The INXS musician on life after the band, surviving prostate cancer and why laughter has kept his relationship with Layne Beachley going strong
You spent decades touring the world with INXS. What’s something you took very seriously in your 20s and 30s that you can laugh about now? And what would your 25-year-old self make of you today?
Fashion, definitely. It was an era when musicians and rock stars set the trends and your image was a big part of being different from the next band. God, if I had the money back that I spent in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s on designer stuff! I’ve still got the red suit from the [iconic 1991] Wembley Stadium show, even though it’s got some moth holes in it. I think deep down I’m the same person, but I’m probably a bit more relaxed and not so caught up in it all. My 25-year-old self would probably be thinking, “Why aren’t you doing anything?”
You were diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2015 at 56. How did you find out and what happened from there?
I had no symptoms. I’d been getting annual blood tests from about my mid-40s and one day my PSA was up a little bit. We did another test six months later and it was up a bit more. Over about two years, it kept increasing. The first MRI didn’t show anything, but the second did. There’s a scale called the Gleason scale that rates how aggressive the cancer is and mine was a nine out of 10. I was told pretty much the only option was to remove the prostate and hopefully the cancer was contained. Thankfully, it hadn’t spread anywhere – I was really, really lucky.
