INXS to Cease Touring

Stephen Chernin/Associated Press INXS performing in 2006 at Radio City Music Hall in New York. J.D. Fortune, center, was lead singer of the group from 2005 to 2011.

The Australian rock band INXS, once one of the biggest live acts in the world, has said it will no longer tour after 35 years of giving concerts.

The band's drummer, Jon Farriss, made the announcement that the band was giving its last concert on Sunday during a dual performance with Matchbox Twenty at an arena in Perth, Australia.

Later the group issued a simple statement on its Web site: “We understand that this must come as a blow to everybody, but all things must eventually come to an end. We have been performing as a band for 35 years, it's time to step away from the touring arena.”

Having invented a danceable funk-rock fusion, the members of INXS emerged as major stars in the late 1980s after their breakthrough album “Kick,” which eventually sold more than 10 million copies and yielded four hit singles, among them “Need You Tonight.” In their heyday, they were one of the biggest draws on the concert circuit, filling stadiums around the world, playing for a crowd of 80,000 people in London's Wembley Stadium and drawing 120,000 to a concert in Rio de Janeiro.

James Minchin/Associated Press INXS in 1997, with Michael Hutchence in the foreground.

But in 1997, the band's charismatic lead singer, Michael Hutchence, was found dead in a Sydney hotel room, an apparent suicide. The rest of the band - the brothers Tim, Andrew and John Farriss, (who played guitar, keyboards and drums, respectively), the guitarist and saxophonist Kirk Pengilly and the bassist Garry Gary Beers - never fully recovered their previous popularity. The group went through several lead vocalists in the late 1990s and 2000s.