Spark for Urban a simple G'dayArticle from: Sunday Herald SunFont size: Decrease Increase Email article: Email Print article: Print Jeff Apter

December 28, 2008 12:00am
THE press release was appropriately grand. It read: "Urban Joins Gibson and Kidman to Celebrate Australia."

"Keith Urban, actor Mel Gibson and actress Nicole Kidman will be honoured January 15 during a gala highlighting the second annual 'G'Day LA: Australia Week' in Los Angeles.

"The event at the Century Plaza Hotel honours Australians who have made significant international contributions. Set for January 15-23, Australia Week will showcase Australian food and wine, travel, film, arts, culture, fashion and business."

This annual celebration of all things "Aussie" was to be attended by the honourees and such expats as Cameron Daddo, with whom Urban had recorded way back when, plus Tommy Emmanuel, actors Geoffrey Rush and Cate Blanchett, ageless songbird Olivia Newton-John and then Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer (who claimed credit for introducing Urban and Kidman, but that simply wasn't the case).

As always, there was a back-story to this orgy of backpatting.

The original idea had been to "honour" Australians Gibson, Kidman and Delta Goodrem.

The former two honourees made perfect sense -- they were Oscar-winning members of Hollywood royalty - but Goodrem was way out of her league.

Urban supporter Kerry Roberts, a woman with a lot of pull at Channel 9 (which was involved with the event), realised Urban was a far worthier recipient.

Some intense lobbying got Urban's name on the honourees' list at the last moment, at the expense of Goodrem.

Be Here, his latest record, was selling by the warehouse-load and had generated another three No. 1 hits in Days Go By, Making Memories of Us and Better Life.

He'd also recently claimed the Country Music Association award for Male Vocalist of the Year; Urban was the first non-American to be crowned country music's top dude.

Walking the red carpet on the day of G'Day LA, Urban and Kidman were a study in contrasts: Urban "styled up" for the occasion in a black velvet sports jacket and collared shirt, his ubiquitous three-day growth in place.

Kidman, as ever, was coolly elegant in a strappy, glittery black dress cut just above the knee, her hair coloured a golden blonde.

Then the formalities began. Kidman was the first honouree to claim her gong, which was handed over by fellow thespian Blanchett.

Rush then "honoured" Gibson and, finally, Newton-John called Urban to the podium. He brushed his shaggy hair out of his eyes, thanked all and sundry, then headed for the bar.

"I did have a chat with him," Daddo said, laughing. "Though I had nothing to do with their introduction."

In fact it was Roberts who introduced Urban to Kidman and quite innocently set in motion a very public affair.

The introduction Roberts made was brief: Kidman admitted that in the wake of her public and hostile split from Tom Cruise she attended the event in a "very wary, very damaged" state of mind and was hardly responsive to a potential new suitor.

After their introduction, Urban and Kidman were swept up in the 1000-plus crowd; they spent little time together on that first meeting. Urban then returned to the road but their paths would cross again before too long.

At first, Urban seemed a bit reluctant to "hook up" with Kidman, despite the connection between the two. He was consumed by a heavy touring and promo schedule.

And Kidman came from good stock, literally; she was a descendant of Sir Sidney Kidman, who had held vast land and livestock holdings in Australia.

She was also an Oscar winner, for her portrayal of doomed author Virginia Woolf in the film The Hours, and the mother of two children she and Cruise had adopted.

What could she see in a scruffy country-rocker from Caboolture, whose dad used to work at the tip?

On paper they were one odd couple; with his three-day growth, shaggy hair and slight stoop, Urban looked like he'd wandered in from an all-nighter at the Gympie Muster.

The frail, pale, ice-cool Kidman - a well-educated, urbane woman raised on Sydney's North Shore - looked so fragile you feared she might snap at any minute.

It was as if Urban and Cruise came from different planets.

And, frankly, what better person was there to help Kidman (and her career) move on from Cruise, whom she'd divorced in February 2001, than a humble bloke who loved his guitar, his mum and his Harley?

And as a career move for Urban, marrying a princess would surely help him shake his bad-boy reputation.

THAT'S not to downplay the fact it was, at least in part, a love match. When they decided to make their relationship public, Urban and Kidman were seen at a Nashville concert of Tommy Emmanuel, Urban's hero and one of his brotherhood of recovering addicts.

Jeff Walker, another long-time "booster", caught up with Urban backstage. Urban pulled Walker aside. He had a confession to make.

"He whispered to me, 'She is the love of my life'," Walker said. "I was really happy for them both. I think Keith has found what he was looking for in the days when I was working closely with him."

This Nashville show was one of many "sightings" in the second half of 2005 of the couple, who referred to each other in private as Hank and Evie.

Soon after, Urban and Kidman were seen in Connecticut, the green and sleepy New England state that seemed more on Kidman's radar than that of her new beau.

This New England outing wasn't long after their first "formal" date. In the spring, Kidman was in New York and got in touch with Urban, who was also in town.

There was nothing especially outrageous about their date; they simply took a walk through Central Park. But a connection was very clearly made, especially for Kidman.

Allegedly, she told a friend that Urban was "hot, hot, hot" and asked someone to track down the almost nude shots of him in Playgirl.

Despite numerous sightings, Urban and Kidman continued to play the PR game, referring to each other as "good friends" even when it was clear "a love thing" was brewing between them.

Urban simply didn't know how to talk about their relationship. James Blundell was one of many people to spot that, but he also knew Urban could cope with the pressure.

Since coming clean about his addictive ways, pretty much anything else would be easy.

"Without that, I don't think Keith would have been in a position to cope with a relationship with the public visibility that he now has with Nicole," Blundell said.

"After a time you really develop the skin of a rhino, but it can f--- people up. But I think he's coping brilliantly.

"And he does have a good sense of 'f--- you' about him, so I was never expecting him to be the handbag. I think it's really balanced."

When Urban was a kid, he'd belted out a Dolly Parton song during one of his appearances on the down-market talent show Pot of Gold while Bernard King scoffed and looked on.

Early in 2006, the larger-than-life Parton repaid the favour, in her own quirky way. Urban was hosting the annual Music City Jam.

Midway through his set, Urban strummed a guitar as his band locked into a familiar riff.

"It sounds like a Rolling Stones song," Urban bluffed and then said: "All we need is a chick singer."

With that, Parton stormed the stage and powered her way through Jolene.

Afterwards, Parton was in a chatty mood, joking about her upcoming 40th wedding anniversary and how she maintained the heat in her boudoir.

"I make out with my husband and pretend it's Keith Urban," she said with a chuckle, before adding this snappy little bookend, directed at the man himself: "And there's nothing you or your leggy girlfriend can do about it."

The working title of his new album was Love, Pain & the Whole Damned Thing, a perfect commentary on his life.

In mid-May, briefly in New York with Kidman for a UN gala, the couple finally revealed the entertainment world's worst-kept secret.

When Kidman was asked about her "boyfriend", Kidman corrected the interviewer: "He's actually my fiance," she said with a smile. "I wouldn't be bringing my boyfriend."

Not since the Coffs Harbour wedding of Russell Crowe and Danielle Spencer had the Australia media gone into quite the frenzy that ensued when Urban and Kidman finally tied the knot.

Three days before the wedding, Kidman's children, 13-year-old Isabella and Connor, 11, arrived from Tokyo by private jet, while such celebrity invitees as Hugh Jackman, Naomi Watts, Kylie Minogue, Crowe and Baz Luhrmann were seen in and around the harbour city, dusting off tuxes and trying on gowns.

The ceremony took place on the Sunday night, at the Cardinal Cerretti Memorial Chapel near Manly's St Patrick's College.

Slightly uncomfortable in his black tux with a white vest, Urban, who'd spent his buck's night at a soccer international at the Sydney Football Stadium, arrived in a silver BMW with his brother and strolled in a side door, barely noticed by the sizeable crowd that had gathered.

The bride rocked up in a cream Rolls-Royce. Kidman, in a white Balenciaga gown, was her usual sleek, stylish self, clutching a bouquet of white roses and working the crowd as she would a red carpet.

Urban's vows included the quite touching declaration: "You make me feel like I'm becoming the man I was always meant to be", which sounded as though it was lifted directly from one of his lyrics. (It wasn't.)

A T the reception, held in a huge marquee near the church, Neil Finn serenaded the newlyweds, while Urban couldn't resist the opportunity to belt out a tune himself, singing Making Memories of Us directly to his bride, briefly forgetting about their 230 guests.

Rob Potts (Urban's Australian agent) and Roberts, who were wedding guests, thought it reasonable to say something to the assembled media and both provided 30-second grabs on the day, revealing little more than how wonderful Urban and Kidman looked and how some people chose the chicken, others the fish.

However, this unauthorised move didn't sit well with the couple; when the newlyweds returned to Nashville after their honeymoon, Roberts and Potts were chastised and neither remains on his payroll.

The biggest news of all, of course, was an announcement in early January 2008: they were expecting. Little Hank or Evie was due in July.

Rumours had been doing the rounds for a few months - both had spoken openly and hopefully of having children - even though Kidman's pregnancy was barely noticeable; she had more of a baby lump than a bump, even six months or more into her term.

When Urban and Kidman fronted at the 2008 Australian Open tennis, the TV cameras spent more time monitoring their movements than the on-court action.

On July 5, 2008, while standing on stage at Nashville's LP Field, sharing yet another bill with his big-hatted pal Kenny Chesney, Urban couldn't resist himself.

"This song is for my very, very, very, very, very pregnant wife," he announced.

Then he and the band eased into Better Half as the 50,000 yelled with knowing delight.

A few days earlier, Kidman's mother, Janelle, had arrived in Music City. Kidman's sister, Antonia, herself a mother of four, travelled with her mother. All was in place.

Although they were seen in a bookstore the next afternoon stocking up on glossies, that was the couple's last public appearance before the appearance of Sunday Rose Kidman Urban, who was born in Nashville on July 7, weighing in at just under 3kg.

To ease her through the birth, Kidman chose a soundtrack that consisted primarily of Urban songs and the easy listening of Sir James Galway, the flautist and the stubbly cowboy making for the most unlikely of mix tapes.

"We want to thank everybody who has kept us in their thoughts and prayers," reported Urban, who was by Kidman's side during the birth. "We feel very blessed and grateful that we can share this joy with you."

Father Paul Coleman, who united the pair back in 2006, was given the nod to baptise the child as soon as the newborn was deemed OK to travel to Sydney.

But to the parents' eternal credit, they resisted the temptation to flog baby snaps to the highest tabloid bidder.

Edited extract from Fortunate Son: The Unlikely Rise of Keith Urban by Jeff Apter. Published by Random House on January 5.

Buy Fortunate Son: The Unlikely Rise of Keith Urban by Jeff Apter, for the special Sunday Herald Sun reader price of only $27.95+ $6 p/h. for credit card orders call: 1300 306 107 or post a cheque to Book Offers: PO Box 14730, Melbourne, 8001.

A new book lays bare the compromises required to make it to the top in Nashville, writes Bruce Elder.

This is a story about the tension between artistic integrity and commercial success. It is the story of how individuality was crushed and an Australian country singer became a superstar. Oh, yes, and got the girl in the final reel.

It is the story of Keith Urban and the compromises he was forced to make on the rocky road to international success.

When Urban arrived on the Australian country music scene he was a true renegade. At the time country music was about bush ballads sung by Slim and Smoky in very Aussie accents.

Urban, looking like a countrified version of Billy Idol, wanted to reinvent the genre. As he explained to the Herald in 1997: "I was raised on 100 per cent American country music. My intention has always been to improve the quality of Australian country music and to use the quality of American country music as a benchmark for that."

So, after Tamworth rather begrudgingly acknowledged his talent (he had won a Tamworth Golden Guitar award for best new talent and, at 16, had won best junior male vocalist), Urban headed for Nashville.

What no one realised at the time was that Urban was so driven and focused that he was prepared to stay in Nashville until he succeeded and, as he would eventually discover, he would do anything, including making a truly Faustian deal with his record company, to achieve success.

To understand the choices that Urban confronted it is necessary to realise that country music in the United States is an eternal battle between pop country and trad country.

The best way to explain this dichotomy is to think of the Kenny Rogers-Dolly Parton Islands In The Stream as the pop end of country and the soundtrack to Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, with its extensive use of folk and bluegrass, as the traditional end. The pop end sells to a mass market; the trad end doesn't.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s there was a pop boom, known as the "rhinestone cowboy" era. It was followed, a decade later in 1989-1990, by Garth Brooks, who used arena rock enriched with a twang and a fiddle to turn country music into the biggest phenomenon of the 1990s. Brooks was so huge that he is still listed as the third most successful artist of all time after the Beatles and Elvis.

There is a too-close relationship between country music and radio in the US. At one point, 2500 radio stations across America were pumping out non-stop bland country pop. These stations, playing a style best defined as "nothing to offend, lots of sweet ballads, nothing too twangy or rootsy or traditional" came to define country music success.

Into this very distorted world walked Keith Urban. He arrived in Nashville in 1992. He knew that Nashville didn't warm to blow-ins, particularly Aussie blow-ins, and he was prepared to work and work.

The problem was that Urban's vision of country music was not Nashville's vision. He disliked the saccharine ballads and wanted to explore a more rootsy, edgy, rock'n'roll type of sound. He was inspired by musicians such as Gram Parsons, John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen.

When he returned to Australia in 1997, he sat in the offices of Warner Music in Sydney and told a nightmare story of his battles with his record company. At the time he was working with a three-piece band, which he led, called the Ranch.

He explained to the Herald: "In the last three years I've realised more and more that I love being in a band. I've always been in a band. I found everyone in Nashville trying to pull me out of the band and make me a solo artist."

Nashville was bending Urban to its corporate will. The result: "We recorded and re-recorded and re-recorded for a year and a half."

This unhappy saga has now been chronicled by Jeff Apter, a former music editor for Rolling Stone.

In Fortunate Son: The Unlikely Rise Of Keith Urban, Apter explains: "Walkin' The Country was the one song on the Ranch album that typified the seemingly never-ending saga that was its recording. As Urban revealed, Warner Bros were particularly hard taskmasters; this one track, to his memory, was cut 'in five different studios with three different producers' … Every time the band emerged with a track that they thought truly captured their hard-driving sound, Warner execs would listen, shake their heads and then tell them to return to the studio."

When the album finally emerged it had been recorded in 14 studios with six recording engineers and 11 assistant engineers.

Tommy Emmanuel, a resident of Nashville at the time, understood what Urban was trying to do and explains that the Ranch "was really doing something different there; they were like this power trio. Most [power trios] only played blues or heavy rock, but he was playing country with clean and dirty guitar, good harmonies and solid rock grooves. He was fusing rock, blues and country when nobody else was in that genre." It was a style of music that Urban would call "funktry".

The Ranch were, as Apter describes them, "hard-rocking country with an R&B backbeat … the country-rock version of the Police".

Warner eventually dropped Urban, who then moved to Capitol Records. The issue was always that Urban's "funktry" was far removed from the radio-friendly mush demanded by the executives.

In 1997 Urban poured his heart out about how he was determined not to compromise.

When I asked about the problems he had experienced he was remarkably honest: "It [the music of the Ranch] doesn't sound enough like everything else on the radio. It's too different. When I [Urban] asked 'Why is that a problem?', they said [that] the more they can make the listener feel as though the radio isn't really on then the less likelihood there is of the listener changing the station. The idea is to keep the person on the station at all times. They are trying to make the music totally linear."

At the time he was determined not to compromise but something happened in the next two years.

What was more important? His original vision and the joy of playing the music he wanted to play? Or succumbing to the demands of the record industry and playing music, chosen by others, that would allow him to become very, very rich?

Capitol persisted with Urban. They were slowly wearing him down and persuading him to abandon his integrity and embrace the mighty dollar. And they won.

Eventually Urban recorded his first American solo album Keith Urban. It was released in 1999 with the tag "Keith Urban, Music For All Audiences - What Every Woman Wants To Hear And Every Man Wants To Say" and the hit off the album was co-written, wait for it, by Jane Wiedlin (formerly a member of the pop group the Go-Gos) and was called But For The Grace of God.

God and pop - how could it miss? Urban thought he had written a song for someone else. In fact he had co-written his first No. 1 US hit.

The rest, as the cliche goes, is history. Urban saw his albums and singles start to succeed in the US (he was the first Australian to have a country Top 5 since Olivia Newton-John) as he went on tour supporting acts such as Garth Brooks and the Dixie Chicks.

He started to win major awards, appeared in Playgirl magazine and reached a point where his albums were selling millions of copies and he was playing 20,000-seat arenas across the US.

What does Urban's story tell us about the nature of the recording industry? For record company executives it demonstrates that they, and they alone, understand the workings of the market and every sensible musician should go into the studio and record precisely what they are told to record. For musicians holding on to artistic integrity it prompts the oldest question: is it better to be poor with your integrity intact, or rich and compromised? There is no easy answer.

Apter, having spent a year researching and writing his provocative biography, admits he admires Urban enormously.

"I genuinely hope that somewhere inside there is the stirring of a musician who wants to get close to the roots of what he is really about … I respect his struggle. He put so much into getting to this point. He went to Nashville determined to succeed and he's succeeded. At the moment the spotlight is far too seductive. What more can anyone say?"

Jeff Apter's Fortunate Son: The Unlikely Rise Of Keith Urban, published by Random House, is out on Monday.

Here's a Q & A session with Jeff Apter about the book on Keith
http://www.jeffapter.com.au/keith-urban-Q&A.html

Fortunate Son - Q and A

Describe the evolution of the book?
I first met Keith Urban, briefly, backstage at Nashville’s Fan Fair in 1996, so in some ways I was a latecomer to his world. To some Australians, he was a veteran by then. At the time, someone mentioned to me: ‘Keith’s done it tough.’ So the idea for the book sprang from there, because I was immediately interested in his struggle. The more I found out about him — and I interviewed him several times in the ensuing years, and saw him play many, many shows — the more interested I became in documenting his career.

When did you start writing the book?
I had some preliminary talks with my publisher, Random House, back in 2005, but began actually writing the book in late 2007. I spent about six months interviewing, listening, writing and researching.

Did you approach Keith about going on the record?
Absolutely. In fact, even before I committed to the book, I reached out to his former manager, Greg Shaw, and contacted his American manager, Gary Borman, regarding my plans. I also contacted Keith’s family, via an uncle in New Zealand. At no point did I really expect Keith to contribute — authorised books require more money than this book had in its budget — but nor did I attempt to keep Keith, or his ‘people’, out of the loop. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who had played alongside Keith, or had been involved with him either personally or professionally, who were willing to speak with me.

What did you learn about Keith during the project?
His stone-cold conviction, his absolute steely-eyed determination to reach the top was stronger than any other musician I have ever written about. Keith has often spoken about his will to succeed at Nashville as being his ‘destiny’, and after discovering what he has endured to get there — the kind of setbacks that would kill most careers — I came away with nothing but respect for his tenacity. Admittedly, I’m not always sold on his music — I think the Ranch record remains his creative peak — but the guy’s drive is stronger than any of the Harleys that he likes getting around on.

Will readers be surprised by what is revealed in the book?
I sure hope so: part of my job is to dig deep enough to uncover things that were not known before and to explain how Keith rose to the top. I was surprised by his broad tastes — he may be known as a country-pop star, but he was raised on a musical diet of heavy metal, Oz rock, west coast singer / songwriters, plus such slick twangy staples as Glen Campbell. Keith has always been very open and frank regarding his personal demons, but I think readers and fans will be interested by not only learning how low he sunk, but how he recovered from these dramas and then used them as source material for some of his best songs — ‘But for the Grace of God’ is a perfect example of that.

How do you Keith will respond to the book?
I’d like to think that he would respect the book as an honest and realistic portrayal of his long, slow rise to the top in Music City. He strikes me as the kind of guy who doesn’t take too kindly to bullshit: and I think this book is short on hype and strong on fact. I’d also like to think it’s an enjoyable read; it’s not called ‘The Unlikely Rise of Keith Urban’ for nothing. The fact that a kid from suburban Queensland (via New Zealand) should strike gold in one of the toughest music markets in the world is about as likely as selling ice to the Eskimos. Many others have tried and failed; there’s plenty of blood on those tracks. But he endured and thrived.

What’s your take on Keith’s 'celebrity marriage'?
Firstly, I have to emphasise that I was keen to write a book on Keith well before he married Nicole Kidman and became one half of the ‘Kurbans’. It’d be a mistake, obviously, to ignore the changes that union has brought to his world, but I also wanted to document Keith’s life in its entirety, from his birth in New Zealand, his early days in Queensland and his struggles to succeed in Nashville, and beyond. Anyway, I’d like to think it’s a love match; I’ve certainly been told that by enough people who’ve spent time with them, or played a role in their relationship, to believe that’s the case. And I’m sure their little girl is gorgeous. But it would be foolish to deny that the marriage also has clear benefits to both their careers, something I do chew over in the book.

Where to next, career wise, for Keith?
I think he’s in a position now, having sold so many records, that he could do just about anything musically that he fancies: instrumentals, bluegrass, country rock, whatever. And a lot of people I spoke with for the book really hope he goes down that path. But the key question, and one I think Keith isn’t quite ready to address, is whether he’s willing to risk alienating his massive fanbase. Only time will tell. As Radney Foster told me, who wrote ‘Raining on Sunday’, constant touring and recording is ‘country’s Social Security, so to speak’: to potentially derail that gravy train is a big call. Heaven knows, though, that Keith doesn’t need any more money!
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