Russell Crowe arrived in Austin, Texas during the hottest time of our summer and at the hottest point in his career. With an Academy Award nomination for The Insider plus a huge summer hit with Gladiator, as well as tabloid frenzy over his personal life, Russell was in great demand for interviews. We were told that of the hundreds of interview requests, he would do only two: one with the weekly newspaper The Austin Chronicle, and one with us. We had a very enjoyable visit with him a few years back when he was promoting the film Breaking Up, and Russell showed to us a real sense of appreciation and loyalty with a return visit to our show on the morning before the first 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts show at Stubbs. - Kevin Connor

KC: Academy Award Nominee, Russell Crowe, joins us.

RC: Good morning. How you doing?

KC: Great! Good to see you again.

RC: Thanks, mate. Good to see you.

KC: You know, the official slogan of the City of Austin is "Live Music Capital of the World.” But for some of us who have lived here for a while, we have never seen such international frenzy over a show at a club!

RC: How about that?

KC: It's 30-Odd Foot of Grunts tomorrow night and for the next three Fridays.

RC: Yeah. Well, actually, we're recording an album. That's the point of us being in Austin., because when I was down here last time talking to you, which was about '97 or something like that, I got to have a good little poke around and had a look at a number of venues and stuff like that. And I thought, next time we get into the studio, Austin would be a perfect place to do it, so -- it took a little while because of the schedule of the day job. But here were are.

KC: And the "day job's” going pretty well, isn't it?

RC: Yeah, yeah. I'm picking up the odd gig.

KC: An Oscar nomination for The Insider, congratulations on that.

RC: Thanks, mate.

KC: And the big hit of this summer Gladiator. You play, obviously, very different kinds of characters in these films, different worlds, different millenia. But at the core I thought these two guys shared a few common traits. They both, you know, put themselves out on the line and stand up for what's right.

RC: Yeah, possibly. But they both have completely different ways of solving a problem. You know, Maximus is obviously much more proactive physically --

KC: Yeah.

RC: But you know, both men are men of principles, I suppose.

KC: Absolutely. And let's see, Richard Harris says that you should be up for an Oscar again this year for Gladiator.

RC: Yeah, well, Richard drinks! Really, really well, too! Man, he's 73 years. We sat in the trailer one night and he did 12 Guinness, right? And he gets to No. 12 and he finishes it and looks at me and he says, "I think it's time for a scotch.” 73, mate! If you could bat that well at 73, you'd be doin' alright.

KC: I'll say! Well, we've got a little bit of music from 30-Odd Foot of Grunts to play here. We had a little debate going earlier this morning. I thought I had read that there was an actual meaning to the name of the band and somebody else said no.

RC: Well, there's many things that I've said in interview situations like this.

KC: Does it have anything to do with sound editing and sound effects and grunts on film?

RC: Yeah, it does, actually. It comes from an ADR session for a movie called Virtuosity. There was a fight sequence on the rooftop with Denzel Washington. And ADR means Analog Dialog Replacement. Now, let me just put this in an historical context. I started playing with the guitarist, Dean Cochran, in 1984. Our first record together was with a band called Roman Antics. And that came out in '85. We kind of, after about '87, played sporadically. But about '92, we kind of got back together and started writing songs again. And we played for a number of years without a name. But it's sort of one of those things where once you stick a handle on it, you know, it's supposed to mean something. And we kind of got to the thing where we wanted to have a name that didn't actually mean anything, but just rolled trippingly off the tongue.

And I was doing this ADR session. And it was kind of like one of those "Eureka” moments, you know. "Eureka” for me, "ugh” for everybody else. But, you know, film is measured in feet and it said between five, five-eight and five-eight-eight, you know, what they required for the replacement dialog was 30 odd foot of grunts. So that's what I did. And I kind of just kept that statement in my head. So when we toured that year, we decided to actually finally put a name on the posters instead of leaving them blank.

KC: So this band has been -- they've been your friends since before all the movie stuff really came along?

RC: Yeah, long time before.

KC: What's more fun, making a movie or playing with the band? RC: Well, with the movies I've been doing lately, the actually making of them isn't that much fun anymore. They take so long. I just finished one the other day that was 28 weeks of work. So it's kind of hard -- the level of concentration over a long period of time gets sort of strange. And there's all this other stuff that comes with it and all this baggage now, you know.

Gladiator must have been tough because it --

RC: It was tough.

KC: Emotionally it seemed as challenging as The Insider, but then you had all the physical stuff, too.

RC: Well, quite frankly, the toughest thing about Gladiator was starting at $103 million motion picture without a script!

KC: Really?

RC: That was the tough one. The rest of it was easy, the wrestling, the tigers, the -- you know…”Okay, Wesley, what are we doing to do today?”

KC: "See that guy? Cut his arm off!”

RC: "Okay!”

KC: One thing about that movie, though. You asked -- your character, Maximus, asks a little boy, "They let you watch the Gladiators?”

RC: Yeah.

KC: And he says, "Oh, yeah, my uncle says it will make me tough.” I walk out of the movie, there's a little boy about five or six years old, with his parents, coming out of this thing with kind of a glazed look. And I just want to stop and say, "Why are you taking such a little boy to this kind of movie?” It's a great movie, but it's -- I don't think it's appropriate for little kids -- my son is eight...

RC: Not for a five or six-year-old, no. No, I think it's appropriate for a little younger than they allowed here because I don't think it really deserves an R certificate. I think the violence is very fantasy based. I mean, it's not often one sees chariots down the main streets of American towns these days. There's no sex, obviously, because Maximus probably had it lopped off at an earlier battle, which is why he spends so much time away from his wife and child. (laughter) And there's no swearing, obviously, because they couldn't work out how to say those words in that time period.

KC: It's amazing, though, that in all these period epics all the Ancient Romans had English accents. I wonder how that works out?

RC: I asked that question over and over, because my character keeps getting called "Spaniard, Spaniard,” right? So I said at the beginning, "Look, I want to play this with an accent, kind of Antonio Bandares, but with better elocution. And they just didn't go with it. So that accent that I do in the movie, I call that "Royal Shakespeare Company, two pints after lunch.”

KC: Russell Crowe is with us. Tomorrow night at Stubb's, 30-Odd Foot of Grunts. Let's play -- you said this is a demo you're working on?

RC: This is just from Christmas, which was the beginning of the tracks for the new album. You know, Track 3 on that one is -- it's a nice and soft, sort of kind of sweet song. It's about masculine/feminine communication, I suppose.

KC: All right. 30-Odd Foot of Grunts, 107.1 KGSR.

(Song: "Other Ways of Speaking”)

RC: "Other Ways of Speaking,” 30-Odd Foot of Grunts. 107.1 KGSR. And that will be on the next album?

KC: Yeah, that's going to be on the next album.

KC: Very good. ( to the camera crew) Did you guys get the meters? Video guys love to show the meters whenever they're at a radio station.

RC: We've got a couple of cameras in here this morning.

KC: We can run this ol' reel-to-reel for a while. That'll look good.

RC: Just run around and look like your job is actually -- you know, needs concentration. (laughter)

KC: Russell Crowe is with us. You've got this video crew going all over the place with you, too?

RC: We're doing a sort of a companion, a sort of documentation of the band. You know, we had to actually end up rehearsing in London, that film that I was doing went over so long. We were supposed to be here at the end of June. So we ended up having to go to London. So we're just -- you know, just filming it all as we go.

KC: So what about the other guys in the band when you're traveling the world making movies and then promoting movies? What are they --

RC: Oh, they usually sit in corners and cry. I send them Kleenex. They send me little notes how much they love me and miss me.

KC: Or the drummer's in four other bands. That's how it works around here sometimes.

RC: Everybody's got a day job. You know, the drummer's actually -- was a cameraman. Now he owns his own editing studio. The bass player's a stock broker. He's really excited to talk to folks after the show. Dean, the guitarist, works for charity in Sydney. Stuart, the trumpet player, he's the slut. He goes around playing for anybody. And that's why we don't pay him very well when he plays with us, just to teach him. Being a mercenary is not the way to do it. And Dave Wilkins, we actually glommed him off another band. They supported us for a tour a couple of years ago. And we're like, "Yeah, mate, yeah. You know, your songs are great, your band sucks. Come this way, son.” So we've been playing with him for a few years now.

KC: And people are flocking to your shows.

RC: Well Stubb's is finding out now that they have to keep replacing their phones because they wear out.

KC: It's amazing. As soon as the tickets went out, all of the sudden, phone orders come in from Europe --

RC: China.

KC: New Zealand...

RC: Switzerland, Canada. We did a show just recently in London at the Borderline Club. And it was amazing. Just about every country in Europe was represented.

KC: Now, was this going on before Gladiator or has that kind of kicked it up a notch?

RC: Well, it's definitely kicked it up. But every time a movie comes out it kind of kicks it up because a few more people read the -- you know, there's a website that they can go and explore.

KC: There's lots of websites.

RC: Yeah, but they all kind of funnel down to the band website.

KC: Gruntland.com.

RC: Yes. The audience itself has built over a period of time. We put enough stuff, I think, on the website for people to make their own decisions, as well. And you can't just go to a shop and buy this stuff at the moment. You have to buy it through the website. So what tends to happen is -- which I think is a really healthy thing, you know, and I'm not in any means decrying radio or anything like that, but it's not a forced situation. They don't get to hear it ten times a day or whatever. You know, they surf, they download a few things. And if they're interested, then they pursue it. And it's sort of like a completely individual decision.