Darren Hayes has put to bed any chance of a Savage Garden reunion after saying his former bandmate Daniel Jones was ‘incredibly unkind’.
Savage Garden, comprising Darren and guitarist Daniel Jones, formed in 1993 and produced a slew of number one hits such as To the Moon and Back and Truly Madly Deeply.
However, a rift between the bandmates caused them to part ways at the height of their fame in 2001.
Appearing on Nova’s Jase & Lauren show on Thursday to promote his memoir Unloveable, Darren, 52, was asked if there was any chance that the hitmaking duo would ever hit the stage together again.
‘You guys don’t talk now do you? You and Daniel,’ co-host Jasion Hawkins asked the star?
‘No,’ Darren bluntly replied. ‘He was incredibly unkind to me and he didn’t tell the truth when the band broke up and I got the blame for it.’
Pressing the issue, Jason then asked if there was any chance of a reunion, even if Daniel were to reach out, but Darren was having none of it.
‘No,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll just stop you there. No.’
Darren went on to admit that too much water had passed under the bridge in the ensuing years for an amicable reconciliation to be on the cards.
‘No, because he has reached out several times and offered to go on the record and kind of apologise,’ he said.
Clearly annoyed at the line of questioning, Darren added: ‘What he did to me was public. Look, no one wants to hear about that stuff. Fans want to just hear songs.’
Speaking with Kyle and Jackie O in 2022, Darren pointed to a press conference Daniel had held in 2001 announcing that he was saddened by news Savage Garden was ending, while claiming Darren never consulted him before going public.
‘He held that press conference where he said, “Oh, this is the first I’ve heard of it”, which was such a stupid thing to say, because people thought I’d left the band,’ he said.
Darren recently revealed to Sarah Grynberg on her A Life of Greatness podcast that he had suffered a huge personal betrayal as a result of the split.
‘Our falling out was entirely due to the fact that he told the world that the band breakup was the first he’d ever heard of it which was not true,’ Darren said.
Darren revealed to Sarah that while his former bandmate may’ve since changed his story, it was a case of too little, too late.
‘He never corrected that. He eventually did, maybe a decade later but it was a decade too late and I really suffered,’ he said.
‘It was a huge personal betrayal for me and I speak about it in the book as politely as I possibly can because for the longest time, I just kept expecting him to, one day, just sit down and say the truth.’
Darren added that he initially gave Daniel a ‘pass’ over his version of events, but soon grew tired of being blamed for the breakup of the award-winning pop band when it was Daniel who wanted to leave.
‘There are lots of reasons why, in the very very beginning he didn’t, which I gave him a pass for at the time,’ he said.
‘But three or four years later when I was still blamed for the band breaking up, I realised I didn’t want to have to keep pretending being close to somebody who had not been very kind to me, is the truth.
‘We don’t have a relationship at all because of that.’
After forming in Brisbane in 1993, Savage Garden released two studio albums Savage Garden in 1997 and Affirmation in 1999.
Combined, the albums sold 23 million worldwide and the group won a record number of ten ARIA Music Awards in 1997 for their debut album and singles including To The Moon and Back, and Truly Madly Deeply.
