can you write songs for a musical? and i went, i don t know, i lltry. and the answer was, yeah, i can. i mean, a bit. and then somewhere between then and now, i got better at it. your next choice for this cultural life is the 1997 album, whatever and ever amen, by the american singer songwriter ben folds. what ben did is gave me hope as what i later described myself as a rock n roll nerd, you know? in that song, i say, i always dreamt of being a star, but he learnt piano instead of guitar, which in the 90s doesn t get you very far because that was my experience. i was deep in the grunge. west australia, in my part of perth in the 90s, was just grunge and i was a pianist doing songs for theatre and stuff and thinking, is there.? i mean, obviously i can t sell records, my band won t go anywhere because, you
Could spread. and that is a profound change, because you re no longer some little guy in a cabaret room punching up at some meanie. you re someone who can really hurt someone. and i think that song probably hurt phil. i think probably his name. do you know that? have you talked to him? i tried to. we did a little online. we talked and sort of displayed that we had forgiven each other. but i d got the video eventually taken down, but not soon enough. the irony, of course, is that if you hadn t written that song and hadn t performed it publicly, nobody would have remembered. very few people would have remembered the original review. probably, except that it was the number one hit on my name for a year when i was trying to make a career, when my wife was having a baby. i m living overseas. you type my name into google and a one star review saying i m talentless was what people read. like, that was my feeling. was like, hey, phil daoust,
That, of course, comes whenever anyone gets any popularity. there s got to be an equal and opposite reaction. and he wrote in the guardian, which was the paper i read and which had, what, in 2005, five million readers? it was pretty big because it was before it alljumped off the page, and he wrote this just utterly sneering review, one star review, really snobby in that sort of guardian way, like, quoting shakespeare. i was like, how dare you quote shakespeare at me? i ll quote shakespeare at you! and just incredibly sneering and ungenerous, a thing that just says i m terrible at myjob. it really, really threw me. and so, like, a year later, when i had to come up with a new show, i thought, well, i m going to take that guy down. so i wrote the song for phil daoust. # ding, dang, ding dang dong # this ends my phil daoust song # everybody sing along # la la la la la la la # i hope something you love catches on fire, phil # ding, dang, dong, i ve written you this special song # to sho
Stage, my 2008 show. # only a ginger can call another ginger, ginger.# and he enjoyed it. it probably would ve been a bit edgy for matthew. he wouldn t have necessarily agreed with everything i said, but he thought my songs were very clever and angular in a way that he thought matched dahl. he wasn t sure about whether i was right because it was all very sardonic and sarcastic. but sometimes, for an encore, i d go on and drop all the irony. and that night i went on and played white wine in the sun, which is my christmas song for my daughter. and about your family, about reconnecting? about home, and it makes people sob. # you won t understand # but you will learn some day # that wherever you are and whatever you face # these are the people who make you feel safe in this world # and matthew went, 0h, 0k, he s got that as well. and so he called me into a meeting and asked me if i d heard of roald dahl and the story of matilda, which of course i had,
# in my efforts to be more mature in the face # of negative feedback.# which really is a song about me not being able to take criticism. it is a complete mickey take of my own insecurity, but on the way to pointing a spotlight on the fact that i m pathetic about not being able to take that criticism. because it s quite extreme. it s very, very extreme. it talks about tearing pieces of his face meat off and making his children watch, you know, like, it s like a murder fantasy. and it was very funny, and people loved it. it was superjolly, like, and it was a joke, but ijust didn t know what was subsequently going to happen, which is that i was going to have the power of a guardianjournalist, that very soon after i wrote that song, i could slander anyone and really have an effect on their lives. because youtube was taking off and my little 150 seat, 50 seat cabaret rooms where i was doing this dark comedy, i suddenly realised that anything i said