Russell Crowe on Tubridy, Geldof and playing Dublin

Russell Crowe has said that Ryan Tubridy has been through “a very heavy situation” over the past year and has paid tribute to the former RTÉ broadcaster.

The Oscar-winning actor has been friends with the former Late Late Show and RTÉ Radio 1 presenter for several years and they have remained in touch since Mr Tubridy and RTÉ became engulfed in a payments controversy last summer.

Speaking to RTÉ Entertainment via Zoom ahead of his concert with his band The Gentlemen Barbers at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin on 1 July, Crowe was reluctant to make a comment on the circumstances of Mr Tubridy’s departure from RTÉ.

“All I would say is that he is a fine man, he has a wonderful intellect and a wonderful heart, he’s so well read, so fascinating and interesting to talk to about particular subjects,” he said.

“When he’s interested in something, he has a way of finding something fresh to say about it. I enjoy his company. It was a very heavy situation for him but I have no comment to make, I don’t really know enough about the situation.”

60-year-old Crowe, who won an Oscar for his lead role in historical drama Gladiator, returns to Dublin with his Indoor Garden Party show featuring his band The Gentlemen Barbers and Lorraine O’Reilly plus special guest Janet Devlin in a few weeks.

And rock `n’ roll is no sideline for the world-famous star. Crowe has worked in and around the music business long before he turned to acting.

His first manifestation of Crowe the rock star was in 1981 when he released three singles, including I Just Want to be Marlon Brando, under the stage name of Russ Le Roq.

“You gotta remember, you gotta remember,” he laughs. “You’re asking me about a series of decisions I took when I was sixteen! At that point in my life, I had decided I wanted to live a creative life and I didn’t care what the job was as long as it was somehow connected to being an entertainer.”

Le Roq was a quiffed fifties throwback rocker and he came about when Crowe began working in a club called King Creoles in Wellington after his dad lost his job and could no longer afford to send his son to college, where he planned to study history.

At the time, the young Russell was into punk but King Creoles only played fifties rock `n’ roll. However, he soon fell in love with the vintage music and was allowed to get up on stage and perform his own songs every night.

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“The boys in the band called me Russ Le Roq so I did three or four records with that name,” he says. “By the time I left new Zealand to return to Australia when I was 21, I had played literally thousands of gigs, sometimes we’d play seven nights a week so that was a baptism of fire, an apprenticeship for me, and I also got some acting experience in musical theatre. I had my sights set on this latent acting ability after that.”

However, Crowe never lost his love for music and he has played and sung in a succession of bands since those early days.

In the 1980s, he and his friend Billy Dean Cochran formed Roman Antix, which evolved into rock band 30 Odd Foot of Grunts in 1992, with Crowe on lead vocals and guitar.

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They released three albums and toured Europe and the US before Crowe formed another act called The Ordinary Fear of God, whose output included a tribute song to the late Richard Harris, who became Crowe’s friend during the making of Gladiator.

By 2017, Crowe had created yet another new outfit – the multi-member rock `n’ roll revue that is Indoor Garden Party – and he’s been on and off the road with them ever since, fitting in shows between making films like Unhinged, Thor: Love & Thunder, The Pope’s Exorcist, and this year’s Marvel release, Kraven the Hunter.

“Indoor Garden Party an event, a band, a happening,” he says. “It’s fluid. The personnel changes, but it’s always big. It’s like a festival where I gather people I admire, musicians and storytellers, and we put on a show.”

Asked about the Irish music acts that have influenced him, Crowe says, “Nobody speaks about this guy’s music anymore because something happened in his life where he became known for Live Aid but I was a big Bob Geldof and Boomtown Rats fan – Mary of The Fourth Form, Tonic For The Troops, the second album . . . all of it, man. I just took it in.

“And it goes back to the storytelling, the story of Rat Trap or Joey’s on The Street Again or even songs that were an education – (I Never Loved) Eva Braun. Who’s Eva Braun? So that would send me off to the library to find out.”

Crowe adds, “I’ve ended up having a number of relationships with artists like that who have ended up becoming friends with. Bob Geldof was one of them, I don’t see him that much anymore but I used to see him quite a lot. Elvis Costello is another one. His album, The King of America, is I think the single most influential album in my life.

“Sting was another one, Billy Bragg is my tertiary education – Talking With The Taxman About Poetry! You look at shows like The Voice or Britain’s Got Talent, and you’ll never see those kind of artists on those shows. My heroes are never gonna make those stage. They have something that catches me in the crags.”

Crowe is no stranger to Ireland. He has played here several times over the years and shot his 2023 movie The Pope’s Exorcist in and around Dublin.

He’s looking forward to coming back. In fact, he’s bringing this two sons, Tennyson and Charles, with him on what will be their first visit to the city.

“We played Glastonbury just before we come to Dublin so I have managed to get a day off while I’m in Dublin,” Crowe says, looking very happy. “So, I’ll probably go for a little walk around town to go to a couple of places I like.

“This will be both my sons’ first experience of being in Dublin and my eldest son really wants me to try to get him into the library at Trinity College so I’ll see what I can do about that because that is a magnificent room!

“My son is a massive fan of Irish authors and he’s been reading some of the great works of Irish literature since a young age so he’s looking forward to walking some streets he knows.”

Russell Crowe’s Indoor Garden Party Featuring His Band The Gentlemen Barbers and Lorraine O’Reilly Plus special guest Janet Devlin play The Gaiety Theatre, Dublin on 1 July

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