FEATURE:
A Timeless New Sensation
INXS’ Kick at Thirty-Five
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I have done quite a few…
IN THIS PHOTO: INXS in Chicago in 1988. From left: Kirk Pengilly, Garry Beers, Jon Farriss, Tim Farriss, Michael Hutchence and Andrew Farriss/PHOTO CREDIT: Norman Seeff
anniversary features lately. One that I am a bit late to but am going to mention now is INXS’ Kick. It was released on 12th October, 1987. Ahead of its thirty-fifth anniversary, it is only appropriate to celebrate and spotlight a sensational album by the Australian band. Produced by British producer Chris Thomas and recorded by David Nicholas in Sydney, Australia, and in Paris, France, Kick is seen as one of the best albums of the 1980s. In fact, it ranks alongside the best albums ever! Although the band are terrific throughout, I think their lead Michael Hutchence really defines the album and gives every song so much gravitas and passionate. A remarkable lead and songwriter, I do think Kick stands out and endures because of Hutchence’s talented and magnetism! It is worth coming to reviews of a simply wonderful album. I want to start out with Louder Sound and part of their review for the thirtieth anniversary release of Kick (in 2017). It is interesting what they say about the Australian band, and particularly Hutchence, and how they differed to what was around on the scene in 1987:
“Outside of Frankie’s pleasuredome and Dexys’ dungaree incinerator, no one in the 80s ever admitted to sweating. This was the decade of the pristine, the age of immaculate aristocrat make-up, sculpted fringes, and trousers cut to allow for the maximum air circulation. Pop music was clinically synthetic, sleek and vacuum-moulded; no star worth their Stock Aitken Waterman remix would ever do anything as human as perspire.
So when, in 1987, INXS frontman Michael Hutchence rolled up in a zip-strewn biker jacket behind a swarthy guitar riff and pouted ‘there’s something about you girl that makes me sweat’, we barely knew what to make of him. He and his band of Australian gloss-rockers had all the plastic funk grooves, silvery synth touches, sax solos and soul harmonies of popular contemporaries such as Fine Young Cannibals, the Human League, Duran Duran, Level 42 and Curiosity Killed The Cat, but they were fronted by a lizard-hipped sex mop with clear aspirations to be the Jim Morrison of his day. With one purring ‘slide over here and give me a moment, your moves are so raw’, INXS became the safe, sanitised sound of 80s sexuality, the Kylie fan’s (and, later, Kylie’s own) bit of rough. A band more likely to make you feel like a million dollars in the sack than Howard Jones, but less likely to leave you encrusted with soiled dairy products than Prince.
Very much an Australian phenomenon until ’87 – their many Australasian hits had barely registered in the UK – their sixth album, Kick, landed like a Thor’s hammer of lascivious arena pop, a virtually faultless, laser-targeted collection of synthetic sleaze that spoke of a band arriving fully formed at the very peak of their songcraft. After 10 years spent quietly polishing up their Boomtown Rats-style new-wave pub rock and trimming their mullets for the spangly new decade, they were the Down Under U2, slamming from the ether with their very own Joshua Tree or, in Peter Gabriel terms, delivering their So without the wider world knowing they’d ever worn a sunflower helmet. Seductive nightcrawler Need You Tonight was like a glowing neon calling card reading ‘NEW IN TOWN’ tucked suggestively into the breast pocket of the top five, and once we made the call they sure kept showing us a good time. Devil Inside was 80s pop licking a forked tongue”.
Kick was the album that defined and announced INXS. It is their breakthrough. 1990’s X is a great album, but it does not scale the same glorious heights as its predecessor. With classic albums, it is great to talk about the songs and the legacy of the album, but I always like to know about the background and how things came together. With INXS’ Kick, Andrew Farriss and Michael Hutchence did work intensely on the songs. This article from 2021 discusses the background and creation of Kick:
“After their breakout hit “What You Need” smashed into the US Top 5 early in 1986, INXS’s slow but steady rise to global stardom intensified. On the back of the single’s success, their fifth album, Listen Like Thieves, went double Platinum in the US and set the stage for the band’s promotion to rock’s big leagues with 1987’s Kick, released on October 19 that year.
Complacency, however, wasn’t an option for the hard-working Australian sextet as they began crafting their magnum opus. Indeed, while they embarked on the album sessions on a high following acclaimed US and UK jaunts, and the Australian Made tour, which straddled December 1986 and January ’87, the band was unanimous in the belief that their new material simply had to better than Listen Like Thieves. As guitarist and saxophonist Kirk Pengilly informed DJ and broadcaster Ian “Molly” Meldrum, INXS were striving for “an album where all the songs were possible singles.”
To achieve this aim, the band reconvened with Listen Like Thieves producer Chris Thomas. Having previously helmed acclaimed titles by The Pretenders, not to mention Sex Pistols’ infamous Never Mind The Bollocks… Here’s The Sex Pistols, Thomas’ crisp, efficient studio technique ensured he remained in demand. Yet while the producer was aware that INXS’s star was firmly in the ascendant, he later told band biographer Anthony Bozza that he felt “they didn’t have the right songs yet” when the Kick sessions began in Sydney.
Accordingly, primary songwriters Michael Hutchence and Andrew Farriss flew out to Hong Kong for an intensive two-week songwriting session. Inspired by the sojourn, the pair returned with a handful of promising demo tapes, including basic versions of several of the future album’s key tracks, among them the driving, anthemic “Kick,” “Calling All Nations” and “Need You Tonight.”
Certain they now had the goods, Chris Thomas and the band headed to France for further sessions in Paris, where they completed the newly-christened Kick. Their gut instinct was correct, for the new record took elements of all INXS’s key influences – anthemic, Rolling Stones raunch, Gang Of Four-esque angularity, and the cutting-edge sounds of the contemporary dancefloor – and seamlessly blended them into a compelling and highly original pop-rock hybrid that would thrust the band into the heart of the mainstream.
Yet, while group and producer alike were convinced they were sitting on a classic, INXS’s US label Atlantic initially failed to see Kick’s potential. In fact, it was only after the sleek, sensual “Need You Tonight” proved a hit on US campus radio, and its infectious follow-up, “Devil Inside,” crossed over onto classic rock playlists, that Atlantic relented and released Kick in October 1987.
The critical acclaim Kick attracted on release (with UK monthly Q’s four-star review memorably referencing “Hutchence’s knowing, Jagger-esque vocal swagger”) demonstrated that INXS and Chris Thomas’ confidence was entirely justified, and the band converted new fans in droves. The confident “New Sensation” and classy, strings-and-sax-enhanced ballad “Never Tear Us Apart” followed “Devil Inside” and the seductive, chart-topping “Need You Tonight” into the US Top 10, while Kick proved a global smash, topping the Australian Charts and peaking at No. 3 during a consecutive 79-week run on the Billboard 200 which eventually yielded US sales of over four million.
Keen to keep the ball rolling, INXS embarked on an extensive 16-month tour which saw them packing out arenas in North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia through October 1988. The itinerary included a brace of highly-acclaimed shows at New York City’s famous Radio City Music Hall and an emotional three-night homecoming at the band’s native Perth Entertainment Centre during the final leg in Australia. By the tour’s end, INXS was regularly performing all of Kick’s 12 songs and the group was widely recognized as one of the biggest bands on the planet.
“I think what makes the Kick album so dynamic is that we weren’t so much interested in what everybody else was doing as on what we wanted to do,” Andrew Farriss says, reflecting on the album’s longevity. “Michael and I were extremely focused as songwriters, and the band was very intent on making a series of recordings that we could be passionate about. It was really an incredible experience”.
I will end with a review for the immense Kick. Turning thirty-five on 12th October, I know that a lot of people will be sharing their memories of the album and what each of the songs means to them. Need You Tonight, New Sensation, Never Tears Us Apart and Mystify are among the best songs in INXS’ catalogue. Kick is an album without a weak moment. The deeper cuts are really strong and interesting. This is what AllMusic wrote about Kick in their review:
"What You Need" had taken INXS from college radio into the American Top Five, but there was little indication that the group would follow it with a multi-platinum blockbuster like Kick. Where the follow-ups to "What You Need" made barely a ripple on the pop charts, Kick spun off four Top Ten singles, including the band's only American number one, "Need You Tonight." Kick crystallized all of the band's influences -- Stones-y rock & roll, pop, funk, contemporary dance-pop -- into a cool, stylish dance/rock hybrid. It was perfectly suited to lead singer Michael Hutchence's feline sexuality, which certainly didn't hurt the band's already inventive videos. But it wasn't just image that provided their breakthrough. For the first (and really only) time, INXS made a consistently solid album that had no weak moments from top to bottom. More than that, really, Kick is an impeccably crafted pop tour de force, the band succeeding at everything they try. Every track has at least a subtly different feel from what came before it; INXS freely incorporates tense guitar riffs, rock & roll anthems, swing-tinged pop/rock, string-laden balladry, danceable pop-funk, horn-driven '60s soul, '80s R&B, and even a bit of the new wave-ish sound they'd started out with. More to the point, every song is catchy and memorable, branded with indelible hooks. Even without the band's sense of style, the flawless songcraft is intoxicating, and it's what makes Kick one of the best mainstream pop albums of the '80s”.
One of the absolute greatest albums, a happy thirty-fifth anniversary to INXS’ Kick for 12th October. It is sad that Michael Hutchence is not here to see how Kick has been respected and enjoyed through the years. He died in 1997. His voice, power, passion, and brilliance are displayed right through Kick. It is an album that will be adored and loved…
FOR decades to come.