inxs kick tour 1988 dates

1988 Chronology

Research by Karsten Roekens and Scott M, plus contributors…

'International Musician and Recording World' magazine - PiL interview.

' Rolling Stone' belatedly review 'Happy?'.

MARCH 1 - 31

PiL play 22 stadium and arena dates in the USA supporting INXS on their 'Kick' world tour (see Gig List for full dates). They are offered the tour at the last minute. Several reports claim they blow INXS off stage at many of the gigs…

A newspaper review of the opening night at New York, Music Hall states: "John Lydon was fantastic. One of the most under-estimated British talents… And his band were brilliant, tight, punchy, INXS on the other hand, were disappointing."

Martin Atkins celebrates the founding of his new record label Invisible Records with a launch party at The Roxy, New Brunswick, New Jersey. The first release of the label will be a compilation album housed in a printed shopping-bag, titled 'What You Can't See Won't Hurt You."

Around this time Atkins is also running a construction company and – apart from appearing on the self-titled debut album by Lunar Bear Ensemble – remains inactive during most of the year: "I actually stopped playing my drums, I was fairly disillusioned with the whole thing." In 1989 Atkins and Invisible Records move to Chicago and reinvent themselves.

FM Tokyo, Japan, broadcast PiL's gig at the Shibuya Kokaido, Japan 10th December 1987.

Keith Levene releases the 12" EP 'Keith Levene's Violent Opposition' (see Levene discography for full info).

ITV, Night Network, 'Video View'. John Lydon is a guest reviewer. Photographer Dennis Morris is also on the panel.

Omnibus Press publish the book 'Johnny Rotten In His Own Words' by Dave Thomas. It consists of a variety of interview quotes of Lydon from 1976-86.

JULY OR AUGUST

PiL fly to New York to record a new album with producer Bill Laswell. Three weeks of studio time are booked, but after one week proceedings come to a premature halt. Lydon: "Laswell said the band couldn't play and he hated all our songs, so I told him where to go... He said he'd written songs and I should sack the band and use his people, and come out with a U2 type product."

At least four songs are recorded with Laswell; 'Happy', 'Warrior','Worry' & 'Sweet Talk' (which might have been an early version of 'Like That'). Laswell later commented in 1989: "I thought he should make a strong rock album" and dismisses the final product as, "a bad disco album".

PiL take the Laswell tapes to Sanctuary Sound in New York and spend a few days with engineer Bruce Miller reworking the songs and adding different overdubs. Bruce Miller: "At one point I turned to John and asked him how he liked the bass. He looked me dead in the eyes and said 'It needed more green." I asked him 'Lime green or puke green?' and he smiled and said 'You're all right' (or something similar) and we went back to work."

PiL try to complete the album with New York producer Jason Corsaro. Just by chance they even end up doing a session with reggae producer Scientist, but in the end the recordings are abandoned, with Virgin insisting on a more "hip" producer... The band return to England $80,000 in debt! Lu Edmonds: "John was absolutely livid!

Rock Summer Festival - Tallinn, Lauluväljak, Estonia (USSR) PiL headline the first day of the Rock Summer Festival in Tallinn, Estonia playing to over 120,000 people! This was no ordinary rock festival or venue by any means… Organised by Juri Makarov, 'Glasnost Rock 88' was the biggest ever rock festival played behind the Iron Curtain. The "Lauluväljak" venue is a massive coral, concrete 'Song Stage' where traditionally a choir of up to 15,000 would sing from!

At the time the "Soviet Socialist Republic of Estonia" was still part of the USSR, and Public Image Ltd records, along with the Sex Pistols, were officially blacklisted by the authorities. However, somewhat surprisingly, Kremlin chiefs largely turned a blind eye to the event. Partly due to the festival organisers policy of inviting bands from outside the USSR as late as possible.

PiL are under no illusion that they have pulled the wool over anyone's eyes, and just prior to the show they freely admitted they knew very little about Estonia. However, John Lydon is so overwhelmed by the day's events, the people they encountered, and the crowd's reaction, he comments that he considers it PiL's "Major achievement so far… " Fittingly, the band play 'Holidays in the Sun' in their set.

The show was broadcast live on FM radio by Finish Radio One; which was later released as a bootleg CD called ' Holidays in Estonia '.

BBC 2, DEF II, 'That was Then, This is Now'. Special 30 mins retrospective interview with John Lydon. This is one of the first British TV interviews where he talks openly about his personal life and the Pistols.

SEPTEMBER 4

Rock Festival '88 - Athens, Pedion Tou Areos, Greece. PiL are set to headline the first day of a free rock festival in an Athens park. However, crowd trouble – which appears to have been pre-organised – prior to their set forces the cancellation of the show. One of the opening acts, The Triffids, had their set cut short due to bottle throwing, and it wasn't long before things got completely out of control.

By the time PiL arrive there are people all over the stage and backstage area. Graham Lee of The Triffids remembers that PiL "took one look at the farcical security arrangements and would not play." The crowd eventually sets fire to the stage, and the riots go on through the night. Many people are injured. Police have to use tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd! The second day is also cancelled.

SEPTEMBER 5

PiL stage a press conference at their hotel to explain their non-appearance at the Athens festival the previous day. The band categorically state they will not play to crowds throwing bottles; after John McGeoch has hit in the face in Vienna 1986 and received 40 stitches.

Keith Levene releases the 3" CD single 'If Six Was 9' by (see Levene discography for full info).

SEPTEMBER 17

' Sounds ' - PiL interview and Estonia feature. Reporter Mat snow comments: "After the gig, John is trying to find something to say to match the significance of the event we've all just gone through. The themes he's been harping on about ever since the Pistols collapsed and he started PiL a decade ago seem more pertinent than ever, but no better defined - freedom, individuality, anti-authoritarianism, personal choices, honesty…"

"The show is a blinder. Every single band member, including John Lydon, reckon it was their finest hour."

' Melody Maker ' - PiL interview and Estonia feature. Part 1. The paper also includes details of the Athens riot.

SEPTEMBER 24

' Melody Maker ' - PiL interview and Estonia feature. Part 2.

Unfortunately, Lu Edmonds leaves PiL due to hearing problems. After the Estonia gig – which would be his last with PiL – Lu had suffered some tinnitus (ringing in the ears); which quickly developed into a serious problem. The tinnitus is so bad it forces him to quit the band and retire for several years.

The band are gutted that Lu has been forced to leave and the door is left open that if he manages to recover he can rejoin. Although he does not appear on the next PiL studio album Lu is fully credited as a co-writer.

Jah Wobble at Square Studios in Brussels, guesting on Niki Mono's 'Dauda And The Crow' EP.

It is reported in the music press that one of the biggest booking agencies in the USA has offered $12,000,000 for a Sex Pistols reunion tour.

With his band Brian Brain going nowhere, Martin Atkins joins Killing Joke, who have just released their 'Outside The Gate' album. Atkins: "They got my phone number through a mutual friend in London when they needed a drummer and called me up...The first thing that I said when I arrived in London and Jaz and Geordie asked me if I had listened to 'Outside The Gate' was, "No, I heard the first three songs and threw the CD out of the window. It's crap!" They were shocked." After making sure that the band return to a more aggressive style Atkins plays his first gig with Killing Joke on 17th December, touring with them for pretty much the rest of 1989.

(Family tree trivia: their bassist Dave Ball later teams up with PiL guitarist Ted Chau in Philipp Boa & The Voodoo Club)

' Deadline ' magazine - Jah Wobble interview.

PiL begin to record their new studio album – without Lu Edmonds – at The Manor, Advision Studios, then Comforts Place, Lingfield, Surrey.

DECEMBER 21

PanAM 103 flight from Heathrow to New York explodes over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988 killing nearly 300 people. Years after the tragedy John Lydon reveals that he and wife Nora were booked onto the flight and only missed it because they were running late...

The track 'USLS 1' which later appeared on PiL's '9' album was inspired by the events around Lockerbie...

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The Unlikely Story of How INXS Came to Rule the Late ’80s With ‘Kick’

INXS' 'Kick' mystified those who heard it first. 30 years later, it remains the Aussie band's most successful album.

By Eric Spitznagel

Eric Spitznagel

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As Chris Murphy, the longtime ­manager of INXS , remembers it, “I really thought I was fucked.” On an ­afternoon in 1987, Murphy, a ­wisecracking Australian, had ­gathered Atlantic Records’ radio ­promotion, sales and ­marketing ­divisions for an advance listen to “Need You Tonight.” He wanted the song to be the first single off of INXS’ sixth album, Kick . Murphy was convinced it would be the Aussie sextet’s breakthrough — a real kick in the pants to the pop-music status quo — but, he says, after a less than enthusiastic reception from the label’s top brass, he went looking for support among its foot soldiers. “I wanted them to storm the castle with pitchforks and say, ‘We must release this album,’” says Murphy.

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The response he got was not even close. “After the track finished, no one said anything,” Murphy remembers. “They just stared at their feet and grumbled.”

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Murphy was stunned, until the only woman in the room — and the youngest person there — blurted out, “This is a No. 1 record!”

Six Songs Inspired by INXS Frontman Michael Hutchence's Life and Death

That was Andrea Ganis, then a director of top 40 radio promotions at Atlantic. She also recalls the awkward silence, but to her ears, “Need You Tonight” was ­thrilling. “I heard something that I’d never heard before in my life. It hit me on a visceral, gut level. Those guitars were unbelievable,” says Ganis, now an ­executive vp at Atlantic.

Murphy remembers Ganis’ appraisal differently. “She shouted, ‘That’s a fucking hit!’” he says, adding, “Finally, somebody at Atlantic shared my belief in this record. That was all I needed to hear.”

Remembering INXS' Michael Hutchence: 8 Classic Songs Revisited

Ganis and Murphy’s instincts proved ­prescient. Released 30 years ago in late October 1987, Kick was a game-changer for INXS and, arguably, the direction of pop music. The album went on to become the band’s highest and longest-charting album, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and remaining on the tally for a record 81 weeks. It yielded four top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 — “New Sensation,” “Never Tear Us Apart,” “Devil Inside” and, as Ganis predicted, the band’s first and only No. 1, “Need You Tonight” — on its way to being certified six times ­platinum by the RIAA.

It also altered the soundscape of the late-’80s mainstream: a muscular mix of pop, rock, funk, dance and even piano balladry that challenged master genre-blender Michael Jackson , who was riding the charts with Bad , and inspired ­contemporary hitmakers such as Maroon 5 .

The year before Kick was released, INXS had scored its biggest hit to date, the No. 5 Hot 100 single “What You Need,” from the band’s previous LP, 1985’s Listen Like Thieves , and expectations were high for the Sydney-based band, in no small part due to the bedroom-eyed charisma of singer Michael Hutchence. “He was a cross between Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison,” says Alan Hunter, a VJ ­during much of the ’80s at MTV, a network that played no small role in exposing the act to a wider ­audience. “He had such an ­amazing mystique about him — and a little bit of androgyny.”

? Kick represented a significant leap ­forward artistically for INXS, one in which its sound evolved beyond the ­easily ­classifiable rock of “What You Need” and its 1983 single “The One Thing.” But, says Murphy, not everyone at Atlantic was galvanized by the band’s ­development. He insists that when he first played the album for Atlantic’s then-president Doug Morris, the label boss offered him $1 million to erase the tapes and start over. Morris, adds Murphy, deemed Kick ­“lightweight,” ­telling the manager that “INXS are ­rockers, and this isn’t rock.”

Chairman of Sony Music Entertainment, Morris refutes Murphy’s account. “I thought it was a ­wonderful record,” he insists. “I said, ‘That kid [Hutchence] is going to be a huge star.’ Whatever Murphy told you, I give you my word it’s not true.”

Andrew Farriss, INXS’ keyboardist-guitarist and, with Hutchence, principal songwriter on Kick , also recalls resistance to Kick at the label: “They thought we were all from outer space,” he says. “Their first response was, ‘You can’t put out this record! It doesn’t sound like the hair bands wearing spandex!’”

INXS 'Kick' Off Box Set to Mark 25 Years

A product of Australia’s pub scene, INXS had never been an easily defined act. Even Reen Nalli, the former president of Atlantic’s ATCO division, who signed INXS in the early ’80s, had difficulty ­parsing its musical identity. “People would say, ‘They’re a pop band,’ and I would tell them, ‘No, that’s close, but there’s a little pop, some funk and other influences in there.’ I’d get so frustrated and say, ‘Just go see them in concert. You’ll get it.’”

“ Kick was so radically different from anything being played at the time on the radio or MTV,” says Hunter. “It had a very rhythmic, bottom-heavy sound to it.” But, he adds, “the big question was, What was it trying to be? Dance music? Straight-ahead rock? Some kind of funk-rock hybrid? It didn’t fit in an easy niche. Remember, this was in a year when the biggest albums out there were by Michael Jackson [ Bad ], U2 [ The Joshua Tree ] and the Dirty Dancing soundtrack.”

Farriss says that when it came time to write and record Kick , INXS’ ­members — who included two of his brothers, drummer Jon Farriss and lead guitarist Tim Farriss — set out to make a record that didn’t share any musical DNA with the hits of the time. “Anyone can write a song that sounds ­contemporary,” he says. “We wanted our songs to sound like the future.”

With the rest of the band’s blessing, Kick was the first INXS record written by Farriss and Hutchence without input from the other members. The two booked a trip to Hutchence’s native Hong Kong in search of inspiration for “an album in which every song could be a single,” says Farriss. There, they often worked ­independently, coming together regularly with ideas that ­eventually evolved into songs. “Hutchence’s instrument was his voice; he couldn’t explain what he was thinking in musical terms,” says Farriss. “He would say things like, ‘It needs to feel like this.’ And I’d try to translate that into notes.”

The duo returned to Sydney with a cassette tape full of bare-bones songs, and fleshed them out in a studio with the band — which included, in addition to Hutchence and the Farriss brothers, Kirk Pengilly (saxophone, guitar) and Garry Beers (bass) — guided by Chris Thomas, who had produced albums by Roxy Music , the Sex Pistols and Elton John .

If there was initial resistance to Kick , it dissipated as the label geared up for the album’s release. Senior regional ­promotion manager Rick Sudakoff says his team planned a “double barrel” push for top 40 radio “right from the get-go. Everybody at Atlantic knew it was going to be huge.”

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But Murphy, who says he was nervous the label wouldn’t give the album the marketing push it deserved, claims that he took out an insurance policy of sorts, by hiring a team of independent ­promoters and marketers to generate early buzz for the record. “We did it backward,” he says, “by targeting college radio.” He adds that he also sent the band on the road to ­preview songs for Kick  — with the ­intention of building demand — before the album was released.

“That’s such bullshit,” says Nalli of Murphy’s ­contention that he hired an indie promotion team. Nalli, who was working as a consultant to Atlantic at the time Kick was released, agrees that college radio was targeted — “we went after it like it was pop radio,” she says — but insists the heavy lifting was done in-house. “My team worked their butts off to get those songs on ­college radio,” says Nalli. “And it paid off.” That said, she calls Murphy ­“brilliant” for helping Atlantic to promote the album long before its official release, then adds, “I taught him everything.”

When Kick was released, Jackson’s Bad held the top spot on the Billboard 200. On the Hot 100 dated Jan. 30, 1988, “Need You Tonight” knocked “The Way You Make Me Feel” — the third single from Bad — out of the No. 1 spot. In late February, Kick peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, topped only by George Michael ’s Faith and the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. The ­follow-up single, “Devil Inside,” spent two weeks at No. 2 on the Hot 100; “New Sensation” and “Never Tear Us Apart” would rise to No. 3 and No. 7, respectively.

MTV also played a significant role in the selling of INXS, but Hunter says the push started long before Kick . Beginning in 1982, he recalls VJs “being called into meetings with executives, who told us there was an arrangement between Atlantic and the network. We were going to see if MTV could break a band.” INXS, he says, served as a guinea pig, and indeed, heavy video rotation of its debut U.S. single, “The One Thing,” in 1983, helped drive the song to No. 30 on the Hot 100.

“We were always getting pressured to talk up the band,” says Hunter, and though Kick was released as he was leaving MTV, he recalls in-house discussions about ­“programming the hell out of [videos for] the album to see if it can have an impact.” (Judy Libow, then a promotion vp for Atlantic, says that no such arrangement existed, saying MTV was simply “part of the marketing puzzle.”)

MTV’s attention certainly didn’t hurt, and the video for “Need You Tonight/Mediate” — the visuals for the latter song a spoof of Bob Dylan ’s cue-card-wielding “Subterranean Homesick Blues” scenes from D.A. Pennebaker’s 1967 ­documentary Don’t Look Back — won five Moonmen at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1988.

One thing all parties agree upon is that Hutchence’s rock-star charisma was the biggest factor in INXS’ global success. “If I knew nothing else about Kick , I knew that this kid was going to be a star,” says Morris.

Hutchence’s stardom would be brief. He committed suicide in 1997, hanging himself at age 37 with his belt in a room at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Sydney just days before INXS was set to go on tour. Hutchence reportedly was distraught at not being able to see his 16-month-old ­daughter, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily, whom he had fathered after a long affair with Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof’s wife, Paula Yates. He reportedly was despondent over an injunction filed by Geldof — as part of a custody battle with his ex-wife Yates — that kept mother and daughter from traveling to see him. (Yates, who died from a heroin overdose in 2000, offered another theory in a 60 Minutes interview: that Hutchence had died from autoerotic asphyxiation.)

Since its release, Kick has sold 6 ­million copies (based on RIAA certification ­figures and Nielsen Music sales data). That ­number should grow with the Nov. 13 ­reissue of an expanded ­anniversary ­edition of the album. The ­surviving members of INXS have toured with three different replacement singers since their bandmate’s death — one hired from a 2005 reality-show competition — but never again came near the success they had when Hutchence was their frontman. They officially announced their retirement at a concert in Australia in November 2012.

Murphy ceased managing the band in 1995 but continues to develop and license projects that involve INXS’ music as chairman/CEO of Petrol Records. (An ­off-Broadway musical and documentary on Hutchence are in the works.)

Thirty years after its release, at a time when the unstinting creativity of hip-hop has overshadowed rock, Kick still mostly lives up to its name. “If Shawn Mendes sang ‘Need You Tonight’ in 2017,” says Murphy, “it would be huge.”

This article originally appeared in the Oct. 28 issue of Billboard.

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A defining album of the 80s, ‘Kick’ alchemized INXS’s key influences into a highly original pop-rock hybrid.

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After their breakout hit “What You Need” smashed into the US Top 5 early in 1986, INXS ’s slow but steady rise to global stardom intensified. On the back of the single’s success, their fifth album, Listen Like Thieves , went double Platinum in the US and set the stage for the band’s promotion to rock’s big leagues with 1987’s Kick , released on October 19 that year.

Listen to Kick on Apple Music and Spotify .

Complacency, however, wasn’t an option for the hard-working Australian sextet as they began crafting their magnum opus. Indeed, while they embarked on the album sessions on a high following acclaimed US and UK jaunts, and the Australian Made tour, which straddled December 1986 and January ’87, the band was unanimous in the belief that their new material simply had to better than Listen Like Thieves . As guitarist and saxophonist Kirk Pengilly informed DJ and broadcaster Ian “Molly” Meldrum, INXS were striving for “an album where all the songs were possible singles.”

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To achieve this aim, the band reconvened with Listen Like Thieves producer Chris Thomas. Having previously helmed acclaimed titles by The Pretenders, not to mention Sex Pistols’ infamous Never Mind The Bollocks… Here’s The Sex Pistols , Thomas’ crisp, efficient studio technique ensured he remained in demand. Yet while the producer was aware that INXS’s star was firmly in the ascendant, he later told band biographer Anthony Bozza that he felt “they didn’t have the right songs yet” when the Kick sessions began in Sydney.

Accordingly, primary songwriters Michael Hutchence and Andrew Farriss flew out to Hong Kong for an intensive two-week songwriting session. Inspired by the sojourn, the pair returned with a handful of promising demo tapes, including basic versions of several of the future album’s key tracks, among them the driving, anthemic “Kick,” “Calling All Nations” and “Need You Tonight.”

Certain they now had the goods, Chris Thomas and the band headed to France for further sessions in Paris, where they completed the newly-christened Kick . Their gut instinct was correct, for the new record took elements of all INXS’s key influences – anthemic, Rolling Stones raunch, Gang Of Four-esque angularity, and the cutting-edge sounds of the contemporary dancefloor – and seamlessly blended them into a compelling and highly original pop-rock hybrid that would thrust the band into the heart of the mainstream.

Yet, while group and producer alike were convinced they were sitting on a classic, INXS’s US label Atlantic initially failed to see Kick ’s potential. In fact, it was only after the sleek, sensual “Need You Tonight” proved a hit on US campus radio, and its infectious follow-up, “Devil Inside,” crossed over onto classic rock playlists, that Atlantic relented and released Kick in October 1987.

The critical acclaim Kick attracted on release (with UK monthly Q ’s four-star review memorably referencing “Hutchence’s knowing, Jagger-esque vocal swagger”) demonstrated that INXS and Chris Thomas’ confidence was entirely justified, and the band converted new fans in droves. The confident “New Sensation” and classy, strings-and-sax-enhanced ballad “Never Tear Us Apart” followed “Devil Inside” and the seductive, chart-topping “Need You Tonight” into the US Top 10, while Kick proved a global smash, topping the Australian Charts and peaking at No. 3 during a consecutive 79-week run on the Billboard 200 which eventually yielded US sales of over four million.

Keen to keep the ball rolling, INXS embarked on an extensive 16-month tour which saw them packing out arenas in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia through October 1988. The itinerary included a brace of highly-acclaimed shows at New York City’s famous Radio City Music Hall and an emotional three-night homecoming at the band’s native Perth Entertainment Centre during the final leg in Australia. By the tour’s end, INXS was regularly performing all of Kick ’s 12 songs and the group was widely recognized as one of the biggest bands on the planet.

“I think what makes the Kick album so dynamic is that we weren’t so much interested in what everybody else was doing as on what we wanted to do,” Andrew Farriss said in 2017, reflecting on the album’s longevity. “Michael and I were extremely focused as songwriters, and the band was very intent on making a series of recordings that we could be passionate about. It was really an incredible experience.”

Kick can be bought here .

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Best New Reissue

By Alfred Soto

December 1, 2017

INXS recorded albums made for communal euphoria. With thick bottoms and light funk filigrees, their songs fit all the needs of 1980s pop radio, but it was singer Michael Hutchence who distinguished the Australian sextet from Duran Duran . Simon Le Bon could sing about unions of the snake but not shout, “I’ll take you where you really need to be” as INXS’ hit “What You Need” did. The lead single from 1985’s Listen Like Thieves inaugurated a five-year period during which they were as inescapable on radio and MTV as Whitney Houston , George Michael , and U2 . Hutchence’s suicide in 1997 has lent this era a beguiling glow: for a while, INXS earned the right to act as if they were a new sensation, a shimmering novelty instead of vets six albums into a career.

If time has proven Listen Like Thieves a superior album, the 30th-anniversary edition of Kick makes clear why the six-times platinum release is better remembered. Thanks to Chris Thomas’ sumptuous production, miraculously free of the ’80s’ production stereotypes that scolds like to claim are “dated,” Kick fulfills the title’s promise. Besides, Listen Like Thieves didn’t have “Need You Tonight” and a trio of follow-up singles that kept Kick in the Top 30 for close to a year. By the time the album/tour cycle expired, INXS were one of the world’s most popular concert draws, competing with U2, especially in South America (where they remain, according to conversations with my students, as beloved and canonical as U2).

Meanwhile, one thing hasn’t changed: Kick sounds fucking great blasting from the car. This edition makes the point rather too sumptuously: a three-CD/one Blu-ray set, including a Dolby surround-sound version of the original release and a welter of previously available demos and 7” and 12” mixes. In case you don’t need the Kookaburra Mix of “Guns in the Sky” as much as I do, starting with “Need You Tonight” is a good idea. Before it hit No. 1 in January 1988, INXS’ biggest American hit sounded like a classic upon its release, and like many such miracles, its simplicity was the key. Guitarist-keyboardist Andrew Farriss, co-writer of many of the band’s hits, claimed that “Need You Tonight” came to him while waiting for a cab to pick him up at the airport; when he got to Hong Kong, he and Hutchence finished the lyrics.

What you hear is a beefed up demo: Farriss’ drum part recorded on a Roland 707 drum machine, keyboard bass, and that riff—maybe the most recognizable opening three notes of the late ’80s. Huffing, whispering, leaping into falsetto, and squealing, Hutchence turned in a performance that was a karaoke version of itself. When Bonnie Raitt covered it in 2016, she didn’t even try to compete; she didn’t have to. All “Need You Tonight” requires is a performer who understands the folly of outsinging the groove. In video form, “Need You Tonight” segued into the nonsensical “Mediate,” during which Hutchence and an obviously hungover band, imitating Bob Dylan in the iconic clip of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” but fabulous in leather, dropped title cards.

The other three singles aren’t so much advancements as refinements. Over a rippling guitar line that showed how much INXS had heard from their former producer Nile Rodgers , “New Sensation” shows Hutchence in the declamatory mode that best suited him, with Thomas isolating instrumental elements every time the chorus swings around: a sax bleat, a terse guitar interjection, synth horns; it’s “Original Sin” recast as a plea for world domination. “Devil Inside” is even better: Elton John ’s “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting ” with bull’s blood in its veins. The fourth single, released as Kick ’s promotional cycle wound down, was the first to peak outside the American top five, but ask anyone born after 1985 and “Never Tear Us Apart” will be the INXS song they know. This ballad, anchored by keyboard strings, is rather blowzy—Hutchence can do the grand manner, but he’s too intense, as if still in that declamatory “Need You Tonight” mode. But millions of fans of Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut disagree, and so did the band: “Never Tear Us Apart” blasted as Hutchence’s coffin was carried out of St. Andrews Cathedral in 1997.

If no one has tried reclaiming Kick as classic, blame the album tracks, which are vestigial at best. “The Loved One” is the band embarrassing themselves with Steve Winwood yuppie blooze. “Calling All Nations” and “Wild Life” boast identical dueling guitar parts, one of which is tuned to “shred.” For a while, though, INXS had enough concentration to cough up a reasonable facsimile like 1990’s X ; the top ten single “Disappear” boasts Hutchence’s most convincing show of soul. As they entered the 90s, the band’s steady commercial decline mirrored Hutchence’s personal decline: drugs and a taste for violence led to desultory albums like 1993’s Full Moon, Dirty Hearts , in which Farriss can’t hide his distaste for the pseudo-grunge material he forced himself to write. Hutchence’s death forestalled an ignominious fade.

Enough of that. Releasing a collection as overstuffed as Kick: 30th Deluxe Edition in 2017 hearkens back to the opulence of the INXS era itself; to ask whether the album deserves the incense is beside the point. I’m sure U2, obsessed with significance, will get similar treatment. But Kick ’s slithery grooves are at least a match for The Joshua Tree ’s hymns, and, as the live versions of “Mediate” and “Never Tear Us Apart” included therein attest, INXS at their peak summoned a grandeur no less numinous for being sex-drenched. At this stage in their careers, INXS were more authentic about their lightness than U2 were about their meaningfulness. After all, Bono, a chum of Hutchence’s, also wrote about the devil inside; Michael Hutchence sang as if he’d confronted him—and liked the cut of his jib. The devil was himself.

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INXS’ ‘Kick’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know

By Van Sias

During their first 10 years as a band, INXS went from playing pubs across Australia to filling modest-size venues in the United States. But that wasn’t enough for the group, made up of singer Michael Hutchence ; guitarist and saxophonist Kirk Pengilly; bassist Garry Gary Beers; and the brothers Farriss – guitarist Tim, keyboardist and guitarist Andrew, and drummer Jon.

The result of their rising ambition was  Kick , their sixth studio LP, released 30 years ago this week. With its sensuous, danceable blend of rock, funk, pop and blues, the album peaked at Number Three on the Billboard charts, surpassing their earlier career-best ranking of Number 11 with 1985’s  Listen Like Thieves , which generated their first Top 10 hit, “What You Need.”

Kick has been certified platinum six times over in the United States, and has reportedly sold 20 million copies worldwide. Four singles off the album reached the Top 10 in the U.S., with “Need You Tonight” becoming the band’s first and only Number One. A special 30th-anniversary reissue of Kick will be released next month. In honor of the milestone, here are 10 facts about the album, from its initial reception to connections with Eighties vampire movies.

1. Their label hated the album. After the success of Listen Like Thieves , the band teamed back up with legendary producer Chris Thomas to take their collective efforts a step further. Recording for a good portion of 1987, both in their native Australia and in France, the band felt they had built upon the possibilities opened up by “What You Need.” After the album was finished, longtime manager Chris Murphy took it to Atlantic Records president Doug Morris. “He put his feet up on the desk and closed his eyes from the minute the record went on to the minute it finished,” Murphy said in INXS KICK: the Words , a book that accompanied the anniversary reissue of the album. “When it stopped, he said, ‘I’ll give you a million dollars to go and record another album. This is not happening, this is shit.'” After that meeting, in which he failed to persuade Morris how “Need You Tonight” fit perfectly into the zeitgeist, Murphy received a call from the worldwide president of Polygram, who according to Murphy, asked, “What the fuck are Andrew and Michael doing?” And just for good measure, the head of Warner Music Australia echoed those sentiments. “Three different record companies with no interrelationship are all telling me the same thing,” Murphy said. One positive response did come in, giving Murphy hope to press forward. “I got a call from my product manager in France,” Murphy said. “He wanted to tell me that the band were geniuses, and that “Never Tear Us Apart” will be one of the biggest singles he’d ever heard and all the other tracks were brilliant. That gave me the spirit.”

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2. A renegade move from their manager saved the LP. After the initial bouts of rejection, Murphy, in an intrepid move, arranged a somewhat-clandestine meeting with Atlantic’s radio promotions executives to play them some of the songs. While the rock and R&B department staffers couldn’t figure out what to do with the heady mix presented before them, Andrea Guinness, who spearheaded college radio promotions, enamored with what she heard. Murphy booked a college tour – on his dime and the band’s – while the fate of the album was still up in the air. As “Need You Tonight” took off on college radio and the band sold out shows across campuses around the country, the efforts to make a major breakthrough in the U.S. began to pay off. Atlantic added the album to its fall release schedule. But the struggle was intense and according to the band’s official biography,  INXS Story to Story , the members didn’t know how drastic the measures were that had to be taken. “I risked every dollar they had and every dollar I had on that tour,” Murphy said. “If it failed, there would have been a mutiny. It would have been the end of everything and I knew it.”

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INXS’ ‘Kick’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know

Inspiration in a taxi cab, a favor from ‘lost boys’ director joel schumacher and other factors that played into the success of the band’s 1987 smash.

[This article was originally published in October 2017]

During their first 10 years as a band, INXS went from playing pubs across Australia to filling modest-size venues in the United States. But that wasn’t enough for the group, made up of singer Michael Hutchence ; guitarist and saxophonist Kirk Pengilly; bassist Garry Gary Beers; and the brothers Farriss – guitarist Tim, keyboardist and guitarist Andrew, and drummer Jon.

The result of their rising ambition was  Kick , their sixth studio LP, released 30 years ago this week. With its sensuous, danceable blend of rock, funk, pop and blues, the album peaked at Number Three on the Billboard charts, surpassing their earlier career-best ranking of Number 11 with 1985’s  Listen Like Thieves , which generated their first Top 10 hit, “What You Need.”

Kick has been certified platinum six times over in the United States, and has reportedly sold 20 million copies worldwide. Four singles off the album reached the Top 10 in the U.S., with “Need You Tonight” becoming the band’s first and only Number One. A special 30th-anniversary reissue of Kick will be released next month. In honor of the milestone, here are 10 facts about the album, from its initial reception to connections with Eighties vampire movies.

1. Their label hated the album. After the success of Listen Like Thieves , the band teamed back up with legendary producer Chris Thomas to take their collective efforts a step further. Recording for a good portion of 1987, both in their native Australia and in France, the band felt they had built upon the possibilities opened up by “What You Need.” After the album was finished, longtime manager Chris Murphy took it to Atlantic Records president Doug Morris. “He put his feet up on the desk and closed his eyes from the minute the record went on to the minute it finished,” Murphy said in INXS KICK: the Words , a book that accompanied the anniversary reissue of the album. “When it stopped, he said, ‘I’ll give you a million dollars to go and record another album. This is not happening, this is shit.’” After that meeting, in which he failed to persuade Morris how “Need You Tonight” fit perfectly into the zeitgeist, Murphy received a call from the worldwide president of Polygram, who according to Murphy, asked, “What the fuck are Andrew and Michael doing?” And just for good measure, the head of Warner Music Australia echoed those sentiments. “Three different record companies with no interrelationship are all telling me the same thing,” Murphy said. One positive response did come in, giving Murphy hope to press forward. “I got a call from my product manager in France,” Murphy said. “He wanted to tell me that the band were geniuses, and that “Never Tear Us Apart” will be one of the biggest singles he’d ever heard and all the other tracks were brilliant. That gave me the spirit.”

2. A renegade move from their manager saved the LP. After the initial bouts of rejection, Murphy, in an intrepid move, arranged a somewhat-clandestine meeting with Atlantic’s radio promotions executives to play them some of the songs. While the rock and R&B department staffers couldn’t figure out what to do with the heady mix presented before them, Andrea Guinness, who spearheaded college radio promotions, enamored with what she heard. Murphy booked a college tour – on his dime and the band’s – while the fate of the album was still up in the air. As “Need You Tonight” took off on college radio and the band sold out shows across campuses around the country, the efforts to make a major breakthrough in the U.S. began to pay off. Atlantic added the album to its fall release schedule. But the struggle was intense and according to the band’s official biography,  INXS Story to Story , the members didn’t know how drastic the measures were that had to be taken. “I risked every dollar they had and every dollar I had on that tour,” Murphy said. “If it failed, there would have been a mutiny. It would have been the end of everything and I knew it.”

3. Hutchence and Andrew Farriss wrote all 11 of the original songs. Buoyed by the success of “What You Need,” Hutchence and Andrew Farriss – the primary lyricist and songwriter, respectively – producer Thomas and manager Murphy wanted to bank everything on the Hutchence-Farriss partnership: Those two would write every song on the Listen Like Thieves  follow-up. “That was the fundamental difference on Kick , Thomas said in Story to Story . “That songwriting partnership certainly worked – and it worked better than ever on that album. The massive success of ‘What You Need’ gave Andrew and Michael the optimism and confidence they needed to go further.” As Beers told Rolling Stone in 1988, “We understood that Andrew writes the best music, and Michael obviously writes the best lyrics, because he sings them. So we left it totally up to them.”

4. “Need You Tonight” came about at the last minute. During the first phase of recording, with a European tour on the horizon, the band laid down a number of tracks for the album. However, Thomas thought that the band was still missing a major single, so Andrew Farriss and Hutchence were charged to come up with one. On his way to collaborate with Hutchence in the Hong Kong apartment he shared with bandmate Jon Farriss, Andrew came up with the familiar riff to “Need You Tonight” just as he got in the cab on the way to the airport. He told the driver he forgot something and needed to run back up to his place, where he proceeded to record a rough demo with the riff, a drum track and the bass parts. When he made it to Hong Kong, he gave the tape to Hutchence, who according to Farriss in INXS Kick: The Words , said “‘I think this is really interesting, give me five or 10 minutes,’ and he came up with, again, most of what was on the finished version.”

5. “Never Tear Us Apart” started on a very different path. With Hutchence’s plaintive vocals, a distinctive guitar riff and the yearning cry of Pengilly’s sax solo, “Never Tear Us Apart” stands as one of definitive rock ballads of the late Eighties. How the song turned out is a far cry from its earliest incarnation. “‘Never Tear Us Apart’ was a piano song originally,” Thomas said in Story to Story . “It was a Fats Domino, bluesy, kind of Rolling Stonesy, early ’60s song. I heard it and thought we could do more [and] came up with the idea to substitute strings for the piano,” Thomas said. “That changed everything. It was what the song deserved, because in structure and lyrics, it was so strong already.” Andrew Farriss agreed with the decision, later telling MusicRadar.com that the strings “have the right kind of empathy for the vocal.” He also expressed his appreciation for his longtime songwriting partner Hutchence, who died in 1997, and his particular gifts. “He didn’t play an instrument, but his voice and his words were his instruments. He was phenomenal.”

6. Kick features the only cover song on an INXS studio LP. Along with 11 original songs written by Hutchence and Andrew Farriss, the band squeezed in an update of a song they had some familiarity with in “The Loved One.” The song is a cover of a track by Australian band the Loved Ones, released in 1966. INXS took its first crack at the song in 1981, when it was released as an Australia-only single and video. The band covered it again for Kick , offering a different arrangement from their own original interpretation. It’s the only song the band has covered that made it onto one of their albums. “Good Times,” a version of a 1968 song original recorded by the Easybeats that featured fellow Australian Jimmy Barnes, landed on the soundtrack for The Lost Boys , with that track cracking the Billboard Top 50.

7. Kick finally broke INXS in England – thanks to a “Need You Tonight” remix. While INXS first topped the U.S. charts with “Need You Tonight,” the band had some experience achieving that feat in other countries before, when “Original Sin,” from The Swing went to Number One in Australia and France back in 1984. However, breaking through in England proved to be difficult. When “Need You Tonight” came out there, it initially only went to Number 58. After it got a remix by Julian Mendelsohn, the song made it to Number Two, and Kick ended up becoming the band’s first BPI-certified platinum album. In 1991, INXS would headline a show at London’s Wembley Stadium in front of 72,000 fans.

8. For the “Devil Inside” clip, the band cashed in on a favor from Lost Boys director Joel Schumacher. The budget for The Lost Boys was $8.5 million, and not much was left for the film’s soundtrack. Joel Schumacher reportedly made arrangements with INXS and Lou Gramm (of Foreigner fame, who was also part of the project): He would direct future videos of theirs if they were to appear on the soundtrack. While he didn’t collaborate with Gramm later, he did team up with INXS for the “Devil Inside” clip, which echoed the beloved vampire flick, featuring the band performing in a bar on a Calfornia beach at night before a crowd of surfers and bikers. The video was nominated for Best Editing at the ’88 MTV VMAs, losing to “Need You Tonight”/”Mediate.”

9. The album’s string of hits kept Kick on the charts for more than a year. Kick maintained a presence on the Billboard Top 200 albums for well over a year, due in no small part to an aggressive singles campaign. “Need You Tonight,” “Devil Inside” and “New Sensation” went to Numbers One, Two and Three, respectively, while “Never Tear Us Apart” peaked at Number Seven. The title track, which Hutchence called “the great Zen song of all time” in 1991 (“Sometimes you kick/sometimes you get kicked”) didn’t reach the Hot 100, but it did make it to Number 33 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock Songs Chart. The follow-up to that, “Mystify,” followed a similar path, making it to Number 17 on the Mainstream Rock chart.

10. The band partied with Guns N’ Roses and Iggy Pop after a surreal post- Kick gig. In September 1988, INXS headlined an MTV-sponsored gig during its Calling All Nations tour that was the epitome of diversity: It featured the Smithereens; Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers; Iggy Pop; and perhaps, most surprisingly, Guns N’ Roses, who were the openers. The Gunners were booked for the show months in advance, and by the time it happened, they were getting their own taste of fame. As the date approached, GN’R wanted to back out – to no avail. According to Story to Story , Hutchence and Andrew Farriss met Axl Rose and Slash before showtime, and Hutchence offered Rose some tips on handling success. “There is always going to be someone greater than you – always,” he said. “And you know what? So what, man. That doesn’t matter. Just do fine work and enjoy yourself. Believe me, that’s what it’s all about.” The rockers didn’t take Hutchence’s words entirely to heart as they cut their set short. As Pengilly wrote in his expansive tour diary, “Guns N’ Roses finished early (sounded terrible).” But there was a celebration with most of the acts afterward, he wrote: “Bit of a party backstage and then some back to the bar at the hotel and eventually most off to the M.H. suite for party till very late, along with Iggy Pop, our L.A. friends, Duff (from Guns N’ Roses) …”

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INXS Setlist at Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre, Glasgow, Scotland

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• Kick Play Video
• Guns in the Sky Play Video
• Tiny Daggers Play Video
• Mystify Play Video
• The Loved One ( The Loved Ones  cover) Play Video
• Original Sin Play Video
• Shine Like It Does Play Video
• Wild Life Play Video
• Listen Like Thieves Play Video
• Never Tear Us Apart Play Video
• New Sensation Play Video
• Soul Mistake Play Video
• Kiss the Dirt (Falling Down the Mountain) Play Video
• This Time Play Video
• Burn for You Play Video
• The One Thing Play Video
• Calling All Nations Play Video
• What You Need Play Video
• Need You Tonight Play Video
• Mediate Play Video
• Devil Inside Play Video
• Don't Change Play Video

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4 activities (last edit by bendobrin , 5 Sep 2018, 21:01 Etc/UTC )

Songs on Albums

• Calling All Nations
• Devil Inside
• Guns in the Sky
• Need You Tonight
• Never Tear Us Apart
• New Sensation
• Tiny Daggers
• Kiss the Dirt (Falling Down the Mountain)
• Listen Like Thieves
• Shine Like It Does
• What You Need
• Don't Change
• Soul Mistake
• The One Thing
• Burn for You
• Original Sin
• The Loved One by The Loved Ones

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INXS Gig Timeline

• Jun 17 1988 Marcus Amphitheater Milwaukee, WI, USA Add time Add time
• Jun 18 1988 Poplar Creek Music Theater Hoffman Estates, IL, USA Add time Add time
• Jun 22 1988 Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre This Setlist Glasgow, Scotland Add time Add time
• Jun 24 1988 Wembley Arena London, England Add time Add time
• Jun 25 1988 Wembley Arena London, England Add time Add time

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