Sexism, Bruhs, and Rock n Roll

Tag: The Swing

Blog Post 20- INXS in St. Petersburg, Florida, July 25, 1984

Gary Grant, The co-manager for the rock band INXS, holding a sales award for The Swing, at his office, Hay St, Neutral Bay. September 16, 1986. (Photo by Adrian Greer Michael Short/Fairfax Media via Getty Images).

There aren’t many photos of Gary Grant out there so I am borrowing this one from Getty Images so you can see what he looked like.

On July 24, 1984, Jess, Terri, and I flew from Newark, New Jersey to St. Petersburg, Florida on People Express airline. You paid cash on board the plane and I paid my fare of $79 using one-dollar bills from the suitcase in my bedroom closet.

When we arrived, we picked up a rental car from Rent-A-Wreck so we could keep the costs of our trip low. The car really was a wreck. It had no radio and the handle for the window fell off when I closed the car door. Back then, most cars had crank windows that you had to open and close manually by turning a handle on the inside of the car door. Electric windows were a luxury item.

Chasing the mail carrier

The three of us drove over to Jen’s house in Tampa. Jen realized that she had given a letter meant for Jon Farriss to the mail carrier. Jackie sent it from Chicago, and we were supposed to deliver it to Jon when we saw INXS. So, we got back in the car and drove around near Jen’s neighborhood until we spotted the mail carrier and retrieved Jackie’s letter.

Next, we drove to the Bayfront Concourse hotel in St Petersburg. We knew that INXS would be staying on the tenth floor of the hotel. Like I have said before, I was not involved in getting that sort of information whether through asking Gary Grant, calling the MMA office, or asking a band member, so I don’t remember how that happened.

Waiting for the band at the hotel

Anyway, the hotel gave us a room on the same floor as INXS or at least that was what we hoped. The band was not there when we arrived. INXS was still the opening act for The Go-Go’s on their tour. They had played at the Sunrise Theater in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on July 22 and July 23. On July 24, the band had to travel four hours by bus to get to St Petersburg for the show on the 25th.

Our room was large and had a king-size bed. There was a large mirror on the ceiling over the bed. Once we got up to the room, we waited. Our window looked out over the front of the hotel, so we spent our time looking out the window. Terri started to worry that perhaps we were not at the right hotel.

But then an RV pulled up to the front door and we jumped around and screamed when we saw it. We opened the door to our room so we could see what was happening. Vance, the roadie, walked by our open door and went into the room next door to ours.

INXS arrives

Tim Farriss (fake name Alvin Purple) was the first member of the band to see us in our room. The details of what happened are lost now. Garry Gary Beers and Kirk Pengilly walked by, and we all said hello to each other, but they didn’t stick around. At some point Andrew Farriss popped into our room and remarked that our room was nicer than his and he wanted to switch rooms with us. We kept our room.

Gary Grant, the INXS manager who was also the tour manager for this tour, stopped in and told us that Michael Hutchence and some of the other band members would be busy doing telephone interviews with Australia for most of the night. We never even said hello to Michael or Jon Farriss because they didn’t come up to their rooms on the tenth floor with the rest of the band and we didn’t see them at all that night.

I removed my contact lenses and stored them in their case with some contact lens saline solution. They were soft contact lenses but they were not extended-wear lenses so they could not be worn while I was sleeping. Disposable contact lenses had not been invented yet.

Gary Grant wakes me up

We turned on the TV and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson came on at 11:30pm. I fell asleep on the floor. A short time later, I woke up because Gary Grant was standing over me in our room and screaming, “Wake up, Donna!” So, I got up off the floor and put my contact lenses back in because I am very near-sighted and couldn’t see without them.

David Letterman came on and Gary Grant stayed in our room to watch it with us. He was supervising the radio interviews, so he had to stay up for as long as the band were up doing them. When he wasn’t off checking on the band members, he hung out with us in our hotel room.

David Letterman with Billy Idol

The Late Night with David Letterman show aired at 12:30am ET on NBC. It was a late-night talk show hosted by a comedian who also did celebrity interviews much like all late-night talk shows on TV in the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Night_with_David_Letterman

Billy Idol was on the show that night. He looked wasted and it seemed like he had been using cocaine before his appearance because he kept touching his nose. I thought he was a moron. The video appears below so you can judge for yourself.

July 24, 1984, David Letterman show interview with Billy Idol

Another segment of the show was a comedy bit where David asked the audience to pick a new catchphrase from a bunch they came up with. Number 3 was “They pelted us with rocks and garbage.” That was my favorite and it won. It made me think of INXS because of the stories they told the media about their pub shows in Australia. It was pretty much the only history of the band they had to talk about with anyone.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/63979/23-things-david-letterman-invented

They pelted us with rocks and garbage

Before there was the internet and internet memes, I combined David Letterman’s catchphrase with a photo of INXS and made my own meme of sorts to use as stationery when writing friends and pen pals.

A photocopy of a magazine photo and the David Letterman show catchphrase, “They pelted us with rocks and garbage” combined to make some fun INXS stationery!

Seeing Vance the roadie again

When the show was over, Gary Grant had to leave to check on things. Terri, Jess, Jen and I decided to go out to Burger King. I desperately needed some coffee if I was going to stay awake and help keep Gary Grant company. We were not people who used cocaine or took pills to stay awake. Not party girls or groupies either.

Out in the hall we bumped into Vance and stopped to say hello. He looked at me and said, “You look familiar. Were you in Fort Lauderdale?” I said, “No, I was in Long Island.” Then he remembered and said, “Oh yeah, you’re the girl I hassled in the bar.” Having been trained to appease men and make them comfortable, I told him, “Oh no, you didn’t hassle me!”

But he was right; he did hassle me. That he barely remembered after being on the road for a couple more weeks means that he probably just took his shot because I happened to be there and it’s what he did out on tour whenever he had a chance.

Burger King

At Burger King, I acted like a nut. Back then I could be described as “out there” because I loved comedy and I tried to be funny as much as possible. I was like a performance artist in many ways.

Jess had a little stuffed koala and I put it in the breast pocket of my shirt, so its head was sticking out. When I got to the counter, I asked for eucalyptus leaves because that is what koalas eat. Not a joke that was likely to be understood in Florida. And I also ordered coffee, of course, so I could stay awake.

There was a stack of Burger King crowns on the counter-the thick sheets of paper with slots for sizing that sort of look like a king’s crown. I took one, turned it into a hat and then wore it back to the hotel and in the room.

A stack of old, paper Burger King crowns

Gary Grant returns to hang out with us

Gary Grant came into our room again. Our room also had a table and two chairs next to the windows. He sat down in one and I sat in the other while Jess, Terri, and Jen sat on the bed, and we all chatted.

Our room with its mirror over the bed, came up in conversation. Gary too thought it was a better room than his and he wanted to switch with us. I made a joke that I had better be careful in case there was a hidden camera behind the mirror because I might want to be Miss America someday.

The Vanessa Williams Miss American scandal

That was a reference to Vanessa Williams. Her Miss America scandal was fresh, as she had resigned the title the day before. I’m pretty sure David Letterman made jokes about it on the show we had just watched.

Vanessa Williams was the first black woman to be crowned Miss America. She was crowned in September 1983 at 20 years old. She gave up her crown on July 23, 1984, at 21 years old when Penthouse magazine announced it would publish nude photos that had been taken when she was 19. Some of the photos included simulated sex acts with another woman.

Vanessa did not pose for Penthouse but for a photographer she was working for who said that the photos would be artistic, and she would not be recognizable. He also said that no one else would see them. He lied but she had no recourse because she had signed a release form. Scumbags like that guy were numerous in the 1980s.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/july-23/miss-america-resigns

Mary Tyler Moore

I told Gary Grant that I had been awake for more than 24 hours already because I stayed up watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show until it was time to leave for the airport.

Gary Grant said he hated Mary Tyler Moore because “she is such a dag.” Dag is an Australian slang word, and the meaning definitely came across as negative-like witch or bitch or ugly. It actually means “uncool.”

Now I wonder what it was that made her a dag in his opinion. Was it her feminism? Was she uncool because she wasn’t some rock and roll sexpot? Was she uncool because she stood up to men or stood up for what was right?

Meaning of the Australian slang word “dag”

https://slll.cass.anu.edu.au/centres/andc/meanings-origins/d

Mary Tyler Moore Show

Emerson Hotel

I’m pretty sure I spoke about paying for my flight using the one dollar bills I had in the suitcase in my closet and that led to me talking about my waitressing job at the Emerson Hotel which was not an actual hotel but only a restaurant. Gary Grant asked, “What hotel?” because I think he just wanted me to repeat the name. But I was always worried that people would think I worked at a hotel so instead of saying the name again, I replied, “It’s not a hotel.”

I forgot to mention that earlier in the day, before we checked in, my friends and I walked along the pier in St Petersburg which was not far from the hotel and did some shopping. I bought a silver ring with a black diamond-shaped pattern on the top side. Black and silver is a favorite combination of mine. In the room, I showed it to Gary.

REM

We heard some stories from him. For instance, they had gone to see REM in concert on one of their nights off and his opinion was that they sucked. INXS was much better live.

Burn For You

INXS now had a video for Burn For You and it was made in the style of a home movie. You can see that for yourself here. We didn’t know it yet, but we were going to see the new video the next day.

The underwear thrown on stage

Gary Grant also told us that Kirk’s girlfriend, the future mother of his child, Karen, who was still along on the tour, tried on the underwear that was thrown on stage by the crazed female fans to see if it fit her. I can’t believe he told us that!

Before Gary left us for the night, he gave us more details about the three nights INXS would play in eastern Canada in about a weeks’ time. INXS would be finished touring with The Go-Go’s after four more shows and then immediately do their own tour in clubs and small theaters.

The morning of the INXS concert

When we woke up on the morning of July 25th, we watched TV, and I also did some crossword puzzles. I had one of those soft covered books of crossword puzzles that you could buy at the newsstand. Perhaps I bought it at the airport to keep me busy.

Once again, we propped open the door to our hotel room so we could see if anyone from INXS walked by. Around lunch time, the four of us walked down the hall to Timmy’s room and knocked on his door.

Hey Timmy!

He opened the door, and he was nearly naked! All he had on was a pair of tiny shorts. His short shorts were even shorter than the short shorts I was wearing. My satiny shorts had about a two-inch inseam.

Tim had been reading Shogun by James Clavell and he was still holding the book. Shogun was a best-seller and had been turned into a hit TV mini-series in 1980. The mini-series had the second highest ratings in the U.S. after Roots. A third of America had watched Shogun.

Lunch with Tim Farriss

Timmy suggested that we all go to the restaurant downstairs, so we waited in the hall for him to put clothes on and come out. Then we went downstairs to the restaurant which was called the Greenhouse.

I sat on the other side of the table from Tim Farriss and I don’t remember where anyone else was sitting. In my diary it says that Tim drank some chocolate milk while I ordered strawberries and cream and only ate some of it. Tim was mostly smoking cigarettes and telling stories.

Animal Cruelty

My favorite story was about Timmy’s job at a chicken farm. The farm had a system where they would put a peg on a chicken’s cage if it didn’t lay any eggs. If the chicken received a certain number of pegs on its cage it would be killed for not laying enough eggs.

Sometimes there were chickens that would peck him so Tim would get revenge by taking pegs off another chicken’s cage and put them on the cage of the chicken that pecked him.

Tim picked up a butter knife from the table and demonstrated how the chickens were killed. Then he said he used to eat eggs in front of the chickens and tell them it was nothing personal.

He told us that he owned a ranch with an orchard and a vegetable garden. His cat was named Cat, and his dog was a boxer named Samantha. But he hated the dog so he would kick it and he would not let the dog come into the house.

Touring America

Jess said that she would make INXS some videotapes so they would have something different to watch while they were traveling on the tour bus. She asked Tim to tell her what she should tape for them, and he said, “you know what we like.”

Then he said that he would hate to tour America constantly. “With the exception of you guys, of course” he added when he realized how that sounded.

Kirk slits Michael’s throat

We also heard more about their videos and music. For example, I wrote in my diary that Tim told us that Kirk slits Michael’s throat in the Dancing on the Jetty video. I don’t know if that is what Tim really said or if I just remembered it wrong when I wrote it down because Kirk slits Michael’s throat in the video for Melting in the Sun and not Dancing on the Jetty.

Melting in the Sun was clearly filmed in London along with the end of the Burn For You video. The parts of the Dancing on the Jetty video with INXS in it look like it could also have been filmed in London at the same time so maybe Tim was confused.

Melting in the Sun video

More INXS music and video info

Tim told us that his son James Lee was in the video for Burn For You and also that his wife Buffy didn’t like it that there were women singing backup vocals in the song. I don’t think she had anything against the singers themselves-just that she would not have had singers from outside the band doing the vocals.

The only other stuff I wrote down was that Tim’s grandmother took him to see The Sound of Music and that American milkshakes are thicker than Australian ones.

He also said, “if you hear some songs that sound like us but are under a different name, it could be us.” I guess INXS had talked about doing some kind of project where they put out music under a different name, but I have never heard anything else about that other than what Tim told us. There is no music out there under a different name and no mention of a plan to do that in any books or articles.

Strawberries

While we were sitting at the table with Tim, Kirk and Karen walked into the restaurant. They sat down at a nearby table just to the right of where I was sitting. From where she sat, Karen could see that I had stopped eating my strawberries.

When Karen stood up from their table, I noticed it, and it looked like Kirk felt embarrassed and was trying to talk her out of doing what she was about to do.

Karen walked over to our table and asked me if I was finished eating my strawberries. She said that it was hard to get good, fresh food while on tour and asked if she could have the rest of my strawberries.

Kirk was looking sheepish. He knew what had happened between us and so did I, but I don’t think Karen did. Even though she was with Kirk instead of me, I didn’t mind at all that Karen asked for my strawberries. I was finished with them, and I gave them to Karen so they wouldn’t go to waste.

If she had known that her boyfriend had been making out with me ten months earlier, I don’t think she would have approached me. But I was trying my very best to act like I had never had anything to do with Kirk Pengilly beyond just being a fan of INXS. Which is how it always should have been because I was never trying to be anything more than a fan. Those guys messed with me and not the other way around.

Taking Tim’s cigarette butts

When Tim went back upstairs, we stayed behind for a few minutes. I took the cigarette butts that Tim had smoked out of the ashtray and put them in my purse. There were either two or three. I told Terri that I wanted to do something with them, but I didn’t know what yet.

Bumping into Jon Farriss

We went back upstairs and bumped into Jon Farriss in the hallway. My crossword puzzle was giving me some trouble so I said to Jon, “Can I ask you a question?” He said okay, so I asked him, “What European capital starts with the letter T?”

Jon didn’t have the answer and said, “At least you didn’t ask a question like, ‘Where did you get your name?’” Terri was confused and said, “What, Jon??”And he said, “No!! INXS!!” It seems that Jon was sick of being asked how INXS came up with their name. I don’t remember if Jon was given the letter from Jackie-maybe that happened when we were on the bus with INXS a short time later.

After that we were back in our hotel room with the door open, talking and joking about what we had just heard at lunch. It was hilarious that Kirk slit Michael’s throat in one of their music videos and we joked about that. Terri and Jess were almost as much a part of it as I was because they were there too when something happened with both Kirk and Michael. Also, it was very fitting after what Michael had done, getting me to kiss him when my loyalty belonged to Kirk Pengilly.

Michael Hutchence walks by

We had yet to see Michael Hutchence at all in the whole time we were there but now he was awake, and it was time to leave for the venue. He looked into our room as he wandered past the open door, and he was surprised to see that we were there.

Michael came into our room to chat for a couple of minutes. He also blatantly ogled me, taking a good look at me from my feet to my face and back again. It was quite rude, but I let him get away with it.

I was still wearing the short shorts and a cropped t-shirt. My wardrobe was quite modest, so my shirt wasn’t cropped very much but I was showing more skin than I ever had before because it was Florida in July.

The only thing my diary mentions besides the ogling is that Michael told us that he had been up all night doing interviews.

We all went down to the lobby together on the elevator. Once there, I stood by the elevator panel and held down the “door open” while my friends exited the elevator. Michael waited for me to get out and he put his arm out to keep the door from closing while he followed me. Gentlemanly, yes, but also a bit self-serving perhaps. Trying to earn brownie points for being polite while also having a view of my backside.

Watching Burn For You on the tour bus

The band was about to see the video for Burn For You for the first time and they invited us to get on the bus to watch it while they made their way to the Bayfront Concourse theater.

Michael sat down near the front of the bus, and I sat down next to him. He opened the book he brought with him and started reading. He never even looked up to watch the video.

Someone said that The Go-Go’s were getting emotional about them leaving the tour but I didn’t write down who it was.

Tasteless, Sexist Joke

There was something I remember that I never wrote about in my diary so I can’t be sure when it happened. I wrote about it in some of my letters because there are mentions of it in the replies from friends. But I have no way to determine exactly when it happened. It happened while we were on their tour bus, so it was either this day or another time in 1984. I’ll just assume it happened in Florida.

We were on the INXS tour bus and Jon Farriss was holding a dish that had some kind of pasta with a thick, white cream sauce in it. Perhaps a fettucine alfredo. He stuck the tip of his index finger into the sauce and then licked the sauce off. Then he said, “Tastes like fish!” Obviously making a crude sex joke about women’s vaginal secretions which can taste like fish if they have bacterial vaginosis.

My friends and I paid close attention to the music video, and we were able to watch it twice before the bus stopped and dropped us off outside the theater. The bus and the band proceeded into an underground parking garage.

What I did with the cigarette butts

A few girls were already outside and set upon us when they saw us get off the tour bus. They asked us questions about what we were doing. They seemed like they might be the kind of hysterical girl fan who annoyed me and that I liked to imitate and mock. So, I took the cigarette butts out of my purse and told them that Tim Farriss had just smoked them.

When I said, “Here, you can have them” and handed them to the girls, they squealed and screamed, “Oh my God, Oh my God!!” Then they asked if I could get them anything else from the band.

Inside the theater, it was general admission near the stage so there were a lot of people packed into that area. We were not at the very front for the show but somewhere in the middle.

Assault

Jess held up a small tape recorder and taped INXS. There were three guys behind us, and I felt someone touch my ass. I was furious so I turned around and yelled, “Don’t touch me!” Those assholes played innocent and denied it.

It wasn’t long before I felt a hand reach up the leg of my shorts to touch my private parts. Immediately, without turning around, I kicked back with one leg and threw both of my elbows back as hard as I could into the guy directly behind me.

When I turned around, the guy I hit whined, “I didn’t do anything!” I said, “I don’t care. If anyone touches me again, I am going to hit you again.” The jerks kept their hands to themselves after that.

If I had a time machine, I would go back there and kick all three of those guys in the nuts because I was not violent enough. I regret having been too nice to boys and men and just hitting that one guy was me being too nice in that situation.

Bootlegging

After the show, we waited for the band outside as usual. My diary says I was keeping myself occupied by balancing on a plank because I hated hanging around to see the band.

Someone must have seen Jess holding up the tape recorder during the show because when Gary Grant saw her, he came storming over. He was very angry. He said, “So, you’re a bootlegger, are you? Is this what it’s all about?”

I think he noticed that we all got quite upset because the last thing we wanted to do was make INXS or Gary Grant angry with us. We were on the verge of tears.

Jess said that no, she was not a bootlegger and was only making the tape for our personal use. Then she took the tape out and told Gary that he could have it. Gary didn’t take it. Instead, he said, “I trust you this time, but I don’t ever want to see you with a tape recorder again.”

We kept our promise to keep that INXS concert to ourselves.

In 2006, I sent the cassette tapes of the INXS concerts from 1983 and 1984 to a place that converted cassettes to CDs.

The CD I had made from the cassette recordings I had of two INXS concerts. I put the CD and case on my scanner bed and scanned it.

There’s nothing in my diary about hanging out with INXS after the show so I don’t think we did. I think that after Gary Grant yelled at us about taping the concert, INXS took off for Atlanta.

The Go-Go’s and INXS had a show the next night, July 26, in Atlanta, which was at least a seven-hour-long bus ride from St Petersburg, Florida.

Terri, Jess, and I did not follow INXS to Atlanta. We stayed in Florida for a few more days.

January 30, 2026
Blog Post 15- INXS Concert July 2, 1984, Holmdel, NJ

Terri took this photo of Michael in front of Toad’s Place in New Haven on August 15, 1983.

This photo of Michael Hutchence was taken by Terri on August 15, 1983. INXS played at Toad’s Place in New Haven, Connecticut. I was not there but my friends were. That INXS had just seen them on the 15th probably explains why they let us into soundcheck on the 16th in Poughkeepsie (see Blog Post 3 for more).

I have this photo because I bought it from Terri back in the 80s. Both Terri and Jess sold photos that they took of INXS to fans to help defray the costs of film and developing. I think Terri got this shot when Michael was posing for some other photographer because a similar shot ended up in some magazine somewhere.

To recap: The first week that INXS was back in the New York City area for the first time since September 1983, my friends and I were either seeing them or I was working. INXS had concerts at Radio City Music Hall, Boston, and Jones Beach. Then they had off while I worked. The next day was the concert I’m about to write about. They played at The Garden State Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ. Still opening for The Go-Go’s. I was scheduled to work the day after that from 12-9pm.

Week of July 2-8, 1984. INXS and work. Donna’s calendar.

Wikipedia article about the Garden State Arts Center

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNC_Bank_Arts_Center

The ride to Holmdel to see INXS

To get to the Garden State Arts Center, we drove down the Garden State Parkway. The Parkway has always had tolls. These days many of the tollbooths have been removed and replaced by sensors and you don’t have to stop at the ones that remain if you have EZ-Pass. You can drive right through at a slow speed.

Back in the 1980s, if you had exact change then you could stop and throw coins through your open car window into a bucket before proceeding. If not, then you went to a tollbooth with an attendant who could take your money for the toll and give you your change.

An example of what we threw our coins into from the car window.

This photo of the toll booth coin bucket is from this article-

https://whyy.org/articles/end-of-an-era-garden-state-parkway-coin-booth-phase-out-begins/

You can see the route and distance to get from home to the INXS concert in Holmdel, NJ.

On our way down, we noticed that some of the tollbooths had posters advertising the concert we were going to. Jackie wanted one so the next time we saw one at the toll plaza, she got out of the car and took down the poster while we were stopped at the tollbooth.

The warning from The Go-Go’s bus driver

When we arrived at the Arts Center, we walked over to the backstage door. It wasn’t long before we were told to leave but that didn’t happen until after we spoke to The Go-Go’s’ tour bus driver.

My impression was that he was in his forties- old enough that he could have been our father. His name was Frank. We told him we were there to see INXS, and he said, “Watch out for that singer.” It was weird when he said something along the lines of “he was in some pants he couldn’t get out of.” I’m not sure what exactly he meant by that, but it was clearly something sexual. Now, at this time, none of us had any idea that he was messing around with Belinda Carlisle, but it turns out he was. Did he have his hand down her pants and wouldn’t or couldn’t take it out? We did not ask for clarification. Anyway, The Go-Go’s’ bus driver felt the need to warn us about Michael Hutchence. He told us to be careful and “don’t get hurt for a night of fun.” Clearly, he didn’t think that Michael Hutchence would have our best interests in mind.

I’m grateful for the warning even though it didn’t work at the time. It’s illuminating now. Frank was the bright spot among the men we met while we were doing this stuff. I don’t even know how much he would have seen. INXS had only been part of The Go-Go’s tour since June 22- eleven days at that point. Was he even their bus driver for the whole time? Who knows?

Ever since I watched the Richard Lowenstein documentary, Mystify: Michael Hutchence, in 2020, I have been doing a lot of research so I can know as much as possible about what really happened in 1984 and beyond.

Mystify: Michael Hutchence documentary trailer

What I didn’t know about Michael and Belinda in 1984

Belinda Carlisle’s autobiography contained the most useful information of the books I have read by members of The Go-Go’s. Kathy Valentine’s book didn’t have much useful information to offer about INXS. Gina Schock’s didn’t either-there was nothing that I didn’t already know.

The Go-Go’s started their tour with INXS as the opening act on June 22, 1984 with two nights at the Pine Knob Music Theater in Michigan about 40 miles outside of Detroit.

Wikipedia article about Pine Knob Music Theater

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Knob_Music_Theatre

Belinda wrote that she and Michael hooked up about two days into the tour. So, around the time that Jackie saw INXS in Chicago on June 24, the third date of the tour, is probably when Belinda and Michael started having sex.

As I wrote in my first blog post, I joined a Facebook group for INXS fans back in 2019. One of the women in the group shared a story about having seen Michael Hutchence and Belinda Carlisle in a club in Cleveland and they were rolling around on the floor together. Belinda in her book said that she was partying even harder than Michael was at the time and both were partying very hard. They had a show in Cleveland on June 26, 1984, so this sighting occurred either that night or the previous night if both bands had already arrived in town from Chicago.

On the morning of June 27, 1984, INXS did a live show for a Cleveland radio station. I have the CD from that show. Michael mentioned in an interview during that concert that the band had to catch a flight to New York. They did and we met them when they arrived at their hotel in New York.

The cover of the INXS CD of the special morning radio concert at the Cleveland Agora on June 27, 1984

Screenshot from Amazon that gives information about the concert CD.

Based on what Gina Schock wrote in her book, Michael and possibly other members of INXS went out to clubs with her and Belinda that night. This was not something we heard about when we saw them. We weren’t invited and I’m not sure we would have gone if we had been. It would have been boring for me as it usually was because I didn’t care for clubs and bars. I only drank a little and I didn’t do drugs and neither did my friends.

The drummer for The Go-Go’s, Gina Schock, had a book published.

According to Andy Warhol’s diary and Belinda’s book, there was a party thrown for The Go-Go’s after they played Radio City Music Hall on June 28th at a club in New York City. I don’t know if anyone from INXS was invited or was at the party. The books don’t say.

I ordered Belinda Carlisle’s book to read on my Kindle.

Now that I am done adding some information that pertains to Michael and Belinda and the tour up until now, I will get back to the story.

Back to July 2nd. Birthday Presents for Kirk

After we were kicked out from the area near the backstage door, we stood near the road where the tour bus would have to come in and we waited for INXS to arrive. When we saw the bus, I think Terri waved to get the bus to stop. We had presents to give to Kirk for his birthday on July 4th. The bus stopped and Gary Grant opened the door. Jess was the one who handed him our gifts and told him they were for Kirk’s birthday. My friends told me that everyone in the band waved to us from the bus windows, but I only saw Andrew Farriss wave.

I gave Kirk a coffee mug, an American flag, sparklers (for the 4th of July), and an entire issue of The Weekly World News. The main story was about a priest who burst into flames while performing an exorcism.

The actual cover of the Weekly World News I gave to Kirk Pengilly.

When we went into the venue, we ran into a girl named Maria. We first met her at the show at Radio City Music Hall a few days earlier. Like me, her favorite member of INXS was Kirk Pengilly so I liked her. Maria and I became pen pals.

The INXS concert

Security was a pain at this concert too. It was very difficult to find seats down in front when everyone was forced by security to sit down and there were more people than there were seats. We didn’t have tickets for seats near the stage. Jackie, Jess, and Terri had to move around a lot. I spent most of the show over on Kirk’s side of the stage and I was able to do that because a nice girl named Joyce let me share her seat with her when we were told to sit down.

During the show, the band noticed where we ended up whenever we had to move. It was always fun to interact with them. Sometimes, we would put our arms up and sway or clap and some members of the band would pick it up from us. Other times, the band would do something, and we would copy them. During the song “I Send A Message” my friends and I would all yell “Hey, Timmy” just before his guitar solo.

While INXS played the song “Original Sin,” Michael Hutchence came over to Kirk’s side of the stage and he noticed that Joyce and I were sitting together in the same seat. When he did, he smiled at us, and I smiled back at him. When the show was over, I asked Joyce for her address so I could write to her. She gave it to me. I think I might have told her that we knew the band and I would write to her about it.

Following the bus again

Once again, we waited in our car for INXS to leave the Garden State Arts Center in their tour bus and we followed the bus when it left. This time we lost the bus for a bit after we stopped in a highway rest stop and made a wrong turn. But we found them again when we saw the tour bus stopped at a different highway rest stop. We pulled over on the shoulder of the highway and then waited for the tour bus to return to the road. Once it did, we pulled out behind the bus again and followed them-we didn’t know where we would end up.

After over an hour of driving, the bus carrying INXS pulled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn in Rockville Centre on Long Island and so did we. INXS was still staying at the same hotel we followed them to a couple of nights earlier.

The time and distance between the INXS concert and their hotel on Long Island.

INXS gets out of the bus at their hotel

All of us got out of the car and went over to the bus to wait for the band to emerge. I no longer had a big problem with doing it as we seemed to be welcome. Kirk and Karen got off the bus. Karen was holding the American flag that was part of my birthday present to Kirk. Kirk thanked us for the presents. He said, “I got the whole paper”, and it sounded like he was bragging. It was also a reference to the fact that Garry only received part of the Weekly World News when I gave him a birthday gift. Yes, Kirk was my favorite, and I gave him a much better present than the one I gave to Garry Gary. Kirk told us that the paper was passed around the bus so everyone could look at it during the ride. He also said that he would stop by at the bar later, but he never showed up. More about that in a future post.

Jon Farriss got off the bus and we talked to him. We asked him where INXS would be playing on their own the next day, July 3rd. He said, “I don’t know. East Hampstead, New Hampshire, East Hamster, something like that.” The official list of concert dates that INXS compiled has the wrong town listed too. They played in East Hampton on Long Island the next day. More about that in the future post I mentioned. I bought the deluxe edition of Calling All Nations from INXS because I wanted the list of their shows which they call Gigography.

It seems that Michael spent the long bus ride drinking alcohol and having his hair braided by Karen. At that time, Karen was a hairdresser. I don’t remember how I knew that-did someone from the band tell me or my friends or did we read it somewhere- I have no idea, but it was something I knew.

Michael drunk on the pavement

Michael came out of the bus, and he was very drunk. He took a few steps and then decided to make himself comfortable on the pavement near us in the parking lot. He was lying on the ground. The rest of the band just left him there and went about their business.

Garry Gary came off the bus and he was carrying his bass in a case. Michael saw that and said that Garry had a gun. Then Michael started babbling about the gun that he had. It was the replica of a Russian gun, and you could flip up one of the pieces, etc., etc. I had no idea what he was trying to describe to us.

Michael was still on the ground when he took out a cigarette and a lighter. Jackie ended up lighting Michael’s cigarette for him while he insisted that he was able to light the cigarette himself. But people were happy to do things for him and always willing to do things for him and to give things to him. Jackie wanted to do it.

He made a very interesting remark about the drunken state he was in. He said that if he kept up what he was doing that he would be an alcoholic by the end of the year. But we shouldn’t worry about him because he would not keep it up. Incredible that he would say that to us when he barely knew us. Did we look so concerned that he felt he needed to say that? Or was he just kidding himself that he didn’t really have a problem?

Eventually he stood up and he continued to talk to us. The subject turned to cars, and he told us he had a Citroen and that he was going to buy a new car when he got home- a five speed. We also heard about Kirk’s old car and how they used to drive it at a low speed and then one of them would jump on the hood of the car and then roll off it on the other side-like stunt men in the movies getting hit by a car.

Michael acting stupid

When a big car drove by us as it was leaving the parking lot, Michael went to jump out in front of it like he was going to demonstrate what he and Kirk did but then he stopped. After that, I thought Michael was fucking crazy. Then he said that the car that drove by was “awful.”

Michael told me that he saw me in the audience at the show and noticed that I was sharing a seat. I’m sure I told him all about that. Terri asked Michael to take his hair out of the braid it was in because she didn’t like it that way. And Michael did it while telling us that he doesn’t care about hair. He said in his soft, lispy, voice that he was trying to grow his hair long like a hippie and that many people complained to him that it “looked uncool or something.”

I decided to get lottery numbers from Michael, so I asked him to pick a number for me. Jackie suggested 69- ha, ha, ha, get it? The first number he chose was 4. I told him I already play that number so he should pick another one. He picked 8. Then I asked him if he could even count as high as 36. (The NJ Pick-6 Lotto at the time had numbers from 1-36.)

What I said was a joke that was meant to mock him and insult him because I didn’t have a high opinion of him, and I didn’t like or respect him. Michael was offended and hurt by it. He seems to have thought that everyone considered him stupid. I had touched a sore spot. He said, “I’m not dumb” and asked, “why do people always think I am?” His reaction told me something about him. He cared too much about what other people thought of him.

Michael’s British friends show up

Our time with Michael in the parking lot came to an end when three British guys who knew Michael showed up. One guy was named William, and he was or had been a roadie for The Stray Cats. Michael went into the hotel with them.

INXS opened for The Stray Cats a few times in 1983 when they came to the United States for the first time. First, they opened for Adam Ant. Then they opened for The Kinks for one show, played at the US Festival, and opened for The Stray Cats before going back to Australia in June of 1983. So, he would have met William then.

This story will continue in the next blog post because the night is not over for us.

November 1, 2025
Blog Post 14- INXS at Jones Beach, NY. June 30, 1984

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.

On Saturday, June 30, 1984, INXS opened for The Go-Go’s at the Jones Beach Theater at Jones Beach on Long Island. Jess, Terri, Jackie and I had tickets and as usual, we went early to be there before INXS arrived to do a soundcheck. Soundchecks tended to happen in the afternoon, so we often showed up before 3pm. That meant getting on the road around noon, depending on where we were going. Jess had to come get us and drive us in her car because Terri’s car had to be fixed after the incident coming back from greeting INXS when they arrived in New York City three days earlier.

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.

Jones Beach Theater website:

https://www.northwellatjonesbeachtheater.com

Waiting for INXS behind a dumpster

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.

A history of The Go-Go’s:

https://www.vogue.com/article/go-gos-40th-anniversary-beauty-and-the-beat-oral-history-belinda-carlisle

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.

Terri offered to buy Timmy a drink, but he wouldn’t let her. I walked up and introduced myself to Timmy like I had done with Andrew in NYC-told him my name and offered my hand for a handshake. I’m sure there was much more conversation than what I managed to remember and write down in my diary. There always was.

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.’”

Truth be told, I never mentioned that my youngest brother had played the snare drum and the bass drum in the school band-marching in the marching band and such. We never had any drums at home and my brother didn’t play a drum kit, but he had drumsticks and a practice drum pad, and I was already quite good at playing drum rolls on it.

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.

Jackie with Jon Farris of INXS in 1983

Don’t Change official video

October 24, 2025
Blog Post 12- INXS releases The Swing, Spring 1984

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!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX6NeYHVWuk Video of Annette Funicello

5/9/84

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 Money

Eddie 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 went shopping in the city today. I bought some cool shoes, a couple of pocketbooks, t-shirts, and assorted other things. I have a headache now. We passed the Milford Plaza and Beefsteak Charlies, and I showed Terri where we sat. We also spent some time and energy searching out the Power Station. We went to Atco but no word. We hit the village and saw lots of interesting looking people. We caught the attention of a couple of skeevs who followed us for a block but finally left when we ducked into a store to get away from them.

5/16/84

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.

I’m hyperactive again but I’m not depressed because I’m raking in the dough, and I got a nice letter from Jackie Fuhrmann. [I still have this letter. Jackie wrote about how she was planning to come visit once she knew when INXS would be touring the east coast. She also asked me if I had heard from Kirk Pengilly again. She asked me that every time she wrote. But no, I only heard from him that one time back in November 1983] Tonight, when I get home, I have to write to Jackie and Jen.

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.]

September 19, 2025
Blog Post 10- Waiting for INXS, Spring 1984

INXS stationery, Someone decorated the xeroxed photo. I think it was Terri.

As I wrote about in my last post, it was fall semester of my sophomore year in college when I got that letter from Kirk Pengilly. I managed to pass all my classes that semester, but I did not want to be in school. I wanted to learn things, but I didn’t want to be in school.

Letter from Terri about INXS

Terri sent me a letter dated January 19, 1984. She said that she was answering a letter from me that was dated December 5, 1983, and apologized for the delay. She had some INXS news for me-she told me she got INXS played on the radio again, “just a few minutes ago”, and said that they should pay her for doing promotions. That’s funny because I wrote the same thing in my diary a few months later-that they should be paying me for promoting them. We were great fans.

Jess called Terri and told her that MTV had announced that INXS would be back in the U.S. in early March and that the new album would also be out in March. “A little later than they expected,” according to Mark Goodman, the MTV VJ who reported the news. This information turned out to be wrong and the album showed up even later than that in the U.S. and the band didn’t show up until June! Terri wanted to know what was taking so long!

I know I visited the Australian consulate in New York City with somebody, but I can’t remember exactly when or with whom. It was during the fall of 1983 because Terri wondered in her letter how Kirk Pengilly, of Neutral Bay, with the silent listing was. Apparently, I called the operator in Australia to ask for his number and I was told that it was unlisted. When I was looking through the Sydney telephone books at the consulate, I ran across a listing for a K. Pengilly who lived at 59 Yeo Street in Neutral Bay. “That must be him” is what I thought so I gave it a try. I didn’t know he had a girlfriend when I did that.

Terri “lurved” the poem I wrote about Kirk Pengilly. If only I had a copy or remembered anything about that! It was probably at least somewhat flattering because I liked him a lot; unlike any poems I wrote about Michael Hutchence, but I probably also mocked him a little. No one in INXS escaped that treatment. Perhaps I mentioned his dislike for clothes dryers because Terri makes a reference to that. He must have talked about that when we were with him in Poughkeepsie, and he was washing his shirt in the bathroom sink.

The jerk from Scotland

Spring semester of college started out terribly. I wanted to do something else so badly. Instead, I was taking five classes and four of them were in business. My mental health was poor-a constant cough kept me from sleeping for over two weeks. And to top it off, I dated a jerk from Scotland who went to my school. He was very charismatic, and people flocked to him. I thought he liked me, and I came close to having sex with him, but I lost my nerve. After that he said we would go out but then he didn’t call and in the following days he started ignoring me.

My roommate Karen spoke to him at a party, and he told her that his friend had asked me out and he couldn’t believe it that I turned him down, so she walked away thinking he was an asshole too. And he was. A couple of weeks later, I ran into a fellow student, and she told me about her experience with the Scottish guy. They had dated during the fall semester, and he told her that he had an impotence problem. She helped him “solve it.” Then he spent Thanksgiving at her house and when he got back to campus, he had sex with a friend of hers.

In my diary, I asked, “why did he have to bother me?” and “how could I ever fall for him?” “This hasn’t been a good experience, and I don’t want to go through it again.” “He’s really done a number on me and I still don’t understand exactly what happened.” I said I was sick of people pestering me.

My world blew up. I felt on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Dropping my accounting class eased some of the pressure. I considered transferring to Terri’s school in Florida, but my mother wouldn’t let me. Trying to find the bright side of meeting this awful jerk, I told myself that maybe it was good because it caused me to think about why I was in school and what I really wanted to do with my life.

The movie, “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” was a big influence on me and especially the song, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” I quoted a lyric from it in my diary while I was writing about my problems.

After thinking about it, I decided to stay in Wharton and major in marketing instead of accounting because I couldn’t afford to switch to the College of Arts and Sciences and stay in college an extra year to study something else. My diary says, “I just have to get through the semester without killing myself and I should be OK.” I wished I could afford to quit school and travel and bum around. My financial situation depressed me. I owed $5200 in student loans at that point, and I would still owe that if I quit.

Billboard magazine

The management class I was taking did not interest me. The professor made me come talk to him after the first exam and he told me I had to do a lot better on the paper and the final exam. I used to go to the Lippincott Library of the Wharton School, but it wasn’t to do my schoolwork. It was to read the copies of Billboard magazine that they had there. Billboard magazine covers the music industry.

Here are links to a Wikipedia article about Billboard magazine and an actual copy from April 28, 1984 that has information about INXS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_(magazine)

https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/80s/1984/BB-1984-04-28.pdf

It was important to find a topic for my paper that would interest me, so I chose to write a paper on the mergers and acquisitions of Warner Communications. Why that company? Because it was related to INXS, the Australian rock band, and the New York Cosmos soccer team. They owned Atlantic Records and the Atco imprint that was INXS’ record label in the U.S., and they also owned the Cosmos.

Both Atlantic Records and the NY Cosmos were founded by Ahmet Ertegun who was a horrible pig of a man who abused numerous women. That was not something I was aware of at the time, but I absolutely believe the accusations. I will write more about that in a future blog post.

Original Sin

It was now March and almost time for spring break. Terri heard that “Original Sin” would be released during the second week of March, 1984 and that INXS would be the opening act for Duran Duran. I called Capitol Records, Duran Duran’s record label, to ask if INXS would be opening for them. The person I spoke to didn’t know and suggested that I call Madison Square Garden, so I did, and they didn’t have any information either. None of this turned out to be true. It’s hard to find an exact date for when the song was released in the United States.

3 Ways Nile Rodgers Made “Original Sin” One of INXS’ Most Enduring Hits

Towards the end of March, I wrote in my diary that I called WKDU which is the student-run radio station for Drexel University and asked them to play “Original Sin”, but they didn’t have it. The first time I tried calling, I dialed the wrong number and said to the old woman who answered, “Do you have original sin?” She said, “Excuse me?” so I said it again. Then she told me I had the wrong number. That was both embarrassing and hilarious because I must have sounded like a religious freak.

A screen shot from the April 28, 1984 issue of Billboard magazine.

On April 5, 1984, I saw in Billboard magazine that The Swing, the fourth album by INXS, had debuted at number one in Australia and the song “I Send A Message” had debuted at number seven there. Original Sin had been released in Australia in December 1983. It wasn’t until April 28, 1984 that Original Sin debuted on the Billboard chart for the U.S. at number 87.

Big Country

Big Country. Trouser Press magazine. March 1984

Big Country concert in Tampa, Florida with Jess and Jen. March 1984.

Jess is a big part of my story but this is the first photo of her to be included in the blog. From left to right is Jess, Jen from Florida, and me with my permed hair. A guy at college told me I looked like David Lee Roth.

For spring break, I took a trip to Tampa, Florida to visit Terri. I needed a vacation. Jess came down for the week too. We went to a couple soccer games and hung around at Jen’s house. We also saw Big Country in concert and met Stuart Adamson and his young son.

Me with Big Country singer Stuart Adamson in Tampa, Florida

My diary says that I was reading A Clockwork Orange (not for school). I also had to read books and work on a paper for my sociology class. The conversations that my friends and I were having were about Duran Duran, INXS, and soccer. I also spent time drawing pictures of punk-rock cats that I called Anarkitties.

Big Country video

Graveyard shift

Two things I started doing during spring semester were smoking real cigarettes and working the graveyard shift at my work-study job in the dorms. The previous semester I had started smoking clove cigarettes. I stopped smoking them after they made me nauseous but unfortunately, I switched to smoking the regular kind. They helped me stay awake through my midnight to eight am shifts. It wasn’t a regular habit yet-that came later. When I worked all night, I drank Dr. Pepper and listened to music-sometimes INXS, Falco, Tenpole Tudor or something else I had on cassette, or I listened to the radio.

I wanted a boyfriend, and I wanted to have sex, but I still didn’t have any luck there. Hookups were not for me. My diary at the time said “I’ve never had any qualms about sex before marriage although I wouldn’t sleep with just any Joe Schmo off the street.”

I went to parties and met guys. One of the guys was named Mike and I wrote about him in my diary. He was funny. He showed me the P-Funk All-Stars sign which is when you make your hand into horns by holding your middle fingers down with your thumb. And he told me to sing, “Shit, Goddamn, Get off your ass and jam!” That was fun. We tried out different accents on each other. I used to pretend to be Irish or Scottish from time to time. When I came back to college for my junior year, I finally found a boyfriend and it was Mike!

Before I left school for the summer break, I went to an interview with Reinhard Modeling agency. They had advertised in the school paper that they would be on campus looking for models. I wasn’t sure if they were legit, and I wondered how much of the money they would get. One woman I spoke to said that models in Philadelphia were paid $100 an hour. The agency was interested but I was unsure-I thought my waist was too big and I was leaving Philadelphia for the summer so pursuing modeling would have to wait.

Modeling is another one of those industries where a lot of disgusting and bad things happen-especially to women. But the agency I went to is still operating and seems to be legit.

http://www.reinhardagency.com

My next blog post will back track a bit and I will talk about soccer, and then I will get back to INXS.

August 16, 2025
Blog Post 8- No Postcard from London. Fall 1983

Xeroxed photo of INXS used for stationery

Fall semester of my sophomore year at school was difficult. My classes were Finance 1 which was called Monetary Economics, Accounting 1-A which was financial accounting, Introduction to Marketing Strategy, Psychology 162 which was abnormal psychology, and Sociology 4- The Family.

A lot of material was covered in every class, so it was bad that I skipped classes to go see Kirk Pengilly in New York City. Especially my finance class which was very difficult. On my first test, I scored 13 points out of 100 but because the test was graded on a curve, it was a passing grade. It was a D. That means that most of the students got low scores but did somewhat better than I did.

I had to get a work-study job for the first time to pay my expenses. Freshman year I didn’t work during the school year. I seem to recall that I was getting a check from Social Security because my father was disabled but the law was changed in 1981 and that payment was being phased out for college students so maybe I remember it wrong.

Diary entries from this period were few-maybe one per month. So, whatever I might have been thinking about Kirk Pengilly was lost to time. I saved some letters from my friends though and through their responses to my letters I can glean some information.

Long-distance phone calls-an 80s thing

Jess wrote to me on September 16, 1983 which was two days after we were at the Power Station music studio together with INXS. She had to write a letter because she couldn’t afford to make a long-distance call to me to say what she wanted to say.

It was so long ago that I don’t really remember exactly how the phone company billed for calls. Back then the telephones were attached to wall in the house. If you had more than one phone, then you were financially well-off. An unlimited number of local calls were allowed for a monthly fee. The area around your home that was considered a local call was a small one. Every other call was long-distance, and those calls were expensive and charged by the minute unless you were calling a toll-free number.

@carmenqgollihar
Things in the 1900s that we no longer say… Long distance calls. 80s kids had to be super quiet when parents were making a long-distance call. Stick around to see the 3 new additions to my Phone collection. #80saesthetic #80snostalgia #longdistancecall #vintagephones
♬ Call Me – Blondie

https://kiowacountypress.net/content/rise-and-fall-landline-143-years-telephones-becoming-more-accessible-–-and-smart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-distance_calling

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/07/style/saving-on-costs-of-long-distance-calls.html

More about our visit to the Power Station

Jess gave me her address at her college in New Jersey so I could write back to her. She wrote, “Dear Donna (Pengilly),” and said she was feeling guilty and wanted to apologize for not finding a way to give Kirk and I more time alone. She thought she should not have gone out to dinner with us.

I must have given her $50 towards the fee she had to pay to get her car back after it was towed from a parking spot near the studio because she said she put it in her account but would not touch it and offered to give it back to me.

She mentions a couple of things from the studio. One is a slightly different take on what I wrote in my diary- Jon says, “It makes about as much sense as natives wearing turquoise and silver” when asked about the “dream on white boy, dream on white girl” lyric. Jess remembered Michael’s answer the same as me-“You have no idea what I’m talking about.”

Jon Farriss was making a reference to the INXS song, “Old World, New World” from the album Shabooh Shoobah.

While we were in the lobby area of the studio, “the guys” (some number of the band members of INXS) sang “like an animal.” Jess asked me if I remembered that and “what that was for or from?” We would not have an answer to that until the album (The Swing) came out and we heard the song, “I Send A Message” because it’s from that song.

Someone must have said something about Andrew having a good head on his shoulders because Jess quotes that in her letter after expressing her disappointment with Garry Gary Beers. The way he acted towards her made her feel that he didn’t like her. That Garry knew she liked him and was avoiding her to the point where he could not be friendly or have a normal conversation with her. She said would forget Garry and pick Andrew as the band member to like instead.

The letter from Jess ended with her saying she can’t wait for the new INXS album to come out. Original Sin was an excellent song that should be even better with the vocals.

Terri’s letters to me from the fall of 1983

Terri wrote to me on September 30, 1983

Another bit of information that didn’t make it into my diary was that Michael Hutchence said his mother had run away before he was born. He just came out with that while he was out there in the lounge- probably when he was telling those high school girls that were his guests about the Chinese restaurants in Australia.

Apparently, I had written to Terri and told her “Weird INXS additions.” I also wrote to her about “Krik.” She wrote, “I don’t mind your talking about ‘Krik’ or whatever he calls himself (Bob Smith?) He’s a doll, I like Kirk.

Where this came from, I have no clue now. There are many references from back then that I no longer understand. Terri said she was thinking of the time in Atlanta when Kirk and Tanya discussed hair products. Kirk used Vidal Sassoon hair mist to make his hair stick up. He said, “All I do is stick my head under a sink and I’m normal again!” And the joke about Kirk not being normal writes itself.

Terri told me that she found the single for To Look At You in the New Releases section at a record store in Tampa. The B-side for that single was “The Sax Thing”, an instrumental by Kirk Pengilly. She couldn’t tell me what it sounded like. Said that she would have to bring it to Jen’s house to listen to it. She said that she had a bad feeling that it might be a saxophone version of The One Thing and that she liked to hear singing and not just music.

While she was there, she saw an issue of Trouser Press magazine with the Flock of Seagulls on the cover and asked me if I still get the magazine. The answer was yes. I had a subscription to Trouser Press magazine up until the time it went out of business. Terri said that I would notice that my Shriekback was profiled and also New Models. Both bands were now connected with INXS. Shriekback because it led to everything that happened with Kirk Pengilly and New Models because they opened for INXS at the Ritz in New York City. If you have it, do me a big favor and xerox it for me, is what she wrote.

Flock of Seagulls. Trouser Press magazine

I had written about the bootleg concert tape from Atlanta and that I heard her on it. She thought INXS would be upset if they knew that Tanya had taped them, and she explained that Garry had kicked over a cup and ice went under her bare feet.

Postcards were mentioned. Terri told me to let her know if “Krik’s” postcard arrives before March! (I think we had heard that INXS would come back in March?) She mentioned that Jess told her about the postcard I sent to her that was wacko, I’m sure. I wrote and drew lot of strange things back then. The postcard said something about Andrew Farriss. The two main songwriters for INXS were the two people in the band I didn’t like. I seem to have drawn a cartoon about Michael Hutchence that I sent to Terri. Mocking him, I’m sure. Terri said she sent a copy of it to Michael with my name on it. Then she said she was just kidding. (Terri had an address in Australia where she did write to members of the band.) She also told me I have nerve to say Michael is strange. That’s because I was strange, but I liked my kind of strange and not his.

Another letter from Terri is dated October 23, 1983. This letter was written on homemade stationery. We used to xerox photos of INXS (or others) at the top of the page and then write the letter on the rest of the paper. Terri used this photo and called it “To jump at you!”

INXS stationery, photocopies of pictures

This letter informed me that I had sent a 90-minute-high fidelity blank cassette tape so Terri could record The Sax Thing for me on a low fidelity stereo. I really wanted to hear the song! She taped it three times for me so I wouldn’t have to rewind it as much. Very thoughtful. Terri complimented Kirk’s song and said she played it over the phone for Jess to hear it. My friends were great-they shared their music purchases with me. We all shared as much as we could with each other, but my resources were the most limited.

I tried to make up for it by being entertaining. I wrote poems about INXS, and I drew cartoons. Pretty sure I wrote a poem about Michael Hutchence called “The Drug Thing”, but I don’t know if it was what Terri referred to in this letter. She wrote, “Like I already told ya, I lurved your poems. Write anything on rhymable Kirk yet?! What the heck does Kirk rhyme with? Jerk, perk, clerk, turk, work; not normal words, fer sure! And what of this story you mentioned- I’m almost afraid to ask!” It would be nice if I had an answer to the question about the story I seem to have written way back when. Not a clue what it was.

My work-study job involved checking IDs to keep people who weren’t students out of the dorms in the western part of Penn campus where my dorm was. Sometimes I would work behind the front desk at the high-rise apartments that were dorms where I would answer the phone, etc. I would write these letters and create my poems, drawings, and cartoons while at work instead of studying for class or doing my homework.

About my cartoon, Terri wrote, “You were right-I did hang it up! Thanks for your highly unusual ‘masterpiece!’ I’m so proud to be the owner of the original-this thing will be worth big money someday! I had to share it, tho, so I xeroxed it for Jackie and Jess (haven’t sent it to Jess yet)…I laughed so hard. I especially got a kick out of “Garry Gary Baah” and the bit about Andrew…that was really funny, probably because it’s true!! Thanx very much, Mrs. Penguinilly!” I can only assume that I turned every member of INXS into some kind of animal in the cartoon.

There was a part of the letter where Terri talked a lot about music because she had finally found a radio station in Tampa that played new wave music from midnight until 3am. She taped it so she could listen to it and find new bands. “Soon we MAY see the days when I get to name some obscure band and maybe someone will take notice of ME! I can dream, ya know!” That’s what happened with me and Kirk Pengilly. One night Terri called the new wave program and requested INXS- supporting our band!

I must have mentioned that I was smoking clove cigarettes and that made Terri angry. She was right- it was a bad and stupid habit. Yelled at me that she would fuck me up and that Kirk would think he was kissing a dirty ashtray. It turned out that I was never going to kiss Kirk again, but we didn’t know that at the time.

One last quote from Terri’s letter, “When Jess and I were talking about the band taking turns on the b sides of the single, we couldn’t help but wonder what the hell GG might come up with. We figured, maybe “The Bass thing” of all bassline! (His spine is the bassline) And what of “Duh” Hutchence? He doesn’t write music, to my knowledge. That is, what will he do-recite poetry or something? “Gimme drugs…I need some Silly Shit!!””

Kirk writes Donna a letter from Japan

And then one day in November 1983, I checked my mailbox and there was a letter from Kirk Pengilly. I still have it and I’ll say what is in it because it’s not some kind of personal love letter but I’m not going to share it. Here is a picture of the envelope instead.

Envelope from Kirk’s letter

As you can see, it was posted on November 2, 1983, from Akasaka in Tokyo, Japan. The letter was written on November 1st on one side of one sheet of hotel stationery from The President Hotel. The hotel’s address was 2-2-3 Minamiaoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan. Located kind of in between Meiji Jingu and the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. There is still a building at this address today in 2025 but it is no longer a hotel.

The site of the hotel where INXS stayed when they went to Japan to shoot videos for Original Sin and I Send A Message in November 1983

Kirk apologized that he had not written sooner. He said that the day after we had visited him in New York City and the car had been towed, that his wallet had been stolen. No story about how that happened-just a list of what went missing: money, credit cards, passport, and my address. That was the day (September 14, 1983) when they were back in the studio at the Power Station recording the vocals with Daryl Hall of Hall & Oates.

Now in New York City back in 1983, especially in Hell’s Kitchen, there was a lot of crime, so the story was believable in that respect. So many years have passed now where I didn’t even think about INXS or what transpired that I can’t remember what I knew back then when I received this letter. But I surely would have known which address was on which piece of paper that I had given to Kirk. The bank where I had my checking account was near the Penn campus in West Philadelphia. That’s where I lived for most of the year. My school address would have been on the deposit slip if there was an address on it.

He wrote that while he was packing to leave for Japan, he found my address on the postcard from me that was given to him in Atlanta. INXS left London for Japan on the day before he wrote the letter. Back when I wrote the postcard for him, I’m not sure I even knew my address at college. Also, the whole point of that postcard was to tell him where I lived in New Jersey and that would have been in Hillsdale, not Philadelphia. So, I think I took this story as a lie. Well-meaning, but still, a lie.

If Kirk really had had his wallet stolen, and he wasn’t just writing this letter to me to be polite because he said he would write to me, then he could have told me his address and asked me to write to him and give him the contact information that was lost. Besides just trying to let me down easy, I think he did what he did because he was living with the future mother of his child, Karen Hutchinson, before he even met me. And that’s what bothers me today. Neither of us women deserved to be treated like that.

Even if they had some kind of understanding with each other about activities on the road, I wasn’t part of that. It wasn’t fair to me. I deserved respect. Toby Creswell interviewed Karen for his book, “Shine Like it Does: The Life of Michael Hutchence”. On page 105, Karen said, “You’d be crazy to think that twenty-year-old guys who had it thrown at them every night were not seeing other people occasionally.” That was not what happened between Kirk and me. I was pursued just because I was there and too pretty to be left in peace; it was not by invitation. We weren’t there for sex and they knew it.

Kirk was not a pig about it and didn’t obviously salivate over me the way Michael Hutchence was going to a year later. If he had done that then I would not have liked him. He wasn’t coming on to me. We were having conversations and I enjoyed them. I thought Kirk Pengilly was interesting. But now it seems that the goal was to take advantage of being out on the road. I’m not going to let women take the blame for these guy’s behaviors. INXS as a rock band was not as badly behaved as Mötley Crüe. That’s a fact. But that doesn’t make them good guys or excuse them.

Back to the letter- Kirk wrote that he was in Japan for one week and INXS would be making a couple of videos. The recording of the album was going well and after Japan they would be going back to Sydney to finish the album (The Swing). He hoped that school was going well for me.

He had fun in London where he spent all his money on clothes and saw the band Big Country in concert. And that’s pretty much all he wrote. He said he hoped I was well and happy before signing off. Of course, I was happy to get a letter and I told my friends immediately!

While INXS was in Japan they made videos for Original Sin, and I Send A Message. I lived in Japan from 2021 until 2024 so I visited the temple where I Send A Message was filmed. Gokokuji Temple in Tokyo. I have Matthew Marsland to thank for that. I didn’t know where the video was filmed but he did.

Location of the temple where INXS filmed the video for I Send A Message

Matthew Marsland’s Facebook post about visiting Gokokuji Temple

https://www.facebook.com/profile/501692468/search?q=%20temple%20tokyo

July 5, 2025
Blog Post 5-INXS records Original Sin. September 13, 1983

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Station_(recording_studio)

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.

https://dittomusic.com/en/blog/how-to-get-sponsored-as-a-musician

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.

https://www.riverfronttimes.com/music/remembering-mississippi-nights-st-louis-most-iconic-nightclub-38988508

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.

A true story.

https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/08/09/Heads-run-over-by-truck-they-live/7094429249600/#google_vignette

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.

https://www.inxsaccessallareas.com/post/episode-166-nile-rodgers-interview

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.

June 8, 2025