Michael Hutchence
On the night of 22 November 1997, Michael Hutchence died in Double Bay, bringing to a close a life that had moved restlessly across continents and disciplines since its beginning in Sydney on 22 January 1960.
His education reflected that restlessness early. He attended King George V School, North Hollywood High School, and Davidson High School — a transatlantic arc of schooling that placed him in markedly different cultural worlds before he had settled into any single one. Working across rock music and new wave, he built a career as a singer, musician, and composer, performing in English and developing work that crossed the boundaries those genres suggest. He also pursued acting, working as both an actor and a film actor alongside his musical output.
The range of his professional life was recognized formally when he received the Brit Award for International Male Solo Artist, an acknowledgment that positioned him explicitly as a figure whose reach extended well beyond Australia. That award, given by a British institution to an Australian citizen who had spent formative years in the United States, captured something of the geographic complexity that had defined him from his schooling onward. He held Australian citizenship throughout, and Sydney remained the city of his origin even as his career carried him elsewhere.
He died at thirty-seven in Double Bay, the same country in which he had been born. The Brit Award for International Male Solo Artist stands as the documented marker of the recognition his work received during his lifetime — a concrete, institutional record of his standing as a singer at the point when his career was still active.
Quotes by Michael Hutchence
I get pretty terrified, to be honest, when I'm on tour. You really have to muster a lot of ego to go our there, which I find rather draining.
I hate it when people lose it, there's nothing left because they're not interesting, they're boring, I hate it, and especially smack, people on smack are the most boring in the world.
I think there is a certain sensibility to someone you are attracted to and when it rubs off that's good.
But then, you know, I'm very happy, I've got to this stage in my life and I'm not dead. I haven't got married and divorced and done all that palimony business, you know all that mess.
But we got up there and decided to stick to this mix of power chords and funk and that's where it really started for us. In having the courage to take that decision. To take a gamble not just with our music but our lives.
I turn over a lot of money for a lot of people and I'm the smallest fish in it.
I know all's fair in love and war but when you go off and try to be by yourself and it ends up on the front page of the press it's frightening, knowing your life is under such scrutiny.
Actually, I find it embarrassing being a pop star. I prefer it when people just treat me like anybody else, although occasionally there is a side of me, which is indulgent and I expect certain things because of my position. It's one of the perks.
There's something intrinsically Australian about a bunch of brothers and school friends getting together as a band at a very young age and all pulling together as a band at a very young age and all pulling together as mates to make something happen.
Racism is essentially natural, it's old fashioned it's an evolutionary phase that we're going through. Ultimately it wont exist.