SHINE LIKE IT DOES, THE LIFE OF MICHAEL HUTCHENCE

“His liquid stage performance made Michael Jackson look like a creaky robot,” says Rolling Stone Australia’s founding publisher Toby Creswell of the “bend from the waist” movement that Mick Jagger complained Hutchence copied from him. Two decades after his death, Michael Hutchence’s star still shines brightly and this biography of the INXS frontman and his rise to the top of the rock charts recounts the story of an artist of contradictions. Hutchence was a loner who hated solitude; he was shy but played to crowds of 25,000; he appreciated both masterpieces and trash. Some of the stories may already be known to devoted fans: how, at 15, his parents separated, and unable to afford to take both sons with her, his mother chose to take Michael to LA, leaving younger brother Rhett crying at the airport; the time Michael appeared covered in lipstick after a six-hour interview with Paula Yates; and, of course, the story of Michael, Paula and Bob Geldof. Toby Creswell puts them – and others – into the chronological context of this enigmatic man’s life.