Hi, I'm Gus Wallin and this is Not An Overnight Success brought to you by Shore and Partners Financial Services.
This is a podcast where we sit down with some very successful people from the world of business,
entertainment and sport and chat about their life's journey and what got them to the position that they're in today.
In today's episode we are chatting with Kirk Pangili.
Kirk is one of the founding members of INXS, one of Australia's most notorious and successful rock bands.
They've sold over 80 million albums worldwide, collected countless awards and trophies for their work from all over the globe,
including three Grammy nominations and have been inducted into the Aria Hall of Fame.
In this chat we talk about Kirk's early years and family life as well as what led him to meeting and forming the band.
The story of INXS is one of resilience and incredibly strong friendship.
From late night recordings after their work at car yards all day to playing in front of hundreds of thousands of people,
INXS certainly was not an overnight success.
We speak about the gruelling years of touring and churning out music
as well as the tenacious attitude of the band and how often they needed to evolve after events like Michael's death.
Kirk has lived a full life and now has found peace in the more simple aspects of life.
As for all these podcasts, Shaw and Partners have generously donated
$10,000 to the charity of choice of each of our guests. We discuss who that money goes to in this chat.
The executive producer of this podcast is Keisha Pettit. Let's get into our chat with Kirk Pangili.
Kirk, how are you mate? I am good. Lovely to see you and thank you for having us in your beautiful home.
Thank you. What were you like as a kid brother? I think I was sort of pretty quiet.
I was born in Melbourne and at the age of eight we moved to Sydney to a place called Cottage Point,
which is a really, you'd call it a remote little village, smack bang in the middle of the Karengai National Park.
And it's, you know, 10k's to civilization to Terry Hills. We had no electricity. This is in the 60s.
You know, as a result of that as an eight-year-old and onwards fishing, swimming, boating, bushwalking, it was crap.
You know, but I spent a lot of time alone, you know, except for obviously when I went to school
and then when I was a bit older started to occasionally have friends come and stay the weekend because we were kind of so cut off
and of course later on, you know, in early high school met Tim Farris and we became best mates and so on.
But I think I was a little bit shy, a little bit sort of
socially inept, but I wanted that social kind of interaction.
You know, I really craved it and I think that was probably one of the reasons that drew me towards, you know, becoming a rock star.
Because I'd meet a lot of people. I reckon I'm shaking hands with about a million people in my life.
So you didn't do a lot of shaking hands in that first 10 or 15 years, but you made up for it.
Yeah, absolutely.
What was your family makeup?
Well, I had a mum and a dad. Dad had been in advertising, had his own advertising agency in Melbourne.
And at the age of 39, decided to retire and sell it and move to Cottage Point, much to mum's
and my oldest brother's disgruntlement.
So he was very kind of creative in that world, not musically really inclined.
And mum was just mum, really.
And then I had two older brothers, Drew and the oldest brother, Mark.
And were you close to them? Was it a close family? Were you sort of similar in age?
No, it was a fairly big gap, really. I think four or maybe close to five years between Drew,
the next brother. I was an accident. Mum had had a miscarriage and then they decided to try again.
And apparently the miscarriage was a girl. So I think they treated me a little bit like a girl.
I was the girl they didn't have, soft and gentle.
But I was closest to Drew. Mark kind of left because he was a lot older.
He left home after about, well, he went into year 11 and 12 when we moved to Sydney.
So he moved out. So didn't see a lot of him after that.
Whereas Drew, we've always been really close.
But in saying that, Mark was the one that got me into music.
His couple of years, his influence up till I was about 10 was massive.
And when you say music, was it you playing certain instruments?
Well, he was a drummer in a band. He had a band.
And occasionally Dad would let us put the generator on so Mark's band could come and
rehearse in the house. And I used to just sit there and watch it in awe and watch them practicing
and whatever. And then I think, yeah, around the time when he left home, he decided to take
up guitar and bought himself a really nice acoustic guitar and gave me this little beaten up one.
And I taught myself guitar on that. I used to just, I don't know how now when I think about it,
it's extraordinary because I literally taught myself somehow I must have learned how to tune
it. And then I used to play along to songs on the radio and work out the chords.
Yeah, it's really weird. I don't know. I must have had a gift for it,
which got awakened when my oldest brother gave me this crappy little guitar.
Fantastic. Have you looked back at that now and said that's the moment,
I suppose, that the journey started for you?
Yeah, I think so. I mean, he used to put on records,
I'd have to go to sleep earlier and our rooms were kind of adjoining.
It was a weird setup. But anyway, it had like a double door between the rooms right near my bed.
So it was like a glass top half that opened up. So he put music on like the Rascals,
Gordon Lightfoot, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, all that sort of stuff.
And so I'd drift off to sleep listening to that every night. So
it obviously had some kind of influence on me. Just music was around me.
What was his band like? I mean, you sat there in awe watching them. Were you like,
I just want to dive in there and be a part of it?
Yeah, I'm not sure really what I thought at that point, you know, but ironically,
the guitar player in Mark's band, a guy called Phil Coulson, amazing guitar player.
His daughter is Sia. Oh, yeah.
Wow. I know, which so there was that connection later on because I met Sia with,
I ran into Phil in King's Cross, I think, when I was living up that way and he was with Sia
and he introduced me and she hadn't really even started her journey at that point.
Yeah, it was just that point of reference where you meet someone and then later on,
there's this other connection. Yeah, a lot of magic was happening
in that room. Yeah.
So what sort of music did your brother's band play and what sort of music did you like to
listen to once you decided to have your own LPs to listen to?
Yeah, look, I went through all types of things. Obviously, what was happening at the time,
I was a big fan of Hendrix and as a guitar player. And then later on, I had fads of
Deep Purple, Status Quo, Black Sabbath, a lot of kind of hard rock, which I just can't even
listen to these days, that sort of stuff. And then later on, definitely much more kind of
muso music, you know, musical stuff like when Inexcess formed or the Farris Brothers,
you know, we were listening to things like Steely Dan and Little Feet, all stuff that
wasn't really that commercial, funnily enough. But Mark's band, I can't really remember what
they, they did a lot of covers. And I do remember Mark taking me with him to Hoadley's Battle of
the Bands or Battle of the Sounds, I think it was called in the early 70s, because they had entered
themselves into the comp. And I think they came second or something. But I remember that was
really eye opening going to, I guess it was my first concert, really, a whole lot of bands
playing against each other and all that sort of thing.
Well, it sounds like he was a huge part of sort of the I know, putting the fire under
under you to get involved. Oh, absolutely. If I look back at sort of, you know, me as a 13,
14, 15 year old at school doing musicals in the choir, you know, that type of thing.
And we all dreamt of being, you know, rock stars. So at what point did you start doing
your own stuff and start dreaming of perhaps being a rock star?
Yeah, I think when I met Tim, which was in about 1971 or two, I think it was 71,
second year high school. He had a little guitar, he'd just moved from Perth, the Faris brothers,
the family had just moved from Perth to Sydney. And I think it was like third term or something
in the science lab. And I walked past the desk, he was that he had a little guitar
drawer in his pencil case. I was like, Yeah, cool, man. We hit it off straight away and
just started playing guitar together. And then a little bit later, we found a bass
player and a drummer in high school, and formed a band called Guinness named after our bass
players dog. Because we I don't think we knew what beer was that it was named after the
I think so. And at that point, I was starting to write original songs. And I was the, you know,
the lead singer and, and then as it turned out, the main songwriter, but we did lots of covers
and stuff as well as all bands do when they start. It was a long time ago.
Do you look back on those that at the start, you know, with Guinness and so forth with
fond memories? Do you look back and go, Oh, I remember that song we did, I wish,
you know, like, absolutely, if I if I hear like, you know, some of the the covers that I remember
that we did, like, I think who'll stop the rain by Credence Clearwater was the first song we did
together as a band, you know, and if I hear some of those songs, I just go,
Do you have a copy of?
I've got I've got some bits of music. Yep. Of course, they're on cassette. So I don't even
know if they're playable anymore. I do have a cassette player, though. Recording techniques
weren't like they were today. No, I mean, I remember, you know, for girlfriends, you know,
you'd wait for the top 40, you'd hear the love song by Richard Marx or something like that,
you'd quickly record it and then, and then the DJ talk over the top.
Hey, what are you talking for, brother? So all the way through school, music is your focus,
or are you quite academic as well? Are you sporty? No, look, the whole music thing, and
absolutely, I didn't do music in school. I can vaguely read music. None of us could, really.
There's no call for it in modern music. So I didn't do music in school. But certainly,
yeah, we were just talking music all the time and introducing each other to new things we've heard
and stuff like that. So that was the focus. And I was fairly good in school, but all my report
cards, like most people, I think, were, you know, could do more effort. In fact, one that was
recurrent was Kirk seems to be away with the birds, which I think meant that I was always just looking
out the window, dreaming of stuff, you know, not paying attention. My brother was like that. He got
like 80% but effort three, which meant the minimal. Yeah, you know, he could always do better,
but he just he's just going to cruise through. So that's him. That was pretty much me, I think.
And so you're looking at looking at the birds, thinking about the birds. Are you thinking about
what you ended up becoming? Or are you just a young kid thinking about a whole lot of other things?
Yeah, look, I think just a young kid, I mean, definitely thinking about music and all that,
but just the same as any other kid. I really like that girl, but I'm too scared to say something
and whatever. And it was difficult for me to living at Cottage Point. Mum and Dad ended up
opening up a restaurant in the house at Cottage Point. Oh, really? Yeah. So they were busy during
the days and I could get a bus to Terry Hills home, but then it was 10 K into the national park from
there. So I literally on many occasions used to walk the 10 Ks with my suitcase because we used
to have cases back then. I've still got calluses on my hand from carrying that bag. I don't know
why they're still there. It's bizarre, but I would hitchhike as well because they couldn't pick me up.
So imagine that hitchhiking into a national park. Am I mad? But that's what happened or it'd be
pouring with rain and I'd just walk home, you know, the 10 Ks. And I don't remember it really
bothering me. In fact, again, it was that serenity, how's the serenity of being just in the national
park? And it certainly paved my desire to always have beautiful surroundings, as you can see where
we live here over freshwater. But yeah, it was, I think as far as trying to date girls and that,
I thought, well, what am I going to do? I'm going to hitchhike out to go on a date,
hitchhike out of Cottage Point to go on a date. Hitchhike back to meet Mum and Dad. Yeah. So it
was difficult to have that sort of relationship and that sort of thing back then. Made up for it
later though. I'm sure you did. Your Mum must be a special person to leave what I imagine was sort
of like a nice posh lifestyle in Melbourne to live in the middle of the rainforest or the national
park. Yeah, she hated it. How did that work with your Dad just doing what he wanted to do? Well,
yeah, that was just maybe how the hierarchy was those days in that generation, you know. Poor Mum.
She hated cooking and then Dad opens a restaurant. Yeah, like he's given her a double whammy. Yeah,
totally. So I think- Did they stay together? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. Right to the end.
And the restaurant ended up getting closed down because we're, I can't say we're in suburbia,
but you know, we had houses next door and the house next door to us, most of them were holiday
houses. They took Mum and Dad to court because they hated the fact that we had the restaurant there
and they found some little loophole in the council zoning and they had to shut it down.
So they immediately put the house on the market and Dad decided to become a farmer.
So they bought a couple of hundred acres down in Goulburn and that was right when I was doing my
HSC. And around that Christmas time when our house sold, Dad said, well, you either move to
Goulburn or get a job because they were moving to Goulburn. Right. And so- You didn't thought
about perhaps letting you have your run into the HSC? Well, no, I'd done my HSC. Oh, okay. Yeah,
I'd done it. It all timed perfectly with that. Okay. So, but it was literally, you know,
late December or early January, I went down to the employment office down in Brookvale and
got a job starting the next day at the car yard of Billbuckle Autos in Brookvale as a yard boy.
And so I moved out, moved in with friends that were in Whale Beach and lived there for a couple
of years and gradually moved towards the city as I got older. Yeah. We spoke to Laney on another,
your wife Lane Beechley is obviously an absolute legend and seven-time world surfing champion and
so forth. We'll talk about how you met a little bit later, but she did mention even though how
beautiful this is here in Freshie, you do miss at times the buzz of the city. When I met Lane,
I'd been living in Potts Point for probably 12 or 13 years at that point, the buzz of, you know,
restaurants and cafes and stuff in walking distance. And it was just a really a lifestyle,
I think probably in sort of, you know, rebellion to my very kind of quiet life at Cottage Point as
a kid, I always crave just stuff, you know, stuff going on and hustler bustler noise. So yeah,
I kind of, we've been in this house here for nearly 14 years, I think, and I still kind of
do miss the city buzz and that sort of thing, you know, although as I'm times going on, I'm starting
to kind of that's waning a bit, which is good. Yeah. The next stage of your life. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. So let's go back to HSC. You're a Bill Buckle. I imagine not exactly loving being the
yard boy. I actually loved it. Okay. You know, the money as far as I'm concerned was good. I think I
was earning 112 bucks a week, which, you know, mind you, this is 1976, 77 or whatever. And the
used car yard, which it was the salesmen were just hilarious. They were the classic car sales
old school. Yeah. That, you know, you can, can imagine like dodgy and lovely and always, you know,
like if a pretty girl walked into the yard to buy something, they would be fighting to get out there
and look and look after her. It was pretty funny. Lots of funny stories. The most important decision
of the day was lunch. So one of my jobs was to travel sometimes, you know, far and wide to go
to a restaurant that allegedly has, you know, the best whatever it was, you know, and pick up
the takeaway and bring it back to them. And yeah, it was, it was good fun. I just had to, you know,
keep the cars clean and make sure they all started and all that sort of thing. And I'd fall asleep,
like start a bunch of cars up in a row. And then next I'd feel this shaking on my shoulder because
I've dosed off to the floor on this car, you know, where they're going, you know, I've fallen asleep
because we'd been rehearsing all night or, you know, whatever. They were really forgiving
with all that. They loved the fact that we had a band and I ended up getting jobs
sort of indirectly for a couple of the other guys in the band as well.
Good on you. Yeah. So you're sort of around 20 ish. What's the band at that stage and what
are you doing? And are you thinking, look, one day we'll end up, you know, living out of this?
Yeah, look, I think without it sounding kind of weird, Tim and I, when we met, hit it off
and we just, we just used to say to each other, we're going to be, you know, bigger than the
Beatles. We're going to do this. Yeah. And we literally believed it. But the band that I had
that I was the singer in kind of broke up in, I don't know, I think it was maybe early 77. So
a year and a bit after we'd finished high school. And then I just didn't really want to do anything
for a while. And it was Tim that maybe six months later instigated a kind of jam session with his
brothers and also with Michael and Gary and a few other musicians. And that was the start of the
Farris brothers. So that was early 77. And that was a pretty awesome day. I still vividly remember
because we built a little studio in Avalon. So we used to rehearse in there and we did the little
jam session with all the brothers in that place. And we worked on about three or four songs, but
it was definitely something special, the chemistry that we've all felt that day. And that spurred us
on to go, well, let's do something with this. And we did. You sure did. So what's the next step from
such a wonderful day like that? I mean, so many people on the northern beaches talk about seeing
you guys. Can you believe that we saw them just there? Yeah, yeah. Like how long did it take from
that moment of those four songs and you go, this is something here through to, you know what, we're
actually in excess and we are really awesome. Well, it's, you know, where do I start with this?
I think, you know, look, we just started rehearsing and we didn't have any gigs or anything. And we
ended up finding a place, a factory in Brookvale that a car wholesaler said we could have for like
five bucks a rehearsal or something, you know, just to pay for the electricity. So we just started
rehearsing and Andrew, the middle of the Farris brothers, he wrote songs, I wrote songs and Michael
wrote lyrics. And so we just started amassing a set to be able to play live with covers and all
that sort of stuff. And we got a few gigs and Avalon RSL was one of the first ones. And then
what happened was John, the youngest of the three brothers, he was still in high school and the
Farris family decided to move back to Perth and therefore John had to go to Perth with them. So
we all went, we'll go to. So we all left our jobs, our girlfriends and everything else and
moved to Perth for about a year and we survived, shall we say, maybe two, three gigs a week.
The problem was Perth was very much a covers band and also probably a hard rock kind of,
that's what was predominantly popular and we weren't doing any of that. So, I don't know,
somehow we managed to survive and save up enough money then to move back to Sydney.
John ended up falling out of school because he was falling asleep in class and all that. So that
gave the opportunity for us to all move back to Sydney and that was in early 79, I think. And we
started playing around Manlyvale Hotel, which is no longer there. That was kind of our home ground
whereas the Antler was Midnight Oil's home ground. We started to do gigs and from there we met Gary
Morris, who was Midnight Oil's manager and he took us on board for a little while and he's the one
who instigated changing the name from what we were called the Farris Brothers Band to InXS.
How did they come up with the name?
Well, it's the first thing he said when we went into the first meeting with him was,
the name's got to go. It sounded like a circus kind of thing.
What did the Farris Brothers think about that?
I think they were pretty, you know, look, we were open to doing whatever it took and if it
means changing the name or whatever. And then he also was very instrumental and kind of,
he decided to come up with outfits for each of us, like a kind of a trip, shall we say.
It's not anything we even ever thought of, you know. I think I was still kind of wearing
leftover hippie clothes, you know, it was the 70s kind of thing. Never even really thought about
dress sense and all that sort of stuff. And so it was Gary that really brought that on and it was
pretty funny. He put two or three of the guys in white overalls. I had like this blue King G outfit
and poor Timmy had to wear a see-through yellow kind of raincoat suit.
Oh, pretty hot. Plastic.
Yeah. But anyway, we sort of, you know, because he managed Midnight Oil,
we did a tour up the East Coast opening for Midnight Oil. They went to impress because,
you know, now Gary was dividing his attention with another band and all that sort of thing.
But I guess the cruncher with Gary was one day he took us for a ride in his HR Holden,
all seven of us in the car and we parked up on top of a factory in Brookvale and he began a spiel of
how he'd been to see Billy Graham, the great evangelist and had become a, you know, born-again
Christian. And he said, I'm telling you guys that the biggest bands in the world are going to be
Christian bands and you guys have to become Christians. And we just all went, you know,
not that we were opposed to it, but we just thought, whoa, whoa, hang on a minute, you know.
So we parted ways with Gary and we went sort of crawling to Chris Murphy, who was an agent at the
time. He'd booked some of the gigs that we'd done with Midnight Oil and whatever. You know,
Tim was kind of managing us, Tim Faris, and he just kept relentingly pushing the idea of Chris
managing us and he didn't want to do it and he didn't want to do it and eventually he broke.
So he took over management and that was in mid to late 89 and yeah, Chris was, well, mostly on,
but on off on working with us until he passed away, you know, earlier this year.
Yeah. And an absolute legend. I remember you coming in with him to Triple M many times and
just the, you could just tell the friendship that you've been through so much with all the war
stories and so much success. And he would have taken a bullet for us. He was so passionate
and also brilliant guy as far as sort of outside the box thinking and marketing and like, well,
we don't have to do it that way. We're going to do it this way. And he ruffled a lot of feathers
along the way and probably most of them, you know, but it was just his, he lived and breathed in
excess. And later on, when we brought him back in to sort of look after us, he was super hesitant
because he knew that if he committed to working with us again for him, it's 24 seven. It's just
blinkers on and off he goes, which it was. And, you know, I'd hate to think that that lifestyle
he led because of that was what ended up participating in passing away. But anyway,
he was a great guy and he wouldn't want it any other way. No, I don't think so.
Yeah. So at what point in your life do you go, actually we're a big deal now. Yeah. This is like,
is there a moment where you go, wow, we're not just driving around at Brookvale doing bits and
bobs? It's incremental, you know, because we recorded our first album after gigs, like Midnight
to Dawnshift in the studio in Leichhardt, I think it was. And so, you know, we do sometimes three
gigs a night at that point, because every pub had bands every night. It was amazing. So we were
playing virtually every night in different pubs around Sydney. And then later on, Melbourne,
Brisbane started travelling, but we did the first album and it was literally really just
going in and recording the songs as we were playing them live. So it was pretty easy.
We had a budget of about five bucks. And so that album came out and hearing for the first time,
one of our songs on the radio, that was like, oh, we've made it.
Was it Triple M who played it? Can you remember? Triple M didn't exist because this was 1980. So
it just started starting in 80. Maybe it just started. Yeah. But no, it was actually in,
we were in Melbourne doing, you know, we used to go to Melbourne, stay in a dive hotel for about
three weeks and do all the pubs in Melbourne. And then we drive back in, you know, sometimes the one
car back to Sydney and do a few weeks in Sydney, and then go up to Brisbane and drive up there and
do a few weeks. And it was a circus life. Did you love the circus life? Yeah, every minute of it,
you know, and that was the thing. Well, none of it was well, as I recall, because I loved every
bit about it. I think there's certainly a bit later on, some of the guys in the band didn't
like touring and all that sort of stuff, but they didn't get their way because we toured and toured
and toured for a decade. But, you know, speaking of tipping point, or when you, you know, you
realise you've made it, I don't know that you ever do, because you're always thinking ahead and
thinking, okay, you know, okay, we just achieved that. Now we've got to win the Super Bowl again,
kind of thing. But definitely, obviously around the kick album, which was released about 10 years
after we'd started. So it wasn't like it was an overnight success, but around the kick album,
and it was crazy, a crazy time and so much demand put on us for press and media and appearances and
blah, blah, blah. And it was just mental. It was literally every minute was mapped out in our lives
as far as the schedule goes and that sort of thing. So when every minute of every day,
you know, is mapped out, all of a sudden, you're not doing necessarily the stuff that started the
singing. Did you mind all the stuff that happened around singing? If anything, I would say it was
the travel that was the downer, because it's just such a waste of time. You know, when we first went
to North America in 83, you know, they have tour buses and they're a bus with bunks and they have
a front lounge and a rear lounge and you pretty much live in that bus. There'd be hotels here and
there, but quite often it'd be, you know, come off stage, jump on the bus and drive to the next
city, which could be six hours. It could be sometimes a lot of what we call overnighters,
which, you know, you'd be driving sometimes for 15, 16 hours. That part of it was kind of a waste
of time, so to speak. Andrew, who pretty soon became the main songwriter, he felt he couldn't
write when, you know, it was bouncing around in a bus and all that sort of stuff. So for him,
he was the one who really hated touring and I think it was more that. We all loved being on stage,
but it was that part of it around it that was a whole chunk of life you never get back, you know.
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So rock and roll people go, right, okay, I want to be a rock and roll star. I want the, you know,
if you're a bloke, you want the girls, you want the parties and that sort of stuff. How much
of being a part of InXS was that type of thing? You're trying to dig up the dirt.
Look, there was a part of it, but we realized early on that every night mattered and that we
had to be at our best every night. So we slipped here and there, but predominantly
we're pretty good kids in the early days. Later on when we'd sort of realized, okay, you know,
when we got to the point of doing sort of stadiums and stuff around the world,
you can't do night after night. So, and in the bigger cities, there'd always be parties
because there'd be record companies throwing a party for you and blah, blah. But, you know,
well, for me anyway, I can't vouch for the other guys completely, but I'm really anal about time
and being on time and being ready and prepared and all that sort of stuff. I drive lane man
because she's the opposite. So I, you know, I would know what my curfew should be and that
sort of thing so that I'd get enough sleep and have enough time to pack in the morning to get
on whatever mode of transport we were traveling on for that day. And that sort of thing,
erred sometimes, but, you know, you can't be perfect. Yeah. But look, all of it was a lot of
fun. It really was and was, you know, we were so passionate about what we were doing and all that
sort of stuff. So for me, I just, at the time, none of it was bad. I just enjoyed it all.
Oh, sounds fantastic. What was the greatest couple of gigs you ever played? Like those moments
where you're on stage and you were doing what you do and you just go, I'm literally the king of the
world right now. Like Michael's just over there. I've got my mates over here and we are playing
Wembley or whatever it might be. I'm not sure that I ever thought I was king of the world, but
Michael might have. But look, there were so many great shows along the way. One of the first that
came to mind was, I think it was in about 85 or 86. We did a special performance down in Melbourne
with a bunch of other bands, Australian bands, for Prince Charles and Princess Di. So, and we
got to meet them after and all that. She is beautiful as we expect. Unbelievable. Yeah.
Just glowed aura. But that was a really kind of special gig kind of thing. And we recorded that
night as well. I loved, I think, the South American gigs in general. We were the first
international act to play in Argentina ever in 84 at a stadium there. And we were the first
international band to play in Mexico City. It was 91. No outside band had been allowed
into Mexico City after the doors had played there in the sixties. And obviously I never found out
really what happened, but they banned international acts. So we were the first allowed in to Mexico
City in 91. So we ended up doing a lot of touring through South America and in some respects really
opened the doors to other acts to go there and tour. We headlined Rock in Rio that same year
that we played Mexico, which was amazing. 160,000 people. Wow. And yeah, it's incredible
because it just, you know, you end up not really seeing any single person because it's just a sea
of people. As far as the eye can see. Yeah. And actually another one that was really interesting
was in at the end of our first ever tour of North America, opening up for Adamant in 83, we did the
US festival in California, which was put on by the two guys that started Apple, Apple computer.
And it was a three day outdoor festival. We were the second band on and we got an encore.
So we were just like, Oh, you know, that was, that was the point of like, we've made it because no,
none of the opening acts normally are even allowed to do an encore, but we got an encore. And there
was allegedly 250,000 people there over the course of the weekend. And it was on a gentle
sloping Hill, like out in somewhere in, you know, in California, about halfway up,
the audience disappeared into the smog. So we couldn't see the back half of the audience
because of the smog. Wow. The LA smog. Yeah, it was pretty crazy, but that, that was a really
memorable gig too, you know, it was so important for us to just go on and on stage. And because
we'd had hundreds of gigs under our belt from the pub scene in Australia, we had sort of a,
you know, we had a one up on most other international acts because they didn't have
that upbringing, shall we say of, you know, playing every night for a couple of years,
which is what we did in the pubs here. You were fit, ready and rearing and we were a machine
on stage. And, and, and quite often it was always said that glue the main act off stage and blah,
but there was sort of proof in the pudding that night. Cause we got an encore.
That's so great. The one thing that I wanted to talk to you about now quickly was the TV show
and the sort of, cause I've got three kids, 22, 20 and 18, and they've got the kick album in their
Spotify playlist, you know, and all of a sudden a whole lot of people went, got this in excess,
it's pretty good. And we're like, um, yeah, we were there when it first happened kids.
It's like coming back to us going, oh, this is band court and midnight, all the same thing
and dragon and a lot of Aussie rock and roll bands have, are now in the Spotify lists of our kids.
Yeah. It's amazing. Isn't that really? I don't know why that is. I put it down to,
in some respects to, well, one got to be great songs, but I think it was real musicians playing
real instruments. And there's something about that. I think, I mean, I'm,
I love a lot of current music and that sort of thing too, but, but yeah, it was just different.
I think there was a lot more point of differences too, between all the different bands.
That was how you made it. You had to have some kind of point of difference to
the next guys or whatever. Yeah, it is interesting, but rockstar, you know, that came about obviously,
you know, Michael, our original singer passed away in 97. We were obviously gutted and thought,
well, that's, that's it. You know, our careers over with, we've lost our front man and you know,
irreplaceable and all that. And it was actually Jimmy Barnes that we were in the studio,
maybe a year later, I think going through all our old tapes, listening to see if we had any
songs that we hadn't released and maybe we can do something with them and whatever.
And Jimmy called up, won't even try to do Jimmy's sort of shouting Scottish accent, but,
but he basically shouted down the phone at us, you know, I want you guys to play
Mushroom Records are having a 25th anniversary and we'd recorded one song with Jimmy Goodtimes
a few years prior and when Michael was alive and that had been released on Mushroom. And so he said,
I want you guys to perform with me at this concert in Melbourne for this 25th anniversary. And
we hummed and aahed a bit and then we thought, oh, what the heck. And so we did it and we rehearsed
three or four songs, I think, and played it at the gig in Melbourne and, you know, the reaction,
the crowd reaction was shocking, astounding. You know, we just didn't expect it to sort of,
to get such an amazing reaction. And so that sort of spurred the idea on that, well, okay, we,
we're still in excess. We still sound like in excess. We just got to find the right singer.
So through a process of a different, a bunch of different things that happened,
we ended up approaching John Stevens and he sang with us for about three, four years, I think.
And it was, you know, I owe so much to John for doing that because it really put our faith back
in us and brought us out of our hole that we'd kind of dug and helped us realise that yes,
we could continue and whatever. Unfortunately, it didn't really move forward with new material.
And so we kind of decided that we're going to try something else now or whatever. And so the idea of
doing a TV show to do an international search for a new singer, we thought we could get someone
known, you know, we're always going to face the comparison situation. We're going to compare them
to Michael and whatever. So we thought, well, let's try and find a diamond in the rough, you know,
someone unknown. So we teamed up with Mark Burnett, who was at that time kind of reality show king
behind The Apprentice and Survivor and all these sorts of shows. And so we teamed up with Mark to
do the production of it. And Tim and I set off around the world going to auditions in all the
major cities around the world, which was a long other story in itself, because some of them were
just like, oh, my God, how are we going to find someone in New York? No, no, I think there was
definitely a bunch of us in the band that were going, we need a female singer, because then
there's not the comparisons, you know, or we need to be that sort of radical with it. So we were
looking at men and women, of course, but I'll never forget in New York, I don't know what if the ad in
the paper had sort of read incorrectly, but we got a whole bunch of, you know, Broadway kind of peeps
come down and sing for us. And it was just like, Tim and I were just like, oh, we're going to die,
this is it. This is the end of our career. Like, no way. Oh, it was horrible. But there was some
great, great ones there as well. But it was funny that we got sort of all these kind of Broadway
sort of trained people, you know, anyway, trying to cut it short. But we, so we went and did the TV
show and was on Foxtel here, which we were a little bit disappointed with only because Foxtel
was not, you know, not that big then. So it was in 2005. So we're about 20% of the if that,
you know, if that maybe, but at least in America, it was on CBS and it was on other big networks
around the world. Extremely nerve wracking, extremely risky to do. And lots of heated
discussions with Mark Burnett about how we need to do this and fights over he wanted the stage
set to be in the shape of a guitar with a finger and it's like country music awards, you know,
you can't do this and had to fight with him to make it, you know, look like a club and get the
audience right down the front. So it was like a gig, which none of the other shows like Idol and
stuff were doing back then. You know, we had a real rock band that was the backing band, you know,
really primo musicians, well known, like the music director was the music director for people like
Cher and also, you know, they're all big gun musicians. In fact, it was intimidating for us
to have to get up and play at one point in the show because they are so amazing on all this band,
this house band, as we call them, you know, but anyway, it was a very interesting journey and,
and very, you know, out of our comfort zone and all that. And, and we ended up with the guy that
we all said at the start, there's no way he's going to be our singer, but he ended up being the one
that sort of had all the goods as far as charisma and a bit dangerous and a bit unpredictable. And
he had a great voice and all that sort of stuff. So he seemed to be the one that wanted it the most
as well. So we ended up picking JD Fortune and straight away went in and recorded the album that
we did with him, Switch in about three weeks, I think, and then went on tour. And did you love
that experience? Yeah, yeah, it was, it was, it was great at first, but then it kind of got difficult.
I think, you know, look, he was a guy that was allegedly living in his car boot before
entering into the show. And, and I think that sort of from, you know, a car boot to selling out arenas
in North America and Australia and all that sort of thing was a massive ask for a young guy without
the experience that, you know, that we'd had and all that sort of thing for us. It was just, you
know, it's another gig, but for him, it was a lot of life changing. Yeah, yeah, totally changing.
And then, and so then he didn't handle it pretty much. I think he just found, you know, it was
obviously too much for him. And so we're after about 18 months, I think, close to two years,
we said, I look going to stop for a while and think about what we do next and all that.
We did end up a couple of years later when we bought Chris Murphy back on, did end up doing
some more gigs with JD for a while there. And then we decided that was enough either time to
do something different or to put the plug on that sort of thing. Where are you now? Where are you
now in your own life? And obviously beautiful house here. You love Lainey. You've been together
for a long time. You're like soulmates. Absolutely. What's the future look like for you?
Well, look, I'm kind of right. I guess I'm retired. You know, I'm 63.
Gee, you don't look 63. I do. You look really good. You can come back.
I love my simple life. I'm the housewife, you know, I did the cooking and mostly the washing
and all that sort of stuff. It's all the stuff I wasn't able to do in my previous life where
I was just always on tour, you know, I couldn't cook in my hotel room, although I did attempt
to a few times. But all that simple stuff, I'm just loving it. Australia is just a wonderful
place to live. And I've got other passions now. I haven't really announced it yet,
but I've bought out a Rosé. I actually had a bottle. Lainey gave me a bottle a couple of weeks
ago and it was beautiful. Yeah. So I'm actually working on marketing my very small batch of Rosé
and just trying to get it into a few restaurants and get it sort of get it going and see what
happens. So that's taken up quite a bit of time in the last 12 months or so. And for decades,
I've gambled heavily on the stock market, which I still do. I love that. Just really enjoy.
So is that you with a laptop in the mornings going through stuff, doing your own calls?
Some of it. Yeah. I trade on, you know, an online platform as well as I do have a stockbroker
company that I've been with for 20 years. I think different stockbrokers have looked after me as
times go on. Yeah, yeah. They come and go. But yeah, I really enjoy that. And up until recently,
we had a Lainey and I found a little cottage at Cottage Point. We sold it at the beginning
of this year, but we had it for about five or six years. So I always wanted to go back there and
we found this little cottage for sale and Airbnb'd it. So I managed that, which was a freaking
nightmare. I'll never do that again. It was me that instigated selling it because I just couldn't
cope. I got so busy in 2020, obviously, with people not being able to go overseas and
fastidious with how it was set up and sort of fully sort of stock kitchen, not so much food,
but making sure that, you know, there was all the teas and the coffees and the sugar and the salt
and pepper shakers were filled and you know, it's nuts. And then, you know, there were a few times
where I was cleaning the toilet going, is this where I wanted to end up? Yeah. Was I playing
in front of 250,000 people? And here I am leaning over a toilet bowl. So it was a bit of,
you know, it was an interesting time, but it was a lot of maintenance to the property and all that
sort of stuff and setting it up for when guests come and then checking that things hadn't been
broken or, you know, it's just like, what am I doing? I don't need to do this. And so anyway,
we sold it in February, but that took up a lot of time in the last five or six years up until we
sold it as well. So I'm actually just bathing in basking in sort of, you know, sunlight of not
having any sort of commitments like that now. And not that we've been able to go anywhere for,
you know, on and off for the last 18 months anyway, it's just been nice having a simple life
and not having to be anywhere and kind of do anything other than cook and drink wine.
And yeah, and just be with Lane. Yeah. And just be with Lane. That's pretty cool. I'd like to do
that. That sounds a good, that sounds a pretty good life. I have had an amazing life. I've,
I've, you know, totally grateful and humbled by everything that's occurred in it. So very,
very fortunate. Do you ever just slip on an album and listen to? Never. No, no, I don't,
I don't listen to our music in excess music, you know, unless something's happening and I
need to have a listen to a new mix of something or whatever. I don't actually do anything sort
of musically now. I've just decided I did everything I could have possibly have wanted to do.
I was never a campfire guy sitting around strumming my acoustic guitar. Anyway, when I was a kid,
I was, but when we became professional and all that, we, some of our tours went for like eight
months around the world. And the last thing I'd want to do when I got home was, Hey honey, can I
sing you a song? Never. A bit of American pie. Yeah, exactly. You know, so I, you know,
I just switch on and switch off and now I've kind of switched off. So I do have a guitar downstairs,
but it's not often I pick it up and play it. And, and I don't regret that at all.
Do people ask you at dinner parties? They go, Oh, mate, could you just-
Yeah, go on, mate, rip a tune out. You know, I've done a few weddings.
Yeah, for close, for close friends.
Yeah. I was doing, you know, corporate gigs, Q and A only. And then if they pay a bit more,
I'd sing a couple of songs for them. But of course that's all been sort of shut down in
the last 18 months. And I won't do it on zoom because I've done a few of those on zoom, but
unless, you know, the sounds set up properly and all that, I'm not willing to risk singing a couple
of songs. Fair enough. Yeah. You know, it's just, as I said, the simple life is good after such a
complicated life. I appreciate it. Yeah. Good on you. I love that. Let's finish off with the
top five questions. Your favourite- Is this like the first word?
No, this is really easy. This is really easy. It's like a psychiatry, you know,
look in my eyes. That's the first word that comes into your head.
Your favourite holiday destination? Oh, well, I'll go with whatever first comes
into your mind. Definitely the homestead at El Questro in, in well, Western Australia,
nearly Northern Territory or Western Australia, most amazing place I've ever been to. It's built
on a, on the top of a gorge and in a couple of the rooms, you got into your balcony and you're
looking down into the gorge where there's crocodiles swimming around and you can throw like bread off
the veranda and the crocodiles swim over to the bread and eat it. It's extremely pricey and it's
one of those all-inclusive kind of things, but it's just, the whole property is amazing. I love
rainforests and waterfalls and all that sort of unicorns and rainbows. And whereas Lane likes,
you know, surf, the bigger, the better sort of thing. So we kind of, again, we're quite
opposite in one of those ways, but yeah, to me that, that place is heaven and there's all sorts
of things you can do there. It's just a magical spot. Sounds great. Are you a reader? Have you
got a favourite book? I am an avid reader and I'm a Kindle guy because I read so much
that I couldn't have books, you know, you wouldn't be able to sit in his room.
And as far as favourite books goes, not really, but I didn't read at all after my school years,
really. I just, I didn't read predominantly at all. And then maybe 10 years ago, I picked up
this book called Plan of the Cave Bears. I think it might even be partially a children's book. I
don't know. But, but the fascination to me was, it was, it was about kind of where Neanderthal
man meets caveman kind of thing, that transition that must have happened when man jumped a notch
intelligently wise. And it's about this girl that gets orphaned and picked up by the cave dwellers
and she's different and all that sort of thing. I just found it fascinating. So from that point on,
I just started reading again. Yeah. And I fire in the belly again. Yeah, I did. I love it.
It's the last thing I do before I go to sleep. Yeah. Best way to go to sleep. I reckon. Yeah.
Have you got a quote or a saying something that you live your life by or someone said something
to you one day and you went, Oh, that makes sense to me. Again, first thing that comes in,
keep it as a hobby. That was what my father told me through my whole childhood when I was living
at home and trying to teach myself guitar and then got a band. And dad always said,
keep it as a hobby. You have to get a real job. And, and funnily enough, about, oh, you know,
many years later, I think it was our fourth or fifth album, you know, to go on platinum or
whatever here in Australia and the record company said, Oh, do you guys want like a plaque made,
you know, the platinum record plaque thing made for family members or any, you know,
anyone that's special, you know, Chris Murphy, he got one anyway. So I said, yeah, I want one
for mum and dad. And on it, I put it in inverted commas, keep it as a hobby. And dad got prior to
place and dad just loved it because he got it, you know, he got it. But that was his saying,
keep it as a hobby. I think that is beautiful. I could just imagine his face,
favourite movie. So many, so many that are that mean a lot, you know, because we used to sit on
the bus touring around America, just watching movies all the time, video VHS videos. Yeah.
There's some of those movies that we just watched over and over again, like Caddyshack.
There was a whole lot of them, really. But one of my favourite movies, and I just don't know why it
gets to me, it's called The Prestige. It's got Michael Caine. I think Hugh Jackman, Hugh Jackman.
Yep. Yep. Yep. I think David Bowie plays a little part in that as well.
David Bowie plays Nikola Tesla. But I just found it just such a fascinating concept. And it was,
it's about, you know, two competing magicians in the early 1900s, trying to outdo each other sort
of thing. But it's really dark and really, really kind of, I don't know, it's almost believable.
And especially this one of the characters, as you said, David Bowie plays Nikola Tesla, who
is probably my all time, he'd be my first person, I would say, at a dinner table,
you know, like, who would you like at a dinner table? Fascinating inventor. And literally,
if we'd gone with his forward thinking, instead of Edison's, we'd be living in a different world and
a much better world power wise, for a start. He was a genius. Anyway, he impacts quite heavily
in the story as well, in The Prestige. So yeah, I love that movie.
Beautiful. Final question. And most importantly, and I know you've got a very,
you know, a charity very close to your heart. Sean partners who are sponsoring this podcast
are giving $10,000 to all our guests to give away to a charity of your choice. So I know you've
spoken about it on Triple M many times. Could you tell us, you know, who are you going to give to
and what will they do with 10 grand? Yeah, well, yes, I'm currently an ambassador for
Alcama Australia, but I don't think I'll pick them. Okay, great. They're going to hate me.
Any reason I say that is that there's a couple of organisations out there that look after
musos and stuff when, if they've been in accidents or they're retired or, and also there's one for
crew guys drive around in the trucks and set up the band gear all the time and they don't have a
life. And, you know, if they get injured, they're not skilled in anything else. What do they do?
So I think probably both those charities, I'll split it. Perfect. Okay. So we'll get the names
of those and make sure they get that $5,000. And if you've heard the Lane Beechley podcast,
you've heard the love story and how that all happened, which is why we didn't go into it with
Kurt. But thank you so much. There's so much we could have got to that we haven't because of time,
but thanks so much for your time. I will tell a different side to the story.
Oh, well, she said that you're that she wasn't interested and you're all over like a child.
Such a liar. I believe anything that comes out of her mouth.
No, she was right. We weren't, both of us were not interested at all. And the first date was
a disaster and probably is a similar story. Although when we do tell it, we always interrupt
each other and say, no, no, that's not, that's not how I remember. Yeah. How does that happen?
Yeah, you're both there. But well, the thing is that you're still together now.
Absolutely. And that's the most important thing. Absolutely. Looking after each other
and loving each other. So thanks for your time, mate. Thank you. That was Kirk Pangili. What a
humble and grounded guy. What I loved about him was just how relaxed he was. And the fact when I
said to him, when did you realize you're a success? It wasn't that moment at Wembley in front of
hundreds of thousands. It was purely just knowing right from the start that they had something
really, really special. And that episode of Kirk was our last episode of season one of Not
an Overnight Success. But we've got some great news. Thanks to all of your feedback. We are going
to be back with another season, another 10 incredible people from the world of business,
entertainment and sport, talking about how they became the successes that they are. We'll be
chatting with the likes of Tweaky Forest, Debra Lee Furness, Lisa Wilkinson and many more. It'll
also be another hundred thousand dollars going to various charities, all thanks to our wonderful
sponsor, Shaw and Partners Financial Services, who have generously supported this podcast and
also donated ten thousand dollars to the charity of choice of each of our guests to thank them for
their time. Shaw and Partners are an Australian investment and wealth management firm who manage
over 28 billion dollars of assets under advice. With seven offices around Australia, Shaw and
Partners act for and on behalf of individuals, institutions, corporates and charities. For more
info, you can check out their website at shawandpartners.com.au. That's S-H-A-W for
Shaw. Shaw and Partners Financial Services, your partners in building and preserving wealth.