What you didn’t know about that notorious INXS concert
30 years ago, INXS played a sold-out show at Wembley Stadium to 74,000 fans. In this oral history, step inside the rock’n’roll atmosphere – which included the two very famous women Michael Hutchence was juggling backstage.
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Thirty years ago, INXS played a sold-out show at England’s Wembley Stadium to 74,000 fans. Stellar spoke to the key players from the night to write an oral history of the iconic concert and the rock’n’roll atmosphere behind the scenes – which included the two very famous women Michael Hutchence was juggling backstage.
A NEW SENSATION
The UK was the last major market to be seduced by INXS. Formed in Australia in
1977, the band had a global vision from the get-go, one that saw them target North America first, starting in 1983.
It wasn’t until 1985 that ‘What You Need’ saw them break into the UK charts. In July 1986, Queen invited INXS to be one of their opening acts at Wembley Stadium. Queen’s notoriously loyal fans weren’t convinced, pelting INXS with tomatoes and bread.
Tim Farriss (TF): “Who takes loaves of bread to a stadium?!”
Almost exactly five years later, after the success of 1987’s Kick and 1990’s X, INXS
finally conquered the UK. After a short stint at the smaller Wembley Arena in late 1990, the band returned to end their X-Factor world tour at Wembley Stadium’s Summer XS on July 13, 1991.
Kirk Pengilly (KP): “We had this thing with the UK for years. We could never work out why we got great attendance at our gigs in the UK, but it wasn’t reflected in the media attitude towards us.”
TF: “The UK media didn’t like us, maybe because we were Australian. They didn’t give us much airtime, then they had to. What made playing Wembley Stadium so amazing for us was it was the final feather in the cap for finally winning over the UK media.”
The band soundchecked on the Friday before the Saturday gig to help alleviate show-day nerves. Pengilly arrived hours early, slipping unrecognised in the crowd to watch opening acts (including Deborah Harry, Hothouse Flowers and Jesus Jones) while Farriss and singer Michael Hutchence were doing interviews until the time they had to leave to get a police escort to Wembley.
TF: “Our manager Chris Murphy wanted Michael and I to get a helicopter to get to Wembley. We said that was a bit over the top.”
However Murphy (who passed away in January) had already organised a helicopter as part of the wildly expensive plan to film the Wembley show in 35mm for posterity. As well as those aerial shots, director David Mallett (David Bowie) had 16 cameras to film the show from every possible angle.
TF: “It was a great piece of management to capture that, and the fact the gig turned out so well made it an ever better idea.”
INXS urban legend insists the band made no money at all from the show, due to the high filming costs (a DVD and live album were later released, the latter selling over a million copies in the US alone).
KP: “Apparently we weren’t paid. But we never saw the balance sheets of any shows. The story goes Michael asked Chris backstage how much we were making from selling out Wembley and Chris said ‘nothing’.”
TF: “As hard as I try, I can’t imagine Michael asked that.”
THE LADIES’ MAN
The band’s longtime producer Mark Opitz was musical director on the X-Factor world tour and had been recording gigs around the globe.
Mark Opitz (MO): “I’ve been to a million shows, nothing fazes me, but Wembley was something else. In the dressing room there must have been 50 to 100 people, from Kylie Minogue to Helena Christensen, the odd Rolling Stone...”
Despite the fact that Hutchence had recently split with Minogue, the pair were filmed hugging before the gig.
KP: “Michael and Kylie weren’t together then, but they were still friendly.”
TF: “We had a guest list of 3000 people. At the start of the band, we would dream of playing to 3000 people, let alone having a guest list of 3000 people.”
MO: “It was a bit weird with Kylie and Helena there. A little while before, I’d been in New York with Michael and he said, ‘I’ve got this girl, Helena, coming to New York tomorrow. I’ve been chasing her for ages, but Kylie is coming for the weekend. Can you look after Kylie for me?’ I said, ‘F*ck you Michael, that’s your problem!’”
Visual artist and video director Nick Egan, a friend of the band, was also at Wembley. He’d designed the iconic Kick album cover and would design the Live Baby Live cover.
Nick Egan (NE): “When Michael broke up with Helena and started going out with Paula Yates, I had to be chaperone. It was the day Michael had been on UK TV with Paula. He was going out with Helena that night and bought her a $20,000 necklace. I said, ‘That’s a $20,000 admission of guilt! A bouquet of flowers would have sufficed.’ But that was Michael for you.”
SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK’N’ROLL
Backstage, Opitz and Egan recall the band were surprisingly calm. Hutchence was listening to Massive Attack’s ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ on headphones and handed Opitz a pill not prescribed by any doctor.
MO: “He said, ‘The Stairs’. When we start ‘The Stairs’. In other words, that was the song [fourth on the setlist] when everyone was dropping their [pills].”
TF: “I was one of the band members who partook. So did Michael.”
As the band were about to go on, Egan remembers witnessing a transformation.
NE: “I watched my friend Michael and it’s like when Superman would go into the phone booth. He’d gone into this superhuman state. You get these chills down your spine. I know that person. Look at the command he’s got over the crowd. Here were these very ordinary, down-to-earth Australian blokes going from chatting to whoever backstage to becoming these deities as they walked towards the stage.
“No-one ever gets to see that transition. I’ve seen it with Duran Duran and Oasis, too. Suddenly a normal human being becomes a rock god or superstar. It’s an unusual thing to witness.”
MO: “Michael used to tell me, ‘Before we go on stage, I go to the INXS shop and put on the Michael Hutchence charisma coat.’ He was incredible that night. The whole band were.”
KP: “We were on top of our game. It was a big time for us. And those two shows with Queen at Wembley had been like a practice run for when we came back with our own show.”
TF: “It was one of those shows where everything aligns. We were lucky to film it.”
FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
Opitz not only recorded the concert, but also wrangled the band into a London recording studio the day after to capture a new song, ‘Shining Star’.
Back in Australia post-tour, the band finished the song in Sydney’s Rhinoceros Studios. Pengilly called a friend – a little-known muso who was still months away from releasing his first album – to add guest vocals.
Keith Urban: “I was living with some friends in Crows Nest. Kirk Pengilly called and said, ‘Do you want to come to the studio? The whole band is here.’ Hell yeah! I was dragged in next to Michael Hutchence to do backing vocals on ‘Shining Star’. It was surreal.”
LEAVING A LEGACY
The concert footage was a triumph, and while the subsequent album was criticised by Molly Meldrum on Hey Hey It’s Saturday for not being ‘live’ enough, Opitz insists only a handful of technical faults were fixed after the fact, and the album was otherwise untouched.
TF: “In a way it was a compliment, it was that good Molly didn’t believe it was live!”
NE: “Videos of live shows usually never live up to the show, they fall a bit flat. This one was epic. It was the Lawrence of Arabia of live concert films. It was one of those once in a lifetime shows.”
MO: “You name them, I’ve seen them – Rolling Stones, U2 – all the big acts. I saw the Beatles when I was 12. The Beatles was the best show I’ve ever seen in my life until I saw INXS at Wembley. Every member of the band will thank Chris Murphy for the rest of their lives. If you could have one INXS show filmed, it was Wembley. The fact we’re still talking about it 30 years later says it all. Forget all the albums, forget Kick, Wembley is their legacy. They were a live band.”
Keith Urban: “It’s an extraordinary thing for any band to play Wembley Stadium, and it was so well deserved for INXS. The songs, the band and Michael – put those three things together and it is magic. I’m so glad for them the show was captured. Michael was on fire, the band sounded truly amazing – all the stars lined up.”
Michele Bennett, who produced several INXS videos including Suicide Blonde from X, and dated Hutchence for many years in the 80s, didn’t go to the Wembley Stadium show.
Michele Bennett (MB): “I never loved touring, but obviously I’ve seen that show and it was incredible. A real landmark moment for INXS.”
Bennett, who had kept her silence about her relationship with Hutchence for decades, shared her memories on the 2019 doco Mystify, directed by Richard Lowenstein. They remained friends until the very end - Bennett had been speaking to Hutchence on the night of his death but had always declined interviews.
MB: “I feel a little bit more liberated having been involved in that documentary. I introduced Richard to Michael years ago. I know how much Richard loved Michael, I had faith he’d do a good representation of who Michael was. Like anyone close to Michael, we were besieged after his death. I felt it wasn’t appropriate to talk about him so soon afterwards.
“Everything around him was so sensationalised. There was a lot of drama at the time, I didn’t want to be involved. It was upsetting at the time for Michael to only be spoken about in the context of sex and drugs rather than about the person he was. When Richard said he was going to do a documentary I was comfortable he’d portray Michael for the person he was, and talk about him as an artist, in his own right and in the context of INXS.
“He was such a beautiful soul, a really talented songwriter. A brother to that band.”
Bennett, a successful producer behind Chopper and Mr Inbetween, was portrayed as a character in the INXS mini-series Never Tear Us Apart.
MB: “It was hard to watch, it was not accurate. It did sensationalise Michael. (The filmmakers) could have easily contacted me, I was disappointed they didn’t make the effort, they had the opportunity to get the facts right.”
Tim Farriss recently watched the Wembley show alone, in a cinema, to sign off on the 4K remastering.
TF: “It gave me goosebumps. From an Australian music history point of view, it’s just us and AC/DC who have played Wembley. That’s quite a feather in the cap. We were very lucky to film that show.”
Live Baby Live will be streamed for a special, one-off event to celebrate the 30th anniversary of SUMMER XS; go to INXS.com to register for updates. Thanks to Bee and Haydn from podcast INXS Access All Areas.
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