Before I even went to any INXS concert in 1984, I had asked my boss at the restaurant for the day off on July 7 so I could go to the INXS concert at the Mann Music Center in Philadelphia. So, I was planning to go to this show before I ever saw Kirk or Michael and I liked to stick to my plans.
After what happened with Michael Hutchence in his hotel room on July 2, I went to work from 12pm to 9pm and my friends went to see INXS in East Hampton, NY on July 3. On July 4, Kirk Pengilly turned 26, INXS traveled to the Midwest, and I went to work from 11am to 8pm. The Go-Go’s and INXS played Summerfest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 5 and I had the day off from work. I was back at work on Friday, July 6, 1984, from 5pm to 1am while INXS and the Go-Go’s did a concert in New Haven, Connecticut.
The concert in Philadelphia was on Saturday, July 7. It took Terri, Jess, Jackie, and I about two hours to get to the Mann Music Center by car. The Mann Music Center was an outdoor theater located in Fairmount Park in West Philadelphia.
Do I have to be harassed everywhere?
When we arrived, we all had to pee, so we walked into a seedy-looking bar in the neighborhood. It was five o’clock somewhere, but I don’t think it was five yet when we got there.
The bathroom was too small for all four of us, so Jess and I had to wait near the bar. Sitting at the bar was a skinny black guy (we were in West Philadelphia where most people were black). This guy looked like he was in his late 30s and he was drunk.
When he saw me, he asked if I was married. Jess told him I was engaged. He said I should break up with my boyfriend and marry him instead because he had a great chest. Then he unbuttoned his shirt and took it off to show me his bare chest! Pointing to his chest, he said, “Does your boyfriend have anything as good as this?” It was scary. What is wrong with men? I couldn’t even use a bathroom in peace.
I had no choice but to be as polite as I could be until the bathroom was free and I could go in it. After that we left as quickly as we could and walked back to the Mann Music Center where we found out that the INXS tour bus had already gone inside.
Hey, Timmy!
We were still outside the venue, but we could watch INXS do their soundcheck from there. Timmy heard us all yell, “Hey, Timmy” in unison. He waved to us and then raised his fist in the air.
The Hooters
As usual, our plan was to find seats down near the stage so we were sad to learn that The Hooters would be going on before INXS. The Hooters were a popular Philadelphia-area band, so a lot of people showed up early to see them and that messed up our plan.
The Hooters- All You Zombies
Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman, the founding members of The Hooters, went to my school, The University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, but at least ten years before I was in college. They met each other while at Penn. They formed The Hooters in 1980.
INXS on stage
When INXS took the stage, I decided to stay in the seat I had a ticket for. It was about twenty-five rows up from the stage. Terri, Jess, and Jackie decided to see what they could find near the stage, so they left.
After a few minutes, I saw them waving to me, urging me to come down. They found seats in the second row on Timmy’s side of the stage and there was one for me too. So, I got up and walked down the aisle to where they were. When I walked down the row to take my seat, Michael saw me, and I noticed it when he recognized me.
I also noticed Michael looking over at me from time to time during the concert. One time, he was in front of us when “Dancing on the Jetty” started. I was standing there swaying to the music at the very beginning of the song and Michael was staring at me. I was feeling the music. Then he stopped staring and sang the song.
Dancing on the Jetty
There were a lot of screaming girls at the concert. Girls acting all hysterical over seeing INXS or any other musician never made sense to me. Really, I don’t get it at all. Why scream because of some guy? I wrote in my diary that those girls made me laugh and that I thought INXS liked us because we treated them like they were normal people.
Following the bus again
After the concert, we had to follow the bus again because we didn’t know where they were staying. This time there were guys in a car behind us and they also followed the bus because Belinda and Charlotte from The Go-Go’s were on the INXS tour bus.
It was an exciting ride as we were following them through the streets of Philadelphia. We ran a couple of red lights so we could stay right behind the bus. The destination turned out to be Rittenhouse Square and the Barclay Hotel. At the time, it was the classiest hotel in Philadelphia. Or if not the best, it was the most famous.
The Barclay Hotel impressed me when I saw it with its marble floors and palace decor. I don’t think I had been in any hotel as expensive-looking before.
Rittenhouse Square at 18th and Walnut Street is a small park and one of the original squares William Penn planned for the city in the 17th century. It’s one of the best and fanciest neighborhoods to live in or hang out at in Philadelphia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barclay_Hotel_(Philadelphia)
The Go-Go’s and their fans
The two guys who ended up at the Barclay with us seemed to be the same age as we were-between 18 and 21. I wrote in my diary that Charlotte was on the bus, but today I don’t remember seeing Charlotte at all.
When Jackie and I reconnected on Facebook, she said that she remembered being on an elevator with Belinda Carlisle and that she wanted to punch Belinda.
That is something I don’t remember but I do remember both Michael and Belinda being super-fucked-up on drugs. Michael was even worse than the last time we saw him just five days earlier when he was lying down drunk on the pavement. It wasn’t just alcohol this time-I could tell that other drugs had also been consumed.
Thank you, Gary Grant
The first thing many members of INXS did when they arrived at the hotel was look for a cigarette machine. The hotel did not have one. We gave Gary Grant a bottle of wine to thank him for being so nice to us. He had just gotten Jackie into the show on Long Island. Gary gave Jess a kiss so she must have presented it to him.
I had nothing to do with buying the wine other than chipping in to pay for it. Terri and Jess did all the planning and were the ones who contacted Gary Grant. If they had not done those things, I wouldn’t have a story to tell. I was just along for the ride.
After we gave Gary Grant the wine and the band went to their rooms, we waited around in the lobby. It wasn’t long before Kirk came down and said hello to us. In my diary, I wrote that he was wearing an ugly outfit. Unfortunately, I didn’t describe it at all. I wish I had. The members of INXS often wore clothes that we didn’t like, and I often never described the clothes and just wrote my opinion. If I had a chance to go back and do it again, I would write down more descriptive details!
Going out for cigarettes
Kirk told me that he had told Terri and Jess to say “Hi!” to me for him when he saw them in East Hampton. He said he was going out to buy cigarettes so I told him that I knew which way to go and would show him. Everyone in our group and the two guys who had followed us, all went with Kirk to the store.
We headed north on 18th street towards Chestnut Street and Kirk walked very fast. It was almost hard to keep up with him. After a couple of blocks, we found a store that sold cigarettes. Kirk bought a pack of Vantage cigarettes and we all headed back to the hotel.
While we were walking back, the two guys who were fans of The Go-Go’s asked Kirk several questions about them. Again, the actual questions and answers were not written down by me so I no longer remember them. All it says in my diary was that Kirk was nice and he answered the questions about what The Go-Go’s were like.
When we got back to the hotel, the guys didn’t come inside with us, and when they were gone, Kirk laughed about them asking him those questions. Before he went upstairs, he told us he would come down to the bar later and then we did not see him again. Just like that night five nights earlier, he didn’t come to the bar.
The hotel bar
Jackie and I decided to check out the bar which was on the ground floor near the lobby. When we looked in, we discovered that Jon Farriss was at the bar so we went in and sat down at a table near the entrance.
Jon Farriss was sitting at the bar with two older women in their thirties. Jackie bought him a drink and when he got it, he looked over at us and smiled. I got up and sat at a table near where the three of them were talking at the bar so I could eavesdrop on their conversation.
That’s how I found out more about those women. One was named Bonnie, and the other was Franny. I don’t remember who was who but one had been a former model who now had a business baking brownies. The other woman was acting like a fool in love or a crazy fan. She told Jon very seriously that she knew his soul because of the way he looked at her. Then she said that she could sense that there was something between them.
I’m sure I looked like I wanted to bust out laughing. The woman saying that nonsense noticed that I was sitting very close by and listening so then she told Jon that she felt like she was making a speech and that I was taking notes to write an article for the National Enquirer. The National Enquirer was a weekly tabloid paper mostly devoted to celebrity gossip.
After she said this, Jon turned and threw a swizzle stick at me. It didn’t hit me, but I got the message and went back to the table my friends were sitting at. But I don’t think he was upset because a little later he came over and sat with us.
Chatting with Jon Farriss
When he told us that the men’s bathroom was incredibly fancy and had a spiral staircase made of marble, Jackie and I went out to look for ourselves. There wasn’t anyone in there, so we went in and looked around right quick.
All the conversations I write about here were a lot longer than what I remember of them or wrote about them. What I remember is a minute here or a minute there and I rarely took note of what my friends talked about in my diary because it was my diary. Sometimes we spent a lot of time in the same room with members of INXS without talking to them. Other times we hung out with them for minutes or for hours.
During our time with Jon, he talked about his American girlfriend from Texas named Lisa. He met Lisa when INXS toured the United States in 1983 and they were still together. Jon was upset that Lisa was going on a ski trip with two guys and he would not be there. He didn’t trust those guys and was worried something would happen. He told us that one of the guys was Swedish, had big thighs, and only had sex on his mind. It’s in my diary because I found the jealousy to be amusing and his concern to be stereotypical: guys only want sex. And it was a surprise to see a handsome, attractive guy like Jon Farriss be insecure like that.
We were ready to leave and make the two-hour drive back to North Jersey and were saying goodbye to Jon when some girls outside of the hotel started banging on the window because they saw Jon. He decided to leave the hotel with us to meet his fans.
Michael, Belinda, and Michael’s “friend”
While we were in front of the hotel, Michael walked out of the hotel accompanied by a sleazy-looking woman who we had never seen before and Belinda Carlisle of The Go-Go’s. All three of them were incredibly wasted as I mentioned earlier. Belinda looked like a warmed-over corpse. They stopped when we said hello. Michael said hello to Terri and gave her a kiss but didn’t seem to see me at all. I think he was pretending not to see me so he could ignore me because the situation was a bit awkward but who knows? Maybe he was too wasted.
Belinda asked us “what day is it?” (which I thought was pathetic) and we told her. I think Michael said they were going to buy cigarettes and then the three of them started skipping down the street towards Spruce Street. That was the wrong direction to go if they wanted to find cigarettes. They were headed to a residential neighborhood. None of us stopped them.
Going home
Jackie cried for the whole car ride back because she was going home to Chicago and would not be seeing Jon Farriss again. I had to be at work that day but not until 5pm for a change so I had 10-12 hours between getting home and starting my 8-hour waitressing shift.
The concert had started at 8pm and likely lasted three hours. We would have gotten to the hotel around midnight. Bars in Philadelphia closed at 2am so we likely left the hotel around the time the bar closed. I don’t know how long we stayed outside because I just didn’t write all those details down.
My diary entry for an INXS concert later in July mentions a woman named Ellen who we had met in Philadelphia so we could have been talking to her. Anyway, it was another two hours or so to get back home so I don’t think I got back until 5am.
Information gleaned from old letters
At the end of the summer of 1984, having met many new people while going to 11 INXS concerts, I had many stories to tell them. I wrote a lot of letters when I got back to college to tell them of my adventures, and they wrote back. Because of that, I believe that the mystery woman with Michael and Belinda, a woman I saw with Michael again later in July, was someone named Sherri.
A letter, dated September 26, 1984, from a woman named Kirsten (also known as Kira) who we met in Connecticut and who was from there mentions a woman named Sherri. Sherrie was described as being extremely sleazy-looking and a druggie. Kira said that she had “seen/heard of a woman named Sherri who supposedly gives Michael drugs and sleeps around with him throughout the tour!”
Kirsten told a story that she had heard from a friend. This friend named Corine told Kirsten that she was in Tim’s dressing room and Michael and Sherri were also there. According to Corine, Michael and Sherri went into the bathroom several times to fuck.
This was something I had not heard until after we stopped following INXS that summer in 1984 so while I had some idea of what Michael was like based on my own experiences up until then, I was still quite naive and my opinion of him was too high.
