URBAN COWBOY 60 MINUTES SPECIAL

Transcript: Urban Cowboy
November 10, 2002

INTRO — LIZ HAYES:
Success stories don't come much better than this. A boy from the Australian bush saves a few bob, packs his guitar and sets out for Nashville, hoping to crack America's massive country music market. For a decade he meets rejection and battles personal demons. But he never gives up. But then, flat broke and out of luck, he's discovered and becomes the hottest country singer in all America. Sounds far-fetched? Not if you're Keith Urban.

STORY — LIZ HAYES:
It's the middle of the night in Middle America. But the bloke clutching the Aussie beer is pure Australian. Introducing the urban cowboy — Keith Urban.
You're a born entertainer.

KEITH URBAN: I'm a bit of a show-off.

LIZ HAYES: Ah ha.

KEITH URBAN: And there is something intrinsically wrong with that, don't you think? You're basically getting on the stage and saying, "Look at me, look at me, look at me". It's like you've got some serious issues.

LIZ HAYES: His music is a high voltage fusion of country and rock 'n' roll. In America today, there's none hotter. Urban's CDs sell in the millions. His tours are constantly sold out.

KEITH URBAN: If the bus has any sway at all, this is the one that gets it. The middle bunk is prime real estate.

LIZ HAYES: Okay.

KEITH URBAN: So there's three in there, three there, three there and three there, so there's 12 all together.

LIZ HAYES: Okay.

KEITH URBAN: So we've got I think nine in our bus right now, 10 including the driver.

LIZ HAYES: This is the kitchen?

KEITH URBAN: Yeah, the little kitchen to make coffee, the microwave and a pantry and stuff. Got to have our bar fully stocked-up there.

LIZ HAYES: Keith's love for music began as a kid — a kid from Caboolture in Queensland.

KEITH URBAN: I think I was about seven and my dad took me to see Johnny Cash. Just watching Johnny Cash, especially on that stage with this big white spotlight and all the smoke from the people smoking cigarettes wafting up through it and I remember just looking up thinking, "I want to do that".

LIZ HAYES: "I want to be Johnny Cash".

KEITH URBAN: Yeah, I just want to be that guy up in the spotlight.

LIZ HAYES: By age eight he was winning country music competitions. By his early twenties, he'd won Best Male Vocalist at the Tamworth Country Music Awards. It was 1991. Keith had talent and a bad hair cut. I mean, really bad! But this tyro with the bottle-blond mullet also had a dream — to conquer America.

KEITH URBAN: This ugly little establishment down here is called "12th and Porter" and I don't know how long it's been there, but we played our very first shows in here. And it's still pretty much … you can go and see live entertainment every night in that little hole of a place and it's packed.

LIZ HAYES: When you came to Nashville what were you expecting?

KEITH URBAN: That's an excellent question. I don't think I really had any ideas of what Nashville was going to be like. I thought it would be like a real small little town that was pretty easy to get around in and just, you know …

LIZ HAYES: What were you expecting for yourself?

KEITH URBAN: A little quicker acceptance. That didn't happen.

LIZ HAYES: If Keith came expecting instant fame, what he found was hard slog and rejection, year after lonely year of it.

KEITH URBAN: It was frustrating and I guess I kept thinking, "Boy, I didn't think it was going to be this hard", but it never occurred to me to stop.

LIZ HAYES: How hard did it get?

KEITH URBAN: Well, my manager, Greg, and my drummer Peter Clarke, who also came across from Australia, they took to mowing lawns for income. I was writing songs during the day, living off this pathetic little publishing advance, and they were both going out and cutting grass and the beautiful thing about cutting grass, is that it's like cutting records.
When people called from Australia and said, "How are you guys doing?" we'd say, "Well, we're cutting this week". We had one show where there was three people, it was a place called the Dingo Bar, the Dingo Bar in Albequque. I should have known. They booked us into this club and we started playing and there was four people in the club — one of them was the bartender — and we played a song and one of the guys at the bar left. I went, "Okay, this is not good", and so I said let's ditch the set and do, like, a cover song and when we finished it that other guy left, so we were down to the bartender and our record company exec and I said "We'd better stop", so we just quit.

LIZ HAYES: How did you get out of that mindset? I imagine you just dread the next place thinking ...

KEITH URBAN: You just drink. That's all we did.

LIZ HAYES: It wasn't just drink Keith turned to. Loneliness and failure saw him seek solace in drugs. At his lowest, Urban was on a constant cocaine high.

KEITH URBAN: I wasn't in good shape. I was just lost and confused. I knew I had to be here but it was so difficult. Yeah, I had no idea what I was doing but just kind of, you know, just wandered around aimlessly for a while.

LIZ HAYES: Did you fall into the trap of drugs?

KEITH URBAN: Yeah, I found a deviation in those. I felt like I could, you know, it is a typical addict syndrome — I can do this alone, I don't need anybody.

LIZ HAYES: Did you class yourself as an addict?

KEITH URBAN: At the time I did. I think in hindsight I have a tendency to get depressed to the point where I find solace in less than healthy things.

LIZ HAYES: How did you get out of that?

KEITH URBAN: Some little voice kept saying to me "You didn't come here to do this", you know, "You didn't come here to do this and be this. This is not you." Some voice kept saying to me "This is not you".

LIZ HAYES: Keith conquered his demons, cleaned up his act and began to get noticed. His records got airplay. His concerts sold out, his name became known. After 10 years of hard labour, Keith Urban was discovered.

MIKE DUNGAN: He's a star. He's a star, first, second, third, fourth, fifth and then you discover that he is a great guitar player and he has all these other elements, but he's really a star in every way you can define it.

LIZ HAYES: Mike Dungan is the powerful head of Capitol Records, a man with his finger on both the vertical and horizontal pulse of country music, whatever that means.

MIKE DUNGAN: In my 23-year career I've never worked with anyone who has as much vertical and horizontal potential as Keith has. I really think his potential is just enormous.

LIZ HAYES: If there's one thing that you can say is the defining quality of Keith, what is that?

MIKE DUNGAN: It's the intangible that makes the difference. It's that drop-dead walk in a room star power that so few have and Keith has it.

LIZ HAYES: You write a lot about relationships.

KEITH URBAN: Yeah.

LIZ HAYES: Are you good at that?

KEITH URBAN: I'm still single, so evidently not. I don't know if it's that I'm not good at it or whatever. I just haven't found what I'm looking for yet.

LIZ HAYES: When he strikes out, well, he strikes out. Beer and bowling, that past-time of the single guy, is Urban's preferred way of winding down.

KEITH URBAN: I brought this ball all the way from Australia. I don't know what I'm best at. I just like playing and I like singing and I like writing songs and I try to get better at all of them and I try to be a good entertainer too.

LIZ HAYES: The guitar work is something you're really well known for. I mean, your guitar work is considered fantastic.

KEITH URBAN: That's (because) my mum's my publicist!

LIZ HAYES: Keith remains proudly Australian, but, ironically, Australians are still a little unsure who he is.
It is interesting where you can have this very Australian man who is probably better known here than he is in his own home.

MIKE DUNGAN: Well, can I say maybe you blew it.

KEITH URBAN: I'd like to get to the point where I can tour when I want to tour and not when you have to. That's it, not when you have to.

LIZ HAYES: So are you making money?

KEITH URBAN: Not yet, but I'm getting close. There's a big hole to fill in, let's put it that way. Ten years creates a big hole.

LIZ HAYES: You must be getting close.

KEITH URBAN: It's a big hole.

LIZ HAYES: Keith Urban is proof that perseverance pays off. He's copped the knock-backs, now the rewards.
What's the best feeling?

KEITH URBAN: Going to a town you've never been to before and seeing people sing songs that you wrote in your bedroom or in your shower ... that is a really freaky feeling. I've never met these people. James Taylor's got a song about that and he says, "Fortune and fame is such a curious game, perfect strangers call you by name, pay good money to hear fire and rain again and again and again." It's perfect. It totally sums it up.