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INXS sacks Rock Star singer

JD Fortune, who joined INXS after winning the Rock Star reality series, says his life has come to a screeching halt.

fortuneSinger JD Fortune, who became the new frontman for INXS through US reality series Rock Star, has been sacked by the band.

“I was in an airport at Hong Kong and literally got a handshake. They said, ‘Thank you very much’,” he told Entertainment Tonight.

“I found myself really alone because I had travelled with these guys for 23 months.

“I don’t know where I am going, from sofa to sofa, from night to night. I am trying to get through my life.”

Fortune – real name Jason Dean Bennison – admitted his departure could have had something to do with his cocaine use.

“It got as bad as it needed to be for me to numb out the fact that I knew this was going to come to a screeching halt,” he said.

It’s understood Fortune was always an employee of INXS’ company.

Jon Stevens, who also sang with the band, has criticised the band for enlisting Fortune through the TV show. He had warned his successor that he would be “raped and pillaged”.

“(The show’s) main objective is money, money and greed,” he said in 2005.

In other rock meets reality news, Australian Michael Johns returns tonight to American Idol, singing the Joe Cocker classic ‘The Letter’ live on the Idol stage, accompanied by fellow season seven finalist Carly Smithson.

Johns is plugging his upcoming debut album to some 25 million viewers. Hopefully he doesn’t follow the same habits as some others…

Source: news.com.au

17 Responses

  1. Fortune will do anything to feed his huge ego. If he is homeless and living out of his truck what must his mother think and sister,his nana that he lived with when they see this on tv? He bragged about his club fibbers. Do they refuse to let him stay with them? What do they think when he says he has nowhere to stay?Some ambitious reporter should find out from all these people if they won’t let him live with them. It would be good for an opinion or statement or anything at all from anyone of them.People must be asking his mom and sister why he said that on tv and it makes them look like idiots. What a moron fortune is. To work with him on any level a person would have to be out of their mind. Think what he will say and so to you.

  2. Having seen the promo special that accompanied Switch, it was pretty clear that the remaining members of INXS have become laughable caricatures of the past-it rocker. Botoxed, fake-tanned, and wearing clothes that suit men twenty years younger, it was just embarrassing, like the album itself. It’s a shame anyone, let alone JD Fortune, got swept up in the bands desperation to capture former glories.

  3. @Mac

    Firstly, what is a “Dood”???

    Secondly, so what if another band did a similar thing(queen and paul rodgers), Not all instances it worked, There was no replacement for Michael with INXS, they should of quit after his death in 1997, period.
    Instead, they turned into a parody of themselves, and ruined the good name they once had, the album they did with JD Fortune was crap.

  4. INXS are a sad, sad parody of the band they once were. Surely these guys had enough success, money as well as an enviable enough CV to avoid selling out in the most grotesque of fashions.

    Hutchence, despite a career decline towards the end, WAS the band. Really. It’s like the Beatles re-forming without Lennon or Harrison. Just wouldn’t happen.

    Fortune- high on cocaine, low on talent. What sort of ‘profile’ Tony do you think would afford him a solo career? He has no profile. Like all of these manufactured pop wanabes with stars in their eyes, it all ends in tears. The corporate machine chews up what little talent they have and then spits them out.

    That comback single was freaking awful McDonalds rock of the worst kind and Australian commercial radio should be rapped severly on the knuckles for ever playing such cynical noise pollution. It’s over INXS- as another band who have never reformed once said, ‘Let it be’.

  5. “…admitted his departure could have had something to do with his cocaine use.”
    Wow… He really was taking this “rock star” thing seriously! 😉 Maybe he could take his little bag of drugs and play Guitar Hero instead. I guess he did better than many of the “Idols”…

  6. Hopefully, the band will do what they should of done back in 1997(after the death of Michael Hutchence), and pull up stumps…. for good.
    There is no replacement for there one and only real singer, the last album, Switch with JD as lead singer was awful.

  7. Good riddance to bad frontmen. Sadly, the reputation of the band is now surely irrepairably damaged. Aside from becoming the new RocKwiz house band, what could they possibly do to claw back some semblance of credibility?

  8. Hate to be picky but “The Letter” is the Box Tops’ classic, covered (very nicely) by Cocker. With Fortune’s profile, why can’t he carve a solo career for himself?

  9. That’s a shame, cos JD made a great frontman for that band… what a bunch of old idiots they are…. and no wonder we never saw a 2nd album with him on it. 🙁

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