From Kiwisheila:

Second installment of the Russell, and Martin Crowe interview with Paul Holmes.

Russell talks about his music, his relationship with Richard Harris and Alan Doyle.

H: Lets talk about your record. Lets talk about your songs. Can I go through some of the songs? How do you write a song? I mean do you wake up in the middle of the night and say, God, that’s an idea.\

R: Oh sometimes, sometimes, yeah.

H: Do you write it down straight away?

R: Oh, sometimes. I heard once, years ago, that you could spend all that time writing things down, but, if anything you actually think of is really good, it will come back to you. So…… and that’s odd actually, because that song, “Mr Harris” is actually a choral requiem for a dead friend, the actor Richard Harris. I wrote that on a beer coaster after a Rugby game at Lansdowne Road in Dublin, and I’d totally forgotten about it . But, I’d described it later to my wife at one point and sang it to her over the phone and years later,when I was making the record, she said to me:

“Are you going to do that funny song you wrote about Richard?

H: It is a funny thing….

R: And it just came back to me.

H: Did you write the music as well?

R: (Couldn’t catch his short remark here), Yes, yes.

H: Its like a completely traditional Irish air, isn’t it?

R: Yeah, well I’d been….. well, see…. I’ll tell you the story. You see Richard and I, we met, obviously probably to most people, on the set of Gladiator – he dressed in the fine rig of an emperor of the Empire and me as a Roman General – and we talked about Rugby, as you do. And one of the things he said to me when he first met me (Russell assumes a soft brogue) “Crowe, they tell me that you were born in New Zealand, but that you choose to live in Australia. Is that correct?”

And I said: “Yes, Sir, born in New Zealand and live in Australia. That’s correct, yes”

“Rights, so…. I can yell abuse to you about the Wallabies, but I can talk in hushed and respectful tones with you about the All Blacks. You, are a good night out in one man. I think, I’m going to like you, Crowe.

And that was the beginning of our friendship and when Richard was dying, we were shooting Master and Commander and he was in the hospital. He’d been in the hospital a number of times since I knew him and he’d always come out, so we were making plans and the plan we were making was that we were going to attend the Wallabies vs Ireland at Lansdowne Rd, a month hence. But, unfortunately, he died and I went over to London to the funeral and I’d never been to Ireland… I’d never been and I’d always planned to go to Ireland with Richard and now Richard is dead. I’m standing in the church at the funeral and I’m going to go to Ireland. I should have probably just gone on a plane and come home, but I went on this sort of one man pilgrimage and I went to all the places that he had talked to me about specifically.

I went to Limerick. I had a beer, a Guinness, at Charlie St George’s Pub, which he’d always talked about in such glowing terms and in my imagination it was completely different from what it was. I went to the cliffs of Mohair. I went to Galway. I went to a couple of different castles that he’d talked about having family holidays.

And, I found myself in Dublin on the day of the game, so I went and….

H: On your own.

R: Actually no, with two other blokes.

H: I was going to say, you didn’t go, ‘Nigel-No-Mates’ to the….

R: No, I was actually standing behind the Irish President…. They were flash seats.

(Holmes and Russell laugh)

R: I went to the game and the mist was falling down, and everything. But, that was the Wallabies of 2002 and the expectation was that they would simply crush Ireland.

You know what its like to play the home nations …. A bit of a tussel 20 minutes up front, then woosh a cricket score. (Note: cricket scores go into the hundreds). But that day it just wasn’t… I mean George Gregan dropped the ball at the base of the scrum umpteen times. Matthew Burke had blokes on his right and he passed it inside to the left. It was just everything that could happen for them to not gain ascendancy happened and for the first time in 37 years Ireland beat Australia at Lansdowne Rd. It was half way through the game that I sort of began to see it from a different perspective and all these things and mistakes I realised that my friend , Richard Harris, had not actually shuffled off this mortal coil and gone to meet his maker. He had decided to stick around for one more Rugby game and he was doing his absolute best on that field – his ghostly presence – to make sure of an Irish victory and be sure of it and that’s where the song’s source is.

H: What was the basis of that friendship? Was it simply humour? Was it soulmates? What was it?

R: It was humour, it was…. I think Richard just liked having a straight conversation. Richard liked to sit down and talk and I think, if he wanted to express himself in a certain way about a certain subject matter, he didn’t like it if people were sort of like “Oh come on – calm down” or whatever. I never would approach that. If he was very passionate about something, then I would engage him on that level. If he was melancholy about something, I could empathise with him and understand it. I think I reminded him of a different time of his life and I never approached him as an old man. I approached him as a bloke. I think he appreciated that as well.

I remember where our friendship started from. It started from us doing an extremely emotionally complex scene in a movie. So once you’ve done that its really just filling in the peripheral details, because you already know each other.

H: Its that real?

R: Ummmm

H: Then we get to the song “Weight of a Man”. This is about Danielle. This is about you and Danielle.

R: Its about my wife, but its about all wives. In fact, its about any young woman contemplating being a wife.

H: Particularly someone contemplating marriage to Russell Crowe.

R: Yea, well… I’m sure my life comes with lots of things.

H: “I’m so hard to handle

My life’s a suitcase that’s never been closed.

There’s black eyes and stitches.

They’re part of the show”

R: Not all those things are literal (giggles)

H: (laughs) You can find a link for all of them.

R: Probably…. I said it is a very personal record.

H: Yes…. And its honest, Russell.

R: I think all the same, that the weight of a man is felt by any wife.

H: What does it mean? “My life’s a suitcase that’s never been closed”? I love that line.

R: Well, do you really want me to explain it? Or do you just want to wonder about it for another year or two before you come up with the idea yourself (smiling)

H: You’re on a journey.

R: And the journey doesn’t end.

H: But I wanted you to tell me. And then you say:

“Don’t close your eyes,

Turn your face to the skies

And breath me as deep as you can.

Your strong heart won’t break.

Are you ready to take

The weight of a man?

You’re the lyricist though aren’t you mainly? That’s right?

R: That’s right.

H: But, there are some songs on it about other people.

R: They’re biographical in terms of writing about Richard Harris or a song about a friend, or whatever.

H: But in terms of the songs on the album, you’ve done most of the lyrics.

R: Yes.

H: And your friend, Doyle.

R: Alan Doyle.

H: Alan Doyle from Canada.

R: Canadian band “ Great Big Sea”, yes.

H: How long did it take to put the songs together?

R: The songs were written over probably an 8 to 9 months period from the time I met Alan to the time we were recording, but the album itself took six weeks.

H: And what was it about meeting him that got the songs going?

R: Well, he is a very unique fellow. He has a wonderful perspective on life. He has a degree in Religious Studies which I always find kind of amusing and it also does come out in conversation in terms of the point of the song as well. But Alan himself is a musicologist to a certain degree. His band’s songs rediscover the roots of folk music from Newfoundland but also from Ireland and its original sources.

I heard a song he had written in 1998 called “How Did We Get From Saying I Love You To I’ll See You Round Some Day?” And, it seemed to me that every English speaking person in the world should have that song as common ground because it was such a beautifully observed thing of life, where that transition from being teenage romance or whatever to your first adult relationship that then falters and the difference that happens in the love that once existed between you and your girlfriend or you and your boyfriend. And, it took six years or more for me to actually meet him and get around to telling him that.

In that period of time he had heard some songs of mine, so that when we sat down we did have music as common ground. And he is absolutely a born storyteller, so he is wonderful to be around;

H: He says you’re brilliant with words, though. He says in all his years, he’s never been around anyone who has been so particular about the spoken word.

R: Alan allows me to be that way. Some other people that you write with are not necessarily as patient in terms of discovering the truth of the story. Alan and I really like to kick an idea around and its nice of him to say that, but it also reflects who he is as a person as well.

H: Have you been something of a student of song lyrics over the years though?

R: For me that’s how a song attracts me in the first place. For me it will be something the singer has said.

I’ll try to get the rest of the interview with Russell and Martin together transcribed over the next couple of days.

Back to News