Writing wrongs of days gone by
TIM ROGERS’ LATEST RECORD BORN OUT OF NEED TO STOP PANIC ATTACKS
The only Australian artist to break the stranglehold of pop superstars Harry Styles, Ed Sheeran, P! nk and Taylor Swift over the top 10 albums in the past month is rock god Tim Rogers.
Rogers would have been entitled to indulge a momentary wry smile of self-congratulation when his record Tines Of Stars Unfurled debuted at No.4 on the ARIA charts last week.
He is the only homegrown recording artist to land in the ARIA top 10 this year with a new record. Indie rockers Spacey Jane’s Here Comes Everybody re-entered the upper echelon on the chart in February after their songs dominated the Triple J Hottest 100.
Rogers is your everyday rock hero in Australia. Within seconds of arriving at an inner Sydney pub for our chat, one local has made it his mission to make sure the distinctive musician is seated comfortably at a table in the crowded bar, while another stops by to say he enjoyed reading the singer’s Detours memoir.
Writing helps Rogers wrestle his demons. Penning the songs for Tines Of Stars Unfurled began as a literary exercise to stave off a wave of onstage panic attacks he suffered during a production of the stage play inspired by his 1999 record What Rhymes With Girls and Cars.
“The idea of writing songs as a sequel to What Rhymes With Girls and Cars came to me on stage as a writing exercise to try to stop having these panic attacks on stage,” Rogers says.
“I wondered what it would be like to update those songs, to respond to them now.”
The sequel to his 1999 “solo” album – recorded with The Twin Set, which also features violinist Jen Anderson and his You Am I brother Davey Lane – seeks to right some of his youthful wrongs with a more seasoned perspective.
Like how he regarded his romantic relationships. One of the songs serves as an apology of sorts to Tracy Forrester, his long-time girlfriend in the late ’90s with whom he remains close friends; their breakup fuelled much of the songwriting for What Rhymes With Cars and Girls.
“Why is it with romantic relationships that you absolutely show your worst to somebody?” Rogers says.
“There’s a couple of songs about that on both records; it was the bravado, the nonchalance of the first record that annoyed me and I wanted to redress that.
“That first record was so much about Tracy and my relationship with her (now) is so strong and so good.” There is no doubt that creating art, expressing himself in words and music, has given Rogers not only purpose – when he’s most needed it – but also fashioned him into the most unlikely renaissance man. He has written a book and stage play. He has acted in theatre, film and television.
Rogers primarily makes music with some of his best mates in You Am I, a band forever synonymous with the coming of age of alternative rock music in Australia in the 1990s, collecting 10 ARIA Awards during those halcyon years.
More recently, he was recruited by The Hard Ons to be their lead singer too.
Up until this year, he also hosted his own radio show Liquid Lunch on Double J.
And the only reason he is not doing that gig any more is because he wants to work on a nonfiction book about addiction and fiction.
As we chat, Rogers is off the wagon, enjoying a liquid lunch of beer. There are periods when he doesn’t drink. And there are times when his anxiety isn’t acute and manifesting as panic attacks but exists as a low background thrum.
His recent coping mechanism is to read fiction. Its effectiveness in dispelling the white noise has motivated him to explore the efficacy of reading as a treatment for anxiety and depression.
“Reading fiction has become another go-to for me,” Rogers says.
“This book I am working on at the moment is about that, about what reading does for cognition and if it can help in those situations. It absolutely has for me.
“I’ve set myself 100 pages a day, well, I did until I started re-reading Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.
“But I find reading at least an hour a day is the only sure-fire way to help, also guaranteed if you’re feeling blue or angry or frustrated.
“People who don’t read fiction will say there’s so much to learn about the world’s workings or geopolitical stuff, there’s so much nonfiction to read.
“Fiction was so disregarded in the 1800s until modernity, really, and was looked at being for women and I guess people still have their opinions, there’s nothing to learn from fiction.
“But I think you come out of 10 minutes of reading fiction having learnt so much.”
Tines of Stars Unfurled is out now. For all Tim Rogers and the Twin Set tour dates,