A Lucky man
Britt Mann gets caught up in Tim Minchin’s enthusiasm as he chats about luck, anger and his upcoming Kiwi tour.
Singing comedian Tim Minchin is Back
Plonk Tim Minchin at a baby grand on an empty stage, and he is powerless to stop himself. The publicist had warned us about this. As such, we’d assumed our positions in anticipation. The photographer’s camera is pointed expectantly in the direction of the piano bench; a metre away, I teeter on a stool, gripping a blank notebook I never planned to write in.
Minchin, one of the world’s greatest musical comedians, has promised he’ll play us a song, having announced he’ll tour New Zealand with a new show in April. Soon enough, the long-legged Australian strides across the stage in skinny jeans and loosely laced boots and with the enthusiasm of a shaggy-haired puppy let off his leash, scales the keys and starts to play.
The stage is Minchin’s happy place, the place his musical comedy career took off at the age of 30, having discovered his wickedly verbose songs with themes of sex, politics and disdain for religion were best sung while wearing lashings of eyeliner, and in bare feet.
In the 13 years since, he’s made a name for himself as a composer and lyricist – including for the international smash-hit musical Matilda, which graced Auckland in 2017 – and as a TV, film and theatre actor. He has had a daughter and a son with wife Sarah, and has moved from Melbourne to London to Los Angeles and, as of January last year, to Sydney. Last year, he co-wrote a TV series, Upright he would also star in, as well as putting together his first proper studio album.
In the present, he dives into a seamless medley comprising Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On, The Rolling Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want, and a made-up song that happens to have my name in it. I avoid eye contact, and keep clutching the notebook.
‘‘Was that the warm-up?’’ I ask, lamely, when he takes a break from the key-smashing and footstamping.
‘‘I don’t know what it is, really,’’ he replies. ‘‘I just have content paranoia.’’
In proletarian English, Minchin means he isn’t sure which one of the millions of songs swirling around his head might best help promote his upcoming tour Back, which he announced late last year.
While fans tend to gag for Minchin classics Ten Foot Cock and a Few Hundred Virgins and The Pope Song (with lyrics almost entirely comprised of a phrase that rhymes with ‘‘pluck the other trucker’’), the 43-year-old muses he doesn’t play those ones any more because they no longer feel as though they belong to him.
The newer songs he’s likely to perform in Back will harken back to the style of older songs such as Rock ’n’ Roll Nerd, Darkside, and You Grew On Me
– songs he says are ‘‘a kind of celebration of overuse of metaphor and too many rhymes’’.
Minchin is still undecided on the material that will form his final set. He says he is waiting to see what the panic makes him do.
‘‘I’ll see whether it makes me write angry or silly or, I’m not sure. The thing I do know is [that] I haven’t toured for eight years and I’ve got probably five hours of material to draw from. So I’m fine. You know. I’ll be all right.’’
Another thing Minchin knows is that he is lucky. In 20 minutes, he says the word nine times. It is the name of his character in Upright. His conviction is not explicitly related to hailing from the Lucky Country, although he’d probably say that it afforded him a background (comfy, middleclass, dad was a surgeon, siblings all got along) that set him up to eventually flourish as a foul-mouthed musician, award-winning lyricist/composer, actor, husband, dad, etc.
In his 2013 occasional address to University of Western Australian graduates, which has been watched more than 3.4 million times on YouTube, where he received an honorary Doctorate of Letters for his contribution to the arts, he tells the ‘‘beautiful intellectuals’’ assembled before him:
‘‘You are lucky to be here. You were
I figured if I’ve got people with too much money [coming to the shows], let’s give it away . . . . I believe very hard in luck, it’s all chance, therefore any privilege you have is chaos.’’ Tim Minchin
incalculably lucky to be born, and incredibly lucky to be brought up by a nice family that helped you get educated and encouraged you to go to uni. Or if you were born into a horrible family, that’s unlucky and you have my sympathy . . . But you were still lucky: lucky that you happened to be made of the sort of DNA that made the sort of brain which – when placed in a horrible childhood environment – would make decisions that meant you ended up, eventually, graduating uni. Well done you, for dragging yourself up by the shoelaces, but you were lucky. You didn’t create the bit of you that dragged you up. They’re not even your shoelaces.’’
Minchin went on to say he supposed he’d worked hard to achieve ‘‘whatever dubious achievements’’ he himself had achieved.
‘‘But I didn’t make the bit of me that works hard . . . Understanding that you can’t truly take credit for your successes, nor truly blame others for their failures will humble you and make you more compassionate.’’
It’s Minchin’s unerring understanding of his own privilege that’s prompted him to donate proceeds of ‘‘premium’’ tickets at his forthcoming gigs in Auckland and Wellington to endearingly obscure charities in those cities.
‘‘I figured if I’ve got people with too much money [coming to the shows], let’s give it away,’’ he shrugs.
‘‘I’m not a good philanthropist yet; I’m not as good as I’d like to be . . . I believe very hard in luck, it’s all chance, therefore any privilege you have is chaos.’’
His sense of what is right and just has led him to become the first artist performing in New Zealand to use a ‘‘verified fan’’ function via the Ticketmaster website, to circumvent would-be ticket scalpers.
Call it second child syndrome, Minchin says. ‘‘I do feel infuriated by the things I perceive to be unfair.’’
He’s managed to musicalise, and occasionally monetise, this fury, using cash to target the very subjects that inspired the rage in the first place. His 2016 song, Come Home (Cardinal Pell), helped raise funds for a contingent of victims of sexual abuse to be present in Rome when Australia’s highestranking Catholic clergyman testified for the country’s royal commission into child sexual abuse via video link.
More recently, his Live Aid-style anthem Canvas Bags, released in 2005, could be interpreted as a prescient example of Minchin’s ability to reflect, even predict, trans-national popular mood. Or so I tell him.
‘‘I was trying to mock the idea of rock ’n’ roll being able to save the planet, at the same time as having something that stuck in people’s heads and made them take their canvas bags,’’ Minchin agrees, dabbling a few chords to emphasise his point.
‘‘It only took 12 years, but I definitely attribute the ban of plastic bags in New Zealand to my song. Without a doubt.’’
Tim Minchin performs Back at Auckland’s ASB Theatre on April 14 and 16, and the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington on April 18. Tickets from ticketmaster.co.nz.