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MUSIC FEATURE

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move, Farriss and Hutchence decided to grab the wheel. “It was a combination of excitement and fear, really. I can remember we were on a bus in Germany on tour with Listen Like Thieves , and we thanked my brothers Tim and John, and Kirk and Gary, for trusting Michael and I to come up with the hits. “I feel like a car salesman retelling the story now, but it didn’t feel like that at the time,” Farriss recalls. “We said to them, ‘Why don’t you let Michael and I write the songs for the next album (1987’s Kick ) and we’ll try and give you more What You Need songs’. “To their credit, the guys said, ‘Yes, the responsibility is all yours.’ And that was the right word to use. Michael and I did feel responsible not to f-ck it up, but that pressure cooker delivered Kick .” Chris Thomas, who would also produce Kick , brought an intimidating CV to the desk when he arrived in Sydney to begin work on Listen Like Thieves . His first studio job, aged 19, was under the stewardship of Sir George Martin. Joining during the recording of the Beatles’ White Album job, Thomas was left to produce Happiness Is a Warm Gun when Martin went on a holiday. Thomas would go on to mix Dark Side of the Moon , produce

Roxy Music and co-produce the only studio album the Sex Pistols would make, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols . INXS’s first meeting with Thomas came when the producer casually strolled on stage while they performed at Los Angeles’ Palladium, touring The Swing . Post-gig, the producer introduced himself backstage, explaining that INXS sounded like four different bands on their previous albums, and he needed to hear how they sounded on stage and what equipment they used. Thomas, Farriss outlines, requested the use of that exact same live rig in the studio. “He wanted to use it all including the floor wedges, and this was way before in-ears (in-ear monitor buds). The problem was we were renting the monitor gear in Los Angeles, so he asked whether we could reproduce it here. “I thought it was most unusual because we’d never worked with a record producer who asked to use our live monitor rig in the studio. But he wanted to capture the same sound he heard in Los Angeles. He didn’t want to isolate every musician from each other. “He was very respectful for someone with his CV. He just tried to capture the essence of who we were and what made our

sound unique, pushing us all hard, including Michael, to be the best we could be. “We could say to him, ‘We want this thing to be a bit heavier, a bit nastier,’ for example, on What You Need . One minute you’ve got a slight hip-hop groove and some funky riff going on, and the next minute the chorus sounds like the Sex Pistols. That was all through his experience of layering guitars. “I really liked that because I could say to him, ‘I don’t want a Mini Minor, I want a Mack truck on this part,’ and he’d just pull it out.” Listen Like Thieves represented a sonic turning point for INXS. The band honed a tighter, more polished blend of tight rock, funk, and pop while building a platform for the magnetic Hutchence to expand his untamed charismatic persona as a frontman. One of the great ‘verge’ albums in rock history, the record’s contagious, danceable pop would lead to unprecedented change in the band’s lives. “I listened to the album not long ago and it brought back so many memories,” Farriss tells STACK . “I think that Listen Like Thieves didn’t get a lot of credit at the time for what the album actually was. That’s only really been realised over the passage of time. But they were exciting times for us. We could all feel that something was on the boil.”

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had on hand, committing acoustic guitar, piano, or electronic keyboard and a drum machine to an eight track recorder. In the early years, he would even write the lyrics. “I began to realise that as the stage sizes got bigger and the stakes got bigger and our chart hits got bigger, it was actually a kind of good idea for Michael to write his own lyrics,” says Farriss. “He couldn’t be on stage and deliver his personality to people and be singing something that I wrote or something he may not agree with.” “Even in my dotage, I can tell singers who are passionate and sing about stuff that means something to them. It has to be real – it has to be convincing.” Andrew Farriss and Hutchence co-wrote five of the 11 tracks on Listen Like Thieves , including What You Need , Kiss the Dirt ( Falling Down the Mountain ), and Shine Like It Does . The pair had a knack for crafting songs with broad appeal and infectious melodies that would bring global success. Quickly gaining confidence, in a bold

I can still remember the cold rush of fear through my bones when he said to Michael and I, ‘We’re all going out now, but you two guys just stay here – you’re going to come up with that single.’

48 JUNE 2025

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