Mystify: Michael Hutchence

Woman: Double-eight, 6-9-5-4.

Man: Nice.

Woman: Sydney, Australia calling.

Parlez-vous anglais?

Man: Oui. Woman: H, Harry. U, uncle. T, Tommy.

C, Charlie.

Man: Slowly, please. After c, Charlie?

Woman: H, Harry.

E, Edward.

N, Nelly.

C, Charlie.

E, Edward.

Hutchence.

Man: Hutchence? Woman: Yes. Michael hutchence.

Michael hutchence.

Man: Hold the line, please.

Woman: Go ahead.

Michael: Hello. Donald: Hello, Michael?

Michael: Donald! Good morning!

Donald: Good morning.

Clear the hallway please...

Clear the hallway please...!

Never tear us apart

don't ask me

what you know is true

don't have to tell you

I love ya precious heart

I

I was standing

you were there

two worlds collided

and they could never tear us apart

The amount of experience that you go through

in doing what we do is many lifetimes.

The problem is holding on to a fixed point

for long enough to understand it.

That's the difficult part.

exorcise the devils in my mind

Michael: I think to be without at least one love in your life,

someone to love you.

To be lonely, I think, must be terrible.

I always remember him

sitting on the floor in Andrew's bedroom,

saying, "mr farriss, I'm determined to play something."

Which brought roars of laughter,

because it was apparent

he couldn't and shouldn't bother with an instrument.

Michael: Got into a fight at school.

Walking around like an english prat from Hong Kong,

going, "where's my class? What's going on here?"

Got picked on in a fight

and Andrew came over and pulled me out.

Andrew sucked me into playing music.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, you just have to give

all these buckets of charisma out to people, y'know...

And that, of course,

was the beginning of the famous six.

Timothy, Andrew,

Jonathan, kirk pengilly, garry beers.

And I'm Michael.

Dennis: Michael was not a happy lad.

He did not have a happy background.

He used to spend a lot of time at our house.

He was never in any hurry to go home.

I'll simply leave it at that.

Michael: I just used to watch 'em and hang out with them,

and it was fun, you know?

Andrew gave me a microphone

and said, "do you wanna sing? I'm trying out these drummers."

And that was the beginning of the end.

Michael: Hey, Simon, where are you?

Simple Simon

Simon found love, in love he thinks he found himself

only has a heart for her and her alone

Michael would show me lyrics he'd been working on.

I said "these are great. What's your inspiration?"

He said, "oh, well, I've had some times"

"where I've had to question things, so I read books."

"Hermann hesse's siddhartha"

"and kahlil gibran's the prophet."

There was something different in the way he looked at things,

the way he was able to articulate it.

I knew he was someone really interesting.

I usually can only write about what

um.. Seems to apply to myself or my surroundings

or my friends, or whatever. So um...

It must be that way, I must have...

I'll have to explain it that way.

The loved one

walking like

talking like

wanting like

she comes...

Michael: I used to hang out with ananda.

She was a poet. A very young poet.

Kind of advanced for her years, really.

She got me into all this beat scene,

ferlinghetti and Ginsberg.

The power of words became apparent to me.

On that night, I was in full slave get-up,

with all the leather criss-crosses.

Hardly anything on at all, except for a collar and a lead.

I was with my boyfriend at the time,

then I met Michael,

and sometime, very soon after that, I was just with Michael.

He turned out to be a very sweet-natured person.

He didn't have a lot of rules, he just wanted you to be happy.

There's no aphrodisiac like being listened to sincerely.

He had a genuine artistry, an artist's eye and sensibility

about the world and himself.

We read books together

and we used to listen to lyrics together

and work out what they meant.

Oscar wilde, Charles bukowski,

and Dylan Thomas, under milk wood.

I remember him reading the picture of Dorian gray,

and he really loved that image

of there being a picture somewhere

where all your evil and bad living shows up

and you remain youthful and sweet.

well, I love her so

ananda: Michael used to say

that he didn't know what love was.

So, I would go, "I love you,"

and he would go, "t don't know what love is."

anytime I say

ananda: During that time, men in suits kept turning up.

Band management,

they seemed to have lots of plans for these young men.

I go down to the stagedoor tavern.

This little band comes on stage.

Next minute, this quirky, little, skinny guy came on

and I was like, "hmm."

So I went backstage and introduced myself to them.

I said, "ok, guys, this thing about management,

"t'll only do it on the basis that we do it internationally."

Michael's hand went up like a schoolkid.

He goes, "yes! I'm in!"

So, I said, "ok. It's gonna very serious.

"I'm gonna work you guys like dogs."

We played and played and played everywhere.

Hundreds of shows a year.

Until the record companies had to sign us,

'cause we had such a big audience.

Molly: When are you touring? - We are touring right now.

- This Monday we start. - Right

and we take off for about two or three weeks, everywhere.

And it was five, six shows a week.

Melbourne on a Saturday, back to do a Sydney show on Sunday.

Two shows on a Sunday.

Michael was just one of the guys.

One big happy family.

Michael always just had that aura about him.

The other five guys felt that, as well.

He always had star qualities.

It was just a matter of getting that to the world.

When Michael began to realise

and get the confidence that he could sing things

he believed in,

that's when it all really started to happen for us.

He really wanted to be a real artist

of some kind,

working towards a lifelong body of work.

He was working very practically towards becoming famous.

I didn't know how profoundly meaningful it was to him.

His desire for fame really fell into context for me

when I met his mum.

Serge Gainsbourg: Je t'aime... moi non plus

Michael: My parents used to have good parties occasionally

and play a lot of soul music and that kind of stuff.

Always there'd be this period of the night

when they would put on this record by serge Gainsbourg

called je t'aime.

je vais, je vais et je viens

Michael: That would be the signal for the kids to go.

So we'd always go, "oh, not this song!"

We had no idea, really, what it meant.

But I do remember it being a very evocative atmosphere

and the sexuality of it being very strong.

That impressed me

that a piece of music could have such an impact on a room.

My sister, who's a bit older, she was a go-go dancer.

She used to rehearse with her girlfriends in the house.

I liked the rehearsals.

A lot of motown stuff, everything.

A lot of music.

The supremes, dionne, Diana Ross,

James brown.

I always had a soft spot for the Beatles,

especially John Lennon.

The Bee Gees doing...

lonely days

lonely nights &

electric warrior, 'cause I just loved Marc bolan.

Aretha Franklin's voice singing respect,

that got me into singing.

Man, over pa: Ladies and gentlemen,

welcome to Hong Kong.

The local time is 5:18pm.