"Better The Devil You Know", chapter nine of
Kylie: An Unauthorised Biography
, as reprinted in various newspapers in Australia and England, November 1997.
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HERE
The Daily Mail, London
Kylie Ann Minogue is reborn It's a few days short of the end of the 1980s and 21-year-old Kylie, sporting a short-cropped platinum wig and a tiny black cocktail dress emblazoned with a metallic noughts-and-crosses game, arrives at the Australian premiere of The Delinquents in Sydney in the back of a big, beat-up old American Dodge. You can almost feel the foundations of popular culture rattle as Kylie emerges from the car arm-in-arm with INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence. It's a surreal scene. Kylie is virtually unrecognisable as the girl who only a year ago was swooning Especially For You beside beau Jason Donovan. Now looking sultry and sophisticated, Kylie is dwarfed by the scruffy Michael, her head glued to his chest as the pair briefly pose for photographers outside the cinema. The media is in a frenzy. Kylie and Michael together - six months earlier, this would have been completely inconceivable, an absurd prediction. In the time it takes the guests to sit through the film and move on to the postpremiere party, the story and first official images of superstardom's latest odd couple have already been flashed across Australian TV news bulletins. Hi world, meet the new Kylie Everything about Kylie's life changed from the moment she hooked up with Michael Kelland Hutchence. Kylie met Michael for the first time in July 1987. It all happened so quickly, so unexpectedly. The incident left Kylie speechless, absolutely star-struck. The setting was the post-awards party of the annual Countdown Music Awards ceremony in Sydney. By that point, INXS had already staked a serious claim to being Australia's biggest rock act of the decade. A long-time favourite of local kids, the band's 1985 album, Listen Like Thieves, sold over a million copies in the US. That same year, INXS headlined Australia's musical contribution to the global Live Aid concert. The band's next album, 1987's Kick, went on to sell seven million copies worldwide. Michael was sharing a loud joke and a drink with a group of friends at the awards when Kylie quietly slipped into the room. Neither initially noticed the other. Kylie was invited along courtesy of the fact that Locomotion was currently sitting at number one on the Australian charts. On arriving, Kylie started star-gazing, running her eyes around the room in an effort to spot some of her favourites. Suddenly, a hysterical, screaming man leapt in front of her. It took Kylie a moment to realise that this guy was yelling directly at her but she couldn't catch what he was saying. It took Kylie another moment to focus and realise that this guy was Michael Hutchence. Kylie was startled, caught completely off-guard. Michael said something else, this time more quietly and with a smile. In the next instant, he disappeared back into the crowd. Kylie was spellbound. "I thoroughly enjoyed the Countdown awards," Kylie enthused soon afterwards. "I was worried that a lot of the famous bigtime rock music people would look down on me as just a soapie star moving in on their area and zooming up the chart. But they were all really nice. Michael Hutchence made an effort to come over and say hi, which was good of him." "It was absolutely hilarious," recalled one of Michael's entourage. "The moment Michael saw her, he jumped up and started running at her with his arms waving and shouting, `I want to f... you! I want to f... you! It was just hilarious." Kylie met Michael again about a year later, towards the end of 1988. INXS had just returned to Australia after a long and fruitful international tour, which included picking up five MTV awards in America, and was currently in the middle of a sell-out run of stadium shows around the country. Kylie and Jason went to see the band perform in Melbourne. Jason was a big INXS fan. A friend of Michael's saw the young couple at the concert and invited them back to the after-show party at the band's inner-city hotel. "There were these gangster guys there from Chicago, there was a lot of drugs," recalled the middleman. "I think Michael changed Jason and Kylie's lives dramatically in one night. Jason was like, `Oh, this is great. Lots of pot.' And Michael was letting Jason get shit-faced so he (Hutchence) could sit on the bed and talk to Kylie all night. (Michael later explained: "I was apologising to her. I've given her heaps in the press.") "Michael set himself a new goal on that night," said the rock star's friend. "Then he just went and chased her in Japan." Kylie's third and most significant encounter with Michael came a year later, this time in Hong Kong. It was the end of September 1989 when Kylie arrived in town with her mother Carol Minogue and Terry Blamey (Kylie's manager). In a few days, on October 2, Kylie was scheduled to perform the first concert of her first international tour. The 14-date Disco In Dreams roadshow would start in Nagoya, play four shows in Japan, and then move to the UK. Kylie had spent the last few weeks of September rehearsing for the tour with her four back-up dancers in London. There was no band - Kylie would sing live to back-up tapes. She went early to Hong Kong to make a guest appearance at the Miss Asia-Pacific beauty contest and take a short break before the start of the tour. Michael, who was living in Hong Kong at the time, heard that Kylie was in town and sought her out. When he finally found her, Michael acted like the perfect gentleman, leading Kylie and her chaperones on a guided tour of the city and taking them out on his boat for some water-skiing. Kylie had never had so much fun. But before she left, Michael made sure that she was clear on one thing: he had chosen Kylie to be his next lover. A week later, on October 6, the night the Kylie roadshow played to 40,000 people in a baseball stadium in Tokyo, Michael appeared again, this time in Kylie's hotel room. "Kylie had a big suite at this hotel and all of a sudden in walks Michael," recalled Gary Ashley, managing director of Mushroom Records. "I'm like, he was in Hong Kong last week, he's in Japan today. Sure! Then it was like, `Let's go clubbing! So whoever was around, I think there would have been about 12 of us, walked from the hotel to this club. "And Terry Blamey and I were walking at the back, and Kylie and Michael were walking up the street ahead of us. And Michael was trying to hold her hand. And she kept slapping it away. By the end of the night, they were arm-in-arm. That's when it began." Kylie and Michael spent the next few days together. They avoided Jason's phone calls and became lovers. But Kylie had to dash off quickly. Her first English show, at London's Hammersmith Palais, was scheduled for October 15. Kylie and Michael made plans to meet each other again in Hong Kong once the tour was over. By the time the pair returned to Australia in early November 1989, Kylie was a different human being. "Michael Hutchence turned that girl on her head," observed Ashley. "It was the wildest transformation you would ever want to see in your life. Weeks. We're talking about an immediate, instant change. "Kylie started dressing differently, started looking different, started doing her hair differently. She sexually awoke. She became another person. Attitudes changed, everything changed. She changed her circle of friends - she was hanging out with an entirely different set of people - and you could see that this was completely changing her direction. "Michael musically woke her up, sexually woke her up, image-wise woke her up circle of friends, the whole thing. I don't even know if Michael's aware of just how much of an impact he had on her. But it was all there waiting to happen. He didn't put it in her. It was there already." "It's probably the last thing we should have done," offered a gleeful Michael soon after his relationship with Kylie became public knowledge. "But it just happened. We come from totally different situations. And obviously all this affects me because I don't have that sort of image. People are saying, `What the hell are you two doing together?' I guess it shows how cruel I am, because I don't really care." Kylie and Michael spent a week alone in Hong Kong following the end of Kylie's British tour and then landed together in Sydney at the start of November 1989. Michael had come back home with INXS to record the band's follow-up to Kick, eventually entitled X. Kylie had no intention of letting him out of her sight. In the short time they'd spent together so far, Michael had already succeeded in completely re-programming Kylie's take on the world. Kylie fascinated Michael. He'd never met anyone like her. Kylie's extraordinary tales from her recent, tortured past entranced him. To every new anecdote, Michael would shriek: `F... off! You're a star! Stop letting them treat you like that! Michael's view of things immediately made an impression on Kylie. To her, everything about his interpretation on how to play the fame game sounded so much more appealing and exotic. Kylie wanted to play on Michael's side. As always, Kylie adapted quickly to her new environment. Friends of Michael noticed how Kylie had immediately adopted some of his mannerisms, like brushing her fringe out of her eyes with the back of her hand. Compelled for so long to deny any love for the man in her life, Kylie didn't waste any time publicly confirming this fiery affair with Michael. "Yes, I have seen him," she revealed to the press soon after arriving in Sydney. "We've been out on a couple of dates." Is there any chance of romance in all this, Kylie? "Could be, might not be," she laughed. "He's kind of different from what people would expect him to be like. For instance, I'm sure people look at me and think I'm just two-dimensional and you can't imagine what it would be like to get beyond that. And Michael, he's really impressive. He's really, like, deep sometimes." Are we talking marriage and kids this time? "Yeah, well, I might have kids without being a wife! ' Kylie was suddenly speaking her mind, her new, open mind, without a script. Her minders went into panic mode. Kylie would have nothing of it. She quickly let everyone know that everything was about to change again. Kylie, she declared for all to hear, was now in the business of doing the unexpected. Privately, beyond all Michael and Kylie's talk about pop philosophy and life, beyond the world's growing awareness of their fling, there burned an intense passion. Michael regularly boasted to friends that "Kylie is the best f... in the world." Back on home soil, Michael led Kylie to the dark heart of his rock 'n' roll world and introduced her to his night-life. Kylie immediately moved into Michael's rented apartment high above Sydney's Hyde Park. The sparsely furnished place was constantly buzzing with regular visits from Michael's many friends across Sydney's ultra-cool art, fashion and music cliques. Kylie loved this life, and felt surprisingly comfortable interacting with people in this hippest of scenes. She felt they respected her. And most did: if Kylie was cool by Michael, then she was cool by everyone else. Kylie loved the idea of being cool. Kylie and Michael spent much of the following couple of months based in Sydney. Most nights, the socialising wouldn't start until well past midnight. Sometimes they'd catch up with a group of friends at the apartment for a drink and a spliff. Other nights it would be a band or a nightclub, partying until daylight. Kylie had never lived this life before. At one point, her family and minders in Melbourne went crazy when they lost all contact with their girl for a week. Perhaps not so coincidentally, it was during these early days in Sydney that Kylie first experimented with drugs. It took Michael a while to convince Kylie that to try a bit of dope or an ecstasy tablet wouldn't kill her. "Kylie experimented but not much," testified one of the couple's friends. "She's had ecstasy a few times. Mainly, she was just having a few drinks. Because she hadn't really been a drinker before. So she'd have a few Fluffy Ducks and she'd be shit-faced." While Terry Blamey insisted to the media that Michael hadn't introduced Kylie to drugs (Blamey was also claiming that Michael had nothing to do with his client's image change), Kylie foolishly made a roundabout public confession of drug use. "It can be fun and it can be dangerous," she told a journalist. "I'm all for kids not taking drugs. But I don't want to say to them you should never try anything. You have to experience something to have a view on it. Do you know what I'm saying?" Kylie's comments caused a minor political uproar. "Not only are these comments incorrect," growled one federal minister, "but they show a remarkable naivety about the tendency of besotted fans to take everything their idols say at face value." "What I was saying was I don't want to preach to children," Kylie offered in her own defence. "Most are pretty aware of drugs." (Several years later, Kylie categorically changed her stance on the matter, stating: "Some things you can only talk about if you've had experience, but I would condemn drugs now.") Michael never made a secret of his fondness for drugs. He once quipped that he spent the whole of 1988 with one arm in an eccy jar. Kylie had no desire to keep up with that sort of behaviour. Kylie would later be subject to false rumours that she was rushed to hospital one evening in this period to have her stomach pumped clean of a cocktail of drugs. The rumours were unreliable, as one version of the story had the incident take place in Melbourne, one in Sydney. Meanwhile, Kylie and Michael's weekends were a totally different scene to their nocturnal escapades. As Greg Perano, an old musician friend of Michael's, put it: "Michael introduced Kylie to nightclubs and she introduced him to daylight. Michael's never minded going out until four or five in the morning, so she'd do that. But at the same time, he knew he could totally relax with her and go hang in a park with her and do those things that she grew up doing." Kylie and Michael often took long rides on the rock star's Harley-Davidson motorcycle, stopping wherever for a picnic. Occasionally they'd invite a group of friends along. It was during a quiet stroll through Sydney's Centennial Park a couple of weeks before the Australian premiere of The Delinquents that the media reared its ugly head. An Australian magazine, Woman's Day, published three pages of intimate photos of Kylie and Michael hugging and kissing in the park, Kylie stripped down to her bra. A photographer had sold the pictures to the magazine for $10,000. He then sold them to London's News Of The World for another $50,000. Then Kylie and Michael made their dramatic official arrival on to the world stage together at The Delinquents premiere. "When we arrived, people were saying, `Who is she? She must be famous'," smirked Kylie's personal stylist, Nicole Bonython. "They were just so confused until they saw Michael Hutchence with her." A few days later, Kylie found herself back in her old world of Melbourne to spend Christmas with her family and prepare for her first all-live concerts. In his New Year's Eve Review of the Decade Clive James named Kylie "Woman of the Decade". Kylie's debut gig with a live backing band was scheduled for the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on February 3, 1990. Two more shows would immediately follow, in Sydney and Melbourne. For her whole music career so far, Kylie had largely avoided the issue of performing live, claiming, "I was determined not to give in to any pressure to perform before I was ready." It wasn't as if her music needed extra exposure in any case. Kylie's first show turned out to be something of a low-key affair, a warm-up gig, played under the transparent pseudonym of The Singing Budgies, at a Melbourne club called the Cadillac Bar on January 29. Kylie, along with her band and four dancers, performed 13 songs in front of 1200 people, including a cover of the Four Tops' My Girl. Scribbled across the top of Kylie's song list were the words: "Look. Enjoy. Dance." A week earlier, Kylie made one of her regular trips to Sydney to visit Michael, this time to help him celebrate his 30th birthday. Kylie personally assisted in organising the party, held in an innercity warehouse and attended by 200 of Michael's friends. Guests included the other members of INXS, Dannii (Minogue) and American actor Billy Zane. When it came time to bring out the birthday cake, Kylie carried it into the room held high above her head, a chain of dancing party-goers linked up behind her, others banging out a conga rhythm on empty plastic buckets. Within a couple of weeks, Kylie had completed her short Australian tour, grossing another $3 million to add to the $14 million she reportedly earned in 1989. The normally cynical local critics seemed surprised by the shows. One who reviewed the official opening night of the tour in Brisbane noted that Kylie had finally proved that she could actually "sing and she can dance and she can even do both at once very well". Of her hometown stadium show in Melbourne, another reviewer exuberantly declared that, "It's time to ditch the snobbery and face facts - the kid's a star." "People are starting to come around," gloated Michael. "They're saying that she's growing up. I think she's almost becoming hip." Despite the pre-pubescent make-up of her audiences, a hangover from the old Kylie days, the singer was pleased enough with her performances, and immediately announced that she was extending the tour to take in the UK, Europe and Asia through April and May. Tour's end coincided with Kylie filming an advert for Coca-Cola and the release of her latest single, Better The Devil You Know. The song was the first sample of music from the new-generation Kylie, and the high-energy dance track sounded nothing like the old stuff. By this stage, Kylie was running her show. Over the course of the last six months, she'd personally grasped control of every aspect of her image, from photos to the production of her video clips. Stock, Aitken and Waterman (SAW) didn't want any of this to happen, but what could they do? Kylie was the biggest and most enduring star they had. She now got whatever she asked for, regardless of the potential damage to her career. Despite all of SAW's protestations and proclamations of doom, the single debuted at number five on the UK charts, soon peaking at number two. Kylie's actions had been vindicated by her public. Kylie and Michael moved to London in June 1990. INXS was scheduled to mix its X album and Kylie had to finish recording Rhythm Of Love. Once those tasks were completed, Kylie and Michael took off for an extended holiday in Europe, spending two weeks in Italy. On their way home, they picked up a $480,000 four-bedroom villa in the south of France. Kylie and Michael spent much of the next few months between their pads in France, Hong Kong and Sydney. Come September, Michael was back in London preparing for the release of X and another major international tour. Kylie hung around when she could and caught as many shows as her promotional schedule would allow. By the end of 1990, Kylie had released her third album, Rhythm Of Love (which, surprisingly, only peaked at number nine on the UK charts and number 10 in Australia), released another successful single (Step Back In Time, which peaked at number four in the UK, Kylie's 11th straight hit there), and was again holidaying with Michael in London and in the south of France. It had been a good year for Kylie, there was no doubt about it. "I'm a lot happier than I used to be," she said towards the end of 1990. "I'm more calm and not so strung-out. And not so worried and not so scared about things. I'm sure most people who are my age go through the same things. "The last year has been so fulfilling and personally great, not just work-wise. Michael is another reason that last year has been incredible, he's expanded my world a little further. He's very knowledgeable and I learn a lot from him but it's not a teacher/student thing. He affects me, that's why we have a relationship, and I'm sure he learns from me too. "People are taking me a lot more seriously now. There's been a general change towards me everywhere and it's definitely for the better. People are listening now and, I don't know, it's nice. I feel more solid, I feel like I've finally made it. For a one-hit wonder, I've been here for a long time." Kylie and Michael's blissful romance wouldn't see out another year. In fact, it barely survived the first few months of 1991. Following their month-long vacation in Europe over Christmas, the first festive season Kylie had ever spent away from her family, Michael took off to begin the American leg of the X tour. Kylie came back home to start rehearsals for her Rhythm Of Love tour, scheduled to start in Perth on February 13. Kylie and Michael only saw each other again at Kylie's Sydney show late in February. And that's where the relationship collapsed. Kylie had got wind of the fact that Michael wasn't being faithful to her while on the road. As one of Michael's entourage attested, "Michael f..... around, took in arty types in every city." These rumours broke Kylie's heart. When she confronted Michael with them in Sydney, he didn't deny anything. And that was the end of that. "He's shocking," offered one of Michael's mates. "He's hopeless. He has no control. He's addicted to casual sex. He's been doing it for so long that it's a way of life. That's what broke them up. Kylie wouldn't wear it." Kylie and Michael didn't talk again for ages. Within months of their break-up, Michael was publicly gallivanting around with a new girl, 19-year-old supermodel Helena Christensen. That relationship was doomed to meet a similar fate. By the end of 1991, Kylie and Michael were friends again, Kylie often popping up backstage at INXS shows around the globe. Years later, in 1994, bemused guests at an after-show INXS party watched on as Kylie and Michael disappeared together into a toilet cubicle for nearly an hour. Despite the heartache, it didn't take Kylie long to get over Michael. Within a few months she had her own new boy and was ready to start the next phase of her unpredictable life. From here on, nothing and no one could keep Kylie down for long.
