Its funny how you can get upset about events that happened and how they can never be changed but in your mind you have that slight feeling of hope, like maybe they can and everything will be different. But the truth is they can’t and then you realise that’s how life is, that death is death and you just have to remember the moments. I am talking about Michael Hutchence here, and while most people will not know the name, he was a rather amazing person. He fronted the band INXS, but died in 1997 by what some presume is suicide but we will never know.

Bono described Michael as “My idea of a rock star is Michael. I never felt like a rock star, I’ve always felt like I’m impersonating one. But Michael wasn’t that at all – he was the real thing. We were very good friends, and good friends learn from each other, but to be honest I think I learned more from him than he did from me. What he had was oxygen. He was always so much better at walking through a room than I was, you know. When we met, I was just learning to loosen up in public, and here was this guy who blew in and out of any room like a breeze. He was just so easy that he relaxed everyone around him. It is a strange thing when your life is coming at you so fast that suddenly you have to walk into a room where everyone knows your name but they pretend that they don’t. We went through that at the same time and it made me uptight, but not Michael – he negotiated it better than anyone I’d ever seen.”

I have been going through a strange sorrow at the moment. I miss him terribly but I never met him, but it feels like he lives on in the music he created so brilliantly. You feel like he was in your life, that the music created his shadow and it still moves around behind you, transforming your life with magic and always having a friend close by. You wish that it could be true, that you could have known or met him, even for a split second, because you known in that moment you would have been granted the opportunity to meet someone that was so deeply special, but was also such an interesting and moving person.

Michael was not a saint and I am not pretending he was, and that is what makes him so much more interesting. He was Shy and outgoing, he had the ability to make everyone feel special, as it says in the book INXS, he could listen to anyone and make them feel worthy, something not every famous person is able to do, but he wasn’t like every star he was different. He had his demons, drugs, sex, girls and in the end they overpowered him. You just wish you could have been there to change that moment, to do anything, but things happen for a reason and now he has moved on to mystify the next world.

I will never forget this amazing man, as I hope everyone else will not either. We still have the music and a movie that is in the works, and all the fans to remember him. I hope he knows how much we care and how much what he did as a person in the short time he had on this earth left a lasting impact and is being preserved in each generation that passes. We love you Michael.

Here I am, lost in the ashes of time, but who wants tomorrow?
In between the longing to hold you again
I’m caught in your shadow, I’m losing control
My mind drifts away, we only have today