Fin Greenall is no fake, his visceral, impassioned songs are no cheap tricks.
“I’m not an actor, I’m a music guy,” says the man better known as Fink.
“A lot of these big, big stars they’re actors too, it’s part of the package that they have this song they didn’t write, about an experience they didn’t have, that was produced by someone they’ve never even met, and they’ve got to act like it’s from their heart.
“It feels like a homecoming to some extent,” Speech says of Arrested Development’s return to South Africa after 14 years.
“At that time there was a change going on — Nelson Mandela had become president — and now there’s another change, with you guys having a new president.”
Sounding supremely relaxed, with his dog barking excitedly in the background, it’s clear a lot has changed for the rapper and his group too.
Mario Joyner enjoys his freedom.
“I do only what I want to do and nothing that I don’t. I just work out, eat, sleep, date, tell jokes. That’s all I do really,” the charming – and unsurprisingly very chilled out – comedian tells me in the lounge of a swanky seafront hotel.
“I have such a relaxed life, simply because I have no-one to answer to. I’m 47-years-old, I have no kids, I have no wife, it’s just me. I can go when I want. I can wake up when I want, I have no need for alarm clocks, I have no real job – this is no real job,” he says, somewhat modestly – on 11 November he’ll have been doing standup comedy for 25 years.
Why, apart from being Australian, would two men in their late 30s take off their clothes and play with their genitals in front of a group of complete strangers for an hour?
“Because we can,” shrugs David Friend, as if we’re discussing the weather. Then again, as one half of Puppetry of the Penis, he’s been doing this professionally for a “dickade” – and most of his life before that. It began in the bath as a child, and grew at university, but his genital origami career really climaxed after teaming up with Simon Morley – their debut at 1998’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival was a big hit. Ten years later, they’re still going.
“Political correctness is a crock of shit,” says comedian Kevin Bloody Wilson.
Not exactly surprising words from the Aussie famous for less-than-PC songs like ‘Dilligaf’ (Do I Look Like I Give A F***) and ‘Do You F*** On First Dates?’
“What it does is it really stops people from using common sense,” he continues, as if we’re chatting over a round of beers in the local pub. “In my mind, common sense isn’t all that common anymore and political correctness itself is a contradiction in terms: if it’s political there’s a real good chance it isn’t f***ing correct,” he deadpans.
“It’s time to not be so negative about everything in life,” offers Ross Learmonth. “It’s time to just rock ‘n roll.”
Prime Circle’s frontman has reason to feel amped. Backed by a new manager, fresh record deal and expanded line-up, his band have just released their third album.
Produced by Springbok Nude Girls guitarist Theo Crous (“He brought a lot to the party in the sense of making the guitar sound like a huge wall of guitars”), ‘All Or Nothing’ is easily their best work: more powerful, more accomplished, more melodic.
Greg Carlin sighs. It’s the question he’s been asked most since galloping onto the South African music scene as Zebra & Giraffe: ‘What’s up with the name?’
“I have no decent story,” he relents, the easy-going guy next door sounding just a little exasperated. “I wish I had a cooler story but I don’t.”
A far better tale is his rise from “obsessed” pre-teen Dave Grohl fan to the one-man band behind South Africa’s debut album of the year.
For years, Carl Barron led a double life: roof tiler by day, comedian by night. But as the comedy gigs increased, he downed his tools and began joking full time.
We speak to the Australian funnyman about burps, sleep, undressing on stage, drool, and a “bunch of weird shit”.
Evan Dando is not a fan of his band’s biggest hit. “I don’t really like that song ‘Mrs Robinson’ at all,” he grins at the irony. “How sad is that?”
But the sole constant member of The Lemonheads is not one for regrets. When the band he formed with friends in 1986 hit it big six years later, Dando’s photogenic looks helped him become, alongside friend Kurt Cobain, one of the poster boys of the indie music scene. But even as People magazine put the singer on their “Top 50 Sexiest Men of 1993” list, a 20-something from Pennsylvania began self-publishing the magazine ‘Die Evan Dando, Die’.
“You should know that the lies won’t hide your flaws / No sense in hiding all of yours.” More than just lyrics to Seether’s swinging hit ‘Fake It’, the words reflect a way of life for the band’s frontman. That’s startlingly clear when I come face to face with Shaun Morgan Welgemoed. What you see is what you get. There’s nothing fake about him.
He doesn’t even bother to hide his vulnerability: “The bigger it gets the more I realise I wasn’t cut out for the fame part of it.”
Nils van der Linden