While his death made the news, it certainly would have made bigger headlines about 10 years ago, when INXS was hugely popular and "Kick" dominated the airwaves. They were a monster phenomenon then with monstrous hits. I loved the band, especially Hutchence. They produced dance music, basically, but with actual lyrics and without the repetitive dubbing and backlooping so prevalent in "club" music today. Most dance "music" today is not comprised of songs . Mike Hutchence wrote songs . And he performed them in a way that forced you to pay attention to him.
I won't beat around the bush. He was terribly sexy and that was a part of his impact. I had an enormous crush on him. I used to giggle to my girlfriends, "Michael Hutchence wants me so bad...he just doesn't know it yet." He had a delightful androgyny achieved without makeup or effects. He was pretty--almost femme--but a little too butch to be girlish, a little too tough to be sissy. YUM! You can't buy that in a store or put it in a bottle.
He was a perfect, quintessential bisexual icon. I never actually thought of it that way. In fact, 10 years ago I didn't actually think of myself as a bisexual or one in need of a particular icon. I was starved for the sight of a Michael Hutchence but I couldn't have told you why.
By calling Hutchence a bisexual icon I don't mean he was bisexual. That doesn't really matter. He was whatever he said he was, and at the end of his life he was living with his longtime girlfriend and child. But he was a beautiful image of possibilities. Possibilities, as in the plural, as in the many. Just watching him sing was a bisexual experience.
Listening was a liberating experience too. Hutchence wrote of love and sex in every form, the intense to the fleeting, the dark and the light. He touched on sexuality's twin incarnations, the uplifting and the degrading. Lust wasn't a diminisher of the beholder or the looked-upon in his world. He sang of its magnifying power.
At that time, many critics compared him to The Doors' Jim Morrison, which they certainly intended as a compliment, though it made me cringe. Jim Morrison was a talented young man and I'm sorry he died young and all that, but I hate what he stands for in peoples' minds. There's a sort of wallowing death-worship glamour to him that I despise. Now Mike Hutchence is dead too young, also. And the thread of depression ran through his hurt mind as it clearly ran through Morrison's. But I don't like the similarity and I don't think the two singers represented the same things. To me, Mike Hutchence is an icon of hotblooded life , even after his death.
He didn't give us songs to commit suicide by. We really don't need any more of those.
He didn't need a soundtrack to commit suicide by. I hate to think of him swinging there silently. It's horrible. He had every reason to live. Talent, fame, money, looks, love, a woman, a child. Every reason should have been enough but it wasn't. I shake my head but I won't cast a stone. He was a depressive. I love my own life, fear my own death, but I have the blue demon too and it defies love and fear. It certainly defies reason. Cling to reason as tight as you can, take your medicine religiously and hope it keeps working. That's all you can do. I have no judgments against Mike Hutchence for losing the battle with the blue demon, only pity for him. He would have won, and he would have lived, if he only could.
What he left behind is music and memories that are better reflections of life than death. To remember him, I dance.
Now I just hope that he's at peace in some way. I don't know where or in what form, but I hope that he escaped the demon and found his own blessing. He sang a beautiful benediction in "Shine Like It Does" (from the "Listen Like Thieves" album):
Shine like it does
Into every heart
Shine like it does
And if you're looking
You will find it ... You will find it.
Michael Hutchence, I hope you do find it.
