It looks like the old axiom “fame is fleeting” rings true. Just ask JD Fortune, the egotistical singer who replaced original INXS frontman Michael Hutchence. Fortune told “Entertainment Tonight Canada” that he’s currently living in his car after the band unceremoniously dumped him.
“I was in an airport in Hong Kong and literally got handshakes that said ‘Thank you very much,’” Fortune explained. “I found myself really alone because I had travelled with these guys for 23 months. Some of the audiences we played for were upwards of 80,000 people.”
While we agree it sucks to get booted so coldly, we’re pretty sure the singer’s current living situation isn’t too much of an adjustment for him. When he entered the 2005 reality show “Rock Star: INXS,” he was also shacked up in his car.
After backstabbing his way to the top to win the competition (we admit it – we watched the show), Fortune recorded a fairly well received album with the band and toured the world successfully for almost two years.
When we first came across this story, a question immediately came to mind: What happened to all the money? It’s impossible to release a hit album and tour for 23 months without having something to show for it, right? Apparently not for Fortune.
Some of the singer’s earnings were used to begin recording a solo project with the intriguing title The Death of a Motivational Speaker. The rest of it, by his own admission, went up his nose; a fact Rolling Stone thinks was probably his undoing.
“Fortune’s dismissal wasn’t without justification, however: The singer reportedly became a heavy cocaine user while he was in INXS. ‘It got as bad as it needed to be for me to numb out the fact that this was going to come to a screeching halt,’ Fortune said. Given that the band’s original singer, Michael Hutchence, had cocaine in his system when he died under dubious circumstances in 1997, it seems likely INXS didn’t want to follow down that drug-fueled path again with their new lead singer.”
The singer told “ET Canada” that although things could be better in his life, he’s learned his lesson and has been clean for two years.
Whatever the reason for Fortune’s ouster, we have to give props to INXS for not publicly trashing the guy, even though they might look like the bad guys right now. The band has been silent on the matter and their web site still lists him as singer.
Read BBC’s coverage of the story here and Rolling Stone’s here.