INXS wanted a female vocalist to take over from the late Michael Hutchence.
Baby Animals vocalist Suze DeMarchi, who jumped on vocals for the ‘Need You Tonight’ band at a concert in 2000, has revealed she was asked to be the permanent replacement for the frontman – who tragically took his own life in November 1997 aged 37.
Suze was “seriously” considering taking up the offer, but then the group decided to scout for their new lead vocalist on the 2005 reality show, ‘Rock Star: INXS’.
Speaking on the LiSTNR program ‘Behind The Hits’, she said: “There was a formal offer from their manager.
“They didn’t say, ‘You’re going to make this, we’ll do this, some of that … It hadn’t got[ten] to that point, but [there were] conversations with their manager at the time, David Edwards, and Andrew and I had spoken quite a bit about it….
“Just before they had done that show, I was really seriously thinking about doing it. I was just about to go, ‘Yeah, maybe we could try this,’ and then they said, ‘Well, we want to do this show.’ So that’s how it went down.”
They ended up choosing JD Fortune, a fan who had been living out of his car.
He sang on the 2005 album ‘Switch’ and 2010’s ‘Original Sin’.
Multi-instrumentalist Jon Farriss admitted they all wanted a female singer.
He said: “We all wanted [the winner] to be a girl.
“We loaded it with girls. It was 15 contestants – it was eight girls and seven guys.”
JD’s tenure ended in 2011, with Ciaran Gribbin briefly stepping in before INXS announced at a concert at Perth Arena in November 2012 that they would no longer tour.