Six years before INXS frontman Michael Hutchence tragically ended his life, he enjoyed a short but intense relationship with pop princess Kylie Minogue.
The Australian sweetheart shared intimate details of her fling with the troubled rockstar between 1989 and 1991 for the documentary Mystify: Michael Hutchence.
Richard Lowenstein’s film features love letters the young couple sent to one another while each were on tour, and never-before-seen footage of the pair.
Minogue described the moment Hutchence eventually broke her heart – just like she knew he would – when he called her to New York to break up with her for no apparent reason.
‘The room was dark, the curtains were drawn, he was on all fours on the floor, crying,’ she said in the film.
A new documentary about legendary Australian rockstar Michael Hutchence (left) has led his former lover Kylie Minogue (right) to reveal more about their romance than she ever has before
Chemistry: An insight into Kylie Minogue and Michael Hutchence’s sexually charged relationship was given in scenes from a new documentary painting an intimate portrait of the late INXS frontman’s life
‘Was it work, was it the drugs? I don’t know. He was like a broken man.’
He was on all fours on the floor…crying.
She said the heartbreak took a long time to get over, but it was one she saw coming even when the pair were smitten and sending each other secret love notes from different parts of the world.
Both touring consistently, the couple would fax one another from their hotel rooms using the aliases Gabby Jones and Swordfish.
‘Jones was my mother’s maiden name and Gabby was my dog. He was swordfish, well, just because.’
The pop princess said she would wait on receiving her fax for the day just to see his handwriting and what message – whether sweet or mundane – he’d written her.
The documentary featured racy clips of the young couple naked and loved up. Pictured: Kylie naked and posing for the camera
They hoped the secret code names would prevent receptionists and hotel staff from reading their love letters.
Minogue said while the pair were often separated due to conflicting schedules, their time together was electrifying.
‘Sex, love, food, drugs, music, travel, books, you name it, he wanted to experience it,’ Minogue said of their whirlwind relationship.
‘As his partner I got to experience a lot of that as well. If you’re a sensual being, all of your senses need stimulation. He definitely awakened my desire for things in my world.’
The documentary featured never-before-seen footage of Hutchence and Minogue during their time together.
‘She (Minogue) has spoken before but never like this, let me tell you (it’s) totally uncensored,’ the film’s director said of the popstar’s candidness about her relationship with Hutchence (The pair are pictured at the Chanel Haute Couture collection in 1992)
‘Mystify: Michael Hutchence’ features a series of interviews with those who were closest to the INXS frontman (pictured) throughout his life, including pop princess Kylie Minogue (right)
One of the clips Minogue shared showed intimate moments of her naked and others of the pair on a boat during a romantic getaway.
She said the public perception that she was a ‘pure, good girl dating this dark, bad boy’ was pretty accurate, but despite it all, she felt ‘safe with him’.
‘I felt protected,’ she said. ‘He had insatiable curiosity, all the good things in life and some the bad.’
‘He opened up a whole new world for me. A lot of it was based around pleasure, let’s face it.’
But the relationship was never built to last.
Minogue said while she hadn’t expected to be with Hutchence forever, when the end came it completely broke her heart.
‘It felt loving, yet sad and probably doomed. We talked through things and I couldn’t give you an actual reason [as to why it happened].
‘I left pretty confounded and destroyed and I knew that was…that was it. Yeah, he broke my heart. I have to confess, the hurt stays for quite a long time,’ she said.
After the split, the neighbours alumni went on to have a series of high profile relationships with actors and performers.
Hutchence also went on to find love with British television personality Paula Yates.
On the night of his death Hutchence spoke to his partner Paula Yates (pictured) and asked her about travelling to Australia with their 16-month-old daughter Tiger Lily
Michael Hutchence and Paula Yates attending a screening of ‘The Birdcage’ at Planet Hollywood in London, 15th April 1996
The married mother-of-three first met Hutchence almost a decade earlier, when he and his band were just taking off.
After their first interaction, she allegedly said to his tour manager: ‘I’m going to have that boy’.
In 1994, nine years after they first met, they began having an affair. Yates was married to Sir Bob Geldof at the time and the couple had three children.
They were considered showbusiness royalty. When she so openly left the relationship and broke his heart, the public turned on her.
But those close to Hutchence say their relationship changed him for the better and made him happier than he’d been in a long time.
At the time, he was in a depressive spiral which may have been worsened by a freak accident which left him without his sense of smell and a diminished sense of taste.
Yates is pictured walking into Hutchence’s funeral carrying their young daughter Tiger Lily and being comforted by a friend
Hutchence (back row, left) with INXS band members, clockwise from top right: Andrew Farriss, Tim Farriss, Garry Gary Beers, Kirk Pengilly, and Jon Farriss
Martha Troup, the INXS band manager at the time, said she regularly fielded calls from Hutchence where he declared his love for Yates.
‘He said ”Martha, she’s beautiful. Martha, I’ve never loved somebody like that.” It was magical. It just was something that changed him completely,’ she said in the Mystify documentary.
I’ve never loved somebody like that.
Michael Hutchence on Paula Yates
But that relationship, too, turned tumultuous.
The couple were embroiled in a nasty custody battle with Geldof over Yates’ eldest three daughters, and after the birth of their daughter, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily, in 1996, the nanny found a stash of opioids and heroin in their home.
They denied the drugs were theirs.
The public had turned on them, and Yates struggled to cope after spending so many years being adored.
Michael Hutchence with his daughter Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily
Hutchence returned to Australia expecting his partner and young daughter to follow him across the pond for a three-month holiday, but he never saw them again.
On November 22 1997, Hutchence was found hanging by his snakeskin belt in his Sydney hotel room.
A post-mortem examination found alcohol, cocaine, codeine, Prozac, Valium and other prescribed benzodiazepines – or ‘benzos’ – in Hutchence’s urine and blood. He left no suicide note.
Three years later, on September 17 2000, Yates was found dead in her home. She died of an accidental heroin overdose while Tiger Lily was at home with her.
Sir Bob Geldof was awarded custody of Tiger Lily and her three half sisters after Yates death and legally adopted her in 2007.
Hutchence’s brother Rhett (left) has in recent years suggested Michael (right) could have been killed by someone else. A coroner found that the famous singer hanged himself with his snake skin belt
Many of Hutchence friends and family traced the steep decline of his mental health back to the brutal attack he was subjected to five years before his death, in 1992.
He had been out in Denmark with his then girlfriend Helena Christensen when a taxi driver punched him.
He fell to the pavement and fractured his skull. Despite his clear and substantial injuries, Hutchence refused appropriate treatment.
Hutchence lost his sense of smell and taste in the wake of the attack, and friends and band mates said they noticed an almost immediate change in his personality.
INXS’s Los Angeles-based bassist Garry Beers said: ‘When Michael hit his head, he came back a different person and I’m sure doctors were prescribing all sorts of weird and wonderful concoctions.’
‘He was drinking wine by the bottle ’cause it was just like nothing to him.’
It wasn’t until his autopsy that those closest to him learned he suffered two large areas of brain damage as a result of the attack.
Tiger Lily Hutchence reportedly lives a quiet life away from the spotlight in Australia