IN LATE 1996 Michael came to LA to shoot the Elegantly Wasted cover with Danish commercial photographer and director Pierre Winther. Winther’s work in advertising included a stuntman actually riding a big tiger shark at the Great Barrier Reef. They had met at Helena’s apartment in Copenhagen in 1994.
‘I felt an immediate connection—Michael and I simply clicked,’ Pierre told me. ‘We shared a slightly sarcastic sense of humour. We were laughing about the same things. He was just also a very likeable person, very down to earth. Not how you’d expect a rock star to be.
‘I had a business card with an image from one of my Diesel campaigns on one side and the shark-riding image from my Levi’s campaign on the other,’ Pierre continued. ‘Michael really liked that they had the look of something out of a movie. So when we got together for the first official meeting in London, he wanted me to come up with a concept for a shoot that would create similarly potent images.’
Michael played him the Elegantly Wasted album. The title song grabbed Pierre immediately and he developed a concept featuring fluorescent green and red, showing, as he put it, ‘an excessive lifestyle, crashing sports cars, illuminated driveways and a lot of fun within the absurd’. On the day the album was released, fluorescent promotional cars were driven around New York and Paris. In London a lurid vehicle even dangled from a crane over the Thames.
Pierre’s work on Elegantly Wasted creates a strange reality in a series of staged shots with no beginning or end. Each band member played a role in costume; there were some uniformed officers and Kirk looked like some kind of flash gangster. For Michael—perhaps unsurprisingly, given his love of Tiger Moths—he chose the role of a jet fighter. He was very enthusiastic about all this but stressed to Pierre that he didn’t want to be the focus of attention this time. The model seen wearing an INXS T-shirt in most of the shots deliberately dominated the foreground. Michael wanted to be just one of the band members, almost an extra. And that’s exactly how the cover and promo images, shot in Los Angeles, San Francisco and a patch of Californian desert outside Edwards Air Force Base, turned out. It was a tight schedule filming all day and often into the night over twelve days. Pierre said it seemed like everybody, including himself, was in character, in a sort of collective trance.
‘Back in London, after I presented the material to Michael, he invited me over to the house in Chelsea where he lived with Paula and Tiger Lily at the time,’ Pierre said. ‘They were both very welcoming and it felt like we’d known each other much longer. Michael often cooked at home. Sooner or later in all conversations the custody fight came up. Paula was more quiet, but Michael talked about it every time I was there. He clearly felt harassed by Bob Geldof and the English press circus. He told me many times that he didn’t feel at home in London and this situation didn’t make it better. But of course, he couldn’t escape. There was Tiger Lily and he really adored her. I remember how much he loved to cuddle and hug her. He was so happy to be a father.
‘One night we went to a concert and Michael and Paula took their little daughter along. I brought her a leather jacket with a tiger on the back that was custom made by a Danish designer friend. Michael loved it.’
When we celebrated Thanksgiving in LA in November that year all our guests entertained us with side-splitting stories. Michael peppered his with a range of convincing accents as usual. He used a very earthy Aussie voice for his story about taking Helena into the outback for a real Australian experience and getting seriously bogged when he tried to ford a river in his four-wheel drive. Fortunately, they were rescued by some locals who gave them an earful of colourful language about how they weren’t used to seeing a magnificent, rangy model in a hiked-up sundress wading through their creek. Michael said he could have been taken by a crocodile and nobody would have noticed.
Then he recounted a very different story, this time set in downtown London. I guess he and Ian Astbury from the Cult were tying on a good one when Michael mentioned that he had never trashed a hotel room. Well, clearly this situation ought to be addressed. Just to prove they were not fey weaklings who could hurl nothing heavier than a mike stand, they ripped the bathroom door off with their bare hands and hurled it out the window. Luckily, it landed on the roof of the restaurant next door; it would have been terrible indeed if they’d injured somebody below. This vision of what-could-have-been was sobering and they meekly awaited their comeuppance, expecting the coppers to haul them down to the station at the very least. But when no thunderous knock came at the remaining door, they called it a night.
The next morning when Michael went to check out, he was handed a bill, ‘of like a thousand pounds for the mini bar’. Before he had time to squint at the detail, the clerk, straight-faced and as bereft of emotion as only the British can be, said—and here Michael affected a very pretentious British accent—‘And that’ll be £90 for the door, sir. How would you like to pay—cash or American Express?’
After we’d all cracked up and the night was winding down, I asked Michael about his plans for 1997 and the solo album he had shown great enthusiasm for. I was concerned that after the debacle of the Max Q project, this too would be derailed. He assured me that Martha was right alongside him on this one. Although he was resigned to first completing his contractual obligations with INXS promoting Elegantly Wasted, together he and Martha would not let anything interfere with their plans. His intense hostility and distrust towards Bob Geldof and abhorrence of the circumstances in London were also on display. Michael made it clear that if it were not for his daughter, he would be living anywhere else but there.
He did return to London though, where he consulted Dr Jonathan Boreham, the general practitioner who had been treating Paula for some time. At this appointment Michael asked for a referral to a psychiatrist. Boreham referred him to Dr Mark Collins, a consultant psychiatrist with the Priory Hospital in Rockhampton, London, with a letter stating Michael had asked to see him in conjunction with Paula over their relationship problems. He said that he’d only been looking after Michael for the past eighteen months, and that when his patient had arrived he was already taking 20 to 40 mgs of Prozac; he wasn’t sure why it was prescribed by another doctor. He suggested Michael might want to see Dr Collins solo as well as with Paula. He said Michael was physically well but ‘fairly stressed’ in his role with Paula’s family connections ‘and his re-establishment on tour with INXS’. It is telling that Michael felt the need to talk to a psychiatrist, not only about his situation with Paula, but also about going on the road with INXS.
Later, in the course of the investigation following Michael’s death, Dr Collins confirmed that he had seen Michael twice during this time, and that he had already been taking Prozac for many months. Paula had accompanied him on his first visit. He noted in his statement that concerns over an ongoing dispute between Paula and her ex-husband regarding finances and childcare were areas of stress for Michael: ‘He had concerns about the effect of this on his partner and also concerns over the future direction of his career and how his band INXS would be received on its forthcoming tour’.
As 1996 was coming to a close, Michael arrived on the Gold Coast for Christmas with Paula, Tiger, Peaches and Pixie. Soon after arriving he went into Ross’s study and sat down to take a look through the former pilot’s flight logbook. It was a thick, handwritten diary of every mission Ross had flown in his illustrious 30-year career in the Royal Australian Air Force. It was full of fascinating information and also had pictures of the various aircraft he had flown. The men in the family especially loved to look through that book and ask Ross questions. This day Ross presented Michael with a bomber jacket he had worn in Korea. Several weeks later, Michael called to tell Ross to be sure to watch an interview he did on television when it came on—he was wearing the jacket.
While Michael was with Ross, Paula and the girls were having tea with our mother. Suddenly Paula leaned in close by Mother’s ear.
‘Anita’s writing a book and there are some really damaging things in there about you,’ she whispered, then turned and walked away. With what seemed to be a deep and senseless cruelty, Paula planted a huge anxiety like a thorn under Mother’s skin in that moment, knowing very well that she had no means of dealing with it except to fret and worry.
In fact, the nanny was not writing a book at all. This was just another classic example of Paula’s ‘gaslighting’, a common abusive technique. The term came from a 1930s stage play, Gas Light, in which a manipulative husband convinces his wife she is imagining their gas lighting flicker, when in fact he is making it happen. (In an ironic twist, the victim in the 1944 movie version is called Paula.) The perpetrator seeks to undermine their target’s confidence and trust in their own perceptions in order to gain control. Of course Mother didn’t understand this concept at all at the time. Paula may not have understood the term herself, but this manipulative, cruel behaviour was something she had been known to subject carefully chosen victims to.
In an effort to lighten the atmosphere, Mother remarked on Peaches’ beautiful (if rather flimsy) dress, which was falling off her shoulders. Paula admitted it was actually hers. Alluding to a wedding ceremony, Pixie announced that they all had special dresses for this holiday. Mother looked at Paula, who was thoroughly enjoying the exchange, and decided that she must be delusional; if she knew her son Michael, he was not about to marry Paula Yates and it seemed more likely that Nanny Anita would have something to say about her lifestyle.
In January 1997, Michael filmed the MTV special A Rough Guide to Hong Kong. He proved a natural current affairs–style host and interviewer, with a strong sensitivity to the political changes coming over the city of his childhood as it prepared to return to Chinese rule. Immediately after returning to London it was time to get back on the touring treadmill, whether he was anxious about it or not.
INXS worked the international media and played some warm-up gigs, beginning with a private acoustic show at the ABC Studios in Sydney. Five days later, a VH1 special INXS Rocks the Rockies was recorded live at the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, Colorado, the band in red-hot form, fresh after a break. Then they swung back to the continent to tape TFI Friday for the UK’s Channel 4.
Most of the next month was spent promoting Elegantly Wasted in London, Paris, Brussels, Toronto, Chicago and New York, where the band performed two songs on the Rosie O’Donnell Show, with Michael in great voice. But when he sat in the guest chair to chat with Rosie, I noticed he wasn’t quite his usual, playful self. She soon changed that by asking him about new fatherhood. He told her how amazing nine-month-old Tiger was.
‘She’s just perfect, I can’t believe it. Sleeps all night and just laughs in the day. Giggles and smiles, never cries, you know.’
Then Rosie asked him to share something unusual he had experienced with fans. Michael recalled a girl in Sweden who’d invited him to stand outside a toilet cubicle and listen as she peed. He didn’t notice anything except she kept stopping the flow. She was disappointed that he hadn’t recognised that she was peeing ‘Need You Tonight’. Both Rosie and the audience roared with laughter.
Released in March, Elegantly Wasted would turn out to be the final studio album from INXS’s long-lasting original line-up.
Michael returned to LA in March and called to wish Rosanna a happy birthday. He invited her to dinner and later played her some of his new solo tracks in his hotel room. He was pleased when she showed enthusiasm for this new departure. He shared how liberating it was to work without having to get a consensus on his ideas. He also shared his concerns about his baby daughter being tied to a city where he didn’t feel welcome.
INXS continued the small-scale tour (organised that way because their drawing power was on the wane, unfortunately, but not unpredictably, after the heady successes of Kick and X). They played in Dallas with Matchbox 20 and Beck, then an appearance on David Letterman’s Late Show was followed by two more months of gigs in the USA, UK and South Africa. In Germany they appeared at the Rockpalast Festival with Simple Minds, Sheryl Crow and Nenah Cherry. Back in California, they played another excellent show at the gorgeous old Mayan Theater in downtown LA. The following day the kids and I met Michael for brunch, and when I hugged him he winced in pain. He’d fallen and bruised his ribs during a recent video shoot. He held his side, groaning every time he laughed.
The Beatles and the Rolling Stones had been in the news over their publishing catalogues changing hands.
‘Yeah, yeah, don’t understand that at all,’ Michael said. ‘I mean, that’s all you have for sure, the royalties are everything and they just keep working for you and your family. Long after you’re gone, your children and your children’s children will benefit.
‘Royalties will be my retirement,’ he laughed.
As we were leaving he slipped me some copies of the new album. I immediately began playing it in the car. I found myself playing the track ‘Just A Man’ over and over, several times. So much of it was close to the bone. I called him to thank him for that song. It was brave of him to bare his story and I told him so. By the end of the conversation he was thanking me. And weeping. I assumed it was a release to cry. It was hard to say how our parents would take it.
I knew that he was unhappy about living in London, but I had no idea that his substance abuse was escalating or that Paula was keeping him on edge with her mind games. Five days later he was in Europe, back on the merry-go-round.
Mother answered her phone on the evening of 26 June and the minute she heard his voice she knew something was very wrong. Michael was calling from his hotel room in Vienna, Switzerland. He was scheduled to perform at the Libro Music Hall in a few hours. She said for the first time she could ‘feel’ his depression.
Very hesitantly, he said, ‘I … don’t think I can go on.’
‘Michael, darling, you mean you can’t go on tonight?’ Mother asked. ‘What is it, are you ill?’
‘I can’t take it anymore … I don’t want to finish this tour. I’m so unhappy.’
‘Oh Michael, what can we do?’
‘Nobody … nobody can do anything. I just can’t take the fighting, the lawyers. Every day is some new crisis and I’m away from Tiger and I’m worried about her. She’s the only thing that keeps me going but I can’t take it anymore.’
‘What would happen if you dropped out of the tour?’
‘I can’t.’
‘So try to hold on, finish the tour and think about your baby,’ she told him.
‘She’s my first priority,’ he assured her. ‘I love Tiger so much it hurts.’
As a mother she wanted to comfort her son immediately, needed to hug him. She said she got the sense that he felt trapped and could not see a solution. He asked if she and Ross would meet him in Los Angeles—he would be there in eleven days. She assured him that she would book the flights immediately. She called me and asked if I could cheer him up.
When we caught up with Michael in LA, he looked happy. We were instantly relieved. His anonymity in Los Angeles felt like freedom, I guess, and he was temporarily released from the Paula versus Bob pressures as well. It was clear his spirits had lifted.
The first night he took Mother and Ross to a private screening of Face/Off, the John Travolta and Nicholas Cage movie that featured ‘Don’t Lose Your Head’, a track from Elegantly Wasted. Michael’s companion for the evening was an attractive girl he introduced as Erin Seem, a journalist for Rolling Stone magazine. After the movie they returned to the Mondrian Hotel’s popular Sky Bar, owned by Cindy Crawford’s husband, Rande Gerber.
While Michael left to track down some food, Mother chatted with Erin, whose cover she was not convinced of.
‘Why don’t you take notes?’ she couldn’t resist asking.
‘I have a retentive memory,’ smiled Erin. Mother rather liked this young woman. We would see a lot of Ms Seem. She accompanied Michael to the San Diego show and the Santa Barbara show and regularly appeared walking out of the elevator with him. Mother rather hoped Erin was more officially ‘with’ Michael. She was so obviously making him happy.
The eleventh of July was a long day for INXS. They started off with an early afternoon, fan-attended sound check at the Greek Theatre along with a live interview that was broadcast over ‘the world famous’ KROQ with the immensely popular DJ Richard Blade. Only recently did Blade explain—in his book World in My Eyes—that it was Michael who came up with that slogan, when he said it in his first interview on Blade’s show. The station liked it so much that they looped it up and kept it. We attended the concert at the Greek, a beautiful, outdoor, city-owned venue in Griffith Park, LA. A lot of long-time fans were there and Michael and the band were fantastic.
From the first note everybody was on their feet. The fan directly in front of me was wearing a very colourful ‘rasta cap’. It was by no means the size of Lenny Kravitz’s one, which we came across at close range that Christmas six years earlier, but it was nonetheless distracting as it bobbed about. I did not realise Johnny Depp was in disguise under there until he appeared backstage after the show.
Martha Troup kept Michael busy with film-related meetings whenever possible. One morning as she sat in the lobby patiently waiting for her charge she was approached by several industry executives offering their business cards.
‘Wow, this is great!’ Martha grinned at me. ‘I don’t even have to walk out of the hotel.’
During this visit Mother and Ross enjoyed catching up with INXS, and spent a lot of time with Michael and his friends, old and new. He seemed happy, proud and loving when introducing them.
I remember thinking how lucky Michael was, with so many people to look after him. Martha would take good care of his career, I mused. He never had to worry about paying the day-to-day bills—his accountant Andrew Paul did that. He owned his properties outright, with not one single mortgage payment to make.
When Tiger Lily arrived with her mother she was a bit under the weather, and although she rallied for a combined birthday party (her first and my Erin’s nineteenth) she became worse in the days following, with vomiting and a fever. Michael called our mother about it and she suggested at the very least to send out for Pedialyte, a product that prevents dehydration in children. Paula was yelling in the background that she was the mother and therefore knew what was best. Tiger did get better but I do know she was never seen by a paediatrician on that trip.
Even after Paula arrived, Michael continued to see his new friend Erin Seem. With a buoyant social life of her own, she was determined not to chase him, but Michael often paged her to meet him privately at Johnny Depp’s house. I don’t think he could have been clearer about his feelings; he loved his baby girl but was never going to marry her mother. He was not going to ‘settle down’ or be monogamous.
Michael had signed with an agency to represent him in his acting goals and on the day Mother and Ross were leaving, before taking off with Martha for producers’ meetings, he went to their room, for breakfast and a talk.
‘Ignore the things you read about Paula and me,’ he told them. ‘We have never discussed marriage, so until you hear it from my lips, don’t you believe it!’ Michael’s refusal to commit to exclusive love seemed by now intrinsic. He suggested they remind Paula about the lunch date they’d made, though, so as not to miss out on seeing their granddaughter Tiger before they went.
Mother and Ross made numerous unreturned calls to Paula’s room throughout the day. Then an hour before they had to leave for the airport, disaster struck.
Paula arrived at their door with Tiger, extremely agitated. Mother and Ross had no idea why she had become absolutely furious at them, but she certainly was. She then made it clear that she not only would not be having lunch with Ross and Mother that day, but never again: in fact, she had no intention of ever talking to them again.
‘Michael should have told you this,’ Paula snapped, depositing Tiger on their sofa, and left. Mother and Ross looked at each other in shock. What was once a warm relationship had been shattered, and they had no understanding at all as to why. It wasn’t hard to imagine Paula might be furious at Michael, but they couldn’t comprehend her verbal attack on them. With minutes to spare before the car to take Mother and Ross to the airport was due to arrive, Michael returned to this emotional maelstrom.
And there it was. A very sad, bewildering, scarring ending to a special holiday that had started out with such promise. How were we to know that although we would be speaking with him over the next fifteen weeks, this awful day would be the last time Mother and I would ever see Michael alive?
The last, bone-crushing hug.
The last infectious smile.
The last wink.
The last wave …
The last picture I have in my head of Michael alive.