J.D. Fortune and INXS take to the stage, kicking off world tour in Vancouver
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at 13:42 on January 18, 2006, EST.
By NEIL DAVIDSON


New lead singer J.D. Fortune performs with his band INXS during the Penfolds Icon Gala Dinner at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles Saturday. (AP Photo/Branimir Kvartuc)
VANCOUVER (CP) - J.D. Fortune is still homeless. But now, as lead singer of INXS, the Canadian is looking at a few properties "here and there."

There is no rush.

Fortune, who famously once lived in his car during down times, will be on the road for some time to come as the veteran Australian band returns to the stage. The band's Switched On world tour was set to kick off Wednesday in Vancouver.

Fortune, 32, won the job in September by outlasting 14 others on the Rock Star: INXS reality TV show. It may have been a musical gimmick but it has paid dividends. The album Switch is a hit and INXS concert tickets are hard to come by.

Fortune has helped pump fresh blood into INXS.

The band has been without a permanent singer since 1997, when the charismatic Michael Hutchence committed suicide. While Fortune was seen as the Rock Star: INXS candidate closest to Hutchence in style, he says INXS allow him to be himself onstage.

"Not only does INXS allow me to be me, but they make me feel really good about me being me, which is something I have never experienced in my life, ever," he said in an interview on the eve of the tour.

Rehearsals have been gruelling - Fortune compares them to the basic training he went through during a brief stint in the Canadian armed forces. The work has paid off, he says.

"It's been such a mutual understanding, it's actually uncanny. We feel like we have been a band for 10 years."

Asked if being part of INXS has been what he expected, Fortune says: "That and more."

More responsibility. More notoriety. More appointments.

"Everything in my day is accounted for. There's never a moment where somebody doesn't know where I am, or what I'm doing. It's just sections of time. We all work together as a band and then outside of that band there's people that help us continue on being a band. They make sure we get here, make sure that this is filmed, that this is set up properly. It's sort of a really cool symbiosis.

"And it's actually kind of refreshing to wake up in the mornings and go 'it's nine o'clock and I know exactly what I'm doing until one o'clock the next morning."'

Despite the demands of the job, Fortune seems devoid of rock star attitude.

"Really nobody in the third row cares about anything except having a great time and that's really what our job is up there. It's the audience's time, it's not our time. Our time is when this is finished and we get a chance to relax and hang out together and enjoy our friends and family. But right now, we're here for the people, we're here to give them what they want and that's exactly what we're doing."

Fortune's respect for his new bandmates ("They are really hard to keep up with, they're the hardest-working band in show business") and their pedigree ("It really is a testament to see them on stage and go 'Wow, you're looking at a combination of 200-some-odd years of experience of rock 'n' roll on that stage"') is plain to see. And it's clear Fortune wants to repay INXS for their belief in him.

Along the way, he is still pinching himself.

"It's really a bizarre thing to go from being in bands where you're playing in pubs to like 15 people to being in INXS where you're playing in front of 15,000."

Fortune, who has roots both in Ontario and Nova Scotia, returns to Toronto for shows Feb. 6 and 7. The dates come almost a year after his Feb. 4 audition for the Rock Star: INXS.

In person, Fortune is remarkably friendly. In introducing himself, he uses both hands in a handshake, keeps eye contact and remembers his interviewer's name.

Tall and rail-thin with a mischievous smile, he draws a delighted gurgle from one female TV reporter when he remembers how she used to wear her hair.

When viewers first met him on the TV show, he was bold and brash. He says that was not the whole picture.

"Well, I think getting to know me on that show would be like saying 'I know Tie Domi personally by watching him play hockey.' I operated within the parameters of the competition. I won.

"Now afterwards, I'm still me. I've always said from the beginning of the show the only five friends I wanted to make on that show were sitting across from me every week and that was INXS. For me, being rid of Rock Star: INXS and now moving on with INXS, being rid of the TV show and moving on with the music, I'm exactly who I was before I started. I think the general public just saw me in competition mode to be where I am right now. I had to do what I had to do."


©The Canadian Press, 2006