A DOTING father to newborn daughter Tigerlily, these images give fans rare insight into the happy days the INXS frontman spent, besotted by his only child, now 21 who would cruelly lose both parents to suicide and heroin overdose by the time she was just four.

Michael Hutchence: The Last Rockstar, unlocks many of the treasures kept hidden since his death in a Double Bay hotel 20 years ago next month.

Photos of the board-short-wearing singer sleeping as he cradles his week-old baby girl are from Hutchence’ private collection, released for the first time by Colin Diamond, the band’s former barrister and coexecutor of his will, who tearfully says “anyone who sees these photos can tell he was proud of her. We just didn’t know he would be robbed of a life with her.”

Intensely emotional interviews with Diamond, U2 frontman Bono, Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon and other industry pals tell the story of his personal life, while new music, including the lyrics and a dictaphone recording of his last song found with his body at the Sir Stamford Hotel give clues to the late rocker’s spiralling state of mind.

A former girlfriend, who Hutchence dumped for Kylie Minogue, also breaks her silence on their three-year, live-in relationship.

Rosanna Crash says she feared he was “being taken advantage of” by some of those working closest to him at the peak of the band’s success.

Mark Llewellyn, the program’s executive producer, said Crash only agreed to be interviewed after she came along to support her actor friend, Peta Wilson during filming.

“It took three hours to convince [Crash] to be a part of it, then another hour before she spoke but when she did it was like yesterday and Michael was still in the room.”

THE LOVER

The former model lover of Hutchence, who the rocker dumped for Kylie Minogue, feared he was “being taken advantage of” at the peak of the band’s success.

Rosanna Crash, speaking for the first time about her three-year, live-in relationship with the late Aussie rocker, tells Seven’s stunning new rockumentaryshe “had to protect him” from some of those closest to Hutchence she claimed exploited the star.

Described as the “saint to Michael’s sinner” Crash controversially states: “I don’t think that Michael could protect himself. I just think he needed support, more than he got from people ... taking advantage of him, I would say.”

The couple were together for three years, meeting when she was modelling in Japan but the romance would end over the phone in late 1989, just as Hutchence began dating Minogue.

Despite being abruptly cut out of his life, Crash, now living in Los Angeles, says she has “nothing bad to say about him. He was a great boyfriend. He was bad at breaking up, but he was a good boyfriend.”

“He would love you ‘til the bitter end and then be gone and that’s it, but not tell you that ... he’d say ‘oh I’ll see you’ then get on a plane and after the flight’s arrived, and we were living together, tell you ‘we’re not together anymore’ and you go, ‘wow, really?’

Known to friends of the couple by her nickname, ‘Johnny’ she would be a “constant presence” in his life from 1987, travelling with the band on their famed Kick tour of America, which cemented INXS global music superstars.

“There were a lot of fun times, a lot of champagne, a lot of fans going crazy,” Crash recalls.

Her concerns for Hutchence echo industry opinion that while he regarded his band mates as “brothers”, many felt he was not given due credit as the iconic group’s primary songwriter and magnetic frontman.

Llewellyn, the program’s executive producer, said the interview with Crash was extraordinary: “It was so intense and so moving for her to open up, 20 years after his death but it goes to the powerful effect he had on everybody he met.”

As Hutchence’s relationship with Crash ends, the two-part series picks up his headlining romance with Minogue, whose baby voice can be heard leaving a message on the answering machine of Nick Egan, a close friend and designer of the band’s cover art.

U2 superstar Bono and Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon feature with the latter conceding he would be “eclipsed” by Hutchence in the sex god stakes.

“I’m the lead singer of Duran Duran, we had massive female following in the 80s and into the 90s, but I remember going to an INXS concert and after the show, they had a sort of backstage party and in there were incredible women and they were just interested in Michael.

He had an incredible sexual charisma.

And it was extraordinary how eclipsed you could feel when you were around him.”

Dead Calm actor Billy Zane described his friend’s flirting technique “was something so altogether fabulously inappropriate and right on the mark.”

“He was the girl in the bunk bed at the sleepover, who beckoned you upstairs to tell you secrets.”

THE FAMILY MAN

CRASHED out with his week-old baby daughter Tigerlily sleeping on his stomach, Hutchence is as far from the wild rock star the world would know him as.

But the never-before seen photos of his domestic bliss with his only child to Paula Yates, a British TV presenter and the ex-wife of Sir Bob Geldof, capture the happier times before his suicide death in a Double Bay hotel room 20 years ago next month.

The images, released from his private collection by Colin Diamond, the coexecutor his estate, feature in Seven’s rockumentary, Michael Hutchence: The Last Rockstar.

Now 21, Tigerlily can be in no doubt of her father’s love looking at a heartbreaking home video filmed by Hutchence as his infant daughter sits up on the bed he shared with Yates in their London home.

It would be raided by UK police in 1996, with the couple questioned over opium and other drugs found — a bust which Yates accused Geldof of orchestrating as revenge during the ugly custody over their three daughters.

Hutchence would brawl with Geldof in a late night phone call over cancelled plans for Yates to bring his daughter back to Australia for Christmas, with a NSW coroner finding it contributed to his deep, drug-addled depression.

Diamond tearfully shares the family snapshots entrusted to him by Hutchence, and says “anyone who sees the photos can tell he was proud of her,” but adds “we didn’t know he would be robbed of a life with her.”

In a TV interview just months before his death, Hutchence would talk of his desire to leave London with his baby, “terrorised” by the paparazzi and feeling in “the same way Diana did before she died.”

In another archived interview, Hutchence boasts about being “surprisingly good” as a dad, drawing parallels with being a rock star: “the hours are the same.”

As a dimpled Tigerlily wobbles upright on the bed, attempting to ‘read’ a picture book, Hutchence films her early moments on a handycam, capturing both of them in a large mirror behind the bed.

The footage, as well as four new songs, and fresh interviews with U2 frontman Bono, Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon, actor Peta Wilson and other industry pals speak to the joy he brought to their lives before his tragic death on November 22, 1997.

Bono recalls spending time on a European beach with Hutchence, who was devastated by the suicide of Kurt Cobain.

Hutchence was convinced if the Nirvana star had been surrounded by their rocker posse he would have been able to stay up late, get up to mischief — but still be alive.

“He said ‘when you’re down like that you lose your sense of humour and Kurt was really funny.’ I said, ‘I don’t know him, but I know you’re a funny f*cker” adding “when Michael lost his joy, that’s when we lost him.”

THE LAST WORDS

THEY are the last lyrics Hutchence would pen, found with his dead body in room 524 of a Double Bay hotel.

Now, the scribbled lost words of the late singer reveal the Aussie performer, feeling penned in by paparazzi and achingly, as he writes it: “just another heart too scared to bleed.”

Penned on a yellow legal pad, the notes were returned by former NSW coroner, Derek Hand after being used as clues to why the superstar killed himself in drug-affected despair.

He had been working on the track in the final hours of his life, recording vocals on a small dictaphone also recovered, which will air on Seven’s two-part, 18-month-long investigation.

His turbulent relationship with the press is captured in one verse which reads: “wouldn’t be right to take it, wouldn’t be right lying down, sick of the dogs outside my window,” a reference to the Fleet St photographers who Duran Duran singer, Simon Le Bon said “terrorised” Hutchence and his partner Paula Yates.

In another stanza, his frustration is clear, writing: “that’s right, took a look, new plan, with a hook, stuck into me.”

He is understood to have played the music for Aussie actor Kym Wilson and her boyfriend who visited him at the Ritz Carlton Hotel.

A fight with Yates’ ex-husband Sir Bob Geldof during a late night phone call distressed Hutchence so much he began calling family and close friends, including Colin Diamond, the man he made guardian of Tigerlily and coexecutor of his will.

In the TV special, Diamond says he tried to comfort the depressed singer, telling him: “don’t panic, we can fix this.”

While his personal life was spiralling, his artistic career was heading in different directions too — with Hutchence auditioning in the months before he died for acting roles in movies planned by Robert De Niro and Quentin Tarantino.

It was while he was in Los Angeles that he ran into Rolling Stones back-up singer Bernard Fowler, who invited Hutchence to jam with an all-star line-up of musicians at The Viper Room.

Surprising the small crowd, the consummate showman would perform Suffragette City, with Fowler, his friends and fans not realising it would be Hutchence’ final show.

* Michael Hutchence: The Last Rockstar will air Monday, October 16 and conclude Tuesday, October 17 on Channel 7.