I just Googled the album and stumbled across a 2005 song called "Welcome to Wherever You Are" by Bon Jovi. Shameless.
I could see that from '93 onwards. Very unsure of whether to continue down a new creative direction or return to their signature sound, and not really committing to either fully. They were such a great band that I think there's some really enjoyable stuff on the last two albums (plus "Strangest Party"), but yeah, both are somewhat unsure records.
When I was younger I thought that kind of stuff was weird, but I've since realized there's so many of those instances. Hell, a band I really like put out a song called "Elegantly Wasted" a couple years ago...I chuckled for a moment, but of course the song is entirely different in every way. Like notes and chord progressions, there's only so many snappy word combinations for song titles.
There are some moments in this album that definitely invoke The Beatles, or at least deserve to be called “Beatle-esque”. The Indian sounds in the opening track Questions, the moment in Not Enough Time when the string section peaks and then transitions is utterly Fab Four, and then a track like Baby Don’t Cry. They definitely had some Beatles in mind while making this album.
I remember hearing about this years ago. The documentary was kinda old news about this for me. Was living in Europe about the time Elegantly Wasted came out, and I think some news about it was broadcast then on some Eastern Europe music station I was watching a lot of at the time.
I was a pretty big INXS fan but I don't recall learning about Michael's head injury until I read the Anthony Bozza book in 2005 or so.
So sad. I was shocked when I heard this in the Mystify doc. So young too. A real sliding doors moment
Definitely. I only heard about it the first time during the documentary, and I was pretty shocked to be honest. I couldn't believe it had never made the news.... if he had been photographed with a new model it would have made the bloody news
It was in the UK news. I remember hearing about his altercation with the cabbie and that he got hurt but not the full extent of it.
Welcome To Wherever You Are. One of the greatest records ever made and easily the best record by INXS. By the time this was released, grunge/alternative had taken over in a big way and pretty much wiped the slate clean for the music world, especially with musical acts/genres that dominated the late 80s, which included INXS. It's well documented that most (but not all) artists tend to get tied to the decade they were initially popular in only to see their fame/career fade away with the turn of the new decade mainly due to the next big thing now dominating the scene. When grunge/alternative fully kicked in, "old" artists that clearly didn't fit either were outright caught in the wake and washed away or had to change/adapt their sound to stay trendy with the current hot acts on the scene. When X and Live Baby Live came and went, I thought INXS were over. Both records (especially LBL) were either seen as a holding pattern or a dead end. What else could the band do at this point? U2 came out with Achtung Baby and it established them into a new direction with that groundbreaking album which renewed/increased their popularity and kept them current with the new music scene. That album along with Nirvana's Nevermind, Pearl Jam's Ten, and Faith No More's Angel Dust were constantly in rotation on my stereo and bands like INXS were becoming a distant memory to me except for whenever I felt like listening to the early albums. I started hearing around early Summer 1992 that INXS was putting out the followup to X and my first thought was that if I get around to hearing it when it comes out, then I will. But the early buzz to get into anything new from INXS was put on the back burner in general while I focused on the music scene currently going on. Then by chance, I think I saw a MTV Week In Rock segment at the time where Kirk and Tim were promoting the upcoming album and the first single, "Heaven Sent". They discussed how the record was made including talking about how Michael's vocals were being done for the record. When they mentioned that Michael sang his vocals through a walkman for the song, along with showing a sample of the music video, that immediately got my attention because "Heaven Sent" gave off this nice raw energy/vibe with some bite to it that I never heard from the band before. They went on to discuss the record and then Kirk broke out the packaging of the record in a digipak case and was showing off the case and artwork which I thought was pretty cool since at the time, 99% of CDs came in the standard plastic jewel case. Not too long after, "Heaven Sent" started getting a lot of heavy play on radio/MTV. This was all enough for me to go out and buy the single to "Heaven Sent". But then I quickly found out that there was no physical single for the song in America (airplay only) which only then got me really hungry to get the new album because this was the first time in years I was eagerly looking forward to a new INXS album and wonder how it would sound like because "Heaven Sent" already gave me so much hope that the rest of the record was going to be at least that good. Release day came and I bought the album. Stuck it into the CD player and right away when the horn came on for "Questions" I was like, "this should be interesting". What an understatement. Spent the next hour just being floored with one song after another unfolding in sequence while in my head I'm trying to comprehend that this is the same band that came up with "The One Thing" a decade ago (since this was 1992 at the time) and dance/rock albums like Kick. By the time "Men And Women" faded out of the speakers, I remember just standing there absolutely gobsmacked over what I just heard. Sat back down and played it another few times while being overwhelmed by how much the band had progressed from a weak album like X. It's almost like the band itself were trying very very hard to not make a Kick Pt. 3 and somehow in the process came up with their own Sgt. Pepper. Automatically after those first few listens, I declared it their best album which still stands to this day. In fact, I thought it was one of the best albums I've heard in years. Over the decades, it's solidly became one of the greatest records of all time because of the massively successful left turn the band made in trying to break away from the 80s image they were now obviously getting away from in the 90s and I personally felt between that and the extreme quality of this album gave the other albums currently out at the time (including Achtung Baby) a big run for their money in terms of sound and structure along with the band coming up with the finest crafted set of songs in their career. This album is considered essential listening to anybody who is into music. The album easily earns 10 stars in a 5 star rating.
Welcome To Wherever You Are is INXS' masterpiece and is one of the top 5 best albums of all time. It was the album they were waiting to make. It was the album they desperately needed to make. And they climbed to the top of the mountain and made it. You simply take all the elements from the past, present and future that made INXS who they were and what they would become and mix them together and you get WTWYA. This album is the most adventurous, thought-provoking, creative, original, brazen, dazzling & stunning album of their career. It's essentially paradise for hard-core fans (and maybe even casual fans?), since it contains just about everything you'd want from an INXS album and then some. The only downside was INXS had now finally reached a creative zenith that they would never top (though, the follow-up, FM, DH is a close 2nd). I vividly remember buying this on cassette the day it was released in August 1992, after hearing/watching the Heaven Sent video on MuchMusic (Canadian music video channel) a few weeks before and being absolutely compelled by the song, video and music of INXS. The power of their music just hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew from that moment forward, that INXS would become my favourite band of all time...and I was correct. And I'm also proud of the fact that this era was when I started getting into INXS, despite the fact that a significant chunk of their fanbase were amazingly about to move on. And since then, it's been an obsession that literally hasn't stopped for almost 29 years. I couldn't be more thrilled to discuss this phenomenal album. So let's get to it...
The vast majority of shows on the Get Out Of The House tour (which hit Australia, North America, the UK/Europe and ran from April-July 1993) were booked in 1,000-1,500 club/small theatre venues. And almost all of the dates were under-booked on purpose. In fact, the UK show venues weren't even announced until the day of the shows, even though these particular concert dates already went on sale. The St. Andrew's Hall show in your market sold out in less than 5 minutes... That's a very good question. And it ties into my above response. And the answer is, depending on the market in question and what the ticket prices would've been scaled to, yes AND no. The following '93-'94 Dirty Honeymoon tour is when INXS finally met demand during this era. Demand dropped off from $200,000 per night during the '87-'88 Kick/Calling All Nations & '90-'91 X tours, to about $80,000 per night on the DH tour. This is because WTWYA & FM, DH's combined sales, in most comparisons, were around 40% of what Kick and X sold during their initial charts runs when they hit these same markets. However, interestingly enough, for the DH tour, INXS were mostly booked into many of the same arenas/amphitheaters that they were also headlining at their peak between 1988-1991. Only in most cases, ticket prices were $10-$12 to help fill them up. So considering WTWYA & FM, DH's album sales coupled with the DH tour's nightly average, if INXS had toured WTWYA proper in 1992-1993, they would've been grossing somewhere around $50,000-70,000 per night instead. This is why it sometimes helps to under-book/build demand and wait...
I'm pretty sure in the Mystify doc, friends confirmed that Michael did start using harder drugs (that he hadn't used before) to cope with the accident's physical & psychological affects. But, the doc also includes a short 1993 interview clip where he states that he was, "fine now", implying he gained both his senses back...
What a different world it was before the Internet. These days Michael's accident would have been big news online.
Welcome to Wherever You Are: This is a desert island disc, hands down and gets played to this very day. I remember getting the cassette in the fall of '92 and at that point, Not Enough Time and Beautiful Girl were mainstays on the radio in my neck of the woods. It was quite an experience listening to the album proper. From the opening of Questions to the closing track of Men and Women, I feel in love with the album. The band broke away from the sameness on X and created this masterpiece. I felt the band had been reinvented, rejuvenated . It's one of those albums that I just have to listen to all the way through and the fact the songs segue with each other, just cements that. I did get the CD the following year along with Live Baby Live, mostly due to the fact both of were pilled up in the CD cutout bin. Being the money strapped teenager, I took advantage of it. As for the artwork and packaging, I do recall folding down the Eco-pak longbox into the clamshell. Wasn't a real fan of it. I had issues with opening the clamshell thanks to the 'window' on the side getting stuck. I did love the artwork, the cover not so much. Really wished they used the band photo as it really does sell the album's title. Anyway, this is a great album, front to back and a requisite for anyone getting into the band. Oh, I gotta point out that this one the few albums I own on multiple formats: Cassette, LP, CD, & the ill-fated Digital Compact Cassette.
Welcome to Wherever You Are This is INXS' masterpiece. I've probably preempted in previous comments, but by the X album I felt they were overblown and caricaturish. I has started at University and was listening to an explosion of alternative music (Grunge was not the only alternative music on offer - Pixies, Ride, My Bloody Valentine, etc). My introduction to WTWYA was hearing Baby Don't Cry on someone's radio and loving the chorus, but they didn't back announce. This is pre-Internet where you had to live with not knowing stuff! Triple M in Sydney must've been giving it rotation because I heard it a few times before I found out it was...INXS?! The whole album felt like a band re-energised. I loved the vocal treatments, loved the production, it rocked, it all came together for them here. An absolute cracker. Smart songwriting, great production details, great sequencing, amazing singing. Far out. Looking forward to everyone's take on individual songs. Feels like I'm not the one one who puts this as one of the all-time great records by anyone. The Concert for Life Tried to Google this but there isn't much out there, which is surprising, because in Australia this show was an absolute PR disaster. Obviously, internationally a whole lot of things could have explained their inability to stay huge, but I really think this event damaged them in Australia. In the absence of google, this is what I remember of the word on the street: The show itself also featured Crowded house and few other big Australian acts. It was ostensibly a charity gig to raise money for Sydney Children's hospital, but INXS were seen to be on a huge star trip that seemed not just to negate, but to actively mock, the charity status of the show. All these are of course allegations, but the mud stuck. Crowded House went public and said INXS' backstage stuff was all cordoned off and isolated and that they were 'untouchable'. There was a million dollar light-show for a gig whose curfew was not long after sundown. A full orchestra was employed and paid for to perform on just 4 of the band's songs. All of which was seen as, effectively, taking money from the hands of sick kiddies. In the few interviews I've read about it, the band have never really been able to defend it. They point to the amount of money that was raised, but the whole thing was tone deaf from a PR point of view. The press (including the oft-mentioned Molly Meldrum) savaged them. Mainstream press too; it was front-page stuff. Add this to the tall poppy syndrome common in Australia (I'm sure i've talked about this factor in previous posts) and it was a nightmare for them. I really do think it affected album sales, and the 'back to basics' small venue tour - rather than a deliberate change of vibe - was seen as them being on the wane and having their tail between their legs after the Concert for Life To me, their status in Australia really changed after this. They'd transgressed. The unforgivable sin: they'd gone international and were too big for their boots. But what an album!
Well, that's basically the Australian press' version of The Concert For (Strife) Life. However, if you get a chance to read Story To Story: The Official Autobiography - in particular, chapter 15 - The Tallest Poppy Must Be Shorn, please do. Because it covers this event in much more accurate terms...
Will do. I'd like to read more about it because, as I said, the bad press from it feels very much like the dominant and lasting narrative.
Questions I was first introduced to this album by someone on the forum .... As I have stated through the thread, although I like the Kick album, I had pretty much moved on from the band by the time Kick came out, and to be honest, until I was thinking about doing this thread, I hadn't heard any of the post Kick albums. I wish I could remember who it was that said I really needed to hear this album ... if you're reading this, remind me, and thanks. To say I was surprised when this opening track started would be somewhat of an understatement .... I was intrigued instantly, because, of course, this track is very different to anything in the Inxs catalog up to this point. What is even more interesting to me as we go through the albums chronologically, is with the last two very safe, and somewhat disappointing albums (I certainly don't think they are write offs, just disappointing) it seems like the last thing we would expect here would be an eastern themed melody and the excellent percussion .... Tabla? The thing that had always appealed to me about Inxs's earlier, pre-mega fame music, was the explorative nature of their music. Sure it was always based in somewhat pop music, but they were always exploring and finding new ways to express, or at least frame their music, and that appealed to me a lot, and the pitfalls for me in the last couple of albums was the seemingly complete abandonment of that spirit of exploration. So as soon as this song started it grabbed my attention. We open with this Middle Eastern, or Indian, I am not sure which, identifying all the instruments of the world is certainly not my strong point, wind instrument, and it is also playing a traditional type melodic theme. So often western musicians use these kinds of instruments, and just play western tunes on them, and there is nothing wrong with that, but this sounds pretty authentic, and that's a pretty solid way to start us off. So we get this solo opening theme, and then burst into this rhythmic section and it all sounds so authentic and it is really very engaging. We have some sound effects, subtly floating in the mix and we move into the vocal. How do you know when it's time for you to go How can you stop when you don't know how to start How can you go back when you don't know why you're here How can you see when your eyes begin to fade How will you hear when you've heard it all before How do you do all the things you want to do How much can you take when you've taken all you can How can you act when you've never seen the script How can you choose when you don't know which is right How far can you go if you've been there before How can you shine if you've never seen the sun How does a child become a man without a child How can you heal someone that doesn't want to heal Questions lyrics © Chardonnay Investments Ltd., Inxs Publishing Pty. Ltd. So the song is aptly named Questions, because it is literally a set of somewhat profound questions. I believe this is Andrew Farris writing solo, and if anyone knows I would be interested in what methodology was used to construct this. Is it something Andrew put together on his own and then the guys embellished it? Anyway, The vocal comes in effected and somewhat distant, and I assume Kirk is playing those subtle and perfectly measured horn notes. They are very simple, but so perfect for the feel of the song. After the last line we get a series of synth chords, that gently wash across the speakers. The song makes this smooth and sweet transition from the east to the west, and the subtlety of the arrangement and mix amplifies this track for me. This isn't the band's best song ever or anything, but it is an incredibly effective way to open the album..... possibly the most effective album opening in the band's career. Questions comes across purely as an intro, certainly it is a track on the album, but it really works, for me at least, as an atmospheric intro, rather than a full blown song. The way it is recorded, and structured shows a restraint rarely seen in pop music, and it really makes the opening of this album pretty special, in my mind at least. I'm left with this feeling of wondering where the band are going here, because this is just so different to what one would expect, that one can't help but be somewhat taken by surprise and filled with expectation all at the same time.
There is a version of this on youtube that says it is the extended vocals mix, but it sounds like it is just an extended edit that someone has put together themselves.
Questions 5/5. A perfect song to open the album which breaks away from the past. No crashing guitar chords, no funky beat. After a series of a straight-forward INXS albums (yet excellent), the band I once loved was back. Remember listening to this when it came out and feeling a bit bliss while walking around London, where I lived, then as it kicks into Heaven Sent... Thought to myself, yes, they saved themselves.
The album version has a smash-cut edit right into Heaven Sent. A full length instrumental version of the track was later released as a Bside. Some folks splice the two together to make an “extended edit” of the track for their own enjoyment. Then on the 2002 reissue there is a full-length version of Questions with entirely different lyrics, called “The Answer”. Of course.
