(Keith) Urban Legend (2024)

Keith Urban doesn't wear a ten-gallon hat and cowboy boots, or drive a Ford pickup. He sports '70s Levi's 501 jeans and sneakers styled by Paul Smith, and he rolls through Nashville in a black Bentley with a tan leather interior and a Breitling clock on the dash. Riding shotgun with the singer, guitarist, and songwriter from the deepest South (Bris­bane, Australia, mate) is one of the more satisfy­ing ways to tour the home of country music.

Urban steers the Bentley through the winding, leafy lanes that go from the Nashville recording studio where he's finishing up his fourth solo CD, Love, Pain & the Whole Crazy Thing, to the home of his co-producer Dann Huff. [Ed. note: Urban has since released 2 more albums.] We pass through Green Hills, Forest Hills, and Brentwood, upscale neighborhoods with plantation mansions and Euro villas on multiacre parcels. Urban hasn't always lived and worked in such desirable zip codes. For the better part of the 17 years he has called Nashville home, he says, "I lived in a cheap sh*thole down on the corner of Crack and Restoration, as I like to refer to it, which I'd be more than happy to show you."

Nashville may have its share of rhinestone cowboys, but the unpretentious Urban isn't one of them. "There's an expression they use here: 'You got to be careful not to be too above your raisin'," he says. "That's your upbringing, not the small edible dry grape."

Fortunately or not, Urban has come close to losing everything enough times that humbleness is part of his DNA. A battle with cocaine addiction in 1997 nearly toppled him for good, but he believes his 2006 marriage to Nicole Kidman gives him his best chance of finally triumphing over his demons. In the past, it was futility and a lack of success that almost ruined him; now, it's success at the highest level that presents the challenge. Urban's personal and professional triumphs offer a valuable lesson about determination and humility. He's the outsider who found a way into a notoriously tight industry through true grit and hard work. Facing setbacks, some of which were his own making, has given Urban a better understanding of what truly constitutes success and a greater willingness to accept his own failings.

Forget, just for a second, the impressive wheels and goddess wife. Urban may have finally won an all-access pass to cash and prizes, but his dilemma as a man is familiar to us all. "I've spent most of my life torn between wanting to be a good husband and a good partner, and wanting to apply myself fully to my career," he says as he steers through town, eyes on the road, "and not always knowing how to go about doing the two of those things simultaneously."

Today, though the missus is in town, it's all about getting behind the music. We arrive at Huff's house and head into the studio to hear some tracks from the new CD. Sitting at the elbow of a musician as he plays his latest creations can feel a lot like watching an obstetrician deliver his own son, but Urban plays it cool and confident. He neither throws himself around the room in nervous fits, nor sinks into a seat absorbed by his genius. Instead, he perches on the arm of a leather club chair, tapping his feet and grinning. Pumping out of a boom box on the mixing console, Urban's voice swoops over the galloping rhythm of "I Told You So."

That voice, the very entity that made him rich, almost abandoned him 10 years ago. "I was always frustrated that my voice wasn't as resilient as my fingers," he admits. "I could play guitar seven nights a week, and my fingers would never hurt—ever." He was determined to push his vocal instrument just as hard, but got different results: Upon the release of his band the Ranch's self-titled U.S. debut, Urban developed throat problems and was ordered not to sing for several months. Unable to tour to promote the album, the band watched the record tank and broke up in the wake of the fiasco. Just a few years ago, Urban was forced to take another six-week vocal sabbatical. "I had a slight hemorrhage on one of my vocal cords," he says softy. "I was just singing a little too often, not getting much sleep, and taking on too much."

Coming off his breakthrough release, Golden Road, Urban took a long, hard look at his habits. "I had to start thinking like an athlete and not a musician. The vocal cords are a muscle, and you have to stretch your muscles and drink lots of water and take care of them. Your body just shifts, and you gotta go with it," he says.

Approaching 40, without a sport to call his own — "I only watch soccer if Australia is winning," he says — Urban is aware of the challenges of aging. "When you are touring, the physical energy it takes to put on shows tends to keep you fit," he explains. At other times, he relies on a trainer to motivate him through four-days-a-week cardio workouts on an elliptical machine and light weight training. "Nothing over the top," he says. "What I need to start doing on top of that is yoga. It's hard, but it's definitely in my future."

The songs play on, and it becomes clear that Urban is anything but a country purist. He can lay down a guitar lead like an arena-rock hero, but his lyrics mine universal sensitive-guy truths about life and love. He writes songs about success-obsessed American go-getters, guys and gals falling in love and falling apart, people drinking alone, and men who have to learn how to cry—folks who are just as much white-collar as redneck.

"Some say it's 'Urban country,' " he says with a self-effacing groan. "I think that is ridiculous."

Such modesty hasn't always come easily, despite his humble beginnings. Keith is the second son of Bob and Marienne Urban, a couple from New Zealand who moved to Brisbane, Australia, shortly after their boys were born. They worked together in a convenience store, eventually moving to a small farm in the sticks of Caboolture.

"It has not always been easy for them," Urban says, with affection in his voice. "It's easy to cut and run from family problems, but they've persevered and really are the best of friends. They love being together. I'm grateful to have that example; I grew up seeing what a marriage can be, and that it can be long and lasting. To hang in there is a really noble thing, a very man thing to do."

Urban recalls a simple rural childhood, "collecting eggs in the morning and cleaning out the pigsty in the afternoons." There weren't any computers, and not a lot to watch on TV, but Dad had records by Glen Campbell and Charley Pride. "What I learned early on was resourcefulness," Urban says. His father, who played drums in rock 'n' roll bands before becoming a country music fan, bought 4-year-old Keith a ukulele. By 8, his son was playing guitar and singing Tanya Tucker and Dolly Parton songs at music festivals.

As a teenager, Urban divided his time between being alone in his room—where he could listen to Dire Straits and teach himself to make music—and performing onstage. At 15, he became a metalhead: "I wanted something that was a little more aggressive, kind of to suit my age and my state of being." He joined a band called Fractured Mirror. "It was so cliché. I bought a leather jacket, wanting to be this big badass rock guitarist, but still loving this chicken-pickin' country stuff. I ended up getting fired."

School, he just up and quit. "I hated it. In Australia, you can leave when you're 15, but my mom made me stay to get a junior certificate, and I said, 'Well what am I going to do with that?' I was already playing in a band on the weekends. The only thing stopping me playing four or five nights a week was having to get up for school."

At 21, he had his own band. Three years later, as a solo artist, he had four number-one country songs in Australia. But those achievements gave him little fulfillment.

"I wouldn't use the word insignificant, but it's heading into that neighborhood," he says of his early success back home. "I always believed I was supposed to live in Nashville." The feeling was not mutual. Urban was the guy who talked funny, dressed differently, and swung his guitar around like a madman—not a very country way to pick a six-string, even though anyone who's ever seen a Mad Max film knows that's what you do when you play in Australian pubs. At 24, having known nothing but support and success in his own land, Urban was a stranger in a strange town, struggling to make money, connections, and friends.

"I couldn't legally work at anything but music because of my immigration status. It was called 'extraordinary alien' at the time, and it certainly felt alien," Urban remembers. He drew a very modest salary as a songwriter, digging himself into "a 10-year hole that…took some financial success to fill. I'd always planned to be here, and poverty was not part of my plan!"

After the Ranch disbanded following their critically praised but commercially damned debut, Urban continued working as a guitarist, playing with the Dixie Chicks and Brooks & Dunn. But the album's failure, combined with his inability to sing, had sent him into a spiral of loneliness and depression. And he went looking for solace in the usual ways: wine, women, and white powder.

"The novelty and excitement of living in America carried me through a good many years of struggling. But after a while that started to wear off, and I realized, Okay, this is where I live, and it's not happening. And I'm half a world away from my family and everything I know. It got very difficult. From early on, I've gotten a lot of my self-esteem from performing in front of people. Not being able to play for months at a time was really hard, and I didn't realize how much I needed to work on that offstage."

Today, Urban does not talk about co*ke addiction or rehab or sobriety. "I have no interest in being a poster child for any ideal behavior. A friend of mine says that a man is either living in a state of humility or he's headed toward one. I definitely followed my path, and my compass was strong enough to carry me through. I used my time to get here. Everybody needs to do what they've got to do to find their way, and whatever track I seem to be on right now seems to be really balanced.

"So," he adds with a grin, "I guess I'm going to do that again tomorrow. If there is one thing that sums up the way my life has changed, it's when I really started to understand what gratitude was about. If I keep gratitude at the forefront of my days, they go much better."

He does have some advice for souls at sea, something that would be equally useful for even the more socially acceptable addictions such as workaholism: "Stay communicating with the people around you. Everybody gets overwhelmed at points, but it's when you think you can handle it yourself and you don't reach out for help—that is when the end is near. Recognize that you are about to tire, that drowning is looming.

"I've definitely been the drowning guy, and in the midst of drowning, thought, I wonder if I should put my hand up?" he says, laughing at such stoicism. "I still wonder how I keep all these plates spinning sometimes, you know? I'm just really grateful to be present and doing what I can. And if it overwhelms me, I speak out and say, 'There is too much going on.' "

As he steers the big Bentley back to the studio to listen to more mixes, Urban traces the beginning of his true success, both professionally and personally, to a conversation with some friends, and a game of Frisbee with a dog.

He remembers playing a show in Australia, before he met Kidman, and running into some guys from his hometown. After the show, they hung out, just talking about their lives. It sounds like a parable, but he delivers it with more humor than hubris.

"I hadn't seen these guys in probably 10 or 15 years," Urban explains. "A couple of them married the girls they went to school with, and lived just up the road from where they grew up. And as they were telling me this, I was feeling bad for them, like, You guys have never gotten out and seen the world. And they said, 'So you're in a different hotel or tour bus for a third of the year?' And they looked at each other and said, 'Gosh, we forget how good we've got it! We get to go home to our own beds and see our wives every night!' They felt bad for me: Here's poor old Keith out there just flogging it." Urban had been on the road so long that, he jokes, "It takes a couple of days after you get home to not roll over and press nine on your phone to get an outside line." Not long afterward, he had a revelation about what he really wanted from his life. He calls it "The Frisbee Dog Moment." Let him explain: "I was in a relationship at the time, and I was in the backyard playing Frisbee with my dog, and it was an epiphany. I'm in a rented house, I have no career to speak of, and I'm just messing around with the dog. I thought, This is a part of who I am, I do like this sort of domestic simplicity, but I just can't have it now. I needed to figure that out, and that was the start of things starting to work in my life.

"I'm driven to a point, but I also feel like I've achieved something, and that calms me. I find myself slowing down a bit to actually enjoy my life as well. Now I enjoy going on vacation and getting away from my guitar," he says, walking into the studio. "A big part of it is recognizing that time is ticking away and that life is right now. And I don't want to miss anything or take it for granted."

As if on cue, Mrs. Urban walks through the door. They beam at each other, all blond-hair-and-blue-eyed Australian sunshine. True, she is unquestionably, breathtakingly Nicole Kidman, but today she is also a wife dropping by the office to have lunch with her husband. She shakes hands and excuses herself before going to wait in another room in the recording complex.

"I'm not really comfortable talking about the relationship," he asserts with a firm but kind smile. They are, he says, "blissfully compatible." And he feels confident about facing the notoriously slippery slope of celebrity marriage. "Trust and love has to be earned, simple as that, and it requires faith and time to build it," he says.

It is a far different union from that of either of their parents, he notes. The newly wed Urbans each clearly have a mutual understanding of and respect for the physical and psychological requirements of the other's work, and forging a relationship with an equally successful partner gives Keith a new perspective on the traditional role of the breadwinner.

"Men have an innate sense of needing to take charge and take care of everything. It is just our job. I think a lot of men in society today are even a little bit unsure about their role, because we have certain primal instincts deep in our DNA that aren't quite as needed as they used to be."

He is especially mindful of this now that he is a stepfather to the two children Kidman adopted with her ex-husband, Tom Cruise. "I am very proud of my relationship with my stepchildren," Urban says. "It is warm, but very private and protective." He has been there before, when he dated model Niki Taylor, and knows that no matter who the parents are, children "respond to genuineness and love, particularly the unconditional kind." [Ed. note: Urban and Kidman had their first child, daughter Sunday Rose, in 2008.]

He is looking forward to "having children with my wife when the time is right. I feel like I could be a good dad. I'm very grateful that Mum and Dad supported me the way they did, and I would be equally supportive of my children and their dreams. I'm not one of these people who would freak out if my child said they wanted to be a musician and tell them to get a real job. I think being present is the most important thing."

Right now, he seems to be present in a familiar place, caught between professional obligation and personal opportunity. His lunch, from P.F. Chang's Bistro, is cooling on a nearby counter. His wife is waiting to eat with him. Like many of the occurrences and coincidences that add up to a career and a life, it wasn't exactly what Keith Urban had planned. Then again, he hadn't planned on spending nearly two decades struggling to become an overnight sensation, or chasing his dream halfway around the world, only to end up falling in love with a girl from back home. "I was watching this show on Paul Newman, and he was talking about creating his food company, Newman's Own, and how it just started in a very lighthearted, simple, fun way, and now it's extremely successful and donates all its money to charities," Urban says, picking up his brown-bag lunch and heading to the door. What struck him most about the Newman story was the plaque on the wall at the company's headquarters, the one that spelled out its philosophy. "'If we ever have a plan,'" Keith Urban says, recalling the motto, "'we're screwed!'"

GUITARS
"I've got an old Rickenbacker, a Gibson Melody Maker, and I love my old Martin 00-18 from somewhere in the '50s. This guy gave it to me at a club in Cleveland because he wanted it to have a good home. I've played it on every record since."

REQUIRED READING
"I'm just finishing up All the Shah's Men, by Stephen Kinzer. It is absolutely riveting, and there is another one he has written called Overthrow that I'm about to launch into."

TIMEPIECE
"I have an old vintage watch, maybe from the '30s, that my wife got me, and she had it put on a thick black leather band, which is a bit '70s. She has exquisite taste, so I'm grateful that she gets what really works for me."

HONKY TONKS
"The Howlin' Wolf down in New Orleans ranks high on my list of great, funky, concrete-floored bars. Any place that can be hosed out at the end of the evening has got my vote."

WHEELS
"Motorcycle riding clears my head. Kenny Chesney gave me a Harley Fat Boy 100th Anniversary for an end-of-tour gift, and I have two custom bikes: a chopper by a company called 357, and I just bought a Vengeance bike at Sturgis, this huge festival that happens every year in South Dakota. I intended to come back with a T-shirt and instead I came back with a motorcycle!"

RIDES
"I'm hoping to acquire a few more cars. I just don't have the space right now. I figure if I build a garage, they will come. I'd like a '57 Thunderbird, a '62 Lincoln Continental hardtop with suicide doors, and a Fiat Bambina. I'd like a Smart car, too, something a little more economical to offset the other beast. I think the Bentley does a mile per gallon."

TUNES
"There's a '40s station with big band and swing on XM that is always on in the tour bus. I used to listen to a lot of Doris Day and Andrew Sisters just to relieve my nerves."