Sunday Herald Sun
Edition 1 - FIRSTSUN 02 APR 2006

Calm change of heart - By NUI TE KOHA

Russell Crowe has taken a new tack with his music, finding calm in his life, NUI TE KOHA reports...

THEMATICALLY, Russell Crowe's latest album showed the actor-singer-songwriter to be in a good place.

It was released, as a download only, in May last year and was met with curiosity, analysis and interpretation.

The recordings, titled My Hand My Heart, indicated a completely new tack.

Crowe dissolved his band Thirty Odd Foot Of Grunts (TOFOG) to write the most revealing songs of his career. And for a star of Crowe's magnitude, his lyrical honesty was unflinching.

He bared his soul on wife Danielle Spencer's strength, family tragedy and a former hellraiser gaining perspective.

Certainly, these sentiments suggested a new Crowe, less uncomfortable in a celebrity skin and finding calm in life.

Then, on June 6 last year, Crowe was arrested for throwing a phone at a New York hotel clerk. The incident caused a global media storm.

Crowe later pleaded guilty to misdemeanour assault and paid $160 court costs.

But suddenly, the profound messages on Crowe's album rang with new meaning and sour irony.

"Did I not take my own warnings into account? Did I not listen to my own wisdoms?'' Crowe asks.

"That is the wonderful thing about that level of personal composition.

"You are bound to be shown up by your own lessons if you go around preaching perspective.

"But let's get down to the actual event.

"I go to a courtroom, a judge asks if I would mind paying court costs, I pay it, and that's it.

"And I'm standing there trying to understand why this is a worldwide news event.''

At the time, prosecutors said hotel security video showed Crowe throwing a phone, then striking a karate pose and taking theatrical bow.

Crowe confirms that.

"I think my words were: `Just get me a phone line. Elvis is leaving the foyer'.

"It's obvious on the tape there was a good deal of humour involved. I think that was taken into account.''

A year after releasing My Hand My Heart, Crowe is finding new layers in the songs. One Good Year -- which features the line: "I've been chasing grace/Grace ain't so easily found'', has expanded vocally. Mickey, about an intriguing yet colourful character, has a prettier live version.

Mr Harris, Crowe's choral requiem to a friend, the late actor, hellraiser Richard Harris, is a certified showstopper. A six- part vocal, a capella, it has floored audiences from Sydney to Los Angeles to Paris.

"I'm having a strange love affair with the songs. I'm seeing them differently,'' Crowe says.

"And I'm also starting to see the potentials in the songs. They are sharper, angular, with their own coolness.''

My Hand My Heart, will be released as a disc tomorrow.

Crowe has covered Nick Cave's Breathless and penned Testify, a charge of gospel-blues-rock giving his side of the New York story.

"I feel the irons on my wrist/and lament it's come to this/when they hang me from the gallows/such is life, they'll hear me hiss,'' Crowe sings.

Testify builds on Crowe's long relationship with Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues, a staple in TOFOG's live set.

"While taking heavily from gospel and blues, it also borrows heavily from Johnny Cash and his style of story-song,'' he says. "I like the narrative because in terms of an intrinsically Australian thing, the protagonist gets away, as opposed to Americana, where somebody has got to crash the car.''

Crowe delivers the last half of that sentence in a broad American accent, then laughs.

"Listen, I applaud anyone who becomes famous and handles it well,'' he says.

"But I never wanted to buy into the seeming falsehoods that come with handling fame.

"That buys into a trap of: `Well, I am very special and I should be treated special'. Then you play the game completely.

"I am of the opinion there are times to have that hat on. And when you don't have that hat on, be the ordinary bloke.

"In this country, they allow me to do that. But in America, I sometimes feel I don't live up to the expectations of a movie star.

"Which is probably a good thing, because I don't rate myself that highly.''

Russell Crowe & The Ordinary Fear Of God, Grand Central Hotel, Richmond, tomorrow, April 10, 17 and 24; Manchester Lane, City, April 20 and 27.

My Hand My Heart is available from HMV, Sanity and Virgin stores from tomorrow.

www.myhandmyheart.com