Need You Tonight (w Andrew Farriss of INXS) - Season 10 Premiere

(This transcript was created by little tiny baby robots, so it may not be fully accurate. A thousand pardons.)

Turn up the radio and sing along. It's time for another great song. This is the Great Song Podcast. Seasons greetings and welcome once again to the Great Song Podcast. I'm Rob Alley I'm J.P. Moser and we are here to celebrate the greatest songs in modern music history. We're gonna tell you what makes 'em great, why we think they're awesome and why you should too.

J.P. how you doing today, man, man, I am doing fan fantastic. Oh, it's good to be back. Come on, season 10, season 10. Oh, it just feels good. Let's go. We're a kickstart in season 10 in grand fashion. Yes. Y'all know. We go epic on openers and we're going all '80s in August. Yeah. As we are '80s kids and maybe snow song is more '80s than our season 10 opener.

That is a hundred percent true. This song is it's the '80s and the future all at the same time. You know what I mean? I love that. I love that. Rob, tell him what song we're playing, BA who, and even who we're hanging out with at the end. Massive worldwide smash single by the band INXS. This is need you tonight.

SONG LYRICS:

Come over here

All you've got is this moment

Twenty-first century's yesterday

You can care all you want

Everybody does, yeah, that's okay

So slide over here and give me a moment

Your moves are so raw, I've got to let you know

I've got to let you know

You're one of my kind

I need you tonight

'Cause I'm not sleepin'

There's somethin' about you, girl

That makes me sweat

How do you feel? I'm lonely

What do you think? Can't think at all

What you gonna do? Gonna live my life

So slide over here and give me a moment

Your moves are so raw, I've got to let you know

I've got to let you know

You're one of my kind

I need you tonight

'Cause I'm not sleepin'

There's somethin' about you, girl

That makes me sweat

So how do you feel? I'm lonely

What do you think? Can't think at all

What you gonna do? Gonna live my life

How do you feel? I'm lonely

What do you think? Can't think at all

What you gonna do? Gonna live my life

So slide over here and give me a moment

Your moves are so raw, I've got to let you know

I've got to let you know

So slide over here and give me a moment

I've got to let you know, I've got to let you know

You're one of my kind

Good gracious. That is there's so much to dig into on this song. that is needy tonight by NS from the 1987 album kick written by Andrew Farriss and Michael Hutchins. We will be hanging out with Andrew Farriss of INXS at the end of this episode it's gonna be a rocking good times with an Australian accent.

It's gonna be amazing. One of these days, one of these days, we're gonna interview someone who is either from the UK, from Australia, Wales. Wales is part of the UK, I think anyway, from the UK, from Australia. And we're gonna try and fake an accent. I'm good to, I don't know if you will, but I've all, I've almost worked up the nerve to do it, to try and just see if I can to match with them.

Yeah. Or to just lay on like super Southern. No, no, no, not super Southern. We just wanna thank you for coming on the Great Song Podcast. no, I wanna see, I wanna see if I can. If I could get somebody who is not from the United States to reasonably believe that I might be from their country. Oh, there's no, they'd know it in a second.

a nanosecond, even though I might be thinking I'm doing really well, they'd be like, you're definitely a American. And I would be like, man, that's good. You got it. Let's go. Let's jump in. Nailed it. It's like my impressions. It's like most of my impressions we go, shock's pretty good. That's so good. And they were like, be like, okay, whatever.

All right. So anyway, that's need you tonight by INXS from the huge, huge 1987 album kick, it went to number one on the billboard hot 100 and the us cash box chart. And in top 10 in several other us charts went to number two in the UK, Canada, and Ireland. And number three in the band's native Australia and New Zealand, the song was so big.

It even charted on the billboard R and B slash hip hop chart reaching number 73 on the hip hop chart. Wow. This song went to that's insane. It was the number two billboard song for all of 1988. Number one was faith by George Michael, and it is the number 4 31 song on the billboard all time, 600 chart.

All right. All right. I didn't look up what was around it. I always do that. You always do that. I didn't look it up. I don't know what what's wrong with me. Let's gas. Let's guess it just edged out. Let's see. It just edged out something by Bobby, Darren. Okay. And I don't even know. And then, or like leader of the pack or something like that.

And then it just got beat by like lollipop by Indian reservation by the Raiders. There you go. Yeah. You know that one? Not Cherokee people Cherokee. Okay. I only know it because it's referenced in Indian outlaw by Tim McGraw mcg. That's right. It's good. Yeah. That's why I was trying to get a little older random.

Yeah. Okay. Cause that's the list it's pretty much over at random. Yes, it is very random. Okay. Let's do a few listening notes. We gotta go back. It was, I was saying this while it was playing, but it bears repeating. There are like four distinct sections to this song and it's not necessarily you go.

That's verse chorus bridge. Mm-hmm tag. It's like what? It's just, it just has sectioned parts and it doesn't really matter. The other part that I would think, you know, what it is is that I need you tonight. That's gotta be the chorus. Yeah. Cause that's the name of the song, right? Yeah. If they called it.

You're one of my kind, David, I don't know. You'd call it. You'd call it so many things. Yeah, it could. Right. And, but each, each section just feels like a, a fresh thing and it's its own. You go, oh, right. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like you anticipate sort of in coming and it's a relief when it gets there. And it's just, and obviously Michael Hutchinson's voice is he sings with so much confidence.

Mm-hmm , you know what I mean? You can only, you swag. He has swag. He has definitely swag. And it's like, he says what's the line he says, oh, your moves are so raw. I've got to let you know. You can only say something like that. If. If you are like two thousands hip hop artist, Uhhuh, you can say that otherwise you have to look and sound like Michael and act like Michael Hutchins, to be able to say that like to a woman to go, you know what girl your moves are just so raw.

I get slapped. I had to let you know. Yeah. It's only, only Michael Hutchins can get away with that. And a very few other people, we can't even say that to our wives without getting slapped, babe. I just wanted to tell you, your moves are so raw. , you're one of my kind, you know, nah, it's, it's the slap, but there you go.

Like, what are you doing? That's what we do for our, what are, are you trying something? What are you, what is go back to faking the Australian accent? Like, yeah. Okay. Let's first go back to the opening. Like just the groove of this song, man. Instantly recognizable. Yeah, you go that's needs tonight. Come over and it's not like.

It's not some special configuration of drum sounds. You know what I mean? And it's not some like rhythmic thing that only belongs to this song, but you know, it immediately, that's the drum loop from need you tonight, but it's. It's a kick drum and a, and a, like a rim, a rim shot, rim click kind of thing. It's not in the air to not Phil Collins.

You know that. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty good. That's okay. That's not been, that's not terrible. And it's a shaker. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like okay. But you instantly go, oh yeah. That's neat. You tonight. Yeah. I, it maybe it's the rhythm of the, of the like cross sticking. Yeah. That's the only thing that is like kind of nonstandard just the snare.

I mean, that's snare sound. Yes. That snare sound. Oh man. It's true that, yeah. I could put that snare sound in any song I record and be happy. Make it sound. Yeah, it'd be cooler. Yeah, for sure. Then you get this guitar riff. Are there any greater, I kind of talked over it, but are there any greater clean guitar riffs than this man?

They are few and far between. Yeah. If there are any, you know what I mean? You know, you'd have to go, you'd have to start making arguments for like, Jerry Reed. Yeah. You know what I mean? Good. Yeah. But that's not clean. It's not clean. Riff. It's kind of clean, I guess. I don't think of it as clean, but it probably is.

Yeah. Cause you don't play cuz we don't play clean, play it. We're freaking cranking up that. Yeah. Every night, turn off the boss D turn off the boss, DS one, bring me my middle zone.

But it's, you know, it's like first of all, if you're listening on headphones, which I recommend you hear that the first part is on the right side, it's actually played by, I believe two different guitars. And the first part is on the right side. The second part is on the left side and it's a, it, it is indicative of something this song does through the whole song.

The first part of it is a C major chord. Beep beep BA that means it's, that's what makes it major. That's an E. And you hear that BA BA bump and then the second part is C minor, which would be E flat, which yeah. E flat DC. Okay. So it's going bump, bump, bump then. Right. And this song is doing that through the whole, through the whole track.

You're hearing the sort of layering of the intermingling of major and minor through this whole track. Okay. So you're gonna hear it a lot. You're gonna hear it in the, in the verse, which has a, well, let's just keep going goddess. I change keys in my brains. Okay. So your baseline is don't don't okay. And that's one flat seven one.

Four flat three, four, it's a minor riff. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Right. Mm-hmm okay. But the synth part what's the, what that, what is the fifth part is a CMA cord. Really? Yes. Over a C minor RF over a C minor RFS or boom, boom, boom. Boom, boom, boom. Right. It's yeah, it's got that major. So let's take, let's take a listen.

Go. 21st century is this today? Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Rolling. Now it's in a space. Yeah, gap. So it can, it not laying over the, it's not rubbing over, you know, if directly, if it was over the E flat note of that, it would be gross dissonance. Yeah. But it's like, it's ah, it's in the space and the, the vocal melody is minor, right?

20 Verve is yesterday. That's minor, right? That's 4, 3, 4 34 through one. It ends on the one. Yeah. So it doesn't matter what you play in that space, but the whole, I need you to it's Verve. It's a very minor, that's a natural minor melody. That is a flat three. Flat seven flat six, like that's oh, wow.

Natural minor. Mm-hmm so like everything about the melody itself is minor mm-hmm and the riff is all minor except for the bam, bam, bam. Right. That part alone is major. And the synth cord is major. Yeah. It's a really, that's cool odd kind of thing, but it works. And obviously it's something that has never bothered anyone in the history of time.

No, nobody even talks about it. it's nice for talking about . So here's a great thing about the riff. Andrew Farriss wrote the riff while a cab was waiting to take him to the airport. Did you see this? I saw that. Yeah. Okay. So he, he and Michael Hutchins in his head. Yeah. He and Michael Hutchins had been sent to Hong Kong by their producer to write some additional music for the album to finish it off.

And on his way to the cab that was supposed to take him to the airport to go to Hong Kong. He gets this riff. And so the, the story goes that he tells the cab, just wait here, I'll be back in just a couple minutes, just hang out here an hour later after he goes to his hotel room, picks out the part, demos it on a little cassette player, you know, whatever.

Then he comes back and the cab's like, what the heck, bro? But I, I guess fairs running the whole time. Yeah. So whatever Cabi, just sitting in the air conditioner, but trying not to double park, but like so anyway, he wrote this, you know, what becomes like the signature riff of the band you know, on his way to the destination that they were supposed to go to write more music mm-hmm so it's kind of like, at that point, if it's you, do you still go.

I'm good. Yeah. Like you wonder cuz if, I guess he probably didn't maybe he did know immediately like, oh, this is it. This is what we're waiting for. Well then you, we still have just cuz you have the riff and the, you still gotta go get the other part. It's true. It's true. So I go, I run to that plane. Yeah.

Okay. And I'm like, I jump off the plane and I'm like, get, I got this. And I think if I recall correctly that the story goes that basically the song came together very quickly. Mm-hmm after that and it was, it was an E this one was an, is an easy song to write, I believe. Okay. So more listening notes.

Just in general, the, the base tone and sparseness of the base part. Okay. The base is so there's so much here and me a moment you moves us, Rob, like it's even the base drops out. I've got no bass, you know, thin bass. You know what I mean? Okay. Just so, I mean, there's, you could have, you could, you could have full meals in between baselines and some spots of this song, eat a sandwich, set it down.

It comes my other part. So tasty, the, the production is a whole, is both is both very sparse, but also very full and busy mm-hmm you know what I mean? There's always something going on. Yeah. Even there's a couple spots where you can just hear him kind of like. Pick sliding doing like a clean pick slide over his pickups where it's like, like that kind of thing.

Mm-hmm, just random stuff here and there, you know? But nothing ever gets in the way it all stays. Very cool. Yeah. It like, the whole thing has just got this sheen of just very cool. They don't interfere with each other in all that they're doing no in any way. That's what I'm saying. It's very busy, but there's a lot of space, both rhythmically and like sonically mm-hmm, , there's a lot, you know, there's a lot of space.

And then you get these great spots where, you know, Hutchinson's playing it cool for like the first half of the song. It's all,

you know, it's all that kind of stuff. I got to let you know, and then he. Lonely. Yeah, I'm lonely, right? He's like here, here I am. So rockstar I'm lonely.

We also get some distorted guitar in this section, double in the baseline. And it's back to and clean and cool. Yeah. You know, man, that's good. Like the only, the only guy cleaner and cooler than Michael Hutchins in this like decade of time period is Jake from California dreams. for real leather and loose man, James he's leather and loose.

Yeah. And Michael Hutchins is clean and cool. That's it. Right. I love it. There're two, there maybe two ends of the same spectrum. That's so good. That's shouts out to anybody who remembers Jay Anthony, Frank and who watched California dreams. We have talked, have we not talked for years about trying to get some of the one of California dream?

We know y'all listen every week. Brent gore, go ahead and shoot us text. That's right. Come on on. Yeah, we're here. Gwan anybody. We're we're in it. That's right. It's Kelly Packard. Oh man. We're just running through list. Let's just do all big California dreams fans over here. If anybody's wondering. Cause we're surf dudes with attitudes.

Y'all know that from Tennessee. That's us. Okay. Let's move on. Unless you got other notes on the song. I wanna talk about video for a minute. Yeah. Let's I'm glad that you said let's talk about the video. Okay. Because this song is MTV. Yeah. I remember this on MTV as much as any with the black and white to the color.

So please talk about the video. Okay. So the, the full video of the song combined need you tonight with mediate, which is the following track on the album which actually in some presses is listed as meditate. Not mediate has an expertise in there. Oh yeah. I didn't. Depending on the album pressing that you have And it, it combines live footage and animation.

The, the need you tonight portion, the animation was created by filming the band members, making photocopies of the footage and then pasting those photos back over the original footage. So it's kind of like it's kind of like rotoscoping where they film something live and then animate over the top of it.

But it's with photocopies instead of line drawings. Does that make sense? Yeah. So like, if you watch the video back, you go, oh, that's why it looks like a newspaper clipping when he's singing. So it's, it'll have the, like the live band in the background and then Hutchins will be up front or different, different shots, Andrew Farriss, that kind of thing.

And they'll, it'll, they'll sort of look like a, you know, paper it's because they're, they're, it's literally, they pasted frame by frame photocopies of the live footage. That's awesome. Back on top of the footage. So that's the unique sort of animated. The mediate video which immediately follows the, the, the full long form video is a tribute as our, a million other videos to Bob Dylan's, subterranean, homesick, blues.

We all know this sort of truth. I think they ask him about the cards on the interview. Yeah, I think we do. I think like what's his most memorable card or what the data is that's right. And it's, it's this thing where they're like lyrics and phrases on big cue cards, you know, that whoever's singing or the band they reveal as, as those lyrics come up, you know, during the song.

And so that is the, the nod there. In the, in the mediate portion of the video, if I had, if I had one hot take on this song, it would be that I don't want to hear mediate really a after need you tonight. Okay. I got no problem with mediate. I don't want to hear it after me. Need you tonight. At least not right away.

Okay. When mediate comes. For me, it's too close to the ending of need you tonight. Mm-hmm and the, the bare ending of need you tonight. Doesn't get to breathe. Yeah. Cause it ends like here's how it ends here. Moment.

You okay. And that's how I think, I think I, I think the air should just hang a little bit, but when mediate follows, it's like, okay, right there immediately that it kicks back into that groove. Mm-hmm and for me, I li I would like to let the song, you know, song, breathe, whatever. That's good. No, that's good.

Super nitpicky about a classic thing here. No, good. I, I don't. I understand, like, but it's cool. It's fine. But, and, and turns out that mediate was, it was a different song, but what happened was I can't remember. They, they were working through it or, or Andrew was playing through it for the producer or something.

And the, and the loop for need you tonight have to be playing in the background. And they just went, why don't we just, you know what I mean, kind of keep this it's almost becomes like a Coda or something, you know a post Lou, is that the word? Anyway, you know, whatever to you know, to need your reprise.

Yeah. Reprise almost in a way. Yeah. So anyway, very cool. Okay. So the video itself won five VMAs, including video of the year, for which it beat out both where the streets have no name. And I still haven't found what I'm looking for by you two, and Bon's still a bitter about that, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah.

And then here's, here's just a, a random thought about INXS. Yeah. Got me thinking about the Mount Rushmore of Australian music acts. And who that would probably be now INXS is definitely on it. And I don't know, like, I know we have Australian listeners, I don't know if you guys have an equivalent of like Mount Rushmore, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Maybe there's a, maybe there's a monument in Australia that has like six faces on it. And so when they make this list, it's six people or whatever, but for us, it's four, right. We we're over here in the states, we got them Mount Rushmore with four president's heads on it. And so we, we do these things in groups of four.

So I was trying to think who would be the Mount Rushmore of Australian musical acts. That might be a weird question to, to spring off the cuff. Yeah. I mean, my initial gut is minute work. Yeah. That's the, I mean, you could put Colin on there, right? Yeah. And then Crowded house. Maybe you gotta give ACD a spot spot DC.

Yeah. Right. You think crowded house would be on the Mount rush? More of Australian you ask Australians? Absolutely. Okay. I would think, I mean, I think I taught you talk about 'em all the time. Yeah. And obviously INXS I think would be. Yeah. So I think INXS ACDC or shoe ends. Yeah. Probably minute, probably minute work.

Right. Who's number four. And then without looking it up, I don't know this. I was gonna say, we're gonna have, we're gonna have to look it up and, and think, cause I feel like we've talked to some other people from Australia. Yeah. We have sure. Almost said Andrew Farriss, of course. Okay. So we paused here and looked up a few just to kind of refresh our brains.

So I'm gonna throw a few names at you and you just. Just now we start to think about, okay, so crowded house is what you're saying. And I'm saying probably minute work. Okay. But some of these really make their own argument. Kylie Mang, like not that huge over here, she had a moment, but like worldwide, huge.

See Olivia Newton, John, I didn't know the BGS were Australian. Oh, of course. BJ's forget it. BGS are on B's on that. B's are hundred percent on it. Maybe, maybe. Tell you, who's not making it. Even if we have to kick him off the Mount Rushmore as Savage garden, somebody tries throwing on me and Rob coming in.

Kidding. Yeah. We're throwing mm-hmm elbows and everything. I'm gonna I'm I bring him my own chisel. Yeah. I was gonna say, I'm gonna chisel his nose off. How about Keith urban an argument. Oh man. How did we not think about it? Argument could be made. Yeah, I, yeah, I think that's yeah. And if they're smart, they put him because they gain another fan base for their mountain visitors.

They're like, all these people from Nashville are gonna come visit the Mount Rushmore now that's because Keith's up there. See? Yeah. So there's I mean, there's some really interesting names on that list and some folks that I didn't know, even were Australian, Tommy Emmanuel. Okay. I didn't know that.

This list also lists flee is flee Australian. And I just didn't know. I've heard the guy talk a lot. Yeah, it's flee. I need seriously Australian listeners. Do you claim flee? this is, I'm totally unaware of this. If this is, if that's a thing or if that's just wrong. That's just wrong on this. What's the most UN Australian, like if somebody threw 'em on there, they're like, there's no way, right?

Like, yeah. Like Bruce Springsteen, Tracy Lawrence

yes. Good. Tracy Lawrence. Absolutely. Okay. Tracy, ain't me love Armen. Hey, all that man. Oh yes. Australia. Do you claim Traci? Lawrence . Hey. Okay. Is this a good place to stop and talk about some actual Australians? Yes, let's meet the band. Let's do it. Hey, let's meet the band. It's time to meet the band. Hey mama.

Let's meet the band. Let's meet the.

All right, guys, let's meet the band of INXS that were on this track. Lead vocals. We've talked about him already. Michael Hutchins. He was in a band called max Q. He acted in a movie called dogs in space. Okay. Everybody's favorite movie. He died in 1997 at age 37. I got this from Wikipedia, so I can't take credit for this Rob and Mr.

Mr. Perfect pitch could probably help or he was a baritone, his vocal range spanned from a base B one to a high tenor F sharp five. Okay. That's a pretty decent range. Yeah. So I thought that was kind of neat little, I don't know how they. I don't know how they keep that on record. Like, do you stretch 'em do you be like, okay, come hit the highest note you can.

I would just guess in his case that probably somebody went through the recorded works and said, this is the highest note he hits, and this is the lowest that's good. Cause that's like you, one of that's that's a G you'll one of right. So he, at least has, he goes down to that. It said he went to a, B B says, so there's no way he goes down to a B below that of cause that'd be an Okta below this note.

right. That would be, be below that. So maybe he does, maybe he gets super growly and maybe it's even some of it's with his spoken tone. Cuz a lot of times people will go lower with their spoken tone. They'll he'll go, you know, slide over here. You know, you get like the way does the way, the way I like that he slides here.

Yeah. Slide over here. Anyway. And then, and it said an F sharp five F sharp five. So I wonder cuz it's high note on this was which is a G a G. So that means, they're saying that he would have almost a step above that one note. No, no. An F sharp would be a half step under that. I'm saying of a whole, a whole Octa active above that.

If that's an F sharp five, I don't really know what, where the, what the numbers are on the keyboard, but that feels wrong to me either way. Both of what I'm saying is both Jacob Collier, is that right? That's right. Both of those notes feel wrong to me. Mm-hmm honestly based on what I Wiki. That's why I sure to say this came from Wikipedia so we've not fact checked.

Interesting. I'd like to. Okay. Tim Farriss guitars had to have, I like this. This is a neat fact. I wouldn't say I like it. It was a neat fact. He had to have surgery to remove an abnormal bone growth in his leg. And his brother, John has the same thing, Ted, the same thing too. So both really both of them had an abnormal bone growth in their leg.

Wow. So, great nickname for guitar player, the riff Meister or riff sheriff, the riff sheriff, the riff sheriff man. That's what I wanna be called. Dang it. If you're the riff sheriff, then I'm the riff deputy. I , I'm the Bardi five to Andy Griffith on guitar, man. I have never, I have never like been jealous of a nickname.

I don't think where I went that. Should I want that? Yeah. That's I wanna be the riff sheriff. He, they came up with that as live at Wimbley stadium Hutchins told him, play the F and RIF Timmy. And so after that he became the RIF sheriff. Okay. He's Verve. So I guess all you gotta do is play at Wimbley.

Yeah. And I'll just yell at you Rob play the riff and then, and we'll just see what, what nickname that burst for me out. That's right. He's very private and enjoys deep sea fishing and cricket. Can you name one other person off the top of your head that likes cricket? No. Cause I can't, I, I don't, I don't know nothing about cricket as much as we love baseball, you would think we would have a basic understanding of cricket, but I can't explain cricket at all.

No, nothing other than it's a really cheap phone. I know we're about to get sponsored by cricket phone cricket. Wireless. Yeah. That sounds kinda like our pod. We're kind of a cricket, wireless podcast. No, but they man, you could be like on the tower at cricket and they'd be like net service unavailable.

like I'm standing on your tower. I honestly, I think I know more about Quidditch than I do. I don't know what Quiddage is the fix, the dairy Potter sport. Is that the one where they ride on the broom? Yeah. And they throw the thing, they throw a waffle and there's a golden snitch and the snitch is worth a hundred points or 150 points or something.

And the, the waffle going through the hoop is worth 10. I literally know more about Quidditch than I do at cricket. I only know that little part because I've only seen one Harry Potter and it's Goble of fire. Okay. And I've seen it probably 42 times as every time I walk in, my wife is watching that movie and I'm like, it's the same one.

Is it Robert Patson? Is she a Robert Patson fan? Okay, here we go. On guitars also, Kirk ply saxophone backing vocals. So the S part and mediate I think is perfect. So go to minute 2 0 1. Here's some patients under groove. At its finest patients, patients is important. That's . I just want you guys to know we practice patients.

this is a perfect example of not overplaying so much with so little. You could keep that in that same concept of jokes if you want. So this is mediate. Yeah, this is the don't be fooled. Go to minute 2 0 1 around there.

I freaking love that. It's so like it's, it's warm. It's awesome.

It is very like relaxing. It sounds like what they play is you're leaving the aquarium. that's great. It's like make sure to stop by the gift shop. Pick up, pick up your inflatable whale. I don't know. They don't have whales anyway. You know what I'm talking about? That's good. That's good. I like that. On base, Gary, Gary BES.

There you go. Great, great name there. He wrote a tangle with your mind with Scott wildland for his solo project. He was a machine operator before INXS. I love pre stories about what people were before they were in monster musical. Things cause one day they're gonna be like that guy used to work for enterprise rent a car before he went off and that's conquered the world.

That's gonna be my, my story. So yeah, I love that. I love that about him. On drums and percussion, John Farriss, we already talked about his leg. Ben is chock full of fares, dude. That's gracious. Farriss is oops. It's like the cabin crunch. Oops, all berries band, all Farriss, all Farriss. He wrote and performed the song.

Never used to cry on the 1984 film. No small affair also producer of Richard Clapton and Jimi Barnes projects. Not to be confused with Eric Clapton and Dave Barnes on keyboard and guitars. Andrew Farriss. Yeah. Oh man. And I've got a segue. I know I did some talk in there, but I want a segue. Into Stu the genius with Farriss in mind.

Okay. So play the jingle. Here we go. Stu the genius Stu the genius Stu the genius. It's time to Stu the genius part. I take your part. I we're gonna play stump. The genius Farriss trivia. First stump, the genius of season 10. Here we go. That's right's. I was telling Rob beforehand, we've done these stuffto geniuses for a few seasons now.

So I have to dig deep into my barrel of creativity to pull out these, these stuffto geniuses. So I'm going Farriss. Okay. Since we're talking to Andrew Farriss. Okay. And I'm going, I'm shooting for 80% this season. Oh, okay. That's my overall 80% on Stump the genius. Okay. Let's see if he can start off. Good. So this is not, we're not really talking about Ferris Bueller.

Okay. But this is mid '80s, 86 Ferris Beuller. Yeah. And I wasn't sure if you've ever seen the movie, have you seen Ferris Bueller? So to my great shame, I think, okay. I think I saw when I was a kid. Okay. You're fine. But. You don't have to have seen the movie spotty test to do okay. On this trivia all because I'm gonna, I wasn't sure if you'd seen it and I wanna be semi far.

Okay. Because if I did a whole thing about the movie, that's not true. Yeah. Like everybody knows certain things about Farriss Steeler. So I'm gonna talk, I'm gonna ask you questions about the cast. Okay. Because it's chalk full of heavy hitters in the cast, and I'm gonna try to make 'em some of 'em will be true or false.

Anyway, here we go. The lead is played by Matthew Brodrick. He plays Farriss. Yes. Okay. He's okay. True or false. Is he the voice of the adult? Simba and the lion king? Oh, Simba, Simba. Uh, No. That is true. He, Matthew bro, Matthew Brodrick is the voice of adult Simba in lion king. Whoa. The kid from war games.

Inspector gadget. Yep. Wow. That guy. So, okay. You gotta get four for four here to keep your 80% going. So that just blew my mind. There you go. So there's your, your nugget of goodness there? Jonathan Taylor, Thomas as little Simba, Matthew, Matthew Broderick as adult Simba. He was way not cool enough. to be adult Simba, right?

I mean, that's kind of his deals. He, well, I guess in Farriss, Bueller, Farriss, Buer, he deals like he's cool, dude. Yeah. That's true on we go, Alan R who plays Cameron fry. Who's Farriss's best friend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's also the session a show. I love three fugitives. He's in twister. Okay. I got a twister question for you.

Okay. All right. Okay. If I ask you to name the most popular van Haen song from twister, it's humans being human being. Yeah. Okay. What van Haen song closes the twister soundtrack. That would be, I believe it's called fear. The wind respect, the wind, respect the wind. I don't know. That's a judgment, Paul that's I give you that one because it's wind related.

Sounds like vibe me instrumental. I love it. Respect. I was like is right. I don't getting credit for that. I know it's not chase the win. That's a Bible thing. Maybe my Bell's behind you. See my Bell's behind you. Okay. Ring for yourself. Boom. There you go. You can, you can, you can ring yourself on that one.

Here we go. Okay. So we're one for two Jennifer Gray who plays genie Butler. Who's his sister also plays baby and dirty dancing. Yeah. So her film debut was in a movie called reckless in 1984, starring Darrell Hannah. Okay. It had two tracks from a legendary '80s band, legendary '80s band. Okay.

All right. That would be.

INXS INXS. There you go. All right. Nailed it. Good job. Well played Rob on that one, two for three. Okay. We're cruising right along Charlie sheen. Okay. Plays the boyfriend of Jennifer Gray in this. Interesting fact. I wanna tell you real quick, he plays a guy on drugs, so to get that look, he stayed, he stayed up 48 hours straight before filming.

Okay. To get that. So I'm super surprised. He wasn't just like, I just did the drugs. I just did the drugs. Yeah, definitely later that became his message. That was his thing, but okay. Name the ABC show that he replaced Michael J. Fox on spin city. Spin city rant. Yes. Okay. If you get this one, you've gone. 80% percent say on.

Okay. Ben Stein. Who's the economics teacher. The classic Bickler Bickler Bickler is from this okay. Show. I loved win. Ben Stein's money. Great show. Do you remember who the co-host was? Jimi Jimi, Jimi, Jimi, Jimi, freaking Kimble. Well done. Rob. Good job. 80%. It's good. Start. Good. Start to the season. The side note.

I wanted me Sarah who played Sloane Peterson. Who's his girlfriend on there because I thought she was super hot at the time. but these were just better questions. Okay. Okay. Good. Good job. Do you remember after, after Ferris Bueller came out, they did a TV version. I, I don't remember that. It was, it was Farriss, Bueller.

I can't remember what the actual name of the show was day on. I don't, yeah, I don't think it was Ferris Bueller's day off, but I think it was maybe just Ferris Bueller, or maybe like Ferris Bueller. The adventure continues. I can't remember. I can see the guy that played him. Obviously. It was not Matthew Broderick.

I wanna say his name was like excuse me. I wanna say his name was like Charlie, something I can't remember. And then there was a competitive slash knockoff show. Right. You know how like one thing becomes popular. Sure. And they'll do you, you get your what's the oh gosh. What's the thing on, this is us, right?

You get, this is us. And then ABC comes out with a million, little things, little things. Yeah. That kind of thing felt. Yeah. And so the Ferris Bueller TV show starts, and I think it was Fox came out with Parker Lewis. Can't lose. Yeah. I remember that show Parker Lewis, right? Yeah. That was my jam. Okay. I like, I saw some Ferris Bueller, but Parker Lewis can't lose, hit me just right.

Yeah. And they were like synchronized watches and all this stuff. And they had the, the big guy that was like the bully, but he was like heart of gold. Anyway. So yeah, Parker Lewis can't lose is my knockoff like dollar, dollar store you know, Farriss, Bueller, Farriss, Bueller store. That's yeah, we're a, that's good.

I like that. We're going to and we're gonna get the guys from the band yellow that do the, okay. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's a, a personal goal. We just set for ourselves right now. That's right. So there we'll get those guys. Okay. All right. Let's talk a little bit about this legendary album kick. Absolutely.

this is written entirely by the duo of Andrew Farriss and Michael Hutchins. Which was the first time the that just the two of them had been the, the so writers. Yeah. And which there's some controversy in that if you guys wanna watch the movie, never tear us apart. Mm-hmm , it's really good. It's a little, I mean, it's the INXS story, so yeah.

Don't watch it with young eyes or anything, but it it's good. It's really good. It, it digs into that a little bit. Yeah. But basically they, they paid no attention to what was going on in pop music at the time. Like they. Didn't want to be influenced by anything that was happening, you know Farriss said anyone can write a song that sounds contemporary.

We wanted our songs to sound like the future. And I think in the case of kick, they absolutely succeeded. Like, absolutely. This sounds like it's, it's still sounds fresh is what I'm saying. And long production. Yeah, yeah. Alone. It all still hits exactly as good as it did. You know, when this came out we'll talk about this too, with Andrew Farriss, but when the album was initially played for executives at Atlantic records in New York city, the executives rejected the album and they actually offered the band a million dollars to just start over, just wipe it clean and start over.

I'm so glad they didn't. No kid. Can you imagine says no to a million dollars to just start over? Yeah. That's belief in product. Go make some more music. And we'll give you a million dollars. Yeah. Yeah. But the band's manager, Chris Murphy worked around the labels distaste by sending need you tonight to college radio, where it picked up steam quickly and convinced Atlantic to release the album in its original form.

Yeah. So what happens if you, if you take that million, you make another album and you still have that. Do you, can you use that later in the future? Right. Yeah. If surely you have to throw it away, release it. Like you could rerecord it, it remixes and B sides, you know, that kind thing. And I'm not a hundred percent sure if, if they wanted them to write new songs or if they wanted them to reproduce, redo the same song.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Either way. I'm glad they didn't and stuck to their guns. Yeah, dude. It's I mean, What, what we would've missed out on from this album, you know, had that happened for charting singles. I mean, new sensation never tear us apart devil inside. Let's say that again because let's go down this, let's go down this album.

Yeah. You've got new sensation. Listen to this. Never tear us apart. Come on.

Tell me 1975. Didn't say that's some guitar gotta at least get to the second.

You. So much energy, like they write guitar parts that are good to sing over and with. Yeah. Yeah. It's not just a cool guitar part for the sake of a good guitar part. It's a guitar part that you wanna sing with. True. Yes. Very. It, it, it allows. A lot of space for the rest of the song. Yes, absolutely. Then you get, so the first of all, you got new sensation devil inside, need you tonight mediate back to back on this album.

It opens with guns in the sky, and then you've got those four back to back. So you've got devil inside right after new sensation, which this is maybe peak cool. Michael Hutchins. Like this is the chorus of this he's he was not, this is in all kinds of movies. The thing about, oh yeah, you kid. Yes, dude. The.

Cool thing about Michael Hutchins was he never felt the need. And I guess Farriss as well, when they were writing the hooks and stuff, never felt the need to like blow you away by singing so high Uhhuh. It wasn't about like even powerful, whatever he's just Hutchins is just gonna get up in your ear. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Devil sad devil. Like, yeah. He's not gonna Steve Perry. You, yeah. He's not gonna, they're not gonna Def Lepard you with huge vocals. Yeah. But yeah, it's just crazy. He, he can say something like soft it's it all just came from. Cool. He just oozed cool dude. Yeah. I mean, I think he could be like, could you pass the salt and be like, oh my God, no, you know what he would say?

Could you slide it over? Oh yeah. Well done. Give me the . My, my, my food is so raw. It's getting cold. okay. Uhmy on Ry. We're so stupid. All right. Why do people keep letting us do this guys? Wait, love this. Andrew Farriss is listening to this episode about to say, Hey, I wonder what these guys did with my interview.

And he's like, who are these guys? He's idiots. Why have you people let us do this for, for nine full seasons. Okay. Alright. Nevertheless, we persist. And then you get on put STR on, right? I'm gonna order that every time I go to Nixon's deli and then you, you also have ni Verve terrace apart, mystify. I mean, it's just crazy.

All the, all the stuff that's on that album, just so good. You know, such full stuff. It's like a funk rock fusion, taking elements from. previous styles from their previous albums and just sort of putting, putting 'em together. Previous albums like the swing and listen, like thieves, the album itself went to number three on the billboard 200, it went to number nine in the UK.

Number one in Austria, Canada, and New Zealand. It was a number four album for all of 1988 in the us. And the number one album in Australia for the entire year. Not a huge surprise there. I should have looked up what the top three albums in the us was curious if you, I almost always looked that stuff up and I, I didn't it is sold 20 plus million albums, 10 million of those coming within the first two years of release.

It is six times platinum in the us alone. Rolling stone readers, ranked it the number three album of all of 1988. And I do have the two above it. Okay. If you wanna take a guess, oh man. 88, 88. 88. I'll tell you one of 'em is you two, so that'll be Joshua tree. No, that's before then this would be is rattling.

Hum. Rattling home is number one recorded at sun studios in Memphis. Okay. So they still have the same mic there. Okay. Set up. So, yeah. Okay. Number two is, might be a bit of a surprise, but genre help me uh, genre. I'll say, I'll say folk. Oh yeah. I don't know exactly how to classify this artist. I'm confused then.

I don't singer songwriter. Singer songwriter. Okay. From 88 88 singer song. Is it Paul Simon? No, that I don't know. It's Tracy Chapman. Wow. How about that? Tracy Chapman with fast car and gimme one reason that's a good album. Yeah. Yeah. Never gimme one reason. I don't, I don't think it was on that album. It's not that album later.

Yeah. Fast, fast car. And oh, come on. What's the other one? I have it upstairs. I can go look at it. Dang it. Anyway, Tracy Chapman number two. Okay. There are a few covers of this song slash like, Interpolations let's do. I have one. Do you have any that you wanna hit? No. Okay. All right. So let's do this one is actually called one of my kind and it is by rogue traders.

This is a 2003, essentially a remix of need you tonight. It went to number one in the Australian dance and club charts. Number 10 overall in Australia, Rob hates this kind of music. So I do typically I like this. It's good. It's a creative remix that doesn't get on my nerves. Okay.

Let me dig into it a little bit here.

Let up his vocal part a little bit.

You're right. Generally speaking, I do hate this kind of stuff. I'm not a big club dance guy.

It's got a cool couple cool breakdowns in it.

Okay. So there's that one. And that is actually called one one of my kind and then there's this one, which is kind of a whole other thing. But I don't know if you know this song or not. This is break my heart by Dupa. Okay. Have you heard this? Oh, no. Okay. So this is technically, I've always been Barron.

Hutchins are creditors co-writers because the guitar riff from need you tonight is interpolated into this song. Okay. But interpolation in this context is when you use an established melody or a musical element, but rather than sample it directly, you rerecord it. Okay. Okay. So they didn't take it. They had somebody play it.

So they, and in this case they actually it's actually the vocal melody. Oh. So like vocal, she's gonna guitar sing the guitar line. It's cool. Here comes you

kinda like her. Yeah. That's

if I would've known that here comes, I would've stayed at. Because I was doing better along. I've heard this when you said hello. I know there was the elevator.

I like the harmony part behind too. Yeah, it's nice. Hey, that's good. Almost makes it sound like a like a, a harmonizer. Yeah. You know, local harmonizer, anything. Yeah. I like that now. Apparent. This is what they say. Apparently the similarity was not intentional what, and wasn't noticed until they were like listening back to the track or at least the demo Uhhuh.

But the writing and publishing credits to NS were apparently a, like, we better cover our backside. So don't, didn't realize we did this. We, we just did it. And then later went, oh crap. That's that INXS thing. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm well, that's cool that they caught that early. Yeah. Or I'll surely somebody heard that and was like, oh, come on guys.

Yeah. Y'all didn't do that on purpose. There's legal teams like dude. Yes, exactly. Like you're take a lesson from, from Rob thick. Yeah. And just exactly give it, yeah. Save yourself the legal fees and just do this. Now. Everybody wins. You're gonna make tons of money, right? Yes, exactly. The move apparently also was one that Dupa kind of dug because the name of the album was already established as future nostalgia, which Ooh, how about that?

It's perfectly right. And so that really played right into that kind of like. Oh, this a blend. You know what I mean? Future Nossal is perfect for that. That's a great album title by way. Really, truly good job doing Lippo on that. Absolutely. So and there's a, I think I know the same legal team that caught that's like, we should call it this, pay that guy, some money.

We've talked about this. I know you and I have talked about this. We've had conversations with Dave Barnes, I think off air about this, about the sort of new wave of songs that are using nostalgia songs to bring popularity to their own songs. Mm-hmm in a, in a way that they're like, not even trying to be slick about it.

Mm-hmm what song was it? You sent me a song yesterday. Yeah. That's the new Cole Swindell song is basically heads Carolina tells California by Jodi Messina. Yeah. It's like it. Same hook. He even uses a part of the song at the end. Yeah. Like takes it and puts it in there. It's not subtle at all. Yeah.

But that is a brilliant play and I'm like, surely. Yeah, I heard it. I never heard it. And I was. I'm on I'm I'm having to, I'm having to just give into it. Mm-hmm because I know it's gonna happen more and more and more. And we've talked before about my disdain for like the the what's almost said Chris, rock the kid rock all summer long, where he uses they sweet home, sweet home, Alabama and WWS of London.

And he's literally singing about sweet home Alabama in the chorus. Same. I don't like that. It's kinda lazy. It's like, come up with your own idea. That's my quit living in that. But that's my problem with it's brilliant. And it's so small because it immediately hooks people. Mm-hmm it attaches your song to something people already love.

You know what I mean? It's it's, it's the closes. I just thought of this. It's the closest you can get to making music, scratch and sniff. You know what I mean? Yeah. It it's like, it's like, this smells like something I already love. You know what I mean? I love strawberries. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it's, that's great.

That's what I'm gonna start calling that, that, that move it's it's the scratch and sniff. Maybe we'll do a whole, you know, we do themed months. Maybe we'll do a scratch of snip, but people will be like, what the crap are you talking about? That's instead of stickers, we'll send everybody scratching. Snips.

Yeah. I don't know what we would smell like. Nevermind. It just sounds disgusting. Scratch and sniff month coming soon on the Great Song Podcast. That's disgusting. All right. I think I'm about tapped. I'm good. Let's let's hang out with why y'all really came, which is to hear Andrew famous, Andrew Farriss, a freaking to that right now. We'll be back to tuck you in at the end, but first stop what you're doing, right. And go to Great Song Podcast on all the platforms, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, give us a follow say, Hey, say hi, tell us where you're listening from. And make sure you join the Facebook group, great songs and the great people who love them greatly.

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We're gonna talk to Andrew Farriss right now, and we'll be back at the end of tuck you in. This is the Great Song Podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, as promised we are here with Andrew Farriss of iINXS other things. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us today on the Great Song Podcast. Hey, how are you, Phil?

You good? Fantastic. Excellent. Yes. Let's start here. We're gonna, we're gonna move quickly, but I, I gotta know this. I understand that INXS was originally called the Farriss brothers and then the vegetables. Do you think you would've been as successful? Had you the world as the vegetables? Oh, probably.

Yeah, actually I think it's, it was just a natural course of events that we would turn into vegetables getting into the entertainment industry in the first place. But I think, I think it was more that you know, there was three brothers and I I'm the middle one and I got an older brother, Tim and my name's Andrew, my younger brother's name was John.

Still are, as far as I know. But you know, the course of events took it that, you know, the more successful we got in Australia in the early years of the band, you know, someone had suggested the name in to us. And at first we were what, especially it was actually really clever. And then when the name stuck and it sort of suited what we were doing, and I think, you know, Michael Hutchins you know, back then he, he liked that.

Cause it wasn't about us brothers, but you understand in the years that we were doing what we were doing you'd you bands come out before us, you know, like the debut brothers and brothers Johnson, the brothers, brothers, brothers thing . And so it felt right by the, you know, by the '80s to, to have that kinda name anyway, you know where the vegetables came in was actually a phrase I come up with.

Because, you know, we, we were sort living on nothing playing nine shows a week. And, you know, we, we, we literally had just about enough money to buy fruit and vegetables, not much else. And and we laughing about it one day and we wrote a song. You, we, the vegetables because become living, you know, but then again, worse, you could eat worse things than that, you know?

Sure. absolutely. According to a biography about Michael Gary Morris of midnight oil, tried to convince you all to become a Christian band at some point, is that a, a legitimate story? And did you guys seriously consider it. Well, yeah, I mean, that actually happened. And, you know, with respect to Gary, I don't think he meant badly.

I think he was more thinking, you know, of, of, of say how, you know, you two for example, had platformed themselves on that sort of moral ground, you know? Yeah. But ironically, you know, I, I already was a Christian land, you know, I respect alls and belief systems as long as they don't hurt other people, you know?

Sure. But, but I think, I, I think for Gary you know, Morris, I think it was more, he was trying to think of a marketing sort of strategy, but it had a kind of funny ending where Gary started talking about, I dunno, what we were talking about in the end, spaceships, you know, aliens or something. And we were like, Hey Gary, it's been really good talking.

We gotta go, man.

That's great. You know that was the part really. I wasn't the Christian part. It was that part, you know, for me anyway. Well, I remember, I remember growing up a young kid in the '80s and, and we are in, we are in Nashville. We both grew up in Tennessee and in, in a pretty strict Christian bubble here in the south, Southeastern us.

And you know, I don't know if you're aware of this, but INXS was one of the sort of bogeymen for the you know, for the for the maybe religious, right. I guess you would say it was like Bonjovi INXS Judas priest, Aussie Osborne, all got sort of like. Breathed in the same breath as like don't dare listen, or you might not go to heaven, you know?

So I remember I was telling J.P.. I remember when I was a kid, like you would have to like avert your eyes from the, from the INXS advertisements, or you might, they might make you think something bad. So I didn't know if you're aware of that, but like, it was kind of the opposite. So the irony that you so are a Christian and then that you were, you know, maybe considering becoming Christian band was pretty ironic to us.

Yeah. Well that that's when you put it, like, that makes total sense. it? Doesn't doesn't, you know, but right. But, but I was gonna say that I dunno what we were grouped with when we first started, we used to, when we first used to come to the United States in three, we started seriously tour, which we did for many years in states and many other countries.

We, we ended up working in over 50 countries at a van during our touring career and recording clear. But I was gonna say that actually I was just in Nashville. And and I was tracking some, some of my new solo country music stuff that I've been doing. And it was funny. I was standing around with the musicians and we're talking and somehow that, you know, I dunno how, you know, we got into some sort of conversation about, you know, the afterlife and I said, well, this is heaven.

It's kind cool. You know, around playing music know. Yeah. What I mean, like, you know, as bad as really, I mean, you know, you got family close by and then, then everything's good. Right. And so I hope, you know, hope. Hopefully if I ever get to heaven, there'll be great band there and I can continue making some music, you know, that'd be nice.

That great. Well, I know you mentioned your solo project, so I'll jump there real quick and then we'll go. I love all the stars, your mind, so good. Acoustic guitar sound great. I like playing in front of the fire as well. Did you come up with the video? Here's a reason I'm asking is this is where you take into your cool hat phase.

I think you originally started your cool hat phase on don't change back in the that's maybe my favorite song of yours back. Right. And then all the stars are mine. There's the hat. Good mama. Bad. There's the hat again? Love, love makes the world falls in the same category. As all the stars are mine, but no hat.

So how involved are you in the videos and did that start your cool hat phase? Okay. Yeah. You know, we, you know, well, first of all, I, I have to say that in, in, in my solar work that I'm doing now is Andrew, Sarah. My wife's Marlina you know, Sarah is seriously involved in, in, in a lot of the art and direction and video, which I'm now doing on my own.

And I hand it to her, you know, cause you know, I, I think I know what it looks like. And she says to, you're not gonna wear that.

That's good for I that, you know, need some, you know, some what, what do you call reflection or whatever direction, but the thing is direction. Right, right, right. But I think it's not even that, but in the early, yeah. We, I mean, we made hundreds of videos, we shot a full, you know, we, we shot a major motion.

Which was actually shown in theaters across the us. And other countries recently for the Wembley stadium show that we filmed, we didn't video it. We filmed it. Wow. And it was a serious production thing. Check that out. That's our Wembley stadium concert, 1991. But the thing is that a lot of the video idea with the hats and all that, I just thought I'd like to wear the hat mainly.

Cause we used to play outdoors in a lot of festivals. I didn't wanna get sunburn. I mean, that's mainly I was growing cause I, yeah, during most of my, you know, adult, I I've always wanted to be and ended up in agriculture. So music isn't the only thing I do. I'm a farmer. I believe it or not. Wow. And you know, I've got a farm I've yeah.

I've owned two farms. Second one. Where my wife and my family and I live is sort of, kind of in the middle of nowhere in Australia, but we love living there. Most Australians live on the but Sly from Ohio and there's a lot of farm land and still left around there. And I just hope to God concrete it and build buildings all over it, you know, we need to, you know, no, the I saw, I saw where you saw the Beatles play at age five.

Do you remember it? And if so, what's your most, either vivid audio or visual moment of that show? Well, you know, complete shock is a good place to start well, because that's a long story, but. But for the forest brothers, our father, Dennis, who sadly passed away as is our mother, but, you know, he used to be in the Navy on aircraft carries.

And then he, when he finished, that was around more or finished. He came down to met. My mother was Australian. And but he hadn't down to go back and see his parents or our grandparents. So he put us on a ship. So for three weeks, we, we, we set out on this ship and that been so seasick in my life, winds up in London and those years people didn't fly around the world.

You didn't all. And so we got there and some other Australians, we were in town, our family was there, turned by a skirt and television show. Well, we're sitting there, my brother's nine and we're sitting in the front row, the Beatles walk out. We like, it was pretty cool. Each other, like, see, this happens to everybody.

Right. You know, and I can still remember more, more than anything, even though I was really young. Everyone was really excited in the room. I can remember the television cameras, the big gray television camera going back and forth. They were more interesting in some ways than the band, because I thought they

thing was kind sensory overload. To be honest with you, look at, I remember saying, you know, with my older brother drove dad one day, dad did that actually happen? Did we really do that? He said, oh yeah, you were there. And afterwards you went and talked. That's awesome, dude. That's awesome. Wow. Well, we've we've we stylistically, INXS reached as several, you know, several bags from new wave to funk to straight ahead rock.

And obviously the, it seems like everybody, we talked to the Beatles influenced, you know, everybody pretty heavily from that era who were some other acts that you listened to growing up that sort of helped you develop that mixed, you know, musical vocabulary, right? That's a really good question.

Well, you know, unlike where modern, especially Ash radio has gone all around what really all around the world, many ways, it it's segregates different genres of music, right? Sure. You've got Rocky, you got country got AIS, you know, whatever it is. And it's R B hiphop, it's all chopped up, you know, but in the years when we were kids, especially, you know, living in Western Australia, which is one of the most remote, I think it is the most remote place in the world that I know of geographically.

They only had like the radio stations and were kids, they would play every kind of music, you know, and they would play everything from country to classical, to, you know, pops to whatever and all that kind of stuff. And, you know whatever it was you know, could be instrumentals, could be, could be a little bit of early rock or whatever it was, you know, some Elvis or Johnny Cash, all that kind stuff.

And I, I grew up thinking that all music was like that all around the world as a kid, you know? Yeah. It was only as I got old, cause we traveled more and we became more world aware. I realized, no, that's not true that you do this. You gotta do that. You gotta like this. You that's one of the reasons why, you know, as, as a, probably the main songwriter from my bang, Michael never played an instrument.

He was great vocal, great with a writer. But he never played an instrument. So it felt to me a lot of the time for our albums and the creative part of it, to think of new, come up with different kind of styles or whatever. And I've always been like that. You know, I'm a fan of many different types of music, you know, including country and funk and rock and, and whatever it is, hiphop, you know, some and B old school Motown, you know, there's lots of things I really love, but I'll draw influences from wherever I can, you know, something that excites me, I think will interest other people.

Yeah. It's funny to hear you mention all the different genres, because I was gonna ask you like where you would categorize your solo stuff. I, you know, I had it country. Is it full? Is it Western? It's kind of alternative the slide guitar kind of takes it to another level on what a categorize this. So it's, it's so neat to hear you talk about how your upbringing was so versatile, so that makes perfect sense on the way your stuff comes out.

I think that's, that's great. If go ahead. I, I, I appreciate that. Cause I think if I can use to add that I. You know, I feel like a stranger in a strange land in some ways what I'm doing now with country, because to me, you know, you know, I, it sounds funny, but I live in the country, I'm a farmer. That's what I actually do in the background.

And I find it really interesting cuz to me, a lot of modern is more about suburbs yeah. Where people live. Whereas, whereas, you know, whereas in the very early, as a country, it was more about folk music. And people who, you know, perhaps do working out on the land and a lot of them were Cowboys, big fans of Cowboys music, you know, like you know, you often hear will Nelson used to talk about, he wants be a cowboy.

Well, I guess a modern cowboy, you know, wearing, wearing a baseball wear a t-shirts have changed. It's good. I like that a lot. Right. You know, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. We're we're probably gonna focus our episode. Like we talked about you know, on your solo stuff, as well as mainly heavy on, on, INXS stuff and probably gonna cover need you tonight.

Mediate. What need you tonight runs into the tribute to Bob Dylan's homesick blues with a cue card. What's your most memorable card or what's the special date on those cards? Interesting. I go, the, my memory's pretty good, but not that good. You, I maybe try not to, you know, just try to. You gotta forgive and move on or, or, you know, it's look, you know, I dunno what you believe, but you know, you carry enough pain.

It'll hurt you, you know, it's good, man. That's timely word. Yeah. Well, good. It's been, it's been published that Atlantic records wanted the band to ditch the kick album entirely and basically record a do over. And that of course would, was a massive misjudgment on their end. What was it about the album that Atlantic didn't like, if you recall,

I, I don't think Dan stood our album chick. You know, what's weird too, is that. Rather than me, you know, giving those guys grief for not understanding our album, you know? I think radio and, and, and the public got our album. Okay. Mm-hmm that's okay. But it could have been a real, real tragedy for as a, if we'd actually gone rerecorded and done other weird things.

I don't think that would've been good at all. I think the INXS, the record producer, Chris Thomas and Bob clear mountain who mixed it and mixed many other huge acts, such as Springsteen, rolling stone, so many other great, great artists. And actually Springsteen covered don't change. When he came down to Australia.

I'd sort of throw that in meant to say that before, but the main thing with. As an album. It's interesting because at the time we didn't, we were, we were never a critical darling, you know, like we were never a band that people go, you have to hear these guys. They're just awesome. Can't get, we used to have people say things like in the British media where they're crap and Australia, you you know, we, we, we used to get it all, you know, not in a good way.

Yeah. And I think it was a lot of, it was people didn't really understand what we were doing. Sometimes that's all we crap.

We're trying sometimes not just to different different sake. We had a lot of influences, a band as a band that weren't straight eights. You know what I mean? Like in the era we came out of, it was very fashionable to be punk and, and kinda, you know, alternative and, and heavy, you know, in that sense. But we had other influences the background of our lives, like punk and, and, and more poppy stuff.

And, and, and combining, like I said before, different stars of music and that I think is what really confused the record label. Yeah, it's good. We I watched never tear us apart the other day and I loved it. So I, I learned, I don't know how you feel about the way they put that together, whether that's a true adaptation or how involved you were in that.

I know they used a quote from you at the end, which was wonderful, but I, I learned a lot of things INXS about by watching that. And I know you've been so kind with your time, Andrew, thank you so much. We'll, we'll be respectful of your time. We had a board full of questions, but we'll save 'em for round two, but we do have one question that we ask everybody.

You got time for one more. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. Last, so you're on tour either with you know, you do a, an INXS retouring or you do a solo tour. You go into a gas station. What is your gas station? Snack food of choice. And while you're thinking of it, I'll tell you mine. I would always get a, a candy bar.

I'd get a three muske tears bar. My mom would say, you could have any candy bar you want. And that's the one I pick. I pick a, a three muske tears bar. It's the most ounces. What's your what's your gas station? Snack. Food of choice. Okay. Would have to be Lay's barbecue crisps. Oh, it's delicious choice.

There we go. Yeah, we, we, we don't have 'em down under and but you know, look, I hope I'm happy to revisit part two of this. It's been great talking you guys, and uh, you know, I really appreciate your support and I hope like my new music and and I'll keep putting it out if people keep wanting it. So off we go.

Absolutely. Thanks. Andrew's been a lot of fun. All right. Take care, Charles. Thanks. Bye-bye see you. Cheers. This is the Great Song Podcast. And that was Andrew Farriss of INXS. Oh man. To kick off season 10 of the Great Song Podcast. It is hard to imagine the world before this show started. I know, right?

10 seasons ago, there was no internet. I remember it. Well, I remember it. Well, my family had just settled in the west and I was, they forwarded the Creek. Yeah. I forwarded the Creek. We tried to caulk the wagon and floated across, but little Richie caught tit Darian, Dary. Didn't make it. And you know, I, I sent, J.P.

a telegram from my saloon. That's awesome. And I said, I have this idea for something called a podcast. What do you think? And he's sitting back. Should I bring my banjo? Yeah. He sent me back a telegram on horse. Three weeks later, I got the response. What's a podcast that's and it took, you know, it took a long time to get it going, but it's seriously, five years, 10 seasons, man.

I can't believe this is it's huge stakes to Mickey Dolans, Lars Alrich, Jerry Rafferty.

Oh man. We just need to do we need to do one episode. Or at least part of a, a best of episode, that's just all the bits about random celebrities and musicians that we've done. What's doing all and all. No, we can't do all apologies by Nivan as I hate it, but we should do all of our apologies to the people that we've given false credit.

That's right. Yes. Man, it's been great if you're just joining us for the first time. Thank you so much for hopping on board. The Great Song Podcast. If you're gonna go back and start with, if you're yeah. If you're just joining us, those jokes are funny. Go back and listen to that's right? The 200 episodes before this that's right.

You can't help. I, I know it's like not entirely cool to sort of live in inside jokes, but over as as many times as we've done this, now, we, you can't help at some and play ride the top play. Ronnie James DIA. Holy. Oh, man. Okay. So season ten's gonna be amazing. August is gonna be amazing. We've got four straight number one hits from the '80s, man with, with interviews with artists who are, you know part of making this song.

So it, it's gonna be a lot of fun here in '80s, August at the Great Song Podcast. So we hope you'll stick around. If you're new, just keep listening. If you wanna go back, maybe start with episode like 15 or 16. Give us through before. Go couple seasons. Yeah. Before you go, we start at the beginning.

Before you go all the way back to number one, I recommend going back retroactively through season or like backwards. That's start and go backwards, start and go backwards. That's good. So that's what I would tell people. That way you ease back into, into the seasons. Yeah. And then pick up some bonus episodes along the way.

And then, then you get to hear the origin of the jokes of the jokes after you've already heard the punchlines that's right, right. And you go, oh, that's why that's funny. It's the yeah. It's the star wars model, right? You go, oh, that's how that happened. Yeah. All right. We'll see you guys next week on another fantastic episode.

'80s August continues. Season 10. Continues on the Great Song Podcast until then. I'm Rob. I am J.P. Go listen to some music.