Behind the Band Name: Savage Garden

Though Savage Garden originated in Australia, the band reached across borders with hits like “Truly Madly Deeply,” “I Knew I Loved You” and others. Before they were topping charts around the world, the duo of lead singer Darren Hayes and instrumentalist Daniel Jones gained musical footing as part of a covers band in their native country. Below, we explore the meaning of the name Savage Garden.

Meaning Behind the Band Name

It took multiple iterations to get to Savage Garden. Hayes and Jones first met when Jones put out an ad for a singer for the cover band, Red Edge, which he was in with his brother Oliver and fellow musicians and brothers Jamie and Scott Sullivan. After Hayes joined the band, Red Edge performed in clubs across Queensland and New South Wales, marking Hayes’ first live performances.

Less than a year after Hayes joined Red Edge, he and Jones separated to form their own duo, originally called Crush, a name they purchased from another Australian group. “But then we realized there was one in England that was storming up the charts with the ‘Jellyhead’ single,” Jones recalled in a 1998 interview with Entertainment Weekly. ”So we wasted our money there.”

They soon changed their name to Bliss and sent a five-song demo tape to record labels around the world, ultimately signing with Columbia Records. Numerous names later, the duo landed on Savage Garden, inspired by the term that author Anne Rice uses in her gothic horror series The Vampire Chronicles.

“It was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden,” she writes in the second book in the series, The Vampire Lestat, released in 1985.

Savage Garden released two studio albums during their tenure, Savage Garden in 1997 and Affirmation in 1999. Both peaked inside the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. and spawned hit singles “I Want You,” “To the Moon and Back,” “Truly Madly Deeply,” “The Animal Song,” “I Knew I Loved You” and “Crash and Burn.” The duo disbanded in 2001 after Jones became exhausted with the rigorous lifestyle that came with fame and touring. Though he and Jones have gone their separate ways with no plans to reunite, they still have a mutual respect for one another.

“The thing with a band is it really is a marriage,” Hayes told Australian news website news.com.au in 2015 about the band’s split. “In our case, we had a marriage that ended in divorce. People don’t get married by accident and they don’t get divorced by accident. There are reasons why musical relationships are magical and those same reasons are sometimes why they can’t last.”

Hayes adds that while he’s “softened” to the constant inquiry of if Savage Garden will reunite, calling it a “huge compliment,” both members have ruled out the idea of ever reforming. “I get it, there are some really happy memories associated with it,” he continues. “But as human beings and artists, there are also some things that obviously didn’t work. I don’t think we would have stayed disbanded for however long it’s been if that was an accident.”

Adds Jones: “We still have a lot of respect for each other. We don’t really have a relationship anymore because of the distance, he’s moved on and I’ve moved on, but we still have a great respect for one another. I still hear him speaking highly of me and that is reciprocated.”

Following Jones’ departure, Hayes continued on with a solo career. He released his latest solo album, Homosexual, in October 2022. He recently wrapped up the Australian leg of his 2023 Do You Remember? Tour and will visit Europe and North America in March and April.

(Photo by Mick Hutson/Redferns)