"Dream on white boy
Dream on black girl
And wake up to a brand new day
To find your dreams have washed away..."
I've always had a thing for PROPER rock stars. FRONT men. High kickers, mike stand frottagers, the leather-waistcoat-no-shirt fraternity. Men who can prance down stadium catwalks like coke-eyed gazelles, dampening the crotches of onlookers, unconquerable, hair flailing. I don't want irony. I don't want knowing smirks. I don't want 'Hello Mum. It's me. Your son. It's Robbie'. I want Jim Morrison. I want 'Songs of Faith and Devotion'-era Dave Gahan. And sometimes, most of all, I want Hutchence.
'Original Sin', released in 1983, was written by Michael Hutchence and Andrew Fariss and is one of the great INXS singles. It was a massive hit worldwide - their first Australian number one - and every synthetic snare and tight little guitar lick in it screams 'produced by Nile Rodgers'. A pop match made in heaven.
Andrew Farriss remembers recording with Nile:
"We were fresh off the road. So we had the basic song completed and we'd been playing it live in the set. He was talking to us through the headphones, kind of saying things that were meant to encourage us, and we figured he was just getting levels and stuff on the whole band playing together, but after we'd run it down a couple of times he said 'OK, come in and have a listen'. We went in and the control room was sort of full of people dancing. Apart from adding background vocals [which were by Darryl Hall] and the sax solo, we were finished. We didn't even know he was recording."
Nile Rodgers is doing an In Conversation with Dave Haslam this Friday at the Zion Centre in Manchester. I'll be the one on the front row biting my fist with excitement.
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