INXS wanted Michael Hutchence to be replaced by a woman
In a new episode of the LiSTNR podcast Behind The Hits, which explored the life of the late INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, his former bandmate Jon Farriss revealed that after the band’s first replacement lead vocalist, Jon Stevens, quit the band in 2003, they wanted to recruit a female singer.
Suze DiMarchi, the lead singer of Baby Animals, confirmed in the interview that she was offered the chance to replace Stevens after performing with the band at a one-off gig in 2000. “There was a formal offer from their manager. They didn’t say, ‘You’re going to make this, we’ll do this, some of that… It hadn’t got[ten] to that point, but [there were] conversations with their manager at the time, David Edwards, and Andrew [Farriss] and I had spoken quite a bit about it.”
DiMarchi revealed that she came close to accepting the offer, but the band decided to recruit a new lead singer through a reality show instead. “Just before they had done that show, I was really seriously thinking about doing it. I was just about to go, ‘Yeah, maybe we could try this,’ and then they said, ‘Well, we want to do this show.’ So that’s how it went down.”
The show – Rock Star: INXS – aired in 2005 and led to the discovery of long-time fan JD Fortune. He became the band’s lead singer until 2011, releasing two albums with them – Switch and Original Sin. Discussing the reason they opted to find a vocalist through a reality show, Farriss stated: “We were trying to sort of get out of the local pub, and we wanted to go global. We wanted to get out there. And we wanted to go, ‘OK, there’s got to be someone out of eight billion people, who we haven’t met before – some interesting, exotic something from somewhere – that would pop up and [make you] go, ‘Wow!” Well, you would never know unless you try.”
Although Fortune won, Farriss revealed that the band wanted a female singer to win. “We loaded it with girls. It was 15 contestants – it was eight girls and seven guys.” The title of the band’s 2005 album, Switch, was even named so in anticipation of a ‘switch’ to a female singer. “The whole [show] was all set up perfect for it, but you know, she wasn’t there. That was the real, honest truth of it.”
“Anyone can get upset and have a [tantrum], but the fact is that, sorry, on the day – when we had to tally up who’s was the best performance – the girl didn’t make it. But I still reckon a girl singer for INXS would be awesome – I still believe that. I honestly do. It just isn’t what God wanted at that time.” DiMarchi commented on the idea of a female vocalist, sharing, “You can’t replace Michael. Nobody can replace him, so if a girl did it, they could not get the immediate comparisons, maybe.”
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