Bono reveals sad reason Michael Hutchence cut ties with him

Bono opens up about his rocky relationship with the late INXS frontman in his new book – and reveals why they eventually cut ties altogether.

U2 frontman Bono opens up about his friendship with Michael Hutchence in his newly-released memoir – and also reveals the heartbreaking reason the late INXS star cut ties with him.

In an excerpt from his book Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story published by Apple News, the Irish singer reflects on his tumultuous friendship with Hutchence and partner Paula Yates in the early 90s.

Bono tracks the early days of Hutchence’s relationship with Yates, which started in 1994 – while Yates was still married to Bono’s close friend, Bob Geldof.

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Michael Hutchence and Paula Yates with their daughter in 1996. Picture: Jeff Darmanin

Bono is opening up about his painful memories of the couple. Picture: Maria TAN / AFP

“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.

But he also says he and his wife of 40 years, Ali, had an immediate sense that the relationship was “going to go wrong, and that this intensity could not last a lifetime”.

And soon enough, Bono writes, the couple were in “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”.

“As their behaviour changed, our friendship became strained, and we grew uncomfortable during their visits.”

Yates and Hutchence had one child together, a daughter named Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence, in 1996. They asked Bono and his wife to be her godparents – but they refused, so “wigged out” were they by Hutchence and Yates’ rampant drug use.

Bono says the couple were soon in ‘free fall’.

Yates at Hutchence’s funeral. She died less than three years later.

They hoped their rejection of such a meaningful offer would make the new parents think twice about the path they were on. True friendship, Bono writes, “meant being truthful. Friendship is not a sentimental business.”

But instead, their rejection only further ostracised the two couples from each other further: “It only made them think again about us,” he says.

“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.”

Hutchence died by suicide aged 37 in a Sydney hotel room in November 1997, while Yates died of a drug overdose in September 2000, aged 41, leaving four children behind.

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

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

The U2 star says his tragic experience with Hutchence informed his belief that there is no glamour in a rock star dying young.

He says that his old friend, Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde, had once given him some sound advice: “Bono, we don’t want to die stupid, choking on our own vomit, falling asleep in a swimming pool.”

“I like my heroes to be alive,” she told him. “I like them to grow old.”