Rock and Pop: An escape from making movies - Hollywood star Tim Robbins at the Union Chapel
Published: 23 September 2010
by ROISIN GADELRAB
IT'S 5am in an airport lounge in Hawaii and actor Tim Robbins is speaking quietly into his mobile phone trying desperately not to be “that guy”.
The wedding he was at ended a couple of hours ago and Robbins laughs when I ask if he’s merry.
“I’ll never tell,” he says heartily.
Robbins and The Rogues Gallery Band play Islington’s Union Chapel on Thursday and the chapel fits the one criteria the Hollywood actor/director/
singer requested of all venues on this tour.
“I wanted to make sure they weren’t too big and that they didn’t have bars actually inside the room I was playing in,” said Robbins, of Shawshank Redemption fame. “I’m all for bars but it gets noisy and the songs I’m playing are a little more intimate than that – to make sure that we have a shot at telling the stories.”
The band name should give a hint at what Robbins’ music is all about, a bit folksy, described as “rousing, raggle-taggle gypsy Americana and storytelling songs”.
An eponymously titled album, out September 27, is the 51-year-old actor’s first.
But don’t be fooled into trying to match the lyrics to Robbins’ real life.
He said: “The stories are about all kinds of different things, people I’ve run into on the road, things I’ve read in newspapers, moments in time in my own life. I was in New Orleans in June and I wrote about an experience I had down there. What was the experience? Oh I don’t know, no comment.”
And this is Robbins’ attitude if you try to get close to his personal reality.
He warns: “If you’re listening to an album and you’re thinking about the personal life of a person you should probably check into an institution. People that are obsessed with other people’s personal life who they don’t know, it’s kind of a little silly and a waste of time. I believe that as well with people you do know. Mind your own business.
“It’s a real good idea to try not to get into people’s personal business because it’s trouble. It’s true. If you start laying your opinions on the personal situation of friends, it can only lead to bad things. Sure you can be an open-hearted compassionate person and a sounding board if a friend’s in trouble but to then pry and needle someone. You know it’s not good.”
That’s not to say he doesn’t draw on real-life experiences in his writing – just be warned, his songs were written well before his much-publicised break-up with actress Susan Sarandon, a fact he wants to stress.
He said: “I would like to set the record straight. If you heard Desert Island Discs I was clearly making a joke – the ‘midlife crisis’ thing.”
Robbins has been affronted by the British media taking his joke and suggesting he wrote the album after the break-up. So much so that he has asked if this interview is being taped for accuracy.
He said: “For them to write a story about how I did the album as a response to recent events and then have a psychiatrist write a side article about what men go through in a midlife crisis and compare my situation to someone who’s institutionalised – it was like, really?
“Is it that important to make some story up where there is no story. All these songs were written way before any recent events in my personal life and have to do with many, many different things and about zero to do with a midlife crisis.”
Robbins, who hasn’t got a TV, admits to loving Arcade Fire and Abba, but when I ask what he thinks of tabloid staple Lady Gaga, he replies: “Who? Honestly I don’t listen to hit music, I don’t listen to radio stations, I don’t have a television either so she’s kind of not landed on my lap and so I don’t have an opinion either way.”
• Tim Robbins and the Rogues Gallery Band play the Union Chapel on September 30 and HMV Forum, along with Paolo Nutini, on October 22.