St. Hutchence? The last Montreal interview

As has become quite apparent in the past months, the press is disposed to beatifying famous dead people. No one has tried to pin wings on INXS frontman Michael Hutchence yet, but his treatment has been not altogether different from Diana's--which is to say that many, many press people have come out extolling his niceness, his goodness, his impending marriage and, of course, the further niceness and goodness that comes with it. >> You must never trust the media on these things. We're all just looking for easy sentimentalism, human interest in tragedy. But in the case of Michael Hutchence, who hanged himself in a Sydney hotel room last Saturday, the whole happy/nice thing is true. >> The Mirror Interviewed Hutchence this past May, when he was in Montreal promoting INXS's last album, Elegantly Wasted. His wife Paula Yates paced back and forth outside the room where the interview was taking place, holding their baby, (ahem) Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily, and Hutchence watched the pair as he talked to me. I remember thinking that, as far as big-time rockers go, he was enviably relaxed and grounded. He seemed satisfied with his lot; in short, chewing on something he liked the taste of. >> "Do I think we are washed up?" asked Hutchence in reply to one of my first questions. "No. I don't think we are an '80s band, as some have said. This album doesn't sound anything like the '80s, or the stuff we did then. It sounds like me now, a father, soon to be married, enjoying life, not looking behind, but looking ahead. Always ahead." --Mireille Silcott