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John Aizlewood's rating
Reader rating
INXS: JD Fortune is the new Hutchence
When Michael Hutchence died in 1997, the remaining five members of INXS vowed to carry on. The problem, of course, was that Hutchence was the voice, spirit and sex of INXS.
Australian legend Jimmy Barnes and, of all people, Terence Trent D'Arby, were road-tested but found wanting. Then these desperate men hit on an idea: they would find Hutchence's successor via American reality television and a programme called RockStar: INXS.
The winner, somehow fittingly, was a Canadian Elvis Presley impersonator, JD Fortune, more than a decade younger than each of his new employers. Unsurprisingly, the album Switch couldn't be more of a dog if each copy came with a gratis bag of Bonio.
So, while Fortune was hired to keep band and brand rolling rather than make terrific records, things hardly augured well for his British debut. Indeed, the opening moments confirmed the worst: a curtain dropped to find the new kid in town sitting cross-legged on the drum riser, camply smoking a cigarette, stroking his comedy facial hair and wearing a jacket, shirt and tie. The former Jason Bennison might as well have unfurled a banner saying I AM NOT MICHAEL HUTCHENCE.
The audience would have been within their rights to unfurl one of their own reading AND YOU NEVER WILL BE.
The band promptly launched into Suicide Blonde, drowning out Fortune's weedy vocals. So far, so Gareth Gates.
And then, for the next 90 minutes, something remarkable happened. Fortune turned his own (and his band's) fortunes around. Somehow, and if I can scarcely believe it, the band must be in a state of almost catatonic shock, INXS have dropped lucky.
Fortune is the right man in the right place at the right time.
Naturally, he was a ball of enthusiasm, hurling himself around stage like a frisky meteorite and the formal attire was soon replaced by a fate-tempting vest saying "Mr Wrong". He grappled with guitarist Tim Farriss and, as if to show just how well everyone is getting on, he squeezed saxophonist Kirk Pengilly's scrotum during the encore. Such frolics were to be expected from a man who admitted he and his band were "shit-scared" to face a London audience and that "a year ago I was living on the street begging for food to feed my little dog".
More surprising was Fortune's voice which, it transpired was not weedy at all. It occasionally resembled Hutchence, most notably on Disappear and a rollicking Mystify, but Fortune mostly steered clear of copying, instead adding touches of his own; a plaintive air to New Sensation and a sense of evil on Devil Inside.
And there's the other thing: that indefinable star quality.
Ever feral, unspeakably handsome and blessed with more than a hint of throbbing devilry, Hutchence had it in spades. So does Fortune. He doesn't have Hutchence's priapism, but, that comedy facial hair notwithstanding, he does have a certain something, despite claiming that this was the last night of the tour: "we made sure of that, so it would be special". They're in Amsterdam tonight and back in Shepherd's Bush on 6 and 7 November.
Fortune's star quality came via likeable weirdness; his tendency to rap introductions; the fortune cookie cod-philosophy between songs ("Sometimes life goes one way. Sometimes life goes the other"); the constant fiddling with his earpiece ("I'm sweating my ears out") and his disturbing tendency to call us "man". He even distributed wine to the front rows.
The crowd adored him. At the end, his reception was tumultuously rapturous and rightly so. Stranger things have happened, but not many. I'm still flabbergasted.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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