The first charttopping hit single for INXS in their native Australia was pushed along by a key contribution from Daryl Hall — who arrived at the suggestion of producer Nile Rodgers, INXS’ Andrew Farris explains.
Sessions hadn’t even begun for The Swing, released in December of 1983, when Rodgers was given an early demo of the track “Original Sin.” Before you know it, Rodgers had INXS inside the same studio were he’d been at work on the songs that would become David Bowie’s blockbuster Let’s Dance album.
“We were doing vocals, and I remember Nile thinking that he wanted a punchiness on one of the higher vocals,” Farris, who composed the song with the late Michael Hutchence, tells FasterLouder. “So he makes a call — and Daryl Hall walks through the door. And I said, ‘Isn’t that Daryl Hall?!’ and Nile was like, ‘Absolutely.’ Wow!”
At this point, INXS has never gotten past No. 18 in their own country, much less the U.S. — where 1982’s “The One Thing” had been their highest-charter ever, at No. 30. Hall and Oates, meanwhile, had over the previous three years scored four of what would ultimately be a total of six No. 1 hits. They couldn’t have been any bigger.
“Hall and Oates were massive as an international act,” Farris adds. “The next thing he’s singing and I’m just pinching myself because there’s a huge rock star in America singing our funny little song. … I can still remember listening to that recording and exactly what I felt. I listened to it in the hotel and got really excited: I’d never heard anything like it.”
Rodgers, who rose to fame in the disco-funk band Chic, also memorably participated in remixing Hall and Oates’ 1984 hit “Adult Education.” Hutchence died in 1997.
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