"Listen Like Thieves" by INXS, at 30

“Listen Like Thieves”, released on the 14th October 1985, was the fifth studio album from INXS and is widely considered as being the international breakthrough for the band.  It spent two weeks at number 1 on the Australian Kent Music Report Albums Chart, peaked at number 11 on the US Billboard 200, 24 on the Canadian RPM 100 Albums and 46 on the UK charts.

To help celebrate its 30th birthday, here's a little retrospective of the album...

During 1984, INXS toured non-stop across Europe, the UK, the US and Australia on the back of their album “The Swing”.  By that December, it was double platinum making it, at the time, one of the five biggest domestic albums in Australian music history and, buoyed up by this, the members of INXS wanted to improve their worldwide impact.

In  March 1985, they returned to Rhinoceros Studios in Sydney to plan their next album with new producer Chris Thomas, who’d previously worked with The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Sex Pistols (on “Never Mind The Bollocks”), The Pretenders, Elton John and Roxy Music.  The powerful producer was just what they needed.  As Richard Clapton, acclaimed Australian songwriter and producer, said, “Chris was one of the most talented, most eccentric and demanding people you'd ever want to meet.  From the moment you walked into the control room, there was no doubt you were in the presence of greatness. INXS met their match...he was the only producer they've ever had who told them what they needed to hear.”  This chimed well with the band, as Michael Hutchence later recounted, “This is what we've been trying to do one way or another for a few years now, that is to make an album that is purely just form and function of the songs. It has no artistic pretentions.”

Album liner image
from left - Jon Farris (drums), Tim Farris (guitar), Michael Hutchence (vocals), Kirk Pengilly (guitar/sax), Garry Gary Beers (bass), Andrew Farris (keyboards/guitar)

Track Listing
1: What You Need
2: Listen Like Thieves (G. Beers/A. Farris/J. Farris/T. Farris/M. Hutchence/K. Pengilly)
3: Kiss The Dirt (Falling Down The Mountain)
4: Shine Like It Does
5: Good + Bad Times (M. Hutchence/K. Pengilly)
6: Biting Bullets (M. Hutchence/K. Pengilly)
7: This Time (A. Farris)
8: Three Sisters (instrumental) (T. Farris)
9: Same Direction
10: One x One
11: Red Red Sun (A. Farris/J. Farris)
unless noted otherwise, all songs by A. Farris/M. Hutchence

This was the first album to feature songs written by a combination of band members and although this practise would continue, Andrew Farris and Michael Hutchence became the primary songwriters from “Kick” onwards.  It was also the first of three albums the group made with Chris Thomas at the helm (along with the aforementioned "Kick" and "X").

The recording process went well, with Thomas tightening up on the genre hopping of previous albums and sharpening the funk aspect.  By the time they had 10 completed songs, he hit them with the statement that the album wasn’t good enough and was missing the “killer” track.

Andrew Farris brought in a demo tape of a funk song he’d been working on called “Funk Song No.13”.  As Chris Thomas said, it “was just this riff - dink, dink, dink-a-dink - and it was great.  I thought, ‘I could listen to that groove for ten minutes!’  I said, ‘Let’s work with that.’”

Andrew Farris: “We had set out to take the funk dabblings [from] ‘The Swing’ and write a dance track with attitude. Michael had a rough lyric idea in mind. I had already been fooling around with the [chords] and most of the track was played live in the studio.  It’s another example of a huge hit that essentially took no time at all.  Michael’s lyrics were simple and direct…”

Hey you, won't you listen

This is not the end of it all

Don't you see there is a rhythm

I'll take you where you

Really need to be

“…and he sang them like he believed it.  Plenty of in-your-face guitar, a stompin' rhythm track, and the use of an acid keyboard bass line gave us a song from outer space compared to other folks in 1985. We had our first Top 5 hit in North America.”

“What You Need” was the lead-off track for the album and the first single to be released from it in Australia and New Zealand.  It was the second single release in the USA and Europe and was the band’s first American Top Ten hit, peaking at number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.  The single was a top 20 hit in Canada, reached number 2 in Australia but only managed number 51 in the UK.

Whilst the band was recording the album, WEA (their label) released a limited edition 12” vinyl (and cassette) EP called Dekadance, featuring remixes from the albums “The Swing” and “Shabooh Shoobah”.

On 19th May, INXS picked up seven awards at the 1984 Countdown Music And Video Awards ceremony and also performed “Burn For You”.  In July, as part of the Oz For Africa concert (in conjunction with Live Aid) they performed five songs and the BBC broadcast two of them, “What You Need” and “Don’t Change”.

from left - Hutchence with Richard Lowenstein, Dekadance EP cover, album in cassette form

After a South American tour in August 1985, the band performed in Melbourne at a concert for Prince Charles and Princess Diana, later released on video as “Rocking The Royals”.  From November through to February 1986, they toured North America, Europe and New Zealand (as Andrew Farris later said, “we toured this album relentlessly for 14 months.”)  During a two-month break following this, Michael Hutchence took a lead role in Richard Lowenstein’s second feature film “Dogs in Space” and sang the beautiful  “Rooms for the Memory”, written by Ollie Olsen, which entered the charts.  Unfortunately, the movie (which I liked and which did well criticially) wasn’t a commercial success.

In May, the band toured (as the wonderfully named “If You Got It, Shake It World Tour”) for six months in the United States, Europe and Australia.  They were the support band for Queen at their “Live at Wembley ‘86” show on 12th July (which I had a chance to attend but didn’t - argh!) and Musician magazine, at the time, called INXS “the best live band in the world.”

The album yielded four singles:
“This Time”, backed with “Sweet as Sin” and released in September 1985
“What You Need”, backed with “I'm Over You” and released in December 1985
“Listen Like Thieves”, backed with “Different World” and released in April 1986
“Kiss the Dirt (Falling Down the Mountain)”, backed with “Six Knots” and released in August 1986
(“Different World” appeared on the “Crocodile Dundee” soundtrack)

The four singles also had accompanying videos:
“This Time” was directed by Peter Sinclair and produced by Godley & Crème
“Kiss the Dirt (Falling Down the Mountain)” was directed by Alex Proyas and produced by Andrew McPhail.  The video was shot on a salt lake in South Australia. Proyas would go on to direct “The Crow” and “I, Robot”.
“What You Need” and “Listen Like Thieves”, were directed and produced by Richard Lowenstein.  He had directed his first ever music video in June 1984 for the band's “Burn For You” (which won the Countdown Music and Video Awards for Best Promotional Video), following it up in October with “All The Voices” (using footage from his first feature film “Strikebound”) and “Dancing On The Jetty”.  He would go on to establish a long term relationship with the band until Hutchence’s death and his work on the “Kick” videos was excellent.

“Listen Like Thieves” was heavily (to put it politely) influenced by John Carpenter’s “Escape From New York” and featured a lot of the cast of “Dogs In Space”, as well as animation from Lynn-Maree Milburn.

video stills from "What You Need"

For “What You Need”, Andrew Farris said, “The video was mostly done with still photography edited together, a motor drive on the camera giving the visual sequence its strange film texture. Lynn-Maree Milburn added the animation.  We were not only fooling with the music but fooling with visual mediums as well and it was working.”  At the Countdown Music and Video Awards in 1985, Lowenstein shared the award for Best Video for “What You Need” with Lyn-Maree Milburn.

Although the album was a commerical success, it had a mixed critical reception.  Rolling Stone magazine wrote that “INXS rocks with passion and seals the deal with a backbeat that’ll blackmail your feet” and felt the band were “going for the jugular - or is that the groin?”.  AllMusic noted that the album completed the bands “transition into an excellent rock & roll singles band”, Australian musicologist Ian McFarlane wrote that it had “a much harder sound than heard on previous INXS records, but somehow it lacked the pop smarts that had made The Swing so appealing.”  In the UK, the NME called the band ‘INX-cusable” and the review declared the album to be a “complete and utter turkey.”

Personally, I think it’s a great album, wonderfully bridging the artistry of the earlier works and paving the way for the assured sound of the mighty “Kick”, which would appear two years later.

Happy 30th, “Listen Like Thieves”, I think you still sound fresh and exciting!

* Interview quotes taken from "Story To Story" and liner notes from the US import "Shine Like It Does: The Anthology 1979-1997"

INXS Friday - for Michael Hutchence

Tomorrow, November 22nd 2014, marks the 17th anniversary of the death of Michael Hutchence, lead singer of my favourite band INXS.  As I mentioned in a previous post (see here), I can still remember clearly hearing the news on the radio that morning and not quite believing it - he was dead, how could that be?

I was lucky enough to get to a few of their concerts (I'm in the crowd at Wembley Summer XS and Alison & I saw them at The DeMonfort in 1993 (which I blogged about here) and at the NEC in 1997).  We've seen the band twice since (at the NEC again with Jon Stevens and on Clapham Common with J.D. Fortune) but neither worked for me - Hutchence was too integral to the band for it to work without him, I reckon and it's only their pre-1997 music that moves me.

1997.  17 years before that, it was 1980, I was eleven and hadn't heard of them.  Neither had too many other people outside of Australia, though the band formed in 1977 (as The Farriss Brothers).  As it was, INXS released their first single, "Simple Simon"/"We Are the Vegetables", in Australia and France in May 1980, following it up with their debut album - INXS - released in Australia on 13 October 1980.  It was recorded at Trafalgar Studios in Annandale, Sydney and co-produced by the band and Duncan McGuire, with all the songs attributed to the entire band (at the insistence of manager Chris Murphy).  Deluxe Records gave them $10,000 to make the whole album, meaning that to keep within budget they had to record between midnight and dawn (often after playing live shows earlier in the evening).

The album featured "Just Keep Walking" (which was their first Australian Top 40 single) and eventually went gold (selling over 35,000 units) but it took a good few years to do so.


I like the album, with its New Wave-ska-pop style but Alison isn't so keen and she's not alone...

I'm not a great fan of the first album. It's naïve and kinda cute, almost. It's these young guys struggling for a sound. All I can hear is what was going to happen later and it's probably an interesting album because of that. "Just Keep Walking" was the first time we thought we'd written a song. And that became an anthem around town. It's funny, I remember kids in pubs saying it and hearing it on the radio the first time. We'd never heard that before.

- Michael Hutchence,

as quoted in "Burn : The life and times of Michael Hutchence and INXS" (Bantam Books)

17 years ago, Michael Hutchence passed away.  17 years before that, INXS were starting on the road that would lead - for a time - to world domination in music.  It still doesn't feel that far away.

And this has nothing to do with 1980 or 1997 but comes from "Later With...Jools Holland" in 1994, with Hutchence, Andrew Farriss (on piano) and Kirk Pengilly (sax) performing a beautifully stripped down version of "Never Tear Us Apart"

RIP, good sir.

Never Tear Us Apart

It's Friday.

I like INXS.

I like "Never Tear Us Apart".

Hey, it's INXS Friday!

The "Soul" version (which has a nice and loose, demo-ey feel to it)

Live at Wembley, July 1991. I was at this gig, it was bloody brilliant. 

 And now for something completely different...

This is the Stringspace Orchestra, who are based in Sydney - I like this.

"Never Tear Us Apart" featured on the 1987 KICK album and was released as a single in August 1988, reaching number 24 in the UK charts.

The song was originally designed as a blues number in the style of Fats Domino until Chris Thomas, the producer, suggested a synth-based arrangement instead.

Music by Andrew Farriss, lyrics by Michael Hutchence.

INXS - 21 years on from Get Out Of The House

This Sunday (July 13th) marks the 21st anniversary of me & Alison going to see INXS play the DeMontfort Hall in Leicester as part of their "Get Out Of The House Tour".

I wrote about this extensively last year (click here for the post - which seems to have gone down well), so I won't go into the where's and whyfore's of the tour, or the gig (check the post for that) but I'll share some music instead.

This was shot on the tour, in Glasgow on July 9th (4 days before I saw them) and whilst the sound isn't brilliant, it does give you a great sense of the experience and features two of my favourite songs.


Here they are, performing KICK in California, 1988


And performing "The Stairs" (one of my favourite songs) at Summer XS, Wembley, the first time I ever saw them live (and in a weird coincidence, that was also on the 13th of July, but in 1991).

* I know it's not the 13th today, but it fits with the "INXS Friday" tag and I get to make the rules on my blog, so there you go!

INXS Friday briefly returns...

Earlier this week I wrote a lengthy blog post about INXS' 1993 Get Out Of The House tour, which will appear later this month and because I was then in an INXS-kinda-mood, Alison & I watched the Live Baby Live DVD.

Way back when, I used to post INXS videos here on a Friday (hence INXS Friday - hey, I never said I was smart) and so I decided to briefly revive the tradition with two versions of one of my favourite songs (which, ironically, wasn't actually written by INXS at all).

The first version was recorded as an Australian-only stand-alone single in March 1981 and reached number 20 in the charts, later featuring on the 1982 compilation album INXSive.  The song also appeared, in a dramatically different arrangement, on their 1987 album KICK.  The second video, featuring the KICK arrangement, comes from the 1991 live album/CD Live Baby Live.







The song was written by Ian Clyne, Gerry Humphrys & Rob Lovett, members of the band The Loved Ones which formed in Melbourne in 1965.  The band split in 1967 but the song really did live on, being selected as number 6 on the Australasian Performing Rights Association (APRA)'s list of Top 30 Australian songs of all time.

Couldn't resist - a late-coming INXS Friday special

Lately, from the Wembley concert (which I was at). Not included on the original concert film (it's an extra on the DVD), this has a terrific sax solo by Kirk Pengilly.

INXS Friday - Week 8

A beautiful song, that tells a real story. In fact, there's plenty of imagery here that I think would lend itself wonderfully to a horror story. But there you go, that's probably just me...

By My Side

INXS Friday - week 7

I'm writing this on our new laptop, the old one gave up the ghost yesterday. This is a weird one though - it's a new style keyboard, with the keypad alongside, so everything's shifted over slightly. I keep missing the Shift Key, meaning a lot of my sentences originally start with \

INXS Friday - week 6

One of my all-time favourites songs, I love this and I don't know that I can explain why that is. I don't suppose it really matters, does it, because that's what music is all about - it's how it touches and moves you that counts.

"Mystify", from "Kick"

INXS Friday - Week 5

This is going back a bit but it's a bloody good song. Apparently, they used to close most of their shows with this and I like that sentiment. When we were in Passionfish, I wrote the lyrics to a song called "On The Floor" and this was in my mind the whole time. I gave the lyrics to Mike (he wrote the music) and when he played it to me later on, it sounded more like T-Rex. Oh well.

INXS Friday - week 4

I was torn, posting this weeks entry. I love this video, which captures the band and the 80s at their height (Joel Schumaker was never this good again), but I love the version they did at Summer XS in 1991. Which to post, which to post?

To quote Harry Hill, only one way to find out...Fight!

The Video


Summer XS, Wembley 1991

INXS Friday - week 3

Perhaps not the best song they ever did, but it's certainly something that's very representative of their style at the time and also their work in pushing what a music video was all about.

I wasn't really into INXS in the 80s, but I do remember this song. Much later, watching the video, Alison & I caught the little dance - nodding, then shaking the head (see the band, in the background, at set points) - and have done it ever since. Wonderfully, Matthew has also picked up on it and now does the dance too.

It's INXS Friday

I hadn't intended this to become any kind of regular feature, but it seems like a pretty good idea to me.

I've chosen this for three reasons:
1: I think it's a cracking song and that, in itself, is more than enough
2: The second novel I wrote was called "The Loved One" - it was a contemporary drama and I loved it
3: I was at this concert, at Wembley, in July 1991.

Sometimes, the old ones are really the best...

I had the day off today, so after dropping Matthew off at school (he’s now decided he likes Dr Who, so we’re going to look for Daleks on YouTube over the weekend) and taking Alison for breakfast and then to work, I hit Tesco. As I was wandering down the crisp aisle, INXS and “New Sensation” came onto my MP3 player - I’m sure I wasn’t singing out loud, but it’s a great song and I apologise to any of my fellow shoppers if the occasional stray “out-loud” words frightened them.

I picked up Q when I was there and read it this evening and there was a big article on the death of Michael Hutchence - an intriguing coincidence, I thought, so tonight I had a look on YouTube and found this song. Not “New Sensation” (the video doesn’t appear to be there), but one of my favourites none the less - it’s a good song but, more importantly, it’s a great video. The band all look so young and full of energy, they were still working to conquer the world (“Kick” was a few years away) and I love the fact that we see them in London so early on.

So here we are, INXS and “Burn For You”…