ON THE EVENING OF SUNDAY, 16 NOVEMBER, Michael boarded a plane at LAX and looped around the globe from the northern hemisphere to the south, crossing the International Date Line. He touched down in Sydney on Tuesday, 18 November. As a footloose Australian, this anomaly was completely familiar to him. He had experienced the losing and gaining of days through jet travel all his life. From Sydney airport he was driven to the expensive eastern harbour-side suburb of Double Bay and checked into Room 524 at the Ritz-Carlton. For his pseudonym, he chose the name of the vast river system crossing south-eastern Australia, Murray River.
Between phone calls to and from various family and friends, he attempted to get over his jetlag before starting rehearsals on Thursday. One of the phone calls he received on Wednesday was from Bruce Butler, who was by then managing Ollie Olsen. There was a discussion about the two Max Q main men getting back together for a rave shortly.
‘Michael really was looking for something new and challenging,’ Bruce said. ‘He didn’t want to do the big stadium rock stuff. He’d got to a point in his career where he’d done that. You know, he wasn’t doing it for money. Max Q—it didn’t matter if it made money. He needed to do that artistically. And for the fun—I suppose to recapture what he got from those early INXS albums.’
There was something else Michael and Bruce had in common now. They were both fathers of their first child; both toddlers. Bruce’s son, Beck, was just a few weeks older than Tiger.
‘My last conversation with him was really joyous,’ Bruce recalled. ‘It was two old mates talking. He was in a very good mood, one of the best I’d heard him in for a couple of years. He was, like me, a proud new father. We discussed our kids and getting together when INXS were in Melbourne so they could meet. Tiger Lily was coming out from England with Paula, you know, for the tour. They were going to all be in Melbourne, and our kids were going to meet for the first time. This was exciting, and he was happy.’
Michael spoke to Ollie on the phone too. ‘The last time I spoke to him,’ Ollie said, ‘he actually talked about doing another Max Q record. He said he really wanted to get together with me, and hang out and have a talk and all that kinda stuff. He said, “Are you up for it?” I said, “Sure.”’
When Michael called our mother they spoke of Christmas plans. She suggested it would be a good opportunity to have Tiger christened as we would all be around. He hesitated at first, then changed his mind. She thought he sounded frail, that maybe he could see the mess his life had become. She called Kell and warned him not to push for any definite plans.
On Thursday evening Rhett arrived at the Ritz-Carlton, calling Michael’s room from the lounge where he and Mandy and some friends had gathered. After a six-hour rehearsal Michael had succumbed to exhaustion and jetlag and begged off. Regrettably the brothers had a minor argument and Rhett departed for the Gold Coast on Friday morning, after having not seen Michael in almost a year.
Before leaving for rehearsal on Friday, Michael called Michele Bennett and made plans for breakfast the following morning. He said he didn’t even know why he was doing the tour. He expressed concern about Paula’s custody problems and spoke of his desire to get back to a simpler way of life. He was tired of dealing with all the problems. In Michele’s words, ‘he was looking for the silver lining’.
He also returned a call left by actress Kym Wilson, a friend he’d missed connecting with the night before. He suggested that they meet in the Ritz-Carlton lounge after his dinner with Kell and Susie.
Rehearsal with the band that afternoon was filmed for publicity purposes; some of it is on YouTube. Michael seems absorbed, a little blue. Sections were used on the television news bulletins that evening to promote the tour. Michael always felt relaxed in front of a camera, but on this day even his endearing playfulness looked a bit contrived. INXS reported later Michael was in great form. I assume they meant his singing, rather than his demeanour, because it was obvious to me that something was weighing on his mind. He had told me over and over that he was tired of singing these songs. And although he is making the best of it, his unstable moods are on show.
The longer version of this final INXS rehearsal runs for over 27 minutes, interrupted between songs as INXS take two newly recruited female backing vocalists, still learning their parts, through some fine-tuning. The reception from the band to Michael’s various arrangement inputs ranges from blank to permafrost-cold. He sits facing INXS in his black, short-sleeved body shirt and pants, showing that he’s once again in lithe and languid shape. He’s smoking a cigarette and sipping beer from a glass mug when suddenly he remembers something from that last jam in LA with Danny.
‘Oh, guess who I jammed with—Billy Gibbons!’ Michael enthuses. Gibbons, of course, is the legendary lead singer and guitarist of the mighty ZZ Top. Sharing a stage with him was a real coup. But the news seems to garner no response whatsoever from the band.
Michael ploughs on. ‘At the Viper Room, so cool, and I turned around and said, “Billy, you’re Billy, right?” He says, “Yeah man, I’m Billy.” He played like a mother … I couldn’t believe it!’
More silent treatment from the band. Michael goes on to tell them how Gibbons was just walking past the Viper Room with his guitar when the doorman recognised him and invited him in. INXS seem pointedly bored. Then Jon plays the drum intro to ‘The Loved One’ and they tip right into it.
Michael looks so sad. He puts his shades on and waits for the next intro. Maybe it is my imagination, but it sounds as though there are tears in his throat. I just want to throw my arms around him.
That evening Michael was picked up by Kell and Susie, who drove him to one of his favourite restaurants, the Flavour of India, in New South Head Road, Edgecliff.
The restaurant’s chef, Hayat Mahamud, told the Daily Mail in November 2017 (in a piece remembering twenty years since Michael’s passing) that INXS’s singer was likely to swing by every couple of months.
They were on a first-name basis and shook hands as the three guests sat to dine at Michael’s favourite table seven, under the chandelier. He sat with his back to a bay window, with Kell on his right and Susie opposite.
‘Which one should you cook for me—which one is best tonight?’ Michael asked Hayat.
‘Everything is best,’ Hayat smiled.
‘Butter chicken is heaven. I love your butter chicken,’ Michael told him. He ordered this, the restaurant’s speciality, along with mushroom saag aloo and chicken tikka fillets as mains. They ordered drinks and had crab in shredded ginger, chilli and onions, served inside potato skins as an entrée.
Kell remembered Michael as pensive. Quieter than usual at first, but brightening up enough to fall into some of his usual mimicry. Nonetheless, his elder son confessed he felt burdened, elaborating on Paula’s custody battle, her expenditures and the overall gloom of life in London. He told Kell that Geldof had agreed to allow his children to depart early for Christmas in Australia and then changed his mind. Sensing that Michael was very anxious, Kell tried to pursue this line of conversation. Michael, as usual, changed the subject, ordering another of his favourite dishes, traditional Indian ice-cream with mango coulis for dessert.
The chef dropped by the table to make sure everything was satisfactory. Michael asked Hayat how his business was going, and his boys.
‘They love your songs.’
When Kell dropped Michael back at his hotel around 10.30 p.m., he changed and went downstairs to the bar to wait for Kym Wilson and her boyfriend. Two women walked in and he struck up a conversation, inviting them to join him while he waited for his friends. Victoria Morish later told me she remembers him being ‘charming and flirtatious’. She did not detect any sign of him being in a ‘dark’ mood, and they returned to a function they were attending soon after.
Kym and her boyfriend, solicitor Andrew Rayment, arrived around 11.30 p.m. to find Michael alone at the bar. Kym made the introductions and after ordering drinks Michael suggested they adjourn to his room, as he was waiting on a phone call from London. As they were leaving, he made a joke about escaping without paying the bill. He was quite theatrical about it and appeared in good spirits—especially when the barman came after him and asked him to sign the tab before he could make a getaway. With drink in hand, Murray River laughed and signed away.
Upstairs, Room 524 soon filled with lively conversation. Michael was glad of Kym and Andrew’s company, urging them to raid his mini bar. Over the course of the night, drinks including vodka, beer, champagne and strawberry daiquiris would be consumed.
The couple settled themselves on the period furniture arranged on the room’s lush green carpet, exchanging news with Michael as he relaxed on the bed. The Regency-style cream print wallpaper behind him framed the dark tangle of hair he pushed back with an open hand.
There was a film script left open on a chair and Kym soon spotted it. They talked for a while about Michael’s role in Limp and his hopeful ambitions for new parts.
Now they were in private, Michael could also explain more about the phone call he was waiting on. Paula was seeking the court’s permission for Pixie and Peaches to come to Australia with her the following day, he said, and would be calling him with the results. He admitted he was nervous, but hopeful. He was particularly pining for Tiger. He talked about how much he had missed the fast-growing toddler as INXS’s Elegantly Wasted world tour had rolled on. He wanted Kym and Andrew to stay and lend their support, particularly if the court outcome was negative.
There was an element to this conflict that Michael may not have divulged that night. In fact, he may not have even been fully cognisant of it himself.
Gerry Agar, who was close to the situation, would later write about the Geldof–Yates stand off in her book. Gerry described Paula’s situation, in terms of Pixie and Peaches, as ‘already on shaky ground, one procedure away from losing them completely’ after the fizzled ‘drug bust’ of the previous year. Now Paula was fighting hard to take them to Sydney in November, when Michael both expected and desperately wanted to see Tiger.
Bob, for his part, had imagined a family holiday with the Hutchences, but it was starting to look more like a seven- and an eight-year-old replacing 1997’s last weeks of school with what could well be the excesses of INXS on the road. Beyond that loomed the not-too-hard-to-imagine possibility that Paula might keep Pixie and Peaches, in Australia, indefinitely. According to Gerry:
Something in her insistence stirred Bob’s dormant fears that Paula planned to take the girls and not come back for a long while … But Paula was defiant and seemed to be saying that there was nothing Bob could do; the plans were set, the tickets bought, she would go regardless. Bob had to act fast. I remember his panic as he rushed to implement legal proceedings against her.
Back in Room 524 the night ticked on with no call from Paula. Around 1.30 a.m. Martha phoned from New York. She told Michael that Quentin Tarantino did not want him for the small part he had tried out for, alas, but he had a better role for Michael in mind. It was a long phone call and Michael was excited by it, sharing the gist of it with his friends.
‘Martha, what time do you think it is in London?’ he asked at last.
‘About 1.30 p.m.’
‘Do you think she’s back yet?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Martha noticed his concern, his mood change.
‘When are you coming?’
‘I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ll see you on Sunday night.’
Martha knew her flight was actually booked for the following day, but by saying she would be with him sooner, she hoped to make Michael feel more secure. By the time they hung up, it was Friday 8.30 a.m. in New York, as Martha left for work.
Michael turned back to Kym and Andrew to confide about how stressful the whole Geldof–Yates custody battle was. He really loved Paula’s children, he told them, and Bob was being so unfair. Knowing that not only was Andrew a solicitor, but his father a barrister, perhaps he was sounding him out. Michael claimed that if the law came down on Bob’s side today in London, he was considering cancelling the whole tour.
As the night drew into the small hours, Kym saw how frustrated and anxious Michael became. He didn’t seem drunk, though, she would later state. At one point he raised the idea of going out, but Kym shook her head; they were here to wait on Paula’s call, after all.
‘I know, but sometimes I just want to run away.’
The ordeal wore on. Michael’s guests grew weary and as the dark early morning hours of that spring day extended, Kym began to fall asleep.
On the other side of the world in London, it was early Friday evening. Before his friends left, Michael decided to try Paula one more time, but her number was busy.
The phone log from his room shows that he also spoke to his friend Nick Cave, who was touring Australia and had just staged his first show in Melbourne.
Around 4.45 a.m. Michael took pity on the exhausted couple and insisted they go home to bed. They’d helped him get through most of the night. Before leaving, Kym and Andrew noted their mobile numbers in the address book lying on his bed. They’d be close by; he should call if he needed to. Michael lay on his bed, drained but too much on tenterhooks over the pending call from Paula to relax.
‘I would love a Valium,’ Michael said as they waved him goodnight. But they didn’t have any.
Around 5.00 a.m. a guest in the room next to Michael’s, Gail Coward, heard a loud male voice having a heated conversation—over the phone, she figured, since she could only hear a single voice. It was Michael, possibly responding to the news from Paula when she finally called. Sydney’s 5.00 a.m. daylight saving time was eleven hours ahead of London time.
The hearing had been postponed until 17 December. Paula wrote in her statement that she vented her anger to Michael. Perhaps Paula’s own storm of emotions stirred Michael up to defensively yell, thump and swear. When she told him she wouldn’t leave England without Pixie and Peaches, he became distraught. In her words ‘desperate’, as if he couldn’t stand a minute more without his baby:
‘I don’t know how I will live without seeing Tiger. What will happen?’
Why didn’t Paula alleviate Michael’s anguish then by telling him she’d make that scheduled flight with Tiger? The Geldof girls could have followed in three weeks. How could you hear this pain from someone you love, and not decide right there and then that you and your little girl will be on that flight and in his arms in a heartbeat? After witnessing what the last two years had done to Michael’s psyche, knowing the state he was in, it would have been the kindest, most loving thing Paula could have done.
He would call Bob, he told her, and beg him to let the children come.
When Michael phoned Bob, to try to convince him to change his mind, Bob was waiting in his car for his eldest daughter Fifi’s school bus. This call lasted just over a minute.
Bob stated Michael’s voice was low and a little sleepy and that his manner was sarcastic. There were no witnesses to this call. Unsurprisingly, given this is from his own point of view, Bob comes off as extremely rational; Michael the opposite.
‘Bob.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘It’s Michael, man. Are you happy?’
‘I’m okay. Listen, can you call back in ten minutes, I’m on the other line.’
‘Ah man, can you call me?’
‘I can’t, I don’t have your number.’
‘Hold on, I’ll give it to you.’
‘I’m in the car and I don’t have a pen.’
(Sigh of exasperation) ‘Okay, I’ll call back.’
This is exactly as it is written in Bob’s statement—even the ‘sigh of exasperation’. After a brief call to Paula at 5.31 a.m., Michael called Bob back at 5.38 a.m. Michael begged him to let the children come to Australia, Bob stated later. His voice escalated to a hectoring, abusive and threatening tone, according to Bob.
Bob claimed he had once reported Michael for harassment. In Michael’s defence, Paula had fuelled the hostility between the two men, according to Gerry Agar, by claiming Bob was causing trouble when he was not. Bob might have suspected as much. He told me himself that Paula had once fabricated a story about his sister Cleo that caused Bob to cut ties with her, his own sibling, for several years. He later realised what a tragic folly it had been to believe everything that Paula Yates said. It had done so much damage.
Bob insists he simply told Michael that he would not allow his children to miss their last three weeks of school, to which, according to Geldof, Michael countered, ‘I’m their father, little man, when are you going to realise that?’
If he actually did say that to Bob, as the latter alleges, it was an ugly way to speak to a man whose wife had left him and was now with Michael. I am reminded that the approach of Christmas is a sensitive time for many, especially unhappily divorced families.
But Michael was losing perspective. On top of his acquired brain injury, he had suffered so many exhausting trials, changes, media attacks and financial and relationship concerns. He was under siege from anxiety, that invisible enemy at the gates. His mental health was failing and he was self-medicating, taking too much Prozac, adding the paranoia-inducing cocaine and the reckless edge of drinking to the mix. He was indeed ‘desperate’. He was fighting to be with his family the only way he could muster, with sarcasm—the last refuge of the powerless.
Michael had been up all night stressing about custody issues and was convinced at that moment that Bob had more control of his little daughter’s future than he did himself. He seemed not to hear, Bob claimed, when he tried to explain it was out of his hands. Between expletives, Michael accused Bob of trying to take Tiger away from him, insisting he had proof he was seeking custody of her. With what seems like extraordinary patience, Bob offered to sit down with Michael and Andrew Young to go over it and reassure them that he had no interest in taking Tiger.
Their call ended at 5.54 a.m. when Michael slammed the phone down. I shudder when I consider how misjudged his tactics were.
The self-fulfilling prophecy of Bob eventually being awarded guardianship of Tiger, after the self-inflicted deaths of both of her parents, looms over this tragic line of thought.
And much as his fear of losing custody of his daughter was spurred by the manipulations of others, perhaps there was also a real premonition of the future there for Michael.
In her statement, Belinda Brewin, who was with Paula during the phone call to Michael, said that when she (Belinda) took Pixie and Peaches back to Bob’s house, before she and Paula left for Michael’s funeral in Sydney, Bob asked her, ‘Did you know I spoke to Michael?’ And she replied, ‘Yes, I did.’ Belinda then said that Bob asked her if she knew whether he was the last person Michael called. She answered that she didn’t know, but she thought so.
‘Bob kept asking if they found drugs in the room and I told him I didn’t know. Over the time I have known Michael, I saw Bob systematically ruin Michael and Paula’s lives,’ Belinda wrote. ‘Anything they tried to do, Bob would interfere. If they wanted to take the children anywhere Bob would take out an injunction. He was constantly interfering in their lives and the dispute became very public.’
Minutes after calling Geldof, Michael dialled Michele Bennett. He was due to meet her for breakfast in a few hours. She was asleep so he left a brief message on her answering machine. It seems he then undressed and tried to sleep. When Michele rose, she played back a message from what she describes as an inebriated Michael.
‘Michele, I need to speak to you.’
Martha spoke to INXS’s tour manager John Martin around 7.00 a.m., Sydney time. She let him know that Paula and Tiger would not be joining Michael on tour, and told him to let Michael sleep as he had obviously not gotten much rest. John had breakfast and worked in his room at the Ritz-Carlton.
Michael rang Michele back at 9.30 a.m., sounding wasted, as he did when he had been up all night. He was over-tired and upset, she said, but speaking normally, not angrily.
‘You sound drunk.’
‘I’m not drunk, just sleepy,’ he said. ‘I have to see you.’
Nothing alerted her that this call was any different from the dozens of others she’d shared with him over their eighteen-year friendship. As they spoke he became distressed. He’d been to sleep for a little while, he said, but was still tired and didn’t know how he was going to get through the band rehearsal scheduled for noon.
He began to weep, saying he couldn’t sleep and just needed her. Michele promised she would be there and advised him to skip rehearsal, call someone in the band and explain. He agreed. Then she told him to expect her in around half an hour. He should lie down and try to rest until she arrived.
Michele showered, dressed and flew out of the house, grabbing the book by her bed. She had soothed Michael to sleep many times in the past by reading to him. She thought it wouldn’t hurt to try again today. Whatever that book was, she has blocked it out of her mind.
Meanwhile, Michael rang down to the front desk and asked them to pass on a message from him to tour manager John Martin: ‘Mr River is not going to rehearsals today.’
There were only two more outgoing calls from Michael’s room. The first, at 9.38 a.m. Sydney time, was to Martha’s New York office. She had left for the day.
‘Marth, Michael here. I fucking had enough.’ When Martha retrieved the message by calling her answering machine, as people did in those days, the agitation and anger in his voice shocked her. She returned his call immediately but the phone in his room just rang out. Perhaps that was because he was in the bath.
He left another message on her home answering machine, twelve minutes later, at 9.50 a.m. Sydney time. This time his voice was slow and deep and ‘sounded like it was affected by something’.
‘Martha, it’s Michael …’
Perhaps he wanted to tell her to cancel the Australian tour. The one that crazily somehow got called Lose Your Head.
But felt he couldn’t.
After retrieving this message remotely too, Martha immediately rang John Martin.
When Michele arrived at the Ritz-Carlton she made her way up to Room 524, knocked loudly and listened. Nothing. She knocked again. Tried the door. She went to the house phone next to the lifts and called Michael’s room. Four rings. No answer. Deciding he must have finally fallen into a deep, much-needed sleep, she didn’t want to wake him.
Instead she went down to the lobby and composed a note telling him she was worried about him and would stay in the area in case he called. She asked a Ritz-Carlton receptionist to slip it under his door and went out to browse the local shops. Then she sat in a cafe with a newspaper and waited. She really hoped they could have breakfast together, soon, like they’d planned to. She was feeling very concerned and really wanted to see him.
Kell called John Martin around eleven that morning. Had he seen Michael? No, he hadn’t. Then John found the message under his door that Michael had dictated to the desk clerk for him, about not going to rehearsal. John called Martha for instructions. She told him to let Michael sleep for an hour or two longer.
At 11.50 a.m. a young hotel maid was doing her rounds when she knocked on the door of Room 524. There was no answer, so she used her master key. Something heavy was obstructing the door. Using all her might, she forced it open and was shocked to find the dead weight of a man’s naked body blocking the door.
Michael had slept naked since his teens. From the crumpled bedding it looked like he’d been tossing and turning, trying to sleep at least. He was in a kneeling position, facing the door. He had threaded his black leather belt over the pneumatic door-closing hinge behind and at the top of the door to his suite, and strained his head forward into the loop so hard that the buckle had broken with the weight of his body. Or the buckle might have, using Coroner Derek Hand’s term, ‘broke[n] away’ as the maid forced entry, pushing the body and belt away from the hinge.
The room was chaotic. Two suitcases were open on the floor. Various medications including Michael’s Becloforte inhaler for his asthma, Nurofen tablets for pain and two other containers filled with unidentified pills were scattered around. In the bathroom lay an open packet of Prozac capsules and some nicotine patches. The bath was full of water. The management was alerted, then the relevant authorities. Michael was pronounced dead.