INXSFinding the inspiration for a song can be as difficult as writing the lyric, penning the music, or arranging it so it’ll actually be well-received by the public.
Songs can often take on a life of their own or find themselves disguised to protect the guilty, but some were actually inspired by real life people.
INXS – Suicide Blonde (1990)
The unexpected relationship between INXS’ poetry-reading heartthrob Michael Huthchence and suburban pop princess Kylie Minogue went down badly with INXS’s manager Chris Murphy, who guarded the band’s brand and image and later shouted “Michael, you make it so hard for me!”
But the relationship did yield one of their biggest hits. The hairdresser on the set of Minogue’s 1989 movie The Delinquents blonded her hair for the movie premiere, and explained that people who “dyed” by their own hands were called “suicide blonde”. She passed the phrase on to Hutchence.
Painters & Dockers – Basia (1984)
Australia’s first female music TV presenter, Basia Bonkowski, became a cult hero in the 1980s among late night music fans.
Her knowledge and platform on SBS (Rock Around The World and Continental Drift) allowed her to showcase exotic overseas music that was ignored on other music TV shows.
Outrageous but fun-loving Melbourne band Painters & Dockers gave a shout-out on Basia, with a fist-in-the-air chant and fanboy lines as “she’s the best thing on TV”, "with the multi-coloured hair and multi-cultured stare” and "B she's so beautiful, A articulate ...”.
Bonkowski, also a writer and producer, passed from leukaemia in September 2022.
Robert Forster – From Ghost Town (2008)
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On The Evangelist, Robert Forster bid farewell via From Ghost Town to Grant McLennan, his partner in rhyme in The Go-Betweens after meeting at The University of Queensland in 1976.
McLennan went to have a nap before a house-warming party on May 6th, 2006, and never woke up. Their mutual friends sent notes to Forster on his passing. Lines like “It's all different now" made it into the song.
The Triffids – Jack Brabham (1988)
Jack Brabham was the title of an early Triffids cassette, with 50 pressings sold at two Perth shows. It was after the legendary Australian-born international racing driver champion who was renowned for a fast-paced lifestyle.
Both the band and the celebrity hailed from West Australia. The WA suburb of Brabham was named after him.
5 Seconds Of Summer – Older (2022)
Lead singer of 5SOS Luke Hemmings wrote this for his wife Sierra Deaton, a former singer songwriter (Alex & Sierra between 2013 and 2016) about growing old together. Both had started off in their living room as a tribute to ‘50s love songs. Deaton sings on the track.
Australian Crawl – Errol (1981)
Tasmanian-born Errol Flynn bounded into Hollywood during its Golden Era and signed on as a swashbuckling legend. He also had a reputation as a hellraiser, with drinking binges, partners of all sexes, charges of statutory rape of two 17-year girls on his boat Sirocco, and was even said to be a Nazi spy.
Australian Crawl guitarist Guy McDonough was fascinated with his biography. It was no surprise he wrote an ode to the adventurer (with James Reyne) and the song appeared on Crawl’s Sirocco album.
“Guy was a larrikin,” recounted his brother Bill, a former drummer with Australian Crawl. “He’d go out on a limb, do something dangerous.”
Inspired by Flynn’s crazy adventures on Sirocco, the brothers decided on a similar escapade. They bought a 50-footer in Bali, with the idea of sailing across the Indian Ocean to Africa, going up the coast to the Suez Canal, and ending up in the Mediterranean.
Alas, they got marooned on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, and lost all their clothes and money. It was a closed territory, so the McDonoughs got deported, and had to beg their mother to wire them money.
Courtney Barnett – Pedestrian At Best (2015)
Speculation on social media will have you believe that Courtney Barnett’s Pedestrian At Best from her first album Sometimes I Sit And Think And Sometimes I Just Sit is about the perverse celebrity cult surrounding Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love.
But Barnett insists she was actually writing about herself, and her awkward coping with growing international fame.
The Paradise Motel – German Girl (1996)
The esoteric alienated feel of The Paradise Motel’s German Girl stems from the fact it’s about the unsolved disappearance of German tourist Nancy Grunwaldt.
The 26 year old had, on March 12th, 1993, rented a red Road Chief Marauder mountain bike and was last seen on the Tasman Highway.
The police believe she was either murdered or hit by a motorist who then disposed of the body.
The song evokes the fear and loneliness she must have felt. As late as 2023, the case was still being investigated, with the reward upped to $500,000 from $30,000.
TISM – (He'll Never Be An) Ol' Man River (1995)
Satirical band TISM had their own response to the death of actor River Phoenix. It came with two sleeve covers. One was a mock-up of River’s gravestone. The other had an assortment of pills with the opening line emblazoned, "I'm on the drug that killed River Phoenix."
Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea, a friend of the actor, was so chapped he threatened “to kill” TISM and the DJ who broadcast the track on triple j.
The Dingoes – Aaron (1974)
Aaron Sherritt was an associate of Victoria’s Ned Kelly Gang, a childhood friend of its member Joe Byrne. He became a police informer, and was shot by Byrne when he tried to lure the outlaws into a trap.
Rather than specifically dealing with his character, the country-rock band The Dingoes (who were managed in the US by The Rolling Stones’ tour manager, Peter Rudge) looked at the dual psychology of a bushranger and informer, the fear and paranoia of continually being on the run from both sides.
Christine Anu – Cos I’m Free (2001)
This is about Christine Anu’s hero, athlete Cathy Freeman. Anu was living in London and homesick, so she decided to trip over to Seville in Spain to watch her win the world championship. The TV cameras zoomed in on Freeman’s new tattoo on her triceps, ‘Cos I’m Free’.
Seeing that, Anu says, “was a goosebump moment”. Right then she began writing the song, later meeting up with Freeman in London. “She's so inspiring—her focus, how hard she trains, all that she's achieved.”
The Go-Betweens – Lee Remick (1978)
It was early days for The Go-Betweens. For what was to be their first single, 20-year old Robert Forster told the Courier Mail: “I wanted to write a love song. But I wasn’t in love with anyone. So I just projected it to this screen goddess.”
Remick emerged in the 1950s in Hollywood, making her name in Days Of Wine And Roses, The Long Hot Summer, and Anatomy Of A Murder.
Forster met her in Sydney a decade later when she was a guest on TV’s The Mike Walsh Show. They got on “pleasantly”, he said, until Walsh started reading out the goofy lyrics on national TV causing him no end of humiliation.
Dragon – April Sun In Cuba (1977)
Dragon keyboard player Paul Hewson, who co-wrote the song with singer Marc Hunter, was a serious chess follower.
He was reading a book on chess master Bobby Fischer when he came across an incident when Fischer famously lost a tournament in Cuba blaming the sun in his eye.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Tupelo (1985)
Tupelo is a masterful biblical rewrite of the night Elvis Presley was born during a heavy storm in Tupelo, Mississippi, losing his twin Jesse Garon, recharging the location via the blues of John Lee Hooker and Leadbelly, Cave’s own role and attraction to outsiders, the theatrics of the coming of a new King, and how Presley lost his sexiness and relevance towards the end.
Pauline Pantsdown – I Don't Like It (1999)
Comedian, activist and actor Simon Hunt transformed into drag queen Pauline Pantsdown, and came up with I Don't Like It.
It sent up the rightwing whinging of Pauline Hanson and sampling her more idiotic statements. It went top 10 and became a staple on triple j. Hanson threatened to sue the ABC. You think her beef with the ABC only started this year?
Cold Chisel – Ita (1980)
Initially when the Ita Buttrose-inspired Ita emerged on Cold Chisel’s third album East, it was because her establishment status – editor of Cleo and Australian Women’s Weekly and later Ten’s morning show Studio 10 – was everything that the band stood against.
“I believe, I believe, in what she says/Yes I do/I believe, I believe, at the end of the day/Her magazine'll get me through.”
However, Buttrose later revealed a different account arose when she and the band met up for a photo opportunity in 2011. When she interviewed Jimmy Barnes about one of his books, he reportedly told her, “The boys used to fantasise about you!”
Norman Gunston – Normdrum (1980)
Norman Gunston was the dorky creation of actor and comedian Garry McDonald who had his own TV show collaring international celebrities.
He also turned into a rock star. gleefully spoofing everything from the ABBA phenomenon to the punk movement with I Might Be A Punk But I Love You Baby.
Normdrum, the B-side of The Kiss Army, is an insane sendup of Ian “Molly” Meldrum’s blubbering Humdrum gossip segment on ABC-TV show Countdown with Gunston (badly) singing hits of the day, intertwined with Molly’s infamous punch-up with Boz Scaggs.
“What’s the point of having all this power if you can’t use it to wreck people’s careers?” “Molly” yelps at one time. Funny thing, Meldrum and Gunston were at that time managed by the same executive.
Hilltop Hoods – Cosby Sweater (2014)
Adelaide hip hop trio Hilltop Hoods’ were first inspired by a photo of the Notorious B.I.G. wearing the garishly coloured Coogi Sweater, an Australian brand founded in 1969 and which had a popular run in the ‘80s and early ‘90s.
They opted to title their song Cosby Sweater referencing the bright jumpers worn by since-disgraced comedian Bill Cosby on TV’s The Cosby Show. The track, which was a top 5 hit with a riff inspired by The Wimple Winch’s Save My Soul, also name-checked Tom Cruise, Christina Aguilera, and chess player Bobby Fischer.
However the band soon distanced themselves from the track, after Cosby was found guilty of sexually assaulting numerous women after drugging them.
Additionally, fans kept asking them – and which they heatedly denied – if the song was about the urban slang for the Cosby Sweater, by which lovers ate colourful breakfast cereals like Fruit Loops, Fruity Pebbles, Trix, and Boo Berry, and then vomiting it over each others’ chests.
This piece of content has been assisted by the Australian Government through Music Australia and Creative Australia, its arts funding and advisory body
