Urban Conurban

I had the pleasure of interviewing Keith Urban, as he prepares his mind and body for a “punishing” tour of the UK in October. Five dates spanning the entire length and breadth of our mighty island (including Ireland).

Predictably early for his interview, he initiated an apology from me before I had even had time to introduce myself.

”Sorry, I’m late,” I said, checking my arm to see if I’d acquired a watch since the last time I had looked. I hadn’t. He smiled. Christ, his teeth look awful.

“No worries mate”, he drawled in that slathery Australian…drawl.

I looked up at the clock of the bar in the Ritz hotel (where he was staying) and found that I had in fact kept him waiting for a couple of hours. Oh well, his calm demeanour didn’t betray any anger towards me despite holding him up so inconveniently.

I sat down opposite him, a Bryan Adams of a man. All muscles and intimidating arm hair. I don’t even have hair on my lip yet. This guy’s good.

I made a bit of small talk, as follows.
”Sorry to keep you waiting Urban. Do you mind if I call you Urban?”

“No, that’s fine. But, if I’m honest, I prefer Keith.”

“What, really? Ok, it's your call. Is your name real or is it a cynical amalgamation of a name renowned for suggesting total cretinity and the word that in bourgeois circles means black, thus rendering your own ‘brand’ of music a confusing double bind of inverted ironies and post-racist tongue in cheek? ”

He laughed for a moment, choosing this moment to take a sneaky sip from his pint of carrot, potato and coriander smoothie. I winked and knocked back a grisly shot from the black flask hiding in my rucksack. I then ripped the filters off two Marlboro reds, lit them and handed him one.

He took it into his massive hands, looking at it like he’d never seen one before. All frowning and confused. He smoked it in an eccentric fashion by pressing it hard into the glass ashtray I had brought to the table.

“Well, to answer your question. My parents, Nigel and Sheila were proud of their given name actually. Urban, short for urbane, meaning confident, comfortable and polite. Yes, I think that would pretty much sum up my parents.”

“Sorry, I suppose you get asked that question a lot. Excuse me.”

I excused myself before coughing violently, and hawking up some phlegm ball the size of a strawberry into my empty glass. This only took a couple of minutes.

“Do people ever joke to your face about your name?”

"Are you ok?”

"Yeah, fine.”

He probably asked because I was, at this point, hunched over my chair a bit, wheezing.

“Do they say things like ‘Keith Urban, that’s a shit name’?. Does that happen a lot? Yes? It must.”

He didn’t say anything for a while because he was reluctantly helping me back to my feet.

“I did get a bit of stick for it at school.”

”Stick? They caned you for having a monumentally ridiculous name? I mean, I know it’s pretty fucking pathetic. Keith Urban. You might as well be called Nigel Metropolis for fuck’s sake. I mean look at you, you’re like some kind of white-bread hulk with a girl’s hair. You’re about as “Urban” as my granddad’s Triumph Stagg. MOBO nominations seem unlikely, no?”

I don’t know why, but it seemed that violence was looking increasingly likely. I’ve always just been able to sense these things. I’m good at that.

Thankfully his mobile phone interrupted the onset of a good ol’ brawl. The polyphonic version of “Days Go By”, (his latest single, soon to be making its way into the collective irritation of the UK radio-listening public) began playing. Even at this awkward time, he seemed keen to let the song play, potentially at the cost of missing the call. That’s just the kind of risk taker he is. That, or like most people, he can’t answer the phone until it’s rung twice.

As the chorus was approaching, I finished what was left in my flask, and suggested that maybe he answer his phone. Upon taking my advice, I had to listen to his cheese-grater baritone rush through a conversation with an agent or something. He was going on about some rude interviewer. Guy sounded like a prick.

“So, Days Go By,” I started, talking over his conversation.

“I’ll ring you back in a sec,” he said, ominously.

“So, Days Go By. Despite on first appearances appearing to be a dreadful song riddled with the usual pitiful clichés prevalent in the kind of rock music made for mums on the school run, in fact it turns out to be a thrilling exercise in pointing out something that is, not only true, but spectacularly so. That days, despite what you may have previously imagined, do in fact go by. The chorus brilliantly illuminates upon this previously unknown endeavour of human thought with the words: ‘You better start living because days go by.’ That is brilliant."

Without pausing to take a breath that, essentially, I probably needed, I proceeded to raise some doubts that I had about the song’s content.

“Do you worry about the influence your music has upon your audience? If we can attribute the recent inclination of Australian parents giving the newly created extensions of their own humanity the name Keith, a name so villainous to most people’s ears that it tends to inspire irrational aggression, do you take responsibility for a slight increase in mobile phone-related traffic incidents?"

Keith looked at me, then at the door behind me, and then at me again.

”What?”

I tried to replicate the guttural death squawk of his voice to sing the words back to him, to which I referred.

“’I’m changing lanes, I’m talking on the phone, driving way too fast.’ That line there. You are essentially validating a highly dangerous cocktail of conflicting activities. And if I’ve learned anything in this life: monkey see, monkey do.”

At this point, Keith, hair straighteners in back pocket, got up out of his seat, leaving at least half of the smoothie he’d earlier slurped, a lonesome figure on the table. A fitting metaphor for this complicated and troubled musician drowning in the middle of the road.


Days Go By is out now on the independent label, EMI.