Elegantly Wasted – INXS 1997

Before I go further, let me start by saying that the Art-sist-ologer likes INXS more than I do. I am just hitching my popsugar pony to her bandwagon. There has been some familial contention over recent days; I want no beef in my family unless someone is barbecuing it, in which case, medium rare for me please. I was too busy Voguing in fingerless pink lace gloves while simulating masturbation and expressing myself to have paid much attention to the sensually evocative hips of Michael Hutchence. 

In much the same way that the Art-sist-ologer and the Smartarse, due only to their geographic proximity to me as youths, can sing, word perfectly, everything Madonna ever released, I too have an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things INXS. When she wasn’t staring sullenly into space lamenting her meaningless existence, the Art-sist-ologer would take a minute or two to stare sullenly at her bedside stereo while Michael moaned about needing her tonight or tearing her apart. Sufficiently stuffed with postmodern angst, she would go back to staring without a soundtrack…or dying her hair purple.*

Long story short, if you ever lived within the walls of 32 Hilliger Road, you knew all the words to Madonna and INXS as well as The Beatles (Dad), Queen (Motherbear) and Faith no More (The Smartarse). We’re nothing if not steadfastly loyal to our favourite artists. 

Unsurprisingly, I, accompanied by 25% of the population of Australia, watched the recently aired mini-series that retold the story of Australia’s most successful rock band; 6 exceptionally Mullet-ed boys from the Northern Beaches of Sydney who went from singing to pissheads in pubs to filling Wembley with screaming British virgins. As the old adage goes, girls wanted to shag them, blokes wanted to be them. A few Sundays ago, Australians were forced to choose between watching INXS or a dramatisation of events regarding convicted criminal Schapelle Corby. The beautician and the body board didn’t win the ratings that night; Australians still have enough sense to avoid the Murdochisation of their telly and watch some very sexy men shake their hips and play air guitar.

The series itself was just OK; the guy who played Michael was a miniscule spark on the sexual lightening rod that Michael really was. The one playing Kirk Pengilly was downright shameful while the ones playing the Farriss brothers were passable. The girl who played Kylie Minogue was the most convincing of them all. However, for my money, the most impressive performance was that of the wigmaker. Six different mullets, plus the luscious schoolboy locks of the seventies, the hair could have had it’s own series; Never Comb Us A Part

 

I remember exactly where I was when I learned that Michael Hutchence had died. I was in a taxi, weaving from George Street, in the centre of Sydney to my then home in North Paddington, in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. I had taken a rare Saturday night off because that night, I was going to the birthday party of a boy I’d had a crush on for months. The only thing I could think about was scrubbing off the deep fried filth of a busy Saturday lunch at Planet Hollywood and getting gorgeous in the hope of getting some from the Salacious Scorpio.

The taxi driver, with an odour and an accent resplendent with sub continental spice, pointed at the police cars as we drove up New South Head Road. They were parked in front of the Indian Restaurant in Edgecliff where Michael had eaten his last meal.

With no more intensity or emotion than he’d used to ask me where I was going, the driver turned to me and said, “The singer from INXS is dead up there.” I asked him to turn on the radio; we both listened as the entire city interrupted their busy Saturday afternoon of summery Christmas shopping to talk about what was unravelling a few blocks away.

Michael Hutchence died 17 years ago. INXS never really recovered from it, some might say they were over before he did whatever he did to himself that night. 

For many of you, especially if you’re British, Michael Hutchence is most widely remembered as the bloke that shagged Paula Yates while she was still with Sir Bob. He is the drugged-up longhaired Aussie lout who shagged his way through a cast of supermodels before shacking up with the Beatified Boomtown Rat’s wife. You probably didn’t care that much anyway, Michael died just 3 months after Diana; the world was still reeling after the demise of the Queen of Hearts and a best selling single from Elton John.

For the generation of Australians that juggled textbooks and cassette tapes in the nineties, INXS were the sound of our youth. The heady guitar riffs, the sax solos…and Michael… undulating, pouty Sex God Michael. They were the soundtrack of our summers, of our schooldays, of our sadness and our sexual awakening. I actually wonder if there is a person in Australia of my age who cannot sing New Sensation, including the punctual ‘aahs’ between the verses.

Watching this series had a very strange effect on me. Yes, I thought about Michael’s now teenage daughter, what it must be like to grow up without a mummy or a daddy and three sisters named after Strawberry Shortcake Dolls.

More than that, I was sad for me. I remembered those days in the sun. Those days when we didn’t have mobile phones, or emails, or texts instead of talks, or Al Qaida, or Scripted Reality, or Phone Hacking, or Skin Cancer, or Miley Cyrus, or Tony Abbott, or Twerking, or all of the other shit that pisses me off today. 

As I walk around these cobbled streets, uncertain of the future, uncertain of whether my apartment’s ceiling will fall onto my unprotected skull^, uncertain of everything really, Michael’s voice reminds me of a time when I knew nothing, but I wasn’t quite so terrified. I was excited to see how my life would turn out, what would I become, how I would ‘grow up’.

I’m trying very hard to focus on that feeling of excitement, rather than walking the streets expecting to be run over by an errant Peugeot scooter. I’d like to be Elegantly Wasted, not just wasted.

 

*The Art-sist-ologer was a committed disciple of the morose Seattle generation. Her natural propensity for staring at people to better understand their character had finally come into its own as she could now glare with purpose and passion. The irony is she had to give up all that black and purple to take up hot pink and orange singing all the words to Peppa Pig and DJ Lance from Yo Gabba Gabba.

^More to come soon on the subject of Home Shit Home

Comments

[Inez]

Hmmmmm, interesting.

Inez | My Small World