But it wasn’t all sex. Michael found time for other vices as well. Drink featured largely and he experimented with every drug known to man, including ecstasy, cocaine and heroin. Now he had the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll lifestyle – and by the end of the 1980s, a decade now regarded generally as an era of conspicuous indulgence, he had Kylie, too. The world watched agog as he set about transforming her into a sex symbol.
‘It’s something no one ever expected – me as well,’ said Kylie at the time. ‘I’d love to be a fly on the wall and hear people’s conversations about us. Obviously it is a difficult situation. We’re both working in a similar field. It’s very demanding, it’s difficult. But it’s also good.’
Michael lost no time in indulging in his new hobby. Drink, drugs, kinky sex – nothing was too much for his new amour. Clean-living Kylie tried to resist the drugs, but didn’t last long and was soon giving interviews about her new recreational habits. ‘It can be fun and it can be dangerous,’ she said. ‘I’m all for kids not taking drugs. But I don’t want to say to them “You should never try anything.”’ This provoked absolute uproar at the time: any pop star who is unwise enough to enter into the big drugs debate tends to get blasted from all sides. In this case the outrage was even greater because the comments were coming from little Kylie, no less, who so many people still saw as Charlene from Neighbours.
Kylie didn’t care; she was revelling in her new life. Next she posed for a set of nude pictures, pictures she herself commissioned from photographer Grant Matthews. ‘I guess she wanted to do it,’ said a bemused Grant. ‘You’re not 22 for ever.’ As a matter of fact there was subsequently some discussion about those pictures appearing in a book, which would have had some similarities to Madonna’s later book Sex. They never did, though and have not been published to this day.
When Kylie attended the Sydney premiere of The Delinquents with Hutchence in December 1989, the change in her appearance – in fact, her lifestyle – was evident for all to see. Arriving in a 1950s Cadillac, the couple caused a storm as they emerged from the car. Gone were the long curly locks of Kylie’s previous incarnation: in its place was a platinum blonde bob (which later turned out to be a wig). Kylie wore a dress that just about made it down over her hips: Michael was equally outrageously clad in a waistcoat – no shirt – floral trousers and heavy workmen’s boots. And he was happy to speak openly to the press about his new relationship.
‘We obviously have a great affection for each other,’ he said. ‘We have a really good time.’ And was there marriage in the air? ‘There are no plans to get married,’ said Michael hastily. ‘We are simply enjoying ourselves. I am just happy for Kylie to know the premiere went so very well. Kylie is obviously to be taken very seriously as an actress from now on’ – which either goes to show that Michael hadn’t actually seen the film or that he had a much better sense of humour than he is usually credited with. Or that love really is blind, after all.
And Michael’s family approved of his new choice of girlfriend, as well. ‘She’s a great kid,’ said his father, Kelland. ‘They seem very much in love.’ And this from his mother Patricia: ‘I think she’s a very cute little girl – she’s pretty smart. There’s no doubt he’s in love.’
Kylie had had two relationships before Hutchence, but this one was clearly something else. Tales abounded of their wild lifestyle, their days beginning in the evening, encompassing half the nightclubs of South-East Asia and not winding down until well into the following morning. Handcuffs were found in Kylie’s luggage by outraged airport officials and the two were said to have had sex just about everywhere, including on that aeroplane mentioned earlier. ‘A friend of Michael’s repeated a story that Michael had told him and I think it was out of place for him to be talking about it,’ said a rather embarrassed Kylie some years later. ‘There was some truth to it but his story wasn’t exactly correct.’
Nick Egan also spoke openly about their drug use, which could be dangerous in more ways than one, as became apparent when he recalled one extremely risky occasion that Michael enjoyed talking about. ‘He liked to tell the story of when he was out with Kylie in the country,’ he said. ‘They had taken liquid ecstasy with a guy who was some hooray In England who was a marksman, and Kylie was sniffing a rose. The guy shot the rose from under her nose so it blew up in her face. Michael got a certain thrill and fear from that.’
The Australian author Dino Scatena also alleges that Kylie eventually decided to try drugs in her new life. ‘It took a while to convince Kylie that a bit of dope or an ecstasy tablet wouldn’t kill her,’ he wrote. ‘Kylie soon relented. The pair would become regular early-morning fixtures in a handful of Sydney’s trendiest nightclubs. On some outings Kylie would look the worse for wear, stumbling downstairs, crashing out on lounges.’
Then there were rumours that the two had attended a massage parlour in Hong Kong together, followed by worldwide shock when Kylie suggested she could become a mother without getting married first. ‘Yes, I do want to become a mum,’ she announced. ‘But I might well go ahead and have kids without being a wife!’ Her fans reeled. Where had the sweet little TV star who threatened no one gone? ‘I’ve been thinking that I don’t want to reach 25 and think, Oh God, what happened to me since I was a teenager? Where has it all gone?’ she explained. ‘I want to enjoy myself as well. It’s good to shock people. I like to do what people don’t expect.’
She was certainly managing that. It was hardly surprising, though, looking back on her behaviour, that Kylie was breaking out of the confines of her old life. Over the previous couple of years, she’d been giving numerous interviews about how exhausted she was and how much she needed a rest; now here was Mr Indulgence in person, telling her to stop working and come out to play. (Not that she ever stopped altogether – even throughout her time with Michael, Kylie’s career remained supremely important to her.)
It’s worth bearing in mind that she had never had a teenage rebellion. When everyone else was smoking behind the bike sheds and getting told off for coming home late, sensible little Kylie was working. And working. And working … So in the long run, it was probably just as well for her mental well-being that Kylie was finally breaking out. She herself was the first to acknowledge a distinct change in her behaviour. ‘Michael has influenced me tremendously,’ she confessed at the time. ‘He encourages me to be outrageous and just to go for it. He has given me a lot of confidence. Before we met I was very reserved but now I’m not. I have changed an incredible amount in the last year and grown up a lot. Much of that is down to Michael.’
But while you can take the girl out of the suburbs, you can’t take the suburbs out of the girl. Kylie threw a party for Michael’s thirtieth birthday: 100 friends gathered in a photographer’s studio and feasted on champagne and home-baked chocolate cake, while Kylie led the pack in a rousing rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’, with Dannii beating time on a drum. The couple then drove off on Michael’s Harley Davidson to another party at his apartment where it is fair to assume that something a little stronger than cake was on the menu.
Michael sometimes seemed as bemused by the relationship as everyone else. ‘I used to be a Kylie knocker, hated what she stood for, never watched Neighbours,’ he said in one interview (during which the interviewer noted he sniffed a lot and said very little). ‘Let’s just say I had a change of heart.’
But unlike so many others at the time, Michael saw a different Kylie (some might say he created a different Kylie) from the bubbly, boring little Charlene. ‘She’s very underestimated,’ he argued. ‘She’s not at all the wimpish personality people think she is. She’s very intelligent and deep, knows how to take care of business and works hard. I admire her for all the crap she’s gone through and come out of it so strong. We’re an unlikely couple, that’s for sure.
‘We’re not exactly the same sort of people, it’s true. Kylie comes from a different side of the tracks. She’s lived a fairly cocooned sort of life. I’m influencing her, I guess
. I’ve been around one way and another, most people have who are getting on for 30. Kylie is – or was – a straight girl.’
‘He was totally charismatic and intelligent, witty and funny and filthy,’ Kylie reflected fondly years later. ‘But what was amazing was that he really let me be myself. He just loved me unconditionally. It was consistent to the end. I remember doing a secret warm-up gig in a small club. I was nervous but he was so proud of me. He took a back seat and let me shine.’
And for quite a while, the odd couple’s relationship flourished. Next on the agenda were plans, sadly never realised, for a £1-million TV movie in which Hutchence would play a priest who falls for the charms of the young Kylie – the very role that Kylie had talked about a couple of years earlier. ‘I’m serious,’ said Michael to universal guffaws. ‘The script is just about ready and we hope to start shooting in the second half of next year. We’re both excited about it.’
And he wrote a song for her – ‘Suicide Blonde’. ‘Kylie dyed her hair this colour she called suicide blonde,’ he recalled later. ‘She said, “I’m going to go suicide blonde today.” I think she was thinking of people like Marilyn Monroe and I thought it was a good name.’ That’s not all he thought was good about the petite one. ‘She’s the best fuck in the world,’ he announced breezily on another occasion.
But even with a prize like Kylie on his arm, Michael was unable to curb his womanising ways. Rumours that he was being unfaithful while on tour filtered back to the petite chanteuse, followed by gossip that he was seeing not one but three other women – two old flames in the shape of Cathy Lee and model Rosanna Klitzner and the Home and Away actress Justine Clarke. Kylie was not amused and the liaison came to an abrupt, if temporary, end in May 1990. ‘We no longer have a relationship,’ she snapped. For now, that was it. Kylie really was in love and it wasn’t long before rumours of a split were denied and the relationship was back on the road again. It seemed that she just could not resist the extraordinary new vistas Michael had opened up to her.
‘I was 21 when I started dating Michael and I’ve always said it was like I had blinkers on and he took them off,’ said Kylie. ‘We went out for about 18 months but it seemed a lot longer. It was very intense and wonderful and it drove my manager crazy because Michael and I used to meet all over the place. I used to get my manager to shimmy things along so I could go to Frankfurt one weekend then fly off to Hong Kong … Michael was such an amazingly charismatic, smart, well-read, wild poetic man. The press loved all that, of course, and it’s easier if you’re seeing someone who’s used to it. If you see someone who isn’t, it’s a lot trickier. I have to put up with that media stuff, but my friends and family and boyfriend shouldn’t.’
Her boyfriend at that time certainly used to get irritated by press attention. Gallingly for someone who had always occupied the limelight by himself, he found he was now getting as much attention for his relationship with Kylie as he was for his music, if not more, and that worse still, Kylie seemed to be even more popular with the media than he was. However, Michael tried to see the lighter side. ‘I’m going to rename the band Mr Kylie Minogue and four other guys,’ he said lightheartedly. Truth be told, the band was no longer the force in music it had once been. INXS’s classic rock sound was as synonymous with the late 1980s as Kylie’s Charlene. Like Kylie, Michael was also making a transition in the way he was perceived: from rock musician to legendary lover.
Still, he was not always so sanguine about the interest that existed in him purely as a result of his relationship with Kylie. ‘It’s horrible when people come over and they don’t even acknowledge you,’ he said. ‘I now see it from a completely different point of view and I sympathise with anyone I’ve been with in the past. You get lots of people talking to you and then looking over your shoulder at Kylie. Maybe they’re straining to catch a glimpse of her because she’s so small.’
However, despite numerous rumours that the couple had just – or were about to – tie the knot, the relationship finally came to an end in February 1991. Michael’s womanising was becoming an increasing source of distress to Kylie, and he was increasingly linked to two other women: Patsy Kensit, who had publicly shoved her hand down his trousers in order to see if it was true that he had what Paula Yates later referred to as the Taj Mahal of crotches, and the beautiful 19-year-old Danish model Helena Christensen. The split happened when INXS were on tour: ironically, Michael ended it in just the manner Kylie had adopted with Jason Donovan – namely, on the phone. And Kylie had been doing a fair bit of telephoning herself, which was causing an increasing amount of friction.
‘She often had trouble getting through to his hotel,’ said a friend at the time. ‘Then he’d be either out or half asleep and not in the mood. She usually ended up getting angry and the phone calls turned into bitter arguments. In the end Mike told her it was best if they called it a day. She’s heartbroken because she still really loves the guy. Kylie’s devastated, but at least she’s not alone now. She’s been seeing her old Neighbours pals like Jason Donovan.’
An INXS spokesman confirmed the split. ‘Their conversations usually ended up with her accusing him of having a good time while she was all alone feeling miserable. Mike thought it was the best for the both of them. He still thinks the world of Kylie but he doesn’t want to be responsible for causing her any more pain.’
But there were also rumours that Kylie herself had been out with other men, not least with the actor Marcus Graham who, confusingly, had been previously attached to Nicole Kidman, who went on to become the new Mrs Tom Cruise. Photographer Steve Dupont claimed to have taken snaps of the couple kissing in Sydney’s Freezer nightclub, before two heavies, ‘put an arm round my throat,’ swore at him and told him to hand the film over. ‘Before I could answer, they threw me against a wall and ripped the film out,’ he recalled.
There is no doubt, though, that Kylie was devastated by the end of the relationship. ‘I was so hurt when we broke up because I was very much in love with him,’ she said sadly some years later. ‘I spent a good part of the time crying my heart out.’
That was not the full story. Michael had never been good at ending his relationships outright and he allowed the situation to drift with Kylie for some time before finally bringing it to an end. Many people believe that Kylie has never really gotten over it and she was certainly left bewildered by the fact that it had all come to an end. ‘It was one of those situations where you’re not too sure why you broke up, but you did. We broke up on the phone. I flew to Manhattan so we could talk. He was very strange at that point and I remember him being somewhere that I’d never seen him before. He was just very distressed. I don’t know what he’d been taking or what he’d really been going through, but he was not together.’ In fact, Michael had already been with Helena Christensen for three months at this point.
Very unusually for him, Michael felt guilty about the way he’d treated Kylie, even telling his father Kelland, ‘I let her down.’ And there is no sign that Kylie is over it to this day, no matter how many boyfriends she’s had since then. ‘He was my first great love and it caused great heartbreak when we split up,’ she says. ‘I think he eventually wondered why it happened. We had a good thing and I’m sure he never ever wanted to hurt me. Maybe he indulged himself in too many projects, whether it be seducing women or reading poetry, taking drugs or staying in the most exquisite hotels. He was the first person I had been extremely close to who has died. But I’m sure he’s laughing, looking down now, knowing that he’s still teaching me.’
Kylie was devastated by Michael’s death in November 1997. She was, however, able to joke about his funeral. ‘There was always a lot of talk about Michael and his wicked ways,’ she says. ‘The bad boy of rock and all that. He was very Byronesque and I remember smiling at his funeral because as the coffin came out the thunder and rain started right on cue. You couldn’t have scripted it better. He was just a very funny, educated, down-to-earth, hedonistic man. In truth I’m not sure th
at he corrupted me … but let’s just say that he opened my eyes to the ways of the world that I had not yet experienced. I would not have missed our relationship for anything and I miss him.’
Kylie still believes they are in touch. ‘I don’t know where he is most of the time unless he visits,’ she says. ‘I haven’t for a little while, but I do and I did on the morning of his funeral. I’ve never gone into it in detail because it’s too personal but I had a real amazing experience – just a feeling and a reaction in my body. I felt he was saying, “It’s OK.” It wasn’t goodbye. It was comforting. I feel really lucky and thankful when he comes by.’
7
After He’d Gone
Kylie Minogue’s life can be divided into two halves: Before Michael and After Michael. BM Kylie was a cute little girl next door; AM she became the world’s leading sex kitten, a role that, despite the fact that she’s nearing her mid-thirties, she still plays to this day. These days she can laugh at it – ‘My so-called sexiness is more like a Carry On film,’ she insists – but in the months after Michael left, Kylie didn’t much feel like laughing at anything.
Life had to go on, though, and so Kylie did what she had always done: she threw herself into her work. And gradually, as it must, the pain began to diminish and Kylie found herself, to her own enormous astonishment, lusted after the world over. Much has been made in recent years of Kylie’s relationship with hot pants, particularly the gold pair she wore in the video for ‘Spinning Around’. More of those hot pants – much more – later. But it was actually back then, right at the beginning of the 1990s, that Kylie began making the most of her pertest asset. She posed wearing nothing but a pair of pink ostrich hot pants – her second pair, after donning some of the silver Lycra variety for ‘Better The Devil You Know’ a year earlier – and looked absolutely magnificent.
Kylie Queen of the World Page 7
