INXS biography
The album The Swing released in April 1984, During 1984 it was #1 in Australia (for two weeks in January) #31 in the Netherlands and #58 in the U.S. and INXS didn't have any Top 50 chart success until the 1985 album Listen Like Thieves.
During 1984, INXS toured non-stop performing across Europe, the UK, the US and Australia and by December 1984, The Swing, was double platinum, making it, at the time, one of the five biggest domestic albums in the history of Australian music. In March 1985 the band re-entered Sydney's Rhinoceros Studios to record their next album, together with producer Chris Thomas (Sex Pistols, Pink Floyd, The Pretenders, Elton John).
As the band were finishing the recording sessions, Thomas told the band that the album was not good enough and still had no "killer" track:
Andrew produced a demo tape of a funk song he had been working on "Funk Song No. 13" and evolved it into "What You Need".
Whilst the band was recording, WEA released Dekadance, a limited edition 12" Vinyl and cassette only EP of INXS remixes from their albums The Swing and Shabooh Shoobah.
On 19 May 1985, INXS won seven awards at the 1984 Countdown Music and Video Awards ceremony. Two INXS songs, "What You Need" and "Don't Change", were also in the BBC broadcast and are contained on Live Aid's four DVD boxed set released in 2004.
INXS had started out as a New Wave act, gradually moved in a more straight-ahead rock-oriented direction through the first half of the 1980s. Listen Like Thieves was released in October 1985, reaching #3 on the Australian charts and #11 on the US charts. With the release of Listen Like Thieves, the band had developed a rock sound influenced by Led Zeppelin and XTC, but remained true to the band's original roots in Aussie pubs. It was also the first album to feature songs written by a combination of band members, with Andrew Farris and Hutchence becoming the primary songwriters in the years to follow. The first US single from the album, "This Time", stalled at #81 in late 1985, but the next single, "What You Need", released there in early 1986, became a top five Billboard hit, bringing INXS their first break-out US success. The single was also a top 20 hit in Canada, reached #2 in Australia (September 1985) but only #51 on the UK charts.
The British press dismissed the album, with New Musical Express calling the band 'INX-cusable' and a reviewer declaring Listen Like Thieves to be a 'complete and utter turkey'. In the United States however Rolling Stone Magazine wrote "INXS rocks with passion and seals the deal with a backbeat that'll blackmail your feet."
In August 1985, they toured ahead of the album's release, touring South America before returning to Melbourne to play for Prince Charles and Princess Diana of Wales at a concert in Australia, it was filmed and later released on home video entitled Living INXS, an edited version of the concert was played on MTV in the US in 1985 on their Saturday night concert series. In November, December, January, and February INXS toured North America, Europe, and New Zealand. The band then took a two month break, with Andrew Farriss writing and producing "You're Gonna Get Hurt" for Jenny Morris (who had previously been a backing vocalist with the band), and Hutchence featuring in Richard Lowenstein's second feature film Dogs in Space. Lowenstein had previously made the video clip for "Dancing on the Jetty". Whilst a song from the movie, "Rooms for the Memory", written by Ollie Olsen, with vocals by Hutchence charted, the movie was received well by critics but was not a commercial success.
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