Nile Rodgers, Tim Farriss and Garry Gary Beers. INXS at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. Photo by Jess
Michael Hutchence and Belinda Carlisle’s last night together
INXS opened for The Go-Go’s for the last time on July 29, 1984 at a show at Kings Dominion amusement park near Richmond, Virginia. Neither INXS nor The Go-Go’s had a concert on July 30. It’s not clear whether Belinda Carlisle and Michael Hutchence spent a final night together after the last show or if it was the following night. INXS did not arrive in New York City until the day of their show at the Beacon Theatre on the 31st.
Belinda Carlisle wrote in her book, “Lips Unsealed: A Memoir”, that she and Michael spent a sweet, sad, romantic, and passionate last night together where they promised to remain friends.
The Go-Go’s did their next show in Berkeley, California on August 1, 1984. INXS presumably traveled by bus to New York City from Richmond on July 31 to perform.
A screenshot from Google Maps showing the drive from the last INXS concert with The Go-Go’s to New York City where INXS would perform at the Beacon Theatre.
Front row seats
We had front row seats to the show because Jess, Terri and Dana had waited in front of the theater all night on the night before tickets went on sale to buy tickets for all of us. When that was, I don’t know because it isn’t in my diary. Probably some day or night when I was working and couldn’t spend all night on the sidewalk with them.
The page from my 1984 pocket-sized appointment book showing July 30 to August 5. INXS concerts and waitressing shifts.
Renee [Terri’s sister] is coming along with us. She is a great kid and a lot of fun. She isn’t a wet rag like some people I know. I’m going to run into Susan and Maria tomorrow and they’ll want to know everything that has ever happened to me. It might be fun to be infamous, but I don’t know. If I don’t want other people to spread gossip around, I have to watch what I say.
I think deep down inside I want to be notorious and have people whisper when I walk by. It might be fun to be on people’s bad side for a while. I am a weirdo.
I’m bored now. I have stuff I could do but I don’t feel like it. I’ll watch TV.
The morning of the show
On Tuesday morning, July 31st, Jess, Terri and I went into New York City. Terri or Jess would have driven us in. I’m 61 years old now and I have never driven into New York City. It’s too scary. If I was in charge of this stuff, we would have taken a bus into the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
While we were there, I made an INXS poster to take to the venue. If I didn’t have a letter from Maria that she wrote on 9/4/84, I would not know about the poster because I don’t remember.
It’s possible I also filled out a form for Dana’s INXS Alliance club. I remember writing that my goals were to be independently wealthy and a world traveler, but I don’t remember if that was at this gathering or some other time.
Back in 1984, I was envious of Dana. If I recall correctly, both of her mother and father were entertainment lawyers and based on their nice apartment in New York City, they seemed successful at their jobs.
They also had connections, so I was envious that Dana had opportunities that I did not have. My family could not fully foot the bill for my education even with financial aid, so I had to earn money to pay for part of my tuition and all of my expenses.
The waitressing job I had was essential because I made well above the minimum wage there. The tips were great because the Emerson Hotel was popular and busy, and I was a pretty young woman. It would have been stupid and dangerous for my future to blow off my job to stay with Michael Hutchence.
Some books by Jean Paul Sartre, French Existentialist
After thinking about it, I went out and purchased another book by Sartre so I could read it and then also give it to Michael. I didn’t write any of this down, so I no longer remember the name of the book I bought but I believe it was a different book in Sartre’s trilogy of novels than the one Michael showed me that night.
It was quite nice of me to spend some of the little money I had to buy a book for someone who had a hit record album in Australia. And it wouldn’t be the last time I gave him a book or spent money on a book that I tried to give to him when I barely had money myself. Lots of fans give gifts but I think Michael misconstrued what it meant when I did it. In a way, I was like Oprah Winfrey and wanted to share books I loved.
Waiting for INXS in the lobby of their hotel
At some point before we expected INXS to arrive from Richmond, Terri, Jess, and I got back into the car and drove to the Barbizon Plaza Hotel where INXS was staying.
A screenshot from the website nycago.org with a photo and description of the Barbizon Plaza Hotel.A screenshot from the website nysonglines.com that shows that the Barbizon Plaza Hotel was across from the Helmsley Windsor Hotel back in 1984
As we waited in the hotel lobby, Jon and Garry walked in and walked straight into an elevator. When Andrew walked by, he said hello to us. Then Timmy and Michael came into the hotel and the two of them looked extremely tired.
We stopped Michael and asked him to please wait because we had something to give him. Jess left to go to the car and retrieve the books and magazines. I asked him if he had read “Nausea” and when he said he had not, I told him that I had it for him.
I think it’s funny to say that I gave Michael Hutchence nausea.
Here is a video about the book. It’s a weird book.
Jess came back with the three Jean Paul Sartre books and also a couple of magazines about flying airplanes that she had found at her house in the den. She brought them for him because Michael had said he wanted to fly a plane that night when we were all in his room.
Michael’s manners
Michael said, “I’m forever in your debt” after I solemnly handed over the books to him. That was a bit much although I think it turned out to be true in the end. He was using the manners he had learned somewhere whether from his father or from the British community in Hong Kong.
Many people have remarked upon his somewhat unusual way of behaving. In this case I would describe him as being dramatically debonair. To me, it was memorable but weird. A regular “thank you, that’s nice of you” would have been better. I suppose I was being weird too by acting like books are holy. But they are!
Someone came over to ask us about Michael Hutchence. This person wanted to know who he was, so I said he was Michael Jackson and he was playing across the river. Michael Jackson and his brothers were doing a concert at Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.
We left the hotel after that because Michael had gone to his room to sleep. I have no idea what we did until it was time to see the concert. Maybe we grabbed something to eat or went back to Dana’s apartment? If Dana lived on the Upper West Side, then we would have been able to walk from her place to the theater.
Beacon Theatre
The Beacon Theatre was and still is at 2124 Broadway between 74th and 75th Street. In Manhattan, 20 north-south blocks equal one mile. It would have been no more than fifteen blocks to walk there. But that is another thing I no longer remember.
Like I said earlier, we had front row seats, and they were near the middle of the stage. At least six of us, perhaps even a couple more girls I didn’t know, were there too. The concert itself is another thing I don’t remember. I’m sure I enjoyed it. If INXS had not been a good live band, I would not have wasted my time going to eleven shows that summer especially after Kirk Pengilly had brought his girlfriend over for the tour.
Screaming girls
The main things that I disliked were when girls screamed or jumped on stage to attack Michael and when Michael messed up the words. And by screaming, I don’t mean cheering. I didn’t mind cheering. Some of the girls let out the loudest, high-pitched screams like they were seeing the Beatles and while I hate to describe it as hysterical, the word fits. It was painful and I think it damaged my hearing.
Nile Rodgers, former guitarist for Chic and famous record producer, came onstage and played guitar when INXS performed Original Sin. The photo at the top of the page is from the concert. Nile Rodgers had produced the song almost a year earlier in New York City at the Power Station.
If it wasn’t for the letter from Maria that she wrote on 9/26/84, I wouldn’t know that Michael Hutchence came over to me during the show and sang The One Thing right into my face. She wrote, “Something like that is hard to forget!” and yet, over the years, I forgot!
The Beacon Theatre stage door
After the show, we waited along with dozens of other INXS fans on 75th Street where the stage door to the Beacon Theatre is located. There must have been some kind of lounge on the second or third floor where the band was hanging out.
There were windows facing 75th Street and we saw Tim Farriss at one of the windows. He was looking at the crowd of fans who had gathered and he yelled, “No shit!” to all of us because he was pleased to see so many fans.
Michael then leaned out of the window and threw a bunch of white, rectangular cards that were about 3 inches by 5 inches in size. We grabbed some and saw that it was an invitation to an after-show party at some club called Pizza A Go Go.
The invitation to the INXS concert after-party that Michael Hutchence threw from the window of the Beacon Theatre.
When Michael saw Terri, Jess and I, he tried to pour beer on us from the bottle he was holding. He missed. That was not the kind of behavior that I found amusing. It was not something that would win me over. Just the opposite-it was the behavior of a 12-year-old boy in middle school who was a jerk, and I hated those boys.
After a while, everyone with INXS came out from the theater except for Timmy and Jon. We stayed and waited for Timmy because Jess and Terri wanted to show him a list of VHS videocassette tapes they had made with movies and shows on them and find out which ones he wanted.
When Timmy and Jon came out of the stage door, some weird guy walked by and asked us where the stars were. I pointed to the sky and told him, “Up there.” Timmy had hurt his head somehow, so he didn’t want to look at the list of tapes and we let them leave.
Pizza A Go Go
We decided to drive downtown to check out the club. When we got there it did not look interesting but then I saw that Ronald, a guy who sold t-shirts for INXS, was there and that seemed like a good sign so we decided to stay for a while and see if anyone from the band would show up.
We greeted Michael and he kissed each of us hello. Michael was wearing a bright blue shirt. When a song by the Talking Heads started playing, all of us went out on the dance floor and danced together. The lead singer of INXS danced in the club the same way he danced when he was performing onstage.
Nile told me he didn’t remember me after I said that I was not the girl with the shaved head. You can read about that day in the studio in Blog Post 5. He was friendly and nice, but I don’t think we talked for long after that. Maybe I talked to him about the concert, but I don’t remember.
We saw Gary Grant making out with Ellen, someone we had met in Philadelphia, so we left him alone. Bonny and Franny were glommed on to Jon Farriss, same as they were in Philadelphia, and they also recognized me from there. They were talking his ear off again, so we spent most of our time at Pizza A Go Go chatting with Garry Gary Beers.
On that day in Florida, the tour with the Go-Go’s was close to its end and Garry had told the woman who took care of the Go-Go’s clothes while on tour that he would be breaking things off with her and she was very upset about it. He felt bad about that so that’s why he didn’t feel like talking.
Terri, Jess and I left the club before the band did and drove home. Timmy had not shown up at the club so there was no reason why Terri would want to stay.
We had spent a lot of time with Garry Gary, so Jess was happy. I didn’t have to work the next day for a change, but I usually didn’t want to be out with INXS in the first place, so I didn’t mind leaving.
We needed to get some rest because we would be driving to Toronto, Canada in about 24 hours, on the night of August 1st, to see INXS play at The Concert Hall in the Masonic Temple. It was going to be an eight-hour drive.
Photo by Jess. Jon Farriss playing drums at a concert in September 1983
The day after the show at Radio City Music Hall on Friday, June 29, 1984, INXS opened for The Go-Go’s at a show in Boston. That day, I waitressed at the Emerson Hotel from 5pm until 1am. The restaurant closed at one but if I still had customers I would have to stay until they left. If I was scheduled to work until 2am, that meant I would have to stay until after all the customers left, and then put all the chairs on top of the tables before vacuuming the entire dining area. The only reason I survived the summer of 1984 was because I was 19. And even so, I almost didn’t survive because I almost fell asleep while driving home from my 11th INXS concert in August. More about that in a future post.
June 25- July 1, 1984. Donna’s calendar. INXS and work.
The theater in Jones Beach is about 57 miles from Hillsdale, NJ and because one must drive through New York City to get there, it takes an hour and a half to two hours to do it.
An idea of how long it takes to drive from Hillsdale, NJ to the Jones Beach theater and the route.
When we arrived at the theater, Jess drove the car into a parking lot that was close to the backstage area and parked the car behind a dumpster so we would not be seen because we were not supposed to be in that lot.
Then we waited, and waited, and waited, and waited for quite a long time. Somehow, we knew what the RV that the roadies for INXS used to get around looked like and noticed when it arrived at the theater.
I decided to get out of the car and move closer to see if anything interesting was happening while trying to stay hidden by crouching behind the other cars. When I got close to the road, two guys saw me. I could tell that they saw me, and I had nowhere to go so I decided to bluff my way out of it by walking over to them and asking if there was a bathroom nearby.
One of the guys walked me out of the backstage area parking lot to the front of the theater. He asked me if I had parked in the lot where he had found me. There was no way I was going to divulge where my friends were still hiding so I told the guy I was there by myself, and I had parked my car “out there” while waving my arm towards the parking lot in front of the theater.
Waiting for my friends to come out from behind the dumpster
There was nothing I could do but stand around and wait for my friends. I had no ticket, no money, and mosquitos were eating me alive. Two other girls were also waiting in front of the theater, so I spoke to them. They told me that they were supposed to be going backstage, but they couldn’t because Atco had not put them on the guest list. Again. So, they were annoyed.
Eventually, Jess, Terri and Jackie drove out from the backstage area because it was getting late and INXS had not arrived. By the time INXS arrived, it was too late for a soundcheck. We were standing near the road to the backstage area and when their bus drove by we waved at them, and they waved back at us.
A clever plan
We had a situation with our seats where Terri had a seat down in the front section of the venue and the rest of us had seats on a higher level. Once we went into the theater, we devised a plan so we could all get down in front. The great thing about INXS being the opening act was that there were plenty of empty seats near the front of the stage that we could take if we could get down there.
So, we all went to the concession stand and we all bought soda and popcorn, so our hands were full. Then we walked down to the section where Terri’s seat was, and she showed her ticket stub to the usher. She told him that we were with her, so the usher let us follow her. It worked exactly as planned and we found ourselves seats on Timmy’s side of the stage in the third or fourth row.
INXS on stage
INXS arranged themselves on stage in the same way at every show. If you are looking at the stage from the audience, Jon, the drummer was in the center at the back. Garry Gary, the bassist, was to the right of Jon. Andrew, the keyboardist, was to the left of Jon. At the front of the stage, Michael, the singer, was in the center, and the two guitarists were on either side- Timmy to the right and Kirk to the left.
Kirk Pengilly was my favorite member of INXS, but I almost always watched the show from either the center or the right side where Timmy and Garry Gary were because I went to concerts with Terri and Jess and their favorites were Timmy and Garry Gary, respectively. So, I was outnumbered.
The concert
Once the show started, the guys doing the security for the theater did their best to make sure the audience did not have fun. They were jerks who constantly came around and told people to sit down.
Michael Hutchence kept making comments like “seatbelts off!” because he wanted people to get up and dance. I would stand up again whenever the security guy walked away after making me sit down. Michael even gave that guy the middle finger when he made people sit down.
I wrote in my diary that Kirk came over to our side of the stage when he was playing a guitar solo. He looked at us and raised his eyebrows a few times.
The last song
INXS was known for ending their sets with the song “Don’t Change.” That didn’t always happen, but it usually did. Certainly, every show I saw in 1984 ended with “Don’t Change.”
When INXS started playing “Don’t Change”, I left my seat and went into the aisle so I could dance. The security guy came over and told me to go back to my seat, so I did, but only for a moment. I went back into the aisle again and I decided I would stay there.
There’s an instrumental break in the song where Jon is only playing the bass drum- two beats in quick succession and then three even beats. During that part I raised my arms over my head and clapped my hands to the beat of the bass drum. I watched Timmy while I was doing this.
The security guy came over and started yelling in my face to go back to my seat, but I kept clapping. Then he grabbed my arms while they were still over my head and started pushing me backwards. At that moment I looked at Timmy and he smiled at me. I smiled back at him and started walking backwards to my row while the security guy was still holding my arms and threatening to kick me out. I felt very defiant and heroic.
INXS video of Don’t Change
This video of INXS playing “Don’t Change” live during the portion of Live Aid that was performed in Australia in July 1985 shows where the band members typically stood on stage. Also, it shows Timmy doing the clapping during the instrumental break. It’s also a performance where Michael gets the words slightly mixed up. “Don’t Change” is a simple song and it was one of their most performed, but Michael often messed up the lyrics. It was one of the first things I noticed about him. I knew the lyrics better than he did.
The Go-Go’s
It would not have mattered if we had been kicked out because we were leaving anyway. We did not stay to see The Go-Go’s perform. Not that day or any other.
The Go-Go’s on the Tonight Show with Joan Rivers, August 7, 1984 after INXS split from their tour.
Near the backstage door
We walked outside to where there was a backstage area of sorts and stood around waiting outside of a chain link fence. I did not want to be outside waiting for the band because I didn’t think it was cool to be waiting there with a bunch of screaming girls. Expressing my displeasure didn’t do me any good. My friends wanted to do it, so we did it. Terri had something she wanted to give to Garry Gary or to have signed by Garry Gary-something like that.
The t-shirt guy for The Go-Go’s (the guy who sold their merchandise) talked to me. About what, I no longer remember. My diary says that I told him that I wasn’t waiting for INXS-my friends were waiting for them.
I also talked to Tony, the guy who sold the INXS t-shirts. Tony was looking around for the 14-year-old girl he wanted to pick up. Disgusting! In my diary I wrote, “it made me ill to listen to them” talk about the girls who were there. But I never called them pigs or said anything about how disgusted I was by what I saw and heard. I only noticed all of it, and wrote it down, and remembered it. The 80s were a time when women and girls smiled, laughed, shrugged it off, took it. I wish I had done more fighting or screaming or something.
Tony asked me if I wanted to dance and I said, “not now” and he said, “Oh, after the guys go by?” I said to him, “I don’t care.” Because I didn’t care if I saw INXS or not. I had already met them, and I didn’t want anything from them. Kirk had a girlfriend, and she was with him.
When INXS came out from the theater, Terri yelled “Garry!” several times from where we were behind the fence- trying to get his attention. Later we found out that Gary Grant thought that Terri was yelling at him to try to get him to come over. I have no idea if Garry Gary or anyone came over or not because I didn’t write it down. I don’t think anyone did.
Following the bus
We ran off to get into the car so we could be ready to follow the tour bus when INXS left Jones Beach. At the time, we did not know where they were staying. I was embarrassed that we were following them like they were the Beatles, and we were crazed fans because we were not. While our car followed right behind them, we could watch the movie that was playing in their tour bus. There was a TV, and we could see it through the back window of the bus. It was National Lampoon’s Vacation, a comedy that starred Chevy Chase and that was released in July 1983.
I think this gave Jess and Terri the idea to tape TV shows and movies for INXS to watch while they traveled by tour bus. It wasn’t me because I didn’t own a VCR. My family had cable TV but no way to record anything. Money was too tight to buy a VCR. Later on, they presented the band with videotapes. I remember that Jess gave them a tape with the mini-series Shogun on it. There were others but I don’t remember how many or what was on them.
The Holiday Inn, Rockville Centre
The bus arrived at the hotel and so did we. I was so embarrassed about following INXS that I didn’t want to get out of the car. But everyone else was getting out and then when we saw Timmy, he invited us to come to the bar and have a drink with him, so I got over it.
A route between the Jones Beach theater and the Holiday Inn in Rockville Centre.AI Overview of the original Holiday Inn that existed in 1984 and the hotel at the same location today.
Andrew, Timmy, and Jon Farriss were the only members of INXS who were on the bus. Gary Grant also came back to the hotel after the show but the other three did not. We heard that Kirk and Karen went off on their own to New York City. Michael and Garry stayed with The Go-Go’s and also went to the city. My internalized misogyny makes an appearance in my diary from time to time like when I wrote that “Michael and Garry were in NYC with The No-Go’s and fat Belinda.”
The bar was in a building that was separate from the hotel rooms. Walking in, the bar was at the back of the room with the long side facing the door. It wrapped around on the left side and met the wall, and it had an opening on the right side for the bartender to go in and out. On the right side of the room there was a small open area with a jukebox, a drum kit, and dance floor. There were several tables on the left side of the room.
I ordered a drink right away and met the bartender who was an old guy named Danny. He had white hair, so he seemed to me to be over 60. The guy was chatty, and he made a lot of jokes.
Tim Farriss
Andrew, Timmy and Jon sat at the bar. Timmy was with a woman named Barbie and we were told that she was from Boston and in the music business. She must have traveled with INXS from Boston since that’s where they were the night before. In my diary, I called her a bitch. She was unfriendly and I don’t think she wanted us around.
Timmy thanked Terri several times for the “Stay Young” t-shirt that Terri made for James Lee, Timmy’s firstborn son, who was only about two years old. James Lee was taking after his uncle Jon, according to Timmy. He told us how James Lee took cooking pots and set them up on the floor in the kitchen and then asked for sticks so he could bang on them.
Gary Grant
The first thing Gary Grant did when he saw us in the bar was to yell at Terri about what she had done earlier in the day. It was not okay for her to call him over. He didn’t want people to know who he was, and also- he was busy. Terri apologized and explained that she was trying to get Garry Gary to come over and not him. Then she said she understood that he had a hard job and bought him a drink. All was forgiven.
Gary Grant then started joking that he had terrible problems; his wife had been raped, his house and kids had been burned, and he was going to die in an hour.
In the spirit of the Monty Python skit where four Yorkshiremen sit around and tell increasingly horrible stories of what they endured in order to outdo the other guys, I told him I was going to be tortured and die in three hours. He said I beat him.
The Four Yorkshiremen Monty Python sketch
Soon it was just us, Jon, Gary Grant, and a roadie for INXS named Vance in the bar. Timmy left with Barbie and never came back. I don’t think Andrew stayed long in the first place. Andrew wasn’t sociable and he didn’t seem to want to be on tour, so we mostly left him alone.
Vance the roadie
Vance was a good-looking guy; also, Australian. I noticed that he was “giving me the eye” like he was interested in getting to know me. I deliberately avoided making eye contact with him because I was not interested.
After a while, all I wanted to do was go home because I had to start work at noon the next day and work straight through until nine at night. It was a strenuous job-on my feet all day and walking around carrying heavy trays full of plates. I didn’t know how I was going to get through my shift. I was bored and tired, so I walked outside where I sat on some steps that led to the rooms. My head was down, and I was resting when Vance came out to talk to me.
I complained to him that I was tired, and I had to be at work the next day. Bars in New York stayed open until 4am so it was possible to stay out very late. Most of what we might have talked about has been forgotten. What I wrote down was that Vance told me to look on the bright side of things and he suggested that I should have another drink.
That seems like an innocuous thing to say, right? But it’s not. It’s the kind of thing that predatory men do so they have a better chance of getting what they want. Maybe I would loosen up or become interested if I drank more alcohol. When I went back into the bar, I didn’t have another drink.
Gary Grant, on the other hand, was quite drunk. He was singing along to the song “Mona Lisa” that the jukebox was playing and that was funny. Either I blurted out that it was Nat King Cole, or someone asked if I knew who the singer was, and I said it was Nat King Cole. Anyway, Jon was surprised and impressed that I knew it was Nat King Cole.
Mona Lisa video
That was one of many, many things that annoyed me out of everything that happened. Because Jon was only three years older than me and no one in INXS was even born when “Mona Lisa” was released in 1950. The song was a big hit. It was number one for five weeks and it won an Oscar. Why wouldn’t I know it?
Playing the drums
At some point, I got so bored with being in this bar that I took a seat behind the drum kit, picked up the brushes that were there, and started playing along to the music from the jukebox. I was playing a cymbal with my right hand and the snare drum with my left hand.
Gary Grant took a bowl from the top of the bar and placed it on the floor in front of the drum kit. Jon came over and gave me some pointers and complimented my drumming quite often. He told me to use my left hand for the cymbal and my right hand for the snare, so I started drumming that way. But when he told me to start playing the bass drum with my foot too, I was too scared to try because I thought it would be too difficult and I would fail.
Jon told me that I needed some practice, but I would be stupid if I didn’t take up the drums. He said I have rhythm and “when you have it, it’s easy.” “When I show you something, you pick it up right away. A lot of people would sit there and say ‘duh.’”
When I finished playing, I picked up the bowl. I made 47 cents and a piece of popcorn. Not bad.
Finally, it was time to leave. Danny, the old guy bartender, said he would take me to see the next INXS concert and then we would hang out with Jon in the bar and Jon would give me more drum lessons. As usual, I humored this old guy-just laughed along and agreed. It was just easier to go along in the moment and then either not take it seriously or just not do it because I didn’t want to. I didn’t even know if it was meant seriously anyway.
You Never Used To Cry
Jackie started to cry after Jon kissed her goodbye. She loved him. I did the same thing to Jon Farriss that I had done to Andrew and Timmy. I held out my hand and told him my name. “Hi, I’m Donna!” Jon and I shook hands. Then we left and drove back to New Jersey.
Michael Hutchence, INXS, July 1984, Photo by Jackie
Where I left off:
Sophomore year of college has ended, and I have returned to Hillsdale, New Jersey for the summer. I’m waitressing at the Emerson Hotel (which is not a hotel but only a restaurant) for the second summer in a row. My friends and I are waiting for word on when INXS will tour.
5/29/84
I just pigged out on Doritos and two candy bars. Now Frank keeps telling me I’m going to get fat. No way. I’ve been working a lot and also doing stretching and exercise as well. I just have to get a haircut and I’ll look great.
Meatballs is on TV. I’m reading the Weekly World News. I’m getting slightly bored. I shouldn’t have eaten so much. I’m drinking Dr. Pepper to stay awake.
I got out of work late today. The party wasn’t too much work. I made $21 today.
I’m still waiting to get paid from the school. Hopefully the financial aid thing will come soon so I know how much I need to save this summer. Then when I’ve saved that I can buy things.
Time to go to bed. After tomorrow I will have worked seven days straight. Kim B has broken my 100m record. [One of my high school track records.] It makes me nauseous.
The trailer for Meatballs from 1979
More diary entries
In this entry I am sitting in Friendly’s eating a Sunday for some of the time. I mention opening a bank account because I had to hide my tip money from my brother (not Danny). This brother would steal various things like my coin collection or money so he could buy pot (marijuana). He would also eat the food that I bought. During both summers I was home waitressing I hid money in a suitcase in my closet-much of it was in dollar bills.
5/30/84
For the third day in a row the weather has been for the ducks and other amphibious creatures. I just saw Mr. DeCaro in Westwood. [A teacher from my high school.] I’m surprised he recognized me.
Sammy (one of the Albanian kitchen workers) kept saying “You get mashed potatoes for lunch”. He made sure I’d get some because I didn’t yesterday. He is nice. I still don’t understand him half of the time like when I was leaving, he said something about plants or something. Who knows?
David [Head cook at the Emerson Hotel] is starting in again with the still waters run deep stuff. Now I’m a prostitute in NY on my days off. Alicia [a fellow waitress] is the only one David treats halfway nicely, and he does it to get whoever he can steamed about it. He fed her Veal Parm a couple of times.
I should open a bank account and get my money out of the house.
Original Sin made it into the 50s and is now falling.
I’m at Friendly’s now. Another fit of hyperactivity and a whipped cream craving brought me here.
Gary Grant called Terri today. It seems that June is the month. I wonder what the future will bring?
Oh gee, I think life is just too exciting for me. I pity the people who work here. If I had to deal with all of these definite psychopaths every day, I don’t know what I’d do. They probably think I’m one of them. At least I’m quiet.
At least where I work, they’re too old to be rowdy. Too much excitement and they’d probably have a stroke. I should check out the parking lot in front of Medi Mart to see the lake.
Hillsdale is such a beat town. Two rednecks followed me in Music Merchant today. Where are all the real men? If I get some definite plans soon, I can arrange for days off. I love when people in jogging suits come in for a sundae.
David was saying how Alicia came in and told everyone she played the flute. The skin flute? These people must make garbage money. There’s another lone girl drinking coffee and smoking.
5/31/84
I said I wasn’t going to waste time, but it is three o’clock and I’ve done nothing. I just went to Quick Chek [a convenience store near Friendly’s. Half a mile from my house] to get lunch. Maybe I’ll go for a long walk later. I slept until after noon. It was so cold and dark outside I just couldn’t get out of bed. That is a habit I must break if I want to make the best use of my time. I made an appointment to get my haircut on Saturday.
I went up to PV [Pascack Valley High School where I went to school. Eight-tenths of a mile from my house] and looked to see if the record board was on the wall. It wasn’t. I jumped over a hurdle a few times and took a couple of long jumps. I jumped almost fourteen feet in my estimation. That’s pretty good for not having trained for two years and for wearing pants. There’s junk on TV as usual. I’m watching Oh Heavenly Dog. On my second walk I watched a rabbit eat.
6/1/84
I’m going to see Breakin’ today. I spoke to Terri on the phone recalling past stupidity over the wire like when someone called for Nora and I said, “She’s not here right now”. “When will she be back?” “Actually, she doesn’t live here”.
Breakin’ had good dancing but not much plot and terrible acting.
INXS is going to be here in the next two or three weeks. They have a date in Seattle on June 21.
I’m kind of depressed. I’m going to sleep now.
Trailer for Breakin’
Jean Paul Sartre and a new haircut
I needed to cut all my permed hair off because it looked like this. This photo also shows the hat I wore to the first INXS concert I went to in 1984. More on that soon.
At Jes’ house in 1983. Old photo. Donna. Sometime after start of sophomore year at Penn.
6/2/84
It’s almost time to get my haircut. My hair will probably never be this long again. I hope it turns out nice.
I finally finished Nausea. Roquentin’s life is over even though he is still alive because he has discovered that existence is meaningless. He thinks he is superfluous. “Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.”
A YouTube video about Jean Paul Sartre’s novel, “Nausea.” I chose this video because it features a real person and isn’t created or narrated by AI.
6/3/84
Another Sunday over and done with. In twelve hours, I will be back working. I hope I don’t have dreams where I wait on people all night like last night. Everyone has complimented me on my haircut. It is very short, but I like it a lot. I have to see how punky it can get.
One table of Joanne’s was very nice. The woman said I could be a model pretty much because I am tall. “Tall is in”, she said. I suppose I can stop in at Reinhard’s [the Philly modeling agency] when I get back to school. It couldn’t hurt. I’d like to do a commercial or get into acting maybe. I wonder where I’ll be when I’m forty.
After the haircut
My new haircut. I am next to my brother Danny.
Mostly entries about work
I’ve included these to give an idea of what my job was like and how much money I made. Also to show that I did not have my own car and I had to share the cars with my mother and my mother’s husband, Carl. He had a vintage Mercedes that he brought to the marriage. He was not at all wealthy though. As a baker, he worked long hours and very hard, but he made very little profit. My mother was the primary wage earner. She was a chemist at a paper company.
Some guy was choking today. Jackie [a fellow waitress] tried to help him, but she wasn’t strong enough. Some man gave him the Heimlich maneuver and got the food out.
Yesterday, the police and ambulance were there because some old lady looked like she had an attack. She was OK too. It was a decent lunch today-$23. Usually, I only make about $15. I was worried this morning that I wouldn’t get to work because Carl took the car somewhere, but I made it.
I just went up to the track and ran a mile in 7:06. I’m not in terrible shape but I’ll be sore tomorrow. I saw Mr. Heinz [a teacher from my high school and one of my track coaches] and he told me that Kim B broke my 100 and long jump records. Heinz thinks it will take two more years for her to break the rest of them.
6/6/84
I hate working parties at lunch. Alice [my boss] wanted me to work on Friday, but I said no because I’m going to be up all of Thursday night. [Going to see Thomas Dolby in concert.] Alice is such a bitch. She doesn’t tell us anything and then chides us when we make a mistake. Jimmy (the owner) was getting on my nerves too. I don’t like people talking condescendingly to me. David (the cook) got on my nerves too. I want to get my ear double pierced tonight. Terri was bothering me about getting my hair cut short, but I told her to shut up until she sees it tomorrow.
6/7/84
Good morning. Off from work at last!
I went to Nanuet last night and got my right ear double pierced. People lie when they say it doesn’t hurt. I also bought a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. I’m listening to Taking Tiger Mountain, the Brian Eno tape I bought yesterday. All of his records are the lowest price on the chart at Music Merchant.
Mom better not be getting nosy in my stuff because it is not her business. If she does then no way am I coming back to live here again if I can help it. Time to eat and watch the soaps. I have an hour to kill before I have to be at Terri’s.
Thomas Dolby concert & INXS is coming soon!
6/8/84
In three weeks, they are here. [INXS] June 28 at Radio City. June 30 at Jones Beach and July 2 at Holmdel.
The concert last night wasn’t as good as the other one I saw. It was too hot and sticky and hard to see. I’m sure that girl keyboard player is a transvestite. If she isn’t then she is an extremely ugly girl. My stomach acted up on me again. I missed Windpower because I had to go to the bathroom.
Terri and Jess seem to be sticks in the mud. I’ll deal with it if the time comes to. Driving in NYC is enough to give anyone an ulcer or heart attack. The drivers are crazy. We drove through Harlem, and it was really sad. Some places looked like they’d been bombed. We drove past an open fire hydrant and Terri said “Open the window” so I did, and we got soaked. She was only kidding but I’ll do just about anything if it is suggested.
Windpower video
Soccer
6/10/84
It has been a long day. It went by like it was three days instead of ten hours. I didn’t make much money today. My tables were cheap tippers. I told people I was getting a tattoo because Toni [a fellow waitress] is my idol. I was afraid to ask Alice for days off, but I did it and she marked it down in the book. I used Jackie Fuhrmann as my excuse.
It is so fucking hot. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep well tonight. Yesterday was the Sting game. Karl Heinz Granitza gave us some tickets and so did Seninho. Karl Heinz gave his jersey to Terri. The Sting left right after the game. We hung out and then went to the Front Row and talked.
My dad was a psycho
6/12/84
I woke up early today because Mom needed a ride to work. She is going to be away until Friday. I drove the Mercedes for the first time. It is easy to handle but it moves by itself, and I get startled every time it shifts gears on its own.
Yesterday, Danny drove me into Westwood. I went to Berkeley elementary school. It is a lot smaller than I remember. Of course, everything looks big when you are small. I can’t imagine myself that short. I went down by the brook and saw the waterfall. There was a no trespassing sign and a bunch of geese. I thought they were patrolling the property because they came towards me when I stepped on the grass. I don’t know why I was afraid of them. They don’t even have teeth. I walked back home and then ate dinner. I have to get out of the house when everyone else is there.
I went to the diner with Danny and Steven Flood. I think we were a bit loud while we were there. We were reminiscing. We talked about the old neighborhood in Westwood. We talked about the crazy and delinquent things that we did and about how psychotic my father was. We went driving in NY state and then came back here. We brought back Bill with us. He is also a busboy at the diner.
We played a game of Trivial Pursuit. Steven won with the help of a few lucky guesses. I came in second. Danny finally came in third at 2:30 in the morning.
I think I will close tonight at work. I don’t mind because I get a break to eat. Everyone there keeps saying how I talk more now and I’m getting wise. I can talk to other people easier. I’m more friendly than I used to be.
More harassment in New York City
6/13/84
I’m getting a taste of the days when there was no electricity. There was a huge storm when I was in NYC, and I guess that caused a power outage. I don’t think people ate Chef Boyardee mini ravioli in those days. I’m writing by candlelight-how romantic.
Terri and I went into the city to shop for clothes. I bought shoes, shorts, a dress, and some tops. It was hot earlier. Terri wore shorts but she regretted it when the comments and looks started. I bought a bird whistle from a man with one arm, and I decided to give it to Garry Gary for his birthday. Terri bought James Lee a red shirt and is going to put Stay Young on it and give it to Timmy. Someone gave me grapes for free and some other people offered us coffee. I don’t know why.
Working Tuesday night was a bitch. I got stuck with a lot of parties at one point. I had a fucking jerkoff table of six that left me $4.50 on a $70 check. Dicks.
I have to copy some good Ed Anger phrases so I can remember like “I’m sicker than a hog with a belly full of wild onions” and “Madder than Richard Simmons with a run in his leotard.”
I don’t think I would be able to survive without electricity. I’m too accustomed to it by now. I can still play my Casio because it has batteries.
Financial Aid
6/14/84
Someone is paving our driveway, and it is very noisy. I made a lot of money in May, but I haven’t saved much. I should enter the MTV party house contest. I would win a house in Indiana! Oh wow! Then me and John Mellencamp would paint the mother pink.
I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied with my wardrobe. I still need something decent to wear. The dress I bought was too small and I don’t like it. My stomach is a pain. I don’t look good in some things because of it and buying pants and skirts is a pain. I’m not satisfied with much of anything today.
I got the good news from the school. The grand total for my fine institution is $15,200. [That’s equivalent to about $47,400 in 2025.] I have to come up with $1300. [I paid a share determined by the university. My mother paid a share determined by the university. The rest was covered by financial aid, grants, and student loans.] That’s not too bad. I’ll have that in two weeks.
I finished reading 1984. It is a great book. I don’t know how easily I would succumb to doublethink. I did solve a mystery because of that book. I read about the snakes and ladders game which in this country is called chutes and ladders. I’m restless again. I feel like going for a walk or staying up all night.
A video about Chutes and Ladders. George Orwell’s novel, “1984”, mentions a game called Snakes and Ladders and I was able to deduce that the game was the same as the one in America called Chutes and Ladders. The INXS song “Melting in the Sun” has the lyric, “take a snake or take a ladder” and now I knew what that lyric meant. I had never heard of Snakes and Ladders before.
6/16/84
Bridget [fellow waitress] was encouraging about my future. She said I would get a new wardrobe, a good job, make lots of money, take vacations. I guess I should want that. I don’t know. She was encouraging me to go to Florida. [To see INXS in concert.] I suppose I could afford another trip.
I bought gray pants today. I have my outfit for Radio City. I keep going back and forth between thinking I look good and thinking I look awful. People are overly critical about their own looks. I saw Kathy [member of my high school track team] where I bought the pants. She works there doing the same thing as Terri-straightening out the racks and shit. We don’t have much in common besides track.
6/17/84
Home at last. Work sucked as it usually does on Sunday. I forgot Dad on this Father’s Day. Out of sight, out of mind.
6/18/84
Jackie will be here a week from tomorrow. I might go to Florida. [To see INXS in concert.] I have enough money for school, so I just need money for Florida. I’m going to see Ghostbusters tonight. There is too much to do. I want to be wealthy-then I wouldn’t have to work and could spend time on more important things.
Fun in New York City
6/19/84
Tomorrow I’m going into the city again. We are going to check out Canal St. I have a month to save the money for Florida.
6/20/84
I’m so tired. I got a message that Alice [my boss] called. She must have called this morning, but I’ve been in the city all day. I didn’t get back until 11:30pm.
I met Dana, the INXS Alliance girl. She has a job with the booking agent for The Go-Gos. That is a good job to have. I can’t afford to have a job just for making connections.
I’m not in the best of moods right now. It’s the usual anxiety attack.
I’m listening to a Chinese tape that I bought in Chinatown. I had fun today. I bought some earrings that mean happiness in Chinese. The owner translated all of the earrings for us. I also bought a Chinese mask. I got my fortune at a Buddhist temple for 50 cents. It says-“Probability of Success- excellent. Wherever in the world you may travel, some mystery you sure will unravel. A simple mallet dug out from gravel may turn to be a president’s gavel.” Some Chinese woman got me to buy four chicken sandwiches for her.
I met a guy who works security during concerts in the city. He will be doing Michael Jackson’s shows. He is into the martial arts. He told us not to be strangers but to keep being strange.
I’m getting sick of people calling me strange. Strange is the guy who asked me if I ever had frozen pink. He said I should put Jess’s Dekadance t-shirt in the freezer and then cut out the pink and eat it.
Danny is graduating from high school tomorrow. Dr. Poli [the high school principal] has banned cap throwing. Danny looked forward to chucking his cap and the whole place away.
Jess’s Dekadance t-shirt had a picture of the album cover on it. INXS released two different versions of the Dekadance EP. The one released in the U.S. had remixes of songs from Shabooh Shoobah.
INXS
6/22/84
Today is Garry Gary Beers’ birthday.
Yesterday I went to Danny’s graduation and saw some people I knew and then went to Terri’s to pick up my Casio.
I’m not in a good mood today. I hope I get my period soon to get over this soon. [PMS] I have to go to work today.
I got the concert days off but not the days around them. It’s going to be interesting. Terri called Gary [Gary Grant, INXS tour manager] in Michigan. He said Original Sin went to number one in France, but I didn’t see it.
Freddie Soehnlein [a family friend] died in a swimming pool. I read that in the paper while I was on the phone with Terri.
I made a ton of money today. $110. [The equivalent of $343 in 2025.] Somebody left me a $26 tip. It is pouring rain outside, or I’d go out. Van Halen is annoying me on MTV. I’m not into the videos they play these days.
I asked for July 7 off so I can go to Philly. [To see INXS in concert.]
I asked Aunt Barbara for my oboe back so I can get into it again.
6/25/84
I bought five tapes and went out to dinner at the diner. Then I went to see The Karate Kid and now I’m at home watching David Letterman.
6/26/84
I’m hyperactive now. Only 24 hrs. or so to go. I can’t wait. Jackie talked to them, [INXS] and they remember Terri. Terri is getting all of the inside information no problem.
The bird whistle
The plastic whistle that was shaped like a bird was extremely cheap. It wasn’t something I wanted. I only bought it on June 13th out of pity for the one-armed man who was selling them on the streets of New York City.
To turn it into a gag gift for Garry Gary for his birthday, I placed the whistle in a shoebox along with some articles that I cut out from the Weekly World News. I wrote a note from Eric, the bird whistle, that explained he was an orphan whose owner had been killed in a tragic boating accident. I named the toy, Eric, because I loved Monty Python’s Flying Circus which I watched as a kid. Channel 13 was the PBS (Public Broadcasting) channel in New York City, and they started showing Monty Python in 1974.
Channel 13 promo video
The sketches that included animals named Eric:
Fish License sketch video
Eric The Half a Bee video
I wrapped the shoebox in the cover of an issue of The Weekly World News. The headline was “Jealous Computer Kills Top Scientist.” I can’t find a photo of that issue on the internet.
Here’s a photo of a different issue from that time.
The cover of the Weekly World News tabloid paper from June 26, 1984.
On June 27, 1984, Jess, Terri, Jackie, and I went to New York City in the evening to wait in the lobby of the hotel where INXS would be staying. Terri drove us. I wrote in my diary that it was the Windsor Harley Hotel, but the internet tells me that the Helmsleys owned a hotel named Windsor and a hotel named Harley and not a hotel called Windsor Harley. My best guess is that INXS stayed at the Helmsley Windsor Hotel on 58th St and 6th Ave just up the street from Radio City Music Hall where they were to open for The Go-Go’s the next night.
Everyone had birthday presents for Garry Gary so what I remember is all of us being around Kirk and Garry while we gave him his gifts. Michael came over and planted a kiss on my cheek. Not something I was interested in because I still didn’t like him. The wrapping on my shoebox gave everyone a laugh. The gift though? Maybe not. It was weird.
Kirk told us that he had to go to the airport and pick up “the little battler.” That’s some kind of Australian slang that seemed kind of misogynistic or insulting like “the ball and chain” or “the old lady.” Not being Australian, I had no idea what he meant. The internet says that he called her a working-class person.
He was talking about his girlfriend, Karen Hutchinson, who was flying in from Australia to spend some time on tour with Kirk. Pretty clear message there that nothing further was going to happen between me and Kirk Pengilly.
I think I had already gotten that message though after getting the friendly, polite letter with no contact information and the revelation in the magazine that he had a girlfriend.
Before Kirk left, I told him that I had started playing the lottery and I asked for a number. He picked 26 which was his age. I also asked Gary Grant for a lottery number, and he picked 27 which I believe was also his age.
Scary drive back to New Jersey late at night
While Terri was driving north on Amsterdam Avenue to get to the George Washington Bridge, the car hit a huge pothole. I don’t know if we were in Harlem or already north of Harlem when it happened. Afterwards, we heard a scraping noise of metal in contact with the road. Terri pulled into a gas station, and we wanted the attendant to help us, but he refused to leave the booth he was in. That was a sign that we were in an area that had a lot of criminal activity.
Jackie was panicking and she lived in Chicago, so it was surprising that she was so frightened. The rest of us were also frightened and it only got worse when a car full of Hispanic guys stopped and asked if we needed help. Because now we have two problems; a broken car and several men we don’t know who might be looking to take advantage of an opportunity to hurt us.
Terri and I put on our toughest tough girl attitudes and Terri said no to them. She told them to go away very firmly when they asked again, and thankfully they did.
A piece of the car was hanging down and touching the ground. It turned out to be the oil pan, but I didn’t know what it was at the time. I had the idea to tie it back up to the underside of the car using my belt. I had a cool-looking hip belt. A hip belt was not worn through belt loops but was worn slung around your hips. My belt had a bunch of silver-colored rings about one inch in diameter and they were connected by strips of black leather. It was a sturdy belt.
An example of a hip belt from the 1980s. Mine had similar rings but they were held together by strips of black leather.
So, I took off my belt, got on the ground, and managed to loop the belt through some part of the oil pan and then loop my belt through some metal part of the underbody so the oil pan was not scraping the ground. Then I buckled the belt to secure it. After that, I bought a quart of oil from the attendant in the booth just in case the car was leaking oil, and we would need to add some on the way home.
We got back on the road and didn’t have any more problems getting back to New Jersey. Terri had to take her car to the shop to have the oil pan fixed, so we had to use Jess’ car to carry on with our adventures.
The INXS concert
The next day, June 28, 1984, was the day of the concert. Jess drove Terri, Jackie, and I into New York City in the afternoon and we parked in the Port Authority Bus Terminal lot.
When we went to Radio City Music Hall, we discovered that we had missed the soundcheck, so we walked over to the hotel. I wore big black felt hat with a flat top and a wide brim that I found at a thrift shop in Greenwich Village. It was similar to the hat that Michael Hutchence wore in the INXS video, “The One Thing” except that it didn’t have a band and the brim was wider. My shirt was black and gray striped-it was sleeveless, and it came up to my neck in front but was low-cut in back. Paired with gray cropped pants and cheap black sandals that looked a little punky because they had cheap metallic bits sewn to the straps across my feet. Around my hips was the famous belt that I had removed from underneath the car.
While walking to the hotel, we just happened to pop into a pizza parlor and Andrew Farriss was in there. Andrew wasn’t much into socializing, so we didn’t bother him often, but I took the opportunity to walk over to him to introduce myself. I extended my hand and said, “Hi! I’m Donna,” and we shook hands. Because other than Kirk, I don’t think any of them knew my name and they all already knew Terri, Jess, and Jackie.
We ran into Michael Hutchence on the sidewalk outside the hotel. I was surprised by how nice and friendly he was when we were talking to him because he had come across as arrogant in the past. This was the first time I had something other than a negative impression of him. As a person and not as a singer, that is.
He told me he liked my hat. I loved my hat! Terri often asked him, other members of the band, and Gary Grant, the manager, to do things for us. She told Michael that we did not have good seats near the front and asked him to tell the audience to move up to the front when he got on stage so we could move up closer. I can’t remember if he did that, but it was definitely something he would be willing to do.
The only thing I remember from the show is being angry because there was one girl who jumped up on stage and ran up to Michael three different times. Now, instead of singing the song for everyone, he had to hug the girl to try to be nice and then deal with her grabbing onto him until someone could pull her away.
The third time she jumped onstage, several other girls joined her, so Michael had multiple girls mauling him when he was trying to sing. They ruined more than one song. We hated that. It’s so rude in so many ways. Fans like that are a terrible problem.
After the show
We left Radio City Music Hall before The Go-Go’s took the stage and waited outside for INXS to leave. Gary Grant came out and we talked about the girls jumping onstage. He was also very angry and used rude language to talk about those girls. Called them all sorts of names.
Kirk Pengilly was outside signing autographs for some fans. He had his head down while doing it. I went over and said something like, “Kirk, you’ll never believe what happened to us when we drove home last night.” Without looking up he said, “What is it, Donna?” So, I told him the story about how we hit a pothole, and I used the belt that I was wearing to tie up the bottom of the car so we could drive home. For the second time in a row, we had a problem with the car when we went to see INXS. I had to tell him because it was like a thing now.
I’m sure plenty of other stuff happened but I was too busy to write it all down and I don’t remember anymore. All I know is that we took a horse-drawn carriage to get back to the car at Port Authority. It was fun but not at all scenic.
Here is a photo from 1991 and the black hat is sitting on the coatrack. You can see that it was collecting dust and I eventually got rid of it because I didn’t wear it and it did was take up space and collect dust.
My room in the apartment I shared in West Philadelphia. My hats and also some INXS stuff on the exposed drywall.
The fourth album by the Australian rock band, INXS.
This post contains diary entries and a letter. There is information about the Australian rock band, INXS, and about what I was doing, thinking, and feeling.
Working graveyard shifts
It’s towards the end of spring semester of my sophomore year in college. I am working at my work-study job for West Campus which oversees the student dorms in the western part of Penn’s campus. That includes the three high-rise apartment buildings where I worked and lived.
Here are a couple of diary entries from when I was working the overnight (graveyard) shift at the desk in the lobby of one of the high-rise buildings. There was an intercom system that broadcast into the stairwells that could be switched on at the desk. There was a hand-held microphone at the desk that was part of the system. It was there for fire safety. During fire alarms, the students were trained to leave their rooms and wait in the stairwells. The intercom could be used to tell them to evacuate the building if it was necessary. Usually, it was used to tell them to remain in the stairwell.
The two tall buildings in the bottom right are High Rise North and High Rise East. West Campus. University of Pennsylvania.
4/27/84
Another night, another graveyard. INXS is keeping me awake tonight. Now I’m playing with the mike and singing to the lobby. A guy with a New Order and Bauhaus tape left me the case and took my INXS one. He said I had a pretty good voice and asked if I was in a band.
All the weirdos are out tonight. Some guy wanted to know if I did crank. I said no and he said, “what are you doing tonight?” Nada. INXS and Dr. Pepper make for a natural high.
Time to wake up Ralph-he’s coming in to replace me at 4. Someone showed me a death star instead of ID. Very comforting.
4/28/84
I’m at work again. I’ll be at work later tonight. Hopefully I won’t be incoherent by the time I finish tomorrow.
It’s graveyard time again. I’ll probably be incoherent soon. At 2am it will instantly be 3.
It’s 5am and I’ve lost it completely. Don just left. We had an interesting conversation. I bought a pizza at a discount. I don’t know why because I ate three pieces and gave the rest away and it cost five dollars. Someone could sell me the Brooklyn Bridge at this point.
A guy claiming to be a social worker almost duped me. Luckily, Victor was around because he found out that the number the guy was calling was for a Honda dealership. The guy left. I am very stupid when it comes to believing people.
I don’t think I’ll remember anything if I study. Just have to keep awake. I’m glad the elevators are here to swallow up the people as soon as they come in. I wonder if my saying I like graveyards is a form of relieving dissonance. I don’t think so because I do like the peace and quiet. I’m the owner of the building. I’m in charge-I put my feet on the desk and blast music. It’s all mine. People think I’m crazy when I say I have fun. I’m getting paid for hanging out and having a private party. I only have to stay awake to make sure that only Penn jerks get in and not jerks off the street.
I’ve been up for 17 hours. That’s not even close to a record. Why it’s nothing really. I should be sharp as a knife. I think I own a dull blade.
The sun is peeking out from the horizon. This dawn used to be sunset in Australia. It’s amazing what a little light does to me. Sunrises are amazing.
It’s fun whirling in my chair. If I ever become an executive- God forbid, I want a chair I can spin around in.
I’m ruining my teeth drinking all this Dr. Pee Pee. Here comes Mr. Sunshine. Here comes Mr. Rainwater. Here come the Anarchittys running up the street.
The trees are a nice color green today. I don’t want to study my schoolwork. I want to be rich. I want to go traveling. Gonna blast some German music. [Falco] I wish I knew the words. My bladder is becoming really efficient because of this job. There’s a funky pigeon outside the door. I’m having a Dr. Pepper overdose. When I go home this summer, I’m going to have nicotine and pepper withdrawal.
4/29/84
It seems these past couple of days I was either sleeping or at work.
Well, I just got up, so it is off to work in a few.
Original Sin finally debuted on the charts here at #87.
I’m getting depressed. I have to figure out a way to get out of lunches at the Emerson Hotel. Fran is going into the hospital, so they’ll probably want me to work as soon as I get back. Terrific. I just have to think of the money. The whole thing is depressing.
I spoke to Mom on the phone. It doesn’t help my mood at all. Sleep will be good tonight. I’m so tired. I won’t dream. I won’t think. I’ll have an eight-hour vacation from this world.
The weather is nice. A cool breeze is coming in through the door. Danny is getting a computer. I might be able to use it over the summer.
Chris invited me to an EST meeting on Tuesday. I haven’t gotten mail in two or three weeks. I want my Trouser Press. I have to subscribe to it again.
From my collection of Trouser Press magazine. October 1983 issue.
5/1/84
Another graveyard. This one hasn’t been much fun. It is 6:20am. I want to die. I have so much work to do.
I went to an EST guest seminar, and everyone gives me the hard sell to do the training. I don’t know. I feel like hell.
5/3/84
It is 2pm and I’m about to take a nap because of a graveyard tonight.
I’ve been keeping weird hours. I worked graveyard Tuesday then slept from 8-3 then stayed up until midnight and got up at seven this morning for my Sociology final which went OK. I got my paycheck today.
Some woman from EST called here to talk to me. I don’t know how she got my number, but they better stop bothering me.
5/4/84
Nan just told me that the light under the desk was on meaning that everything going on at the desk was being broadcast into the stairwells- how embarrassing. A girl came down from the stairwell while I was playing INXS and singing to it and she said I had a good voice so it must have been on then. I wondered how she was able to hear me. It was bound to happen sooner or later. A total of about seven people offered to get me coffee or breakfast. I never expected so many considerate people to be around.
5/5/84
It is almost 10 pm and once again I am behind the desk. My feet are vibrating because they are on top of the refrigerator. I’m listening to the Swing. I made a special trip downtown to buy it. I told Chip from WQHS it was a great album so maybe they will play it. I should be getting paid for PR work.
Letter from Terri
A letter from Terri who was still in school in Florida arrived. It seems to be the last letter from her for the next few months. We were both about to go back to New Jersey for the summer, so we didn’t need to communicate by mail once that happened.
Terri gave me news about INXS. She said that “The Swing” was supposed to be out in a few days. One of her pen pals in Australia recorded it on cassette for her so she had already listened to it and said it was great.
Gary Grant was still in Australia, so she was not able to speak to him when she called Atco Records. The receptionist finally put her through to someone else and whoever it was said that “there was nothing definite, but there was talk of a spring tour with the Cars. If they plan to come in OUR spring, they better get something settled soon!!”
A friend of hers left for Australia so Terri told her about Gary Grant and gave her the address for their office in Sydney so she could go there if she had a chance. I don’t know if she actually did.
An MMA Management ad from Billboard magazine. Date unknown.
Terri heard “Original Sin” on a “real” radio station for the first time in Tampa- on a commercial station and not a college station. “They are still trying to figure out who Inkses is in Florida, for the most part!”
An Australian friend sent her a nice poster of INXS, and she told me all about it. The Farriss brothers looked stunning. Timmy looked cool. Jon’s hair looked like it did this time last year at the Ritz. Andrew had shaved and looked adorable. “Michael is too busy looking evil, so the heck with him.” Garry looked like he had a cold but his hair looked good. Kirk’s hair was going back to brown. She didn’t like the haircut, “but at least he doesn’t look like a lawn mower’s been in his head! And a new pair of frames-this guy is the Elton John of INXS!”
The back of the poster contained information about the band. The members of INXS chose their favorite songs from The Swing. Kirk chose “I Send A Message” while everyone else chose “Dancing on the Jetty” except for Michael who couldn’t decide.
Everyone but Andrew gave the names of their girlfriends. Terri wrote, “I won’t tell you Kirk’s unless you want me to!” She also wrote about some of the answers the band members gave when asked what their first love was. Tim said Annette Funicello and Garry Gary Beers said surfing and surfboards. Jonathan James Farriss said, “My first orgasm, I guess. When I was fourteen and a half!”
Almost time for my management final. I’ve been up at 5:30am for the past two days because of finals. Tomorrow is the last one and then I have to pack up my shit and hit the trail back home. I’m just so excited. I hope I can stay awake for this exam. Hopefully I can answer the questions.
I want simplicity, doldrum, sleep, boredom, to twiddle my fingers, to watch TV, to avoid thinking, to avoid this.
5/10/84
Last day of finals, last full day in Phila. There must be more important things in life than brand loyalty.
Back in Hillsdale, NJ for the summer
The portion of Hillsdale, NJ that includes my house, Terri’s house, Friendly’s, the supermarkets, library, and my high school.
I had to walk to many places. The supermarkets were half a mile from my house. The Hillsdale Library was three-fourths of a mile away and Terri’s house was another two hundred yards further up the street from the library.
5/11/84
I’m watching MTV. That’s right I’m home. I just got back and already I’m scheduled to work tomorrow and Sunday. Keep thinking of the money-what I can do with it, where I can go.
Saw “Eat It” for the first time. [Music video by Weird Al Yankovic. A parody of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”] I’m going to miss school. Well maybe not the work. I better get used to not eating. I made myself a hamburger omelet- it was good at least for scrounging. It takes so long to walk to the stores. This is going to be a long, long summer. I hope it doesn’t kill me.
I’m going down to the Meadowlands tonight with Terri and Jess to hang around and maybe see Randy and Eddie Money. I’m dressed to kill in my fedora and Michael Jackson earrings. [Randy was the keyboard player for Eddie Money. Terri and I met him when I was thirteen and Terri was fourteen and we went to Central Park for some soundcheck.]
Randy Nichols, keyboard player for Eddie MoneyEddie Money backstage at the Wollman Ice Rink in Central Park. NYC. Dr Pepper Summer Music Festival. August 9, 1978
5/12/84
11am- Just got out of bed. I could sleep all day, but I have a lot to unpack before I go to work. Urgh. My feet are aching in anticipation.
5/13/84
I’m exhausted. I worked Sat. night until one am. and then today (Mother’s Day) from 12-9. I made $90 which makes it worth it. It wasn’t really hectic tonight. I was managing OK. My brain is in a daze and my body hurts. My feet ache and itch and they swell up after I work.
5/14/84
Ho hum. Going to NY [New York City] tomorrow perhaps to spend money on whatever. I have been spending money so fast because there is so much to buy. I’m becoming manic again. I want to get away from here, but I know I’m stuck for now. I’m looking for a way to be free and hopefully I’ll find it. Mother dear better keep her nose out of my journals.
Showed Terri where Kirk and I ate. Stopped by INXS’ record company. Dirtbag men followed us in Greenwich Village.
5/15/84
Next summer I’m definitely going to stay in Philadelphia. This place is going to drive me nuts. My only desires are becoming food and sleep. There is no privacy here. I can’t live my own life here.
I’m going for a walk as soon as I get dressed. I need to get out. I want to cry again.
I’m in Lisa’s Pizza before I go to Terri’s for a Cosmos meeting. This area is the pits. If I don’t go nuts, I’ll be thankful. I’ve been debating whether or not to buy cigarettes. I bought a Lotto ticket instead.
In Music Merchant [Record store in downtown Westwood, NJ that survived until 2024] some people were trying to decide what record to buy for some kid as a gift. I suggested the Swing. I don’t know why I should bother.
This meeting tonight will probably be boring. I don’t think I’m going to shake my mild depression but at least I’ll be bored and depressed away from home. I don’t belong there. I’m too used to being on my own and now I have to tell mommy where I’m going when I leave the house. I should have been born with money. I know money doesn’t solve all problems, but I would be better off with it than without it.
I wish there was a decent cafe around. Somewhere quiet that I could go to for a cup of coffee and some inspiration. I sound like a member of the coffee generation. [Reference to a “Coffee Achievers” TV commercial for the coffee industry.]
Coffee Achievers video
5/17/84
Eskie [Eskandarian] and Johan [Neeskens] [NY Cosmos soccer players] were at the meeting but I spent the time rewriting the Swing album. I did three songs. I’m beginning to feel panicky about everything. NAUSEA. I am hyper. I just got back from Bamberger’s. [A New Jersey department store owned by Macy’s. All the stores were renamed as Macy’s in 1986] I lost my card, so they gave me a temporary one but the Casio thing I want to buy is out of stock. [Casio portable music keyboard]
I have to save up for tuition. I don’t know what is wrong with me. Now I’m becoming vain about my appearance. I shouldn’t worry because I can’t change what I was born with, and I didn’t get a raw deal so why this urge to look in the mirror all the time? Maybe I’m going through adolescence at the age of 19.
Rewritten songs from The Swing
Dancing on the Jetty video-INXS
Walking off the Jetty [My version]
Why don’t you take a long walk
Off a short pier
Who’s gonna teach you
Teach you how to swim
You could talk forever
Just never get tired
Listen to your words
Find out why you get us down
Long stories, bad jokes
Loud clothing
Go walk off the jetty
Cause we’re sick of you
Why don’t you take a long walk
Off a short pier
Who’s gonna teach you
Teach you how to swim
You told your life story
You started years ago
Prayed like hell that you’d shut your mouth
Another story and I’d kill myself
Bore the world, too sorry
Give anything
for a moment’s silence
We want to stop you from making noise
Nothing but trouble, leave town
Don’t you come back
We hope you got the hint.
INXS Video Melting in the Sun
Lying in the Sun [My version of Melting in the Sun by INXS a la Weird Al Yankovic]
Sung to the tune of Melting in the Sun by INXS
More from the diary
5/18/84
I just got out of work. I go back to work dinner in a couple of hours.
My Michael Jackson t-shirt came out well. Mom and Dan thought I bought it with sunglasses and burning hair.
I hit four numbers the first time I played Lotto. I’m psyched.
I’m back from work. I got a tip from one of my customers that included a balloon cat and mouse. It was great.
5/19/84
A Saturday night off! This event should be marked down in history. I have to eat dinner soon. I’m starving. I’m sitting on the living room couch. Junior [our dog] is lying on the floor next to me and my mother is in the kitchen. Barbara Streisand is blasting on the stereo.
My mother changed the record to Neil Diamond. I bought a Weekly World News at Quick Chek. The headline is “Famed Psychic’s Head Explodes”. The National Examiner had an interesting story about Jesus’ secret life, but I didn’t buy the paper. I think it is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the wealthy Australian newspaper magnate, who wanted to buy Warner Communications. All My Children [my favorite soap opera] had on someone named Hubert Drydoch-I think that he is supposed to be Murdoch because of the accent and the allusions about newspapers and magazines.
[I was wrong about the National Examiner. The tabloid was never owned by Rupert Murdoch. He owned The Star. Read about it on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Examiner]
Dr. Pepper tastes best when it is warm and flat. Gary Grant is supposed to be back in America sometime in the next couple of days. I had a really severe muscle cramp in my leg last night. I thought I would never be able to use my leg again.
Tonight, I’m going to read my paper, watch Tootsie on TV, and then INXS on MTV. [I don’t know what MTV showed. Maybe the debut of I Send A Message? INXS were in Europe at the time.] Tomorrow is going to be a long day, but I should survive. I hope I’ll get decent tips. I’m only halfway through Nausea. [Book by Jean Paul Sartre] I hope Mom and Carl leave soon. I like having the house to myself.
Cover of the Weekly World News from May 22, 1984
5/20/84
I like my job for the most part. It is just very painful to the feet and back. To most people there I am still a baby. I’m not supposed to know about sex and all of the other grownup things. I’m too young. They should think back to the time when they were my age. Some of them were already married. My job is less frustrating and easier than last summer. I even found out when I was home for Christmas that I could handle five tables no sweat. Now that it has gotten easier, it is also more profitable.
5/22/84
I was just at the Emerson Hotel nine hours ago and I’m going back in another hour to work lunch.
I would rather be reading
5/23/84
I slept so late this morning. Carl is home. [My mother’s husband. The guy who owned the Ho-Ho-Kus bakery.] I’m so tired. I bought my Casio thing yesterday. I have to figure it out. Junior is barking now. He is such a pain. One minute he wants in and then out again. I hope I get my paycheck from school sometime soon. This town is getting boring. I need to find a place to go away from here where I can sit and think or read. Maybe the library is open. Maybe I can go see a movie tonight.
I wonder if I am sane. I was walking backwards down the railroad tracks singing earlier this afternoon. I went to the bank and just made it into Friendly’s before it started to pour. The lightning was really close. It scared the shit out of me. I had a cup of coffee and now I’m at the library. I brought my backpack just in case I found some books to take out.
There are so many things I should read and learn and know about that it all gets overwhelming. Insignificant things like working to earn a living and sleeping get in the way.
[Friendly’s was an ice cream place with food that was half a mile from my house. The one in Hillsdale closed and is now a Chipotle.]
Modeling doesn’t sound so great
5/24/84
Lunch was sooo dead today. I only made ten dollars. I have to go back in two hours and work 5-10. I’m working in the middle, so I have two big tables and three little ones. I hope I’m not run to the ground tonight although I would like to make some money.
I told them about my school job. They listened to me like I was E.F. Hutton. I guess because I don’t talk much. I don’t know why they expect me to talk more. What am I supposed to say? Frank and Toni always tell me to shut up because I’m talking too much or giving them a headache. They must tell me this at least ten times a day. It’s getting on my nerves.
I read a book about modeling, and I don’t know if I want to be bothered that much. Every part of your body has to look perfect. You have to get test shots and then maybe you’ll get some work, but it is long hours. I don’t know how much money it takes before I would even get work. My waist is too thick. The book talks about how guys that are halfway decent are almost impossible to find if you are a model. How about decent guys are hard to find period? Everyone tells me how lucky I am not to have a boyfriend. Freida, Joanne, and even my grandmother approves of not having one.
Well, I’m not a millionaire this week. I only got one number. I might have been a bit richer if we weren’t on pool. I had eight tables, and we were busy. I worked extremely hard and I’m tired. On one twelve-dollar check the people left me a twenty-dollar tip. That has to be the best tip I’ll ever get. I had to give it in to the pool. I’m expected back at work in eleven hours. Tomorrow, hopefully it will be busy for two hours then I can get paid and leave. I’ve certainly changed. Work is not as bad as it used to be, and I’ve become almost ambitious.
5/26/84
I try to convince myself that school is worth the cost. I’m sure I won’t regret it later so I can’t be too impulsive now. I went to a store on Route 4 and played with some keyboards. Today’s technology blows me away. It is so cool.
5/27/84
It’s good to be home. Work was long, slow, boring, and not very profitable. I’m tired from standing around all day. At least I got out around 8:15 and didn’t have to do ketchups. I had to eat Cornish hen because they didn’t sell any. Yuck. Everyone has been giving me compliments on how good a waitress I am. Barbara is back for the weekend and then she goes back to school for the summer. A new girl named Valerie is starting on Tuesday. I’m still the youngest there. Joanne thought I was about 22. I’d like to be 21 so I could do anything I want without a hassle. Tomorrow, we have to be in at 4:45 in case the rush starts early (if there is any).
I must stop thinking before I depress myself. I can see where drugs might come in handy at times like these-to forget everything: good, bad, or otherwise.
[The restaurant used to have bottles of ketchup on the tables and we would have to fill them up by pouring the ketchup from almost empty bottles into half-full ones to fill them up. I didn’t like to do this task.]
Jackie Fuhrmann with Victor Nogueira, the goalkeeper for the Chicago Sting. He is from Mozambique. I think he was Jackie’s favorite player. He was a good-looking man. He is also in the Indoor Soccer Hall of Fame which seems to only exist on the internet.
On March 11, 1984, while I was in Tampa, Florida for spring break, I wrote in my diary that a certain soccer team was in town yesterday and Mr. X didn’t even try to pick me up! “I guess he knows better at this point, so he doesn’t bother. At least I didn’t have to pay for the game.” Mr. X was a married soccer player from a foreign country who was 13 years older than me.
We went to an indoor soccer game after some player that we knew gave us the tickets. The visiting team won the game. After the game we went to a bar called Whiskey Joes. My diary says that I didn’t talk to any of the players.
It was towards the end of my time as someone who went to soccer games as both the New York Arrows of the MISL (Major Indoor Soccer League) and the entire NASL (North American Soccer League), which played soccer outdoors during the summer, folded after the 1984 season.
Giants stadium, in the Meadowlands, opened for business in 1976 when the New York Giants football team played its first season there. The stadium was in East Rutherford, in the southern part of Bergen County, the county in New Jersey where I grew up. The New York Cosmos professional soccer team started playing there in the summer of 1977.
The Cosmos team was started by the Ertegun brothers of Atlantic Records fame along with several other executives from Warner Communications, which owned many entertainment companies and later merged with Time, Inc. to become Time Warner. The team debuted in the NASL in 1971. They were losing a lot of money from the beginning, so it wasn’t long before the founders basically signed their stakes over to Warner Communications.
A history of the Cosmos can be found on Wikipedia.
Video of Franz Beckenbauer farewell game highlights with some weird narration.
Keeping a diary wasn’t something I did until I was a junior in high school and that was only because my English teacher had us write during class every Wednesday. So, I don’t know for sure if I went to soccer games during the summer of 1980 or not. The players I met at were all on the Cosmos roster in 1980 and 1981. My diary contains a couple of hints that perhaps I did go to at least one game before the Franz Beckenbauer Farewell Game on September 24, 1980. If not, then I went to at least one of the Cosmos fan club meetings with Terri.
Press release announcing that Pele will come back for the Beckenbauer farewell game
Franz Beckenbauer was a very successful and famous German soccer player. The New York Cosmos lured many players from other countries to play for them, such as Pele, usually towards the end of their careers.
Video tribute to Franz Beckenbauer when he died January 7, 2024.
Meeting some soccer players
After my junior year in high school, I stopped writing any kind of diary. I didn’t start again until 1984 so I only have my old memories to go on now. I think it wasn’t until after junior year of high school that I went to more games and met some of the soccer players. Terri and I were in the same grade in school, but she was many months older than me. She was able to drive before I was.
Our high school (Pascack Valley High School in Hillsdale, NJ) started a girls’ soccer team in the fall of 1980. My diary says that I considered trying out for the soccer team, but I joined the cross-country track team instead. I was already active in indoor track and spring track but that is the subject for another post.
That fall, Terri and I went trick-or-treating at Andranik Eskandarian’s house on Halloween. He was a defender for the Cosmos who came from Iran, and he lived nearby. I dressed as a runner for my costume. His wife was home, but he was in Europe because the Cosmos went on a tour where they played twelve games against teams in Europe and North Africa.
Here is link to a story about Eskandarian’s soccer store in Hackensack, New Jersey.
There were a couple of Cosmos players from Paraguay who were only two or three years older than us. Julio Cesar Romero and Roberto Cabanas. Roberto Cabanas was like the Jon Farriss (drummer for the Australian rock band INXS) of the Cosmos-the one I thought was the best-looking and the one closest to my age. Neither of the guys from Paraguay spoke much English and Terri and I had chosen to study French in high school so spending time with them was a bit awkward. We did try though. I vaguely remember going with Terri to Guttenberg, NJ where Romero lived, and we had lunch with him.
In the front row of this photo are Seninho(11), Johan Neeskens(13), Julio Cesar Romero(7), Giorgio Chinaglia(9), Ricky Davis(17), Bogie(8). In the middle row are David Brcic(21) and Hubert Birkenmeier(1). In the back row are Roberto Cabanas(19) and Eskandarian(2). Those are the players I remember meeting or who are mentioned in this post.
There was a bar on Paterson Plank Road, near Giants Stadium, that was owned by two football players who played for the Giants- Brad Van Pelt and Doug Van Horn. It was called The Front Row, and it was a place where soccer players would hang out after the games. I remember spending time there with Terri and her mother, who used to drive us places, and some other fans after games. I thought it was funny because we were still in high school. We didn’t drink though.
It was a good place to observe behavior. Most of the soccer players were attractive-in their 20s or 30s, athletic, fit, some tall, some handsome. Not all of them were single. I saw how the women who were there to pick up one of these men were dressed. One woman wore a shirt that had a see-through plastic window in front. That was most memorable. I don’t know if that always worked to get the attention of men in the bar, but I knew that dressing like that was meant to get a sexual sort of attention. I never dressed that way, ever.
George Katakalidis. New York Arrows indoor soccer
This is me in high school after a New York Arrows indoor soccer game. I’m on the far left. The man is George Katakilidis, one of the players. The other girls are Rena, and Linda, I think. My diary mentions them, but I don’t remember them. They didn’t live in our town. The Arrows played in Nassau Coliseum out on Long Island but my diary mentions a game in Madison Square Garden so I don’t know where this was taken. I’m wearing what I typically wore in high school when I only owned two pairs of jeans and they were identical. They were cast-offs as were most of my clothes back then. I didn’t get contact lenses until I went to college so I always wore those eyeglasses except when I was running.
Married man leaves bad impression
My first encounter with Mr. X happened at the Front Row bar when I was a senior in high school. I think I was standing on the dance floor when I talked to him, but I don’t remember why I was talking to him or what about. The only part I remember was when he asked me how old I was. I told him I was seventeen. He said, “Seventeen? What a beautiful age.” Just imagine it sounding icky because it came across as gross and inappropriate. I don’t think he specifically mentioned sex at all, but it was meant as a sexual comment.
Perhaps things got a little more serious the next time because he figured I was over eighteen by then? Who knows? Some men will target the younger girls while others are more cautious and only prey on the ones over 18. When we went to see Mr. X’s team sometime after I graduated from high school, we were in a hotel bar with some of the players. Mr. X was there, and I did look at him because he was good-looking but I was not flirting. So, it was a shock when a bit later, one of the other players came up to me and told me that Mr. X was waiting for me in his room. That was crazy to me, and I was embarrassed. I didn’t go. Later, Mr. X came back down and lured one of my friends by promising to give her a jersey or something. So, she left with him to get it, and he tried to kiss her.
None of that kept us away. We still wanted to support the teams and be friendly with the players because we could get free tickets and afford to go to more games that way. Plus, most of them were okay to be around and we would have fun. If we took precautions and avoided certain situations with certain players, then the assaults were kept to a minimum. This kind of behavior from men was so common and so normalized that we just put up with it and excused it if they were drinking alcohol. When I was 18 some 32-year-old soccer player put his hand over my mouth and then kissed the back of his hand. Stuff like that just got laughed off.
After a Chicago Sting indoor soccer game somewhere with Dee, Frankie, Jess, and Frankie’s mother in the early 1980s.
This is a photo of me, Dee, Frankie, Jess, and Frankie’s mother Fran. Taken on some road trip to go to an indoor soccer game when I was a freshman in college. I wore contact lenses.
Visiting Tampa, Florida
Before I went back for the spring semester of my sophomore year of college, in December of 1983, I took a trip to Florida where Terri was going to college. Jackie was also visiting. We stayed at Jen’s house. Jen babysat for one of the soccer players on the team in Tampa, so we hung out with her at his house. She knew all the players and we saw several of them during our time there. There isn’t anything in my diary about any of them bothering me which was not always the case. I think this photo of Jackie and Tatu of the Tampa Bay Rowdies might be from this time. Tatu is from Brazil and he too is in the Indoor Soccer Hall of Fame.
Jackie Fuhrmann and Tatu of the Tampa Bay Rowdies
You can read more about Tatu on his Wikipedia page.
On August 15, 1984, I wrote in my diary that I went to a soccer game because I was bored and that it was a big mistake. This was just a few days after we were finished going to INXS concerts for the summer. Terri was friends with a player on the opposing team, but she told me that she wasn’t going to go out of her way for him. He ended up keeping us out until 6am and I wrote that I almost died when I was at work four hours later.
We went to the Front Row bar after the game and Terri spoke to this guy while we were there. Then he, his teammate, Terri, Jess, and I all went to a restaurant in Clifton, NJ called Bogie 8. It had been recently opened by one of the captains of the New York Cosmos, Vladimir Bogicevic. His nickname was Bogie and the number on his jersey was 8 and hence the name. I didn’t enjoy it.
After leaving the restaurant, we went back to the hotel where the players were staying. We took two more players besides the two we were with back to the hotel with us. Those two players were in the backseat of the car with me. One of them attacked me. He started kissing my shoulder and asking me for a kiss. I didn’t kiss the guy. The two of them said I looked like Julianne McNamara.
Julianne McNamara was a famous American gymnast at that time. She was on the US Olympic gymnastics team.
We got rid of those two players once we reached the hotel. According to my diary, “I made it there relatively unscathed.” Jess went home from there. I had come with Terri so I couldn’t go home if I wanted to. The four of us went out to a diner.
New Jersey is well-known for its diners. There were loads of diners in New Jersey in the 1980s. Many were open 24 hours a day. Most served breakfast at all times of the day.
I thought it was funny that Terri kept talking about Timmy Farriss of INXS in front of her friend. Timmy was Terri’s favorite member of the band and we had just spent a lot of time with them.
The four of us went out to the parking lot and played some soccer. There must have been a soccer ball in the car. I walked away with the guy who was from Brazil so Terri and her friend could be alone for a few minutes. We sat down in the parking lot in the middle of the night and waited. It was kind of awkward. We did our best to have a conversation. It was one of those times when I wished I had stayed at home in the end or that I had my own car so I could leave.
Photo of Kirk Pengilly signing autographs at Harlow’s Club in Stone Mountain, GA. September 5, 1983.
Kirk Pengilly, Jess, and I walked out of the Power Station music studio which was on 53rd St. between 9th and 10th Avenue in New York City. Jess offered to drive Kirk back to the hotel where INXS were staying. That was the Milford Plaza at 8th Avenue and 44th St. In the 80s, the Milford Plaza was a cheap place to stay and popular with tourists. They advertised on television as you can see in this video.
When we got to the car, Jess opened the trunk so Kirk could put his saxophone in it. Inside the trunk there was a photo album. Jess took it out and told Kirk that it contained photos of INXS. Kirk said we should bring them into the hotel to look at them. He related a story about how his saxophone (a different sax from the one he had just used in the studio) had been stolen, along with some other equipment, during this first tour of the United States. He said that it cost $5,000 to replace it.
Jess got into the driver’s seat while Kirk and I got into the back seat of the car. I went in first and I noticed that there were a couple of cassette tapes on the seat. They were copies of the bootleg concert tape from the INXS show in Stone Mountain. I did not want Kirk to see the tapes at all, so I discreetly grabbed them and hid them from his view. It’s possible that seeing an unauthorized recording of an INXS concert would have upset him and I wasn’t taking any chances.
INXS concert recording from September 5th
My copy of the cassette tape no longer exists. Jess made me a tape in 1983 with the concert on it as well as some B-sides such as Long In Tooth and You Never Used To Cry. After the technology became available, I sent my tape to a company that transfers cassette tapes to CD. It was in 2006 that I decided to preserve it. Now it is on my computer.
It was a good show, but the recording is incomplete. I don’t know why. The tape I have starts with Michael Hutchence saying, “This is another one from Shabooh Shoobah” and then he sings “Shabooh Shoobah Shabooh Shoobah” before the band launches into Spy of Love. Shabooh Shoobah sounds like the bass line in that song and according to Wikipedia, Tim made that up. INXS.com says something different.
It’s fun to hear my friends speak during some of the songs. The Loved One is the next song and Terri says, “I’m wounded for life. Is anybody hurt?” I don’t know what happened. When they played Black and White, the drumming was great. After that, they played Don’t Change and Michael said “See you later Atlanta. You’ve been great. You’re just like an Australian audience actually. This is our last night on our last leg of our little American tour. I want to thank our road crew that’s half Australian and half from the United States- Neil, Colin, Jay and Ted.” Terri heard that and said, “What?”
They left the stage and then came back for an encore. Michael says, “We’re gonna do a few. This next one’s called Night of Rebellion. Terri says, “Oh, yes!” and claps. Michael says, “Let’s make it nice and hot and sticky in here. I want to see steam rising off bodies.” This is one of my favorite songs from the Underneath The Colours album so I wish Michael had gotten this one totally right. Overall, he did a great job of singing well and singing all the song lyrics properly in this concert, but he switched the order of the last two verses in this song.
Michael did this often over the course of his career. We all had INXS songs memorized better than he did. I found it annoying when verses were switched around or left out or repeated when they were not repeated in the song as recorded because I liked to sing along. The main reason I went to the shows was to sing along while the band played. And to dance too. It was the next best thing to being the lead singer.
“This song’s called Stay Young. This one is for Rick Sales”, Michael said next. During the instrumental break in the song, Garry Gary Beers, the bass player, kicked or threw a cup of ice into the audience and it landed near Terri. She said, “Oh shit! It’s disgusting. Oh shit! It’s going right under my foot. Thanks, Garry.”
Next, Michael says, “Who wants some more?” The audience clapped. There weren’t any screamers in this audience. “Want to hear The One Thing again? No? That’s all we’ve got left. I can’t remember anything else.” Jess yells “Simple Simon!” Terri yells, “Simon.” Then they both yell, “Michael, Simple Simon!” Michael says, “Simple what then?”, and the band starts playing The One Thing. When the song ended, Michael told the audience, “Thank you. See you soon. You’ve been fucking great.” End of show.
Dinner at Beefsteak Charlie’s with Kirk Pengilly
Back to New York City- Jess and I had to sign a guest register in the lobby of the Milford Plaza before we could go up to Kirk and Garry’s room. My behavior was not the best. I was quite nosy back then and I still am, but I hope I’m more respectful now. Garry’s suitcase was open, and I looked at what was there. I noticed an issue of Playboy magazine. Pia Zadora was on the cover. He had some cassette tapes too. I didn’t write down which bands he was listening to, so I don’t remember what they were anymore. Looking at people’s record collections or the books on their shelves is super interesting to me.
We sat down on the beds for a few minutes to chat and Garry’s combat boots were on the floor near me, so I stuck my feet into them. The boots fit me. Then Kirk let me try on his Chinese slippers and those fit too. My feet are big because I am as tall as the average man in many countries- five foot nine and a half. I was taller than Garry but around the same height as Kirk.
I don’t remember what we talked about for the most part. Maybe I talked about going back to school. I do remember telling Kirk that my roommate Dohi lost one of her friends when the Soviet Union shot down a Korean Air Lines flight. That had happened a couple of weeks earlier on September 1. The flight took off from JFK airport in New York and was enroute to Seoul when it was struck by a missile.
Dohi’s parents had immigrated to the United States from South Korea. The University of Pennsylvania put me, Dohi, and Karen together as roommates when we were freshmen. We chose to be roommates for three years and we are still friends. here was another girl freshman year but we didn’t like her.
Kirk looked at the photos of INXS, both onstage and off, that Jess had taken. I think most of them were from the concert in Atlanta. He happened to have a small jar of Vegemite that he had brought with him from Australia. We were able to taste it for the first time thanks to Kirk. Maybe he offered to let us taste it because he knew it would be funny to see our reactions. Vegemite is disgusting!!!!! And we went out to dinner after that.
Kirk was hungry and he wanted to eat steak, so we went to the Beefsteak Charlie’s restaurant that was next to the hotel on 45th St. and 8th Avenue. We sat in a booth and I sat across from Kirk. I ordered a hamburger with a baked potato and Jess just ordered a 7-Up. Kirk ordered a salad for all of us to share along with his steak.
I was a nervous wreck, and the hamburger wasn’t good, so I started feeling queasy.
Jess and Kirk talked about photography. Both Jess and Terri had cameras and took photos. It was an expensive hobby because you had to buy film and pay to have it developed. I was too poor to have that kind of hobby.
My friend asked Kirk if he was looking forward to going home and he said, “Not really.” She asked him if there was someone special back in Australia- basically asking if he had a girlfriend and he said no. I don’t know if I would have asked that question myself if Jess had not, but I heard the answer and I believed it.
Kirk told us a lot about himself. He said that he lived in Neutral Bay in Sydney and that his birthday was July 4th. New York City was the place where he wanted to live if he could live anywhere.
We heard from Kirk that his oldest brother, Mark, was 31 at that time and he was trying to be a comedian. Mark had not been very successful in show business so far. Because of that, Kirk’s parents had wanted him to get a real job and keep music as a hobby. But they changed their minds when INXS started to do well.
Drew, Kirk’s other brother, was 29 and Kirk said he was the favorite because he had a real job and was married with two kids. I think he was a hotel manager. We heard that Kirk’s parents used to run a restaurant.
Kirk told us his father would go into record stores and put the INXS records at the front of the section, in front of the other records, so that they would be seen. I thought that was a wonderful idea so after that night I also went into record stores and moved the INXS albums to the front whenever I could.
Jess left the table to use the ladies’ room and when she did, Kirk asked me how long I was staying. I said I didn’t know. He said I could stay and spend the night with him and implied that I should have Jess leave. I didn’t even say anything because I was nervous and scared to take the plunge. I didn’t know if I should stay or if I should go. And I wasn’t mature enough to realize that if I was that conflicted then I should just say no. It was overwhelming and I was not handling myself well at all.
Kirk paid for dinner when Jess came back, and we all went back to the hotel room and talked about the situation. I said I thought I should stay because the ride home would make me throw up. My stomach hurt. Jess said that she would sleep outside in the hall or else pick me up tomorrow. I asked Jess to go out and buy me some Di-Gel to take for my stomach. It probably seemed like a ruse to get Jess out of the room at first, but I think it became clear soon after that it was not.
The medicine I would take when I had a painful upset stomach.
When Jess left, Kirk came over and sat next to me and we started kissing. He became the first guy to touch my breast. I usually didn’t wear a bra back then. Bras suck. They are uncomfortable and I didn’t need the support. So, he just put his hand under my shirt. It was all consensual, but I was not enthusiastic because I had worried myself sick long before then.
At that point, Kirk said, “Maybe it’s better if you didn’t stay. Next time.” I probably would have gone along with sleeping with him if he had pressured me, but he didn’t so that was a big point in his favor.
Next time was a great idea. It would have been weird having Garry in the room with us. And I think he would have been because he didn’t have anywhere else to sleep. Also, I didn’t have any birth control because I was too immature to even be in this situation. I had not come prepared. Lucky for me, nothing happened, so I didn’t get pregnant.
Jess came back and she had Pepto Bismol instead of Di-Gel. She told me later that she had asked Garry if she could go to dinner with him so we could be alone together. Garry didn’t want to hang out with her.
I drank some of the Pepto Bismol and told Kirk that I didn’t think I could do what he did for a living because I would get sick riding on the bus. Motion sickness was a major problem for me. Sometimes I would carry a plastic bag with me in case I got nauseous and needed to vomit into it. Particularly when I had to take a bus.
Around 11pm, Garry called the room. He told Kirk he was tired and wanted to go to bed. So, it was time for us to leave. When Garry came up to the room, we said goodbye to him, and we all left. Kirk walked us to the parking garage. I ripped a deposit slip out from the back of my checkbook and I wrote my phone number at school on it. I didn’t have anything else to right on. He put it in his wallet after I gave it to him. The man had every bit of contact information for me that there was back then. In 1983, that is just mailing addresses and home phone numbers. E-mail did not exist and there were no mobile phones.
We kissed again. Jess offered to drop him off in front of the hotel, so we all got in the car, and she drove him back. When we got to the hotel, I got out of the car with him, and we stood on the sidewalk. I said, “Have a nice few months,” and he said that he didn’t think he would because he had a lot of work to do. Kirk said he would write me a postcard from London. Then we kissed goodbye again before I got into the car and opened the window for some air. I was still worried about getting car sick on the ride home.
We drove off. I think I must have stayed over with Jess at her house and gone back to school in Philadelphia the next morning, but I don’t remember.
Kirk went back to the studio at the Power Station the next day to finish Original Sin.
Kirk Pengilly and Rick Sales, Stone Mountain, Georgia, photo by Jess, 9/5/1983
Photo of Kirk Pengilly (guitar, saxophone, vocals) of the Australian rock band INXS and Rick Sales, their tour manager. Arriving for the soundcheck at Harlow’s Club in Stone Mountain, GA (15 miles east of Atlanta) on September 5, 1983.
This was the last INXS concert on their first tour of the United States. I didn’t go to this concert, but Terri and Jess did. So did someone by the name of Tanya. She was friends with Jess. I don’t remember anything about her such as where she lived or how she knew Jess. It’s my understanding that a bootleg tape of some of this concert was recorded by her.
Not the actual postcard but something like this.
When I found out that my friends were going to Atlanta to see INXS, I bought a postcard with a map of New Jersey on it to give to Kirk. New Jersey was part of our conversation and I had even drawn a crude map for Kirk so buying it for them to give to him seemed like a great thing to do. On the front of the postcard, I made a mark in the area where Hillsdale was located and I wrote, “This is where I live” with an arrow pointing to it. I wrote my address on it. I can’t be 100% sure anymore if it was the address of my mother’s house in Hillsdale but odds are that it was. If I wrote anything else, it would have been that I enjoyed talking to him or something like that. I no longer remember some specific details, but I remember how I was and how I behaved. The guesses I make are based on my likely behavior.
By this time, the band recognized Terri and Jess. When they showed up to do their soundcheck, my friends were already there. Jess took photos of everyone in INXS except for Timmy. Jess gave my postcard to Kirk, and he must have known that they were going to be recording at the Power Station in New York City with Nile Rodgers by that time. He asked Jess for my phone number. She gave him the phone number at my mother’s house in Hillsdale.
If my friends told me details about the show, I did not write them down. They were invited back to the hotel lounge after the show by INXS. I’m sure they went. I was happy to know that Kirk asked for my number because I thought we had hit it off. He was interesting. And then he called!!
After this last INXS concert, the band went to Florida to write songs for their next album, The Swing. Where in Florida? No idea. Kirk called on Friday September 9, most likely because I know he called the day before I had to leave Hillsdale and move into my dorm room in Philadelphia. My mother worked so she was probably taking me on Saturday. My mother answered the phone and then gave it to me. She was not amused to find out that the man who called was a member of an Australian rock band. Some man fucking up my life was not something she wanted for me.
Kirk invited me to visit him at the studio in New York City. He told me where they would be and when they would be there. INXS were scheduled to be at the Power Station on Tuesday, September 13 and Wednesday, September 14, 1983. I told him that I couldn’t go because it was the first week of classes. The professors take attendance during the first couple of weeks of class and if you miss class then you risk being dropped from it so someone from the waiting list can take the class. And I was afraid of that. Money was tight and I couldn’t afford to make a costly mistake.
University of Pennsylvania Academic Calendar 1983-1984
It’s possible he called me a couple of days earlier and I went back to school a couple of days earlier because that would have given more time for my roommate, Dohi, to perm my hair using a store-bought kit. That was something that happened before I went to visit Kirk. It was a bad perm. I looked like I stuck a fork into an electrical outlet.
This is a photo of me from a month after I went to NYC so you can see my perm. My mother married the man who owned the HoHoKus bakery. They are the two sitting next to me. It’s from the wedding reception.
Mom and Carl’s wedding reception at the Iron Horse in Westwood, New Jersey. October 1983. Me and my perm.
But then I told Jess, and she was willing to do whatever needed to be done to make it happen. I thought about it and changed my mind. Somehow, Terri had the phone number for the rehearsal studio in Florida where INXS was. She had already called there to talk to Timmy- maybe? Terri gave me the number and I called to talk to Kirk and tell him I was coming. When I called, he wasn’t there so I left a message with the person who answered the phone that I would come to the studio after all.
On Tuesday, September 13, I took a train from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia to Newark, New Jersey. While I was waiting for my train in Philly, I browsed at the newsstand, and I saw the Weekly World News for the first time. It was a black and white tabloid paper full of ridiculousness. The cover said, “I AROSE FROM THE DEAD AS A ZOMBIE.” I bought it. The paper was a mix of strange but true stories and crazy stuff like Elvis sightings and space aliens. I loved it. I had a subscription to it a few years later.
An example of the Weekly World News tabloid paper from the 1980s.
Jess drove to the train station in Newark to meet me and we had lunch at Burger King before going into New York City. The Power Station was in Hell’s Kitchen and back in the 80s, it was known to be a dangerous area of the city. Jess drove us into Manhattan and drove around the block where the studio was supposed to be. It didn’t look like there was anything there. There was a school with a playground on one side of the street and graffiti-covered buildings on the other.
Jess parked at a space with a parking meter, and we walked around until we found the building. The window on the door was boarded up. We didn’t know what was going on because we expected something that didn’t look abandoned.
I was extremely, extremely nervous and I kept saying, “I’m not going in there.” That’s because the sex part of this trip just got real. They were in a rock band after all and that was what I felt was expected in this situation. Kirk didn’t say on the telephone to come spend the night with him, but I felt it was implied. And I wanted to do it, but I also didn’t want to do it. I was a lot more interested in finding a boyfriend before I took that step. At 18, almost 19, I was still a virgin and had now kissed two guys, one of them being Kirk Pengilly of INXS. Jess insisted that I was going in there.
Jess rang the bell, and someone opened the door. She pulled me into the lobby. There was a camera focused on the door, so I smiled and waved to it. Later, I noticed the monitor for it in the studio. Jess asked the guy in the lobby if INXS was in the studio. He picked up the phone and asked who was here to see them. She said, “Jess,” and quickly added, “and Donna.”
When he got off the phone, he told us to take the elevator to the third floor “but do not go into the recording studio.” The elevator doors opened into what looked like a living room. On the left side there was a couch against the wall and the door to the recording studio. Straight ahead were other couches against the wall. To the right, there were windows that looked out to the street, more seating and a low table. There was also a kitchen area with countertops and a refrigerator. And there was a bathroom.
We walked in and Jon Farriss, the drummer, was sitting on the couch in front of us. He was talking on the phone with his girlfriend from Texas, Lisa McCormick. When he noticed Jess, he said, “Boy, you really get around.”
Garry Gary Beers, the bassist, was also in this lounge area. He was talking to a man about getting a sponsorship to play their bass. Jess asked Garry if Kirk was around, so Garry went inside the recording studio. There were no windows so we couldn’t see what was happening in there unless we were in there.
I sat down on the couch near the elevator and started reading theWeekly World News. It was 3pm and I thought about how I would be in my finance class right now if I had not come to the studio and that I probably should have gone to my class instead.
Timmy Farriss, the guitar player for INXS, came out and came over to me. He said, “Hi! How are you?” I think he remembered me from that night in Poughkeepsie. Timmy told me that Kirk was busy “at the moment” and that he would come out as soon as he could. I showed Timmy the Weekly World News and he said, “Wow! This is great! Can I take this in to show the guys?” Of course, I was going to let him take it. I said, “Sure” so he took the paper and went back into the recording studio.
Jess and I were just sitting there along with Garry and the guy he was talking to about the bass sponsorship. There were other people in the lounge and the studio from time to time. Jess recognized Neil and Colin who were part of the INXS road crew. And there were three girls there who were invited by Michael Hutchence, the lead singer. One girl had part of her head shaved like Anabella Lwin, the singer for Bow Wow Wow, so Michael called her Anabelle.
From time to time, Jess had to leave the building to feed coins into the parking meter. Kirk came out of the studio when Jess was outside. He poked me in the stomach with his index finger and said, “What are you doing here?” I told him I came to say hi! He said I should have called Florida like Terri had done and I told him I had and that I left a message. Kirk didn’t get the message. He told me he was sharing a room with Garry and that it wasn’t possible to switch because Tim already had a guest staying with him. He asked what I did to my hair, and I told him the story.
Jess came back in and told us that her arm had been hit by a passing car while she was out there. She didn’t need medical attention. She was only slightly hurt. Kirk offered us something to drink. The choices were beer, vodka, mineral water, or milk. Now I’m very picky- there are many things I cannot eat or drink. And when I am nervous or stressed, my stomach and digestive tract cause me all sorts of problems too. Carbonated beverages are something I avoid so the beer and the mineral water did not appeal to me. Straight vodka tastes nasty, and I don’t drink a lot of alcohol. But if there had been some orange juice or cranberry juice, I would have had some vodka with that. That left milk. So, yes, I went into their rock and roll studio and had a glass of milk. Kirk laughed when I chose milk but then he brought me a glass of milk.
We spent almost no time in the actual recording studio that day. That I didn’t want to leave Jess by herself after she came back from dealing with the car was one reason. I also didn’t want to get in the way of the work. We saw Nile Rodgers, guitarist from Chic and the producer of Original Sin, but we didn’t interact with him much.
Jess and I were sitting in the lounge on the couch near the elevator and we were laughing hard at something when Nile came out. He saw us cracking up and he said, “And I thought I was really happy.” He thought we were high on something like he was. Nile Rodgers referred to cocaine as “silly shit” sometime during our time there. I don’t remember the details.
Tim Farriss came out to do a line of coke on the low table that faced the windows. The windows looked out onto the school playground so when he got up, he said, “Hi, kiddies!”
Michael also mentioned cocaine. He told his three young guests that he had bought some Peruvian Marching Powder (his term for cocaine). He said he was saving it for when they went slam dancing later.
There was a time when I was chatting with the three girls. I don’t think anyone else was around. It was how I found out that they had been invited to the studio by Michael when they saw INXS play at Mississippi Nights, a club in St. Louis on August 31, 1983. That was two nights after my friend, Jackie, saw them open for Men at Work in Chicago. I’ll tell her story from that concert in another blog post.
These girls were claiming that they had just graduated high school. Well, that was me the previous summer, so I started asking questions to find out what we had in common like where they were planning to go to college. Stuff like that. One of the girls decided to confess that she was fifteen and about to be a sophomore in high school. She was not the girl with the shaved head. They had told their parents that they were going on a trip to Chicago when they were really going to New York City because that way the parents would allow them to go. I was told that they would not have been allowed to travel to New York City if their parents knew that was where they were going.
It wasn’t very hard for me to get the truth. I wonder what the band knew or believed or if they even cared. The people in the music industry back then were quite disgusting and perhaps only cared about not getting in trouble when it came to messing with their young fans. I didn’t do anything about it at the time, but I also never forgot about it. Given Michael’s reputation when it came to having sex, it’s hard to believe that nothing untoward happened but maybe nothing did. Still, why did this 23-year-old man invite high school girls to hang out with him? At least Kirk knew that I was in college and over 18. But I can still find fault with Kirk too because he was 25 so I think I was too young for him.
Michael was telling them some weird things. What I wrote down was that he said that all the animals in Australia except for rabbits are protected so you aren’t allowed to kill them. And then he said that no one ate at the Chinese restaurants in Australia after they heard that the restaurants were using possums in their dishes.
At one point Jess and I were in the lounge by ourselves. Jess went out to deal with the parking meter again. Kirk came out and asked if I wanted to come inside the recording studio, but I said I would wait in the lounge until Jess came back. Then I was alone and, I looked at the sheet of paper that Michael was writing the lyrics on.
I sat down on the couch again and waited for Jess. Michael came out to work on the lyrics and I ignored him. He wasn’t the reason I was there, and I was still very nervous about what would happen with Kirk. Michael asked, “How is New York treating you?” I answered him by saying, “Is that a question?” We did not have a conversation.
A little later, Michael sang the Led Zeppelin lyric, “Big-legged woman ain’t got no soul” from the song Black Dog. And you should know that I have extremely long legs, disproportionately long legs. They are my most distinctive feature. The feature that caused me to be called “Daddy Long Legs” like the spider and that meant I often wore “high water” pants because I couldn’t find pants that were long enough. They looked fantastic and they were why I was a track star in high school but nevertheless, I was highly offended by this. I felt that Michael Hutchence was singing to me that I had no soul. I glared at him, and he said, “Sorry.”
Jess came back and she was very upset because her car had been towed and it was going to cost $110 to get it back. Kirk came out again and he almost stepped on my bare feet. Apparently, I had taken my shoes off at some point. It’s likely I was wearing sandals, but still, it could be considered a weird thing to do. The three of us discussed what happened to the car. Kirk offered to pay the money. Jess declined his offer. I told her that in her place, I would take the money and Kirk said that he would do that too. Still, she said no and left again to retrieve the car.
Kirk invited me into the recording studio again and this time I went in with him. I stood near the control panel. Timmy was playing his guitar part for the song. Garry was sitting on one side of me, and he was reading the Weekly World News. He laughed when he read the story about two lovers lying on a beach on Long Island who had their heads run over by a garbage truck and survived.
Nile Rodgers was into the music. He kept saying “Dis shit is happening” and “Bingo, this is fucking happening!” I loved it and started using those phrases whenever possible going forward. Andrew Farriss was sitting down eating a sandwich and making suggestions to Tim about his guitar work. I heard Timmy play one part of the song about twenty times.
Kirk asked if I wanted anything so I said I would have some mineral water. He got a glass of water and brought it back to me. I only took two sips of it because it tasted awful. We went to check the lounge to see if Jess came back and when she did, she came into the studio with us to watch for a couple of minutes. Then Jess and I went back out to the lounge to talk about the car.
We both sat on the couch by the elevator door again where we had a view of the kitchen area. Michael came out and went to the refrigerator where he took out a beer. Michael was looking around for a bottle opener but did not find one, so he started banging the top of the bottle on the edge of the counter to try to open it. Jess said, “Michael, I have a knife. Do you want it?” He said, “No, I enjoy whacking” while he continued to hit the counter. He said it in such a way that it was clear he was talking about masturbation. Then he was successful at opening the beer bottle and at that time he looked at me and smiled and said, “I love getting tops off.” It was clear by the way he said it that he meant he loved taking off the shirts that women are wearing. It was gross and I didn’t appreciate it. He was about as mature as some stupid boy from my junior high or high school.
Jon, Kirk and Timmy came out and Michael wanted to know what they thought about his lyrics for Original Sin. At that time, the lyrics said, “Dream on white boy, dream on white girl.” He asked, “Do you think it sounds okay?” Jon replied, “It’s no different from ‘natives wearing turquoise and silver.’” That lyric is from the song “Old World, New World” which is on their Shabooh Shoobah album. Michael got frustrated and said, “You have no idea what I’m talking about.”
Perhaps that led to Michael adding the “dream on black boy, dream on black girl” part that Nile Rodgers mentions in the INXS Access All Areas podcast. Because I don’t remember that part from the day I was there. Maybe Michael added it that to make it clearer that the dream was for some kind of paradise where all races got along together. Nile Rodgers says he talked them into mixing up the races even further within the lyrics and that is how the song was recorded. I wasn’t there for that because the vocals were not recorded until the next day. More about that in the next blog post.
The guys all started talking about the song. They were very excited about how it was going. They wondered if Original Sin would go to number one on the charts-they all wanted it to be a big hit.
Timmy said that Nile was in the studio playing some guitar lines to add to the song. He said that it would make the song harder to reproduce live, “but who cares as long as it sells more records.”
Kirk said he wanted to be famous, and that he also wanted to buy a house. Andrew started talking about how Nick Launay (the man who was about to produce the rest of their album, The Swing) and his girlfriend are a team and that they go everywhere together. Andrew didn’t want the band to pay to fly Nick’s girlfriend from London to Australia. Kirk said, “Why not? It’s only $1500.” Andrew suggested that they should wait until the album was recorded and then tell him that they won’t pay for his girlfriend. Andrew thought that if Nick knew this before they recorded the album that it might affect his work.
Someone in the band popped a cassette tape of Original Sin into a boombox and we all listened to what had been completed so far. The song didn’t have any vocals, but it sounded good. The work was done for the day, so everyone left.
In the podcast, Nile Rodgers said that it was a late night, but it wasn’t. Maybe the next day they ended late, I don’t know, but it was no later than 8pm when we left, and I think it was more like 7pm.
The photo is of me and my friends before an INXS concert in 1984. I want to introduce the people in it. Jess is not in the photo because she was taking it. I met Jess through Terri. Terri is third from the left, wearing the purple shirt. Terri and I met in the seventh grade when I moved to Hillsdale, New Jersey. Jess, Terri and I met a few years later because of a mutual interest in soccer and the New York Cosmos. Jess lived in Wayne, New Jersey.
Jess, Susan (fourth from the left, between Terri and me), and Dana (far right, wearing the Relax t-shirt) can be seen in the Wham documentary that is on Netflix. add link? They are in the footage from an autograph signing at Sam Goody at the Willowbrook Mall in New Jersey. I was at school in Philadelphia, so I wasn’t there.
Maria, first on the left in the photo, was a fan of Kirk Pengilly, same as me. We met her at an INXS concert earlier in 1984. I think we also met Susan at a different INXS concert or maybe she was a friend of Dana’s. I don’t remember. Dana had some kind of INXS fan club going. I think it was called INXS Alliance. We either met her because of that or at an INXS concert. Jess, Terri, and Dana all saw INXS open for Adam Ant at St. John’s University in April of 1983 and met members of the band but I don’t think they met each other.
Jen, second from the right, lived in Tampa, Florida which is where Terri went to college. Jen also had an interest in soccer and music. I don’t know how Terri and Jen met. It’s possible that they were pen pals long before Terri went to Florida.
What I remember most about the day Terri, Jess and I went to the Ritz to see INXS in concert was how tired and uncomfortable I was. We didn’t just go there for the show. We went early (around 3pm) and waited on the steps in front of the Ritz for the band to show up for soundcheck.
My mother’s future second husband owned the Ho-Ho-Kus Bakery and he gave me a job there during the summer between high school and my freshman year of college. Now I had just come back home from finishing freshman year of college and I worked at the bakery that morning from 6am until 1pm.
We were eating while sitting on the steps when INXS showed up for soundcheck. Tim Farriss, the guitarist, said, “Are you having a picnic?” I was wearing a sleeveless shirt with a blue diamond pattern and long pants. Jon Farriss, the drummer, looked me up and down when he passed me and he said, “Hi!” I said, “Hi!” back. I didn’t mind because I thought Jon Farriss was the best-looking and sexiest guy in the band. But we weren’t there for that. Nothing else happened as far as I can remember.
The band left and we still had hours to wait. I had to pee, so we pleaded with the doorman to let us in to use the bathroom. When I got in there I couldn’t go. Either my bladder was shy, or I was holding it too long. I couldn’t stay in there for long so I went back outside and had to wait a few more hours before I could try again. It was not fun. I thought I damaged something in my body.
We were first in line so when the doors opened, we took spots up against the stage. We still had to wait for a while. I was able to use the bathroom successfully. What a relief! We met another girl named Donna- Donna B while we were waiting for the show to start. We went to future shows with her too and she is also part of my story.
First the opening act, New Models, took the stage. I was so tired that I put my head down on the stage while they were playing. I was oblivious until Terri tapped my arm and told me to get up. I looked up to find the lead singer jumping up and down two inches from my head. I think he was trying to wake me up.
INXS came on and I listened and watched- no sleeping. They were good. I liked them. A couple of times when Michael Hutchence, the lead singer, was in front of me, I touched the top of his shoe with my index finger. No screaming, nothing crazy, just a tap with my finger.
Later on during the show, Michael drank some water from a glass Tropicana orange juice bottle and then handed it to me. I was thirsty so I drank some water and then passed the bottle to Terri. She drank and then passed the bottle to Jess and she drank. They passed the bottle back to me and I drank the rest of the water and then kept the bottle as a souvenir. I threw the bottle away a few years later.
We hung around near the stage after the show and the band came out onto the floor. I don’t remember anything about that except that Kirk Pengilly (guitar, vocals, saxophone) was standing around and I took a close look at the back of his head. He had very short hair in back and there were zig zag designs cut into his hair there. He turned around and said, “Hi!” I said hi and told him that I liked his haircut. He said, “thanks.”
I have no idea what time it was exactly, but I would have been awake for close to 24 hours at that point. I don’t know how long it took me to write anything down from this night. If I was really busy, I would just jot down notes and not write out the whole story until later. I was probably too tired to remember much. Maybe Terri or Jess talked to some of them. I don’t remember. We made it back to New Jersey without incident. I don’t remember who drove. I just know it wasn’t me because I didn’t have a car. I could use my mother’s car to drive to work but that’s it. Terri had her own car- a little Datsun, back when those existed!
