STACK #197 Mar 2021

FEATURE MUSIC

inter-racial couple. Psychologically that makes it a bigger statement. Even when I rang up Daryl Hall from Hall & Oates to sing on it, his manager thought it was too controversial. But I think the record would have been bigger [it peaked at #58 Stateside] had I not talked them into changing the lyrics.” On providing BVs for Original Sin , Hall later reflected, “I don’t know why, because they’re good singers; they didn’t need me, but I did it anyway”. Original Sin also topped the French charts and when tour manager Gary Grant roused Hutch from a post-revelry slumber – in a Rome hotel room, INXS were on tour at the time – to share this milestone, he recalls, “Michael jumped out of bed, completely naked and began singing, ‘We’re Number One! We’re Number One!’ He was marching around the room with one arm raised, bellowing as loud as he could. He strode right out onto the balcony and directly across from our room, on the roof of a church, a dozen nuns were kneeling there, saying their prayers that morning. It was amazing – I don’t know if they heard him before they saw him, but all of them stopped

INXS on tour in June 1984, outside a venue in Illinois. Photographed by Paul Natkin.

When Molly Meldrum asked Michael how Nile Rodgers came to produce this INXS track during a 1984 interview, he explained, “We’d always loved Chic... great musicians and great production and stuff. And at that stage we were listening to Nile’s solo album, which really never got a great run here [in Australia], [ Adventures In ] The Land Of The Good Groove .

primo front-and-centre possies were already ‘reserved’ was priceless. Photographic evidence of this exists thanks to The Truth newspaper, which sent a photographer around to pap us. The Truth ran a dodgy article headlined “Waiting For Their Idols Of Rock” the following day, claiming that we were groupies who flew around the country stalking INXS on tour. I cut out the photo as a memento, but threw away the trashy article that was lies, all lies (as if Year 11 students could even afford the flight costs!?). It’s hard to believe that Original Sin , The Swing ’s lead single, is the only INXS single to ever top the singles chart in Australia. The song’s arresting, stuttering opening drum pattern could sound clunky in less capable hands, but Jon Farriss slays. Enter sinister, stalking bass, and then inquisitive synth sashays in. Even before Hutchence’s bedroom tenor materialises, “You might/ Know of/ The original si-in” – alongside that funkadelic-yet-coy guitar riff – this song is killer. Fun fact: Producer Nick Launay used a sampler to enhance Farriss’s drumming: “What I did was feed Jon’s snare sound into [the sampler], then set it up so that every time he hit the drum live, it would play this minirecording of his drum sound.” Chances are you’ve already conjured images from the Yasuhiko Yamamoto- directed Original Sin music video, which was filmed in Tokyo, in your mind’s eye: circling motorbikes, trucks backing in and out of shot, a fairground, ‘80s mullets, sunglasses at night, long coats that resemble Driza-Bones...

their prayers and turned in unison to look at him, just completely stunned. It stopped Michael in his tracks for a moment. Then he just smiled, waved at them, and shouted, ‘We’re Number One!’” The Swing topped the

I cut out the photo as a memento, but threw away the trashy article that was lies, all lies

And funnily enough we did a show in Toronto with Men At Work... Nile came along to a show, and he came backstage and said ‘Hi’, and Tim [Farriss, guitarist] kinda fell on the

Australian Kent Music Report Albums Chart for five non-consecutive weeks and remained in the Top 100 for a jaw-dropping 104 weeks (over two years)! After releasing Original Sin , INXS relocated to the UK to record the rest of The Swing with Launay, who admits, “ Original Sin was so incredible that when I heard it, I just thought, ‘How on earth am I going to follow this?’” In the band’s illuminating offical autobiography, INXS: Story To Story , Launay reveals, “ The Swing was supposed to be their Talking Heads album. It was supposed to be their Remain In Light . We didn’t talk about it, but it was clear that that’s what we were doing...” BC

floor – ‘cause, you know, he loves Nile Rodgers – and [Nile] said, ‘Hey, let’s have a jam,’ and we

said, ‘Sure.’ He said, ‘Look, if we’re gonna have a jam, let’s record it really well. So let’s do it at the Power Station,’ and we thought, ‘Well why don’t we just do a single?’ And he said ‘Yeah.’ So he was a fan and that was fantastic. So I think he listened to The One Thing – he was a fan of The One Thing , which was what we were trying to do, you know? That mixture of funk and rock.” Rodgers didn’t just inject his special brand of funk into Original Sin , he also suggested a lyrical twist within the chorus that would result in the song being banned from a number of US radio stations. “The original lyrics were, ‘Dream on white boy/ Dream on white girl’,” Rodgers has admitted. “I said, ‘Why not make it black boy, white girl?’ I come from an

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