Heart Of Glass, the fourth single (following Picture This, I’m Gonna Love You Too and Hanging On The Telephone) from Parallel Lines (which I wrote about here), was released on 27th January 1979 in the UK. Recorded at The Record Plant in New York during June 1977, it was written by Chris Stein & Debbie Harry and produced by Mike Chapman.
Heart Of Glass broke Blondie worldwide and was a huge hit for them. Their first UK and US number 1, it also hit the top spot in Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Switzerland as well as making the Top 10 in Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa and Sweden. In the Year End charts, it was number 1 in New Zealand, number 2 in Canada and the UK and number 3 in Australia (and ranked 32nd in the UK chart for the whole of the 1970s). It has sold over 3.5m copies to date and was certified Gold in France, Germany and the US, Platinum in the UK and 2xPlatinum in Canada.
The basis of the song, then known as Once I Had A Love, was written by Debbie Harry & Chris Stein between 1974 and 1975. “[It] was one of the first songs Blondie wrote,” Debbie told Dave Simpson of The Guardian in April 2013, “but it was years before we recorded it properly. We’d tried it as a ballad, as reggae, but it never quite worked.” As work progressed on Parallel Lines, producer Mike Chapman “asked us to play all the songs we had. Sheepishly, we said, “Well, there is this old one.” Chapman liked it (“he thought it was very pretty,” said Debbie) and the band started to work on it.
Chapman credits Debbie with giving it a more disco twist, she says he convinced her and Stein of it. In an interview with the NME (dated 4th February 1978), Debbie mentioned she liked Giorgio Moroder’s disco work - “It’s commercial, but it's good, it says something, that's the kind of stuff that I want to do” - and Blondie covered I Feel Love (written by Moroder and Donna Summer) at a benefit for Johnny Blitz in New York on 7th May 1978.
“The boys in the band had got their hands on a new toy,”
Debbie told The Guardian. Stein and keyboardist
Jimmy Destri often visited a music shop on 47th Street in Manhattan and had picked
up a Roland CR-78 drum machine. “They
came back with this little rhythm box,” Harry said, “which went 'tikka tikka
tikka'.” Mike Chapman heard them
experimenting with it, liked the sound and decided to build the song around
it. The CR-78 was first introduced in
1978 and Heart Of Glass was one of the first uses of it in popular music (it
was also unusual at the time for a rock band to use a drum machine). The decision was made to combine it with Clem
Burke’s live drumming and the machine was also used to send a trigger pulse to the
early synthesisers Destri used, which became a distinctive electronic/synth
element of the song.
“The lyrics weren’t about anyone, they were just a plaintive
moan about lost love,” Debbie told The Guardian. “I was tired of hearing girls singers write
or sing about being beaten by love,” she told Q. “So I said, well listen, there are also a lot
of girls who just walk away.”
Heart Of Glass was originally released as a 12” single in a
5:50 version but there were objections from US radio stations to the “pain in
the ass” lyric, which the 7” version cut down on. “At first,” Debbie told The Guardian, “the
song kept saying: 'Once I had a love, it was a gas. Soon turned out, it was a
pain in the ass.' We couldn't keep
saying that, so we came up with: 'Soon turned out, had a heart of glass.' We kept one 'pain in the ass' in - and the
BBC bleeped it out for radio.”
As well as being a hit, the song created some controversy
because of its disco sound and Blondie, at the forefront of New York’s growing new wave music scene,
were accused of selling out. “People got
nervous and angry about us bringing different influences into rock,” Debbie
told The Guardian. “Although we'd
covered Lady Marmalade and I Feel Love at gigs, lots of people were mad at us
for 'going disco' with Heart of Glass.” Stein
said, “As far as I was concerned, disco was part of R&B, which I'd always
liked. The Ramones went on about us "going disco", but it was
tongue-in-cheek. They were our friends.”
Although it includes a shot of the legendary nightclub Studio 54, the
video - directed by Stanley Dorfman - was filmed in “a short-lived club called
the Copa or something,” said Stein.
Opening with footage of a nighttime New York, it then becomes a performance
piece, focussing on Debbie (often with that wonderful disinterested expression
she has) but also showing a lot of the band, especially in the wide shots. “I wanted to dance around,” she told The
Guardian, “but they told us to remain static, while the cameras moved around. God only knows why. Maybe we were too clumsy.”
Her dress was designed by her friend Stephen Sprouse, while she created the bands
T-shirts. “Everyone says I look iconic
and in control,” she said, “but I prefer our other videos.”
The song was issued as a single both as a 7” (backed with
Rifle Range (Stein, Ronnie Toast) in the UK and 11:59 (Destri) in the US) and
12” (Rifle Range again and the Heart Of Glass instrumental in the UK,
while the US version only included the instrumental).
Growing up in the 70s, I was a big fan (and avid reader) of
Look-In magazine (I wrote about it here), published by Independent Television
Publications Ltd and subtitled ‘The Junior TV Times’. Back then, you have to remember, there was no
Internet so everything you knew about TV shows, music and films came from
whatever was on the news - but Look-In changed that. Designed and written for kids, it featured
major film and pop stars, sports people and TV stars of the day, along with
comic strips of popular shows and occasional behind the scenes articles. I loved it.
Back in 1977 and 1978, a lot of us had gone Star Wars mad and
the clamour for information and memorabilia was incredible. We had the Marvel comics, of course (which I wrote about here) and the Collectors Edition but otherwise, there wasn’t a great
deal. Thankfully, my favourite magazine
was on hand to help out and Look-In became, in 1978, a terrific resource for
Star Wars. The film appeared a lot
within the magazine as the year went on and made the cover three times.
It’s first cover appearance was No. 1 1978 (w/e 31st December 1977) and the issue included an article, a fantastic centrespread poster and a competition to win 25 sets of albums and t-shirts.
Mark Hamill took to the cover, along with Donna Summer, in
No. 6 (w/e 4th February 1978). The issue
included a feature on Stewpot’s Newsdesk (“Letraset Star Buys” about the
transfers and stationery, which I wrote about here), a feature on Mark Hamill
and the centrespread poster featured two pictures of him, in his flight suit
and on Tatooine. Also of interest to me,
there was a poster of Lee Majors on the back cover.
The third appearance, in No. 11 (w/e 11th March 1978), came
complete with a free gift (“2 Star Wars Letraset Transfers”) and an advert on
TV. In addition, there was a poster of
Han and Chewie on the inside cover and Gerry Anderson wrote about the film in his
weekly column (“I can honestly say that I wish I had been the one who made it!”)
The full set (curiously, no sign of Han Solo...) pic courtesy of action-transfers.com
Look-In magazine was launched on 9th January 1971 and in addition to the weekly issues published twenty annuals (dated between 1971 and 1990) and a Summer Special each year. The final issue appeared on 12th March 1994.
Denis was the first single (except in Japan) from Blondie’s second album, Plastic Letters and was released on 18th February 1978. Recorded at Plaza Sound Studio in New York between June and July 1977, it was written by Neil Levenson and produced by Richard Gottehrer.
Denis was a cover of the 1963 hit by Randy & The Rainbows, written by Neil Levenson about his childhood friend, Denise Lefrak. The Blondie version, changing the name and sex, was the single that effectively broke the band into the international market. It reached number 2 in the UK Top 10 - held off the top spot over four weeks by Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights and Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs by Brian & Michael - staying on the charts for a total of fourteen weeks. It was number 1 in Belgium and the Netherlands, Top 10 in Germany and Austria and Top 20 in Australia and Sweden. It was the only single release from the album in the US and never officially charted.
As well as Debbie Harry (vocals), Jimmy Destri (keyboards), Chris Stein (guitar) and Clem Burke (drums), Frank Infante (guitar) and Nigel Harrison (bass) played on the track although they weren’t officially members of the band at the time.
The single was issued in both 7” and 12” formats and they shared the same b-sides - Contact in Red Square (Destri) from Plastic Letters and Kung-Fu Girls (Destri/Harry/Gary Valentine) from Blondie (their debut album). Plastic Letters was Gottehrer's second and final album with the band and recorded under their original label - Private Stock Records - but picked up by Chrysalis Records for release. Chrysalis' main office was in England and they understood the international potential for the band, promoting the album and singles extensively throughout Europe and Asia, the plan being to develop overseas markets before the US one. It was a ploy that ended up working very well.
Blondie at the time (from left) - Jimmy Destri, Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, Clem Burke
As well as changing the gender and singing from a different viewpoint, the song also includes a section where Debbie Harry sings in French. As Richard Gottehrer wrote in the liner notes for the 2001 re-issue, “Her phrasing aside, it felt great and sounded amazing. When Chrysalis took over, I was asked by Terry Ellis [the boss] to go back and re-record the French section with a proper translation. We tried, but there was just too much magic in the mix, so Denis was released as-is.” This second version was released as a bonus track on the 1994 re-issue of the album.
The video, though it’s a performance piece and you do occasionally see the other members of the band, focuses heavily on Debbie Harry and she looks fantastic - perfect make-up, that hair, the look, a tuxedo and a swimsuit. My crush had begun…
I'm pleased to announce that my new novella Polly will be published on 30th November by Stormblade Productions, with an online Facebook launch party to be hosted that day by Carrie Buchanan between 8pm and 10pm. You can find the launch here.
Leaving her cheating husband and hollow marriage behind, Polly goes to Paris to visit a city she’s always wanted to see and open the next chapter in her life. The City Of Love is everything she wanted it to be and even more - the grandeur of the architecture, the Seine, the people, the atmosphere. This could be the start of something special, something new.
But why did she keep running into the strange man she met on the plane, the one she christened Mr Creepy because his smile made her skin crawl? Perhaps it was just her imagination, perhaps it was paranoia but still…
Quickly making new friends - an American called Katrina and a waiter called Francois - she hoped to start again in a city that didn’t know her and never mind their melodramatic stories of a ‘necktie murderer’ stalking the backstreets of Paris.
What could possibly go wrong?
This all began with a Facebook message, in August 2015, from Neil Buchanan at Stormblade Productions asking if I’d like to write something for him. Since I’d never had an audio book of my work done before, I readily agreed and the first idea came to me in late August, as I was driving and the INXS song New Sensation came on the stereo. I’d already decided I was going to have a female protagonist (Carrie Buchanan narrates the Stormblade audio and it made sense to utilise a terrific female voice actor as much as possible) and my mind made the link that a new sensation could be a bloke or a destination.
I originally thought it’d be horror (since that’s my default genre) but the tone shifted as I worked on the notes (and my novella Drive, a dark thriller, began attracting attention). I had most of the story in my head to pitch it to Neil and Carrie at FantasyCon that October and, buoyed by the fact they liked it, began writing in November.
I had trouble with the original ending (which was a lot darker than it is now) and talked it through with my friend Sue Moorcroft at one of our regular Trading Post meet-ups but otherwise it flowed well, with the first draft written in little over a month. After taking a fortnight off, I wrote the second draft, sent it to my pre-readers (Kim Talbot Hoelzli, David Roberts and Sue) and using their notes, wrote the third draft in January 2016.
The bulk of the story takes place in the Latin Quarter of Paris, somewhere I’d wanted to visit since my teens (like Polly). I was lucky enough to travel there several times on business, where the local manager of our company delighted in showing me around his wonderful city, pointing out places of interest and feeding us in fine restaurants. On one occasion, I got to walk alongside the Seine to Notre Dame, taking lots of pictures. listening to the people and music around me and realised the Left Bank was everything I had always hoped it would be.
Finally, I was able to work my love for The 400 Blows into the story. Polly stays in L’Hotel Truffaut (named for Francois, the director) and all the names come from either the actors or the characters in the film. The one exception is the disco where Polly meets Manu – another favourite film of mine is Pauline a la Plage, directed by Eric Rohmer, so he lent his name to Club Eric.
In real life, Paris was everything I wanted it to be and more - as beautiful and grimy as London can be, with fantastic architecture and a wonderful atmosphere - and I had a lot of fun revisiting it with Polly.
The Metro at Saint-Michel, Paris - May 2012
A Bouquiniste, alongside the Seine, with Notre Dame in the background - May 2012
The plane hadn’t stopped before
the first telephones began chiming with incoming messages and passengers got to
their feet to pull their belongings from the overhead lockers. Nobody had sat between Polly and the man and
she’d noticed him giving her furtive looks throughout the flight, mainly at her
legs. Horrible creepy man.
She waited until he got up and
retrieved his laptop case and a small rucksack before she moved across the
seats. He looked down and gave her a
sour smile. “Enjoy Paris,” he said.
“I’ll enjoy my romantic
weekend,” she said.
“I’m sure you will,” he said and
pushed into the line of people.
Polly watched until he’d left
the plane before she stood and waited for someone to let her into the queue.
She went through passport control quickly, the immigration staff apparently uninterested by blonde English women. The man behind the counter quickly checked her photograph then handed the document back with a curt, “Thank you.” “Merci,” she said and offered him a bright smile. His expression didn’t change. Charles DeGaulle airport was light and airy, with high ceilings, plenty of glass and pale marbled floors. It wasn’t overcrowded and Polly allowed herself to be carried along with the knot of fellow passengers to Arrivals. Some bags had already come onto the carousels and she stood to one side, trying to spot Mr Creepy but he was nowhere to be seen. Ahead, through the windows, she could see roads and car-parks and the sun struggling to break through the clouds. After she got her case, Polly made her way to the entrance, checking signs and trying to read the language rather than look at the symbols. She passed a couple of small cafes, the smell of fresh coffee intoxicating. Further on was a big restaurant, surprisingly full and kids dragged their parents into a McDonalds franchise next door. Between the two was a toilet and she went in, relieved herself, washed her hands and stared in the mirror. The forty-four-year-old Polly Harper who stared back looked better than she’d expected. Yes there were perhaps a few too many laugh lines around her mouth and eyes but they added to her, she’d earned and wore them well. Her straight blonde hair was cut to her shoulders and looked good, the fringe covering most of her forehead. She had a narrow nose, blue eyes that seemed darker in winter than summer and thin lips, none of which she particularly liked but all of which made her Polly. She’d never really considered herself pretty but now, looking at herself in the mirror and disconcerted by the vaguely haunted look in her eyes, she realised she would have to or else she’d crumble. What she’d discovered at home, what she’d walked in on, didn’t reduce her - if that was the view she took, she was lost. No, she was as pretty as she’d ever been, if she wasn’t prettier than she was yesterday or the day before that and she needed to keep that in the forefront of her mind, to try and drive away the haunted look. She saw the girl, her eyes large with surprise and perhaps fear. She saw Dale’s hands all over her tits and felt a shiver run down her spine - no, don’t think about it. It can’t be changed, now is the time to move forward. Think ahead, think positive. She was here in Paris, so what if she was on her own, she might have been in Barcelona now with a husband she didn’t know was cheating on her. Polly ordered a coffee from a busy stand near the main entrance. Next to it was a newsagent and she glanced at the headlines as she waited for her Americano to cool. The police, apparently, were no nearer to finding out the identity of the so-called Necktie Murderer, having just released a suspect. She blew on the coffee and took a sip - strong and rich, just as she liked it. Now what? She hadn’t planned beyond this point and couldn’t decide between catching a train into the city, which would be more glamorous or a taxi, which would be more direct. She looked up as Mr Creepy came out of the toilet, stopped by the door and used his handkerchief to wipe the corners of his mouth. Surprised, Polly stepped back behind a pillar and counted to five, then peeped around. He was looking in the opposite direction, towards the signs for the train station and that made up her mind on how to get into the city. Mr Creepy turned slowly and locked eyes with her. A small smile played at the corners of his lips and he nodded. “I see you,” he mouthed. Startled, it felt like his words had pulled the oxygen from her lungs as her heart seemed to thud against her ribs. She slipped behind the pillar again and rested her head against it, her mouth suddenly dry, the only sound the rushing blood in her ears. Had he really mouthed that? Perhaps he was trying to be flirty, a kind of “peekaboo, I see you” and not something sinister, but it hadn’t felt like that. “You’re being paranoid,” she said out loud as if making a sound would confirm it. Nobody paid her any attention, which didn’t help. Not wanting to see what Mr Creepy was doing - if he suddenly appeared around the pillar, with that little half-smile, Polly was convinced she’d scream - she grabbed her case and made for the main doors, trying to lose herself in the gaggle of people there. She didn’t turn, didn’t pause, just barged her way through and out into the cool morning air. A few people were standing at the taxi rank but there were more vehicles than passengers, so she stopped by the drivers door window of the first unoccupied one. “Are you free?” she asked the driver, a huge black man who spilled over his seat onto the centre console. The driver nodded and smiled. His left canine was capped in silver. “Oui, je suis entrer.” “Merci,” she said and got into the back, sitting behind him. As he pulled into the traffic, shouting heartily at a bus that wouldn’t let him by, Polly risked a glance behind but couldn’t see Mr Creepy. She took a deep breath, willing her heart rate to slow down.
As hard as it may be for people (such as Dude) to believe these days, in the not-so-distant past, once a film had left the cinema that was the last most of us saw of it until it turned up on TV. In the early 80s, video recorders were starting to become affordable (ish) and some of my friends had them (big old top-loader machines, some of them Betamax system), but most didn’t (including me).
Although I was a big fan even then, I’d only seen Star Wars a few times - the original release in 1978 (at least twice, if memory serves), the re-release in 1979 and then again as part of a double bill with The Empire Strikes Back in late 1980 (at Corby cinema) - and I wanted to see it again.
I finally got my chance in 1982, when ITV premiered it on Sunday 24th October 1982, a good four months before it hit network television in the US on 26th February 1984, though it had already been shown on pay-per-view channels there. Tony Crawley, in his March 1982 Starburst magazine column, reported the news of the purchase but pointed out George Lucas wasn’t pleased - Lucas owned the TV rights to the sequels but distributor Twentieth Centry Fox owned Star Wars. Sid Ganis, Lucasfilm’s spokesman, was quoted as saying “If it were up to Lucasfilm we wouldn’t sell Star Wars to TV” as they felt “there is considerable theatrical life in the film. And that’s why Lucasfilm will not sell the TV rights of The Empire Strikes Back or Revenge of the Jedi.” Jedi, under its original title, had begun filming in January 1982. Lucas, Crawley pointed out, took the view that if Disney had been so quick to sell films to television rather than reissue them at cinemas, Disneyland would never have been built.
Even so, I was well chuffed and hatched a plan (we might not have had a video but I owned a tape recorder with a hand-held microphone) - if I couldn’t record the images, I could record the soundtrack! It was an idea of utter genius, something only a Star Wars-mad 13 year old could come up with.
The TV Times magazine for that week made a big deal of their film premiere and Star Wars was the cover story. "The Force Comes To ITV", it crowed, "Star Wars Sunday" (it also mentions “Channel 4 is coming” and that there were “5 Ford Sierras to be won”). Although the gang were all present - Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, the droids and Darth Vader, towering over them all holding two lightsabers - the image was taken from a poster for The Empire Strikes Back (shown left) with the non-New Hope elements taken out.
Coverage started with a double-page comic strip by Martin Asbury (who also drew the Garth strip in the Daily Mirror and was a key artist for Look-In magazine, which I wrote about here), showing how the Rebels got the Death Star plans to Princess Leia (not apparently read by the writers of Rogue One). There were two articles - “Unveiled: The most famous faceless men of films” about Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker and Peter Mayhew, whilst “’I’m a female Woody Allen,’ says Princess Carrie” is an interview with Carrie Fisher - a competition to win a host of Palitoy products and resident critic David Quinlan’s brief review, in which he writes “it’s a lot of fun” but compares it to a pantomime.
My tape (note the Topps card cover) which I haven't listened to in years
At 7.15, I settled in front of the TV with my trusty tape recorder, reminding my sister Tracy to be quiet and stressing to Mum & Dad that if they needed to come into the living room, could they please do so quietly. The film started, I pressed record and then stage one of my plan came undone - I was using a Winfield C60 cassette, giving me one-hour recording time with the necessary tape-flip midway through and it just wasn’t enough. Yes, I should have realised before (I'd suggest it was a schoolboy error but, then, I was a schoolboy), but in the excitement it just didn't occur to me. The film, with ads, was due to finish at 9.30 so I filled one side of the tape and then gave up, content to just watch. Yes, it was a pan-and-scan version (apart from at the cinema, I wouldn’t see it in widescreen again until the one of the 90s VHS re-issues, when it was a revelation how much visual information was lost) and didn’t have a stereo soundtrack but it was still as exciting and gripping and utterly thrilling as I remembered. As I wrote in my diary entry for that day, “it was ace” and I just wanted to see it again, as soon as possible.
The film rights, negotiated by Leslie Halliwell who was an ITV buyer as well as writer of the eponymous Film Guide, were bought for $4m. At the time, it was the highest ITV had ever paid for a single film and allowed them three showings over seven years. The premiere topped the ratings, with an estimated 16.8m viewers though it has since been suggested the figure was higher, as it wouldn’t include people taping off TV. Halliwell was apparently disappointed, saying, “for top money, I would expect 20m viewers”.
The film was originally released on VHS in 1982 (though back then, sell-through copies were very expensive) and I didn’t buy my first version until much later (I picked up the 1985 re-issue and numerous versions afterwards).
Star Wars was re-shown on Sunday 30th December 1984, Thursday 1st January 1987 and Friday 1st January 1988 and, according to my diaries, I watched them all. The Empire Strikes Back premiered on Christmas Day 1988 and the following year, Return Of The Jedi premiered on Boxing Day.
I remember that evening well, partly for the thrill of seeing the film again, partly because of how big a deal it was that Star Wars was finally going to be on TV. You don't get that kind of hype now for films on telly.
This YouTube clip was taped from TV (the trailer was the same for all regions, though this comes from London Weekend Television, as you'll see towards the end), this is how ITV advertised their big film.
2017 marks the 40th anniversary of Star Wars, which was released in the US on 25th May though it didn't hit the UK until 29th January 1978 (following a 27th December release in London). I was lucky enough to see it in early 1978 and it remains my favourite film to this day.
To mark the anniversary, I'll be running a year-long blog thread about the film with new entries posted on the first Monday of each month.
Kick, released on the 19th October 1987, was the sixth studio album from INXS and remains their most successful, with almost 14m units sold. It spent 85 weeks on the ARIA album chart (peaking at number 2), 81 weeks on the US Billboard chart (peaking at number 3) and 103 weeks on the UK album chart (peaking at number 9).
To help celebrate its 30th birthday, here’s a retrospective of the album…
Following the release of Listen Like Thieves (which I wrote about here) in October 1985, the band toured it through until July 1986. After the tour ended, the band had a short break (during which Michael Hutchence appeared in Dogs In Space) before appearing in a series of outdoor concerts across Australia, organised by their manager Chris Murphy, featuring Jimmy Barnes, Divinyls, Mental As Anything, The Triffids, Models and I’m Talking. The band then reconvened with Chris Thomas (who’d they’d worked so successfully with on Listen Like Thieves) to start work on the next album. “We started from where that [album] finished,” Tim Farriss said in interview. “Chris really understood the band by then. He'd flown around the world to see us play. He said, ‘My goal is to make you come across on record the way you do live. And’ - these were his very words - ‘you haven't done that yet.’”
Andrew Farriss agreed. “What Chris brought to us was sort of an extension of what we were already feeling. His attitude was very daring and free. He trusted our vision, and I have to say that his belief in our confidence was so important.”
INXS and Thomas based themselves at Rhinoceros Studios (which the band part owned) in Sydney, where the 180 degree layout meant they could all play simultaneously and see each other. “[They] asked me to use their engineer, David Nicholas, for the recording. I went along with the idea and it was fantastic – there was a direct communication with him.” It was such a successful partnership, the two men worked together for the next eight years.
gatefold CD cover from left - Tim Farriss (guitar), Garry Gary Beers (bass), Andrew Farriss (keyboards/guitar), Kirk Pengilly (guitar/saxaphone/clarinet/backing vocals), Jon Farriss (drums), Michael Hutchence (vocals)
Track Listing
1: Guns In The Sky (M. Hutchence)
2: New Sensation
3: Devil Inside
4: Need You Tonight
5: Mediate (A. Farriss)
6: The Loved One (Clyne/Humphreys/Lovett)
7: Wild Life
8: Never Tear Us Apart
9: Mystify
10: Kick
11: Calling All Nations
12: Tiny Daggers
unless noted otherwise, all songs by A. Farriss/M. Hutchence
One of the biggest lessons learned from Listen Like Thieves was that successful singles drove big sales and, as Kirk Pengilly said later in interview, “we wanted an album where all the songs were possible singles”. The huge success of What You Need gave Andrew and Michael the confidence to try something different and whilst on tour in Germany, Andrew suggested an idea. “I felt incredibly confident,” he said later in interview. “Even before I'd started writing for Kick, I knew the audience was there for it. I said to them, ‘If you trust Michael and I to write the whole of the next record, it will be massive. We know what we're doing.’”
Using What You Need as their template, Andrew and Michael sequestered themselves away to start writing. “The melding of funk and rock was always in our heads,” said Andrew, “and we were very excited about the idea of overlaying two types of songs and genres together.” On the subject of focus, he said, “I think what makes the Kick album so dynamic is that we weren’t so much interested in what everybody else was doing as we were on what we wanted to do.”
Michael & Andrew work on Mystify (frame from the video)
A lot of the songs were written on tour. Mystify was demoed in Chicago (“on an old 16-track tape recorder”) and New Sensation was another early song, though the demo gave it more of a blues feel.
Devil Inside was written in a hotel on Edgware Road, London. “I wrote the riff and recorded the demo in my room,” said Andrew, “played everything for Michael and he said, ‘Let’s run with it’”.
INXS had already recorded The Loved One (originally written by an Aussie band in the 1960’s called The Loved Ones) in March 1981 as an Australia-only stand-alone single (which I blogged about here). It was Tim who suggested they record it again, this time as a “balls-to-the-wall blues-rock track”.
Never Tear Us Apart was written in New Zealand and demoed with keyboards and guitars but Chris Thomas felt it needed a more formal sound and suggested strings which, as it turned out, fit perfectly with Michael's lyrics.
Chris Murphy had scheduled a European tour to follow the recording but, as with Listen Like Thieves, Chris Thomas felt something was missing. Since this same feeling had yielded What You Need, Andrew and Michael went to Michael’s apartment in Hong Kong with orders “to create a hit single in two weeks”.
The Hong Kong sessions started well - and quickly - with Andrew coming up with the riff to Need You Tonight before he left, though he was convinced he’d heard it before (as I wrote about here). He demoed it at home in Sydney as a taxi waited to take him to the airport, telling the driver to hang on while he recorded it. “The driver was oblivious to my creative urges and reminded me that unless I got in the cab I was going to miss my flight,” Andrew said in interview. “I made the plane with just minutes to spare and flew to Hong Kong. Michael loved what I played him, said, ‘Give me a pad and a pen’ and wrote the lyrics in something like an hour.”
Andrew wrote the music for Kick the day before inspiration struck with Need You Tonight, though the demo was acoustic and Michael wanted to toughen it up and play it as a straight rock song with plenty of brass. Calling all Nations rounded out the Hong Kong demos and when Chris Thomas heard them, he knew the album was done. The session “produced some really important material,” he said, “and that gap gave them a chance to think and realise what was and wasn’t working. It swung the album around.”
Following a couple of weeks recording at the Studio De La Grande Armée in Paris, the band went on the pre-arranged tour and then met up again with Chris Thomas in Paris to listen to the album. Chris Murphy was also there and everyone present knew they’d captured something special. Chris Murphy immediately flew to New York to play it to the top executives at Atlantic, the band’s label but unfortunately they didn’t hear the same thing.
“They hated it, absolutely hated it,” he said. “They said there was no way they could get this music on rock radio. They said it was suited for black radio, but they didn't want to promote it that way. The president of the label told me that he'd give us $1 million to go back to Australia and make another album.” Worse, the Australian and European labels didn’t get it either.
Kick, therefore, became INXS’s biggest challenge. “I don’t know where I got the strength,” a shocked Murphy said, but decided the best way to deal with it was to do it themselves. He took inventory of the band assets and made the executive decision to gamble them to break the record in America - on the understanding that if they won there, the rest of the world would follow. He didn’t tell the band but hired a promo team and used guerilla tactics, gaining favour from inside Atlantic (though the rock people didn’t know how to market it, nor did the funk team) and in the end it was Andrea Guinness, the head of college radio promotions, who became his ally, saying she could make it a hit. Murphy organised a string of concerts at colleges and, as an excellent live act, the band won over the fans, the reception pushing Atlantic Records into adding Kick to their schedule.
When it was released, Kick was an instant hit and Murphy’s gamble (he didn’t tell the band about it until much later) had been a resounding success - after years of building their reputation, INXS were suddenly one of the biggest bands in the world.
To support the album, the band mounted the enormous Kick World Tour which started at East Lansing in Michigan on 16th September 1987 and took in America, Canada, the UK, Europe, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. The tour ended on 13th November 1988 at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, having played to more than 3 million people.
Once the tour was over, the band members took a year off, pursuing individual projects and enjoying time with family and friends. Michael collaborated with Ollie Olsen on the Max Q album and appeared in Frankenstein Unbound (as Percy Bysshe Shelley), Andrew produced Jenny Morris’ Shiver album and toured it, Tim produced a documentary called Fish In Space and contributed to the music along with Kirk and Jon whilst Garry toured with Absent Friends
The album yielded 5 singles:
Need You Tonight/Mediate, backed with I’m Coming (Home), was released on 23rd September 1987 (re-released in the UK in November 1988, it hit number 2, their highest ever chart position) Devil Inside, backed with On The Rocks, was released on 13th February 1988
New Sensation, backed with Guns In The Sky, was released on 31st March 1988
Never Tear Us Apart, backed with Different World and Guns in the Sky (Kick Ass Remix), was released on 8th August 1988 Mystify, backed with What You Need (12” remix), was released on 15th March 1989
All five singles also had accompanying videos (as did a couple of the ‘b’ sides)
Need You Tonight was directed by Richard Lowenstein. It featured a combination of live action and animation, the visual effects created by cutting up 35mm film frames and photocopying them, before re-layering the images over the original footage. Given his pick of album tracks, Lowenstein chose this because “it spoke to me with all the funk and syncopation and clean sounds. I knew I could do something with all those rhythms. Michael’s sexy, I said that’s the one, if you want a No. 1 hit give me that one.” The video took three months to produce and ended up winning five MTV Music Video Awards including Video Of The Year (1988).
Mediate was directed by Richard Lowenstein and is a deliberate homage to Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues (which worried the band). It was filmed, without permission, outside a steel mill in Newcastle, Australia and captured in three takes. Lowenstein said, “the only person who was supposed to have rhythm, Jon Farris the drummer, messed it up and couldn’t get his placards [turned over] in time! We had to speed it up, you can see it speed up and slow down if you watch closely.”
Devil Inside was directed by Joel Schumacher and filmed in Balboa, California. Kirk Pengilly didn’t like it as he felt it was “too American”. For me, I think it now stands as the archetypal 80s video.
New Sensation, Guns In The Sky and Never Tear Us Apart were all directed by Richard Lowenstein and filmed in Prague. “I’d gone to Prague on a film festival,” he said in interview, “[and] it was like going back in time.” The country was then behind the Iron Curtain so it had hardly been seen on film and Lowenstein knew they could “do long, slow, incredible shots.” New Sensation and Never Tear Us Apart (it’s not often a song’s sound and vision match so perfectly, to my mind) were scheduled to be shot there and Lowenstein managed to film Guns In The Sky in various corridors while waiting for shots to be set up for New Sensation.
Mystify was directed by Hamish Cameron and created whilst filming the In Search Of Excellence documentary.
The videos were collectively released as KICK: The Video Flick which also included behind the scenes footage. It was released in the UK by Channel 5 video and I still have my VHS copy.
“Sometimes we think, ‘How'd we get here without being a pack of assholes?’ It's pretty rare. That's what it's about: respect for your position and appreciating it. . . . And I know we're going to keep going. We may burst our own bubble, but I don't think we're going to let anybody else do it for us.”
- Michael Hutchence, Rolling Stone magazine interview, issue dated 16th June 1988
“Generally speaking, I suppose making Kick was the best fun I’ve ever had – it was the pinnacle.”
- Chris Thomas, interviewed in 2002.
Kick was certified 7x Platinum in Australia (the second biggest selling album on the Australia charts for 1988), Diamond in Canada, Gold in France, Germany and Hong Kong, Platinum in Switzerland, 3x Platinum in the UK and 6x Platinum in the US showing total sales of around 14m units.
INXS were nominated as Best Group at the 1988 Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) Awards. At the 1989 awards they won for Outstanding Achievement and Best Group while Never Tear Us Apart won Best Video and was nominated for Single Of The Year. The band would be inducted into the ARIA Hall Of Fame in 2001 alongside The Saints.
Kick received a nomination in the 1988 Grammy Awards and INXS was nominated as Best International Group at the 1989 Brit Awards.
At the 1988 MTV Video Music Awards, INXS was the night's biggest winner and nominee, with five awards from nine nominations. Need You Tonight received eight nominations and won five (Viewers Choice, Video Of The Year, Best Group Video, Breakthrough Video and Best Editing In A Video) whilst Devil Inside earned one nomination (for Best Editing). New Sensation was nominated at the 1989 Awards.
Receiving their platinum album - manager Chris Murphy is standing between Garry and Andrew in the pale brown suit
Critically, it was well received. All Music gave it 4.5/5, Christgau’s Record Guide rated it a B, The Encyclopedia Of Popular Music gave it 4.5/5, the LA Times awarded it 2.5/4, Q Magazine gave it 4/5 and The Rolling Stone Album Guide gave it 3.5/5. BBC Music reviewed the 2004 Deluxe Edition, calling it “a near flawless collection of songs”, Ian McFarlane in the Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop wrote it was “the band's most enduring release by mixing the hard rock sound of Thieves with a looser approach to dance grooves”, while Newsweek said it had “a hard-driving, irresistibly danceable sound and a sexy, live-for-the-moment attitude -- tempered with just a dash of social consciousness.”
Personally, I think Kick is INXS’s best album and sounds as fresh and exciting today as it did 30 years ago, full of energy and excitement, superb musicianship and a crisp, clear production.
Happy 30th birthday Kick and thanks for all the good times.
Need You Tonight, the first single from Kick, was released on 23rd September 1987. Recorded at Rhinoceros Studios in Sydney in 1987, it was written by Andrew Farriss & Michael Hutchence, produced by Chris Thomas and mixed by Bob Clearmountain at Air Studios in London.
It was the only INXS single to hit number 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and stayed on the chart for twenty-five weeks (going on to sell six million copies). It became the band’s highest charting single in the UK, reaching number 2 when it was re-released in 1988 (and stayed on the charts for fourteen weeks), having only achieved number 58 on its original release. It peaked at number 3 in Australia (with twenty-four weeks on the chart), hit number 2 in Ireland and Canada, number 3 in New Zealand and was a top 10 hit in Belgium and South Africa. Following the screening of the Never Tear Us Apart mini-series, it re-entered the Australian chart as a download for three weeks in February 2014 and peaked at number 28.
Need You Tonight was one of the last songs written for the album. When Chris Thomas compiled the songs they had he felt, as also happened with Listen Like Thieves, that something was missing and suggested Andrew & Michael go off to write some more. As that last occasion had yielded their first worldwide hit with What You Need, they agreed to spend a fortnight at Michael’s apartment in Hong Kong.
In late June “I was working on this thing at home,” said Andrew in interview, “and I wasn't sure what it was, it wasn’t exactly what was going on a lot on the radio, either.” He was worried it was something he’d heard before, that it “was kind of weird, even 1970s-sounding.” He realised he needed to capture it but his taxi, to get him to the airport in time for his flight, had arrived. Telling the cabbie to hold on, he quickly recorded the riff and chord sequence on tape and set up a “groove on a drum machine and it was all getting very technical.” When the cabbie knocked on the door, Andrew “thought he was going to [go] and I had this moment of paranoia, like ‘Don’t leave!’”.
Arriving in Hong Kong, he went straight to Michael's apartment at the Watson Estate and played what he had. "He loved [it] and said, ‘Give me a pad and a pen.’ He sat down and wrote the lyrics in something like an hour. Michael was always naturally gifted in his ability to articulate his thoughts poetically on paper.”
Mediate was written as a stand-alone song but Chris Thomas decided to link them (they share the same bpm) and whilst on some compilations the two songs appear together, Need You Tonight often appears on its own (something Mediate rarely, if ever, does).
Richard Lowenstein was a longtime collababorator with the band, starting with Burn For You on The Swing album and his video for What You Need had helped propel the song to being a big hit (it was very popular on MTV). On that, he and Lynn Maree Milburn - his animator and partner - had started using a technique involving a collage of photocopied and hand-tinted pictures over moving images. Chris Murphy, INXS’ manager, gave him a pre-release cassette of Kick and asked which song he felt would make the best video. Lowenstein said, in interview, there were “some good songs but if you make Need You Tonight the first single, I can make you a landmark video.” When told it would take three months to make, Murphy wasn’t happy but he deferred to the director. “It was more conscious than other videos I made,” he said. “It spoke to me with all the funk and syncopation and clean sounds. I knew I could do something with all those rhythms, Michael’s sexy, I said that’s the one.”
The effects were created by cutting up 35mm film frames and photocopying them, before relayering those images over the original footage. “This was before scanning,” said Lowenstein. “Colour Xeroxes were just coming onto the market and you could get [them] to move like a picture. We had the very first video layering computer, it was a real novelty at the time.” As it was, Lynn Maree Milburn ended up mounting more than 3,000 colour photocopies.
The rat, which got its own thank you in the liner notes for Kick, was called Plague and belonged to Michael’s brother Rhett.
Need You Tonight was nominated for eight awards at the 1988 MTV Video Music Awards, making INXS the nights biggest nominee and winner, taking home five of the trophies (for Viewers Choice, Video Of The Year, Best Group Video, Breakthrough Video and Best Editing In A Video).
The song was issued on vinyl and CD, with a lot of variation depending on the territory. Some of the 7” singles had I’m Coming (Home) as the b side, others had Move On or the Need You Tonight (Mendelsohn 7” mix). With the 12” single, some had Mediate and I’m Coming (Home), others had the Need You Tonight (Mendelsohn extended mix), Kiss The Dirt (Falling Down The Mountain) or New Sensation (extended mix). The UK CD had Need You Tonight (Mendelsohn 7” mix), Move On, Original Sin and Don’t Change, Japan only had I’m Coming (Home) and Germany got the Japan version plus Mediate.
This performance was shot at Summer XS, Wembley Stadium, 13th July 1991 - a concert I was lucky enough to attend - and later released on the "Live Baby Live" DVD, directed by David Mallet.
Happy 30th, Need You Tonight (where did all that time go, eh?)
Following the huge international success of their album Kick, INXS toured it extensively starting in August 1987 and running through to November 1988 (including five UK dates during June). Understandably burned out by the end, the band took a year off during which most members started musical side projects, before reconvening to record X, which was released in September 1990.
INXS, 1991 from left - Jon Farriss (drums/keyboards), Garry Gary Beers (bass), Tim Farriss (guitar), Michael Hutchence (vocals), Andrew Farriss (keyboards, guitar, harmonica), Kirk Pengilly (guitar, saxophone, vocals)
On the strength of Kick, the profile of the band had been steadily rising and it’s perhaps difficult now to remember just how big INXS were at that time. Kick peaked at number 2 in Australia, number 9 in the UK and number 3 in the US album charts and was certified Platinum in Australia (x7), the UK, the US and Switzerland, was a Gold record in France, Germany and Hong Kong and Diamond in Canada (a category Tim Farris later admitted he didn’t even know existed - it apparently represents sales of 1m). Total sales to date are approximately 12.8m copies.
X had a lot to live up to and opened well, reaching number 2 in the UK and number 5 in the US charts, racking up plenty of sales along the way - Platinum in Australia (x2), the US (x2) and the UK, hitting Gold in Germany and France. Combined with the X Tour, it managed to spend an aggregate of eight months on the UK chart, returning to the Top 40 in July 1991.
In 1988, Michael Hutchence met soap-opera star and singer Kylie Minogue and when they ran away together in 1989, it brought the band to a whole new audience and level of publicity. In 1991, INXS received a Grammy nomination for 'Best Rock Performance by a Group', whilst USA Today reported they were tied for second place as 'musical artists with the most videos played on MTV' (at the time, they had 37 different clips). At the 1991 Brit Awards in March, INXS won 'Best International Group' (having previously been nominated in 1989) and Hutchence won 'Best International Male'. They were also recognised as 'Best International Band' at the first Australian Music Awards.
The X Tour kicked off in October 1991 at the Mackay Entertainment Centre in North Queensland. It hit the UK on November 25th with two nights at London Docklands Arena, a four night run at Wembley Arena, four nights at Birmingham NEC (where Alison & I would see them in 1997 as part of the Elegantly Wasted Tour), one night each at SECC in Glasgow (should have been two but the first was cancelled by weather), Manchester GMEX, Brigton (The Brighton Centre) and Bournemouth (Bournemouth International Centre) before two nights at The Point Theatre in Dublin. The UK dates ended in January and, in all, the tour played to 1.2m fans through 80 cities over four continents.
After a successful ‘homecoming’ leg in Australia during April and May, INXS returned to Europe for a series of headlining festival shows from 28th June through to 16th July, the highpoint of which (according to most band members) was the 13th July sold-out show at Wembley Stadium.
So the stage was set, with Summer XS taking place six years to the day after Live Aid had been staged at Wembley Stadium, as INXS continued to enjoy rock giant status both in the UK and around the world. And I was there.
My now slightly sun-bleached ticket - look at that price!
Saturday 13th July 1991 was warm but overcast. I’d stayed up late the night before to watch the excellent Dogs In Space, which starred Michael Hutchence and was written & directed by Richard Lowenstein, who directed a lot of INXS videos from Burn For You onwards (his latest was Suicide Blonde, from the X album). I was quite excited, since my then-girlfriend Liz (who had seen INXS at one of their Wembley Arena gigs in late 1990) had talked me into going to see the show and raved about them - slightly older, she was a fan of long-standing. I knew of them, of course - I started going to nightclubs in 1986 so I was around as Kick broke out - and I bought X on vinyl a couple of weeks before the gig and really enjoyed it.
Me & Liz, 1991 - I wore that t-shirt a lot!
I picked up Liz and then her friends teenaged daughter (who took her friend), we piled into my Fiat Panda and took off down the M1, listening to an INXS mix-tape Liz had made. By the time we reached the North Circular, we were all singing along as the signs for Jellyfish, one of the supporting bands, started to appear. In fact, they were on pretty much every lamp-post we passed.
We parked in the multi-storey next to the stadium, crossed the bridge, found our gate and settled down as we waited to be let in. The girls were chatty, Liz & I talked and watched the world go by, we went on memorabilia buying sprees and ate our lunch. Finally the gates opened and we legged it - it was the first time I’d ever been to Wembley so of course I took the opportunity to run onto the (covered over pitch) and pretend I was representing England. As did so many other blokes my age it became silly.
The four of us made our way towards the front and found some seats to the left of the stage, close enough that we could see people up there (if not clearly), though the huge video monitors would also come in handy as the day wore on. The festival feel was maintained by having a whole host of bands on the programme which started in the early afternoon (INXS came onstage at about 8.45). Another of my main reasons to go was the fact that Debbie Harry was playing and I’d been a Blondie fan since the late 70s, though I'd been too young to get to any of their concerts.
The Summer XS line-up was:
Jellyfish - don’t remember anything of their set at all, though they were apparently “a melodic San Francisco rock band” (and got in trouble for plastering their posters everywhere)
Roachford - who were excellent, I went onto the pitch for a dance when they played
Jesus Jones - didn’t like them before I went, didn’t like them any better when I left
Deborah Harry - who I adored. I left the girls in the seats and pushed my way as far to the front as I could possibly get and then rocked out with the best of them. She played 11 songs and ended her set with the superb “Atomic”. Fantastic.
Hothouse Flowers - who were better live, I thought, than when I’d heard them on the radio
The INXS show was being recorded as part of the Live Baby Live project, under the supervision of Mark Optiz and the band’s manager, Chris Murphy decided it should be filmed as well. In an interview at the time, he said that although he thought X was good “the band had grown lazy, the new songs were too slick and too much like Kick. I was worried. I knew I had to do something to bring it back to the basics, back to the strengths of the band. Doing the film and releasing the live record accomplished that. It was a way to remind the public of how powerful INXS was live, in case they’d written them off as a band who only released pop songs.”
INXS spent £250,000 filming the concert whilst Murphy convinced Polygram, their European record label, to stump up the rest. On the night, the fact the band was barely breaking even on the show weighed heavily on Andrew Farriss, though he has since revised his opinion. “I am so glad we did it,” he said in interview with Anthony Bozza. “Thank God we did, that same band is not here any more. Michael is not here any more.” Andrew was so overcome with expectation of the event, he famously escaped to a bathroom where he spent ten minutes alone, enjoying a beer and smoking a cigarette. In documentary footage, Michael Hutchence comments that the gig is making £1m and he was only getting £5k of that.
Murphy hired David Mallet to film the concert and he used sixteen 35mm cameras, including two on roving helicopters, to capture everything. At the time, Mallet was an up-and-coming talent who’d cut his teeth on promo videos for Queen (Bicyle Race in 1978 and I Want To Break Free in 1984, which Brian May credits with the band losing US fans), Blondie (Hanging On The Telephone in 1978), a host of Bowie videos (including the iconic Ashes To Ashes in 1980) and many more. His work on Bowie’s Glass Spider tour in 1988 and Madonna’s Blond Ambition in 1990 convinced Murphy he was their man. Mallet also shot the video for Shining Star in 1991 and has since gone on to a strong career in concert films.
By the time INXS came on stage, I was ready. Opening with two big songs from Kick got me into it straight away and they followed up with a few songs from X that were fresh in my mind but it was Original Sin that locked it for me, vibrant and alive with the all-out jam session at the end. I do remember loving the rest of the gig, I remember being invigorated by the whole thing though I must confess that most of my memory of the show itself now comes from the DVD. But no matter - as Mark Opitz said in interview, the band were incredible on the night and they were. In fact, watching the film again (as I did when I wrote this post), they were clearly on fire and for a first gig by a band relatively new to me, I couldn’t have asked for anything better!
Lately (with a beautiful sax part opening from Kirk Pengilly) followed Original Sin in real life but it was never filmed (it’s an extra on the DVD). Then came The Loved One, which remains one of my all-time favourite songs and it was launched with an introduction from Hutchence. “This is a big gig. Really happy to be here, la-di-da-di-dah - this is the biggest pub we’ve ever played. Is this what they call a fucking rave or what?”
The show is superb - in sound and vision - and Mallet’s cameras catch it well, with plenty of highlights to savour. During the opening to Mystify, the crowd sing along so Hutchence stops and holds out the microphone towards them and they bounce around once the band kicks in. How cool must it be to see an audience do that for one of your songs? There’s the moshpit run during Wild Life, the crowd going mad for Suicide Blonde, Hutchence kissing Andrew Farriss at the start of What You Need (which also includes the "play the fucking riff, Timmy!” incident). Kick, Need You Tonight and Never Tear Us Apart sound huge and the set concludes with the best version I’ve ever heard of Devil Inside - the band always used to close on Don’t Change and whilst that would have been good, it really works well as it is.
“We had already headlined at plenty of stadiums and festivals, but this was different. Wembley is the most prestigious stadium in Europe - if not the world - and it was going to be magical. There were 16 cameras, 72,000 extremely psyched people and some great opening bands and we were ready to turn Wembley Stadium into the biggest pub on the planet.”
- Kirk Pengilly
“For us as Australians, Wembley was always thought of as one of those places you knew you that you wanted to play - if you were lucky. To even have the opportunity to perform there was a dream. There were something like 200 people backstage which was a bigger crowd than some of the pubs we'd played in! It was nuts and I couldn't really take it all in.”
- Andrew Farriss
“This gig was a prize; it meant that all those years of touring, playing gigs the world over paid off this one night. We had played many concerts that were bigger but selling out Wembley Stadium was a prestigious hallmark for us, especially considering England’s affection towards INXS took years to develop.”
- Jon Farriss
“When we took part in Live Aid in 1985 it was made all the more special knowing that our performance was being projected onto the large screens at Wembley Stadium. Wembley was the pinnacle of venues around the world, the place you read about in music magazines growing up in the 60’s and 70’s. To sell out Wembley Stadium was certainly a dream come true.”
- Garry Gary Beers
“It was INXS Day on BBC Radio, MTV, you name it, we were everywhere you looked or listened, it was kind of surreal, which is always a good thing. The whole gig was kind of like a big pressure cooker of 'let's see just how nervous we can make the band', but the tension had the opposite effect on me. I had to struggle to keep the smile off my face.”
- Tim Farriss
Selling out Wembley Stadium was a big deal - AC/DC are the only other Australian band to do the same. INXS had played the venue before, supporting Queen during the “Kind Of Magic” tour in July 1986 (which I didn't see, though had the opportunity to - really wish I had done now).
According to Billboard magazine, the concert grossed £1,426,617 and the audience was a sell-out capacity of 73,791.
The day after arguably one of their biggest gigs ever, the band and Mark Opitz recorded Shining Star (which Andrew Farriss had written on the road) at London’s Metropolis Studios.
* * * * * Live Baby Live, the live CD and concert film video, were both released on 11th November 1991 (when I bought my copies). The film, which looks glorious but isn't in widescreen (presumably since TV's weren't set up for that then) is well-edited and perfectly captures the scale of the event (shots of the crowd and stadium) without missing any of the intimate bits - such as the little nods between Kirk Pengilly and Tim Farriss (plus the fabulous ear signals during What You Need as Hutchence sings “Hey you, don’t you listen” and Kirk gestures to Tim, who had screwed up his riff). It also captures the sheer energy of the show, the tightness of the musicianship and the real sense of camaraderie amongst the band. For me, watching it on VHS back in the day was a revelation - I thought I’d picked up a lot from the video monitors (and I thought Kirk was the coolest thing ever in his red suit and black shades) - but I clearly hadn't. I'm happy to say that even now I still find new bits every time I watch it.
Track Listing:
"Guns in the Sky" "New Sensation" "I Send a Message" "The Stairs" "Know the Difference" "Disappear" "By My Side" "Hear That Sound" "Original Sin" "The Loved One" "Wildlife" "Mystify" "Bitter Tears" "Suicide Blonde" "What You Need" "Kick" "Need You Tonight" "Mediate" "Never Tear Us Apart" "Who Pays the Price" "Devil Inside"
On the re-issue, there’s an excellent 40 minute behind-the-scenes documentary which shows the band in preparation for the gig with a real sense of nervous excitement about them all, which is refreshing to see.
The Live Baby Live album reached number 8 in the UK, number 3 in Australia and number 72 in the US (though it sold over 1m copies there). Shining Star, the single recorded directly after the concert and the only new material on the album (it’s heard over the closing credits of the DVD), was released on 2nd November. It reached number 31 in the UK, number 21 in Australia and 14 in the US Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The CD single was backed with live versions of Send A Message (from Summer XS), Faith In Each Other (Sydney 1990) and Bitter Tears (Paris 1991).
The album - produced by INXS and Mark Opitz - featured several songs recorded at Wembley, as well as highlights from gigs in Paris, Dublin, Glasgow, Rio de Janeiro (“Hey, hey Rio?” before launching into Suicide Blonde), Montreal, Spain, Switzerland, Melbourne, Sydney, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Las Vegas.
Track Listing:
"New Sensation" "Guns in the Sky" "Mystify" "By My Side" “Shining Star” "Need You Tonight" "Mediate" “One X One” “Burn For You” “The One Thing” “This Time” "The Stairs" "Suicide Blonde" "Hear That Sound" "Never Tear Us Apart" "What You Need"
Part of the DVD documentary, showing the audience gathering. I wonder if I'm in one of those shots?
An excellent gig and an excellent memory, a great band at the top of their game and I'm chuffed to have been there.
sources:
band interviews from the Live Baby Live DVD re-issue liner notes, no credit (released by Sanctuary Visual Entertainment) INXS: The Official Inside Story Of A Band On The Road, text by Ed St. John
Gig information from Billboard Magazine Story To Story: The Official INXS Autobiography, by INXS and Anthony Bozza
