Music: Interview: Tim Minchin

Written on July 2, 2011 – 9:58 am | by Jaxon Hallahan

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Tim Minchin began his career as a straight musician, but found himself writing songs that expressed comic ideas, or took on loaded topics like religion in a comedic way. His acta solo stage show that combines piano songs with the occasional heady bitcame about naturally, as did his rise in international popularity. His 2005 solo show, Darkside, was met with critical praise and later recorded as a top-selling album, as was 2006s So Rock. After winning the award for Best Alternative Act at the 2007 HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, Minchin began his run as an Edinburgh Festival Fringe staple, debuting a string of new shows and material. Last year he co-wrote the music for Matilda, A Musical, based on the Roald Dahl books, which begins an open-ended run at the Cambridge Theatre this fall. Minchins introduction to the United States, though, has been much more deliberate. Hes appeared on Conan twice this year, and is in the midst of his first-ever U.S. tour. Fans are coming out of the woodwork, eager to hear Minchins layered, bitingly satirical ditties, or simply sing along to the lyrics, Fuck the motherfucking pope. During his stop at the Just For Laughs festival in Chicago, The A.V. Club sat down with Minchincrazy hair, eyeliner and allto discuss his discomfort with the term musical comedian, his deliberate career choices, and his relationship with applause.

The A.V. Club: Have you noticed any discrimination against musical comedians? The phrase often gets a bad rap.

Tim Minchin: When I came into comedy in 2005, I didnt even know there was discrimination against musical comics in the alternative-comedy strain. I was saying, Im cool. I dont really give a fuck. I come from a cabaret, musical theater background, not a comedy background, so it didnt even cross my mind. And then the interviewer started going, So how do you deal with the fact that everyone knows musical comedy sucks? Im like, Eh, call it what you want. What I do is write. Im a songwriter and the lyrics are meant to make you laugh. Then I understood that what theyre talking about is the tradition of, you know, in a club night youll have a guy with a ukulele or playing four chords [on a guitar], and hes leaning on rhymes and misdirection.

AVC: It can be an easy way for a mediocre comic to stand outto have a hook.

TM: Yeah. And look, a lot of that comes from jealousy, because stand-ups hate it when someone gets up with an instrument and they have a big impact, because people are predisposed to chant and cheer when they hear a song. But obviously, now I am in the comedy world much more. I guess now I can see it more in the context of things. When I started doing it, its not like I was listening to Tom Lehrer and old-school music comics and going, I wanna do that! I was just listening to bands and trying to write songs and realizing Im really bad at writing songs without hyper-dense, critical lyrics. And now, of course, Ive developed all these ideas about what musical comedy should be. Although lots of differentReggie Watts is a musical comic, but he doesnt really do songs. He doesnt do many songs, anyway. Hes got Fuck Shit Stack and stuff, these kind of edgy songs. And then youve got Bo [Burnham] doing more of my end of stuff, the hyper-dense lyrics. But hes finding his way to define himself, in a way, thats very different from what I do. What has become apparent is that, increasingly, you cant get away with being a shit musician. If you want to be a musical comic nowadays, it seems theres enough people out there being relentless in their pursuit of being musically good at the same time.

AVC: Was it difficult to find an audience when you were starting out, given peoples apprehension about musical comedians?

TM: No. For whatever reason, luck and word of mouthmy comedy career couldnt have started better. I went to Edinburgh, selling out this 300-seater just because I got the right place, right time, right venue, right buzz, right reviews early on. And every year Ive gone out on tour since, its doubled. Ive done my penance, but I did it in the music industry for 12 years. But in terms of comedy, I never did five-minute sets or clubs or anything. I just started doing shows. Coming from that theater background, it never crossed my mind that I should start doing five-minute sets. I just went, Im gonna put on a show, and people came. Which is why Im a comedian. If they hadnt come, I would have moved on and done something else.

AVC: Now that youve been doing Conan and shows with a very defined length for a comedian slot, what has been your experience performing songs that might be out of context with your larger show?

TM: I dont find it very hard because Ive done little sets at charity gigs and on telly. I found the best way to do a telly is write a song specifically for the show, if theres time to do that. Things like Conan, its such broad audience, you just hope that a couple of thousand people look further. Because those songs have to be clean. Theyre very tip-of-the-iceberg of what I do. My clean stuff is absolutely in the minority. [Laughs.] I just do what I gotta do and try to show people I can write some funny lyrics and play piano, and hopefully thatll make them dig further. I really believe in my form. Thats why I havent done a lot of telly, and Im not a regular on any panel shows, and Im not in a sitcom or all those things. And not really for lack of offers, but I just know that what I do suits me trapping an audience in a room for an hour-and-a-half and going, Were having this conversation, and I can say this because I said this earlier and that justifies my position. Or, Im asking you to trust me on this and Im holding off a joke for three minutes. It requires a building of some kind of relationship. All comics feel like that. Im just in a luxurious position where so far in my career, Ive been able to pursue that form almost exclusively.

AVC: Most comedians start with one joke, turn it into a bit, build out a five-minute set, then turn a bunch of five-minute sets into a half-hour or an hour. But you started with an entire show right off the bat.

TM: Yeah. And look, I have massive admiration for those people. I only write a couple jokes a year, you know? I dont look at the world through a stand-up comics glasses. Im not always looking for the gag. If Im writing a childrens musical, like I did last year, Im looking at the world through a childs eyes. I just dont have that top comedians filter on. And if I did have that pressure, Im sure Id be a better stand-up. But my jokes only exist inside my shows. My stand-up is so on purpose in relation to the songs and where Im going. Its not like a narrative, but its a graph. If Im doing a couple of dick jokes, its just cause Im trying to pull it down so that I can then do something more testing.

AVC: Youre thinking more about the arc of the show.

TM: Thats right: The relationship Im building, giving people permission to laugh at this, and then stopping them laughing deliberately and making them feel comfortable, and letting them go, and all that. I dont think about that cerebrally, but thats what Im instinctively trying to do. I think about things in long form. The good part of thatwell, its a blessing and a curse. Ive never been under pressure to make people laugh immediately. In a club, youre standing there, and if you dont get a laugh every 15 or 20 seconds, youre failing. Thats your currency: laughter. And a good set is more laughs, whereas Ive never had that pressure. So although I think my show is getting funnier and funnier as I get better at my craft, Ive got bits that most stand-ups would never ever get. In what club can you practice the bit where you hold up a copy of the Quran and have five minutes of jokeless stuff about the nature of sacredness and supernatural agency? Its quite nerdy. But its like winding up the car so I can play, Fuck the motherfucking pope. I loaded up my audience with realizing that when I think about language and the sacred, I think about it very, very carefully. And this is my response. [Sings.] Fuck the motherfucker! I couldnt have developed that in a club atmosphere.

In my 90 minutes, what my show does that gives it an advantage apart from the plinky-ploinky, is that you get tired in a stand-up show. Even if theyre brilliant, like Ross Noble who just makes me lose my shit, or Demetri Martin especially, after 40 minutes, Haha, I wanna keep laughing, but Ive seen the rhythm of these jokes now and its not doing its magic on me anymore. And you find yourself forcing. So what I try to do is make sure that over my 90 minutes or two hours, I find the time in the 105th minute theres still a laugh of surprise, because I havent been relentless. It sounds like Im justifying not being funny. I think people find my show funny.

AVC: Do you feel like YouTube has introduced you to America?

TM: Absolutely.

AVC: It took a long time for you to have your American TV debut, though, which was only last January.

TM: Thats the amazing thing: Its very hard to quantify how youve spread. I havent done America because Ive been busy, and Ive been touring, and the U.S. has that charming habit of thinking that its Mecca, right? It didnt really cross my radar. I like going to Montreal and Aspen. Actually, I must have been on a gala before Conan, but I was busy, you know? Ive had a really good career in the UK and Australia, and so its just been held off there. Also, what the American industry wants to do is go, Right, youre going to come over, and youre a big star over there, so were going to get you into the movies, get into a Russell Brand, and I just kept saying, Book me a tour. They were like, Yeah, well have to get a viral marketing thing, and Im like, The virals done. Look at YouTube. Just book a tour and well see what happens. That took a good year to convince someone, and even though I was the one saying, Book me a tour, Im surprised Im doing the numbers I am. I just didnt know. I thought there might be 100, 200 people in each town who might have heard of me and take the risk, but its better than that. Its totally word-of-mouth.

AVC: A lot of press, too.

TM: Yeah, hipster press, and Im not key with press generally, but my stuff appeals to a lot of journalists because its about words and language. A lot of the stuff that journalists are interested in themselves.

AVC: At comedy shows, when a comedians introduced as being really popular in the UK or Australia, theres a real sense that the audience has just crossed its arms, like, Yeah okay. Prove it. Have you run into that?

TM: Yeah, you should try being an American comic in Edinburgh, man. The British are straight-up racist. Like, someone goes, Now all the way from America, this guys huge, hes been on these shows, and he comes on and theyre like, Yeah, fucking whatever. My mate in Liverpool, hes so funny, and youre, fucking, a big star. Theyre so defensive. And thats incredibly important to me. Youve gotta be a fool to come in all guns blazing. Im not trying to get rich or famous; Im just trying to have a long career and build my audience, and the way to do that is to let people feel like theyre discovering you. Ive managed in England to play 10,000-seaters, and yet still people feel a sense of ownership because Im not on their telly every week, and I dont take out ads. Theres still a sense that Im playing for them, and that theyve come to see me because theyve found out about me, as opposed to being whacked over the head by a million bucks worth of advertising. Thats worth its weight in gold, because thats a lot of people, and they all feel invested. Theyre there to see you. Its cause my stuffs got such a strong worldview. Its atheists and people who want to laugh at shit, people who are frustrated, bookish people, intellectuals who dont want to watch a chat show because they find it obsequious and vapid. And Im not actually that guy, so its like, Oh this is fun.

AVC: Is there a point where you remember feeling more comfortable pushing boundaries, especially with religion?

TM: I was doing it all along. Even some of my earlier songs that I wrote as a teenager were about religion, and I dont really care what people think as long as I dont hurt other people. Its a really rich subject, and its a challenge to make people laugh about it. Theres an element to which I am preaching, Im proselytizing for critical thinking. I believe strongly in what Im saying, but its not my intention to proselytize. Ive got to write about something, and thats what I spend my days thinking about, thats what I read about, and what Im interested in.

AVC: How do you approach the subject without ostracizing people?

TM: I ostracize people, and thats fine. I have lots of peoples emails sayingbasically Im one of the things standing in the gateway for people who have doubt. Im loath to over-estimate my impact on people, but if I think about the people I listened to when I was a kidmusicians or artists, playsthose people you listen to in your late teens, early 20s, define the way youll think for the rest of your life. I get a lot of feedback along the lines of, I was brought up in this kind of household, and I stopped going to church a little while ago, but youve helped me. Im like a gateway drug to what Americans like to call skepticism, or critical thinking. And Im very happy with that role. I can help people firm up their beliefs. I dont think Im going to take a fundamentalist Christian and convert themfar from it. Theyll think Im Satan. What I care about is that there is someone out there saying this stuff, and there are people who are sitting at home thinking about this stuff, and cant believe that they live in a country where the president says that he thinks that a magic sky fairy is looking over his army. I mean what the fuck? If you get into thinking about it too much, its scary.

The other thing I try to do is avoid laziness, and I dont mean to say, Im not a lazy comic and everyone else is, because all the comics I know are incredibly smart and they think a lot about what theyre doing. In that vein, if Im going to write a song expressing anger at the Popes treatment of claims of child abuse, Ill write a chorus that goes, [Sings.] Fuck the motherfucker, fuck the motherfucker, fuck the motherfucker, but then make sureand I dont think anyone can ever accuse me of not trying to structure an argument that self-justifiesthat its intellectually consistent and hopefully entertaining. I am really interested in comedy that entraps people, and makes people go, Youre just saying this! And you know what? Fuck you. Im not just doing anything. Im saying that, and Im looking at your reaction to that, and Im judging your reaction. I keep coming back to this term thoroughness, and being thorough sounds like such a damningly faint praise to give to a comic, but Im obsessed with being thorough. Musically thorough. Intellectually thorough. I love the idea of thoroughness. [Laughs.]

AVC: Where does that come from?

TM: My surgeon dad? I dont know. [Laughs.] No, I never thought I deserved to be a musician, and I never thought I deserved to be a comic. You gotta earn your right to talk, and my way of earning my right to talk is to go, Im going to relentlessly pursue this idea until its all nice and tied up. Sometimes when I feel like I dont draw a very clear conclusion, thats okay as long as I know what kind of question Im asking. It also just sounds so dry to talk about. My main aim is still to entertain people, you know? Not to make them walk out and go, Wow! Fuck man! That was huge! Like, he really tried hard! I dont know how else to be. You can only be yourself onstage, and Im really just interested in people who articulate ideas. Anything. Whether theyre talking about art or politics or science or the meaning of fucking life. Like Ian McEwan and Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens and [Richard] Dawkins, even some religious writers with beautiful, totally consistent ideas.

AVC: What was the nature of your theater background?

TM: I came up through uni theater writing music mostly. I wrote my first score for a theater show when I was 17, and another when I was 18, and all through uni I wrote musical scores for Shakespeare and stuff.

AVC: How did you get into theater originally?

TM: I guess school, and then university.

AVC: Was it was something you had always wanted to try?

TM: Nah, I guess it was just the drama departmentI wouldnt get lead roles in plays at school or anything like that. There was this lady, who is a dear friend of mine now, who wrote me a letter in 1993 because she had seen me doing little songs in plays, going in a hand-written letter, Im doing this version with Midnight New Theater Companywhich was the company based at the school I went to, and I had left school by now…of Loves Labours Lost, but its a musical version. Weve got other Elizabethan poems and we want to write music to it, and would you like to do it? I was 17 and showed it to my mum, and said, Look at this, and mum said, You dont know how to write music. And I went, Yeah, but because Im not trained or anything, so that was huge. One of those things wherehave you done plays?

AVC: Yeah.

TM: Its like that summer camp thing, where everyone falls in love with each other, and you never forget those moments. I wrote songs that made audiences cry and songs that make the audience laugh, and I went, Fuck me. Id been writing songs forever, but I didnt really feel legitimate until the last couple years when I finally got over the fact that just cause I cant read music doesnt mean I cant play with a symphony orchestra. But its been a long road to feeling like Im allowed to be a musician. And then I started acting again, having spent my time composing, and I got a couple of roles in professional theater, at The Perthsmalland then I moved to Melbourne thinking, Ill get an agent and continue this. I couldnt get an agent, got ignored, and played in shit bands. Out of that frustration came my first solo cabaret show, which people laughed at, so I took out the abaret and put in omedy, and now its great.

AVC: Originally this interview was slated as a Random Rules, but you declined because you said you dont listen to music anymore. What kind of music did you gravitate toward as a kid, and why dont you listen anymore?

TM: I didnt grow up in a loads-of-music household, but I kind ofI lived in a revisionist history guys home, where you do a lot of interviews and people ask you your influences, and you end up sort of having a fictional version of it that youve made up to justify where youve ended up at. But all that taken into account, my grandma took me to Gilbert And Sullivan and all the school musicals, and I listened to Sgt. Peppers from beginning to end probably 100 times the year I turned 12; I actually liked Shes Leaving Home and the interesting, weird stuff. We had a Pianola, like a pedal piano that had all these old tunes, and so we sat around and sang, and my brother played guitar. He listened to Australian rock bands like The Hoodoo Gurus and Midnight Oil and INXS and Crowded House, and eventually British stuff. Then there was The Kinks, which was a massive, massive [influence] on me, and Queen, Deep Purple more than Zeppelin, the British organ bandsThe Doors and Deep Purple probably because of the keyboards.

AVC: Was it always keyboards that held your interest?

TM: On the hard-rock end of the things. The 70s rock where everyone was listening to Zeppelin, Motrhead or whatever, I was listening to Doors and Purp because of the organ. But its mostly just what you stumble across. My brother was really into music, and I drifted in and out. We played in some bands together, and he was like, Learn the introduction to Light My Fire. Thats actually why Im up here doing this, because he was like, I want to play music. Fucking learn these chords, and I play piano like guitar, I play chords.

AVC: Does he still play music?

TM: No, not enough. Hes a business guy. Hes chairman of Whammy, which is part of the Australian music industry. Hes great at guitar, but he stopped. And then I went to college eventually, and did this two-year contemporary music course. I sat there for a few years just feeling shit about myself because next door the guy was learning jazz, and I go, Ill never, ever learn to play like that. I dont know why I fucking bought that; thats what any music college makes you feel, any artistic college. Then I learned my 13 sharp 11 chords and my dominant nine flat five and all that, and spent a good five years finding my way back from those hyper-extended chords, back to the place where I could write a song with three triads. Somewhere in there I started finding music stressful because it either annoyed me because it wasnt good, or it upset me because it was too goodmaybe thats because somewhere in me theres someone really competitive. Like, I couldnt like jazz because it was too stressful. It was never relaxing for me. Then I got to the point where last year I wrote 50 songs, I was in my studio all day writing, and I just wanted silence. Somewhere along the way I lost my habit, not that it was ever a very well-developed habit. I would put a CD on once every three weeks during a drive, and so when I turned on the car I liked silence or science podcasts. And thats fucking great.

AVC: Has it affected your songwriting?

TM: I dont know. Now I listen to music rarely, and when I listen to itand I listen to it very consciouslyI run the risk of being too easily influenced because thats all Ive heard that week. The other side is, my music is quite different. The subjects I write about, the actuality of the song structures is this weird thing. Its not very original, but its not whats going on in the moment, and thats served me well. When I wrote Matilda, I did in such isolation. You listen and you can go, Theres a little [Andrew] Lloyd Webber, theres a little [Stephen] Sondheim, and Ive listened to all that. I dont worry what other people are writing at the time. I just try and find the shortest route between my lyrics and my intent, and the place I want to hit people. The musics a function of the idea. If I want to make people cry, because Ive got an idea that I find emotional, I make sure I simplify or pull back. If I want to say, Fuck the motherfucker, my first instinct is to go, [Makes heavy percussion noises and raps.] Fuck the motherfucker! and people are laughing despite themselves because you skipped something, youve gotten behind their barriers. Musics like a magic pill.

AVC: Do you hear your own songs running through your head the way people get songs stuck in their head?

TM: No, I dont get my songs stuck in my head, but sometimes a phrase will slip out of my mouth, which is quite disgusting.

AVC: I read in another interview that you used to have a desire to write very serious rock songs. Do you still have that?

TM: Its against my instinct to write, because thats what I mock, but I dont see lines between what I do now andif Matildas doing all right and I have a bit of income and time next year, Ill go into the studio for six months and write an album. I would imagine that album would have quirky lyrics, but Ill shed myself of the pressure to make people laugh. Ill try and get rid of my didactic tendencies. Ill put out a record with a band, thatll be whatever I feel like writing about at the time, and thatll be the result of consciously going and listening to some stuff. Go back and listen to Abbey Road and listen to what Randy Newmans been doing, and listening to a few people who write like Elvis Costello, and then go listen to The Strokes and go, What sort of album do I want to make? and I might go make it. Im in a really good position to just be a songwriter now. Im incredibly fucking surprised that I have that position. I dont think the majority of my fans are going to go, Whats he doing making an album? Hes a comedian! People who know my stuff know that the music is everything, and that Im a serious musician. Even watching my comedy show I dont think anyone will. The most common thing people will say to me after my show is that theyll comment on my playing If I didnt fall into comedy, Id still be playing in bands, but my shows would be silly and entertaining, like Barenaked Ladies, or Frank Zappa, or, frickin They Might Be Giants. Whatever side of that comedy/music boundary I fell, I dont think it was ever going to be much different from this. Being called a comedian has put pressure on me though, I reckon.

AVC: Comedians have odd relationships with applauselike, they prefer when people laugh, and they can find applause unsettling.

TM: Yeah, like its not as visceral. Is that what it is? Thats more thought-out than I want. I want [surprised laugh].

AVC: Whats your own relationship with applause?

TM: I get a lot of mileage out of expressing ideas with apparently casual pff. Its not casual of course, I work my fucking guts out to try and get this idea. They get applause because theyre not exactly funny, theyre, Huh-huh, oh, fucking exactly dude! Thats exactly right! The dude just said what Im fucking angry about, but its quite a fun way to say it, and its a poetical way to say it. Sometimes its like a tent revivalist, like, Hallelujah! Thats fine, Im very comfortable with that response. Sometime you do a joke and people clap and it feels a bit like theyre going [adopts a snooty accent], Yes, yes. Well-structured joke. I have no problem the way my audience reacts to my stuff. Without applause it would be very fucking weird.

Songwriting to me is a lot more like doing puzzles, doing sudokus, than most musicians. My songs are like little journeys. Theyre little games that I have to solve. Like, this little girl in Matilda whos just moved a glass with her eyes, shes 5 and shes just discovered shes telekinetic. What would she feel after that? What would she say? What are the options here? Maybe it makes her feel big or small. Its like, with all the other people in Matilda, we threw up all these different ideas, and we decided that it gives her a sense of peace that shes never had, so how do I write about that? Its the same with the comic stuff: How do I talk about my child and make people laugh? Its problem-solving, as opposed to a real artist whos going, I just want to express my soul. I dont know what that means.

Music For Teenagers