Bono reveals why he ended friendship with Michael Hutchence

U2 frontman Bono has revealed why he stopped talking to close friend Michael Hutchence just prior to the INXS singer’s death.

Michael Hutchence and Bono had a falling out towards the end of the INXS star’s life. Picture: Getty Images/AFP

Bono has revealed why he ended his friendship with close friend Michael Hutchence just prior to the INXS star’s death by suicide in 1997.

In an excerpt from his memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story published by Apple News, the U2 frontman wrote that he and his wife Ali Hewson were close with Hutchence and later with his partner Paula Yates after she and the INXS frontman got together in 1994.

But he says things changed when Hutchence and Yates went into “free fall – spiralling down the vortex of a recreational drug use that had become hard work for everyone, especially their family, especially the younger ones”.

Bono has revealed he cut ties with Michael Hutchence due to the INXS singer's drug use. Picture: Supplied

“As their behaviour changed, our friendship became strained and we grew uncomfortable during their visits,” Bono writes in the book.

He says the friendship was over for good after Hutchence and Yates asked Bono and Hewson to be godparents to their daughter Tiger Lily who was born in 1996.

Bono says the couple were so “wigged out” by Hutchence and Yates’ drug use, that they declined.

Michael Hutchence and Paula Yates with their daughter Tiger Lily in Sydney. Picture: Supplied

Bono says his hope was that Hutchence and Yates might examine more closely the path they were on.

“True friendship meant being truthful. Friendship is not a sentimental business,” he writes.

But the move only estranged the two couples further.

“It only made them think again about us,” Bono writes.

“That we can half live with our conscience is no substitute for the fact that we can’t live at all with our friends. They are gone.”

Bono also writes about Hutchence’s relationship with Yates.

Bono writes that Paula Yates “worshipped Michael at a time when things were not going well for INXS”. Picture: Supplied

“Paula worshipped Michael at a time when he needed all the adoration he could get, things not going well on and offstage for INXS,” Bono writes.

Bono, who was close friends with Yates’ ex-husband, Bob Geldof, revealed he and his wife knew the relationship was “going to go wrong, and that this intensity could not last a lifetime”.

The message from Bono and his wife Ali that accompanied a floral bouquet for Michael Hutchence’s funeral. Picture: Supplied

Indeed, one of Hutchence’s last calls before his death was to Geldof amid a fight over Yates’ three daughters spending Christmas in Australia with them.

Geldof reportedly did not want the children to travel.

Hutchence died by suicide at the age of 37 in a Sydney hotel room in 1997. Yates died of a heroin overdose in 2000 at just 41.

Tragically, one of Yates’ three daughters with Geldof, Peaches, died of a heroin overdose in 2014.

“Neither of us dreamt they’d both end up dead so soon,” writes Bono.

“Even now, I can’t believe I’ve just written that.”