Electric Gypsys: Moments with Michael Hutchence & Dave Stewart.
It was summer in the South Of France, and I was staying at Villa Neptune in Théoule-sur-Mer. Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox owned the house and I had been working with Dave at a residential recording studio about 2 hours away. The studio was located in the Château de Miraval, a 900 hectare estate located in Correns, in the Var department of Provence. The iconic studio is now owned by Brad Pitt, who purchased it in 2008 for $25 million.
We spent a few weeks recording and mixing songs for an album we’d started working on in New York, we also filmed a couple of music clips during some downtime. One of the clips we did using a hand held camera, with Dave sitting in the passenger seat of his Alfa Romeo Spider while I drove. I mimed to a few of the recent mixes we’d done playing on the car stereo, sometimes forgetting the words and breaking into laughter as we headed through the night to Cannes. We enjoyed a memorable evening at a French restaurant, with outside seating, overlooking the marina. All night Dave kept trying to hook me up with a Swedish girl who was one of his helpers, and he was quite mischievous at times. He would love to create little scenarios and romantic dramas between people. All in the spirit of fun of course.
On our days off from the studio, we would go down to the rocks at the back of his house, take a guitar and the hand held camera and record songs by the sea. We made a clip of me doing a version of Real Love on one occasion. The Beatles had just released their version of the lost Lennon demo and I was obsessed with it at the time. We even had a large framed photo up in the studio control room of John Lennon, leaving the Dakota building circa 1980, which we placed on an easel for inspiration.
It seemed like a million miles away from the reality I knew and I was suddenly living in some kind of rock and roll fantasy. Life was always exciting during that time, and I never knew who I would meet next. One week it was Velvet Underground legend Lou Reed or Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher at Electric Lady studios in New York. The next week it was Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry in Nice or a member of Parliament - Funkadelic in London. I remember one time in the Church studio in Crouch End, London, when Dave just handed me the phone and it was George Harrison.
Dave’s generosity was always truly remarkable, consistently demonstrating a kindness and willingness to help. I gave him a lift home one night to his house in north London and as we were driving he asked me ‘Have you got enough money?’ ‘Was the record label advance ok?’ He always had compassion and genuinely seemed concerned for the young musicians he worked with.
Once when we were in New York, working at Electric Lady studios together, we went out shopping for records. He bought me a silver, glitter Gibson Les Paul guitar from Matt Umanov guitar shop on Bleaker street. I saw it in the window and commented on how cool and Marc Bolan it looked and was astonished when he just bought it and handed it to me. I said to him “ How can I pay you back for this?!” “Just love it and play it” he replied.
Meanwhile back at the house, the day after the dinner in Cannes, Dave came over to speak to me while I was lolling about in his pool and mentioned that Michael Hutchence was coming for lunch with Paula Yates. It was a great surprise because I had always been a fan of Michael’s voice and his magnetic stage presence. I couldn’t wait to meet him. Paula had also been a permanent fixture on British TV during my adolescence, presenting iconic shows such as The Tube with Jools Holland, so I was intrigued to meet her too. I always thought she was charming, charismatic, pretty and flirtatious. I remembered her interviewing Michael on The Tube and The Big Breakfast and their chemistry being extremely sexually charged.
INXS had been huge during their early 1990’s peak and had played to 72,000 screaming fans at Wembley stadium during the summer of ‘91. Their popularity had waned somewhat since those heady days, but I still loved the band and had bought all of their subsequent albums. Meeting him would be fascinating in many ways, because to me, he was a real star and somebody I’d idolized as a performer.
In recent years he seemed to be in the press a lot in London, for reasons other than music. He had become infamous for being an adulterer rather than a singer when he and Paula Yates , who was still married to Bob Geldof, had become lovers. He had a toxic relationship with the press and had punched a photographer in the face. He was subsequently sued £20,000 for that particular pleasure, and from that moment onwards, he and Paula were hounded mercilessly by the paparazzi.
One memorable incident in 1996 was when Michael presented a Brit award to Oasis and Noel Gallagher said, ‘Has-beens shouldn't be presenting awards to gonna-bees’. It was a mean spirited thing to do to another musician, especially in front of an audience. I watched it live on TV and saw this once slick and sexy superstar being humiliated by an uncouth bully.
During a press conference the same year he infamously said that ‘Pop eats its young'‘. This statement would become all too poignant in the months to come. He would be yet another cautionary tale in the black book of subversive pop culture, like so many other stars who had burned all too brightly and briefly. For now though, he was coming for lunch and I was rather excited.
The two lovers arrived with their baby Tiger Lilly on a Ducati motorbike which I thought was pretty wild and dangerous. We sat at the table, under the pergola by the pool and chatted away to each other while a lovely Thai lady named Nida, who worked for Dave, served Thai noodles and curry. Michael kept holding the baby up In the air and mock shouting ‘She’s a baby!, She’s a baby!’ He seemed thrilled about it all, and he looked great dressed in a white, short sleeved shirt, with long dark curly hair. Paula kept staring at Michael and me chatting to each other. She seemed to be trying to suss me out, and it was a little unsettling.
I declined a second helping of Nida’s Thai noodles, to be polite, but Paula gave me a look and asked if I was, ‘on the pop star diet?’ The truth is I was more interested in talking to Michael than eating, as we were locked in a conversation about studios. He told me about a studio in Capri where INXS had recorded their last album - Full Moon, Dirty Hearts, and how the band would have to get a boat across to the studio. It all sounded so familiar because I knew these albums, yet I was being told first hand by the actual guy in the band. I loved it. I belonged in this moment. When we chatted together, Michael seemed genuinely interested and engaged and made me feel like we’d known each other for years and not merely for a few hours.
Michael and I were left alone to talk and play music to each other under the pergola for a few hours. One song I played to him entitled Beautiful Things, was recorded that same week on the studio grand piano. He sang along to it and seemed to like it, which was a thrill. I mentioned to him that the live room at Miraval where the piano was recorded had a beautiful stained glass window above it designed by Yes’ Jon Anderson. It was a great sounding space, and to this day I think the Steinway, in that room, with the late afternoon sunlight, streaming through the stained glass, was a particularly inspiring moment.
When I had finished playing a couple of my songs, Michael played some rough mixes of the INXS album they had just finished recording in Vancouver, with producer Bruce Fairbairn. One song that he played was called Elegantly Wasted. I asked him what the album title was and he replied ‘We haven’t decided on a title yet mate’. I said I thought that Elegantly Wasted was great album title, to which he replied ‘Yeah, that’s not a bad idea’. I have since heard U2’s Bono in interviews say that he suggested the same thing to Michael, but I’d like to think I said it first. I loved the rough mixes and told him how I thought they had the band’s classic sound again. it was a perfect, warm summer day in the south of France, and here I was playing music, drinking wine and chewing the fat with the lead singer of INXS.
At some point during the afternoon, Dave and Michael went for a 30 minute ride on their Ducati motorbikes, through the French countryside, with Shelly and Karen Poole on the back. The two sisters, who were also staying at the house, were in a pop band that Dave had been producing back in London, at the same time we’d been working together. Paula relaxed alone in the house and read a book while hers and Bob Geldof’s children, Pixie, Fifi and Peaches swam in the pool with Dave’s two sons Django and Sam.
I needed to make a call to the UK, but I couldn’t recall the international dialing code. I turned to Paula who was curled up on a nearby sofa, and asked for her help. ‘Hey Paula, Whats the dialing code for the UK?’ I asked. She looked up, slightly amused, and replied, ‘Plus, four, four,’. Her expression suggested I should have known this already. I called my brother and told him what I was up to, where I was and who with. I had to tell someone.
All things must pass, as George Harrison once sang, and like everything in life, I knew this moment would come to an end. My ticket was booked for London and as I was packing my suitcase that evening, I remember feeling like I didn’t want to leave, because I was having such a good time. I was 23 and up for any adventure on offer, of which there were many, especially when I was around Dave.
I felt like I belonged here, not back in ancient, cold, rainy old London with the endless buses yawning past my flat in Willesden Green. I didn’t want to go back to that particular reality and the daily quotidian. I would have to screw my head on and get writing some hit songs fast, so that I could get the hell out of that place, because I wanted to be here, in this world, amongst this kind of company. Michael once famously sang the line “You’re one of my kind”. I wanted to be one of those kind and talk, play music and never return to the life I knew back ‘home’.
As I was leaving to get into the car, Michael came to say goodbye with Dave. We looked at the Ducati motorbikes for a moment and I foolishly went to stroke the chrome exhaust of one of them which was still hot and Dave shouted “Don’t touch that, man!” I thanked both of them for a great day and as I stepped towards the car, I turned to Michael and said to him “Next time you’re in London, come over for a cup of tea or something”, to which he replied “I definitely will mate”. I looked back as they both waved goodbye and I headed for Nice Côte d'Azur Airport.
As a kid growing up in the late 1980’s, early 90’s, who had listened, watched and rated him as a singer and performer, I was shocked and saddened by the news of Michaels suicide the following November in 1997, and I could barely imagine the impact it would have on Paula, Pixie, Fifi, Peaches and of course Tiger Lilly.
Paula Yates cut a lost and lonely figure around London, in the years after Michaels death, and she would eventually follow him to the grave 3 years later from a heroin overdose, aged 41. Peaches Geldof, the 7 year old I had met, and who had splashed about in the pool with her sisters, would be taken in the same way as her mother in April 2014, aged just 25 years old. An unimaginable tragedy that I could never have foreseen, as we chatted away under the pergola, listening and playing music.
As I sit alone, at home in Los Angeles and reflect on that sun-kissed day in 1996, I'm struck by the fragility of life. The memories of Michael's warm smile and laughter are forever etched in my mind, a bittersweet reminder of the transience of joy. The subsequent losses – Paula, Peaches, and the shattered dreams – have left an indelible mark on my heart. Yet, I'm grateful for that fleeting glimpse of perfection, a reminder to cherish every moment.
Thanks, Dave, for the gift of that experience. Thanks, Michael, for the lessons in fragility and beauty.
Songs and Sonnets: My Encounter with Cathal Coughlan.
I can remember hearing the Irish singer/songwriter Cathal Coughlan for the first time in 1987. Microdisney, the band he formed with guitarist Sean O Hagan had just released a superb single called Town to Town which BBC Radio 1 would not stop playing. It was a fantastic song all about the aftermath of Nuclear war, burying the hatchet with an ex lover and helping to reap the dead harvest together. The lyric was haunting, the strings sublime and the voice of the singer, full of rage and beauty was fantastic. It was a blessed, artistic statement and as far as you could get lyrically from ‘I Should Be So Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky’. It made listening way more interesting to my ears than the saccharine, aural cotton candy that was on offer in the singles charts in 1987, thanks mostly to the Stock Aiken and Waterman factory. Their formulaic, soulless creations were the epitome of commercialized banality. This on the other hand was a real artistic voice and I was hooked.
Cathal was fiercely bright from a scholarly background in Cork, and had a deep compassion for people on the fringes of society and an even more ferocious distain for their subjugators, all of which came out in the often acerbic, confrontational and occasionally hilarious words he wrote. I learned more about the human condition and all of its complexities and injustices from listening to his lyrics than any teacher could have taught me at the time. He even studied for a degree in medicine, but dropped out due to being - by his own admission “pretty fucking terrible” He was rebellious and compassionate in equal measure and it fascinated me.
My brother had the cassette of the album Crooked Mile from which the song Town to Town was lifted and we bought the next album entitled 39 minutes. We both loved the song Singers Hampstead Home and we played it to death. It was like The Beach Boys with jangly guitars. stunning melody and harmonies and a cynical yet amusing lyric.
Town to Town and Singers Hampstead Home will always be number one records In my chart. Listen to the chorus of each song. It’s as good as pop music gets. How those two singles alone could slip through the cracks was beyond me at the time and must have driven Cathal and the rest of Microdisney to the brink of despair and despondency. Virgin records kept pushing the band, but to no avail. They released one final, glorious single entitled Gale Force Wind which I duly went out and bought on 12” single.
Microdisney had made a handful of great albums, they were press darlings and I loved them and have never grown tired of listening to them. Their classic 1985 album on Rough Trade - The Clock Comes Down The Stairs (a euphemism for death) and the two albums that followed on Virgin are some of my most listened to albums. Really gorgeous stuff for my teenage ears. I’m still listening all these years later.
Legendary DJ John Peel, famous for the iconic Peel sessions once brilliantly described Microdisney as ‘A barbed wire rainbow’ and said that he could listen to Cathal Coughlan ‘sing the phone book’. I had to agree and I proceeded to buy anything with the bands name on the front cover. Every 7” and 12” single and B side and every album was bought and studied and worn out by the record players stylus. I even loved the band name which was an Oxymoron and as paradoxical as the songs themselves which were a mesmerizing blend of serenity and turmoil. Sean O Hagan’s peaceful, melodic instrumentation lulled the senses while the emotional incongruity of Cathals lyrics created the captivating tension.
Microdisney eventually fell apart in 1988 during one final disastrous show at the Dominion theatre in London. The concert was filmed and there is some footage of it on YouTube which shows a band in an absolute unmitigated, free fall meltdown. Cathal regretted the way the band had ended and would later say that “I acted like a complete dick” and “we had a bunker mentality”. The chance would come for the band to make amends and celebrate their legacy with dignity in 2018 when they were asked to reform and play a handful of shows in Dublin, London and their hometown of Cork, but that’s another story.
Cathal moved on and formed the blisteringly powerful, and even more confrontational Fatima Mansions. I saw them live in ‘91 and it was quite intense. Like Punk circa 1977 on steroids. This music was not for the faint hearted and could be truly angry with songs such as Viva Dead Ponies, Only Losers Take The Bus and Blues For Ceausescu. Yet there were always moments of great beauty with songs such as Pack Of Lies, The Day I lost Everything, Bishop Of Babel and the gorgeous Wilderness On Time. Back then as I listened as a young kid I knew this was the work of a lyrical genius and perhaps even a troubled soul. His lyrics made me think deeply, I tried to figure them out as I listened. They haunted me. Microdisney’s 1985 single Birthday Girl still haunts me to this day.
After all these years of loving the songs and voice of Cathal Coughlan I decided that I should get in touch with him during the Covid pandemic in October 2020 and see if we could write together. I have been lucky enough to work with some of the greatest artists and singers in the world, from the sublime Sia and people like Marc Almond who is another brilliant lyricist, but I had never worked with Cathal.
We exchanged emails, arranged a chat on Zoom and found we had much in common musically. We both loved Prefab Sprout, Scritti Politti, Robert Wyatt, Talk Talk etc. After our chat I said I would send him some music which I did. Cathal loved it and got to working on it straight away. What he sent back was gorgeous, haunting and as thought provoking as ever. He made my piano chords even more strange, sad, melancholy, romantic and mournful. I told him how much I loved it and he was pleased.
We arranged another catch up on Zoom and had a wonderful, hour long conversation about the music we loved and where we could go next with the songwriting. He told me that he had greatly enjoyed our conversation and I felt the same. It was inspiring. We both loved Talk Talk, especially their album Spirit Of Eden, so I said I would do something with the kind of vibe of Talk Talk’s sublime 1991 single I believe In You. A song both Cathal and I thought was fantastic.
I wrote the new piece of music, sent it to him and he loved it. He said he already had ideas for it and as soon as he was back from a holiday in Wales he would get the lyric finished and put a vocal down and send me the files. He did that and I was once again thrilled and inspired with what I was hearing. I told him that I thought his voice had never sounded better on these two songs we’d written and that I loved the film noir atmosphere of the new lyrics
We had planned to write a third song in the new year of 2022 so that we could make what we were doing ‘a thing’. An ep would make it more than a single, but less daunting than an album, for now anyway. I loved his words and I loved his latest solo album entitled Song Of Co Aklan. He was on form and back to his melodic and lyrical best. I couldn’t wait to write the next song together.
He emailed me in January 2022 and asked if I was still amenable to the idea of working on a third song. I started getting piano chords and ideas together ready to send to him, but in early February he emailed one final time to say that it would have to wait. He apologized for the delay which blows me away when I now think about what he was dealing with at that time.
Life is precious and the connections we make with one another even more so. Cathal passed away on May the 18th 2022 after a long illness and left a void in my musical heart. He was such a great thinker. He made me think everytime I heard one of his songs. It’s hard to lose great thinkers when they seem so few and far between.
We never got the chance to finish the third song, but the two songs we did write and record together I still cherish. I wish I could call him up and tell him how great I think they are.
Thank you Cathal, for the lyrical inspiration.