Writing and Recording
The song was written by Michael Hutchence and Andrew Farriss of the group INXS, after the band had gotten back together after a year-long sabbatical in 1989. The song was named after a woman who had bleached her own hair because she had "dyed" by her own hand and who was "love devastation". It is rumoured that Hutchence's then-girlfriend, Kylie Minogue, gave him the inspiration for the title while working on her 1989 film The Delinquents. Minogue was required to dye her hair platinum blonde for the role and was quoted by Hutchence in an interview in '89 as saying "I'm going suicide blonde today."
The recording of "Suicide Blonde" showed some new influences on INXS. Jon Farriss's drums show the influence of dance music especially the acid house sounds popular in the UK. Similarly, the blues harp intro on the track, performed by Charlie Musselwhite, was sampled rather than recorded live.
The track became poignant after Hutchence committed suicide on 22 November 1997, and his lover Paula Yates died of an overdose on 17 September 2000, after attempting suicide in 1998. Kym Wilson (with her then boyfriend Andrew Reyment the last people to see Michael alive) also became known as the "Suicide Blonde" in the tabloids.
Read more about this topic: Suicide Blonde
Famous quotes containing the words writing and/or recording:
“A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape, I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep; and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Write while the heat is in you.... The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)