As a teenager in Perth in the 1980s, the Australian local music scene was strong, there were bands playing the local pubs. I was certainly too young in the early 80s to see live music in the pubs, but we discussed music at high school and there was always Countdown on the ABC on Sunday evening.

INXS were originally a Perth band in the late 1970s but moved to Sydney when forced to play covers instead of original music. The Farris brothers had already met up with Michael Hutchence in Perth and all headed east to pursue their dream of being the world’s number one band in the late 80s and early 90s.

The Kick album propelled the band into super-stardom, there were many memorable tracks from the album, the reason why Kick stayed highly positioned in the charts throughout 1987 and into 1988. For me, Never Tear Us Apart was the song of the album. The film clip was set in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic in winter, this was the reason I wanted to see this city.

I was finally able to visit Prague in 2014 during my long service leave, we were in the Munich Bahnhof and I enquired at the counter what train options I had. When I was told Prague, that was an easy sell and we were told to get moving to the departure platform as the train leaves in less than 10 minutes. That left us with just enough time to purchase a bagel and coffee and we were off.

We got to Prague after midnight, then we had to hang around in the terminal to use their WiFi to find some accommodation. My tablet was nearly flat, I tried to charge my tablet on the train but there must have been a power surge as the charger burnt out and the battery in my tablet was damaged, the capacity was now severely limited. I could see the battery indicator losing a percent per minute.

But we got there, we found accommodation so we found a bed and when I woke up in the morning, we had Prague to explore. Naturally I walked over Charles Bridge and I looked for the bank where Michael Hutchence strolled around in the opening scenes. Ok, so what does Never Tear Us Apart mean to me? Well, to Michael Hutchence, this was apparently about the band’s rise to stardom.

My sister played this song at the end of my brother in law’s funeral, just as it was played at Michael Hutchence’s funeral, so I really wanted to get to Prague to walk the same streets and river bank as INXS did shooting the video clip. This was by far the best song on an amazing album, the Kick album made INXS worldwide superstars