INXS enjoys its good Fortune
Band’s ‘ TV find’ from Canada seems a good fit New album out today, world tour begins in new year
“ We didn’t know people would care so much.” INXS drummer Jon Farriss is sitting in a boardroom at Sony/ BMG’s Liberty Village offices in Toronto with his guitarist brother, Tim, bemusedly commenting on the media attention that has re- besieged the Australian band since Mississaugaborn J. D. Fortune was chosen as their new front man on the reality TV series INXS: Rock Star in September.
Since Fortune — “ Jason” to his insta- bandmates — was living in Oakville until he decamped to Los Angeles last winter for the Rock Star
contest, the two Farriss brothers ( a third, Andrew, is INXS’s principal songwriter) are happy to play second fiddle to their young charge this afternoon while he dashes madly from interview to interview, running a gauntlet of swooning female admirers each time he braves the lobby to nip outside for a smoke. The musicians were in town last week to play a quick, semiacoustic set for an invited audience at the record company’s Canadian headquarters and talk to the press about the first INXS album in eight years, Switch. The polished, taking- no- chances record — rushed through production in just over a month after Rock Star’s finale — arrives in stores today to the most consumer interest since the band peaked with 1987’s Kick and 1990’ s X.
Fortune, who shares the writing credit for the current hit single “ Pretty Vegas” and a couple of other tunes on the album, is now being groomed to confront INXS’s millions- strong fan base on a world tour. It kicks off in Vancouver on Jan. 18 and arrives here for two sold- out Massey Hall gigs on Feb. 6 and 7. Ticket sales have been so successful that a summer arena tour, with a stop at the Air Canada Centre, is already in the works.
“ I’m happy that it’s sold out because that means less family I have to call and ask to buy tickets,” says Fortune, 32, already a good fit with his likable elder bandmates. “ It’s funny. I can’t even get some family members in because it’s a no- comp tour. So they’re going to have to wait until we play the ACC in the summertime.
“ I feel a great deal of responsibility to this band. And that comes in the form of leadership, it comes in the form of creativity and it comes in the form of just taking care of myself physically and mentally and spiritually, and finding a harmony that’s gonna last the next 18 months.”
Yes, folks, Fortune is already a media pro. And his obvious charisma is certainly not lost on the band, which is banking on him to finally, permanently, fill the void left by Michael Hutchence’s suicide in 1997, after a series of failed experiments involving the likes of Terence Trent D’Arby and John Stevens.
“ When he went off and wrote ‘ Pretty Vegas’ by himself ( during the TV show), that was a good indicator for us because we really liked the song and it wasn’t the right thing to do, which is something we appreciate,” says Tim Farriss, adding that the band took to Fortune further because of the very behaviour that irritated the show’s producers.
“ We heard that he and ( fellow Rock Star
wannabe) Marty Casey took their microphones off next to running taps and things and opened the bars on the window in the mansion and escaped and went off to a bar, and we were being told, ‘ These guys are gonna be run off the show.’ He only got caught because he went out on the street for a cigarette and one of the people driving around in vans looking for him nabbed him.”
“He’s certainly not like the rest,” says Jon. “ On the show, it really did change from week to week. You’d see strengths from one person and then someone else would really come a long way from their experiences from the week before. J. D. was always milling around at the top there, but towards the end the intensity really fired up and he just shot forward.”
Still, he says, with the “ training wheels” from Rock Star removed and the album Switch unleashed upon the planet, the band now faces the challenge of convincing its audience Fortune is not a gimmick, but the man to make INXS a proper band again. It’s not going to be easy, considering the huge shadow cast by a natural- born rock star like Hutchence.
“ What we do is what we do and we had no choice in the matter when Michael departed. We’re in a band and we play music,” says Jon.
“ We’ve certainly had enough time to grieve and go through that horrible period and we just want to play music and make ourselves happy. . . . We weren’t a band. We needed to be a band. And it’s worked out.”
“ I just saw this two days ago,” says longtime INXS fan Fortune, picking up a copy of Switch handed to him by one of his recordlabel handlers.
“ I know every inch of this CD, which is great. It’s not like it’s a shock. I was there when we all came up with the artwork, I was there when we decided which songs we were gonna play. I was there for every inch of this. Every aching inch of this CD, I experienced, which is great. This is really, really, really quite a trip, man.”