This article talks a little about the haunted mansion.

MALENE ARPE
TORONTO STAR

LOS ANGELES—Tonight is the night for Rock Star: INXS, the reality show's grand windup when we learn which of the three singers left standing will get the precious nomination as the Australian band's new vocalist.

For Marty, MiG and J.D., the ticking clock to the denouement began a whole new phase last Friday, when the survivors packed up and prepared to leave the mansion. Next stop was to be a hotel, for sequestering from each other and the world at large until the run-up to tonight's telecast.

Three months ago, they and 12 other contestants had moved into the mansion and began a long process of auditions and self-revelations in individual bids to persuade the existing members of INXS that they had the right stuff to front the band.

It's mid-afternoon on Friday and J.D. — the sole Canadian in the running after Suzie was let go — is giving me the grand tour of the mansion before everyone departs. He's so damned pretty it's hard to know whether to look at the INXS gold records and the elaborate draperies or at him.

"Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle, they were all here," the native Nova Scotian says and makes a sweeping gesture around the grand hall. Then he pours a couple of beers from the tap. "It's Foster's this week, I think. They've served us Busch Light," he says and makes a face. "Just give me a couple of cases of Keith's and I'd be happy."

He would also like a Tim Hortons coffee ("like you wouldn't believe") and whooped when I gave him a Player's Light. This boy who wants to be at the mic for INXS is a bit homesick and, for a couple more hours, stuck in a haunted house.

The 16,000-square-foot mansion in L.A.'s Silver Lake district sits on two hectares of gorgeousness with a breathtaking view that includes the Hollywood sign far off in the distance. Completed in 1923 by oil heiress Daisy Canfield, who'd left her husband for movie star Antonio Moreno, it was a mover-and-shaker kinda joint until all was lost in the Depression and it became a school for girls, then an orphanage and finally a nunnery. In 1998 the estate was saved from the bulldozer by the current owner, the designer Dana Hollister, who spends the rental fee from Rock Star on the upkeep.

J.D. thinks he may have encountered a dead nun last night.

"Three consecutive nights I had the same dream, and then last night at 4 in the morning I was walking down the hallway and I heard this voice `Jaaason ...' Like right in my ear. I'm not kidding. I had to get out of the house and go outside for about 15 or 20 minutes.

"It could be some of the nuns or the old stars who used to party here. It definitely feels like they have a sense of humour. But maybe some of the nuns don't approve of what's been going on here for the past months."

MiG joins us in the "gold room" and says when the crew came in to doll up the house for Rock Star purposes, the doorknob to the room was ice cold and when they got it open, the room was, too. No mean feat in all this relentless sunshine.

Next we meet Marty, who says he has loved staying at the house, even if it is full of nooks and crannies and strange winding stairs. ("Let me hold your hand while we go down these," says J.D. and I feel a swoon coming on.)

"It's been the greatest summer of my life," Marty says. "This is like getting your own private resort with all the fixings. The best thing is, you're surrounded by creative arts for three months. We talk of music 24/7, we write songs, we play with the phenomenal house band. It's all music ... It will be weird to go out in the real world."

The mansion contestants have been kept away from cellphones, newspapers, television and Internet access, gilded-cage style. Says J.D.: "It's weird. It reminds me of being in the military a little bit. We're on a need-to-know basis here, and most of the time they don't think we need to know."

As a result, the trio has no real sense of what the outside world thinks of the show. For their blogs on the official website, they had to submit postings in longhand. Without all that outside reality, they've had time to think about Plan B, should someone else win tonight.

"The whole world has changed as far as the recording industry goes," MiG says. "You can't just walk into a record company office with a demo tape. But if you have a bit of a profile, maybe they'll listen to you. This has made a creative profile for all of us ... I will go back to London. It's where my wife is, it's where my band is, but I will stick around in L.A. for a bit, just to see what doors might open."

The show's production team has been set up in the old stable, watching the more-than 30 static cameras and the six moveable ones. A sign on the door warns that the site is off-limits to the rockers, and signs inside remind the crew that there's no seventh day pay without prior approval and to stay "the F out" of the monitor room unless you're a producer.

One of them, David Goffin, has been working on the show for 15 months. Now that it's coming down to the wire, he seems calm enough.

"I was just talking to Marty about how whoever wins, the press is going to have questions about their legitimacy. But what this show is, it's a really difficult audition, more difficult than any singer in any band has probably ever been through. So don't say, `These guys didn't pay their dues,' because they just did."

Goffin is considering taking the show on the road, having the house band tour with all or some of the candidate singers. He asks me if there's an 8,000- or 9,000-seat venue in Toronto that would be suitable.

Turns out Canadian viewers weren't the only ones sad to see Suzie eliminated.

"Suzie was one of the hardest to see go," Marty says, "because she was such a phenomenal female presence ... It's hard to act like a rock star when there are no women in the house. She's such a big personality that 75 per cent of the fun left the house when she left."

As the crew starts crating up to move out, Marty tries to put into words what tonight will mean.

"Everything I've learned about music in the past 15 years will have to be delivered through one song. If you want an epic moment in the history of my life, this is the pinnacle. This performance will influence the rest of my life. So it's pretty heavy."

J.D. has his clothes folded on his bed, ready for the transfer to the hotel. He's taking a last look around the mansion that's been an odd kinda home for the past 12 weeks. And what does the guy from New Glasgow think about the possibility of winning?

"I will be going to Australia if I win, but I will be taking the Canadian flag with me."