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The story of INXS and Michael Hutchence is more upsetting than you thought
This story is a bit of a heartbreaker. Seriously, if you’re in the mood for something light with your morning coffee, you might want to read a different article...
But it's a story worth telling, about a brilliant man who was dealt a cruel twist of fate, and ultimately passed way too soon. This is about Michael Hutchence, the singer of INXS, who had his life turned upside down with one punch.
You might remember INXS. They came out of Australia right at the end of the 70’s, and enjoyed massive success through the 80’s. It’s hard to really pin them down to one genre.
It wasn’t quite glam, it wasn’t quite pop, and it wasn’t the classic heavy metal of their fellow Aussies AC/DC.
What it really was a vehicle for Michael Hutchence’s amazing voice.
INXS were Michael Hutchence on vocals, Gary Beers on bass, and three brothers: Tim Farriss played lead guitar with his brother Jon on drums, and Andrew primarily played keyboards but also hopped on the guitar both in the studio and in a live setting. Kirk Pengilly played both saxophone and guitar. These two really gave the band added depth, especially live.
Andrew was the main songwriter musically, and it was often him that would bring a song in for Michael to write lyrics over.
Fun fact about the name: They originally went by The Farris Brothers, but this changed when they got a new manager, Gary Morris. He’d seen a commercial for a brand of Jam called IXl - with the tagline ‘I excel in everything I do’. He’d also discovered the band XTC, and loved the name. So he stuck these ideas together and came up with INXS.
I think it’s a really great name for a rock band - In Excess - so it’s funny to me that it was half inspired by a brand of jam.
They cut their teeth in Australia before getting their first Number 1 album, The Swing in 1984. This got them noticed internationally, and they followed it up with their first world tour. It was worth the trip. 1985’s Listen Like Thieves was their first big international break: Tracks like What You Need cracked the top 10 in the US and the EU. INXS were officially global.
And they didn’t stop there: 1986’s Kick quite literally kicked the door down. It was pretty much a greatest hits collection, except they were all new songs. This album had Need You Tonight, Never Tear Us Apart,New Sensation. 4 of INXS’s 5 biggest hits ever were on this album.
It was topping charts all over the world, and INXS were proper 80’s megastars. What’s funny is that their record label initially refused to release the album. They told them it was too close to dance and funk to ever get released on rock radio.
They offered the band $1 million to actually re-record the whole thing, but they stuck to their guns and refused. Good for them.
And at the centre of it all was Michael Hutchence: The quintessential frontman. If you think of a rock singer, you think of him. Tall, long hair, good looks, and natural charisma. The ‘cool guy’.
And what a voice. He could do it all. He was a baritone, he had that great mid range rock power on songs like Need You Tonight, and could smash a high note too. But his voice had this unique character to it that set him apart.
You know how some people can learn to sing, and they sound fine. You listen to them and say ‘yeah, they sound good. I can listen to that’.
And then some people just have this X factor, this element to their voice that puts them in a higher category of singing. It’s that difference between someone who can sing, and someone who is a Singer. Michael was one of those people. His voice had… flavour, I guess.
And he lived the rockstar lifestyle to go with it: Jet setting around the word, hanging out with Bono, dating supermodels: He once somehow managed to woo Kylie Minogue and they dated for a while. He definitely had his charm.
This clip makes me laugh… there was definitely chemistry between him and interviewer Paula Yates.
They scandalously kissed on air in that same interview, despite the fact she was married to none other than Bob Geldof. Paula and Michael would end up having a child together later on.
I don’t mean to paint a picture of one of those egomaniacal diva’s that let fame go to their heads. By all accounts, Hutchence was said to be a lovely guy.
Larry Mullen of U2 fame said this in 1997:
“Sometimes lead singers relate only to other lead singers. It’s kind of this ego thing. But Michael wasn’t like that at all. He was a really sweet guy, a very nice guy to everyone he met.”
So it's kind of fitting he came from humble beginnings: Just a kid from Australia, who originally was so shy he had to be pushed on stage at his step-sisters fashion show. Even his bandmates recall a shyness at the beginning of his career.
Tim Fariss told Hot Press in 2019:
"It shows how powerful a frontman Michael was. It's funny - when we started out playing together as teenagers, Michael could barely sing, he was very awkward, quite shy. You couldn't imagine he was going to become the frontman he became - so confident. He morphed into that throughout his career. Suddenly this butterfly emerged from the cocoon."
Michael's parents divorced when he was 15, which devastated him and split the family in half. His mother packed up and moved them to California, leaving his brother Rhett to be mostly raised by nannies in his mothers absence. They returned to Sydney after a couple years, but the experience left Michael wracked with guilt as his mother had told him beforehand this was going to happen.
Michael struggled socially, both before and after the California move. He was bullied, and became introverted. In fact, one story says that he met Andrew Farris when he intervened in a playground fight where Hutchence was getting beaten up. It wouldn’t be long before they were jamming together and his potential became obvious.
And so that's sort of the nice bit of the story: A shy, charismatic boy who grew up to be one of music's great frontmen, able to entertain a stadium crowd as easily as if he was performing in his living room. He was on top of the world.
I wish I could say it ended there, but this is where it takes a tragic turn. In August 1992, Michael and his girlfriend at the time, Helena Christensen, were riding bikes home from a night out in Copenhagen. They stopped for some pizza on a narrow road, where an ‘insane’ taxi driver as Helena described him, started shouting at them to move out the way. An argument ensued, and the taxi driver got out and punched Michael, knocking him to the ground.
Michael hit his head on the curb as he went down. His life would never be the same again.
As he lay there with blood coming from his mouth and ear, she thought he was dead.
When he woke up in hospital, he was belligerent. He demanded to be released, and amazingly, the hospital allowed it.
He spent the next month in bed, vomiting and suffering bouts of anger and confusion.
He had also lost his sense of smell and taste. Something was clearly wrong, but still he refused to go to hospital. Eventually, he was convinced to see a specialist. The news was damning:
He had a cracked skull, and nerves had been severed in his head. He would most likely never regain his sense of smell or taste.
But the damage ran deeper than that. I'll explain more later. But for Michael, something was clearly wrong inside his head.
He went into a deep depression, and refused to allow Helena to tell anyone what had happened.
It was clear to everyone around Michael that he was not the same. He would suffer mood swings and behave erratically, completely out of character. He could become aggressive.
There’s a really fantastic film about INXS and Hutchence. It’s called Mystify and it's really worth a watch.
In it, bandmate Tim Farris recalls Hutchence smashing a beautiful acoustic guitar that belonged to Andrew, seemingly just for fun. It was then that he thought to himself:
“Wow, something’s happened to Michael. He just didn’t seem himself at all.”
Kirk Pengilly described the unpredictable changes in his nature to Mystify in 2015 as:
‘virtually bipolar’
An interesting note is that he got massively into the grunge scene, and began trying to steer the band into that direction. It caused a lot of arguments with his bandmates.Grunge is a very different animal to INXS. Was this more evidence of a personality shift?
A doctor testified that losing his sense of smell and taste likely had more of an effect on Michael's psyche than anybody realised - this is common in sufferers of Anosmia.
In short, things spiralled for Michael. His depression got worse, and tensions within the band grew. It didn’t help that INXs started to experience a decline in popularity, which weighed heavily on him.
In 1995, he was prescribed Prozac, a powerful anti depressant. It also has a nasty connotation as a suicide drug. A listed side effect of this ‘antidepresseant’ is suicidal feelings or thoughts.
This is compounded if it's mixed with alcohol, other drugs, or taken improperly - it’s been speculated that Michael was doing all of these.
There was a famous incident where he presented an award to Noel Gallagher at the 1996 Brit Awards. For some reason, Noel took a swipe at him, saying:
“Has-beens shouldn't be presenting awards to gonna-bee’s”
The comment crushed Michael.
In 1996, Michael and Paula Yates - the woman from the interview earlier - had a child together, a little girl named Tiger Lilly.
Their relationship was highly publicized, as Yates had until recently been married to Bob Geldof, with whom she had 3 children.
In 1997, heroin was found in Paula Yates' house. It was a huge public scandal, and ex husband Geldof tried to secure immediate custody of his children with her.
Tiger Lilly was wrapped up in all the turmoil. Paula supposedly tried to leave Michael during all of this. That year, INXS had a tour of Australia, where Michael was expecting a visit from his daughter and Paula’s other kids, with whom he was extremely close.
This was delayed due to problems in the custody case. On the morning of 22nd of November, Michael is known to have made multiple distressed and angry calls to Paula, to an ex partner, and to friends. His ex partner Michelle knocked on his hotel room around 20 minutes after receiving a distressed phone call from him asking her to come over. She got no answer. Later that day, hotel staff entered the room and found Michael.
His cause of death was ruled suicide whilst under the influence of alcohol and other drugs by a NSW coroner. The official toxicology report found traces of Cocaine, Prozac, Keflex, Valium, Codeine and a blood alcohol level of over 0.1%. That's double the drink-driving limit in Australia.
But something even more damning was found in the autopsy. Michael was found to have contusions on both sides of his frontal lobe. This sort of damage is associated with severe head trauma. It can cause anosmia - the loss of smell and taste.
Your frontal lobe is basically the part of the brain that is You. It controls emotional regulation, voluntary muscle movement, speech, social interactions. It gives you your ability to plan and react to things. It’s your sense of judgement. And all this time, Michaels had been damaged.
It's hard to be 100%, but from the sources I have, this damage was not made clear at the time of Michael’s accident. Even he did not fully know what was wrong with his brain.
It was a tragic waste of an amazing person. And one that marked the end of a downwards spiral of a man who was left permanently changed by one act of violence.
Some people debate whether it really was a suicide, or an accident. There was no suicide note, and Michael had ongoing plans with his family and band. Police found nothing suspicious at the scene.
There may not have been a note, but Michael did leave behind some lyrics in the hotel room. And in the context, they’re heart breaking.
"Wouldn't be right to take it
Wouldn't be right laying down
Sick of the dogs outside my window
That's right take a look
New plan with a hook
Stuck into me
All the bitterness
Has started showing
Five years no one hears."
Five years no one hears. It had been 5 years since the attack in Copenhagen. Now this isn’t to say this proves intent - only Michael could truly tell us. But it is chilling and tragic to picture him writing those words in his final moments.
Even worse, his beloved daughter Tiger Lilly was left an orphan less than 3 years later, after Paula Yates died from an accidental heroin overdose. It happened on her other daughter Pixie’s 10th birthday.
I told you this one was a heartbreaker. Goes to show how quickly life can change, and how we need to look after each other.
If you would rather watch these stories than read them, check out my YouTube channel!
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