They’ve sold 11 million albums worldwide. Nice trick — but can Savage Garden do it again?

Back -to-back: Technology help Savage Garden
see eye to eyesince they live onoppostie
sides of the world.
Like all inspiring Australian success stories, Savage Garden’s dream was born in the suburbs, but realised on the world stage. spending years working on their songs in obscurity and hours convincing each other they had that magic "something" culminated In sales of 11 million debut albums, sellout inter-national tours and a pleth-ora of awards. And now the hard work begins.On the eve of the release of The Animal Song, their first single from the much-anticipated second album, Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones are anxious but cau-tiously optimistic about their return to the music scene.
They have had to do things differently the sec-ond time thanks to geographical constraints of Darren living In New York and Daniel in his hometown of Brisbane. Besides an intensive songwriting session In Aust-ralia at the end of 1998, the pair have crafted their new creations via Zip discs, e-mail and the good old tele-phone.Both songwriters agree they suffered a fair degree of trepidation when It came to sitting down and starting again. Both were mighty relived when the old chemis-try bubbled to the surface."It was almost like being on autopilot," Darren says, laughing.
"I’d rock up to Danie1’s place with my rice cakes and peanut butter and banana, back to all the old patterns when we were writing the first album.
"Everything had changed In our lives except that."For two guys who are responsible for one of the biggest-selling albums in recent pop history, Damn and Daniel remain surprisingly unaffected by their phenomenal success.Daniel jokes he is waiting for the royalty cheques to come through so he can buy that beach house.He has returned to his Brisbane roots, living in the same suburb he grew up In, walking down the street undetermined the ephemera of celebrity and its resulting madness is kept at bay There is no eager team of. lackeys ready to cater to his every whim — even on the road, Daniel insists he wipe his own nose, thank you very much. I’m pretty independent ~ most of the people in our team know I can get my own. food or whatever," he says "I’m still living in the same suburb I was brought up In, would you believe? "It’s a security thing. I don’t particularly like change in my life and I realise I’m probably in the wrong business. "And I want to stay in the real world." Darren admits his relocation to New York is an attempt to maintain anonymity. While he enjoys the perks of taking Australian mates to a fancy restaurant or sold-out gig, mainly he walks the streets in daggy clothes, watches a lot oftelevision and writes songs You can be as cheesy or up your own butt as you like here and no one will bat an eye," he says.I felt I could get my life together by living In New York, but Brisbane rocks It and I really miss It - it’s home." After an era of navel-gazing, angst-ridden rock, Savage Garden arrived at the perfect time with per-fect pop songs, distinctive because of Darren’s vocals and Daniel’s blend of musical sensibilities. Their songs touched a chord with both sexes, from it 12-year-olds to 52-year-olds — a fact evidenced not only from their staggering album and single sales, but from the stories their fans tell them at concerts or via mail.
I still see music as a release or escape from the real world, even though has become my life." Daniel says.
Like a good book or film, music can help you get out of where your head’s at with, work or life or anything."
Darren adds: "I have heard every horror tale of dysfunctional families, relationships, really tragic life and death stories. To think that for some people , a two-minute slice of pop music can give them peace from a day of hell is amazing."But these Brisbane boys are hardly about to take themselves too seriously. There is no goal to save the world, although they realise the challenge to match their initial success with their second album is daunting. "The first time around we had nothing to lose and we weren’t scared of failing- we would just go back to i playing those really weird clubs," Daniel says It was good coming home for the ARIAs last year and seeing Natalie (Imbruglia) clean up. "It kind of makes you want to go out there and do it again Savage Garden expect to begin recording the album next month with renowned producer Walter Afanasieff. The first single, The Ani-mal Song, will feature in The Other Sister—a film starring Jullette Lewis, Diane Keaton and Tom Skerritt — which opens locally in May. Daniel hinted some of their new material will ex-plore a more "trip-hoppy" feel and incorporate his love of technology. We became very content with the first record after it had sold 10 copies — after that, anything else that hap-pened was fantastic and It just kept going," Daniel says.
"We played this album for two years and, during that time, we were growing up. Now we can show the audi-ence how we grew up."

Savage Garden’s new single, The Animal Song, will be
released tomorrow.
Thanks to Toby Harnisch for the Newspaper.