Songwriters: Andrew Farriss, Michael Hutchense
Original Release: X
Year: 1990
Definitive Version: Live Baby Live, 1991
After we became friends,
Dave did me a solid—or at least tried to—by setting me up with his friend,
Marilyn. Marilyn was in the business, like we were; she was an editor at a
suburban Detroit paper (Waterford, I think) and lived in Birmingham, which made
her the fourth person I’d dated in the past 5 years who hailed from that area.
No, seriously.
You’ll notice I said he
tried to do me a solid. Marilyn and I only dated sporadically for only a couple
of months. I was more interested than she was, and it just didn’t work out. Our
last date was interesting: She asked me (the only time she initiated the
action) to be her escort to the funeral of a community leader that she covered
for her paper. That couldn’t have been more of a sign to me that we were done
than if Marilyn had bought a billboard announcing it on I-75.
We did have one great date
though—INXS at The Palace of Auburn Hills. In March 1991, INXS was at the apex
and arguably one of the biggest bands in the world at that moment. This was
something of a surprising development, because I remembered them as a fairly nondescript
new-wave band during the early days of MTV, but Kick made them gigantic, and
the new album, X, seemed to continue the momentum.
Marilyn wanted to go, and by
this time, I had jumped firmly on the INXS bandwagon with both feet. I said I’d
get the tickets, and for the first time without the help of an insider, I got
incredible seats: 10th row on the floor.
I picked her up from work,
and although I’m sure we had dinner somewhere, I couldn’t now tell you where,
although I’m certain it wasn’t at Little Caesar’s, which made me nauseous the
one time I had it. I hadn’t told Marilyn where our seats were, and she was
plenty impressed. Hey, what can I say? Me and Michael are tight. Maybe later,
she would show me exactly how impressed she was …
The Soup Dragons warmed up,
and the crowd was ready to party, because the show was about a week after the
liberation of Kuwait—although now that I think about it, I don’t recall too
much of a nationalistic furor in the festive mood. Still everyone was feeling
pretty good.
When INXS hit the stage to this
song, I’ll never forget it. The crowd blew up, and I was stunned that they
were opening their show with their most recent big hit—I had never seen another
band do that. You always start with something older; it’s one of the
rock-and-roll traditions.
Well, as soon as this song
launched, everyone on the floor stood up—on their chairs. This also was
something I’d never seen before, and it seemed to solidify the notion that INXS
was so big that extraordinary measures were in order. If we were going to see a
thing, we had to, too, so I quickly climbed up and helped Marilyn up. Like I
said, everyone was ready to party.
We were on our chairs for at
least the first two songs and maybe a few more before cooler heads decided, you
know, maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all, and we all moved back down
to merely standing on the floor.
It was a great show.
Hutchense was doing his best Lizard King, and the ladies were responding with
panties and bras flying onto the stage. The band sounded good, and they played
everything I wanted to hear except for the super old stuff that I remembered
from MTV. It was the most alive audience I had been around until the first time
I saw a certain Seattle band that at that point still was a mere twinkle in a
rocker’s eye.
After I drove Marilyn home,
nothing happened. Maybe she wasn’t THAT impressed with the seats, but more
likely it was because we already were on the downside of our dating arc, and I
couldn’t help but think that the only reason we had stayed together as long as
we had was so she could go to the INXS concert. Whatever, it still was worth
it.
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