REMEMBERING MICHAEL

THE PAIN AND SHOCK STILL LINGER OVER THE LOSS OF THE INXS SINGER, WHILE QUESTIONS REMAIN ABOUT HIS DISTURBING DEATH

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On the Friday evening of November 21, 1997, Michael Hutchence, the adored frontman and lyricist of INXS, had dinner with his dad, Kell, and stepmother, Susie, at an Indian restaurant not far from where he was staying at Sydney’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Knowing his son was anxiously awaiting the outcome of a child custody hearing involving his partner, the UK TV host Paula Yates, and her ex, Sir Bob Geldof, his dad asked if he was OK. “And he said, ‘I think we’re going to have a big win tomorrow,’” Kell recalled in the 2019 documentary Mystify: Michael Hutchence. “And I took him back to the Ritz-Carlton and he just waved, a big smile on his face, happy as anyone.”

The next morning, in one of the most shocking and mystifying episodes of Australian music history, Hutchence, 37, was dead. November 22 marks 25 years since the celebrated singer took his own life, leaving his family, bandmates and friends devastated, and his fans heartbroken. His death was deemed by the NSW Coroner to be the result of depression, while under the influence of alcohol and other drugs.

“He was one of the last people you’d expect to commit suicide,” Hutchence’s biographer Mike Gee tells WHO. “It was just pure shock.”

Before that heartache, there were years of joy. Hutchence was still in high school in Sydney’s northern suburbs in the ’70s when he joined forces with brothers Andrew, Tim and

Jon Farriss, Kirk Pengilly and Garry Gary Beers to form a band (known for a time as The Farriss Brothers).