Steve Hughes

I’m calling Steve Hughes late. I feel shit about it, because he’s a busy man, an international touring comedian with a brand new show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. I’m probably one of 19 phone interviews the poor bastard has to do today, and I’ve kept him waiting. When he picks up I immediately apologise.

“Ah, that’s alright mate,” he says. “I totally forgot. Just woke up from a nap, actually.” This man, at least at first blush, is living the dream.

Anyone that has seen Steve Hughes work, whether it’s his classic bits on the nature of offense or the masculinity of homosexuality, knows that he’s not only a caustic, forthright, well reasoned and wickedly smart comic, but that the dude is angry. Whether it’s with sarcasm, mockery, or outright aggression, Hughes has always managed to take what irks and annoys, smash it apart, and stomp on the bits till we think his subject matter is as absurd as he does. And that subject matter, more often than not, has always orbited bigger, “edgier” themes; politics, religion, homophobia, draconian governments and conspiracy theories are not only staples of a Steve Hughes set but are, until recently, the only things he thought he could talk about.

“I’ve seen comedians do 20 minute bits about going to the shops,” he tells me. “I’ve been to the shops; they’re not that fucking funny! I couldn’t write a routine about going to the shops. I could write a song about it… but it would probably sound a lot like fucking Primus.”

Throughout our phone call, Hughes repeatedly refers to himself as a musician. Despite the fact that he was among the very first people to start the Sydney death metal scene as it looks today, and despite the fact that his band Presto had a level of success in the 90’s that most musicians will only ever fantasise about, you’d be forgiven for thinking that maybe this comedian, who has toured the world and been successful in this scene for literally decades, and who hasn’t released any musical material in just as long, should maybe just let it go. But as he himself says, it’s a part of who he is.

“I think every comedian wants to be a rockstar, but I also think every rockstar wants to be a comedian.” I heard him use this phrase two years ago, when we last spoke; in that time, I have joined a band after not performing for a number of years, and god damn it, he’s fucking right.

“Comedy can be quite limiting, from an emotional aspect. If I want to write a joke about something, it’s got to have a punchline at the end of it. People have to laugh. With a band I can put forward a point of view which is much wider, which is what I did. I wrote music about the topics that interested me. So now, when I go to write a joke, I’m only interested in those things. I can’t make a joke about walking to the shops…”

His new show, however, is called Nervous Breakthrough; a delightful pun, but also the perfect summation of Hughes attitude to life; adversity will only make him stronger. I ask him about the personal nature of the show, and the fact that most of his material to date has been very outward facing, but this show title seems to suggest much more introspection than his fans would be used to. How has that been to write and perform?

“That’s a very, very good question,” he says, in a way that makes me believe that answer for the first time ever. “I’ve had a lot of personal epiphanies, but I don’t know if I can make them funny just yet. But what I’ve learned is…”

Anyone that has seen an interview with Steve Hughes, watched any of his stand up, or had the pleasure of his company, knows what happens next. The conversation veers into so many different topics, so many different facets of life, and so many emotions, that it’s almost hard to keep track of it all. But at no point is Hughes a rambling, incoherent mess; he is lucid, rational, and passionate. When he brings up his recent breakdown, and his depression, he goes off on an impersonal tangent about why he hates the term ‘mentally ill.’

“I’m not insane – that’s different. But I’m not “mentally ill”. I’m physically ill, and that impacts my mental state. It’s all connected. Depression can kill you, it fucking nearly killed me, but it wasn’t an illness my mind got, I wasn’t insane. My body was breaking down. And I don’t trust psychiatry for that reason; it isn’t a science. They are investigating the mind. Well, show me the mind, show it to me. Science is about looking at things, seeing them as they are, and falsifying claims about them. You can’t do that with a mind.” And it’s here I find the great contradiction that is Steve Hughes to be so engaging.

On the surface, he could appear to be a nut case; a conspiracy theorist (he constantly talks about the “research” he’s done), a misogynist (he mentions that women’s biological role is that of caregiver), a big pharma believer (the aforementioned aversion to psychiatry). But chatting with him for a while longer, it’s very obvious that those assumptions are plainly false – he lists off a number of texts, authors and academics by name as he talks about his research; he assures me that equality is necessary between the sexes when it comes to the caregiver, but, when it comes to who should look after an infant, he says “well, look who has the tits!”, and from a purely logical standpoint, he’s right I suppose. Women can provide a meal to an infant at a drop of a hat, something that men just can’t do. And his reasoning behind why he thinks the gender roles have been deliberately and maliciously dismantled veers awfully close to my partners research work into the rise of individualism and the corporate state. God damn it, he’s so right.

When I finally manage to steer the conversation back to his show Nervous Breakthrough, I start to see more of Steve Hughes The Man, not Steve Hughes The Comedian. He’s still dealing with a lot, a lot, of shit, and he gets rather emotional talking about it all.

“I was touring non-stop for five years, five fucking years, and five gigs before the end I had my breakdown, and it all fell to shit. I knew it was coming, but I didn’t listen to myself, I wasn’t present. I knew what I had to do to take care of myself, but I’d forgotten how to do it. I wasn’t living consciously. And when I was seeing the warning signs I thought ‘I’ll do one more year of touring, take the money and run’, and it caught up to me. I developed insomnia, so I couldn’t sleep, but I had so much excess energy because my adrenal glands were working over time. I was going for 8, 10k runs before every show. I was in the car with my support act one night and just said “why the fuck can’t I calm down?’ It was all building up.

“Five gigs away from the end, I breakdown. I get massive anxiety, just brutal fear. It’s debilitating; I can’t even get down to the shops (Editor’s note: Let alone write a song about it! Sorry.) I lose my missus, the only girl I ever thought about marrying, which I’m still not fucking over, and days later she’s with another bloke and splashing that all over social media! I have so many health problems a fucking tooth falls out and I spend thousands on that fixing that up, I get in a fucking car accident which has done all sorts of shit to spine… mate, I was suicidal. People have fucking killed themselves for less. I nearly did. I looked into going to the Netherlands for it (NB – this derailed into a fascinating conversation about assisted dying, which I don’t have the space for here. Ah well). I’m just looking around going ‘what the fuck have I done to deserve this! What the fuck is Karma!’ Thanks god I wasn’t in the US or I would have blown my fucking brains out.”

The personal passion Hughes was throwing at me during all of this was disarming. Usually the model of composure, I was hearing a man still grieving, still figuring out how all the pieces of his life fit together. And how he’s doing a fucking good job of making sure they do all fit again.

“I wasn’t living consciously, I know that now. I had forgotten all the things I knew about living properly. And it got to a point, in my stand up, where I had to change; fear and confusion are used as weapons against us, and I started to think, ‘Am I just adding to that? Am I adding to the thing I’m trying so hard to fight against?’
“So now, the stand up is facing inwards a bit more. I’ve still got stuff about overpopulation, which I don’t believe in (NB; Of course he doesn’t. Always the fucking contrarian, god bless him), governments, some old material. But the newer stuff… I’ve got a lot of stuff to work through.”

And just personally, I’m pretty damn excited to see how he does it. For whatever else may have happened to his mind, it is still very much molded into the synaptic shape of a world class comedian, and I can guarantee you do not want to miss Steve Hughes exorcising his demons this Comedy Festival.

Steve Hughes opens his brand new stand up comedy show ‘Nervous Breakthrough’ in Melbourne tonight at the Forum Theatre. Tickets on sale now.

Melbourne – April 5 – April 10
Tickets

Perth – April 28 – May 1
Tickets

Sydney – July 2
Tickets

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