Tim Rogers: A pandemic forced the You Am I frontman to change his tune

Most of his life has been spent touring with a band, including 32 years and more than 3000 shows with You Am I, but in 2019 Tim Rogers got a regular day job – to save his mental health.

“I wanted to figure out what was going on and why I was feeling this way and, rather than speak to someone, I got a job as a bartender, dug trenches in Boronia and had a go at gardening,” the 51-year-old says.

 It wasn’t exactly a midlife crisis – or perhaps, in hindsight, it was – but Rogers, who wrote some of the biggest radio hits of the 1990s, including Heavy Heart and Berlin Chair, says touring life had wearied him.  

“A lot of musicians say they’ll stop performing when it stops making them happy, and many don’t,” Rogers says. “They become curmudgeons and rude to bandmates and to those who come to their shows. I was becoming miserable and needed to disconnect.” 

It also took a trip to NSW to go fishing and write songs for him to gain some clarity – as did a meaningful chat with his friend Tex Perkins. Rogers contemplated quitting the band but stopped short of announcing it. The pandemic changed the tune of what happened next. 

“I saw a lot of friends, who worked in staging and road crew, who suddenly lost their jobs last March. I realised I had to stop complaining. I was lucky that I could still write songs even if I couldn’t tour,” Rogers says.

The Lives of Others, You Am I’s first album in six years, is a reminder of the four-piece’s status. It entered the local album charts at No. 2, behind Delta Goodrem’s latest album, Bridge over Troubled Dreams, which debuted in the same week in May this year.

The album is packed with ’60s inspired melodies, razor-sharp guitars and a touch of psychedelic rock. It’s a true return to form – traversing the golden era of their album-making, including 1993’s Sound As Ever, 1995’s Hi-Fi Way and 1996’s Hourly, Daily.

“The band is the longest relationship I have ever had outside of my own family,” Rogers says. “There’s something to be said in that.

“And while we have seen each other at our best and worst, the magic when we come together is still there. I didn’t think that would be the case when I needed a break, I just thought, ‘That’s it.'”

Then, in early August, it was announced that Rogers would also join Sydney punk-rock outfit The Hard-Ons, as their lead singer.

He has been a long-time fan of the group and, at the time of the announcement, said: “I was already the luckiest goof in rock’n’roll and I get asked to make a racket with my heroes? Strewth. Wake me up sometime, will ya?”

Rogers has already recorded an album with the Hard-Ons, with the first single, Hold Tight, released on August 13. The album, I’m Sorry Sir, That’s Riff’s Been Taken, is due out on October 8. Tour dates are set to be announced later this year.

Adored for his flamboyant stage presence, he certainly knows how to fuel a crowd. Rogers says being on stage is still cathartic but would hate to see a film played out of what goes through his mind when he’s up there. 

“I’m thinking of everything like, ‘What would it be like to be a dog?’ to, ‘How do you make a sausage roll?’ It’s wild, it’s manic, it’s dangerous. I keep reminding myself, ‘Keep your clothes on, Rogers’,” he says.

But it wasn’t the stage that frightened him as much as the twilight zone of touring, and perhaps the repetition and uncertainty of doing it just got too much.

In his 2017 autobiography Detours, he wrote of a suicide attempt while on a North America tour – something he’s ashamed of, but addresses in his book.

“I was always dragging myself through another hangover or comedown, until it wore me down,” Rogers says. 

Born in Western Australia, Rogers spent his childhood moving around Australia with his parents and sister. He arrived in Melbourne aged 28, and has never left. 

He lives in St Kilda and is still drawn to its “dangerous, sexy and cruddy appeal”. It’s where his now 20-year-old daughter, Ruby, who lives in New York with her mother, spent her formative years. 

“I speak to Ruby every second day. I miss her. It’s been a year and a half since we were together in the same room, but that’s the life of an international family,” he says.

Rogers also hosts Double J’s radio show Liquid Lunch, a rambling mix of music and storytelling. 

Long before his music career came calling, he wanted to be a professional sportsman – but that dream was crushed early on in his childhood.

“Skin conditions kept me inside a lot,” he says. “I had lots of warts, boils and acne and played in my room a lot.

It made me quite nervous and quashed any aspiration I had of wanting to be a sportsman. I was nerdy and eager to please. That really did affect me growing up.”

Perhaps that childhood longing to please still lingers within Rogers; in conversation, he’s well mannered and calm, but a nagging self-doubt seems to rage quietly beneath the surface.

He’s never shied from talking about the complications of his drinking and drug-taking past or the strains of long-distance relationships, but right now, he’s ready to give his bands the attention they deserve. 

“I’ve learned when you’re on tour and the fun comes along, you absolutely get involved, you share it and you cherish it.”

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