Bono reveals why Michael Hutchence cut ties with him
Bono has shared the details that led to the end of his friendship with late INXS frontman Michael Hutchence.
In his new book, titled Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, the U2 frontman reflects on his tumultuous friendship with Hutchence and partner Paula Yates in the early 90s.
Bono recalled the early days of Hutchence’s relationship with Yates, which started in 1994, while Yates was still married to Bono’s close friend, Bob Geldof.
“Paula worshipped Michael at a time when he needed all the adoration he could get, things not going well on- and offstage for INXS,” Bono writes.
Bono also says he and his wife of 40 years, Ali, had an immediate sense that the relationship was “going to go wrong, and that this intensity could not last a lifetime”.
And soon enough, Bono writes, the couple were in “free fall – spiralling down the vortex of a recreational drug use that had become hard work for everyone, especially their family, especially the younger ones”.
“As their behaviour changed, our friendship became strained, and we grew uncomfortable during their visits.”
Paula and Michael had one child together in 1996: a daughter named Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily.
Bono and his wife were asked to be her godparents, to which they refused, as they were too “wigged out” by the couple’s rampant drug use.
They hoped their rejection of such a meaningful offer would make the new parents think twice about the path they were on.
True friendship, Bono writes, “meant being truthful. Friendship is not a sentimental business.”
But instead, their refusal only further pushed the two couples from each other further, as Bono says, “It only made them think again about us.”
“That we can half live with our conscience is no substitute for the fact that we can’t live at all with our friends. They are gone.”
Michael Hutchence committed suicide aged 37 in a Sydney hotel room in November 1997, while Yates died of a drug overdose in September 2000, aged 41, leaving four children behind.
“Neither of us dreamed they’d both end up dead so soon,” writes Bono.
“Even now, I can’t believe I’ve just written that.”
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