Michael Hutchence: Age 37 | Cause Of Death: SUICIDE
(b. 22 January 1960, Australia, d. November 22, 1997, Sydney, Australia)
Hutchence hanged himself in Ritz-Carlton Hotel room with his leather belt.
The body was discovered around noon by a hotel employee. INXS had been rehearsing for their 20th anniversary tour. All those close to the singer report that he had been in high spirits in the days prior to his suicide, although he had been linked with a notorious reputation of cocaine and opium use. He was also planning to marry his girlfriend, Paula Yates, the mother of his 18 month old daughter, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily. To read more Link to: Michael Hutchence Memorial Site or The Final Days of Michael Hutchence
Obituary
INXS Singer's Death Officially A Suicide
Feb 06, 1998
SYDNEY, Australia – The death of Australian rock star Michael Hutchence in a Sydney hotel room in November was declared a suicide Friday.
Hutchence, 37, the lead singer of the rock group INXS, was found dead at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel at Double Bay in east Sydney on Nov. 22, 1997.
He was in a “severe depressed state” due to his relationship with girlfriend Paula Yates, her custody dispute with her former husband Sir Bob Geldof, and the effects of substances he had ingested, New South Wales Coroner Derek Hand said Friday.
Hutchence hanged himself with his belt and the buckle broke away, leaving his naked body kneeling on the floor of the hotel room, Hand said.
The coroner said there was no evidence to substantiate the suggestion the singer died as a result of an act of auto-eroticism. He also said there was no other person involved in the death.
Hand said Hutchence had consumed vodka, beer and champagne the night before and blood analysis detected cocaine, the anti-depressant Prozac and other prescription drugs.
Hand said there would be no inquest into the death.
Hutchence's Dad Points Finger
Michael Hutchence’s father, Kelland, is publicly accusing rocker Bob Geldof of playing a part in his son’s death last month. In an interview on Australian TV, also reported in British tabloid The Sun on Thursday, the retired businessman said Geldof was out to get his son, the 37-year-old INXS star, and his partner, Paula Yates, formerly married to Geldof.
“He made their lives miserable. It’s like he was on a vendetta . . . I think contributed very much to what happened,” the father said.
Geldof had refused to allow his daughters with Yates to travel with her to Australia for an INXS tour. The elder Hutchence confirmed that Michael had an argument over the phone with Geldof in England just hours before he was found hanged. Geldof and Yates had been in a custody battle over their three daughters.
Kelland also called “rubbish” any suggestions that his son’s death was a result of sexual misadventure but admitted his son’s propensity for the wild: “He was a bit in excess himself, you know,” he said. Kelland stated he believes his son’s death was “some kind of accident.” A coroner’s report is due in February.
Meanwhile, members of INXS have issued two statements: The first warns friends and colleagues of the band that no INXS books have been authorized. The second reiterates that INXS is not auditioning for a new singer and has no plans for any touring or recording.
©COPYRIGHT 1997 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
News Stories Following Report Of Hutchence Death
An airline spokeswoman in Sydney confirmed Yates was involved in a incident in an airport lounge in Bangkok during a brief stopover, and some disturbances on board during the flight. She refused to comment further.
Britain’s Daily Express newspaper reported Yates had told other passengers that her former husband and father of her three other children, British singer and charity organizer Sir Bob Geldof, was responsible for Hutchence’s death.
“Bob Geldof murdered Michael Hutchence,” the Daily Express quoted Yates as saying. “That bastard killed Michael. He is called Saint Bob. That makes me sick. He killed my baby. We have had three years of this.”
©COPYRIGHT 1997 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
INXS Singer Did Not Commit Suicide, Partner Says
March 29, 1998
SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — Paula Yates said Sunday she refused to accept a coroner’s ruling that her partner, rock star Michael Hutchence, committed suicide and was seeking legal advice to have it overturned.
New South Wales Coroner Derek Hand ruled that Hutchence, the 37-year-old lead singer of INXS, had committed suicide Nov. 22 by hanging himself in his Sydney hotel room.
“In no way do I accept the coroner’s verdict of suicide,” Yates told Channel 9 TV.
“I will be making it abundantly clear that because of information that I and only I could know about Michael … I cannot accept the verdict.
“And I won’t have my child grow up thinking that her father left her, not knowing the way he loved her.”
The coroner ruled in February that Hutchence was in a “severe depressed state” due to his relationship with Yates and her custody dispute with her former husband Bob Geldof, combined with the effects of alcohol and prescription drugs.
Yates had three children with Geldoff in addition to her daughter with Hutchence.
Yates said Hutchence thought suicide was the most cowardly act in the world.
“I just don’t think he killed himself, I really don’t,” she said.
Geldof Wins Custody
Oct 30, 1998
The tragedy of Michael Hutchence death has taken another twist on the announcement, in an official statement, that Bob Geldof has won custody of he and Paula Yates three children, Fifi Trixibelle (15), Peaches Honeyblossom (9), and Pixie (8).
Former Boomtown Rat and Live Aid organizer Geldof won the right to custody of the children for most of the year, school holidays will see the divorced couple dividing the children’s time equally. There have been reporting restrictions on the case to protect the children, and details, quite rightly, on the grounds for the custody decision, are not to be made public.
The Court of Appeal, however, has lifted the restriction enough to allow the outcome, made in June, to be announced, and legal representatives have also stated that the order may be subject to variation, at the couple’s discretion. Miss Yates (37) could possibly face a further custody battle with Hutchence’s family, over Heavenly Hirani Tiger Lily, her two-year-old daughter by Hutchence.
Michael Hutchence, lead singer with INXS, committed suicide in a Sydney hotel room last year, whilst in Australia preparing for an anniversary tour with his band. The circumstances surrounding his death were the subject of much speculation and for a time the death was believed to be an accident caused by an unusual sexual practice.
A coroner, after a long investigation, gave a verdict of suicide, which many found hard to believe particularly members of his band and family. Miss Yates and he were engaged to be married, and intended to live, partly, in Australia with Paula’s three children by Geldof and Tiger Lily.
Geldof’s refusal to allow his children to leave the country for a Christmas holiday in Australia led to a great deal of acrimony between himself and the couple, causing Miss Yates, quite publicly to blame Geldof for the tragedy, an accusation he refutes vehemently. The normally chirpy and affable Miss Yates has suffered very badly since her fiancé’s death, from bouts of depression.
Hutchence Death Documentary
Aug 09, 1999
Paula Yates continues to contest claims that lover Michael Hutchence committed suicide in a new British documentary. In Excess: The Death of Michael Hutchence (Channel Four 17 Aug) will feature Yates and Hutchence’s brother Rhett discussing evidence which was never made public at the official hearing into the INXS frontman’s death. Both persist that Hutchence did not take his own life but died accidentally during an attempt to play out a sexual fantasy. As well as talking about Hutchence’s death, Yates (whose recent relationship with Finlay Quaye featured heavily in the tabloids) speaks frankly about the couple’s sex life and her lover’s attitude towards fatherhood. Hutchence father Kell also appears on the documentary, declaring that Hutchence was a victim of his rock’n’roll lifestyle and is convinced that his son committed suicide. The speculation surrounding Hutchence’s death and a series of legal complications have seriously delayed the release of the solo album recorded by Hutchence a week before his death in November 1997. V2 will finally release the album in October. Q Magazine
Paula Yates, British Television Host And Rock-Scene Celebrity, Dies At 40
By SARAH LYALL
LONDON, Sept. 18 — Paula Yates, a British television personality known for her outrageously flirtatious interviewing style and for her relationships with the rock stars Bob Geldof and Michael Hutchence, was found dead at home here on Sunday. She was 40.
The cause was apparently a drug overdose, the authorities said.
Reared in north Wales, Ms. Yates left school at 16 and moved to London, where she joined the emerging punk scene and embarked on an extravagant — and extravagantly public — life. When she became enamored of Mr. Geldof, who was then the lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, she followed the band on tour until Mr. Geldof became just as smitten with her, and they embarked on a relationship. They married 10 years later and had three daughters, Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches and Pixie.
Ms. Yates reveled in the spotlight, posing naked in the stuffy Reform Club for Penthouse magazine and compiling a book of photographs called “Rock Stars in Their Underpants,” which Andy Warhol called “the greatest work of art in the last decade.” She also wrote several books for children, but it was not until she started her television career as a co-presenter of “The Tube,” a show about music, that she became a celebrity in her own right, affecting a bubbleheaded, giggly personality that belied her sharp intelligence, friends said.
In 1992 she began presenting “The Big Breakfast Show,” a morning television program in which she often interviewed guests while lying on a bed in the studio. One guest was Michael Hutchence, the lead singer of the band INXS, and the two fell madly in love. She left Mr. Geldof, setting off a bitter, tabloid-fueled divorce and an equally bitter fight for custody of their three daughters. Mr. Geldof won.
Ms. Yates and Mr. Hutchence had an intensely passionate affair and one child, a daughter they named Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily. But their relationship was marred by drug use and extreme behavior that ended when Mr. Hutchence was found dead, hanging by his belt, in a hotel room in Sydney, Australia, in November 1997.
Ms. Yates, who once said that Mr. Hutchence was “God’s gift to women,” seemed never to recover from his death, spiraling into a depression that resulted in her admission to a mental hospital and at least one suicide attempt of her own.
It was hard for her to hang on, she once said in an interview. “It’s only the mothering instinct that makes you willing to suffer every day,” she said. “Right now, I think living is a noble gesture.” ~NY TIMES
Paula Yates Found Dead At Home
By Sally Pook and Danielle Demetriou
PAULA YATES, the former television presenter and girlfriend of the late Australian rock star Michael Hutchence, was found dead at her home in west London yesterday. She is thought to have choked to death on vomit after taking a cocktail of vodka and pills.
Tiger Lily, Miss Yates’s four-year-old daughter by Hutchence, was in the house with the body of her mother, police said last night. She answered the telephone when a friend called Miss Yates and was playing near her mother’s body when the woman arrived at the flat in Notting Hill, west London, shortly after 10am.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “It appears Paula Yates was at home alone with her four-year-old daughter. Substances have been removed from the scene and have been taken away for examination.”
Fifi Trixibelle, Miss Yates’s 17-year-old daughter, made a tearful visit to her mother’s house last night and laid a bunch of yellow flowers beside the steps. She was led into the house by a police inspector. Five minutes later she came out, picked up Miss Yates’s black cat and cuddled it.
Miss Yates, who rose to popularity while presenting the Channel 4 music show The Tube in the Eighties, also had three children by Geldof. Last night Geldof appealed for the family to be left alone.In a statement he said: “It doesn’t require much imagination to understand the pain. Please do nothing to add to that. We are all so sad. The loss for all the children is insupportable. Leave them with their loss and Paula with her dignity.”
Miss Yates had been plagued by depression following Hutchence’s suicide in a hotel in Sydney three years ago and was admitted to a London clinic suffering from a nervous breakdown after his death. She later described how she had contemplated suicide every day and had been “beyond grief” but said knew she had to be there for her four daughters.
The couple began an affair in 1995 and in the following year her nine-year marriage to Geldof was ended in a 90-second divorce. Her life had been marked by a series of personal traumas, from the suicide of Hutchence and the abortive attempt of his father to win custody of Tiger Lily, to the discovery three years ago that her real father was Hughie Green, the presenter of Opportunity Knocks.
She was admitted to private clinics on several occasions and in June 1998, two weeks before Geldof won the right to have their three children, Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches and Pixie, live with him for most of the year, she tried to hang herself. She was saved by a friend who found her barely conscious with a noose round her neck.
Miss Yates’s mother, Helene Thornton-Bosment, who lives in France, said she was devastated by her daughter’s death. She said: “This is a terrible shock.” Hutchence’s father, Kell, 68, said: “We did not expect this at all. We always supported and tried to get along with Paula.”
Jools Holland, Miss Yates’s co-host on The Tube, said: “I am deeply saddened by the loss of my very dear friend.” ~ http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk
Stars Bid Farewell To Yates
8:50 AM AEST September 24
Around 100 mourners gathered to pay their last respects to Paula Yates, the former lover of deceased INXS star Michael Hutchence, at her funeral service in Kent, England.
Several big names from showbusiness attended the 55-minute service, including Australian Nick Cave, who was also present at the Sydney funeral of his good friend Hutchence in 1997.
Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily, the now orphaned four-year-old daughter of Hutchence and Yates, was at the ceremony in the care of her godmother, Yates’ friend Belinda Brewin.
But she appeared unaware of what was taking place, and did not seem grief stricken.
Sir Bob Geldof, Yates’ former husband who has been granted temporary custody of Tiger Lily pending a court decision, was also in attendance.
He appeared briefly, looking pale and drawn, as the funeral procession left for the crematorium, where he took part in a private ceremony with his daughters with Yates – Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches and Pixie.
Other mourners at the funeral in the small town of Davington included U2’s Bono, other singers Paul Young and Annie Lennox, and Jools Holland, Paula’s co-presenter on their former British music TV show, The Tube.
Mourners had agreed to keep details of the service secret and none spoke to the waiting press as they filed out of the church in the town of Davington, London-based Cave included.
Yates, 41, was found dead in her Notting Hill, west London flat last Sunday, as Tiger Lily wandered alone elsewhere in the dwelling.
Amid tight security, Yates’ funeral was held in the same church – Mary Magdelene’s – in which Yates’ marriage to Geldof was blessed 14 years ago.
Her cream coffin with silver handles was covered with dark pink lilies and surrounded by wreaths.
Yates spent many years living in Davington with Sir Bob.
David Flood, organiser at Canterbury Cathedral, said later Bono had sung a song called Blue Skies which was accompanied by Holland on piano.
The hymns played were Jerusalem and I Vow To Thee My Country, and a poem by Keats was read out as part of the service.
While Hutchence’s father Kell said he was content to let Geldof have full time custody of Tiger Lily, the wishes of the late singer’s mother, Patricia Glossop, have been shrouded in confusion. ~ http://www.excite.com.au
Yates' Ashes To Be Buried With Hutchence's
Paula Yates’ ashes will be interred with those of her late lover, former INXS singer Michael Hutchence, it was reported in London.
Yates received a share of Hutchence’s ashes along with his mother Patricia Glassop and father Kell Hutchence, and had them sewn into a pink and white pillow on which she slept.
Following her death from a suspected drug overdose on September 17, her wish to have her remains buried with those of Hutchence will be fulfilled, the Express newspaper said.
A spokesman for Chelsea Funeral Directors, which conducted Yates’ funeral in Kent on Saturday, said her ashes would be interred with the pillow, though he would not say where.
“Paula believed she and Michael were soulmates, and wanted them to be together for eternity,” an unnamed friend of the former TV presenter told the paper.
Yates reportedly had even kept Hutchence’s ashes in her bed while having sex with other lovers.
“She would curl up around the little pillow, after we’d had sex, to sleep with Michael,” said Kingsley O’Keke, who had an affair with Yates after meeting her in a rehabilitation clinic. ~ http://www.excite.com.au
