Melbourne Writers Festival, Toff in Town, 3 September 2011
Side 1
Guns in the Sky OMAR MUSA
New Sensation JUSTIN HEAZLEWOOD
Devil Inside CATHERINE DEVENY
I Need You Tonight KEN ARKIND
Mediate SEAN M WHELAN
Side 2
The Loved One BEN POBJIE
Never Tear Us Apart ANGIE HART
Kick TIM CLARE
Tiny Daggers EMILIE ZOEY BAKER
In 1987, hardnosed band manager Chris Murphy swept into the New York offices of INXS’s US label Atlantic Records with tapes of their new album fresh from recording studios in Paris. The top executives gathered, Chris hit play and sat back beaming as the crystalline, plastic fantastic sounds of Kick filled the room. When it was done, the Atlantic president reached for his chequebook – to offer Chris a million dollars to throw it out and get INXS to start again. They hated it. It might work on black radio, but that’s not what they were looking for. Fortunately, Murphy paid no heed, got college radio on-board, started a tour and talked Atlantic round to a distribution deal. The album went triple platinum, and has sold over 10 million in the US alone, with four consecutive Top 5 singles. INXS were a six-headed slinky funk-rock arrow aimed straight at the heart of the MTV generation, and Kick had an irresistible snap, crackle and pop, not to mention a bona fide sex god in the loose-hipped, caramel-voiced Michael Hutchence. They’d polished their sound to a brilliant shine even U2 were envious of, they’d honed their performances on tour enough for influential US magazine Musician to declare them the best live band on the planet. They packed filmmaker Richard Lowenstein in a bag and headed to newly chic Prague to record videos of Michael mooching about in lovely overcoats. In the late ’80s, INXS didn’t just straddle the globe, they rubbed themselves on it. (Apologies in advance, but tonight’s going to get a little sordid. But we are, after all, talking about Australians abroad.)
This is really the story of three historic moments, each a decade apart. Exactly ten years before Kick, in 1977, Elvis died, and a slightly smaller piece in the local press that same day might have reported the first gig of the newly formed band The Farriss Brothers – linking the groups Guinness and Dr Dolphin, which involved three actual brothers and three high-schoolmates – at a house party in Sydney’s Northern Beaches. They soon shifted to Perth to stick with youngest member Jon Farriss who had to move there with his parents. The tightly bonded line-up was to steel itself playing in Western Australian mining communities – no mean feat for a bunch of blokes who liked to dress up for gigs and played rock with a decidedly Euro influence. They’d drive into the desert to Mad Max-like outposts, where among other characters, they recall meeting Captain Thong, a bloke who’d demand people’s left thong, from which he’d bite off a chunk and chew it in front of them. Walking around the tiny town, they’d notice that everyone had bits out of their thongs… When they returned to the east coast, they joined the renaissance of Aussie music taking place in the RSLs and pubs, and were discovered by Midnight Oils’ manager Gary Morris, who gave them a new-wave makeover. It was he who turned Kirk Pengilly into the Thomas Dolby of the saxophone, all nerdy hair and glasses, and who urged Michael to get weird. They performed behind a wall of white lights projecting up from the front of stage, and ended each gig with Michael in a spotlight yelling out the nonsense phrase “Koomooloomayo Yong Style!” (I know… but hey, they’ve sold over 30 million records…) Morris also convinced them to change their name. He’d seen ads for IXL jam, with the slogan “I excel in everything I do”, he liked English band XTC, and had a concept for the guys being inaccessible, and he put it all together and got… INXS. Fortunately, what he liked about XTC was their bastardised acronym, otherwise they could have ended up as “10CC Cottees”. In any case, Morris was to soon discover Jesus in a big way and when he tried to convince INXS to become the biggest Christian rock band in the world, they… just kept walking (clearing the way for Stryper).
From that first Farriss Brothers gig in 1987, it was ten years till INXS unleashed Kick and became one of the biggest bands on the world. And then ten years after that, in 1997, Michael Hutchence, too young, was to die at his own, er… hand. By that stage, for some time the focus had been strongly pinned on the sultry star, whose exploits became global media fodder, while the rest of the band was more in the background, presumably with this expression: [gobsmacked]
Like Spinal Tap’s “Lick My Love Pump”, INXS’s story is one of intersecting lines. Lives that weaved in and out of each other, forming a tapestry of celebrity. Post-Kick, you get the divine trinity of Saint Bob, that saucy devil, Michael Hutchence, and Valiant Prince Bono, who pops up from time to time, as he does. Add women of vice and virtue, Kylie Minogue, Helena Christensen and Paula Yates, and the whole thing gets biblical.
Three historic moments over three decades. Tonight, we start at the middle, turning back to 1987, the year the world was collectively RickRolled for the first time, as Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” stormed the charts. The year The Simpsons appeared for the first time, as a series of shorts on Tracey Ullman’s show, and Countdown aired for the last time. But INXS were way past that by then – they didn’t need Molly any more.