INXS Manager Responds To TV Series Backlash

Over the past two weekends, the Channel Seven miniseries Never Tear Us Apart has helped the Australian public reignite a long held love for the legendary rock band INXS, sending them back to the top of the charts and back into the minds and hearts of many. But, for manager Chris Murphy, it's the culmination of years of hard work.

“We've been strategising it for two years; people call me and say 'oh my god, look at this!' but it's two years of hard labour – we don't do anything without a strategy and without a plan. One of the plans was to put an album back to number one and have two or three albums in the top ten.

“It all feels good; people say 'are you going to have a rest now?' and I laugh, I've got to do this in every country in the world now. We haven't really set anything up in other markets as yet; we wanted to use this as our springboard.

“All we really had to do was find an avenue to get the music and the band's story – particularly the history of Michael and everything – in one place, and hopefully the job would be done.”

Murphy played a very active role in the development of the series, he was officially listed as a producer but, as he alludes to in his new book Murphy, threw himself into the show at all stages of its creation. While the renewed success of the band he managed for so long was one of the ultimate goals, the other was a portrayal of frontman Michael Hutchence that was respectful and dignified.

“Finally I got to see the reinvigoration of Michael and his death being dealt with in a proper way, rather than the way the media took it on a world basis. [They] tried to create it into the sleaziest way possible – though the final report was it was suicide, everyone forgot about that and just took the sleazy side. It's a shame because there's a lot of children involved; his child, my children, the band's children – it was pretty hard for all these kids to grow up under that cloud.”

Not everyone agreed with the way Never Tear Us Apart portrayed Hutchence and his passing, the frontman's half-sister Tina calling it “a complete fabrication of our family” on commercial radio on Monday morning.

“I didn't sleep very well on Sunday night, probably had a few too many nips too often, and I woke up in the morning feeling very cloudy and the PR people said I had about 15,000 radio interviews to do,” Murphy says of hearing Tina Hutchence's recent comments for the first time. “On one of the radio interviews the whole thing had just broken with the talking to her and I lost it a bit – I think they reported me as the foul-mouthed ex-manager. I thought 'shit, man, what are you doing?' but then I thought, 'Well that's me and that's how I felt'.”

Murphy and Tina Hutchence haven't seen eye-to-eye on projects relating to Michael for some time now. The manager indicates something of a disrespect of the band and himself in her unwillingness work with them before announcing proposed new projects.

“Tina has approached me… she has been trying to make movies about her brother,” he says. “I don't know what expertise she has in making movies, what her expertise is in the entertainment business, but when she keeps asking me for the music rights I keep saying 'Tina, I don't think it's relevant.'

“If Tina maybe had contacted me before making announcements in the press that she's running off doing films or she's doing this and she's doing that and, as she seems to do, act like a loose cannon, without any thought to the band members – this is their music, you can't just run out and publicly say you're gonna do this.

“Instead of being interested and sending some nice emails saying 'Chris this is amazing that you're back and I can see what you're doing with the band' or 'I've read that your major priority is restoring Michael's dignity and having a good story to finally show his daughter Tiger, we as a family appreciate that'. Maybe I could have handled the whole thing. I don't know how I would handle someone trying to jump on a glory moment and take the gloss off her brother.

“Does she just not know that? Does she not know that her half-brother, Michael – I don't know how much time they ever spent together, a lot of band members have said 'I don't remember seeing her around us when we were growing up, I never saw her' – to come out and take Michael's moment is pretty tacky.”

Murphy says this isn't the first time Tina has grabbed the limelight while INXS and her sibling have been the subject of media attention.

“It's similar to the anniversary of Michael's death back in 2012. INXS had just made the hardest decision in their life, after 33 years they decided to retire from touring, that was a big decision, a hard one, an emotional one. We were working on the TV series, which we were to potentially announce on the 17th of December, all of a sudden on the anniversary of Michael's death, Tina and her associate – apparently he won't talk to her anymore – went out and started doing radio interviews on the 15^th anniversary of Michael's death, saying 'We're going to make the ultimate Michael film'.

The phone started ringing off the hook for me, I said 'this is just disgusting that anyone would use the 15th anniversary as a platform, I wouldn't do that in a million years. Number two, I hope they're making Charlie Chaplin movies', people would say 'What's a Charlie Chaplin movie?' and I said 'It's silent, because there ain't gonna be any music.' I might not do everything with the right mannerisms, I mightn't speak properly, but I try to operate with a level of integrity.

In the end, Murphy is upset that the comments of Michael's half-sister were given credence when he believed the country should simply be celebrating the career of the band.

“I can understand Channel Nine doing what they did on A Current Affair, we seem to have reached this dog-eat-dog thing on television, but I was a bit surprised with some of the radio networks. We gave them all of INXS' time and they actually gave her a platform, I wish everyone had said 'shut the fuck up and get out of here, please, leave us alone. We're having a great moment with one of our greatest artistic treasures ever created.'”

As well as INXS commitments, Murphy has finally published a book about his life and career. Murphy tells the story of a man who lost his father at a young age, went to work not long after and faced myriad battles to get what he so ruthlessly wanted.

“I keep getting nervous about looking like a show off,” Murphy says of finally deciding to release the book after years of being asked. “The night before this book went to the printer I was staying up trying to proofread some of the chapters and I nearly rang my partner Louis Calleja and said 'I can't do it. I just really can't do it' but Louis was great and kept saying 'it's a great story and hopefully it'll be aspirational to young people and old people.' I just wanted it to be a good read.”

When we say he published the book, we mean it; this is CM Murphy after all. Rather than succumb to the pressures of an outside publisher, Murphy released it through his own Murphy Media Academy imprint.

“I learnt a lot about the book publishing industry,” he says. “I had every book publisher in Australian ringing me last year saying 'we want it', but all they really wanted was a 'do tell' book and to call it INXS And The Man or something. I wanted to be in control of the creative process, which we were, and then at the last minute we considered putting it with a publisher but realistically I didn't want to cheapen it.”

Murphy: The Making Of CM Murphy is out now through Murphy Media Academy.