THE LOSS OF a frontman sounds the death knell for most bands. Although The Doors soldiered on manfully for two albums after Jim Morrison's death in 1971, they were a shadow of their former glory without their Lizard King. In the case of Nirvana, its remaining members sensibly chose to pursue other projects after Kurt Cobain's 1994 suicide.
After the untimely demise of Michael Hutchence in 1997, it seemed as if the party was over for INXS, too. American R&B artist Terence Trent d'Arby and former Cold Chisel vocalist Jimmy Barnes joined them for one-off concerts, while Jon Stevens - who had previously found moderate fame as the lead singer of Australian band Noiseworks - toured with the band between 2000 and 2003. Nevertheless, a new album failed to materialise and the remaining five members of the band, which had been one of the music world's biggest draws in the late 1980s and early 1990s, looked in danger of becoming a platform for a spot of celebrity stadium-rock karaoke.
But then they came up with the idea of launching a reality-TV show to find their next lead singer. And so Rock Star was born. The show, which premiered on Star World on Tuesday and might best be described as a mixture of Big Brother and Pop Idol, follows 15 hopefuls as they compete to be INXS' new spearhead. The winner will not only record an album with the band, their first new material since 1997's Elegantly Wasted, but will also embark with them on a 60-city world tour, beginning in Sydney early next year.
Guitarist Tim Farriss and guitarist/saxophonist Kirk Pengilly were doing the publicity rounds by telephone from Los Angeles last week, on the set of Rock Star as filming was due to commence.
'The idea actually came about in 1998,' says Pengilly, recalling the uncertain months that followed the Hong Kong-raised Hutchence's death. 'We were trying to decide what we were going to do. We were discussing a bunch of ideas and I flippantly threw in the concept of doing a worldwide search for a new singer on TV.'
The rest of the band liked the idea, says Pengilly, but it seemed unworkable at the time. When the subject came up again last year, however, INXS decided that, in the wake of the flood of reality-TV shows, the time was ripe to put the plan into action. They spoke to several production companies and eventually found their perfect match in Survivor creator Mark Burnett. Together they worked on the format for the show, eventually coming up with a system in which, week-by-week, each of the contestants gets the chance to perform a song of their choice and viewers around the world vote for their favourite. The three lowest-polling contenders must then perform a song from INXS' back catalogue in front of the band, who then decide which performer must say goodbye to the show and their dreams of stardom.