Michael Hutchence. Largely forgotten?*

I meant Jimmy Page.

 

They are pretty loud but they’re not brickwalled or anything I don’t think. I listen to them on iTunes and they don’t appear too loud but have nothing to compare them to. Loudness doesn’t have a huge affect on the sound of INXS for me anyway. Music with not much distorted guitar etc mainly sounds ok. If it’s a wall of guitar type of thing then the mastering would bother me, like REMs Accelerate, which I just can’t listen to.

This thread has inspired me to go back and listen to Hutchence’s posthumous album again. It’s actually quite good. Parts of Get On The Outside sounds very, very similar to Kids by Robbie Williams and Kylie. Never noticed that until now.

 

Oh, I'd forgotten about that. Well, Hutchence had become tabloid fodder more than rock god by that point.

Listening to their albums on Spotify yesterday and today, because I was always curious about them but never liked the band enough to pull the trigger, I'm struck by how uneven they are (at least on first listen), and also how they got progressively less-interesting and more generic. The early stuff is creative, even if it doesn't work, and it's an interesting spin on New Wave. As they progress, when the hooks come they're much stronger, but the material itself is lyrically and musically more mainstream. And unfortunately apart from Kick there just aren't enough hooks to keep the whole thing going. The Swing is an interesting attempt to do their own Let's Dance, but largely falls flat because the songwriting just ain't there. It did well in America though considering there were no real chart hits from it and fairly limited radio play.

Kick is a different matter, and producer Chris Thomas deserves tons of credit for essentially doing for INXS what Mike Chapman had done for Blondie a decade before - getting them to focus on songwriting discipline and working on the hooks until every track shined. It didn't hurt that he'd produced one of the best rock albums of the decade, Pretenders, whose sound Kick echoes to some degree. Granted I'm more familiar with Kick, but playing thru their albums yesterday it was clear why this was their multi-platinum breakout in America and made them big stars here.

Lead single "Need You Tonight" is essentially son of "What You Need", their first big hit stateside, but the "Mediate" coda elevates it to another level and harks back to some of the more unusual stuff from their earlier records, but with a better hook. It sounds like a #1 record, which it was.

After that it was off to the races in the US, with "Devil Inside", "New Sensation" and big ballad "Never Tear Us Apart" all racking up major singles chart success. The album itself didn't sell as well as you'd expect for something with this many Top 10 hits (four in total, including a #2 and a #3), and I think something another poster up above mentioned might have been a contributing factor:

And there you have it. I think selling him as a hot Jim Morrison for the '80s got the band plenty of attention - especially from women - but I also think it tanked them to some degree among (straight) male rock fans. And that's the crowd that bought albums. They came across as just a little too pretty and too polished to appeal to the trailer trash snapping up Bon Jovi records. Which is a pity, because I far prefer INXS to Bon Jovi, even if Jon seems to be a really nice guy. I always thought Triumph the Insult Comic Dog pretty much nailed it.

 

That's not quite true. In their pre-Collins days they were definitely the darlings of some critics, and they had lots of college fans. The first Collins-led record had their first big US hit, which was mellow but lovely - not critic bait, but nothing that would get them pilloried, either. They got much edgier after that, and both Genesis and Collins racked up a lot of great reviews. I think it was only the run up to Invisible Touch and the fallout from that one, where they were clearly overexposed and smack dab in the middle of a quickly-dated mainstream that Genesis became truly unfashionable.

It didn't help that Collins can be a world-class a-hole and had a motormouth.

I think they were always in a better position to be rehabilitated because Genesis and Collins were big players in the development of the sound of the '80s, for better or worse. That whole gated drum thing dates to Collins working on "Intruder" from Peter Gabriel's 1980 album, and was largely popularized by Phil's own "In The Air Tonight" which - love 'em or hate 'em - is an iconic '80s song and frankly pretty fricking creative and unusual. (And not a fluke - Collins was doing amazing drumming for Eno back in the mid-'70s that sounded like something from the next decade.)

There's not one thing in the repertoire of INXS either that creative or that important. Not a dig, just a fact.

 

Touch sold ~17 million units, many of them on vinyl. Kick sold around 11-15 million, most on CD. So there's undoubtedly more inventory of Touch out there on vinyl.

I'd also argue Kick is a much better album and less annoyingly dated, but that's a separate matter.

 

Maybe...but that clip looks more like a sendup to me than "reverence".

Burn level: Krakatoa.

 

Really interested to know what you thought of Welcome To Wherever You Are. I liked that one a lot at the time, having lost faith with the X album and its singles. I remember it as less mainstream than its predecessors (while still sounding like INXS).

 

Don't Change is such a great song

 

The One Thing

 

The Loved One.

 

While I'd agree that Kick was a definitive late '80s album, calling both Little River Band and Dr. Hook "one hit wonders" is profoundly ignorant. You should really Google discographies before making assertions like that.

Hook scored six US Top 10 singles, during the era where single sales reached their peak. They were also big across Europe and Australia, with 2 Australian #1s and 3 more Top 10 singles, 1 UK #1, 2 #2 and 3 more Top 10 singles. They were big on the continent as well, but Wikipedia doesn't have singles chart placements for them there.

In fact, in terms of singles chart success, they were considerably bigger than INXS in the UK - INXS never had a #1 hit there and indeed only scored a single Top 10 while Hook had six, including a #1 and 2 #2s - and roughly comparable in the US (INXS has a definite edge with 7 Top 10 singles including a #1, #2 and #3, but Hook managed more Top 20 placements and charted over a much longer period).

Likewise, Little River Band were big in the US, with 10 Top 20 hits, including 6 Top 10's with a peak of #3 for "Reminiscing".

I chose to compare INXS to those two bands because I knew their singles chart histories were roughly comparable. And I'd say that their legacy is roughly comparable as well - some fondly-remembered hits, but nothing transformative. And there ain't anything wrong with that.

 

Dr Hook would never sell out Wembley. LRB had hits but they were more like a county fair or a down the bill at outdoor festivals band.

 

Not really a decent burn since the 1975 are operating in the present. One would expect kids to be buying more of their records. It’s like saying that INXS were outselling the Beatles in 1988 so....

I don’t think that clip is a sendup to ridicule Hutchence. It’s meant to ridicule himself just as much. There’s an interview on YouTube’s where he says that.

 

Again, you should Google this stuff before you make these assertions. King had six Top 20 US hits over nearly a decade, including 4 Top 10's and a #1 and a #2. Her album Tapestry is certified Diamond in the US, with 25 million units sold worldwide. Follow up Music couldn't match that success, but is still thought to have moved a couple million units worldwide. And King is a poor comparison point anyhow, since as part of the songwriting team of Goffin & King she wrote songs which have racked up bazillions in sales. Her Troubadour Reunion Tour with James Taylor in 2010 grossed nearly $60 million. Billboard ranked it as the 6th biggest of the year, outgrossing The Eagles, Metallica, Paul McCartney, and Taylor Swift, among others. There's no comparison to INXS to be made - King dwarfs them.

And of course her influence is incalculable - she essentially launched the whole singer/songwriter movement to commercial and critical prominence. When you release the best selling album of all time, music industry bigwigs sit up and take notice.

Morissette's an odd duck, but you can't classify her as a one-hit wonder, either. She may have actually moved more albums than INXS, even though much of her career has been in the post-Napster era, and by the time she hit the singles charts were a pale shadow of their former selves and largely irrelevant. Jagged Little Pill has sold over 33 million copies, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie has moved something like 8 million, and Under Rug Swept over 4 million.

 

INXS were definitely bigger than Frankie Goes to Hollywood since "Relax" was their only big hit in the U.S. But Culture Club broke up in 1986, so of course, INXS were bigger than them in the late '80s. But I wouldn't say INXS were much bigger than Culture Club in the U.S. when Culture Club were in their prime 1982-85.

 

You're a fan. I get that. You're more than entitled. Enjoy.

Ed

 

They were literally called one-hit-wonders, which is patently untrue. Selling out Wembley wasn't one of the criteria expressed.

I'd note though that Hook weren't exactly a stadium rock act and wouldn't be expected to sell out a venue like Wembley, anyhow. So, apples and oranges in that regard. I'd imagine there were fewer fans wanking to pictures of Ray Sawyer as well vs. Michael Hutchence.

Hook were never much of a force on the albums charts, so I'd give that nod to INXS. Of course, the '80s and '90s were a very different era than Hook's '70s heyday - singles sales collapsed in general during the '80s and consumers tended to buy albums more. Radio listenership also declined as the cassette and - later - portable CD penetrated everywhere. And of course MTV played a huge role in promoting the most telegenic bands (or at least the ones who could shoot a great video - ZZ Top for example).

 

Culture Club were enormous here in the US, until they suddenly weren't. 6 Top 10 and 9 Top 20 singles between '83 and '86, including 4 Top 5 singles, a #1 and 2 #2s. 50 million albums sold worldwide, including 7 million in the US, and most of that over the same 4 year period.

They were on an entirely different level than INXS, and helped break the US charts open for a slew of other UK New Romantic and affiliated acts.

 

In Australia Dr Hook could have a 20 Greatest Hits album and no one would ask any questions. They literally had hits here that didn't chart anywhere else but INXS were a much bigger live act.

 

Agreed. CC was a cultural phenomenon too. George stood out from absolutely everyone and made them more marketable then they would have been otherwise. Hutchence was merely a heartthrob with tremendous charisma. Both bands were phenomenal and criminally underrated, though I'd give the edge to CC because they could groove a little deeper than INXS could, IMHO. Still, only CC had anyone like George.

Ed

 

Don't compare INXS to obviously more successful acts (critically, commercially, and in terms of influence) and you won't get any blowback. Make utterly ridiculous assertions, expect some pushback.

And I totally get some of the scathing criticisms of INXS, but in general don't fully agree with them. My overall impression of the band is that they were very talented players and naturally had a good ear for what was interesting (and even tasteful), but that they weren't particularly bright or capable of consistently converting those natural talents into either successful pop songs or into high art. When Chris Thomas whipped them into a hitmaking machine on Kick I think he discovered how to unlock their full potential, but unfortunately as its lackluster followup X proved, Kick probably represented all they were really capable of. And unfortunately when grunge arrived, INXS suddenly sounded ridiculously dated. The market had not only shifted, it had completely rejected the whole paradigm INXS was built around. Their brand of pop was suddenly too dumb for their target middlebrow audience, but not stupid enough for the Bon Jovi audience, leaving them with no audience at all.

I think if something like Kick had come out in '86 from the band, they might have been a much bigger and better-regarded act in the US and UK today. Essentially Kick in '86 and Kick Vol. 2 in '88 or '89 would have been in the middle of the '80s zeitgeist instead of at the tail end of it. Unfortunately, by the time they fully got their pop act together the '80s were in their autumn, leaving them very little time to exploit their sound or their image. We were about to enter the era of the anti-rock star, and INXS were sitting there fronted by the epitome of the '80s rock star. The timing couldn't have been worse.

 

I totally agree. It's such a shame that Culture Club ended on such a whimper in 1986. But Boy George had become addicted to heroin, and he said on Culture Club's "Behind the Music" many years ago that once he and Jon Moss (the drummer) broke up, Culture Club didn't mean anything to him anymore. Boy George's addiction and his lost of interest in CC explain why their material declined so drastically in just a few years. They went from the pretty good "Kissing to be Clever" album to the excellent "Colour By Numbers" album to the horrific "Waking up with the House on Fire" and "From Luxury to Heartache" albums.

 

The self-destruction of Boy George is one of the great tragedies of pop. They had an incredibly broad appeal and could well have been a superstar act into the '90s. Heck, my Great Aunt loved Culture Club songs - her old people AM radio light pop station routinely played them - and teenagers also gobbled them up. And in his prime he gave the best quips during interviews since The Beatles.

Effin heroin.

 

Hard to argue? I haven't seen any evidence he was much influence on anybody at all.

The idea that Mick Jagger was taking notes is ludicrous. He'd already stolen from the best - Tina Turner!

 

Every one of those acts sounds fresher and less (badly) dated today than INXS. In part because they all had better material. The problem with the whole sexy, edgy rock god thing is that it tends to be tied to a very specific era, and quickly ends up looking like Spinal Tap once that era ends.

Also, it just ends up repeating tropes that the Stones established back in the late '60s and early '70s. You're never topping that. I remember thinking that about INXS at the time.

I will say, they fused New Wave and blues-tinged rock better than the Stones ever did. But by this point Mick and the gang were largely a spent creative force and a (killer) oldies act, trading on their own established image. Those acts you listed up above have a discography that beats anything the Stones released after Tattoo You.