Exclusive: INXS Singer's Posthumous Album Previewed
LOS ANGELES — It's easy to lend meaning to the ominous lyrics on late INXS singer Michael Hutchence's posthumous solo debut.
Listening to the funky, soulful tracks and pleading vocals, it's hard to miss the dire, insistent nature of Hutchence's lyrics. Hutchence's sultry voice booms as he sings about his lack of privacy, the pressures of fame and, more often, the search for redemption.
The album is scheduled to be released Oct. 18, nearly two years after he hanged himself with a leather belt in a Sydney, Australia, hotel room on Nov. 22, 1997.
"Give it up/ Who could take it," Hutchence asks on the album's likely lead-off track, the brooding funk tune "Song #1," which features backing vocals from ex-Clash singer Joe Strummer. As the chorus explodes into a rock groove, Hutchence pleads, "Let me show you how you make me feel/ Got my finger on the trigger/ It's the way you make me feel."
"Listening to [the lyrics] now, this is the most ironic album ever," the album's co-producer Danny Saber, 32, said as he listened to the album over a car stereo system just off bustling Beverly Boulevard.
Seated in the driver's seat of his black Mercedes convertible, Saber previewed the eight songs he's finished for the album, playing them at glass-vibrating volume.
"But who the f--k knew then [that Hutchence would die]?" Saber said. "To be honest with you, where my head was at that point, I'm only now starting to grasp lyrics like I should have."
The words to the still-unmixed "Don't Save Me" are even more chilling than those of "Song #1." "I'm not keeping time/ Get me outta here," Hutchence sings before nearly a dozen repetitions of the chorus, "Don't save me from myself."
The as-yet-untitled album was written and recorded over two years with the collaboration of Saber, former Gang of Four guitarist Andy Gill and Bomb the Bass member/producer Tim Simenon. It is the first full-length solo effort from Hutchence, the charismatic 37-year-old singer for popular Australian rock band INXS.
The album is infused with the blue-eyed soul and rock grit that propelled INXS' 1987 album Kick to sales of more than 9 million copies, courtesy of such sensual hits as "Need You Tonight" (RealAudio excerpt) and "Never Tear Us Apart" (RealAudio excerpt).
Although he had possession of the tracks he'd recorded with Hutchence in Los Angeles and London in 1996, Saber said he hadn't done any work on them until a month ago. "It took a year before I'd even listen to it again," Saber said.
"I don't think it really hit me until now what happened ... [working on the album] is kind of resolving sh-- for me," he said. "Michael's still alive for me. I listen to him sing every day"
"All I'm Saying" is a track Hutchence co-wrote with Simenon. The spectral ballad, propelled by a heartbeat drum rhythm and spare, echoing guitar chords, has the feel of a morose soundtrack to a James Bond film.
"All I'm saying/ Is come around/ Tell me about/ The life you've found," Hutchence sings midway through the song as his voice is overtaken briefly by a skittering techno-jungle sample.
All the songs were co-produced by the L.A.-based Saber (U2, Rolling Stones), who is completing work on the album by himself. He said he was brought into the project in late 1995 after Hutchence expressed admiration for Saber's work on Black Grape's 1995 debut album, It's Great When You're Straight ... Yeah, melding rock, rap and Jamaican rhythms.
Saber was reluctant to discuss the Hutchence album before working on the final mixes, he said, out of respect for the singer and the work they'd done together. But his enthusiasm for the nearly finished work blasted through as he raised and lowered the volume on his car stereo and beat out a rhythm on the steering wheel.
"This one has [longtime Rolling Stones back-up singer] Bernard Fowler on backing vocals," Saber shouted over the funk track "Get on the Inside." The song, a bouncing R&B number co-written with Gill, features a vocal homage to pioneering funk band Parliament/Funkadelic.
The techno-funk song "Breathe" is a futuristic, spooky track in which the singer repeats the phrase "just keep breathing, breathing, breathing." The track mixes a trip-hop beat with a wall of grinding guitars reminiscent of heavy-metal innovators Led Zeppelin.
Earlier this year, Gill said that Hutchence was intent on capturing a danceable vibe on the album, so they tried to imbue songs such as the buoyant "Straight Line" with the feel of such classic Motown R&B hits as Martha and the Vandellas' "Dancing in the Street."
"We were both just very into groove music," Gill said. "He was into the groove nature of the Gang of Four's stuff. That's why it was incredibly important for me to have it come out like Michael wanted."
The album is also slated to feature the slinky torch song "Possibilities," the dance-rock tune "Fear," and a psychedelic trip-hop song, "She Flirts For England" — dedicated to Hutchence's lover, British TV personality Paula Yates.
"I'm not preaching/ Cause I'm full of sin/ Nothing's secret/ That I have not done," Hutchence sings on "Fear," seemingly alluding to what Saber said were the singer's difficulties with the English tabloids. The song also features the lines "Kiss the warm knives/ As they dig for your soul" and "Here's the scandal/ They don't let the truth get in the way."
The week before his suicide, Saber said, Hutchence admitted he was reluctant to return to Australia for what was to be INXS' 20th anniversary tour.
"I think Michael was the kind of guy who was always trying to be everything to everybody," Saber said. "He wanted to live up to what people thought he was, and I don't think he sometime took care of himself or what he needed"
