that “I don’t wanna be a fucking cliche. I don’t need to be dropping off in a hotel bath. I’ve come close, though. I’m surprised I’ve survived, and so are a lot of my friends. One thing about me is that I always manage to have my cake and eat it, whereas people love to see fuck-ups.”  When Hutchence offered this characteristically insouciant reassurance, he had roughly two years to live.  , was a multi-layered jolt. It freighted the shock attending any suicide, especially that of a young person with an apparently enviable life. It contained all the horrors of the stereotypical rock’n’roll burnout that Hutchence had sworn to avoid: a lonely end in an expensive hotel room, driven to distraction,  , by a combination of personal turmoil, alcohol, cocaine, prescription drugs and antidepressants. And it prompted bewilderment that such a fate could befall Hutchence, of all people, who’d spent his career looking approximately like the least tortured artist who’d ever held a microphone.  It seems safe to assume that Channel 7’s two-part miniseries INXS: Never Tear Us Apart, which premieres on Sunday, will largely focus on the aspects of Hutchence’s life which most delighted those sections of the media which took the least interest in his work. And this is understandable: a professional musician’s day-to-day trudge between rehearsal room, studio and venue is not the stuff of which grippingly lurid drama is made. And it’s why professional musicians end up pursuing – money and powers of persuasion permitting – the sorts of pastimes which get them in the kinds of papers which made such hay from Hutchence’s eventful personal life.  It must be hoped, however – especially given the involvement of INXS’s surviving members in the project – that some consideration is given to Hutchence’s accomplishments as a singer and performer, which have become occluded by the circumstances of his passing. Granted, a lot of what INXS recorded hasn’t aged terrifically well. Like many artists who define their times, INXS ended up being defined by their times, and their biggest albums were enduringly cursed by the echoing pomposity of 80s production.  But those albums INXS recorded at their commercial peak, from 1984’s The Swing to 1987’s Kick, did contain moments of genuine grace. INXS were an interesting tempering of their British post-punk inspirations with the breezy populism necessary to survive an apprenticeship on Australia’s unforgiving pub rock circuit. Burn For You, Kiss the Dirt (Falling Down the Mountain), New Sensation, are all superior pop froth, but they resonate mostly as Pavlovian triggers of their era. It’s desperately difficult to name a significant act of whom it can be said that INXS were a key influence (although Arcade Fire covered Devil Inside on their recent Australian tour, this was gallery-playing akin to Bruce Springsteen’s recent tilt at the Saints’ Just Like Fire Would; and though Nile Rodgers has been known to perform Original Sin, he produced the record).  While there is nothing wrong with – or easy about – creating such instantly irresistible confections, Hutchence always seemed faintly troubled that INXS were never taken wholly seriously. Certainly, at the Australian high schools I attended in the mid-80s, any fondness for INXS, especially among male students, was indulged furtively. They weren’t even granted the dubious consolation of being regarded, by beard-scratching cultural arbiters, as “important”, like U2 or Midnight Oil. INXS were always more respected for their success than the music they’d earned it with. It is impossible to avoid suspecting that the reason Hutchence so enjoyed playing a hip, underground wastrel in Richard Lowenstein’s 1986 film Dogs in Space was that this was precisely the kind of singer he’d rather have been.  Hutchence’s distress at this state of affairs became most obvious on INXS’s increasingly turgid post-Kick albums, on which his thwarted desire to be acclaimed a proper grown-up artist overwhelmed his group’s essential playfulness. There is evidence, however, that there was more to him as a frontman than a confidently worn pair of leather trousers. In the late 80s, Hutchence took a break from counting the royalties from Kick to record, under the name Max Q, a terrific album with avant-garde composer Ollie Olsen and other denizens of Melbourne’s underworld. Long out of print, it remains, by some margin, his finest hour. In an interview I did with Olsen at the time, he described Hutchence as “One of my best friends – a really talented guy, much more than people give him credit for.”  It is telling that though INXS were never cool, Hutchence was rarely derided by his compatriots who were: Olsen was happy to make a record with him; Nick Cave sang at his funeral. This may have been partly on the grounds of basic affability: working for the street press in Sydney in the late 80s, dealing by definition with musicians less successful than INXS, I don’t recall hearing a bad word uttered about Hutchence as a human being.  But in 1980s Australia, Hutchence was admired, whatever one thought of his music, for what he’d made appear possible. Before INXS, the idea that any group could graduate to dominance of the world’s airwaves from the sweaty beerhalls of Australia seemed as strange and remote as the country itself. Before Hutchence, the notion that mainstream international rock star was a plausible career option for someone from Australia felt preposterous. He gave Australians something to dream at, which is what people in his line of work are supposed to do.
Andrew Mueller: As the Michael Hutchence story airs, we shouldn't forget his real achievement – going from Sydney pubs to world domination