THE daughter of INXS star Garry ‘Gary’ Beers has slammed the bass player for sleeping with groupies and abandoning his young family at the height of his fame.
In a scathing account published in The Australian, Lucy-Mae Beers described 57-year-old Beers as a “D-list rock star†suffering from a “Peter Pan syndromeâ€.
The 22-year-old said the recent INXS mini-series Never Tear Us Apart was full of errors and did not paint the full picture of Beers’s lifestyle at the peak of the band’s success and the effect it had on his then wife and two young daughters.
But Beers hit back on Wednesday, releasing a statement that answered all the accusations made by his daughter, and saying he was “deeply hurt†by her comments.
“(She has) chosen to misrepresent the truth about me and my wife Jourdan,†he stated.
“Lucy makes a series of hurtful allegations against me, each of which is untrue. She claims that I slept with a backup singer while my pregnant wife was at home with a brand new Harley Davidson she had bought for me. This is untrue.
“She claims that I am married to ‘the woman who used to wait for him outside of gigs while his family were inside’. This is also untrue. I did not meet my current wife, Jourdan, until five years after my first wife and I were divorced.â€
REBUTTAL: Read more about Garry Gary Beers’ statement here
To add insult to injury, Lucy-Mae said, the script portrayed Beers as rationalising his affair with a backing singer because he was “lonely†and “she was beauÂtifulâ€.
After the series aired, Lucy-Mae said Beers — who she only speaks to via infrequent email — sent her an “egotistical†message asking, “What did you think of Hugh Sheridan playing Âmyself?â€
When the glory days of INXS fell away after the shock death of singer Michael Hutchence in 1997, Beers abandoned his wife, Lucy-Mae and her little sister Matilda by moving to the US and marrying one his “conquestsâ€, his daughter wrote.
“A settled family lifestyle with us was not appealing in the slightest — he longed to be back on tour fooling around with instruments and women,†Lucy-Mae wrote.
Lucy-Mae said her father had never apologised to his daughters or ex-wife for his actions.
“A multitude of excuses have escaped my Dad’s mouth in his time, but never the word ‘sorry’,†she wrote.
“It is clear he is not sorry that my little sister found out about his first affair in the INXS autoÂbiography in the school library, or that we were sent to four psychologists to understand why we were upset with him for abandoning us like stray dogs.â€
Beers currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Jourdan and their twins Isla and August.
To read the full version of Lucy-Mae Beers’s account, go to The Australian.