A New Album From The Actor Who Swore He'd Never Release A Record

When Guy Pearce and Darren Middleton enter this quiet South Melbourne cafe, staff members adopt ‘should we know who they are?’ expressions.

Middleton orders a cappuccino, but Pearce sticks to water. They’ve each released debut solo records – Pearce, Broken Bones (2014); Middleton, Translations (2013) – and the pair was introduced by a mutual booking agent. “We just started chatting and put together the idea that we’d do a tour together,” Middleton explains. They’ve recruited a backing band and Pearce clarifies, “I’ll sing [my songs] and he’ll do backing vocals with the other singers there, and then I’ll do backing vocals with them while Darren sings his songs.”

While discussing songwriting techniques, the duo’s banter is quality. Middleton points out, “With the advent of technology and what we can do at home in our bedrooms, you can knock something up into shape complete.” Pearce interjects, smirking, “We don’t wanna know what you’re knocking up on your own in your room. Put that computer in your lounge room, Darren, I’ve told you!” Later in the chat when Middleton admits he had a topless poster of Samantha Fox on his door when he was “about 12”, Pearce jokes, “The tour’s off”.

"If Molly’s telling me not to, then I’d really better not'"

On writing Translations, Middleton reveals, “This record is very personal, which is kind of the first time for me.” Pearce poses a question: “I know you talked before about coming out of the band [Powderfinger] and finding yourself through that, sort of, two or three years, is that therefore why this record’s, you know, personal?” Middleton allows, “Pretty much. It was part of that process of me going, ‘Who am I?’ and, ‘Do I wanna do music?’”

One of Pearce’s Broken Bones launch shows at The Toff In Town late last year just so happened to clash with a party held at Crown Casino’s Club 23 to mark Molly Meldrum’s 50 years in the music industry. During this gig, Pearce shared a fun Molly story: “It was pretty ironic... I do remember [Molly] saying, ‘Don’t you release a record, will ya?’ And I went, ‘No, no, no, I never would. [Through gritted teeth] Damnit. If Molly’s telling me not to, then I’d really better not.’”

So in one of the legendary Neighbours scenes where Meldrum plays himself, was it Scott or Mike (Pearce’s character) that was seeking a record deal? “The storyline was that if you sent the demo tape to Molly Meldrum there was a chance he’d listen to it and, if it’s any good, you might get a record deal out of it. So the three of us sort of write this song, Kylie [Minogue, as Charlene] sings it and we play it, and he listens to it and goes, ‘Well forget about the song, but who’s the girl singing?’ And we get shoved aside and he picks her up. Charlene gets the chance to then go and record Locomotion.” And a Stock Aitken Waterman star was born.