Irish rockers U2 and Australia's INXS were at the top of their respective musical games throughout the eighties and nineties, giving shared fans close to 20 albums split between the two during that time, each featuring some of the group's biggest hits.
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In his new book Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story available now via Apple News, U2 frontman Bono discusses his close friendship with INXS’s late singer, Michael Hutchence, before his untimely passing in 1997, while also laying out the tragic reason he eventually decided to cut ties.
The U.K.'s The Daily Mail cites an excerpt from Bono's book which touches on the singer and his wife since 1982, activist Ali Hewson, both sharing a close friendship with INXS singer Hutchence and his partner during the early nineties, Paula Yates. However, as he reveals, a decision was made to disconnect after the latter couple began to spiral "down the vortex of a recreational drug use that had become hard work for everyone, especially their family, especially the younger ones," he says. "As their behaviour changed, our friendship became strained and we grew uncomfortable during their visits," Bono adds.
Bono says the whole thing came crumbling down in 1996 when he was "so wigged out" by Hutchence and Yates' drug use, he declined their invitation to be godparents to their new daughter, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence Geldof. This apparently ended their friendship altogether.
Michael Hutchence was found by a maid in his Sydney, AUS hotel room of an apparent suicide on November 22 the following year. Paula Yates passed away from a heroin overdose in 2000.
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Bono is currently taking Surrender on the road for a 14-city tour to support its release. For more information visit, surrendermemoir.com.
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