kick

INXS calcitrated their career into hyperdrive with the new wave funk of this pop juggernaut.  After the modest success of 'What You Need' and 'Listen Like Thieves', the band was primed for a breakthrough. 'Kick' was recorded at Rhinoceros Studios in Sydney, Australia and Studio de la grande Armée in Paris, France. The sessions were produced by Chris Thomas and engineered by David Nicholas with Michael Hutchence on vocals; Andrew Farriss on keyboards and guitars; Kirk Pengilly on guitars, sax, and vocals; Tim Farriss on guitars; Garry Gary Beers on basses; and Jon Farriss on drum and percussions. The album was mixed at Air Studios in London by Bob Clearmountain.

Beers says:  "We understood that Andrew writes the best music, and Michael obviously writes the best lyrics, because he sings them; so we left it totally up to them."


Hutchence deferred:  "I'm not a great political lyricist, and I don't claim to be. I don't like knee-jerk politics. Anybody can read the front pages and write down, 'It's bad, it's bad, it's bad.' This is probably the most educated the most educated, conscientious generation in history. They're not stupid. Why tell people something they read in the newspapers last month? We don't make any great claims to change the world, but hopefully somewhere in our lyrics we are prodding people."

Andrew Farriss recalls how he and Hutchence went to Hong Kong to write new material: "Michael had decided to leave Australia again and, in retrospect, it was kinda like he was rolling up his sleeves and ready to take on the world again. But the making of Kick was full of some very odd moments. I wrote the music to Need You Tonight waiting for a cab to take me to the airport to fly out to Hong Kong. I arrived, played Michael the piece of music and within two hours we had the finished track! Michael was much more at ease socially than I in Hong Kong because he knew his way around. My trip was littered with bizarre moments and language problems – very funny stuff where I was getting out of cabs stranded in the middle of nowhere but the Hong Kong session produced 'Mediate', 'Guns In The Sky', 'Calling All Nations'...Actually making the whole album was odd when I look back. We were in New Zealand and the rest of the band were out playing tennis with an A&R guy called Jimmy Hendrix when I first wrote the music for 'Never Tear Us Apart'. Odd moments threw up odd things and somehow they all fell into place."

Pengilly remembers:  "It certainly was a really enjoyable album. We were working in a studio that we part-owned at the time. It was brand new, a very large studio that allowed us to all play live together. There were lots of different rooms, so we could isolate each guitar amp and whatever else. There were windows in a panoramic 180-degree thing, so we could all see each other. It was a really great vibe, being able to put these tracks down together rather than building up from a drum track or whatever else — which never worked for us. 'Cause after all the years we'd been playing together, there was a lot of spontaneity, especially between the rhythm section, Garry and Jon. There was a positive attitude; it felt comfortable."

Jon Farriss considers:  "I went through this whole phase around the time of the 'Kick' and 'X' albums where I was triggering everything. I was playing acoustically, but every tom and drum had a mic on it that went through a triggering device that would then make a sequential imprint in a computer. Then we would offset the MIDI delay of that, and the variations of that, to be precisely recorded in the computer, so that at any time I could mix sounds in with it. That enabled the actual live performance to be kept, but some of the sounds were rearranged. From there, I would record all of that and then sample various effects."

Tim Farriss says:  “We were so caught up in what we were doing we didn’t think about sounding contemporary or not. This slinky rock and roll is what we do.”

The band's manager Chris Murphy remembers the reaction of the record executives: "They hated it, absolutely hated it... the president of the label told me that he'd give us one million dollars to go back to Australia and make another album." The band refused and 'Kick' catapaulted them into multi-platinum success around the world, going to number eleven in the UK, nine in Germany, three in the US, and number one in Australia and New Zealand. 'Kick' has sold over twenty-one million copies worldwide, with a diamond certification for ten million copies in the US alone.

Andrew Farriss admits:   "All the songs off 'Kick' I love performing live because the stars aligned for us on that album - it was like the universe all came into focus at one time and place for us. In 1987 when we gave it to the record company, they hated it and wanted us to go back and re-record it. That's a true story. They didn't understand it and they'd never heard anything like it. We said, 'Yeah, that's why we love it.' It's scary because you put this massive amount of thought into a project and then it gets shrugged off. It's devastating to not so much your ego but your creativity. But then to have it massively, commercially received, that was just extraordinary...We weren't just brats off the block. We just said, 'No, we have to be really strong with this and this is what we are going to do.'"

Hutchence said at the time:  "We've been together for about eleven years; so it's very typical of Australian bands to stick together through thick and thin. It must be something about growing up in Australia that prepares you to do that...I guess we're lucky we're lucky to have that time and experience in pubs in Australia to make us strong we're very strong we really do believe in ourselves...I think for any Australian band there's an element where you have to take yourself out of the pub to the rest of the world. and that is a very crucial time. There's tons of australian bands; but they wouldn't mean anything to anyone else. It's a very important moment for a band to leave Australia...it's how they approach that that makes or breaks them...I think that artists have got way bigger things to contend with. Politics are just there because we haven't got the basics right. I'm more into dealing with the basics: life death and everything in between."









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'Need You Tonight / Mediate' was a worldwide smash, going to sixteen in Germany, thirteen in the Netherlands and on the US mainstream rock tracks chart, three in Australia and New Zealand, two in the UK, and number one in Canada and on the US pop chart. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exb3IwSV0HU






'Devil Inside' rose to forty-seven in the UK; forty-one in the Netherlands; thirty-three in Germany; six in Australia; three in Canada; and two in New Zealand and on the US pop and mainstream rock track charts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luobOzreRq4







'New Sensation' went to thirty-five in Germany, twenty-five in the UK, sixteen in New Zealand, fourteen in the Netherlands, eight in Australia and on the US mainstream rock tracks chart, three on the US pop chart, and number one in Canada.







'Never Tear Us Apart' hit sixty-six in Germany, twenty-eight on the US modern rock tracks chart, twenty-four in the UK, twenty-one in New Zealand, fourteen in Australia, nine in Canada and the Netherlands, seven on the US pop chart, and five on the US mainstream rock tracks chart.







'Kick / Mystify / Never Tear Us Apart'
The title track charted at number thirty-three on the US mainstream rock tracks chart and 'Mystify' found its way to number fifty-thrin the Netherlands, forty-six in Germany, seventeen on the US mainstream rock tracks chart, fourteen in the UK, and number five in Canada.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLqzpBnCA2M













'Kick' 

full album:




00:00 "Guns in the Sky" (Michael Hutchence) – 2:21
02:22 "New Sensation" – 3:39
06:02 "Devil Inside" – 5:14
11:18 "Need You Tonight" – 3:01
14:19 "Mediate" (Andrew Farriss) – 2:36
16:56 "The Loved One" (Ian Clyne, Gerry Humphreys and Rob Lovett) – 3:37
20:34 "Wild Life" – 3:10
23:44 "Never Tear Us Apart" – 3:05
26:50 "Mystify" – 3:17
30:11 "Kick" – 3:14
33:22 "Calling All Nations" – 3:02
36:26 "Tiny Daggers" – 3:29