The story of INXS

Hong Kong, the northern beaches and the Farriss Brothers

Michael Kelland John Hutchence was born in the Sydney suburb of Crows Nest on the twenty second of January 1960. His mother Patricia was a former model turned make up artist, his father Kell a businessman, and he had an older half sister called Tina. Kell's work took the family to Brisbane, where Michael's younger brother Rhett was born, and then to Hong Kong. Michael showed promise as a swimmer there until he badly broke his arm, and then he turned to poetry. His first ever song was sung in a commercial for a Hong Kong toy store. The family returned to Sydney in 1972. When Michael was fifteen his parents separated, and he spent a short time in California with his mother and Tina while Rhett stayed behind. Friends later said he carried guilt about that for the rest of his life.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

At Davidson High School on Sydney's northern beaches, Michael became friends with Andrew Farriss, who had stepped in to stop a fight involving the new boy. Andrew, born in Perth in 1959, was one of four Farriss children, and at the age of five he had seen the Beatles perform on a family holiday in London. He took naturally to the piano, while his older brother Tim studied classical guitar and younger brother Jon played drums. Michael and Andrew spent hours recording odd music on a four track machine and, by Michael's own account, trying to impress girls with it. Andrew soon talked Michael into singing for his school band, Doctor Dolphin, which included a bass player from nearby Forest High called Garry Beers.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Tim Farriss had a band of his own. With his best friend from Forest High, Kirk Pengilly, he had been playing since 1971, sometimes as an acoustic duo and sometimes as a four piece called Guinness, named after the bass player's dog. Guinness played progressive rock, with Kirk as the main songwriter and singer. When little Jon Farriss asked to audition, he was turned away for being nine years old. In 1977, while Tim was recovering from painful surgery to remove abnormal bone growths in his legs, the pieces fell into place. Tim invited Andrew, Michael and Garry to join him and Kirk, and with a teenage Jon on drums they became the Farriss Brothers. They played their first show on the sixteenth of August 1977 at Whale Beach, north of Sydney.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In 1978 the Farriss parents moved to Perth and took Jon with them to finish school. As soon as Michael and Andrew had finished school too, the rest of the band followed them across the continent. For a while they played Perth as the Vegetables, mixing Roxy Music covers with what Michael later called terrible originals, before returning to Sydney about ten months later with a tighter act and a set of demos. Back home, a chance meeting in the car park of the Royal Antler pub in Narrabeen changed everything. Midnight Oil's manager, Gary Morris, approached Tim and soon had the band supporting the Oils around the pubs. He also passed on a new name that a member of the Oils crew had come up with.[1] [2] [3]

The name was INXS, a play on the phrase in excess, and it nodded to the English band XTC and an Australian jam brand called IXL. Morris also floated a stranger idea, turning them into a Christian band, which they considered briefly and rejected. The first show as INXS was on the first of September 1979, on the New South Wales Central Coast. By the end of that year they had a new manager, Chris Murphy, a young booking agent who had grown up in his father's theatrical agency. Murphy said he decided to take them on halfway through their third song, struck by how funky they were and how strange the kid out front was. He agreed to manage them only if they aimed at the whole world.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Pubs, The One Thing and the long road to America

Murphy signed INXS to a five album deal with Deluxe Records, a Sydney independent run by the former AC/DC manager Michael Browning. The first single, Simple Simon, came out in May 1980, and the debut album INXS followed that October. Deluxe gave them ten thousand dollars to make it, so they recorded from midnight to dawn, often after playing one or two gigs the same night. At Murphy's insistence every song was credited to the whole band. Just Keep Walking became their first Australian top forty hit, and Michael later said it was the first time they felt they had written a real song. He would look back on the album itself as naive and almost cute, the sound of young men struggling to find their voice.[1] [2] [3]

What really made INXS was the road. In 1981 they played almost three hundred shows, driving across the Nullarbor to Perth and working Queensland clubs so hot that oxygen tanks were kept by the stage. Australian pub crowds were tough. Michael remembered that you did not dare walk backstage at the end of a set; you walked straight into the bar and bought people drinks. A cover of the Loved Ones' 1966 song The Loved One, produced by Richard Clapton, reached the top twenty, and Clapton went on to produce their second album, Underneath the Colours, released in October 1981. It reached number fifteen in Australia. The songs were written in a rush, and Kirk admitted the band had not really been ready for a follow up.[1] [2] [3]

Deluxe could not get them noticed overseas, so in early 1982 the band paid out of their own pockets to record one new song, The One Thing, with the producer Mark Opitz. It turned out so well that Murphy used it to sign INXS to WEA at home, PolyGram in Europe and, crucially, directly to Atlantic's Atco label in North America. Before committing to Opitz for a whole album, Michael, Andrew and Kirk flew to Britain and America looking for a bigger name, but everyone they asked told them Opitz was already the right man. The album, Shabooh Shoobah, came out in October 1982. Tim coined the title from a rhythm in the song Spy of Love. It reached number five in Australia and stayed on the chart for ninety four weeks.[1] [2] [3] [4]

America did not come easily. The band's first US show, in San Diego in March 1983, drew twenty four paying customers. They opened for Adam and the Ants, the Stray Cats, the Kinks, Hall and Oates, the Go-Go's and Men at Work, and played New Wave Day at the huge US Festival in California. The One Thing became the first INXS video on the young MTV and climbed to number thirty on the Billboard Hot 100. Former MTV host Alan Hunter later claimed the channel treated INXS as a test of whether it could break a band. By the middle of 1983 they were headlining the Ritz in New York, and co manager Gary Grant had moved there permanently to keep the momentum going.[1] [2] [3] [4]

After a show in Toronto, Nile Rodgers of Chic approached the band. He later said he wanted to work with them after watching Jon Farriss drum at a festival where they shared a bill with Hall and Oates. In September 1983 at the Power Station in New York, Rodgers produced Original Sin, with Daryl Hall singing on the chorus. The rest of the album, The Swing, was made with Nick Launay at the Manor studio in Oxfordshire. Original Sin's interracial theme made some American radio stations nervous, and it only reached fifty eight there. But in January 1984 it became the band's first number one in Australia, and still their only one there, and it also topped the charts in France and Argentina. The Swing spent five weeks at number one at home.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

What You Need and the making of a live monster

In 1984 the band found their most important visual partner. Richard Lowenstein, a Melbourne filmmaker from the post punk scene, was about to take his first feature to Cannes when INXS offered him ten thousand dollars to shoot a clip for Burn for You in north Queensland. He expected surfers in Hawaiian shirts and got exactly that, but Michael loped over with an enormous smile, and within a day the pale Melbourne crew were snorkelling on the reef. Lowenstein went on to direct many of their best known videos. At the Countdown music awards for 1984 INXS won seven prizes, including Best Songwriter for Andrew and Michael, and performed dressed in Akubra hats and Drizabone coats.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In March 1985 INXS went back to Rhinoceros Studios in Sydney with the English producer Chris Thomas, who had worked with the Beatles, Pink Floyd and the Sex Pistols. As the sessions wound up, Thomas delivered bad news. The album was good, he said, but it still had no hit. The band left the studio that night with almost no time left to find one. Andrew went through his demos, and Thomas latched on to a groove labelled Funk Song Number Thirteen, saying he could listen to it for ten minutes. Two days later it had become What You Need. Released in America in early 1986, it reached number five on the Hot 100, the band's first top ten hit there.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Listen Like Thieves came out in October 1985 and reached number eleven in America. The British press was brutal, with one critic calling it a complete turkey, but Rolling Stone praised its passion and a backbeat to get anyone moving. In July 1985 INXS played five songs at Oz for Africa, the Australian arm of Live Aid, and in Melbourne they performed a concert for Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Lowenstein's video for What You Need used rotoscoped animation and won Best Video at the Countdown awards. From May 1986 the band played thirty two European shows, forty two American shows and twelve at home. On the twelfth of July they supported Queen at Wembley Stadium, and Musician magazine called INXS the best live band in the world.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Michael's private life in these years centred on Michele Bennett, an Australian film producer he dated from 1982 to 1987. They shared a flat in Paddington with the singer Jenny Morris, who toured with INXS as a backing vocalist, and it was Michele who introduced Michael to Lowenstein. In 1986 Lowenstein cast Michael as Sam, the drug addled singer of a Melbourne post punk household, in his film Dogs in Space. Michael recorded songs for it with the underground musician Ollie Olsen, and Rooms for the Memory became a hit. Then Chris Murphy staged the Australian Made tour, a summer of stadium shows with Jimmy Barnes, Divinyls and others. INXS and Barnes recorded the Easybeats' Good Times to promote it, and the song reached number two in Australia.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Kick

For the next album the band wanted every song to be strong enough to be a single, and for the first time, with the others' blessing, Andrew and Michael wrote the whole record between them. Recording began at Rhinoceros in January 1987 with Chris Thomas, but even with a European tour being booked, Thomas felt they still did not have the right songs. So he sent the two writers to Hong Kong, where Michael and Jon shared an apartment. As Andrew waited for a taxi to the airport, a guitar riff arrived in his head. He told the driver he had forgotten something, ran back to his motel room and recorded a rough demo. The driver was furious, because the forgotten item took forty five minutes.[1] [2] [3]

In Hong Kong, Michael heard the tape and wrote most of the words for Need You Tonight in about ten minutes. The pair came back with more demos, including Kick and Calling All Nations, and Thomas knew the album was finished. Final work was done in Paris and Bob Clearmountain mixed it in London. Andrew's demo for Never Tear Us Apart had been a bluesy piano song in the style of Fats Domino. Thomas swapped the piano for strings and turned it into a slow waltz. Engineer David Nicholas happened to play the demo of Mediate straight after Need You Tonight and found the two synced so perfectly that he thought something was wrong. They were joined for good. The title Kick won partly because, like INXS, it had four letters.[1] [2] [3]

Then Atlantic heard it. Chris Murphy said label president Doug Morris listened with his eyes closed and his feet on the desk, then offered the band a million dollars to go home and make a different album. Morris has always denied saying anything of the kind. Either way, Murphy did not wait for the label to come round. He played Need You Tonight to Atlantic's promotion staff, found allies among the younger team, and sent INXS on a college tour that he said was funded with his own money and the band's. He admitted that if it had failed, there would have been a mutiny. Need You Tonight took off on campus radio, and Atlantic put Kick on its release schedule. It came out on the twelfth of October 1987.[1] [2] [3] [4]

On the Billboard Hot 100 dated the thirtieth of January 1988, Need You Tonight knocked Michael Jackson's The Way You Make Me Feel off the top spot. It remains the band's only American number one. Devil Inside followed it to number two, New Sensation reached three and Never Tear Us Apart seven. Kick peaked at number three, spent twenty two weeks in the American top ten and was eventually certified six times platinum there, with worldwide sales reported at around twenty million. In Britain, Need You Tonight first stalled at fifty eight, then went to number two after a remix. In Canada, Kick became only the second album by an Australian act to be certified diamond, after AC/DC's Back in Black.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The videos turned INXS into global faces. In the November frost of 1987, Lowenstein filmed New Sensation, Guns in the Sky and Never Tear Us Apart in Prague, where curious locals watched without any idea who the band were. His Need You Tonight clip layered photocopied film frames over the footage, and the Mediate section was an affectionate copy of Bob Dylan's cue card scene from Subterranean Homesick Blues. At the MTV Video Music Awards in September 1988 it won five awards, including Video of the Year and the Viewer's Choice. The Devil Inside clip came from a favour owed by Joel Schumacher, who directed it after INXS gave their Good Times cover to his vampire film The Lost Boys. The Kick tour lasted sixteen months.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Kylie, X and the night at Wembley

After the tour, INXS took 1989 off. Michael threw himself into Max Q, an electronic project with Ollie Olsen and musicians from Melbourne's underground scene. It was named after Olsen's dog, released one album that went gold in Australia, and never played a single concert. In 1990 Michael also played the poet Percy Shelley in Roger Corman's film Frankenstein Unbound. The others kept busy too. Andrew produced Jenny Morris's album Shiver and won the ARIA award for Producer of the Year. Garry joined the Sydney band Absent Friends, while Tim and Kirk produced a record for another local group, Crash Politics. Tim even released a fishing video, cheekily titled Fish in Space after Michael's film.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Michael's new relationship made headlines around the world. From 1989 to 1991 he dated Kylie Minogue, then the girl next door of Australian pop. Critics linked her shift towards a more grown up, sensual image and sound in that period to their time together. The couple were filmed on holiday in Hong Kong harbour, on the Orient Express and at Michael's house in the south of France. Kylie wore a platinum blonde wig to the premiere of her film The Delinquents and described the shade as suicide blonde. Michael took the phrase to Andrew, and it became the title of the lead single from the next album. Years later Kylie handed over her private home movies for a documentary about him.[1] [2] [3] [4]

X, the Roman numeral for ten, marked a decade since the debut album and came out in September 1990. It was Chris Thomas's third INXS album in a row. Andrew suggested blues harmonica, and after learning that Charlie Musselwhite was touring Australia the band met him. On Suicide Blonde they used samples of his playing rather than recording him live. The single went to number one in Canada and New Zealand, and Disappear, written by Michael with Jon Farriss, also reached the American top ten. X peaked at number two in Britain, where INXS were finally being embraced. At the 1991 Brit Awards Michael was named Best International Artist and INXS won the award for Best International Group.[1] [2] [3]

The X tour ran for ten months, with a hundred and twenty one shows seen by about one point two million people, including a headline slot at Rock in Rio. The peak came on the thirteenth of July 1991 at Wembley Stadium in London, six years to the day after Live Aid was staged there. More than seventy thousand people filled the stadium, the biggest crowd INXS ever played to on their own, and sixteen film cameras captured it, one of them in a helicopter. During the show Michael told Tim, in colourful language, to play the riff, and Tim was known as the Riff Meister ever after. The concert became Live Baby Live, which went platinum in America even though some critics questioned how live it really was.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Copenhagen and a changed man

With grunge rising, INXS decided to change. Welcome to Wherever You Are, produced by Mark Opitz, used sitars, an Eastern horn, distorted vocals and a sixty piece orchestra. Released in August 1992, it entered the British chart at number one, the first album by an Australian group to do so since Back in Black, and Michael said it earned the best reviews of their career. But the band chose not to tour it, planning to make another album first and then tour both. In America, where it peaked at sixteen, it faded fast. Some fans did not even recognise it in the shops, because its covers showed an Irish boys' band and a pyramid of boy scouts rather than INXS.[1] [2]

In August 1992, while promoting the album in Europe, Michael was in Copenhagen with his girlfriend, the Danish supermodel Helena Christensen. Late one night the couple stopped with their bicycles in a narrow street, eating pizza. A taxi driver wanted to get through, got out of his car and assaulted Michael, who fell backwards and hit his head on the kerb. He fractured his skull. When he came round in hospital he was aggressive, doctors assumed he was drunk, and he checked himself out. For about a month he lay in Christensen's flat, vomiting and barely eating or sleeping, before a doctor sent him to Paris for a brain scan. He had completely lost his sense of smell, and much of his sense of taste.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Michael swore Christensen to secrecy and played the injury down to almost everyone, including the band. He told friends he had simply had a bump on the head. Years later Richard Lowenstein gave the full coroner's report to a neuroscientist, who told him Michael had been living with a serious lesion in his brain. Lowenstein said he had never seen depression, erratic behaviour or a violent temper in his friend before the accident, and saw all of them after it. One night in Melbourne, Michael broke down in tears and told him he could no longer taste his girlfriend. Those closest to him came to believe that the injury was the turning point of his life.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The next album was made at a clifftop studio on the Italian island of Capri, which Kirk called a five star Alcatraz. On the first night, producer Mark Opitz, who shared Michael's villa, woke at four in the morning to the sound of furniture being smashed upstairs. Michael threw microphone stands, forced a microphone through the strings of an acoustic guitar and shouted that the track needed more aggression. Garry Beers later said Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill him, and that over six weeks Michael threatened or physically confronted nearly every member of the band. After a Christmas break he came back calmer, and wrote the lyrics for the title track on the ferry from Naples.[1] [2] [3]

Full Moon, Dirty Hearts came out in November 1993. Michael and Andrew had discovered Ray Charles working in the same Paris studio and persuaded him to duet on Please, You Got That, while Chrissie Hynde sang on the title track. Chris Murphy had videos made for all twelve songs by up and coming Australian directors, but MTV banned the clip for The Gift because it used footage of the Gulf War and the Holocaust. The album reached the top five in Britain and Australia but only fifty three in America, and it ended their contract with Atlantic. A Greatest Hits followed in 1994, and in June 1995 Murphy stepped down as manager, saying he wanted to spend more time with his children.[1] [2] [3]

Paula, Tiger and the last tour

Michael had first met Paula Yates in 1985, when she interviewed him for the British music show The Tube. She was already with Bob Geldof, the Boomtown Rats singer who organised Live Aid, and they married in 1986. According to accounts of that first meeting, Paula declared she was going to have him, and over the following years she turned up at INXS concerts in several countries, sometimes with her young daughter Fifi. In the mid nineties she interviewed Michael again, famously on a bed, for her segment on The Big Breakfast. The British press soon exposed their affair. In February 1995 Paula left Geldof, and Michael left Helena Christensen to be with her.[1] [2] [3]

The tabloid siege was relentless, and Michael assaulted a photographer who had followed them. Geldof and Yates divorced in May 1996 after a bitter public fight over their three daughters, Fifi, Peaches and Pixie, and Geldof moved into Michael's old bachelor home a short walk from the family house. On the twenty second of July 1996 Paula gave birth to Michael's daughter at their London home, in the bathroom, with Michael helping with the delivery. Pixie picked the name Heavenly, Michael chose Hiraani, his favourite Polynesian word, and Paula added Tiger Lily. Friends said Michael adored her with an unconditional love he had never felt before, and he grew terrified that she might be taken from him.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In September 1996 the family's nanny reported finding a small amount of opium at the couple's home, and police arrested them on suspicion of possession. Michael and Paula said it had been planted, and the case was dropped for lack of evidence, but Geldof was granted temporary custody of his three daughters. Lowenstein saw Michael fly into a rage over the legal battle and punch the wall of a hotel room, and later called him one of the loneliest people he had ever met. His confidence as an artist was fragile too. At the Brit Awards in February 1996 Michael presented a video award to Oasis, and Noel Gallagher told the audience that has beens should not be handing awards to gonna bes. Friends said Michael was devastated.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

INXS had not released a new studio album since 1993. In 1996 Michael and Andrew, both living in London, began writing again, and worked on demos in a small studio in Dublin while visiting U2's Bono and Larry Mullen. The band recorded with the Canadian producer Bruce Fairbairn in Vancouver, and Michael and Andrew finished the album in Spain. Elegantly Wasted was released in April 1997, and the three Farriss brothers dedicated it to their mother Jill, who had died in 1995. It reached number fourteen in Australia and sixteen in Britain, but only forty one in America. On the side, Michael was making a solo album with Andy Gill of Gang of Four and the producer Danny Saber.[1] [2] [3]

The twentieth anniversary tour took INXS across America, to South Africa for the only time in their career, and around Europe. Their last concert with Michael was on the twenty seventh of September 1997 at the Star Lake Amphitheatre near Pittsburgh, and the last song he ever sang live with the band was Suicide Blonde. In November he flew in from Los Angeles, where he had been discussing film projects, and landed in Sydney on the eighteenth. The band rehearsed at the ABC's studios for a homecoming tour due to open in Sydney on the twenty third. Paula planned to fly out with Tiger and two of her older daughters for Christmas, but that depended on a ruling from a London court.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The twenty second of November 1997

This part of the story is hard to tell, and it is told here with care. On the evening of Friday the twenty first of November 1997, Michael had dinner with his father Kell, who later said he held his son's hand across the table and asked if he was all right. Michael told him he had never felt better. Back at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Double Bay, the actress Kym Wilson and her boyfriend joined him in his room. They drank and talked for hours, mostly about Paula, Tiger and the custody case, and left in the early hours of the morning. Soon afterwards Paula called from London. The custody hearing had been adjourned until the seventeenth of December, so she could not bring the children for Christmas.[1] [2] [3]

Paula said Michael was terribly upset and told her he did not know how he would live without seeing Tiger. He then phoned Geldof. Geldof told police that Michael was hectoring, abusive and threatening, and a guest in the next room heard a man shouting and swearing at about five in the morning. The coroner accepted that this was Michael arguing with Geldof. At about nine forty, Michael left a voicemail for his manager Martha Troup in New York, saying he had had enough. A second message minutes later sounded slow and deep. At nine fifty four he rang Michele Bennett, crying, and said he needed to see her. She reached his door at about ten forty, got no answer, and left a note at reception.[1] [2] [3]

Shortly before midday on Saturday the twenty second of November 1997, a hotel maid found Michael's body behind the door of his room. He was thirty seven. Police said a leather belt was involved and that there were no suspicious circumstances. His bandmates were waiting for him at rehearsal and learned the news, like everyone else, from the media. On the sixth of February 1998 the New South Wales coroner, Derrick Hand, ruled that Michael had taken his own life while depressed and under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Tests had found alcohol, cocaine, the antidepressant Prozac and other prescription drugs. The coroner specifically considered the suggestion of an accident and found no evidence to support it.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The funeral was held at St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney on the twenty seventh of November and broadcast live on Australian television. Paula carried Tiger in her arms. Among the mourners were Kylie Minogue, Helena Christensen and Michael's favourite singer, Tom Jones. Nick Cave, a close friend who had once co owned a small London bistro with Michael, sang his song Into My Arms and asked for the cameras to be switched off while he did. Andrew Farriss told the congregation that Michael was one of the greatest singers and performers of his generation. The band and Michael's brother Rhett carried the coffin out of the cathedral as Never Tear Us Apart played.[1] [2] [3]

Even in death, Michael's life was pulled in different directions. His ashes were divided into three after a dispute between his family and Paula. One portion was buried at Forest Lawn in Los Angeles, and around what would have been his thirty eighth birthday his father and Rhett scattered another into Sydney Harbour, while the band and Michele Bennett watched from a yacht. Paula kept her share in a cushion. His estate, once estimated in the tens of millions, turned out to be tied up in offshore trusts and companies controlled by his financial adviser Colin Diamond. His mother and sister went to court over it, and by 2005 reports said almost nothing was left for his heirs.[1] [2] [3]

After Michael

Paula never accepted the coroner's verdict. In interviews in 1999 she suggested Michael had died by accident, which contradicted what she had told police, and Michael's family and friends were furious. In 1998, after a suicide attempt, she lost custody of her three older daughters to Geldof. On the seventeenth of September 2000 she died of a heroin overdose at her home in Notting Hill, aged forty one, and four year old Tiger was with her. The coroner said she was not a habitual user and had behaved foolishly and incautiously. Geldof took Tiger in to grow up with her half sisters, won custody in December 2000 over a bid by Michael's sister Tina, and adopted her in 2007.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

For almost a year INXS did not perform at all. Then came one off shows with guest singers. Jimmy Barnes fronted them at the Mushroom Records twenty fifth anniversary concert in November 1998, and in June 1999 Terence Trent D'Arby and Russell Hitchcock sang when they opened Stadium Australia in Sydney. Michael's solo album came out in October 1999, dedicated simply to Tiger, with Bono's voice added to Slide Away after Michael's death. From 2000 the Noiseworks singer Jon Stevens toured with INXS, including during the Sydney Olympics. He was named an official member in 2002, but left in October 2003, saying the creativity was too slow and he was tired of singing other people's songs.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 2005 INXS tried something no band of their stature had done before. They went looking for a singer on reality television. Rock Star: INXS, produced by Mark Burnett of Survivor and hosted by Dave Navarro and Brooke Burke, ran on CBS with fifteen finalists living together in a Los Angeles mansion. Each week Tim Farriss told the loser they were just not right for the band. The winner, announced on the twentieth of September 2005, was J.D. Fortune, a Canadian former Elvis impersonator who had been living in his car. During a team task he broke away to write his own lyrics to a melody by Andrew, and the song that came out of it, Pretty Vegas, helped win him the job.[1] [2] [3]

Pretty Vegas entered the American chart at number thirty seven, the highest debut of the band's career, and the album Switch, produced by Guy Chambers, reached number seventeen in America and number one in Canada. Its final song, God's Top Ten, was written by Andrew as a gift for Tiger. Reviews were harsh, and in September 2006 INXS parted ways with Epic Records. In February 2009 Fortune told Canadian television that he had been let go with a handshake at Hong Kong airport, and admitted heavy cocaine use on tour. Chris Murphy, who had come back to the band through his Petrol label, said Fortune had never been fired. By 2010 Fortune was back, singing with INXS at the Vancouver Winter Olympics.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In 2010 the band released Original Sin, remaking their songs with guest singers including Rob Thomas and Ben Harper. In September 2011 they announced that Fortune had left again, and he said he found out from their website. His replacement was Ciaran Gribbin, a Northern Irish songwriter who had co written Madonna's Celebration. He had met Andrew at a Sydney house party, where the two ended up singing Mystify together on a balcony. Gribbin sang more than fifty shows with INXS. Then, on the eleventh of November 2012 at the new Perth Arena, the band told the crowd it was their final concert. Kirk Pengilly said it felt right to finish where they had started thirty five years earlier.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Never torn apart

The music refused to fade. In February 2014 the Seven Network aired a two part miniseries, INXS: Never Tear Us Apart, with Luke Arnold as Michael and Tim Farriss and Chris Murphy among the executive producers. Around two million Australians watched each episode, The Very Best compilation shot to number one on the ARIA chart, and Kick returned to the top ten. The Very Best became Australia's top selling album of 2014. The following January, Tim severed his left ring finger in a winch accident on his boat in Sydney. Despite two operations he said he could only play a few beginner chords, and in 2022 he lost a damages case against the boat's owners and was ordered to pay their costs.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In 2019 Richard Lowenstein released his documentary Mystify: Michael Hutchence, built from home movies and audio interviews, including Kylie Minogue's private footage and Helena Christensen speaking for the first time about Copenhagen. A dispute with Murphy's Petrol Records over ownership almost left the film without INXS songs, until Tiger watched a rough cut in her London flat and wrote to the band's label. Within a day the music was cleared. That same year the Wembley concert was restored and shown in cinemas. On the sixteenth of January 2021 Chris Murphy died of mantle cell lymphoma at his property near Ballina, aged sixty six. The band called him their brother and said the INXS story would have been totally different without him.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The members have settled into quieter lives. Andrew moved to a cattle farm near Tamworth, began a solo career with a country flavour, released his first solo album in 2021 and was made a Member of the Order of Australia. Kirk married the champion surfer Layne Beachley, finished second on Celebrity MasterChef Australia, and after surgery for aggressive prostate cancer in 2015 became an ambassador for Movember. Jon released a song featuring the cricket great Viv Richards. Tiger, now known as Tiger Hutchence-Geldof, studied psychology, works as an art psychotherapist, and in 2022 released an album of her own under the name Heavenly. Nick Cave is her godfather.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In July 2025 Never Tear Us Apart was voted the best Australian song of all time in Triple J's Hottest 100 of Australian Songs, a poll that drew more than two and a half million votes, with listeners aged eighteen to twenty nine among its strongest supporters. Need You Tonight came in at number fifty nine. INXS have sold more than fifty million records worldwide, and only AC/DC and the Bee Gees have sold more in America among Australian acts. In early 2026 INXS were nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the first time, but when the class was announced in April they were not among those inducted. As of 2026, the door is still open.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The people around INXS

Michael Hutchence and Andrew Farriss. School friends who met when Andrew broke up a fight, they became one of rock's great writing teams, with Andrew composing the music and Michael writing the words. Andrew co wrote all but one of the band's American top forty hits. He said Michael could not explain his ideas in musical terms, so he would translate a feeling into notes. At the funeral Andrew called Michael one of the greatest singers of his generation, and later wrote God's Top Ten for Tiger.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Michael Hutchence and Michele Bennett. Michele Bennett, an Australian film producer, was Michael's girlfriend from 1982 to 1987 and remained his closest friend and confidante for the rest of his life. He told an interviewer that Never Tear Us Apart was a song for a girl called Michele. His sister and Richard Lowenstein both believed she was the only woman he would ever have married. She was the last person he called on the morning he died.[1] [2] [3]

Michael Hutchence and Kylie Minogue. Michael and Kylie Minogue were together from 1989 to 1991, and the relationship was widely seen as the moment she shed her girl next door image. Her description of a wig as suicide blonde gave INXS a hit single. The break up was painful, but she attended his funeral, and in 2019 she gave Lowenstein her private home movies of their time together and spoke openly about the relationship for his documentary.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Michael Hutchence and Helena Christensen. The Danish supermodel lived with Michael on and off in France and Denmark for about five years in the early nineties. She was with him on the night in Copenhagen in 1992 when a taxi driver attacked him, and she nursed him for a month afterwards. He swore her to secrecy about the extent of his injury, and she kept that promise for more than twenty years, until she told the full story in the documentary Mystify.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Michael Hutchence and Paula Yates. The television presenter met Michael on The Tube in 1985 and began an affair with him in the mid nineties while still married to Bob Geldof. She left Geldof for him in 1995, and their daughter Tiger was born in 1996. Hounded by the tabloids and consumed by custody battles, their life together was intense and turbulent. After his death she refused to accept the suicide verdict, and she died of a heroin overdose in 2000.[1] [2] [3]

Michael Hutchence and Bob Geldof. Geldof's marriage to Paula Yates ended when she left him for Michael in 1995, and the custody fight over their three daughters became a bitter public war. On the last morning of Michael's life they spoke by phone, and Geldof told police Michael was abusive and threatening. After Paula's death in 2000, Geldof raised Michael's daughter Tiger with her half sisters and adopted her in 2007, over objections from Michael's mother and sister.[1] [2] [3] [4]

INXS and Chris Murphy. Murphy took on INXS in 1979 as a booking agent and stayed as manager until 1995, steering them from Sydney pubs to Wembley Stadium. He signed them directly to an American label and gambled on the college tour that broke Kick. His tactics could be ruthless, and the band parted with him in 1995. He returned in 2008 with his Petrol label and controlled their catalogue until his death in 2021, when the band called him their brother.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Michael Hutchence and Richard Lowenstein. The Melbourne filmmaker met Michael in 1984 when he reluctantly agreed to shoot the Burn for You video, and they became close friends. Lowenstein directed many of the band's most famous clips, cast Michael in Dogs in Space, and saw first hand how the Copenhagen injury changed him. Twenty years after Michael's death he spent a decade making Mystify, fighting the band's management along the way to tell his friend's story his own way.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Michael Hutchence and Noel Gallagher. Michael admired the new wave of British bands, but the Gallaghers had little time for him. Michael and Liam Gallagher reportedly nearly came to blows at the 1995 MTV Europe awards, and at the 1996 Brit Awards Noel called Michael a has been from the stage as he presented Oasis with a prize. Noel later said it was a response to Michael saying he had heard Liam wanted a fight. Friends said the insult hurt Michael deeply.[1] [2] [3]

Michael Hutchence and Bono. The U2 singer was a close friend, and Michael and Andrew worked on Elegantly Wasted in Dublin while visiting him. After Michael's death, Bono wrote Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of as an imagined argument with his friend about suicide, and said he felt guilty for never having that row in real life. He also added his vocals to Slide Away on Michael's posthumous solo album. In 2019 U2 paid tribute to Michael on stage in Sydney.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Michael Hutchence and Nick Cave. Michael had been a fan of Cave's early band the Birthday Party, and the two became close friends in London in the early nineties, even co owning a small bistro. At Michael's funeral Cave sang Into My Arms and insisted that the television cameras be turned off while he did. He later became godfather to Michael's daughter Tiger.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about INXS

• Tim Farriss and Kirk Pengilly's first band, Guinness, was named after their bass player's dog. Guinness formed in 1971 at Forest High in Sydney and played progressive rock. It became the base of what later grew into INXS. The dog belonged to bass player Steve Spencer.[1] [2]
• Jon Farriss auditioned for his big brother's band and was turned down for being nine years old. Tim and Kirk's early band Guinness rejected Jon as too young. His first band was actually a Christian choral group he played with at eleven. He went on to become the INXS drummer for thirty five years.[1]
• Andrew Farriss saw the Beatles play live when he was five years old. The Farriss family took a holiday in London, where young Andrew saw a Beatles performance. The family moved to Sydney in 1971, where he met Michael Hutchence at Davidson High School.[1]
• The name INXS was partly inspired by an Australian jam brand called IXL. The name was suggested by a member of Midnight Oil's road crew and passed on by manager Gary Morris. It combined the idea of in excess with a nod to the English band XTC and the IXL jam brand.[1]
• Their first manager suggested INXS become a Christian band, and they briefly considered it. Kirk Pengilly later explained that Midnight Oil's manager Gary Morris was keen on turning the group into a Christian act. The band thought about it before rejecting the idea and hiring Chris Murphy instead.[1]
• Michael Hutchence's first ever song was performed in a toy store commercial in Hong Kong. As a boy in Hong Kong he was a promising swimmer until he badly broke his arm. He turned to poetry, and his first sung performance was in a local toy shop advertisement.[1]
• The debut INXS album was recorded between midnight and dawn to fit a ten thousand dollar budget. Deluxe Records gave the band ten thousand dollars. To stay within it, they recorded overnight at Trafalgar Studios in Annandale, often after playing one or two gigs earlier that same evening.[1] [2]
• The cover of Underneath the Colours is an uncredited artwork by the British printmaker Cyril Power. The second INXS album, released in 1981, used a linocut by Power titled Folk Dance on its sleeve without credit. The record reached number fifteen in Australia.[1]
• The band's first ever American concert drew an audience of twenty four people. INXS played San Diego in March 1983. Within months they were playing the US Festival in California and headlining the Ritz in New York.[1] [2]
• Some Queensland clubs INXS played were so hot that oxygen tanks were kept on stage. The band played around two hundred and eighty gigs in one early year, driving across the Nullarbor to Perth and working the steamy Queensland club circuit to build their live reputation.[1]
• Kirk Pengilly said Men at Work were opening for INXS when Down Under hit number one. Pengilly told the Los Angeles Times that Men at Work went from a small Melbourne pub to American arenas within a month, while still supporting INXS at home.[1]
• The title Shabooh Shoobah is the sound of a rhythm in one of the album's songs. Tim Farriss coined the name as an imitation of a rhythm in the track Spy of Love. The cover, showing a naked male torso and a whippet, was conceived by Michael Hutchence.[1]
• Nile Rodgers wanted to produce INXS after watching Jon Farriss play drums. Rodgers later said on stage at the Sydney Opera House that seeing Jon perform at a festival with Hall and Oates inspired him. He produced Original Sin in New York in 1983.[1] [2]
• INXS played a concert for Prince Charles and Princess Diana in Melbourne in 1985. The show took place during the band's 1985 touring schedule and was filmed and released on video as Living INXS. An edited version aired on MTV in America.[1] [2]
• What You Need began life as a demo called Funk Song Number Thirteen. Producer Chris Thomas told the band Listen Like Thieves had no hit. Andrew Farriss offered the demo, and it became the band's first American top ten single.[1] [2]
• A taxi driver waited forty five minutes while Andrew Farriss recorded the demo for Need You Tonight. On his way to the airport to fly to Hong Kong, Andrew invented the riff and told the driver he had forgotten something. He ran back and recorded it. The driver was not pleased.[1] [2]
• A cue card in the Mediate video shows the date the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. In the Dylan style section of the Need You Tonight video, the card for the words about a special date reads nine, eight, 1945, the ninth of August 1945 in Australian date format.[1]
• The Loved One on Kick is the only cover version on any INXS studio album. The band first cut the Loved Ones' 1966 song as a single in 1981, then recorded a new version for Kick. Their famous Good Times cover with Jimmy Barnes appeared only on singles and soundtracks.[1]
• Joel Schumacher directed the Devil Inside video to repay INXS for their Lost Boys soundtrack song. The Lost Boys had little money left for music, so Schumacher reportedly offered to direct future videos. He made Devil Inside, set in a California beach bar full of surfers and bikers.[1]
• Guns N' Roses once opened for INXS, and reportedly cut their set short. At an MTV sponsored show in September 1988, Kirk Pengilly's tour diary noted that Guns N' Roses finished early and sounded terrible. Michael had given Axl Rose advice on handling fame before the show.[1]
• Max Q, Michael Hutchence's side project, was named after a dog and never played live. Max Q was Michael's 1989 collaboration with Ollie Olsen. It was named after Olsen's dog Max, went gold in Australia, and has never been reissued.[1]
• Michael Hutchence played the poet Percy Shelley in a Roger Corman film. In 1990 he appeared as the Romantic poet in Frankenstein Unbound, a time travel story based on a novel by Brian Aldiss.[1]
• The harmonica on Suicide Blonde is a sample of blues legend Charlie Musselwhite. The band met Musselwhite while he was touring Australia. On Suicide Blonde they sampled his playing, while he played live on two other songs on the album X.[1] [2]
• Wembley 1991 took place six years to the day after Live Aid at the same stadium. INXS played Wembley on the thirteenth of July 1991. The show was filmed with sixteen cameras, including one in a helicopter, and later restored for cinemas in 2019.[1]
• Welcome to Wherever You Are was the first Australian group album to debut at number one in Britain since Back in Black. Released in 1992, it entered the UK chart at the top. Its cover featured the Artane Boys Band from Ireland rather than INXS, which confused some fans.[1]
• Ray Charles sang with INXS after they bumped into him at a Paris studio. Michael and Andrew found Charles recording in the same studio and asked his engineer. He turned down one song as too high for his voice but agreed to duet on Please, You Got That.[1]
• MTV banned an INXS video in 1993 for using Gulf War and Holocaust footage. The clip for The Gift, from Full Moon, Dirty Hearts, was banned by the channel that had helped make the band famous. All twelve songs on that album got their own low budget video.[1]
• Michael Hutchence and Nick Cave once co owned a small bistro in London. They met in 1984 and grew close in the early nineties when both lived in London. Cave later sang at Michael's funeral and is godfather to his daughter.[1] [2]
• Michael chose his daughter's middle name Hiraani, his favourite Polynesian word. Her half sister Pixie picked Heavenly, Michael picked Hiraani, and Paula Yates chose Tiger Lily. Michael's posthumous solo album was dedicated simply to Tiger.[1] [2]
• Paula Yates wanted Tom Jones to sing What's New Pussycat at Michael's funeral, but the family refused. Tom Jones was Michael's favourite singer. He attended the funeral and wept, while Nick Cave performed instead.[1]
• After his divorce, Bob Geldof moved into Michael Hutchence's old London home nearby. When Paula Yates stayed in the Chelsea house she had shared with Geldof, Geldof moved into Hutchence's bachelor home a short walk away.[1]
• The last song Michael Hutchence ever worked on was Possibilities, three days before he died. It appeared on his solo album in 1999, which he had started in 1995 with Andy Gill of Gang of Four. Bono later added vocals to another track, Slide Away.[1] [2]
• Tim Farriss once served as president of a Sydney cricket club. The private guitarist was president of the Manly Warringah District Cricket Club and is a keen deep sea fisherman. He even made a fishing video called Fish in Space.[1]
• Kirk Pengilly kept a daily diary of the band from the very beginning. Known as the band's archivist, Pengilly logged entries throughout their career. His notes, including the night Guns N' Roses opened for them, fed the official band history.[1] [2] [3]
• Pretty Vegas came from J.D. Fortune going it alone during a team task on Rock Star. Contestants had to write lyrics to a melody by Andrew Farriss. Fortune split from his team and wrote his own, and the song became the band's first single with him.[1]
• Tiger Hutchence-Geldof says she received just five hundred pounds from her father's estate. According to Richard Lowenstein, she told him the money came in a white envelope from the estate's controller, Colin Diamond, about a decade earlier, and was essentially all she had received.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.