Travel / Music

Never Tear Us Apart: Where Were You When Michael Hutchence Died?

Prague, and a convergence of music 25 years on.

I remember it like it was yesterday, much clearer than other things that happened to me 25 years ago. Still, today when I saw this reminder of the INXS front man’s untimely demise a quarter century ago, I had to consult my meticulously kept journals from that year. Thank god I never burned them, as originally intended.

I was on my first big solo trip, having graduated from university and a strapping 23 years old. I had the tiger by the tail and the world was my oyster.

And the oyster I chose was Central and Eastern Europe in the dead of winter.

Europe was the only place I had ever been outside of North America up to that point, on family trips, so that was the first place I could think of to go. I am not special in that regard, it’s most people’s first big trip when it’s time to spread those wings and see the world.

Costa Rica and Thailand come later and then it either ends, or gets really crazy, the whole travel thing.

I had been staying with family in southern Germany and had earned enough money in 2 months of less-than-fun work on construction sites to buy my Interrail ticket for unlimited train travel and set off on my first true foreign adventure.

Salzburg, Vienna, Budapest were my first stops, a couple of nights in each. It being early November, many of the places I stayed in were quite empty. Which was not an easy thing when I wanted to meet people.

And I wanted to meet people because I had not yet understood the difference between being alone and being lonely. I had not understood it because I had never been confronted by it.

Until this trip.

Further stops included Dresden, Berlin, Krakow, back to Berlin, Hamburg and then back to southern Germany.

But it is the middle of the trip that was an awakening, as much for travel as it was for music.

In those heady days, directions and tips were given by a mix of Let’s Go, Rough Guide and Lonely Planet books. It’s almost hard to remember now: travelling without the internet, google maps and TripAdvisor reviews of every last thing.

Once you got off the train at a very cold station in a new-to-you city in post-Communist eastern Europe, you were on your own. There was no tourist information center, never mind any wifi to connect with to call an Uber. There were plenty of elderly women around trying to rent you a room, however.

But if you had a place in mind whose blurb you had read in one of the guidebooks, you had to figure out how to get there. A taxi was financially out of the question, so a combination of bus and subway had to become your quick friends. Then there was a walk to the hostel itself, which you most likely hadn’t made a reservation for, much less could be sure it was even open. And if it was open, whether you’d be the only one there or not.

You really had no idea what you were getting yourself into.

It was Prague, so yeah…Charles Bridge, Stare Mesto, the Astronomical Clock, Wenceslas Square, beer halls and absinthe. Of course, I went and saw those things then and again in 2000 and again in 2012. But really, what sticks in mind most about that city in the Czech Republic was music. It was the backdrop throughout my weeklong stay in this city.

It started with my lonely and freezing cold arrival at a hostel and a welcome introduction to two fellow travellers and an invitation to a chamber music concert that they were going to in a cathedral. Vivaldi and “The Four Seasons”. Immediate feelings of gratitude that I could cry about now.

Next is a distinct memory of going into a record store and hearing “Bittersweet Symphony” by the Verve for the first time. I remember being overcome with thoughts of “my God, what sound is this?”. The fact of where I was and what was happening to me at the time is probably why I consider it the greatest song ever written.

I remember hearing the opening strains of the strings that begin the song, closing my eyes and feeling an instant wave of utter calm wash over me. The same thing still happens every single time I hear it now. I could cry about that too.

It happened that Oasis were playing live the very same week that I was in Prague. I had seen them a few months before in Vancouver when they had played four songs and left the stage due to things being thrown from the audience. They redeemed themselves that night for me and the entire hostel that went and every time I hear “Be Here Now”, I remember the full-powered, full-throated swaggering start of that show.

But the next night, at the Boathouse, a hostel some way out of town that was full of Australians, the news of Michael Hutchence’s death from some form of auto-erotic asphyxiation arrived.

The histrionics that followed were legendary. The feeling was that if you were Australian you had claimed him as a national hero snatched away too soon. Other nationalities just wouldn’t understand.

But I felt him too. INXS had been with me for a long time. I came in with “Original Sin” and “What You Need” in the mid-80s, but it was their massive “Kick” album in 1987 that hurtled them into the stratosphere, on the back of the slow-burn captivation of “Need You Tonight”.

It was “X” in 1990 when I think they hit their stride. Songs such as the soaring “The Stairs” were staples in my grade 12 year and I recall seeing them with my then-girlfriend at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver.

Those two albums were their high-water mark, and though those that followed produced a few hits, they did not produce nearly the same amount of sales. Now it was the 90s and there was grunge, there was Britpop and INXS was none of those. The world had moved on.

By 1997, Michael Hutchence was on the ropes, involved in a rock and roll/child custody tug of war with Bob Geldof revolving around journalist/model Paula Yates.

Long story short, Yates had had three children with Geldof while they were together and one subsequently with Hutchence. A planned visit to Australia that included Yates, Hutchence and the four children was blocked by Geldof.

Hutchence, already in the throes of depression and drug and alcohol addiction, was distraught at this turn of events and turned his lights out, possibly accidentally, with a combination of overdose and asphyxiation in a Sydney hotel room.

Anyone travelling in those days and staying in hostels (and probably still today) will at many points come into contact with fellow travellers from Australia. Their reputation often precedes them. The hostel I was staying at in Prague was no different, the place was swimming in Aussie’s on tour. The vast majority of them were great fun, but there were a few that one could do without. I suppose that would be fair to say of just about any nationality, lest one think I am impugning the stereotypes of the Down Under set.

The mood in that Prague hostel was hysterical at first, then somber disbelief, then jubilant and complete with a singalong into the wee hours in Hutchence’s honour. I had never seen such an outpouring of national emotion…until I witnessed the Tragically Hip’s last cross-Canada tour and the subsequent death of lead singer Gord Downie from cancer in 2017.

But that’s another story for another set of travels. In the end, sometimes all you need from a city you are spending time in is not necessarily for it to “be” anything, apart from just a place where everything comes together, briefly but unforgettably.

By coincidence or otherwise, here is INXS in “Never Tear Us Apart”, shot in Prague, 10 years earlier in 1987.

I really do hope that you like what you have just read. If you want unlimited access to thousands of writers, consider a subscription to Medium. It will set you back $5 a month and if you use the link below, then I get a slice of that that will go to the man on the Charles Bridge playing “Suicide Blonde” on his accordion, when I am next in Prague.