Somewhat bewildered INXSsquatted in between the musical jam in a bizarre rap sandwich.
Coming off a full year's sabbatical, INXS had reason to wonder what had become of pop music in the Northern Hemisphere as they arrived backstage for a perfomance at the American Music Awards in January.
When last the affable Austalian sextet strode these parts, their music fell beneath the umbrella of modern dance.
Now, tuned to their first glimpse of 1990s North America, INXS found itself widely perceived as being several notches nearer to aminstream blues-rock.
A remearkable shift, considering the band's music hasn'r undergone any dramatic renovations. But it was the rest of pop that did the shifting. "We were a little scared when we first got there, to tell you the truth," says guitarist Tim Farriss. Farriss,29, and brothers Andrew (keyboards,guitar) and Jon (drums, keyboards) founded the group 14 years agoin Sydney. The band's lineup completed by frontman Michael Hutchence, bassist Farry Beers and guitarist / saxophoniest Kirk Pengilly, has remained virtually unchanged since 1977.
First looking at who they'd booked for the show told us American music had turned upside down. We weren'tsure what it all meant, or where we fit into the picture."
Farriss says the band accepted the fact that it would be one of the few live music components of an award s show presumably designed to recognize American music.
But they did have a problem with the program's ban on drinking beer in the dressing room.
"Of course, we sent out for a few pints," Farriss laughs "But they arrived warm and we had no ice. So while Vanilla Ice was on stage rehearsing, we snuck into his room, and stole all his ice. The headlines would've been great if he'd caught us-'INXS punches out Vanilla Ice'. I'm not a fan of his."
If the INXS re-entry into American music began on a ja?????ing note, the group's current tour-a seven-month orbit that docks tomorrow at Maple Leaf Gardens- has thus far allayed fears that changing trends have left them behind.
three Saturday's ago at Madison Square Garden, a vo??????inous New York City audience cast their votes with their ??ect, dancing from the outs ??? to 100 minutes of music that rattled the fence between rhythm and blues.
It wasn't quite the pat. packagedroadshow from three years ago, when the band's sixth album Kick, topped the norht American charts and entrenched singer Hutchence (now 30) as a pin-up sex god of the Jim Morrison veriety.
???? this was a loose, unfettered ju????p???p featuring past hits and songs from the seventh LP, X. And while the concery was marred by technical screw-ups, the miscues inadvertently seemed to draw the capacity crowd closer to the band.
"Oh, you would have to see that show," Farriss laughs ruefully, recalling the first three songs at the Garden, during which both the band's lighting system and its smoke machine went on the fritz simultaneously. "It was bad enough when the lights went crazy, but then the smoke machine wouldn't stop billowing a cloud across the stage. I couldn't even see my brothers by the second song."
"For a split second, the air in front of me cleared up, and I got a glimpse of one of the guys from our crew standing beside the smoke machine, winding up with a hammer. It was like a scene out of Spinal Tap."
Three years ago that kind of technical disaster would've caused enormous grief within INXS. Now, in the wake of a year's break, they laugh until it hurts.
"I mean, c'mon! It's hylarious. But then, a few years ago we were supposed to be a modern band, and we were all quite serious about it."
"We busted our asses for 12 years and we were so stressed that funny things weren't funny anymore."
With a full 12 months to blow however they chose, the members of INXS scattered in verious musical directions. Singer Hutchence sunk into the MAX Q solo project, which met with negligable commercial and critical response.
Three members went off to produce other Australian groups, with bassist Beers shepherding a debut LP from Absolute Friends and Tim Farriss himself producing Sydney band Crash Politics.
Brother Andrew, meanwhile, collected the Australian producer of the year award for overseeing the debut by Jenny Morris.
Pengilly sont his time writing songs, while Jon Farriss actually rested.
Besides his production work, Tim says he took the notion of "going fishing" to new depths, taking a video crew with him to record an envirnmentally sound report on deep-sea Marlin excursions.
"We're calling it Fish In Space (a skewed reference to Dogs in Space, the 1986Hollywood flop that marked Hutchence's acting debut.)
"Basically, we went out to the Great Barrier Reef, caught some marlin, patted them on the snout, gave them a pep talk, clipped a scientific tag on them, then let them go."
"It's a fun way of explaining that you can enjoy fishing without destroying the fish. It also shows the damage drag-net fishing is doing to the marlin stocks."
When the year passed, Farriss says the band mambers regrouped with grins on thier faces. "Michael was feeling better about himself for doing Max Q, and better about being a part of INXS. And for the rest of us, it was just a laugh again, like it was before."
"We'd gotten to the point where being in the band had gotten to be a labor, and it needed to be brought down to the earthy level we had in the beginning."
Tim Farriss says the fresh outlook stretched through to the making of X, as the band "hung on to the funk, grooves that we'd also liked, but took it to a more basic level, like it was in the 70's when we were called the Farriss Brothers."
"I think we topped out on some comfortable level, musically. We relate enough to dance and rock fans alike that we don't concern ourselves with trends, because they don't seem to affect us."
"I mean, to me, the rap that's getting on the charts today is like commercialized punk, a pose of the real thing."
"Frankly, I find it a little scary that someone like MC Hammer can spend $1.4 million on a video. Where does that leave the young groups trying to break in?"
"So we've still got a dance beat, but we've drawn more to the blues things we tried in the beginning." "Andrew, especially has been getting into the blues harp.And the only CD I've got with me on the road is the Robert johnson reissue."
The band's blue's blusier muse will culminate in a live album, he expects, noting that tapes have been made of recent concerts in Detroit, Chicago, Rio, Dublin, and Wembley.
"Charles Musselwhite, who blew his harp on the X album, is part of the Chicago show, in fact. But it won't be the usual kind of live album. We're trying out different things, even recording acoustically in bathrooms, just to mix things up."
Tim, who's one of the three married members in INXS, says that in the grander scheme, the band's future probably will involved more recording, less touring.
"In the first 10 years, we managed seven albums and 14 tours, so it would be nice if we turned those numbers around in the next 10 years and did 14 albums and only seven tours."
"We want to matter, we want to be a significant band, but I'm not sure if we've pulled that off just yet."
"It's a good sign that we're getting lots of older kids out on this tour, and the teen thing isn't as intense s it was."
"That means the audience has grown, but grown with us, which makes sense, because we've been having singles in American since 1983, I just hope that by the end of the '90'3 we can say something people want to hear."
"America is pretty fickle, and the music it likes tends to be trival, disposable. If you can straddle that line and give them something substancial, that's a goal worth achieving."