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Friday, November 23, 2007
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 "'CAUSE I'M NOT SLEEPING": THE NOVEL DEATH OF MICHAEL HUTCHENCE
It was ten years ago yesterday, November 22, 1997, that the body of Michael Hutchence was found hanging in a Sydney hotel room. He was 37 years old and had a one-year-old daughter. It was pretty sad at the time. Then stories started and it quickly became comical. Then it got sad again.
If you're my age, you remember INXS being the biggest band in the goddamned world. They had been very successful in their native Australia and, oddly enough, Canada. But when Kick was released, they became fucking enourmous. And they deserved it. They wrote some pretty goddamned good songs. Tell me you still don't tap your foot to "Need You Tonight" from time to time.
And after about a year, it was pretty much over.
To be fair, INXS remained pretty big in Europe, Asia and Australia at the end, but they played a club in Toronto about two months before Hutchence died. And if you're over in North America, you may as well not bother. England has gotten pretty good at the celebrity freakshow, but we invented it.
As much as big-time rawk stars bitch and moan about their lives, it is an entirely voluntary occupation. The last time I checked, there wasn't a draft to be the bassist in, say, Judas Priest. No one in their right mind spends years playing shithole bars in no-name towns to stay anonymous. Sure, record companies and promoters will fuck you over finacially for years, but you'll be too preoccupied with cocaine and blowjobs to notice.
 Cocaine and blowjobs were big priorities with Hutchence and he did both with a certain finesse. It is said that he personally hoovered tons of blow and got his blowjobs from only the best. Among those who sampled his goo; Kylie Minogue, Helena Christensen and Belinda Carlisle. That's a pretty tough life to beat.
For whatever reason, Michael decided that what he really wanted was to settle down with Bob Geldof's celebrated mess of a wife, Paula Yates. Consequently, the list of things Geldof didn't like was expanded from just Mondays to include the lead singer of INXS. A very, very contentious divorce was taking place as Hutchence was in that hotel room in Sydney 10 years ago.
Ten years ago yesterday, Michael Kelland John Hutchence was found dead at the Ritz-Carlton in Sydney. He was naked and a belt was found around his neck. The coronoer concluded that he had been mixing alcohol and cocaine with antidepressants. Shit happens, I suppose.
Except that Paula Yates wasn't quite prepared to accept that. Not for her explaining to their daughter, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence, that daddy offed himself for no reason. No, Paula insisted for years that Michael had perished in a bizarre autoerotic asphyxiation accident. That's right, Paula Yates honestly wanted to one day tell her daughter that daddy actually masturbated to death.
Look, no one knows better than I do the joys that come from cutting off the oxygen to your brain just before you cum, and that its an adult business and should be reserved solely for adults. Having said that, I'd certainly prefer that my wife someday to sit my kids down and explain that daddy's not around any more because he put a plastic bag over his head so that he could fire his jizz 400 yards than to tell have to say that I couldn't even get polypharmacy together.
If you ever wondered why I never got married or had kids, now you know. I have priorities.
Plus, I'm pretty sure that no woman would ever love me enough to tell my offspring that I masturbated to death. I can just imagine the conversation after my passing.....
Kid: "Where's my daddy?"
Mom: "He's taking a dump, honey."
Kid: "No, I mean my real daddy. The one who looked like a white Suge Knight!"
Mom: "Oh, that skinny Canadian loser? He fucked up with Prozac and Chivas. You're better off without him and his stupid, heavy books about nothing. Fuck him, the baldheaded prick!"  Not for me the quiet solace of knowing that my fruit of my lions is content thinking that I had jerked off into the great unknown. So perhaps it's best that I never wed in the first place.
That's how I know that Paula Yates really loved Michael Hutchence. She tried to give the poor bastard some dignity. And she struggled mightily to maintain that dignity until her own death from a heroin overdose less than three years later.
Tiger Lilly, now 11-year-old orphan, has been adopted by - of all fucking people - Bob Geldof and can't seem to find any peace. The Hutchence family is now gearing up to go to war with Sir Bob.
Mrs Glassop branded Sir Bob as "Satan" who did not look after her granddaughter, Tiger Lily, well.
She also slammed party girl Peaches as a "bad influence" on Tiger Lily, the late Hutchence's daughter by Yates.
Sir Bob agreed to raise Tiger Lily - along with the three daughters from his marriage to Yates - following the death of Hutchence in a bizarre hanging tragedy and Yates' fatal drug overdose in 2000.
But despite his reputation as a tireless worker for charity, Ms Glassop accused Sir Bob of being a bad father who was interested only in Tiger Lily's inheritance. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be much of an inheritance for poor Tiger Lilly. Michael seemed to devote more time to hiding his money than he did making more of it. A guy who was estimated to have been worth $10-20 million when he died left an estate of about a thousand dollars. And apparently he wanted it that way.
Ten years on, the sad, stupid death of Michael Hutchence only seems to get sadder and stupider.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Heaven Sent By: INXS From: Greatest Hits
Permalink Labels: Celebrity Skin, I Hate Music
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