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between_time_and_42Recently I got it into my head that I should do a writeup of the events surrounding the breaking-up of the band INXS for the subreddit r/HobbyDrama. Because Reddit in general makes me nervous, I decided to post it here first, and if it goes over well, I'll transfer it to that site.
Before we begin, please note that while I experienced most of these events firsthand, I'm sure that there's a lot of information I'm leaving out because I don't remember it or couldn't track down any sources, so if anyone from the INXS fandom happens to be around to help me get the facts straight, I'd really appreciate you chiming in!
So... who are/were INXS?
INXS was a rock band formed in Australia in 1977, consisting of six members: the three Farriss brothers, Tim, Andrew, and Jon; bassist Garry Gary Beers, saxophonist Kirk Pengilly, and their shining star of a frontman, Michael Hutchence. You've probably heard their biggest hit, "Need You Tonight" (released 1987), at least once in your life. If you haven't, here's a refresher:
INXS' upbeat, danceable sound alongside Michael Hutchence's powerful charisma and sex appeal was a winning combination, and the band enjoyed a fair amount of success throughout the 80's. Sadly, the party came to an end in 1997, when Michael Hutchence took his own life right before an upcoming tour. (The last few years of Michael's life could probably be covered in a post of its own, but I personally don't feel comfortable writing more about it.) This was, as one would imagine, a hard blow to the band, who essentially went on an extended hiatus for several years.
Rock Star: INXS
Throughout the rest of the 90's, INXS did several one-off performances with various guest singers, such as Jimmy Barnes and Terence Trent D'Arby. One such performance, featuring Jon Stevens on lead vocals, even led to an official offer being made for Stevens to join the band. After a brief tour and some preliminary recordings, Stevens left INXS to pursue a solo career in 2003, leaving the band without a singer once again. It was clear by then that the band wanted to continue with a permanent singer, so what were they to do? Why, enter the world of reality TV, of course!
Rock Star: INXS was a televised competitive singing contest a la The Voice and American Idol that debuted in 2005. I'm going to be perfectly honest here- my entire knowledge of Rock Star: INXS (the structure, the contestants) comes from a self-insert fanfic that I read back in the 2010's, which was essentially the writer's fantasy of competing on the show. So I can't speak too personally about it. What I do know is that the winner of the competition was J.D. Fortune, a Canadian singer with a rock and roll sensibility that seemed like a perfect fit for the band. Later in 2005, INXS released Switch, their first (and what was to be their only) album with J.D. on vocals. Switch's lead single, "Pretty Vegas," was unmistakably INXS-like in its sound and feel. Though some fans believed it was tasteless of INXS to "replace" Michael Hutchence via a reality show, it was hard to deny that J.D. had the right spirit, at least. Take a listen here if you don't believe me:
Rough patches
J.D. Fortune went on tour with INXS for the first time in January 2006. I'm not sure how well this tour was received, but it was clearly enough for INXS to continue booking shows AND for them to achieve a new record deal. However, in February 2009, trouble began to arise when J.D. Fortune announced to the press that INXS had fired him. Chris Murphy, the band's manager, put out a statement that did not support this claim... but it didn't refute it, either, stating that "The band have always stated to me that Fortune's services could potentially be contracted again when INXS next tour." Not exactly the kind of statement you'd expect a band to make about their own lead singer, who one would assume is a bit more than a contract worker, but hey... Eventually, J.D. clarified his comments in a statement made a month later, explaining that he had been under the impression after completing the last leg of INXS' tour that there had been two more legs left to complete. However, the next two legs were cancelled, and the band refused to return J.D.'s calls for six months. Naturally, upon receiving the silent treatment, J.D. assumed he was out of the band (not helped by the fact that he was dealing with a drug problem while on tour, which alienated the rest of the band from him). [Note: the article in which J.D. "sets the record straight" is now a 404 Page Not Found. If anyone knows where I can find and read this article, please point me in the right direction!]
A tentative reunion
For the next few years, INXS worked on and off with J.D. Fortune. In 2010, they performed at the Winter Olympics with J.D. on lead vocals, though they claimed the performance was a one-off. Later that year, they embarked on a world tour with J.D. Fortune on vocals. Somehow it took until July of 2010 for anyone in the band to confirm that he had officially returned as the band's lead singer, but at any rate, it was clear by then that they were a package deal. In November of 2010, INXS released their second post-Michael album, Original Sin, which was a tribute to Michael featuring various vocalists (one of whom was J.D. Fortune). To support this album, the band went on tour throughout 2011, which is where I come in. 2011 was the year I discovered INXS, and the year that they played in my hometown. Being both a hormonal teenager captivated by Michael Hutchence's swagger, and the type of teenager who would write "I'm only 15 and I love this music! Today's music SUCKS!" in the comments of 80's songs uploaded to YouTube, I absolutely refused to go see INXS with J.D. Fortune, as I thought it wouldn't be the same. Nowadays, I still kick myself over the fact that I missed that show, especially knowing what was to come later...
"Tiny Summer"
As far as I can tell from the Setlist Wiki, INXS' last gig with J.D. Fortune as their frontman took place on August 14th, 2011. This was the final show of the Original Sin tour, after which the band went quiet... but not for long! In September 2011 (I wish I knew the exact date- going off memory and a glance at the 2011 calendar, it must have been either the 12th, 13th, or 14th), INXS announced on their official site that they had something to share with their fans later in the week. What they had to share became apparent on the 15th, when a new track was uploaded to their site. This song was called "Tiny Summer," and it sounded a little something like this:
So, uh. Remember those two songs I embedded above? Yeah... this does NOT sound like THOSE. INXS were no strangers to ballads (see "Never Tear Us Apart," arguably their second biggest hit), but this is not the sound that they're typically known for. To say nothing of the rough, demo-like quality of this recording. As well as one glaringly obvious observation... that's not J.D. Fortune singing.
Fortunately, a statement was posted alongside this song, but unfortunately, it did little to shed light on the matter of who the singer was and what had happened to J.D. The statement seems to have been scrubbed from INXS' site, because it returns a 404 message (if anyone preserved the full statement, please send it to me!), but I managed to find part of it quoted elsewhere. From Andrew Farriss, INXS' keyboardist and main songwriter:
"Without a doubt, amazing song magic happened when Michael and I were a creative writing team. Recently at a party, I met a fellow songwriter by accident, an Irish bloke, and we sat around playing songs on acoustic guitars. Despite his funny accent, we then spent a few days songwriting and singing together... song magic was in the room again."
Why Andrew didn't just name the singer right away, I have no idea. Because the thing is, the vocals on this song are reminiscent of a certain other Irish songwriter... Bono, the lead singer of U2. To hear what I mean, take a listen to one of U2's own ballads, from their most-recent-at-the-time album, 2009's No Line on the Horizon:
Within a day, speculation began to fly in both the U2 fandom and the INXS fandom. On Interference, a U2 fan forum, a thread entitled "New INXS Demo... Featuring Bono?" was posted on the 15th, where fans shared their impressions of the unknown vocalist:
"It sounds like Bono to me."
"It's definetly him! he's singing in a very new way!"
"I think if it wasn't Bono... Andrew wouldn't have gone out of his way to cheekily avoid naming the singer other than calling him Irish."
"It's Bono and I love it!!!!!!!!!!!!! <3 And you can def hear Edge [U2's guitarist/backing vocalist] in the chorus."
Meanwhile, the INXS fans were equally confused. Since I can't find the original post from INXS' social media sharing "Tiny Summer," I have to rely on comments that fans left on the official announcement of the singer's identity. Regardless of when these comments were made, it's clear that they heard the same thing the U2 fans did:
"Reminds me of Bono a bit."
"Yeah ......sounds like U2."
"sounds like u2 to me! weird but its a decent song!"
"omg..he does sound like bono...thats okay i love bono...n bono was good friends w micheal..."
I chimed in on the conversation on Interference, stating that "I seriously doubt it's Bono. But on the other hand, I am hoping like crazy it is. Then my mind would explode from the awesomeness." This is what having U2 and INXS as your two favorite bands when you're a teenager will do to you.
Sadly (or perhaps thankfully), my mind did not explode from the awesomeness. It took a week and four days (an unusual length of time in my opinion) for INXS to finally put out a statement revealing the identity of their singer, but at last, on September 26th, they did. The conclusion?
It wasn't Bono
INXS announced that the singer of "Tiny Summer" was in fact an Irish singer-songwriter named Ciaran Gribbin, and that the recording was in fact a demo they had made together. They also revealed that he would, from that point in time, serve as the band's lead singer, with J.D. Fortune having left the band in "a mutual and amicable decision." Although J.D. validated this statement on his website, claiming that he and the band had agreed before the start of the 2011 summer tour that he would be stepping down from the band's duties after their last show on August 14th, he later- in June 2012- presented an entirely different story, claiming that INXS hadn't let him know he was fired until the end of the tour. And they hadn't spoken to him about it, either:
"I had no idea I had left INXS the second time, to be honest with you. I woke up August 18 and I had to find out from their web site, which, to this day, I still find bizarre.”
Now, I can't speak to the veracity of this because I don't know what statement J.D. is referring to, or how to find it. As I recall (and I was there and active in the INXS fandom when all of this went down), no one knew that J.D. had left the band until "Tiny Summer" was released, which is at odds with J.D.'s claim that the band made a public statement on their site, through which he found out he had been fired. But, I'd be happy to be proven wrong about this, and again I ask that if anyone has information about this, please share it with me. Bottom line is, if J.D. is telling the truth, then this wasn't the first time that INXS apparently fired their lead singer without talking to him first. And unfortunately, it wouldn't be the last.
The End of INXS
With Ciaran Gribbin, INXS went on to tour throughout the end of 2011 and much of 2012. I didn't hear much about how that tour went, either because there wasn't to say about it or because I refused to accept Ciaran as the band's singer, but you can hear for yourself what the band sounded like with Ciaran:
I mean. It's not BAD. Here's what they sounded like with J.D. singing this song, for comparison:
For all I know, things seemed to be going fairly well for INXS. I mean, they were still touring the world. But then November 2012 rolled around, and with it came a bombshell. During INXS' concert in Perth, Australia, on November 11th, Jon Farriss took the microphone from Ciaran just before their third-to-last song and announced that this was the band's last gig and they would henceforth be retiring from touring. This wasn't just a surprise to the audience, and to fans worldwide- it was a surprise to Ciaran as well. It wasn't until August 2013 that he opened up to the press, but when he did, it was a familiar story:
"I'd got wind of the INXS thing and knew the guys wanted a break but I didn't think it would come as abruptly as that... There'd been no word of the band splitting up. Then on the last night at the Perth Arena, I was talking about it being the 25th anniversary of the band's album Kick and introducing the guys. Jon walked on stage, took the mic and said 'It's wonderful to be here,' before going on to say that INXS would not be touring anymore."
Ciaran went on to emphasize that the band hadn't ever said they were splitting up, that they were only retiring from touring, that they had nothing to prove to anyone anymore, that he still respects the members of INXS and considers them to be his friends... But, well, it's 2024, and INXS hasn't released any new music since "Tiny Summer." Nor has Ciaran Gribbin done any work with them, as far as I know. Which sort of implies to me that the band has broken up.
So where are they now?
After Ciaran's last show, each band member went their separate ways. Andrew Farriss embarked on a solo career. The others seem to be happy spending time with their families and indulging in various hobbies. Ciaran Gribbin has released some solo stuff and gotten into the songwriting business. And J.D. Fortune started a new band and went on tour with them.
Regardless of the way things ended, I still believe that INXS has left behind a beautiful legacy. They were very influential on me as a teenager and I'm so glad I discovered them. May Michael Hutchence rest in peace. <3
Aaaand that's my story (and I'm sticking to it). If anyone can help clarify, elaborate, and/or fact-check some of the parts I was iffy on/wasn't around for, your help would be MUCH appreciated (and I will credit you should I end up actually posting this on Reddit). I'm also not sure if I should just stick with writing about "Tiny Summer" and the Bono/Ciaran confusion, or if I should keep it broadly focused on INXS' overall end the way I did in this post... Thoughts?
Before we begin, please note that while I experienced most of these events firsthand, I'm sure that there's a lot of information I'm leaving out because I don't remember it or couldn't track down any sources, so if anyone from the INXS fandom happens to be around to help me get the facts straight, I'd really appreciate you chiming in!
So... who are/were INXS?
INXS was a rock band formed in Australia in 1977, consisting of six members: the three Farriss brothers, Tim, Andrew, and Jon; bassist Garry Gary Beers, saxophonist Kirk Pengilly, and their shining star of a frontman, Michael Hutchence. You've probably heard their biggest hit, "Need You Tonight" (released 1987), at least once in your life. If you haven't, here's a refresher:
INXS' upbeat, danceable sound alongside Michael Hutchence's powerful charisma and sex appeal was a winning combination, and the band enjoyed a fair amount of success throughout the 80's. Sadly, the party came to an end in 1997, when Michael Hutchence took his own life right before an upcoming tour. (The last few years of Michael's life could probably be covered in a post of its own, but I personally don't feel comfortable writing more about it.) This was, as one would imagine, a hard blow to the band, who essentially went on an extended hiatus for several years.
Rock Star: INXS
Throughout the rest of the 90's, INXS did several one-off performances with various guest singers, such as Jimmy Barnes and Terence Trent D'Arby. One such performance, featuring Jon Stevens on lead vocals, even led to an official offer being made for Stevens to join the band. After a brief tour and some preliminary recordings, Stevens left INXS to pursue a solo career in 2003, leaving the band without a singer once again. It was clear by then that the band wanted to continue with a permanent singer, so what were they to do? Why, enter the world of reality TV, of course!
Rock Star: INXS was a televised competitive singing contest a la The Voice and American Idol that debuted in 2005. I'm going to be perfectly honest here- my entire knowledge of Rock Star: INXS (the structure, the contestants) comes from a self-insert fanfic that I read back in the 2010's, which was essentially the writer's fantasy of competing on the show. So I can't speak too personally about it. What I do know is that the winner of the competition was J.D. Fortune, a Canadian singer with a rock and roll sensibility that seemed like a perfect fit for the band. Later in 2005, INXS released Switch, their first (and what was to be their only) album with J.D. on vocals. Switch's lead single, "Pretty Vegas," was unmistakably INXS-like in its sound and feel. Though some fans believed it was tasteless of INXS to "replace" Michael Hutchence via a reality show, it was hard to deny that J.D. had the right spirit, at least. Take a listen here if you don't believe me:
Rough patches
J.D. Fortune went on tour with INXS for the first time in January 2006. I'm not sure how well this tour was received, but it was clearly enough for INXS to continue booking shows AND for them to achieve a new record deal. However, in February 2009, trouble began to arise when J.D. Fortune announced to the press that INXS had fired him. Chris Murphy, the band's manager, put out a statement that did not support this claim... but it didn't refute it, either, stating that "The band have always stated to me that Fortune's services could potentially be contracted again when INXS next tour." Not exactly the kind of statement you'd expect a band to make about their own lead singer, who one would assume is a bit more than a contract worker, but hey... Eventually, J.D. clarified his comments in a statement made a month later, explaining that he had been under the impression after completing the last leg of INXS' tour that there had been two more legs left to complete. However, the next two legs were cancelled, and the band refused to return J.D.'s calls for six months. Naturally, upon receiving the silent treatment, J.D. assumed he was out of the band (not helped by the fact that he was dealing with a drug problem while on tour, which alienated the rest of the band from him). [Note: the article in which J.D. "sets the record straight" is now a 404 Page Not Found. If anyone knows where I can find and read this article, please point me in the right direction!]
A tentative reunion
For the next few years, INXS worked on and off with J.D. Fortune. In 2010, they performed at the Winter Olympics with J.D. on lead vocals, though they claimed the performance was a one-off. Later that year, they embarked on a world tour with J.D. Fortune on vocals. Somehow it took until July of 2010 for anyone in the band to confirm that he had officially returned as the band's lead singer, but at any rate, it was clear by then that they were a package deal. In November of 2010, INXS released their second post-Michael album, Original Sin, which was a tribute to Michael featuring various vocalists (one of whom was J.D. Fortune). To support this album, the band went on tour throughout 2011, which is where I come in. 2011 was the year I discovered INXS, and the year that they played in my hometown. Being both a hormonal teenager captivated by Michael Hutchence's swagger, and the type of teenager who would write "I'm only 15 and I love this music! Today's music SUCKS!" in the comments of 80's songs uploaded to YouTube, I absolutely refused to go see INXS with J.D. Fortune, as I thought it wouldn't be the same. Nowadays, I still kick myself over the fact that I missed that show, especially knowing what was to come later...
"Tiny Summer"
As far as I can tell from the Setlist Wiki, INXS' last gig with J.D. Fortune as their frontman took place on August 14th, 2011. This was the final show of the Original Sin tour, after which the band went quiet... but not for long! In September 2011 (I wish I knew the exact date- going off memory and a glance at the 2011 calendar, it must have been either the 12th, 13th, or 14th), INXS announced on their official site that they had something to share with their fans later in the week. What they had to share became apparent on the 15th, when a new track was uploaded to their site. This song was called "Tiny Summer," and it sounded a little something like this:
So, uh. Remember those two songs I embedded above? Yeah... this does NOT sound like THOSE. INXS were no strangers to ballads (see "Never Tear Us Apart," arguably their second biggest hit), but this is not the sound that they're typically known for. To say nothing of the rough, demo-like quality of this recording. As well as one glaringly obvious observation... that's not J.D. Fortune singing.
Fortunately, a statement was posted alongside this song, but unfortunately, it did little to shed light on the matter of who the singer was and what had happened to J.D. The statement seems to have been scrubbed from INXS' site, because it returns a 404 message (if anyone preserved the full statement, please send it to me!), but I managed to find part of it quoted elsewhere. From Andrew Farriss, INXS' keyboardist and main songwriter:
"Without a doubt, amazing song magic happened when Michael and I were a creative writing team. Recently at a party, I met a fellow songwriter by accident, an Irish bloke, and we sat around playing songs on acoustic guitars. Despite his funny accent, we then spent a few days songwriting and singing together... song magic was in the room again."
Why Andrew didn't just name the singer right away, I have no idea. Because the thing is, the vocals on this song are reminiscent of a certain other Irish songwriter... Bono, the lead singer of U2. To hear what I mean, take a listen to one of U2's own ballads, from their most-recent-at-the-time album, 2009's No Line on the Horizon:
Within a day, speculation began to fly in both the U2 fandom and the INXS fandom. On Interference, a U2 fan forum, a thread entitled "New INXS Demo... Featuring Bono?" was posted on the 15th, where fans shared their impressions of the unknown vocalist:
"It sounds like Bono to me."
"It's definetly him! he's singing in a very new way!"
"I think if it wasn't Bono... Andrew wouldn't have gone out of his way to cheekily avoid naming the singer other than calling him Irish."
"It's Bono and I love it!!!!!!!!!!!!! <3 And you can def hear Edge [U2's guitarist/backing vocalist] in the chorus."
Meanwhile, the INXS fans were equally confused. Since I can't find the original post from INXS' social media sharing "Tiny Summer," I have to rely on comments that fans left on the official announcement of the singer's identity. Regardless of when these comments were made, it's clear that they heard the same thing the U2 fans did:
"Reminds me of Bono a bit."
"Yeah ......sounds like U2."
"sounds like u2 to me! weird but its a decent song!"
"omg..he does sound like bono...thats okay i love bono...n bono was good friends w micheal..."
I chimed in on the conversation on Interference, stating that "I seriously doubt it's Bono. But on the other hand, I am hoping like crazy it is. Then my mind would explode from the awesomeness." This is what having U2 and INXS as your two favorite bands when you're a teenager will do to you.
Sadly (or perhaps thankfully), my mind did not explode from the awesomeness. It took a week and four days (an unusual length of time in my opinion) for INXS to finally put out a statement revealing the identity of their singer, but at last, on September 26th, they did. The conclusion?
It wasn't Bono
INXS announced that the singer of "Tiny Summer" was in fact an Irish singer-songwriter named Ciaran Gribbin, and that the recording was in fact a demo they had made together. They also revealed that he would, from that point in time, serve as the band's lead singer, with J.D. Fortune having left the band in "a mutual and amicable decision." Although J.D. validated this statement on his website, claiming that he and the band had agreed before the start of the 2011 summer tour that he would be stepping down from the band's duties after their last show on August 14th, he later- in June 2012- presented an entirely different story, claiming that INXS hadn't let him know he was fired until the end of the tour. And they hadn't spoken to him about it, either:
"I had no idea I had left INXS the second time, to be honest with you. I woke up August 18 and I had to find out from their web site, which, to this day, I still find bizarre.”
Now, I can't speak to the veracity of this because I don't know what statement J.D. is referring to, or how to find it. As I recall (and I was there and active in the INXS fandom when all of this went down), no one knew that J.D. had left the band until "Tiny Summer" was released, which is at odds with J.D.'s claim that the band made a public statement on their site, through which he found out he had been fired. But, I'd be happy to be proven wrong about this, and again I ask that if anyone has information about this, please share it with me. Bottom line is, if J.D. is telling the truth, then this wasn't the first time that INXS apparently fired their lead singer without talking to him first. And unfortunately, it wouldn't be the last.
The End of INXS
With Ciaran Gribbin, INXS went on to tour throughout the end of 2011 and much of 2012. I didn't hear much about how that tour went, either because there wasn't to say about it or because I refused to accept Ciaran as the band's singer, but you can hear for yourself what the band sounded like with Ciaran:
I mean. It's not BAD. Here's what they sounded like with J.D. singing this song, for comparison:
For all I know, things seemed to be going fairly well for INXS. I mean, they were still touring the world. But then November 2012 rolled around, and with it came a bombshell. During INXS' concert in Perth, Australia, on November 11th, Jon Farriss took the microphone from Ciaran just before their third-to-last song and announced that this was the band's last gig and they would henceforth be retiring from touring. This wasn't just a surprise to the audience, and to fans worldwide- it was a surprise to Ciaran as well. It wasn't until August 2013 that he opened up to the press, but when he did, it was a familiar story:
"I'd got wind of the INXS thing and knew the guys wanted a break but I didn't think it would come as abruptly as that... There'd been no word of the band splitting up. Then on the last night at the Perth Arena, I was talking about it being the 25th anniversary of the band's album Kick and introducing the guys. Jon walked on stage, took the mic and said 'It's wonderful to be here,' before going on to say that INXS would not be touring anymore."
Ciaran went on to emphasize that the band hadn't ever said they were splitting up, that they were only retiring from touring, that they had nothing to prove to anyone anymore, that he still respects the members of INXS and considers them to be his friends... But, well, it's 2024, and INXS hasn't released any new music since "Tiny Summer." Nor has Ciaran Gribbin done any work with them, as far as I know. Which sort of implies to me that the band has broken up.
So where are they now?
After Ciaran's last show, each band member went their separate ways. Andrew Farriss embarked on a solo career. The others seem to be happy spending time with their families and indulging in various hobbies. Ciaran Gribbin has released some solo stuff and gotten into the songwriting business. And J.D. Fortune started a new band and went on tour with them.
Regardless of the way things ended, I still believe that INXS has left behind a beautiful legacy. They were very influential on me as a teenager and I'm so glad I discovered them. May Michael Hutchence rest in peace. <3
Aaaand that's my story (and I'm sticking to it). If anyone can help clarify, elaborate, and/or fact-check some of the parts I was iffy on/wasn't around for, your help would be MUCH appreciated (and I will credit you should I end up actually posting this on Reddit). I'm also not sure if I should just stick with writing about "Tiny Summer" and the Bono/Ciaran confusion, or if I should keep it broadly focused on INXS' overall end the way I did in this post... Thoughts?
