Singer Daryl Braithwaite is making another comeback, this time hosting a show about people’s dreams. If only his own dreams could be fulfilled. By Larry Schwartz.
BERT NEWTON flaunts his trademark grin. Newsreaders Mal Walden and Jennifer Hansen are smiling. And weatherman Mike Larkan seems oblivious to grey skies outside.
Judging by the portraits in the fourth-floor foyer at Ten’s South Yarra headquarters, everyone associated with the network is infected with good cheer.
Why then does the new kid on the block seem so glum? “I guess I’m still not happy with life, personally,” Daryl Braithwaite says. “Just unfulfilled …”
He’s satisfied with work prospects. “But I guess on a personal side …” He pauses. “That leaves a lot to be desired.”
He aches to be with his 10-year-old son, now living in America; is hurt at the breakup of a close, romantic relationship. He wonders at “the demons” that he says make happiness itself seem so elusive.
Candid revelations of personal turmoil come as a surprise at a brief meeting at which we are to hear about his first foray into television as host of a show called `Dreams Can Come True’, which shows how good things can come to ordinary folk.
Perhaps we’ve caught him on a bad day.
Once upon a time, he was a fresh-faced pop idol in satin and flared trousers. He had been an apprentice fitter and turner. He was the darling frontman of Sherbet, a group that dominated local charts in the 1970s. The world was at his feet then. So it seemed.
At 47, he is leaner than I had imagined. His hair is cropped tight and greyish-white.
Daryl Braithwaite Mark II emerged in the late 1980s in the guise of a cleancut yuppie singing to the same crowd that favored the likes of Phil Collins. He did so to huge success and record album sales. Then came a lengthy, much-publicised court case over the sacking of two managers. Recent
news has revealed financial problems.
Now we have the possibility of a Mark III, a 1990s Braithwaite on the brink of a TV career. So it seems.
The innocence of his halcyon days long gone, an older, edgier Braithwaite sips a glass of water. Someone in Los Angeles recently alerted him to the hazards of the high sugar content in soft drinks. Cautiously, he measures his world.
Only when he talks of his passion for surfing and tells how he takes his boogie board with him to gigs in the vicinity of beaches, is there something of earlier incarnations.
Perhaps he is just weary on a day of promotional interviews for a two-part TV special he’s hosting. If he did not say so himself, you might not notice he is so forlorn.
Later, he will tell a record company executive that he has misgivings about being so revealing about personal agonies.
Still, the encounter is a refreshing departure from the restrained hype and guarded front you might expect.
ONLY after he confides his unhappiness does his very tone seem at odds with the official quote. “The wonderful and uplifting stories on the show remind us,” Braithwaite says in promotional material for `Dreams Can Come True’, “to have hope and never stop chasing dreams”.
The show records heartening yarns such as a reunion between a five-year-old girl, presumed killed in “a European war zone” and her mother; the way in which locals in the NSW south coast town of Eden rebuilt the remote home of a teenager suffering leukaemia.
Braithwaite may counsel others to have hope and continue the pursuit of their dreams. But his own would seem to have soured. Not merely the much-publicised dispute four years ago in which a Supreme Court judge ruled in favor of two former managers he had fired.
The singer has other matters in mind. “It may be the age I’m at. The crossroads. Thinking, which way do you go? It may be that my son is in Los Angeles and I just visited him.
” He obviously misses the boy, now in the US with Braithwaite’s estranged wife, Sarah Taylor. He delights in telling how the youngster would demand of strangers with shopping lists in supermarkets whether they were not in fact after his dad’s autograph.
“It may be that (his son) or it may be that a relationship has just ended which really hurt. I think if you put them all together, they weigh heavily.”
You wonder what could possibly satisfy him. “Maybe it’s naive or whatever but the dream is that one day you can be happy.”
Braithwaite sighs. “I think – and it probably sounds pathetic … but it’s just that I would like to be in a relationship and to have a reciprocating thing where you love them, they love you. It’s as simple as that. I mean, this might sound really trite or whatever …”
He has been writing songs for a new album, tentatively titled `Diary’. “If it comes out the way I want it to, it’ll be dealing with the so-called demons that are in me as well. The thoughts that I’ve had over the last six, eight years.
” Demons? “The evil side as well as the good … To me, there is a black side. I don’t know if it applies to everyone … I think that it is there. This gets back to maybe relationships that somehow go wrong. Whether they’re my fault or not, I’m now starting to feel that there is something that I do,
for whatever reason, that buggers them up.”
Then there are the continuing financial problems. There was the winding up of two companies from which creditors received less than 50 cents in the dollar. Then, earlier this year, the deputy commissioner for taxation applied in the Federal Court for a bankruptcy order against Braithwaite,
alleging he owed $81,252.49.
Braithwaite says the matter is “virtually cleared up”.
His accountant has told him that he owes $7000 or $8000 to the tax department.
He says he was aghast when he read a newspaper report on the matter after his return from America: “I thought, `Oh Christ, what’s happened?’ I’m not going bankrupt and it’s not the huge figure that they thought.”
He says he has learnt from the 1992 court action that culminated with a Supreme Court judge ruling in favor of two former managers who had claimed they were owed $600,000. Mr Justice Byrne ruled in their favor, awarding them $57,446. In addition, Braithwaite had to pay court costs
estimated at $500,000.
He says the money has been paid and he has gained some insight.
“The thing is that … you look after yourself … I’m very trusting of people, which is probably a fault.
“BUT I think the thing I learnt is that you have to maintain control of your life. You have to be involved to a degree with every aspect and make decisions and know what you’re doing. It goes against the grain for me because I do like to trust people.”
On balance, says Braithwaite, “I think I’ve been very fortunate with life … It has its highs and lows. But everyone has that and it’s not me whingeing.
“It’s just that the highs have been extraordinary and the lows have been extraordinary. And I look at it and at the end of the day I think, `Christ, Daryl, you’ve done more than a lot of people. You’ve been down there, you’ve been up. And you’re still alive’.”
Son of a boilermaker and amateur singer, Braithwaite was born in Melbourne. “When I was probably about 10 or 11, I saw an act . . . at Festival Hall. It was The Diamonds, and they used to sing falsetto. I thought, `Oh, I’d kill to sing like that’.”
The family moved to Sydney in the early 1960s. Young Daryl was more interested in music and surfing than classes at Randwick High.
In hindsight, he says he “just went a little wayward, so to speak”. How wayward? “No more wayward than anyone else.
” He almost completed an apprenticeship as fitter and turner, working on the supply ship, HMS Stalwart, and O-class submarines at Cockatoo Island Dockyard in Sydney Harbour. Though he quit early, he was given his indentures.
His first band was called The Brightlights. “I got into Sherbet just through someone hearing me. He said, `Do you want to join the band?’ And I said, `Yeah.’ Much to my father’s disgust …”
He remembers a hectic time of travel, sleepless nights, strained vocal chords. “We did our work and then partied as well. It was all part of the game, I guess.”
Like John Farnham, whose 1980s comeback inspired his own, Braithwaite’s star has shone twice.
His moment came again with the release of a 1988 solo album, `Edge’, that became Sony’s biggest-selling (250,000 copies) Australian album.
But between one heyday and the next, there was a period of unemployment and desperation. “It was quite a learning process,” Braithwaite says of a stint doing construction and laboring work. “I was quite nervous fronting up to Bulla Shire Council and saying, `Hi, I’m Daryl Braithwaite,
I’m meant to report here and go to work’. I can remember the guy looking up at me and going, `Right, OK’.”
His co-workers were perplexed. “They were saying, `What are you doing here? We’re here because we can’t find a job.
We’re on the dole and we’ve had to’. I said, `That’s basically the same principle as me’.
“I was on the dole. I didn’t want to do club singing. Not so much (because it’s) boring. Not degrading either. But I just thought, that’s prostitution … I’d rather just take the dole or nothing.”
HE embarked on an ambitious program to remake himself as a solo artist, even took singing lessons to increase his chances.
In 10 lessons, he learnt for the first time the importance of singing for your own enjoyment first. “You sing so personally that people just go, `far out’. I think it was more a psychological thing that I learnt. To sing for yourself. You become selfish.
” As a solo artist, Braithwaite regained the adulation he had known with the band. With `Edge’ riding the local charts, he toured Australia, Canada, the US, the UK and Europe. Victory was sweet.
Well short of the sales of Farnham’s `Whispering Jack’, here was nevertheless a stunning return from a man recently humbled. He was riding again. Back in the limelight.
The follow-up album, `Rise’, sold well and yielded five singles. A version of Ricki Lee Jones’ `The Horses’ topped the charts for three weeks and was named Song of the Year in the 1991 Australian Music Awards.
But the spell was not to last. Braithwaite joined Simon Hussey, James Reyne and Jef Scott for the `Company of Strangers’ album that had four hit singles. Interest in the man and his music has diminished.
A 1993 album, `Taste the Salt’, coincided with his appearance on the Tina Turner tour. He had a hit with the single, `The World As It Is’, but was generally disappointed with the response.
“I really liked it as an album but I think it didn’t work for whatever reason.”
His latest, `Six Moons’, is a collection of songs including the Young Rascals’ `How Can I Be Sure’, the Tim Finn-penned `Blue Hills’ and `Escape From Reality’, written by Roger Mason of the Models. It was released a year or so after `Salt’ and fared little better.
“It didn’t do that well,” Braithwaite says. “If anything, it probably failed in regard to expectations by the record company.”
Can he revive his prospects? He has irons in the fire, including a role in the stage play, `Chess’. Channel Ten is said to have him in mind for serveral projects if the public takes to `Dreams’. The network might continue it as a series next year.
Well might the Bulla Shire co-workers have wondered at the celebrity in their midst. Wasn’t he supposed to be on TV, they asked. On the brink of a TV career, music remains his first interest.
“I have this huge desire, passion to do a new album,” he says. “But I could handle both (music and TV).”
Braithwaite was approached for `Dreams’ by a friend at a Sydney-based production company while it was negotiating the sale to the network. “I said, `Yeah, when do we do the pilots?’ He said, `No, no. We’ve done pilots and we think you’re the right sort of guy.’ Whether they were bull … I
don’t know.
” You can hear the wariness. He seems unsure. You sense that he is not in the clear yet.
Ten promises that tonight’s special is one “of hope, inspiration and miracles in the making”.
Perhaps there’ll be a happy ending yet in the Daryl Braithwaite saga. “When you get to a low ebb,” he says, “you think, `Christ, it can’t get any worse’. And then, sure enough, something gives you another kick. But something comes along, or you do something, that activates something else that pulls you out of it.”
THE SUNDAY AGE, 01st of September 1996
Larry Schwartz Writer 