Darren Hayes has once again shut down talk of a potential reunion for Savage Garden, alluding to a fractured relationship with bandmate Daniel Jones.
Taking to Instagram over the weekend, Hayes put out a call for questions from his followers, with one requesting that the musician launches a Savage Garden reunion at some point. Responding in the negative, Hayes cited his professional relationship with Jones as the sticking point in these plans.
“Imagine if you had come out and survived a really dysfunctional and toxic relationship, and then for years later people would ask you to please get back in that relationship,” he offered as an explanation.
Originally forming back in 1994, Savage Garden existed for just seven years, during which time they released two chart-topping albums, with their self-titled becoming one of the best-selling Australian albums ever, and resulting in a record ten honours at the 1997 ARIA Awards ceremony.
Since their split in 2001, constant calls have been made for the pair to reunite, though Hayes has usually been quick to shut down the idea. In a 2007 interview, Hayes famously revealed that the duo would “never” reunite. “I once said I’d only do it if it cured cancer,” he explains to The Daily Telegraph, “and that’s still how I feel.”
Speaking to News Corp in 2015, Hayes went on to liken the band’s split to a marriage that ended in divorce.
“The thing with a band is it really is a marriage,” Hayes noted. “In our case we had a marriage that ended in divorce. People don’t get married by accident and they don’t get divorced by accident.”
“I get it, there are some really happy memories associated with it,” he continued. “But as human beings and artists there are also some things that obviously didn’t work. I don’t think we would have stayed disbanded for however long it’s been if that was an accident.”
In a 2019 interview, Jones offered some form of explanation as to the pair’s refusal to reunite, noting a lack of a friendship as the main reason behind the stalemate.
“I saw him at my manager’s wedding in Los Angeles a couple of years ago. We just acknowledged each other. We said hello,” Jones explained. “We didn’t delve into the past… That’s how our relationship functions these days. We don’t have the most healthy, workable relationship any more.
“I still love the guy dearly. We are just different people. There’s no wrongdoing. It’s just different directions and different people,” he added. “We just don’t have a friendship anymore or working relationship.”
Since their split, Hayes has continued as a solo artist, with his most recent studio album, Secret Codes and Battleships, being released in 2011.
