Justin Heazlewood

Imagine if it all played out now.

I would just turn on my laptop and my audience would be like coming at you through social media.

But back in 2002, they were still a bit abstract, this sense of an audience.

They weren't really there.

So...

I would listen to my songs on the radio and the hairs would prickle on my arms and I'd be recording them on tape and it was like electric.

It was like taking a little electricity pill of excitement knowing that I was sort of wired in to the country.

I just had this sense of being plugged in and that all of Australia was kind of listening to my three minutes of airtime and

I don't know.

After that, I was sort of done.

Like, I didn't need lots of emails or lots of validation.

I didn't even really need to know what people thought that much.

Yeah.

I mean, I worked at the Canberra Labour Club and there was the day someone I didn't know said, ''Hey, I heard you on the radio.''

And that was sort of ground zero for fame, if you like, which was I sort of began apologising almost immediately and was really awkward and sheepish and like, oh, yeah.

Because being some sort of self-loathing Tasmanian, I don't know, the fame thing was... It's kind of awkward from the start because...

people are coming at you to heap praise on you and put you up on a little pedestal and you're almost wary in advance of where all this is going and you're like, oh, yeah, okay, thanks, just did this thing, not a big deal.

Well, yeah, it was a pretty huge, pretty strong voice

My whole life had been designed to put someone else ahead of my own.

Like, I sort of think the syndrome of that manifested itself in different ways.