Title: An Unfunny* Interview with Tim Minchin

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar. I'm in for Alison Stewart today. Happy Friday, everyone. Thanks for spending part of your day with us. We're really happy that you're here. On today's show, the new film Strange Darling flips the serial killer trope on its head, and it's out in theaters. Today, we'll speak with its writer and director, and cinematographer. We'll take your suggestions for New York anthems that go beyond Alicia Keys, Billy Joel, and Frank Sinatra, and we'll send you into your weekend with suggestions for what to do, curated by team All Of It and you, because we want to hear what you're doing. That's the plan, so let's get this started. [theme music]

Kousha Navidar: For the first time in over a decade, Tim Minchin, the musician, composer, comedian, and actor is on a solo tour in the United States. His 13-city North American tour, called An Unfunny Evening with Tim Minchin and His Piano, ends this Sunday and Monday, August 25th and 26th, right here in New York City at the Town Hall. Let's listen to a little bit from his 2020 album apart. This is about a minute from his song Airport Piano.

[MUSIC - Tim Minchin: Airport Piano]

I always hated those airport pianos

Should be a law saying playing the theme from Beverly Hills Cop

Will get one of your hands chopped off

I wrote this song on an airport piano

I'm out of time I just need one more little rhyme

I gotta board that plane

They're calling my name

So I'm writing a song

(Singin')Women in SUV Porsches always look miserable

Or is it only the Botox (is it only the botox?)

Kousha Navidar: I was first introduced to Tim's music almost 20 years ago, thanks to a lucky YouTube algorithm suggestion and with many fans, who have followed Tim's dynamic career. Broadway lovers listening, probably recognized his music from both Matilda the Musical and Groundhog Day, both of which earned him Tony Noms for best original score. Tim's work can be many things, thoughtful, funny, moving, but it always has heart. Maybe that's the best place to draw from, to write funny and unfunny things. Ahead of his performances this weekend, we're lucky to have Tim here with us now.

Tim, when I say lucky, I mean legitimately, there was luck involved in making this interview happen. We picked the song Airport Piano because this week a canceled flight forced you to take a nine-hour road trip to make a show in Toronto. Listeners, I kid you not, this morning Tim had to have emergency dental surgery and I'm pretty sure the Novocaine is still wearing off but he has been generous enough to hang out with us. Tim, welcome to WNYC.

Tim Minchin: Thank you so much.

Kousha Navidar: On behalf of North America, I am so sorry for your bad luck.

Tim Minchin: Thank you. Thank you for the very generous introduction, including an out for me. If I say something stupid, I can blame it on the Novocaine. That's very good of you.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely happy to provide. How are you feeling?

Tim Minchin: I feel great, actually, because I won't go into it because there's no sexy way to talk about dentistry but I was in such bad pain last night, insane kind of. That pain where you actually just feel scared because you think if this keeps going, it's just unbearable in the very literal sense of it. The fact that I was able to get dentistry this morning for three hours in the chair and then be able to be on stage tonight, I'm stoked because missing shows is just unacceptable to me. Yes, I'm in a very, very good mood. Maybe it's partly the numbing age.

Kousha Navidar: Whatever it takes to get on stage, right?

Tim Minchin: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: Let's talk about the show a little bit. It's called An Unfunny Evening with Tim Minchin and His Piano. It's a great title. Are you trying to manage expectations there?

Tim Minchin: Well, because I got known as a comedian, I made that title because I want to be honest with my audience. I don't want people to think they're coming to see a stand-up show just because they've seen some of my funny YouTube vids because in the 30-odd years I've been a professional artist. I've only really focused on comedy for about six or seven of them. I've obviously done you very kindly, mentioned my musicals and stuff.

I've made TV shows and I'm a writer and I've got a book coming out of speeches. I do all these things. I'm not claiming I'm equally good at all of them, but I certainly try. I just wanted people to know that I'm expanding outwards. That said, as the tour, too, I've been in the UK and Australia and now here. I've done about 80 versions of this show. They're always a bit different, but I do tend to fall towards comedy in the way I talk. I can't really help it, but I'm not playing my old punchliney songs. The songs are quirky but not punchliney, I guess.

Kousha Navidar: What kind of music can fans expect tonight? More from your more recent album, new stuff?

Tim Minchin: Yes, quite a bit from apart together, which, as the listeners heard from Airport Piano, is crossover, as quirky. It's not all that funky. That's a pretty silly disco tune, but I'm going to play something from Groundhog Day, especially in New York. I'll definitely play something from Groundhog Day. I play my favorite song from Matilda, which is called Quiet, which is one of Matilda's songs from the second act.

I do some tunes that people have probably never heard. I play one from 1997 when I was 22, which is a swing tune called The Song of the Masochist, which you'd have to be a superfan to have dug up online. I'm just telling the story of the journey I've traveled a bit.

Kousha Navidar: It's interesting to hear you talk about how you're tailoring songs per region. What's it like for you to come back to the United States on a solo tour? How are you receiving it? How has it been so far?

Tim Minchin: It's amazing. I don't know why, I guess, I didn't really get much traction in my career until I was about 30, and I'm now 48, and so it still feels quite new to me and quite novel to me that I can not tour America for ten years because I've been doing all this other stuff and then just put a bunch of shows on sale in 1500 seat, 2000 seat theaters, and people buy tickets. I feel just so grateful and privileged by that and that I keep managing to step sidewards and do different things, and my core fan base keep following me.

I take the responsibility of that really seriously without being too humorless about it. I don't want to take advantage of my audience's loyalty so I always try and make sure whatever I'm doing, I really throw myself into it. Apart from anything else, I'm just loving sitting at a piano and playing because I've pushed it out to symphony orchestras and eight-piece bands and big bands, and I've done so many different things that apart from anything else, I'm just getting better at piano still, which is a real pleasure. A big part of this concert is proving to people that I'm an actual pianist and not just a clown, I think.

Kousha Navidar: That's really interesting. How do you feel like you've been improving on the piano? What part of the craft have you been especially enjoying on this tour?

Tim Minchin: Only on NPR would someone dig into that. I love it. Let's just talk about how was that-- [crosstalk]

Kousha Navidar: Well, for a full disclosure, I have learned some of your songs on the piano, Tim. That sounds, like, By Ear or by YouTube, whatever.

Tim Minchin: Oh, thanks.

Kousha Navidar: Inflatable you is something that I used to be able to plunk out, so I am very interested.

Tim Minchin: That is a classic. I am largely self-taught. I guess I did up to grade three piano as a kid and quit. Then in my late teens, did a couple of years. I did a course, and I was hoping I would learn to read music and write music. When I did that course, because I wanted to be a composer, I failed to do that. I was way far gone by then, so it's always been a journey for me. I taught myself to play by writing. In 2005, 2006, when suddenly I went from playing tiny cabaret bars in Melbourne to playing the Royal Albert Hall over that three or four years.

Just the glorious pressure of having an audience watch my comedy, I thought, "Well, this can only get better if I get better." Something like, I don't know if you remember my song Lullaby, which is like a classical waltz about trying to get your baby to sleep. It's very dark, actually, if anyone wants to avoid looking it up. I just wanted to play a double octave. I wanted to fake virtuosity. The best way to do it is just practice and practice and practice.

I've always taught myself by writing and playing, and I feel like I'm just in the middle of the journey I haven't aspired to be. I'm nowhere near a great jazz player and absolutely, nowhere near a great classical player. I love that in all the areas I'm interested in, I've still got a long way to go. That's one of the fun things about being a pseudo polymath, is that I've only just got started on. I've only written two musicals. I hope to write four or five more. I hope to keep getting better and better.

Kousha Navidar: It's so wonderful to be able to see the journey ahead and to enjoy it, no matter the level at which you go. Especially for very successful individuals like yourself, it's very refreshing to hear the ways in which you are looking at the craft because I think it's a lifelong journey for any art form.

Tim Minchin: I really appreciate that.

Kousha Navidar: Listeners, we're talking to Tim Minchin, the writer, the musician, composer, comedian. He's performing this Sunday and Monday. That's August 25th and August 26th at the Town Hall as part of his tour, An Unfunny Evening with Tim Minchin and His Piano. Tim, you had talked about the ways in which your sound and the things that you write about broaden. I think my most-played song in 2012 might have been White Wine in the Sun. It's a throwback, but let's listen to it a little bit. This is about 40 seconds from that song.

[MUSIC - Tim Minchin: White Wine in the Sun]

I'm looking forward to Christmas

Though I'm not expecting a visit from Jesus

I'll be seeing my dad

My brother and sisters, my gran and my mum

They'll be drinking white wine in the sun

I'll be seeing my dad

My brother and sisters, my gran and my mum

They'll be drinking white wine in the sun

Kousha Navidar: The first time I heard that song, at least I stopped in my tracks. I was actually at the gym working out, and it just came on and I stopped and I listened to the whole song. It is so moving, so wonderful. We have a text, I just want to let you know, that came in and said from a listener live, "I'm looking forward to his concert on Sunday." There is so much of the music beyond comedy, that moves people with what you make. I think that's interesting because you do branch into so many different genres and directions. As a professional artist, has it been difficult to achieve that flexibility in sound?

Tim Minchin: Well, it's not in my nature to lean into how hard it is to be me because apart from anything else, I'm a determinist, and I believe everything is luck. Also, even if you don't believe everything is luck, I've had so much luck with Matilda doing so well in my first real, big musical. It gave me freedom to take more risks and to do things like worry about my craft and worry about stepping sideways, knowing that I'm going to be okay and I can change from 10,000 seaters to 2000 seaters on a matter of principle like I have because I don't like those big venues and all those luxuries.

To be honest, I think getting known to an extent, globally, certainly in the UK and Australia, as a comedian and trying to un-become a comedian, and I talk about this on stage in a comic way, is maybe that almost impossible. I can't think of. I guess Steve Martin is a comedian who plays serious music, but I don't know if any-- I've taken twelve years now to try and not never be a comedian, but just to not be boxed in as a comedian. I've slowly, gradually, and quite patiently tried to just unpigeonhole myself.

I think I've achieved something that's quite hard to achieve. As I say, it's because I had the luxury of a security blanket but certainly, writing big musicals in America, I think with my musicals and even Californication and the amount of people who have watched my TV show upright and even my university speeches. I think in America people understand me to be a bit of a weirdo, rather than just a comedian, which is nice for me.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, it is nice. You use the term pseudo polymath, I think is exactly what you said, but there is this insatiable desire for discovery, I guess, in you, is what I'm hearing.

Tim Minchin: I just feel so lucky and I do have in me, you don't get to where I've got without a bit of competitiveness. I don't like that word because it's self-competitive. It's not, "Well, no, it spills over." I'm one of those people if I go see something on Broadway or see a film or see a TV show, and I love it, part of me is like, "Damn it, I wish I had come up with it." It's terrible, but it is how I'm wired. Interestingly, I'm not jealous of megastars. I don't wish I could be playing arenas or stadiums. I don't want to be Ed Sheeran.

Obviously, I wouldn't mind the record sales, but that's not what I am jealous of. Put it this way. If I wasn't me, I'd be jealous of my career, which is how I know I'm on the right track because if I wasn't getting to do all these things, I'd be striving to.

Kousha Navidar: It's like gratitude that you're talking about.

Tim Minchin: I just always wanted to-- I wanted to act and I love theater and I love making people laugh and I love playing the piano and I love writing and I'm one of the very few people who have really genuinely got to do it. Some of my fans are like, why isn't Tim better known? I go, "Well, I'm incredibly happy with how known I am." That I can go play a couple of nights at New York Town Hall is not something that, when I was playing in cover bands at the age of 27, I thought I deserved or was destined for. I'm very happy with where I've ended up, to put it mildly, and I hope to keep doing it, keep pushing up.

Kousha Navidar: We just got another text through here that said, "Love this song," which is referring to White Wine in the Sun.

Tim Minchin: White Wine. I might have to play it.

Kousha Navidar: I'm sure people would appreciate that. I wanted to talk about a part of that song, actually, your mom, which features in that song. Would it be okay if we talked about her?

Tim Minchin: Yes, of course. Yes, she's a legend. Well, she was a legend.

Kousha Navidar: She passed away last November. I'm so sorry, but also so grateful to hear the parts of her that you share through your music. That song is so moving. I'm wondering, how do you feel her impact on you musically today?

Tim Minchin: That's another beautiful only on NPR question. My mum and I were super different and super close. My whole family's very close. I'm not in a really demonstrative, language-based close, but in a constant contact all the time. I don't know what someone who wants to be an artist can be given that is more important than just I say in the song, these are the people who make you feel safe in this world. I don't suppose my folks weren't musicians and I don't.

When I started wanting to be a muso, my mum, of course, being a mum was like, "Well, you should get a backup degree and cut your hair and all that." She wasn't like, "You're my brilliant son. You're going to be whatever you want to be." Quite the opposite. That they were normal, worried about us, parents who held us to account, as in, we weren't to take the mickey. You had to work hard, but they didn't insist we were lawyers and doctors or any of those middle-class things.

Basically, the absolute knowledge that we were absolutely loved and safe, that's all that matters. When people ask me about their kids, I think, are my kids really talented? What should I do to help them get ahead? I'm like, "Well, you can't do anything. They just have to get good and find their voice." All you have to do is make them feel safe. That doesn't mean pay for their rent. No one paid for my rent or bought me a car or did any of that. They just made me know that I'd be all right if I took risks so I wouldn't end up on the street.

I'm not putting my mum on the pedestal she probably deserves to be on, but I'm not very good at talking romantically about that sort of thing. I miss her. I actually miss her a lot when I'm on tour, for some reason. I guess just come on my own and have time to think. Look, she was 74, so she wasn't very old, but she also wasn't very, very young and I'm a grown man and it's all acceptable. It does make that song a bit harder to sing. I've lost--

Kousha Navidar: I imagine.

Tim Minchin: My gran went and then my mum went and I suddenly struck me when my mum went, that every few years as I play that song, I'm going to lose someone from the lyric, but they'll live in the song, I suppose.

Kousha Navidar: You know what really struck me was that, as I understand it, you performed the day after she passed away. Is that right?

Tim Minchin: The day she passed away? Yes.

Kousha Navidar: The first time I hosted a show at the station was actually just days after my dad passed away about two years ago.

Tim Minchin: Oh, man.

Kousha Navidar: I felt very connected to you in that sense. For me, that show that I did, sticks out in my mind, and you've performed so many times. I was wondering, what about that performance stuck out to you? Do you still hold it with you?

Tim Minchin: I want to ask you about yours. It feels pretty vivid, doesn't it? Because it's so heightened when you lose someone you love and I assume you're younger than me and you lost your dad a lot younger. Loss is profound, right? There's nothing more profound, maybe apart from birth, than death and it doesn't mean it's good or bad. Profound is a neutral word, but it is definitely profound. It definitely puts a focus on what matters and brings everything into sharp relief in terms of your values, doesn't it?

Kousha Navidar: It does. I was on the younger side to have lost my father, I think. I know for me, what you said about gratitude and that feeling of being supported and loved was what I heard, I think felt it for me. For me, it was never really a question of what I do. The show, it was like, it's in his honor that I am doing it.

Tim Minchin: Yes. How do you bring that feeling, not just of gratitude, because gratitude can be very, "Oh, that kind of I'm just so blessed. Gratitude in its real profound sense, the gratitude you feel when you lose someone that gave you so much is it wants you to be good, it wants you to be better. It makes you want to be better, doesn't it? If you have to get on and do your first show a couple of days after you've lost your dad, you want to make sure it's not nothing, I suppose. You want to make sure you're putting a flag in, whether it be fella for him or just for the fact of you wouldn't be there without him sort of thing.

Kousha Navidar: Exactly. That is really well said. Go ahead, go ahead.

Tim Minchin: When I did my show that night, I guess it's a bit of a blur, probably because I needed a couple of tequilas to get on, but I said on stage, I didn't tell them till the end of the show because I didn't want them thinking, this guy's a psychopath, because I, of course, was just doing the show. I wasn't moping or crying or just doing ballads, I was doing the show and I was making him laugh and I told him towards the end, and there was this gasp.

This maybe you can relate to, if you like White Wine in the Sun because White Wine in the Sun is about love in a meaningless universe. I suppose, in the end, because I don't have faith or anything. I said to the audience, "You know, I don't have faith. I don't particularly have a culture that I would call my own, I'm just a person who lives in ideas and stuff, but if I have a tribe, if I have a community, it's this, it's theater, it's performing. As far as I know, there isn't ten commandments, there's just one."

The one is the show must go on. Whether you've missed a flight or lost a tooth or lost a mum, you go on. It's not like, "Oh, my art is so important. If I don't go on, my poor fans will suffer, it's just good to have something clear in your life as a guiding principle of dedication to your craft. You go on, you don't let the audience down, you don't let your castmates down. You just go on. Just the clarity of that, on the day my mom died, I wasn't actually in the right city.

I had been with her the whole week before when she was lying in a coma, but I had to get back to my family, so I was back in Sydney, and so I had nothing else to do and I had this clarity. Well, I know what to do. I know exactly what to do tonight I go and sit at my piano and put the profundity of this moment into my work, you know? It felt incredibly clarifying.

Kousha Navidar: Clarifying. You describe it as saying, this is my tribe, and that's two ways as well. For me, I can say at least that when I do this, I feel like a very good version of myself and I feel like I am in an area where I can appreciate the things, the people, the stories. It is, in that way, a little bit selfish, too. That's a fair saying?

Tim Minchin: Yes, absolutely. That's a really good point. You stepping up, having something to step up to, makes you your best self. It can be a moral guideline, it can be a religion, or it can be-- I prefer my moral guidelines not too dogmatic. They need to be able to change as you change. Yes, having a place where you're valued and this goes to a wider conversation about human happiness and stuff. All the studies show that human happiness correlates most to making a meaningful contribution to your community.

It doesn't correlate, particularly with wealth or the amount of lovers you have, or the amount of holidays you get on. It mostly correlates to making a meaningful contribution to your community and I think that is one of the many ways in which I feel blessed. Obviously, I can do it in this much over-beatified, and that's not the right word. We put artists on pedestals that I think is a bit much. I get to have 2000 people standing up and clapping me and is that meaningful? I suppose it is, but either way, I think if there are 100 people a night or 50, I'd feel the same gratitude that I feel like I'm giving something. You obviously do when you do your show, and also you have this opportunity to learn and listen. You do a lot more listening than I do. As you can tell, I do a lot of talking, but-

Kousha Navidar: Good match.

Tim Minchin: -I hope it goes both ways.

Kousha Navidar: No, but you're right. We get single callers. You talk to a caller a person at a time and any of that one-on-one is deeply meaningful, as you're saying, as compared to 2000, folks. It's very insightful. I'm so happy that we got to talk about that because it is an interesting look. That sharp clarity of focus that you're talking about that big moments in our lives bring into effect is important. You've got a new book coming out next year in the US, at least it's getting released next year. It's called You Don't Have to Have a Dream. Can you tell us a little bit about it, where that title comes from?

Tim Minchin: Well, I made a university speech for my alma mater. It's called the University of West Australia. Ten years ago, now almost to the day, actually, October 2014, I think it was. They gave me an honorary doctorate, which was very kind of them. I made a speech that I wrote in a couple of days before. I was 38 at that point, and I thought, I didn't feel very grown up, but I did realize that I was close to 20 years older than a lot of the graduates I'd be speaking to, 18 years old.

I thought, well, I might as well do one of these, kind of-- these are my values, kind of. It's a bit ostentatious But I thought, come on, I'm quite well-known in Australia. I might as well just lean into the ostentation of my honorary doctorate. I have a floppy hat and a cape on. I might as well pontificate. I just did this speech and it got known as Nine Life Lessons. I didn't call it that, but it's really just the nine things that I think that I value in my humanist worldview.

It went ridiculously viral. Some self-help website stole it and got 200 million views off it. I did write to them and say, "What's happening to the money from the ads?" They're like, "Aren't you grateful that we shared your speech?" I'm like, "Yes, but what's happening to the money from the ads?" They just disappeared, anyway. That speech has-- The lesson number one is you don't have to have a dream. It's all about being incrementally ambitious, is the phrase I used, which is just being really passionate about what you are.

This comes back to our clarity we've been talking about but if you're really passionate about what's in front of you, the next opportunity will arise. If you set your sights too far in front of you. You might miss those adjacent opportunities. You might miss what's in your periphery. That was the first lesson on the most famous speech. A couple of publishers came after me and eventually, Penguin Random House convinced me they were super passionate about making that speech into a book. As it happens, I've done two other speeches for two other very kindly bestowed honorary doctorates. One really about music and one really about acting. All of them linked together because they're really about authenticity.

Kousha Navidar: It's kind of bringing all of those lessons together.

Tim Minchin: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: Oh, that's wonderful.

Tim Minchin: The three speeches are in the book, plus three essays I wrote this year to accompany them, plus an introduction, plus these beautiful illustrations. It's kind of, I don't know who it's pitched at. I hope anyone from 15 to 35 who's still trying to figure out what their path is or older. I'm really excited about it.

Kousha Navidar: Yes, it'll be great to see it. We have a text here that says, "Will there be an audiobook? I'd love to hear Tim read the book out loud." Maybe that's in the future.

Tim Minchin: I've already read it. It is recorded and I think you can even pre-order the audiobook if you want.

Kousha Navidar: Wonderful.

Tim Minchin: Just to show me your intention to listen to it. You don't even have to listen to it. Just pre-order it.

Kousha Navidar: Another text here says, "Tim Minchin is one of my favorite people on the planet." I think that's a wonderful way to wrap this up. We've been talking to Tim Minchin, the writer, musician, composer, comedian. He's performing this Sunday, August 25th, and Monday, August 26th at the Town Hall. Maybe there will be a song about teeth. Who knows? I don't want to have to have you relive it, but go find out. It's called An Unfunny Evening with Tim Minchin and His Piano. Tim, thank you so much for your work and hanging out with us.

Tim Minchin: Thank you. It's just really gorgeous to talk to you. Thank you.

[00:29:02] [END OF AUDIO]

 

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