He confirms days later that the pair are due to have a second child.

It doesn't take long to realise that this seemingly larger than life character is a superstar who wishes he could take off his mask, with all the stigma, myths and unfortunate truths that go with it, and just be Russ at the pub or the park.

When he calls for our scheduled interview, two hours late, he catches me off guard. Assuming I'd been brushed aside for something more important it took a moment to twig who owned the deep, apologetic tone on the other end of the phone.

"Michael . . . Russell," he says. Tick. Tick. Tick.
"Oh, G'day, how you going?" I reply.
He goes on to explain his minders hadn't confirmed the time and says sorry. He appears sincere.

My mind elsewhere, I ask him about his show that night, scheduled for the Coffs Harbour Hotel just minutes from his property outside the north coast town. For some stupid reason I mention having one too many lemonades there as a teenager. He appreciates that and starts telling me, in detail only known by a person with a strong connection to their community, about the pub's renovations after a large portion of it burned down. He devotes the album's title track to anyone he's ever had a drink with.

What is this? This guy is a big star. He should be bored by this menial chit chat. I should be asking about famous-people things. He seems to enjoy it.

Sampling professionalism for a moment, I turn talk to his album, admitting to having listened to it five times in total. Three times at work hearing little more than "Russell Crowe's" earthy but recognisable dulcet tones. Once in the background while I was thinking of other things. And once, forgetting the artist altogether and listening to the songs. Curiosity was the main driving force.

"Five times? Thank you deeply," he says. "That's quite a commitment to make."
This, Crowe goes onto state, quite obviously, is his greatest hurdle as a singer-songwriter, getting people to take him seriously. And his art, if not himself, he takes very seriously.

"In my position so many people come to [the music] with all sorts of assumptions," he says. "But I find other people who ignore the preamble can really connect with it. There is a lot to relate to, lots of thematics, the stories are universal and there's a lot of common ground. People grow up where I grow up."

Why, many ask, would a bloke who makes more money with one movie than many do in a lifetime, tour pubs with a band?

"I've been in bands since I was 14 years old," he says. "Why should I stop doing something I love, that brings joy to the people who give it a chance, just because some people think it isn't cool?"

In Mickey, he writes about his mate Michael Castellano, a walking bio-epic. Mr Harris is about another mate he had a deep connection with (it just happens to be the late great actor Richard Harris), who Crowe starred alongside in his Oscar-winning role as Maximus in Gladiator. Land of The Second Chance is about a bloke called Mario, an Italian immigrant he sat with at a Sydney cafe and with whom he was fascinated as he heard his life story over three lattes.

It's these stories he seems most enthusiastic to tell, seemingly disinterested in himself. There's been enough written about him anyway.

"It's a funny constant I'm part of," he says. "A movie comes out and interviews and appearances are part of promoting that movie. You only answer the questions you are asked, which effectively come across as random opinions. My opinion based on that part of a question. It's hardly a concise picture worth trusting."

His own experiences are the ones which connect most on the album. It seems in music, or the poetry his songs are based on, Crowe can tell his side of the story, even though he's been quoted to say "to truly know me, watch my movies".

Is he Mr Honest (Dr Jeffrey Wigand, The Insider, 1999), Mr Paternally Brave (Maximus (Gladiator, 2000), Mr Sensitive Dual-Personality (John Nash, A Beautiful Mind, 2001), Mr Stubborn (Captain Jack Aubrey, Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World, 2003) and Mr Outhouse to Penthouse (Depression-era boxer James Braddock, Cinderella Man)?

He left school during year 12 to help make money for his family, has been reported in many personas from the deeply sensitive to a bloke who can handle his knuckles, and will talk all day about love for his wife. So why not? It's as accurate as anything else.

A little talked about fact, which Crowe recalls with great enthusiasm, is his start in show business. In 1987 he was in three episodes of Neighbours.

Crowe jokes he calculated from figures in a newspaper, based on his on-screen time in Neighbours, that he contributed 0.087 per cent to the longest-running Australian soap.

Crowe has a co-hort in this writing caper. Alan Doyle, from Canadian band Great Big Sea, who he started working with in early 2005 after his long-time band 30 Odd Foot of Grunts "dissolved/evolved".

The same man who was maligned in the media for his insistence to change a pivotal line in Gladiator, a noted perfectionist, paints an alternate picture when it comes to this particular partnership.

He says the pair worked over the space of seven Sundays in Toronto, Canada, on the song Raewyn, their first together. The song is essentially about mortality, tragic deaths in his family, the unfortunate demise of a great friend, and the uncle after whom he named his first born.

Crowe had written the basis to the song, but when the two formed a friendship and agreed to write together, Doyle "marked them like a schoolteacher".

"I was made to think so much about the words, there were times when five paragraphs would be distilled into one line," Crowe says.

"They were delicate waters for two people to be working in for a first time, but it was liberating."
It was a humbling process too for a notoriously strong-headed character.

Doyle describes Crowe as "the most thoughtful writer I've ever worked with".
"No one considers and ponders a lyric, a character, or a context like him," he says.
"I've been in bands since I was 14 years old. Why should I stop doing something I love . . . just because some people think it isn't cool?"

Russell Crowe performs with his band The Ordinary Fear of God tomorrow night at Queens Wharf Brewery. Tickets $20 on 4929 6333.