INXS help draw 588,000 for 60 Minutes

Last night’s episode of Nine Network’s 60 Minutes which featured a segment withINXS drew 588,000 overnight metro viewers, making it the eigth-highest rating show of the night.

Sydney had the highest amount of viewers with 180,000, followed by Melbourne(155,000), Brisbane (118,000), Perth (80,000) and Adelaide (56,000).

The show ranked fifth in all the demos: 25-54, 18-49 and 16-39

The 60 Minutes special was part of INXS’s 40th anniversary celebrations sinceforming in Sydney’s Northern Beaches and the upcoming 20th anniversary ofMichael Hutchence’s death in a Sydney hotel room.

The show took the surviving members back to their beginnings, to Davidson High,where Hutchence and brothers Andrew and Jon Farriss attended (as did 60 Minutesinterviewer Tara Brown, but long after the musicians had moved on) and ForestHigh where Tim Farriss, Kirk Pengilly and Garry Beers forged lifelong friendships.

Poignant were scenes of Andrew and Jon returning to the school’s music roomwhere they had rehearsed, and talking of the day they were told about theirsinger’s death – visibly still a raw topic for the pair.

There were also text book insights as to why INXS went on to sell 55 million recordsworldwide.

Close friends from a young age meant they collectively had the vision of“climbing the mountain” together.

They were ambitious, hit the road incessantly, were driven by a visionarymanager, were sharp enough to understand and utilise new game-changers of thetime like MTV, allowed themselves to look like rock stars, and tap as manymediums as possible to reach the widest range of music fans.

Only a handful of Australian acts chasing the overseas dream successfully tickedoff all these boxes.