“He threw violent tantrums all the time”: the night Michael Hutchence threatened to stab his bandmates
It’s often said that rock and roll, and the fame that comes with it, can change a person, but the true reasons behind the personality shifts of the biggest stars are far more nuanced than that. It would be easy to blame an inflated ego for this sort of change, but cocktails of booze, drugs and sleep deprivation probably don’t help in a lot of instances, either. However, for INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, it was an incident of a completely different nature that turned him into a completely different person from the one that helped the Australian band rise to success.
By 1992, the band were arguably at the apex of their popularity, and nothing appeared to be able to stand in the way of their meteoric rise. Selling out stadium tours and releasing platinum-selling albums, the sky appeared to be the limit for INXS at this time, but a tragic incident where Hutchence was attacked in the streets of Copenhagen sparked a dramatic shift in his typically personable attitude towards others.
After being deliberately knocked off his bicycle and left bleeding in the middle of the road, he awoke in hospital a different man, according to his bandmates. Bassist Garry Gary Beers explained in a 2014 interview that “when Michael hit his head, he came back a different person, and I’m sure doctors were prescribing all sorts of weird and wonderful concoctions,” adding that “he was a dick, and it wasn’t him.”
Even after spending two weeks recovering in hospital, his aggression didn’t show any signs of easing up, and during the rehearsals for the next album in October 1992, he began to act even more out of sorts. Despite starting rehearsals at Hutchence’s home in Southern France, his bandmates became concerned that his new erratic behaviour would affect the sessions, and they quickly decided to decamp to Capri to be in more isolation.
However, stories of Hutchence smashing furniture and becoming increasingly violent only increased as the solitude of their location made the singer even more irascible than before. According to guitarist Tim Farriss, there were a few occasions when things became even scarier for the members of the band, and they began to genuinely fear for both their and Hutchence’s safety. “Things got worse,” he said of spending time in Capri. “Michael was really out of himself.”
In one instance, Hutchence became so irate with his bandmates that he threatened to stab Beers with a knife, and in another, he thrust his microphone through the strings of Andrew Farriss’ acoustic guitar in a fit of rage. Guitarist Kirk Pengilly echoed the sentiments of his bandmates, stating that “Michael had very violent moments” and that “he threw his microphone stand around inside the studio, and he threw violent tantrums all the time.”
After they took a break for Christmas, things appeared to return to how they were previously for Hutchence, but it did, in turn, spell the start of the band’s commercial downfall. The album that they had been rehearsing for, Full Moon, Dirty Hearts, was the least successful release they had had in over a decade, and they would only record one further album with Hutchence before he passed away in 1997. His story is undoubtedly a tragic one and unfortunate to have happened to someone at such a pivotal moment in their career.
