Savage Garden singer Darren Hayes suffered ‘terrible accident' two months after mother's death
Savage Garden lead singer Darren Hayes is recovering from a serious injury, shortly after suffering the loss of his mother.
The Truly Madly Deeply singer shared a photo of his swollen jaw and X-ray imagery on Instagram, explaining he had 'a terrible accident.'
Hayes wrote in the caption that on March 17, exactly two months after his mother died, he 'lost consciousness – I fainted shortly after getting out of bed and collapsed 3 times, losing consciousness each time.'
'The blunt force trauma was so severe it snapped my left jawbone in half. I woke up in a pool of blood, terrible pain in my left side of my head and with 9 teeth shattered.'
The 52-year-old said he was 'so lucky' and thanked the medical team at St. John's Providence in Santa Monica.
'I could have died if I landed in a different position. They scanned for and ruled out heart issues and anything neurological.'
Hayes underwent emergency reconstructive surgery and had a titanium brace inserted into his jaw followed by his mouth wired shut for eight weeks.
The Australian-born singer said he had experienced some light-headedness and fainting spells before the incident, and the cause is being investigated by his medical care team.
'So far my heart is normal, my arteries are normal and I don't have a brain tumour or anything that could cause the accident,' he said, adding, 'No Judgement to those who partake but I do not take drugs or drink alcohol – this was a complete shock.'
Hayes is one half of pop rock duo Savage Garden, with Daniel Jones on guitar and keyboards, known for late '90s hits like I Want You, Truly Madly Deeply and I Knew I Loved You.
Savage Garden split in 2001, per Billboard, but Hayes continued his solo career.
He thanked fans for understanding the reasons why he'll 'be out of action for quite some time.'
'After my jaw heals it's a long road to rehabbing my jaw function and then of course replacing my shattered teeth. I love you folks. I'm so grateful to be alive and every day I'm getting stronger.'
Hayes revealed near the end of his post that not only had his mother recently died, but he also learned his father had died and he had just gone through a 'brutal divorce' from his husband of 17 years, Richard Cullen.
According to People magazine, Hayes filed for divorce in 2023.
'I have had moments of deep sadness. But I am a survivor and I'll come back strong.'
He also thanked everyone for their support, adding that he decided to share the news on social media because he had to cancel 'press and public things planned and I didn't want people to speculate.'
'I'm sure I'm gonna be fine – it's just time. Love you,' he added.
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Medcalf said he and his colleagues at Encore were unaware that on January 26, 1974, Dietrich, under her husband's name Mrs Rudolf Sieber, had secretly checked in to the Methodist Medical Centre in Houston and underwent surgery to 'save' her legs, consisting of an aorto right femoral, left iliac bypass, and a bilateral lumbar sympathectomy. Six weeks later she was back on stage, touring the US. In August 1975, as Dietrich prepared for her tour of Australia, her husband suffered a massive stroke that left him in a wheelchair and in need of around-the-clock care. Dietrich had been living independently for most of their open marriage and insisted she still go on tour. Her daughter's biography also reveals, somewhat surreptitiously, that the singer had conducted a long-term extramarital affair with an unnamed married Australian journalist several years earlier. 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Her concerts were not sold out, the management was considering cancelling the rest of the tour … we negotiated a compromise … to do our very best to persuade Miss Dietrich to consider terminating the tour, attempt to straighten out some of the more unpleasant disagreements if they, in turn, agreed to pay her contractual salary without any deductions. Fortunately, by now all they wanted was to get rid of her, cut their losses.' Dietrich refused to quit. Riva writes of her mother's abuse of powerful (now banned) drugs and booze: 'Filled with her usual [narcotic painkiller] Darvon, [stimulant-sedative] Dexamyl and Scotch, Dietrich opened in Sydney on the 24th of September, 1975.' On that night, Stuart Greene, then 21, was working as an usher at Her Majesty's Theatre. An ardent fan of Dietrich's, he tells Good Weekend she was much more gracious and coherent than she was given credit for. 'We all got to meet her in person when she arrived,' he says. 'She was very gracious. 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A week before she came to Sydney, Phillip Adams, after comparing her to an embalmed Egyptian mummy, wrote in The Age of her Melbourne show: 'Where other performers go through their paces, she goes through her inches. A gesture here, a raised eyebrow there. Nonetheless, the illusion of life is almost convincing.' But it was following her first Sydney show that the press fully unloaded. The Daily Telegraph 's Mike Gibson wrote: 'A little old lady, bravely trying to play the part of a former movie queen called Marlene Dietrich, is tottering around the stage of Her Majesty's Theatre. When I say bravely I mean it. Without a doubt her show is the bravest, saddest, most bittersweet concert I have ever seen. When it is over the applause from her fans is tremendous … Hanging onto the red curtains for support, she takes bow after bow. She is still bowing, and waving, still breathing it all in as we leave.' Five days later, Dietrich was lying under that same curtain in a crumpled, sparkling, fluffy heap. Among those in the audience, sitting with a group of managers from the Packer camp, was former head of Channel Nine publicity Vicki Jones, who vividly remembers the audience's reaction watching Dietrich fall. 'I do distinctly remember everyone in that audience making a collective gasp as she fell, it was like the entire theatre had reacted exactly on cue,' Jones says. 'It really was quite something to witness, and upon reflection a terrible tragedy for her … and the public.' Riva writes that the 'shock' of falling had sobered her mother sufficiently to realise something was wrong with her left leg, which would not support her. Dietrich had to be spirited out of the theatre as fast as possible. 'But she absolutely refused to have her fans, waiting for her at the stage door, see her close up in the stage dress and insisted on changing first. As she had to be held upright in order to remove the dress without tearing it, my mother locked her arms around the neck of the distraught producer, and just hung there, while two women peeled off her costume and dressed her into her Chanel suit.' Dressed in her designer bouclé, Dietrich returned to her Sydney hotel – the Boulevard on William Street, on the edge of Kings Cross – while her daughter alerted her doctors in New York, who were soon in contact with doctors at St Vincent's Hospital. Orthopaedic surgeon Brett Courtenay had only just started working at St Vincent's. He was mentored by the same surgeon who treated Dietrich, the late head of orthopaedics and keen sailor Dr John Roarty. 'John had a great sense of humour and would tell us stories about treating Marlene … she even gave him a signed photo of herself as a thank you,' Courtenay recalls. An international convention of orthopaedic surgeons was taking place in Sydney the same week Dietrich was performing. Within the hour, Roarty, resplendent in his tuxedo, having come straight from a gala evening, attended her suite. She refused to be taken to hospital, though Roarty suspected her femur was fractured. 'All that night my mother lay in her bed, hardly daring to breathe,' Riva writes. Early the next morning Dietrich finally allowed herself to be smuggled out of the hotel into St Vincent's Hospital, where she was made slightly more comfortable with the aid of sheepskins placed under her brittle, delicate frame, the same Australian sheepskins she would lie on until her death in Paris 17 years later. X-rays confirmed the doctor's suspicions. She had a broken femur of the left leg. Dietrich refused to remain in Australia. Roarty convinced her she needed to be placed in a protective body cast if she insisted on flying back to the US, and she was photographed in it being hauled out of St Vincent's into an ambulance when she was discharged. Dietrich would remain horizontal for almost all her remaining days. Dietrich's more glamorous image now hangs on the wall of St Vincent's. The caption claims she was a 'difficult' patient but that her 'departure was that of a great star'. (The hospital's archivists were unable to find any more details for Good Weekend.) Loading Riva and Dietrich's medical team made arrangements for a Pan Am jet to remove four seats so that Dietrich could be accommodated horizontally for the long flight back to Los Angeles. The cancelled shows left a huge hole in Encore's coffers. Co-founder Cyril Smith told The Sydney Morning Herald at the time it would account for a $100,000 hit (equivalent to $890,000 today). Having already agreed to pay Dietrich, an unimpressed Kerry Packer pulled the pin on the touring business. Encore was kaput. And Medcalf? 'I discovered I didn't have a job when I pulled into the Australian Consolidated Press car park a few days later,' he says, chuckling. 'Not only had Marlene cost me my job, the security guard told me I no longer had a parking spot, either.'
