Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Sex podcast
Speaker 1: recorded Love Australian Musical. My guest today is manager Extraordinar
Speaker 1: John Watson. John, good to have you here, Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. So we were working at Sony. How did
Speaker 1: you decide to leave to manage Silver Chair. Well, they
Speaker 1: already had a record that was exploding all around the world,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't really that hard. Now usually it is.
Speaker 1: I mean you have the security of you know, a
Speaker 1: weekly paycheck or by weeek paycheck, and so for you
Speaker 1: it was really no problem. Look, when John Adunlan and
Speaker 1: I first saw the band, we saw them. You know
Speaker 1: it's a proverb your gig with six people and four
Speaker 1: of them are watching a TV a place called Jewels
Speaker 1: Tavern outside of new Castle, and they did three sets
Speaker 1: and included most of the folk Stomp album that you
Speaker 1: know we're gone to sell three minute around the world.
Speaker 1: And as we were driving home that night, I said
Speaker 1: to John, I love my job here, but if I
Speaker 1: was ever going to leave to manage a and this
Speaker 1: is the one I remember saying it in the car
Speaker 1: driving my Mitsubishi Magna back down the highway. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's really funny, because that's how the music business is.
Speaker 1: If you stay with your are, it's a game of
Speaker 1: musical cheers. If you stay where you are, eventually you
Speaker 1: tend to be out. It's very true. Yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: they can't shoot a moving target. Okay, So how did
Speaker 1: silver Tare get signed to Sony so Um? Silver Chair
Speaker 1: had won a demo competition that SPS had had run.
Speaker 1: In the first instance, it was sort of what we
Speaker 1: were a little bit slower for those people don't know
Speaker 1: what is SPS. So Silver Chair had one a demo
Speaker 1: competition that had been run by a national public broadcaster
Speaker 1: called SPS, and it was in many ways the blueprint
Speaker 1: for what Triple J would go on to do with
Speaker 1: their Unearthed program, finding unsigned artists and giving them profile.
Speaker 1: So Um, the prize for winning this demo competition was
Speaker 1: a day's recording at the Triple J studios, and so
Speaker 1: we had got a tip off that this band had
Speaker 1: been in on the weekend and they've done this song
Speaker 1: and everybody at Triple Jay was talking about it are
Speaker 1: probably going to actually start playing it, which was a
Speaker 1: very rare thing to plan unsigned band at that time.
Speaker 1: And so we got the call, you know to to
Speaker 1: check it out. We loved the song. We called them up,
Speaker 1: actually we called their mums up because they were fourteen
Speaker 1: and fifteen at the time, and we John and I
Speaker 1: was John's second day working at Sony. We started up
Speaker 1: this Murmur label and he was literally sharing my office,
Speaker 1: so sitting across from my desk, and we called up
Speaker 1: the parents and we said, well, great, we'll come up
Speaker 1: and see them play. And they were playing on playing
Speaker 1: two shows, one on the Tuesday night, one on the
Speaker 1: Friday night. The Tuesday night we couldn't go because the
Speaker 1: head of Sony International was in town, so it was
Speaker 1: put on a suit and go out to dinner with
Speaker 1: the boss um. But we said we're coming up on
Speaker 1: the Friday. Mushroom went up on the Tuesday. That was
Speaker 1: my next question, was there any competition? So Mushroom went
Speaker 1: up on the Tuesday and um and then Michael Godnsky
Speaker 1: got told by the Mushroom people who've been up there
Speaker 1: about it. He flew up on the Wednesday, and so
Speaker 1: on the Thursday, John and I call up just to
Speaker 1: confirm the times for the gig on the Friday, and
Speaker 1: we're told, look, you shouldn't you probably shouldn't buy the card. Um,
Speaker 1: you know we're going to be signing with Mushroom Like, well,
Speaker 1: we're coming anyway. So we went up on the Friday,
Speaker 1: and then you know, it proceeded to be a sort
Speaker 1: of an interesting bidding war situation thereafter. So how did
Speaker 1: you convince them to go with Sony? Well, it's a
Speaker 1: good question. Peter Carpins in the audience today. He was
Speaker 1: my boss at at Sony at the time, and so
Speaker 1: we had started this new independent label, alternative label. It
Speaker 1: was the early nineties. Everybody had an alternative label to
Speaker 1: get their Nirvana um and the whole point of that
Speaker 1: label was that it couldn't get into sort of financial
Speaker 1: bidding wars. So we had to find a different way
Speaker 1: to provide an incentive. And there were two options. One
Speaker 1: was to do a one album deal, so make it
Speaker 1: so that the parents was a low bar for them
Speaker 1: to jump. You know, when the kids turnading, they can
Speaker 1: make up their own mind. Then the other was to
Speaker 1: do an Australia only sort of deal give them which
Speaker 1: is very important as you would been talking to other
Speaker 1: people about lots of Australian artists don't like to sign
Speaker 1: for the world out of Australia. So I went to
Speaker 1: Peter and I said, look, we've got these two options.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking we should probably just sign them for Australia.
Speaker 1: They're gonna be too young to tour internationally anyway. That's
Speaker 1: you know, there's already a lot of bands that sound
Speaker 1: like this in America. Difficult for them to compete over there.
Speaker 1: And Pete with sort of the longer ranged perspective, when yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's always little river band meaning an Australian band
Speaker 1: that sounds so much like an American band that they
Speaker 1: beat them at their own game. Follows you. I'd go
Speaker 1: the other way, and in that one statement probably made
Speaker 1: so many tens of millions of dollars um. So we
Speaker 1: offered them a one album deal. My few with that
Speaker 1: was that they would think that we were saying, um,
Speaker 1: we don't have long term faith in you. Was Our
Speaker 1: pitch was the exact opposite. Our pitch was always, if
Speaker 1: they're capable of this at fifteen, imagine what they'll do
Speaker 1: at twenty five if they're just given the chance. So
Speaker 1: our pitch was very much, look it's a one album deal.
Speaker 1: There's options which you guys have that you can exercise.
Speaker 1: For more albums. Were definitely keen for more albums um
Speaker 1: and then A Eventually that deal was extended. So we
Speaker 1: we competed with Geninski, not by sort of throwing money
Speaker 1: at the band, by by by throwing greater control and
Speaker 1: a greater long term vision. And I guess the fact
Speaker 1: that John and I at the time was sort of
Speaker 1: the younger guys that you could give them, you know,
Speaker 1: unreleased pearl jam c d s and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: gave us a little bit of an edge. And as
Speaker 1: I say, the deal flexibility helps a lot as well. Okay,
Speaker 1: so did Mushroom really come back and try to get
Speaker 1: the band or Mushroom Mushroom were definitely could be other
Speaker 1: labels and then came to the party, and there were
Speaker 1: people around the band, as there always are, who are
Speaker 1: sort of leaning them one way, leaving them the other.
Speaker 1: So but Mushroom with the main competition. Others subsequently came along,
Speaker 1: but it was always sort of U saw them and
Speaker 1: then so we signed them in the I think that
Speaker 1: the Juno July by the August September of ninety four
Speaker 1: tomorrow had gone to number one in Australia. It stayed
Speaker 1: there for six weeks April. The following year, Frog Stomp
Speaker 1: came out here in March April and debut at number one.
Speaker 1: And that's in That song was the most played song
Speaker 1: on modern rock radio in America for the year. Okay,
Speaker 1: so a little bit slower. So you signed the band,
Speaker 1: you make the deal, what do you do about the recording? Um?
Speaker 1: So they had the first DP had already been done
Speaker 1: at Triple J with Yeah. Look, it was their first
Speaker 1: recording in a studio and Phil mccally did a great
Speaker 1: job with them. Um. There was a guy called Kevin
Speaker 1: Shirley who went on to do a Millionaires Journey, a
Speaker 1: million aero smith and he now does cultures or for
Speaker 1: us and Jimmy Barnes. He's now based back in Australia,
Speaker 1: South African originally, but he's been around the world. Um,
Speaker 1: we thought Kevin was perfect because he had a really
Speaker 1: no frills, lean kind of rock approach. And the other
Speaker 1: thing is the fastest engineer producer I've ever seen, Like,
Speaker 1: you've never seen somebody who can capture a sound for
Speaker 1: a band like this guy. And they were teenagers. They
Speaker 1: had teenage attention spans. You know, if you didn't get
Speaker 1: it in the first twenty minutes to half an hour.
Speaker 1: You are going to get it. This band needed to
Speaker 1: make please Please me. You know, they needed to get in,
Speaker 1: make a record, fast, get out. They had the songs,
Speaker 1: it just needed to be captured and sound great, and
Speaker 1: so Kevin, and Kevin was a big kid himself, so
Speaker 1: they'd get in. You know. We sent him in for
Speaker 1: a day to sort of do a tryout with keV.
Speaker 1: They walked out with two completely finished masters in a day,
Speaker 1: which is pure massacre and a song called leave Me
Speaker 1: Out that was the B side of it, and and
Speaker 1: then Kevin did the record in. He did it about
Speaker 1: nine days, but three of that was chause Daniel blew
Speaker 1: his voice out from all the singing. He really did
Speaker 1: it in six and then mixed it thereafter. So it
Speaker 1: was super fast. And all the songs were written before
Speaker 1: they went in the studio. Yes, yeah, they had every
Speaker 1: single pretty much every song and time on that album.
Speaker 1: There's like two or three that they wrote after we
Speaker 1: signed them, but none of the singles. All the singles
Speaker 1: were there the first time we saw. So the album
Speaker 1: was finished. How long after it finished does it come out?
Speaker 1: So the album's finished really quickly because tomorrow was already
Speaker 1: exploding in Australia and we're starting to get buzz around
Speaker 1: the world. Um, the band was on the big day out,
Speaker 1: so it was probably only eight to ten weeks between
Speaker 1: delivery of master and first CD going in the shop.
Speaker 1: It's always funny because labels have their schedule, but if
Speaker 1: the change of priorities, they can get things out much
Speaker 1: very true, very true. I think about that Silver Chair
Speaker 1: arc now and you know it was all super quick
Speaker 1: at the time. It was explosive, right, but it still
Speaker 1: took the better part of twelve months for this song
Speaker 1: to travel from its first Triple J spins to the
Speaker 1: band getting played on k Rock. And but once it's
Speaker 1: played on Triple G at that point, it's breaking in
Speaker 1: all of Australia, right correctly, it's a national station. At
Speaker 1: what point do you quit? Sony, I don't leave until
Speaker 1: like the formally until the June of ninety. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: in every manager's dream situation. I am a secret agent
Speaker 1: withinside the record company, um, knowing that I'm probably going
Speaker 1: to leave in six months or so to manage this band.
Speaker 1: So you could have a meeting we sort of should
Speaker 1: we fire this band to Europe to do a few
Speaker 1: promotional shows. Yes, we very much should um, but it
Speaker 1: worked out pretty well for everyone. Okay, so they didn't
Speaker 1: have a manager at the time. Now the mums, Well,
Speaker 1: we had this situation where each of the band's mother's,
Speaker 1: the band's agent Owen, authored their lawyer, Brett Oton, John O'Donnell,
Speaker 1: and myself between us kind of divided the management responsibilities
Speaker 1: and their accountant. So it was sort of management by
Speaker 1: committee for a while, with most of the career direction
Speaker 1: stuff that record company side, the global strategy side stuff
Speaker 1: coming out of John and I Are the touring stuff
Speaker 1: coming out of Owen. Brett was kind of looking after
Speaker 1: the band members interests and the moms were kind of
Speaker 1: helping with a lot of the sort of the day
Speaker 1: to day organizing and just making sure that they were
Speaker 1: kept ask of the theoretical fifteen percent. Did that all
Speaker 1: out up to well? There was There was no one
Speaker 1: really getting paid for the management first period. No one
Speaker 1: was getting paid for it. It was just everybody was
Speaker 1: doing it. It was a labor of love for everybody. Okay,
Speaker 1: sure the record explodes in Australia in terms of international
Speaker 1: they find you or you pitch them so my I
Speaker 1: had two roles at Sony Australia. I was by then
Speaker 1: I was a and R and I was international marketing,
Speaker 1: which sounds strange from an American perspective. It's like think
Speaker 1: of the assembly line on the first step in the
Speaker 1: last step. UM Melissa, who's the general manager of my
Speaker 1: company has been ever since, was the domestic marketing person.
Speaker 1: So between us we sort of had the assembly um.
Speaker 1: So we had UM through that international marketing role. I
Speaker 1: was already had been spending a few years traveling around
Speaker 1: the world meeting people at Sony. We've had some success
Speaker 1: with Tina Arena around the same time she had a
Speaker 1: top ten hit in the UK. UM there were other
Speaker 1: artists that we had had sort of worked, probably with
Speaker 1: less success, but it had helped me build some relationships
Speaker 1: and I've been able to kind of slipstream on the
Speaker 1: very back of Midnight Oils global career, sort of walk
Speaker 1: in where you know, they were already a very established band.
Speaker 1: Was just a kid walking around bumping into things who
Speaker 1: knew nothing. But it was a great way to meet
Speaker 1: people and build relationships. So by the time Silver Chair
Speaker 1: came along, after two or three years of doing that job,
Speaker 1: I was really well placed to be able to find
Speaker 1: the right supporters in Sony. So David Massey had just
Speaker 1: taken on his role um at Epic working for Richard
Speaker 1: Griffiths at the time, and he was a big early
Speaker 1: champion for it. And simply in some other territories, it's
Speaker 1: always the type of record if you pleaded for somebody
Speaker 1: once they got it. Yeah, and I think the Australian
Speaker 1: successful well yes and no, I mean Tomorrow obviously sounded
Speaker 1: a lot like Pearl Jam And you know, there was
Speaker 1: always that thing of like, oh was it a teenage
Speaker 1: novelty act, you know, so that most people could see
Speaker 1: the commercial opportunity in it. That wasn't what we were
Speaker 1: looking for, though. We were looking for people who could
Speaker 1: actually sort of see something more than that, who could say,
Speaker 1: hang on, if they're capable of doing this at fifteen,
Speaker 1: imagine what they'll do at twenty five if they're given
Speaker 1: the chance. So those were the kind of believers we
Speaker 1: were looking for. It wasn't hard to find people who
Speaker 1: thought they could make a quick buck. It was hard
Speaker 1: to find people who thought they could make a long buck.
Speaker 1: And did it end up on Sony labels all over
Speaker 1: the world or did you make deals with other independence. No,
Speaker 1: it was a worldwide signing to Sony because of how
Speaker 1: the deal went down in the first place, So other
Speaker 1: Sony affiliates released. It was just a matter of convincing them.
Speaker 1: There's no if the Sony affiliate in some country didn't
Speaker 1: want it, you couldn't take it independent. Um. Well, look,
Speaker 1: had they not wanted, I suppose we could have taken independent,
Speaker 1: but it just was never necessary because of the um,
Speaker 1: you know, the heat that the song happened. So it's
Speaker 1: happening in Australia. Where's the first other country it happens, Um, America.
Speaker 1: And it's a great question, Um, it happens in This
Speaker 1: is a great example of how breakouts happen in slow motion.
Speaker 1: Now they happen in such fast motion that it's hard
Speaker 1: to go back and figure out. You know, did the
Speaker 1: blog happen one minute before the playlist dad, or did
Speaker 1: it happen two minutes after the you know? Um, it
Speaker 1: was more slow motion in those days, so you could
Speaker 1: actually see it was that then it was that, then
Speaker 1: it was that. So there were three separate American radio stations,
Speaker 1: one of which is notionally on the Canadian side of
Speaker 1: the border. But it plays him to Destroit who all
Speaker 1: started playing the record. So it's key rock now, I
Speaker 1: don't know it's it's not the ones you expect. So
Speaker 1: Brian Phillips at the time was programming x in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: which was the big alternative station in Atlanta. He had
Speaker 1: been flow in to Australia on a junket to see
Speaker 1: the Cruel Sea, an Australian band that probably aren't familiar
Speaker 1: to your overseas listeners, but of familiar to everybody that's
Speaker 1: here today. M Brian had come to Australia seeing the
Speaker 1: Cruel Sea, hadn't been that impressed with them, but it
Speaker 1: heard tomorrow on the radio. I thought this is fantastic,
Speaker 1: went back home and played it, added it to his station,
Speaker 1: as said of his souvenir of being in Australia. Completely
Speaker 1: different record company. By the way, so PolyGram have paid
Speaker 1: to flame down. He's picked up the Soniac, gone home
Speaker 1: and added that. And that was before the record was
Speaker 1: even out in America. Yeah, way before, way before um.
Speaker 1: He then decided to call his radio show the Big
Speaker 1: Day Out as well. So he had had a really
Speaker 1: good to Australia. Poley gramp brilliant. Um. Meanwhile c I
Speaker 1: M x n X, which was north of Detroit, as
Speaker 1: I say, on the Canadian side of the border, but
Speaker 1: played into the Detroit market. Um, someone there had a
Speaker 1: There was a person who had a sibling who was
Speaker 1: backpacking in Australia. I was a brother or a sister.
Speaker 1: The siblings sent them the CD and they added it,
Speaker 1: and um, then we had and they were the two
Speaker 1: that went first. And then there was also air play
Speaker 1: in Chicago. Um from another coincidence of that sort that
Speaker 1: I'm just blacking on at the moment, but it was
Speaker 1: an equal Oh, I know what it was. People had
Speaker 1: flown to Australia. We we'd flown down on a junk
Speaker 1: at some people from a trade mag from like in
Speaker 1: those his album network and Gaps and those sorts of things. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So a couple of those people had come to Australia.
Speaker 1: They had picked up I'd sent some of them the
Speaker 1: music they'd come down before to see other artists, and
Speaker 1: so I had given them some music. They had shared
Speaker 1: it with the end in Seattle and m Q and
Speaker 1: one in Chicago at the time, and so they started
Speaker 1: playing it as well. So epic is getting um these
Speaker 1: calls from radio programmers saying, this is our number one UM,
Speaker 1: you know phones record, this thing is, why don't you
Speaker 1: release it? So it's the perfect world and it led
Speaker 1: to a situation for us that was highly unusual, which
Speaker 1: was that within epic Um, the promotion department was actually
Speaker 1: the band's biggest fans. Usually the promotion department, of course,
Speaker 1: is the hardest one to sell exactly. But you know,
Speaker 1: Sue Burgan and Ron Serrito and Jackie Saton, Evan Prague,
Speaker 1: those people were all very instrumental in the band's career
Speaker 1: across all three records that we put out on Epic
Speaker 1: and even when sort of other people within the company
Speaker 1: were may be less interested in them because they were
Speaker 1: an inherited project, they were foster kids, not firstborn's. Um.
Speaker 1: They we still had the promotion department out there working,
Speaker 1: and we had supporters in radio, so we sort of
Speaker 1: work backwards into a record company. Okay. The perception from
Speaker 1: my viewpoint across the pond is that it breaks up,
Speaker 1: breaks out immediately, you know, I get the record, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But it didn't appear that the Subjequent records were as
Speaker 1: successful in America. Is that true or just my perspective. Well,
Speaker 1: it's true, but they were still successful. So the second one,
Speaker 1: the third one was more successful than the second one
Speaker 1: because they had a big TRL video top ten TRL
Speaker 1: video at the time on MTV. UM. They both gold records,
Speaker 1: well and truly gold records. The first one was double platinum. UM.
Speaker 1: The other thing that was interesting with it with that
Speaker 1: band is because k Rock was late to the party.
Speaker 1: They were one of the latest stations. They never felt
Speaker 1: the same ownership that they did on many other artists.
Speaker 1: So Silver Chair had the opposite as well. Very inside baseball,
Speaker 1: but the Silver Chair had the opposite kind of career
Speaker 1: in America to most international artists. They were much bigger
Speaker 1: in the middle than they were on the coasts. Um.
Speaker 1: So the BIGG in Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, UM, you know,
Speaker 1: not as big in New York and l A. They're
Speaker 1: always proportionately quite weak market, so the industry perception of
Speaker 1: them was always probably a little weaker than what the
Speaker 1: reality was. But yes, the second and third records were
Speaker 1: not as big. The band had had a successful career there.
Speaker 1: Of course. The difficulty was that being at high school,
Speaker 1: they just weren't able, and they did go through all
Speaker 1: of their school and they finished the first two records
Speaker 1: came out while they were still full time high school students.
Speaker 1: UM So they weren't able to do anywhere near the
Speaker 1: same sort of touring they were doing here. So our
Speaker 1: ability to convince people that this is a really good
Speaker 1: rock and roll band that you should see live, um
Speaker 1: was diminished in America compared to what we were able
Speaker 1: to do in this market, where they had very different
Speaker 1: standing in Canada because it was a smaller market and
Speaker 1: we were able to play more. They're probably twice as
Speaker 1: strong per capita there. So it's very much about our
Speaker 1: ability to have people see the band play live. Once
Speaker 1: they saw them play live, they're like, oh, it's not
Speaker 1: a novelty act that this is a seriously So in
Speaker 1: a couple of years when they were still in high school,
Speaker 1: how many deeds would they do in a year? Well,
Speaker 1: it depend how long school holidays were, um, so they
Speaker 1: only worked on the schoolhole And I'm being a little
Speaker 1: bit but like it's largely yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: they we were touring probably a fifth to a quarter
Speaker 1: as much as your average rock and roll band would
Speaker 1: have been touring, particularly at that moment. Now didn't whose
Speaker 1: idea was to stay in school, the parents, the kids,
Speaker 1: probably not the kids. Um, I think it was everybody
Speaker 1: else's idea other than the kids to some extent. Although
Speaker 1: having said that, you know, as things got nutty for them,
Speaker 1: and it did get unbelievably nutty, tabloid photographers camped outside
Speaker 1: the school taking photos to put on the front page
Speaker 1: of the Sydney tabloids and all that stuff. Um, having
Speaker 1: that some sort of anchor within the school environment was
Speaker 1: pretty good for them, you know. I mean they turned
Speaker 1: down playing with the Chili Peppers at Wembley in order
Speaker 1: to go to a mates sixte birthday party in Newcastle.
Speaker 1: So during this run, would you say they remain relatively
Speaker 1: well adjusted? Yeah? Um, I think Daniel was always going
Speaker 1: to um. And you know, if you listen to the
Speaker 1: lyrics on frog Stomp, which were all written before he
Speaker 1: was famous, clearly you know he was a guy that
Speaker 1: felt things deeply and was battling with some issues. Um.
Speaker 1: Those issues were not helped by the pressures of fame,
Speaker 1: and despite everybody's intentions, best intentions, the best efforts to
Speaker 1: try to kind of protect him from from all of that, stuff.
Speaker 1: There's no doubt all of that. You know, it took
Speaker 1: a toll as well. Okay, so as they say, we're
Speaker 1: in America, we're very focused there. How about the rest
Speaker 1: of the world in terms of the records acceptance, they
Speaker 1: did well on the continent. The UK never liked, the
Speaker 1: UK never likes anybody Australia from Australia, and really, well,
Speaker 1: it's a two sorts of Australian artists that that's that's
Speaker 1: that's not what I meant. There's two sorts of Australian
Speaker 1: artists that succeed in the UK in my opinion, artists
Speaker 1: that they can laugh at. Look at those silly bit
Speaker 1: of Australians that can make kangaroo jokes, you know in
Speaker 1: their way, Kylie, Rolph harr It was a couple of examples,
Speaker 1: Kylie minog Rolf Harris, um you know more than novelty
Speaker 1: pop band Peter Andre, the pop stuff that they can
Speaker 1: sort of almost giggle about, you know, stuff that has
Speaker 1: a neighbors connotation the TV show neighbors or artists that
Speaker 1: they think are way too cool and smart to be
Speaker 1: Australian and that only the English could appreciate them. So
Speaker 1: if you go Betweens or the Saints in the early days,
Speaker 1: wolf Mother and Jet and the Vines stuff. That's you know,
Speaker 1: the enemy can get but you know Australians couldn't possible
Speaker 1: because they're you know, all just sport playing, you know, convicts.
Speaker 1: Um So, if you but if you go back historically
Speaker 1: and look at them, the sort of the middle of
Speaker 1: Australian artists, they've typically sort of done very poorly in
Speaker 1: the UK compared to everywhere else. Meant at work, it
Speaker 1: was the last territory in the world. Peter could speak
Speaker 1: to it and he signed them. But you know, the
Speaker 1: it's one of the last territories in the world to
Speaker 1: have success. They did have success with them, but it
Speaker 1: was the last to get there in excess. Same thing.
Speaker 1: It was only you know, when Michael and Paula got together,
Speaker 1: it was X that was the record. They're not kick
Speaker 1: with Midnight Oil. Diesel and Dust sold six and fifty
Speaker 1: thou copies in France and twenty thousand copies in the UK.
Speaker 1: I mean you can swim from one country to the other.
Speaker 1: Um so you know I could go on so for
Speaker 1: Silver Chair, Yeah, the UK, they had a support there
Speaker 1: from Koreng and whatnot, but it was always you know,
Speaker 1: koala and kangaroo jokes. Germany and France were much stronger
Speaker 1: for them, and that's often the case for Australian rock bands. Okay,
Speaker 1: So in the US it seems like a period of
Speaker 1: time for silver Ture, But I was talking to people
Speaker 1: last night and they see Silver Ture could do multiple
Speaker 1: arenas in Australia. So bring us up to now in
Speaker 1: terms of the Beyond's career. So that the really sad
Speaker 1: part of Silver Chair's career, um is so they had
Speaker 1: three albums on Sony. The third of those albums, as
Speaker 1: I say, had a big TRL hit on Up brought
Speaker 1: a lot of audience and there's a lot of fans
Speaker 1: you panick of the disco fall, that boy, that sort
Speaker 1: of vintage of bands, the good Charlotte. That third album,
Speaker 1: Near ball Room is considered a classic for for a
Speaker 1: lot of those sorts of musicians. Four years later, um,
Speaker 1: they made an album called Diorama, which most Australians would
Speaker 1: say is their classic album. Atlantic had signed them for
Speaker 1: America for that record. Unfortunately, Daniel got a condition called
Speaker 1: reactive art writers, which is a genetic predisposition where um,
Speaker 1: your hands and feet swelled terribly. It's very painful, completely debilitating.
Speaker 1: It hit him about a month before the album came
Speaker 1: out and didn't a bait until nearly a year after
Speaker 1: the album came out, so they were basically unable to
Speaker 1: tour and promote it. In America. It went on to
Speaker 1: win heaps of Area awards here and you know, it's
Speaker 1: considered a classic Australian album. Um. Van Dyke Parks did
Speaker 1: a lot of work on it. It's a record that
Speaker 1: unfortunately most people overseas, if you weren't already a fan
Speaker 1: of the band, haven't heard, but most Australians would tell
Speaker 1: you it is worth checking out. Very different from what
Speaker 1: you expect, sort of a a strong beach boys kind of
Speaker 1: touching things. Um, they're quite quite original. It's the album
Speaker 1: that you know, I think we were always trying to
Speaker 1: get to know. In their mid twenties, and then in
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven they made an album called Young
Speaker 1: Modern which had a song called straight Lines on it,
Speaker 1: which was next to Tomorrow their biggest hit um here
Speaker 1: and probably around the world. It was a top five
Speaker 1: modern rock radio hitten in America. K Rocks sparted a
Speaker 1: lot actually what was aliable then, so then we put
Speaker 1: out through I LG. So Stu Bergen, who had been
Speaker 1: our guy at EPIC was then running ILG and so
Speaker 1: he picked it up and did a great job with
Speaker 1: his team. And you know that record did quite you
Speaker 1: know that the song did very well, um, and it
Speaker 1: was again a big success here. So in Australia, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're perceived and sort of they've won more Area Awards
Speaker 1: WI our Grammys. They've won more Area Awards than any
Speaker 1: other artist. Um, you know, they've had five number one records.
Speaker 1: But in America there is any most other territories. Understandably,
Speaker 1: people remember the fifteen year old version. They don't remember
Speaker 1: what happened in all twenties. You're the manager, what about today?
Speaker 1: What do you do well? Unfortunately, the band after two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven has sort of imploded in terms of
Speaker 1: the internal relationship since Daniel has gone through a lot
Speaker 1: of struggles. So, um, you know, we no longer manage
Speaker 1: daniel solo career. We did, you know for for a
Speaker 1: long period of time, um and released a solo album
Speaker 1: from Dan. But you know, um, there probably needs to
Speaker 1: be lots of changes, you know, at at a human
Speaker 1: level in order to get the band, you know, back
Speaker 1: into a place where they can actually work together. Usually
Speaker 1: they call that money. When pop'll run out of money,
Speaker 1: they'll do a Guns and Roses, Black Crows. You know.
Speaker 1: The one thing that you could never say about, you know,
Speaker 1: Daniel in particular, the band, you know, the band as
Speaker 1: a whole, Danna particular, you could never say he did
Speaker 1: stuff for the money. You know, Please God, I wish
Speaker 1: he had done more of it. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: he was avowedly all about the work and the art
Speaker 1: and doing the things that felt right to him. And
Speaker 1: you know, they're probably the last band on earth that
Speaker 1: would get back together for the money. Okay, So just
Speaker 1: going back through history, how did the end up in
Speaker 1: Atlantic UM? So after three records UM on Sony Australia
Speaker 1: that was released by Epic, we wanted to have a
Speaker 1: direct relationship with an American label. Our view was that
Speaker 1: just to go back there because historically it was fifty
Speaker 1: cents on the dollar and other territories. Was it still
Speaker 1: that deal at your time? Yeah? There was. You know.
Speaker 1: So there's a number of problems that come when you're
Speaker 1: signed to a satellite come from UM. The first is financial,
Speaker 1: which is that you know, the a the artist. There's
Speaker 1: there's three picks in the trough instead of two. There's
Speaker 1: the American record company, the Australian record company, and the artist.
Speaker 1: So obviously both everybody, well the artist in the American
Speaker 1: record company both make less money than they would make
Speaker 1: if the artist was directly signed for American label. So, um,
Speaker 1: there's a financial reason that you would want to be
Speaker 1: directly signed, but there's also a more sort of intangible
Speaker 1: emotional reason which is that obviously, um, you know, everybody
Speaker 1: wants to support the things that they strongly personally identify with.
Speaker 1: They want to know people want to break the act
Speaker 1: they signed. It's a priority, you know, it's an emotional
Speaker 1: investment that you know, when when Richard Griffiths saw not
Speaker 1: a single Richard because he was a great supporter, but
Speaker 1: when understandably as a man from England, when Richard Griffiths
Speaker 1: saw Oasis his name going up the charts and he
Speaker 1: and David Massey knew that they had signed Oasis, of
Speaker 1: course they couldn't help but feel very personally proud of that.
Speaker 1: In a way, that wasn't really going to be the
Speaker 1: case with Silver Chair. As much as they were happy
Speaker 1: for us they hadn't been directly, If they hadn't been
Speaker 1: the ones driving to Newcastle and competing with Mushroom for
Speaker 1: and in the studio with the band, it's a different
Speaker 1: type of involvement. You're a foster child rather than you know,
Speaker 1: a firstborn. So what we wanted at the end of
Speaker 1: those three Sony records was we wanted that kind of
Speaker 1: skin in the game. We wanted someone behind a desk
Speaker 1: in New York and all a who's who were likely
Speaker 1: to get a bonus if we had a hit and
Speaker 1: likely get fired if we didn't, and was that person.
Speaker 1: So Sony were not willing to allow the band to
Speaker 1: kind of do that because I guess it would invite
Speaker 1: mutey from every other artist signed to overseas territories. So
Speaker 1: we were forced to look elsewhere. So we signed with
Speaker 1: Craig Calman, Kevin Kevin Williamson and Tom Storms with the
Speaker 1: A and R guys, and Craig Calman sort of was
Speaker 1: driving the deal out of Atlantic once again huted it
Speaker 1: in with Sony because of Sony. We we said at
Speaker 1: the end of three albums with a three album deal
Speaker 1: um with with Murmur of the Australian label as I said,
Speaker 1: it was a short term deal. He said it was
Speaker 1: the uption of the arcs, so that's right. So there
Speaker 1: was that was sort of formalized that not long afterwards
Speaker 1: into a three album deal. Um so, as it was
Speaker 1: a three album deal, the band had filled it and
Speaker 1: we then swered right, well going forward, we're real happy
Speaker 1: to stay signed to Sony in Australia, um, but we
Speaker 1: would like to be signed directly to Epic or in
Speaker 1: America and they were not willing to do that deal,
Speaker 1: so which is fine that they're prerogative, and so we
Speaker 1: went and looked for other options. So um Atlantic were
Speaker 1: the keenest to sign the band, um and and so yeah,
Speaker 1: we we signed there for the Diorama album, which, as
Speaker 1: I say, was unfortunately you know what label did it
Speaker 1: come out in Australia. So then we started our own
Speaker 1: label in Australia called Eleven. John O'Donnell, who I had
Speaker 1: worked with as I said in signing the band, not
Speaker 1: long afterwards, ended up running am I here. Tony Harlow
Speaker 1: had done the deal to bring the Eleven label to
Speaker 1: em I in Australia, and so Eleven released the band's
Speaker 1: recordings in Australia from that point forward. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: leave Sony, you're managing Silver Chair, you're on the rocket ship.
Speaker 1: At what point do you say, hey, I want to
Speaker 1: get another raft? Um. It's a good question. Um. So
Speaker 1: I think that the period from ninety five through two
Speaker 1: thousand was really sort of my apprenticeship, I suppose in
Speaker 1: being a manager. You know, we'll stop there for a second.
Speaker 1: In retrospect, how ignorant or bad were you? Um? Great
Speaker 1: question to um. I think that I was good on
Speaker 1: the label side of things. I was good on the
Speaker 1: music side of things. I was okay on the personal
Speaker 1: side of things. I was weak on the touring side
Speaker 1: of things. Because my background was I was good on media.
Speaker 1: So my background, um, was that I had done media.
Speaker 1: I'd worked in record stores. I've been in a band, um,
Speaker 1: I had worked at a record company. I've done a
Speaker 1: bit of promotion. So I understood those sides of the
Speaker 1: business well or you know, reasonably well. Um. But I
Speaker 1: hadn't really, I didn't come from being on the road.
Speaker 1: I wasn't someone who came out of you know, six
Speaker 1: years as a tour manager or being a booking agent.
Speaker 1: So the live side of things was my weakness. Now
Speaker 1: that was probably less of an impediment in a way
Speaker 1: with Silver Chair because they weren't being driven by touring. UM.
Speaker 1: But I was learning the touring business as I went, So,
Speaker 1: you know, in hindsight, there were definitely things that I
Speaker 1: did or didn't do with their tour ring that I
Speaker 1: would do differently now. But I don't know that it
Speaker 1: made that big a difference really, And I think that
Speaker 1: what I would like to think that sort of what
Speaker 1: I brought to it in terms of having that longer
Speaker 1: term vision and so forth for them more than made
Speaker 1: up for sort of the downside. What were the couple
Speaker 1: of lessons you learned? Um? I think I've probably gone
Speaker 1: harder when it was there to be had. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: the band went very quickly into a second album and
Speaker 1: thinking probably more from a label mentality of like let's
Speaker 1: get another album out, um, where probably what they should
Speaker 1: have done was going to spend a summer touring in
Speaker 1: America make the money while it was there to be made. UM.
Speaker 1: I probably also tried to please multiple territories rather than
Speaker 1: sort of doubling down in the areas where we were successful. Realistically,
Speaker 1: in hindsight, we because the band was so impeded in
Speaker 1: terms of being able to tour um we were never
Speaker 1: going to break everywhere, So it was a waste of
Speaker 1: time going and doing a gig in Manila, as as
Speaker 1: interesting as that was, you know, it was a waste
Speaker 1: of time investing in UH shows in Austria or even
Speaker 1: getting to Scandinavia. What we should have done was being
Speaker 1: more targeted our touring and doubled down and actually just
Speaker 1: properly served a smaller number of markets, which we did
Speaker 1: do in Canada and it really worked to what did
Speaker 1: we in retrospect you think you were ripped off of
Speaker 1: the touring sphere. I'll probably the usual amount because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of where everybody you know, takes years to
Speaker 1: figure out what's going on there. But anyway, you have
Speaker 1: those five or so years with Silver Cheer, the cloud
Speaker 1: starts to lift, and you think the cloud starts with
Speaker 1: the band quitt breaking up like has happened. So at
Speaker 1: the end of the third album, you know, Daniel was
Speaker 1: for a while going out, hadn't enough I want to
Speaker 1: do this anymore. So that's that's sort of an existential threat.
Speaker 1: So we had our label just as I say, three
Speaker 1: Am I. So we started looking to sign other artists.
Speaker 1: Had you signed any ortists previous? Paul Mac? We were
Speaker 1: managing hers sort of an early E d M act
Speaker 1: in Australia, real dance music piety. And when the band
Speaker 1: breaks up, there's someone I wanted. You work at Sony
Speaker 1: five years are you start worrying about the weekly paycheck?
Speaker 1: I was never. I've never really been sort of a
Speaker 1: financially driven person, and I guess I've always been egotistical
Speaker 1: enough to figure out that. So you feel you would survive,
Speaker 1: that it'll be fine later. I had one of those
Speaker 1: moments that you're looking for. So in two so when
Speaker 1: Daniel got the react of arthritis. So we've got we
Speaker 1: have at this point signed Mr Higgins, which we can
Speaker 1: come back to, but she's not released anything when she's
Speaker 1: off backpacking. We've got Paul Mac, who's done well, but
Speaker 1: it's not going to put food on the table um
Speaker 1: in any major way. We've got her. I've just my
Speaker 1: wife and I have had our first child. He doesn't
Speaker 1: start for a second. How did you meet your wife?
Speaker 1: She worked at Sony and in fact, and in fact
Speaker 1: first silver Jet too of America, which was we went
Speaker 1: and did Atlanta, Detroit, and Chicago. We went in. That
Speaker 1: was the other unusual thing we did with them in
Speaker 1: the start, which we went to just the markets where
Speaker 1: they were strong, and we made it people from New
Speaker 1: York and l A fly to those markets where the
Speaker 1: shows were sold out to see them, which really worked. Um.
Speaker 1: She came on that trip because the band didn't have
Speaker 1: a manager, so you know, we were wearing multiple hats.
Speaker 1: She was the promotions person of the year for Sony,
Speaker 1: so the prize was an overseas trip and she got
Speaker 1: to come along and help wrangle these teenagers. So um,
Speaker 1: you know, at a pancake parlor and Detroit, I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, this could be good. And at what point
Speaker 1: did she leave son She left soon after that. She
Speaker 1: then worked in New York for a number of years,
Speaker 1: actually with Wendy Lacester in managing Aero smith and managing
Speaker 1: Tena Arena for a while, and then there was a
Speaker 1: long courtship. Yeah, yeah, we had a place together in
Speaker 1: New York. It took a little while to figure out
Speaker 1: the opportunity she was missing, but she got there eventually. Okay,
Speaker 1: so an even you can see the sun setting on
Speaker 1: silvery chair, you have your label. So it's that I'm
Speaker 1: seeing the sun setting. It's the opposite of that. Diorama
Speaker 1: has come along. We've spent years doing these new deals
Speaker 1: with Atlantic. We're ready to take on the world, and
Speaker 1: then Daniel gets really sick. The record comes out, you know,
Speaker 1: it plummets down the charts in Australia and Jet come
Speaker 1: along and Um. There was a management company that I
Speaker 1: had sort of helped out informally who had been managing
Speaker 1: the Vines, who are the hot new thing at the time,
Speaker 1: and it came down to either that management company or
Speaker 1: myself to be the co managers of Jet was the
Speaker 1: other manager. So it's a company called Windhaman Goldstein. So
Speaker 1: three friends of mine, Andy Kelly, Andy Castle and Pete Lusty. Um,
Speaker 1: good guys, and you know, we've sort of talked informally
Speaker 1: around the Vines. I was a fan, you know, but
Speaker 1: I've been sort of a little bit of a mentory
Speaker 1: sort of thing at different times to them and definitely
Speaker 1: felt like, Okay, I've got more runs on the board
Speaker 1: right at that moment. They've gone on to be phenomenally
Speaker 1: successful with all sorts of artists. Um, but at that
Speaker 1: moment I felt like, you know, well, if I'm competing
Speaker 1: with him, I should probably get this. But the it
Speaker 1: went with the Vines guys because they were the cool ones,
Speaker 1: you know, and we had a newborn baby at home
Speaker 1: two months old. Um, the Silver Chair record was eighty
Speaker 1: in the charts with an anchor American Atlantic wasn't even
Speaker 1: sure they were going to release it. And that was
Speaker 1: the That was the moment where I thought, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: going to have to go back and you know, call
Speaker 1: up Dennis Handle and so, Dennis, would you please give
Speaker 1: me a job, go back to work at Sony because
Speaker 1: now they won lots of arias a few months later,
Speaker 1: Missy exploded. Everything turned around, and you know, but that
Speaker 1: six months in two thousand and two was was my
Speaker 1: h There was a very It's amazing. I think the
Speaker 1: ringer must have been broken on my phone. It just
Speaker 1: went really quiet. Oh yeah, so how do you sign
Speaker 1: Missy Higgins? So Missy not dissimilarly from Silver Chair. Really,
Speaker 1: Triple J had been a fantastic A and R department
Speaker 1: for US. Um Missy one Triple jown Earth And because
Speaker 1: she was still at high school, I tended to get
Speaker 1: the phone calls every time somebody had a kid who
Speaker 1: with that guy. I was that guy, like the lawyer
Speaker 1: would call and hey, we've got another high school band.
Speaker 1: Would you give them some advice on you know, all
Speaker 1: the things not to do. And by this point my
Speaker 1: advice was don't be in a hurry, you know, please
Speaker 1: take your time. Given all the struggles that we had
Speaker 1: had with Silver Chair, it was like, just make sure
Speaker 1: you're really wanted it. They wanted the big success. No,
Speaker 1: I don't know that they did, know. I think that
Speaker 1: I think lots of artists think they want success, and
Speaker 1: when they discover what it is, they very quickly decide
Speaker 1: they don't want it, or you know, they get ambivalent
Speaker 1: about it. Truthfully, they just love the noise it made
Speaker 1: when they played in the little space above Ben's garage.
Speaker 1: You know that they loved making music and everything else,
Speaker 1: and and so all the success that came to them
Speaker 1: was not really what they got into it for. It's
Speaker 1: quite unusual, like, you know, success to them was like
Speaker 1: a bicycle to a fish, you know. Um so, so, no,
Speaker 1: they didn't want it, and that a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: or at least they are ambivalent about it, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the problems that ensued really in shoot from
Speaker 1: that basic core disconnect and so Missy when when she
Speaker 1: first won Triple Janna okay, but if the fact that
Speaker 1: she even enters the contest would tend to indicate that
Speaker 1: she has an interest in having a career. Her sister
Speaker 1: editor um in the contest, um, So she didn't know
Speaker 1: even what the contest was um at the time. She
Speaker 1: was at school. She was at high school. They've done
Speaker 1: a demo. The school had bought in a little mobile
Speaker 1: recording studio and allowed a few of the kids to
Speaker 1: make recordings. So she'd done a demo of this song
Speaker 1: off Believing, and Triple J picked it up and UM, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a phone call from from the mother and
Speaker 1: I had heard the song on the radio. I really
Speaker 1: liked the song, and they sent me a live when
Speaker 1: when she had one on Earth, they've done a little concert,
Speaker 1: you know, to sort of celebrate. It was like she
Speaker 1: done four or five songs just acoustically on the piano,
Speaker 1: just a live recording, And so she sent out that
Speaker 1: CD and I never forget sitting out the back of
Speaker 1: the Terrorice house we were in Surry Hills at the time,
Speaker 1: putting that CD in the car while I was waiting
Speaker 1: for Melissa to come out and get in the car
Speaker 1: or off to a meeting, and it was forty five
Speaker 1: seconds into the first song and Melbourne to the car.
Speaker 1: I said, if this girl is even halfway sane, we
Speaker 1: are so going to do this. Not only was she
Speaker 1: halfway saying, turns out she's about the same as Statust
Speaker 1: have ever met, um you know, and unbelievably blessed association
Speaker 1: for us. So yes, so we then signed her. But
Speaker 1: which does anybody else want her in any competition? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sony actually, um so that was very competitive, very competitive,
Speaker 1: but our ability to use eleven as a device to
Speaker 1: split deals became really fundamental to getting that a little
Speaker 1: bit slower. So what would you offer? So she would
Speaker 1: sign to eleven in Australia, her masters would revert to
Speaker 1: her UM some years down the track, but she would
Speaker 1: own her own masters with us. Our deal would specify
Speaker 1: full creative control, because if we're managing her realistically, she's
Speaker 1: going to have it anyway, and she's going to get
Speaker 1: control over where those masters are assigned internationally, so she
Speaker 1: gets to pick who her overseas label is going to be,
Speaker 1: Unlike what Silver Chair had in those first few records. So, um,
Speaker 1: those are three pretty compelling advantages. And she's going to
Speaker 1: make more money because whereas managers, we are not taking
Speaker 1: a piece of the recording revenue, so she's saving the
Speaker 1: management commission on her recording revenue and royalties and getting
Speaker 1: a higher royalty rate as well. And who distributed leaven
Speaker 1: in Australia. My okay, so you signed her? You see
Speaker 1: you want to go more slowly this time since she's
Speaker 1: in high school. Yes, So when when she's she's one
Speaker 1: unearthed and she's only got a small handful of songs
Speaker 1: and she's not really sure she even wants to do
Speaker 1: this as a career. Um, she loves making music, but
Speaker 1: she's like, I'm not really ready yet. And she and
Speaker 1: her best friend had been planning for years to go
Speaker 1: backpacking around Europe and do a gap year after high school.
Speaker 1: We're like, you should totally do that. Don't get on
Speaker 1: the merry, go around until you're ready. Um, even when
Speaker 1: you think you're ready, you're dobably not ready, but certainly
Speaker 1: not ready. If you think you're not ready, um, so
Speaker 1: I said triple j Unusually for media, organizations are the
Speaker 1: kind of organization that will still support you in a
Speaker 1: couple of years time when you come back. Everybody else
Speaker 1: was telling her, telling her getting now while it's hot,
Speaker 1: you know. So we were the hey, sign with us,
Speaker 1: will stick the contract in a drawer for a year,
Speaker 1: We'll see you when you get back from Europe, and
Speaker 1: that's what we did. But then what was funny was that, um,
Speaker 1: I think it was Rob Scott, who's here today as well,
Speaker 1: sent that same live recording that I had heard, the
Speaker 1: Triple J live recording to Sat Bisla, who was then
Speaker 1: working at Album Network, and Sat shared it around to
Speaker 1: a few friends in l A, including Chris to Readis,
Speaker 1: who was a caseyr W, and casey W started playing
Speaker 1: off the live version of All for Believing, Chris in
Speaker 1: particular and CASEYRW being one of those stations that lots
Speaker 1: of taste makers listen to. All of a sudden, the
Speaker 1: own started ringing. So mrs backpacking around Europe and it's high.
Speaker 1: It's Warner Music High. Its Craig Kelman again. I know things.
Speaker 1: You know, we've already got this going on with Silver Chair,
Speaker 1: but which interesting talking about this Miss Higgins artist. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm calling from Mr Davis's office. Would you know so
Speaker 1: Missy literally at one point Um went from a backpackers
Speaker 1: hostel in Amsterdam. Um Clive Davis was then running the
Speaker 1: J label. His his J label, which had this incredible
Speaker 1: office directly opposite the Plaza Hotel looking over Central Park
Speaker 1: with a grand piano in it. Um and Missy got
Speaker 1: flowing business class from the backpackers hostel in Amsterdam to
Speaker 1: New York to play for Mr Davis and we sat
Speaker 1: in the room on the grand piano gazing out at
Speaker 1: the at the Plaza Hotel. She then got back in
Speaker 1: the very nice car. We drove down to the Empire
Speaker 1: State Buildings so that you know, she could actually see
Speaker 1: something in New York, went back to the airport, she
Speaker 1: went back to stay in a backpackers hostel in Amsterdam.
Speaker 1: So it was a very surreal sort of process finding
Speaker 1: a label. It did come down to ja Or Warner brothers,
Speaker 1: Andy Elephant and James Dowdle with a sort of the
Speaker 1: then R Point People was Tom Walli's era there and
Speaker 1: we signed to Warners and on a similar developmental basis.
Speaker 1: And so then she spent about a year going through
Speaker 1: the the writing and co writing thing and looking for
Speaker 1: producers and made that record in l A. And of
Speaker 1: course the other benefit to having a split deal for
Speaker 1: her was that all of those costs were quarantined in America.
Speaker 1: So from the first record she sells in Australia, she's
Speaker 1: making royalties, and all those costs are quarantined against the
Speaker 1: royalty she's making in America. So it's a very beneficial
Speaker 1: range for her, getting all of the A and R
Speaker 1: expertise of the American label and the songwriting help and
Speaker 1: so forth, but without having to sort of recoup it
Speaker 1: out of your Australian success. Okay, what did Close see?
Speaker 1: What did Claride Nevers? He liked it and he was positive.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that the problem miss always had
Speaker 1: in America was that there was no gimmick, Mrs Gimmick,
Speaker 1: was that there was no gimmick, and that was a
Speaker 1: very hard thing to convince people in America, partic of
Speaker 1: the time the height of you know, the big pop
Speaker 1: music boom. About later when you saw the success of Adele,
Speaker 1: who of course is very different vocally and everything else.
Speaker 1: But authenticity can be an amazingly powerful connector to audiences
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily have to have, you know, um, some
Speaker 1: other gimmick, which we won't need to sort of you know,
Speaker 1: explore the other artists. But you don't have to have
Speaker 1: something else if you've got an authentic ability to connect
Speaker 1: to an audience. And that proved to be you know
Speaker 1: true in Australia where her albilem end up going nine
Speaker 1: times platinum. Um, but in America they always struggled with,
Speaker 1: you know, what's the gimmick? And so miss I think
Speaker 1: Mr Davis struggled with what's the gimmick because usually he
Speaker 1: wants also to change the music too, which is something
Speaker 1: acts from me and not be willing to do. So
Speaker 1: if we jump forward to today, you're still involved with
Speaker 1: Missy today. Uh. So she put out Guard a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. There's great video and song having to
Speaker 1: do with the environment. What do you do with someone
Speaker 1: like Missy today? So Missy has had an incredible career.
Speaker 1: She's actually probably got the perfect career. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: we just put some shows up in Melbourne. She sold
Speaker 1: nine thousand tickets in a week, you know, across three shows. Um.
Speaker 1: She's she toured with Ed Sheeran doing stadiums here last year.
Speaker 1: You know, Um, she can she's got two young children.
Speaker 1: So she's not really that interested in sort of trying
Speaker 1: to have a global career anymore. But you can have
Speaker 1: a really great career in Australia. She can get to
Speaker 1: speak out on issues that are important to her. You know,
Speaker 1: she's done a lot of stuff with refugees. Her father
Speaker 1: is very active in the refugee support groups and as
Speaker 1: is she is very in active on environmental causes. UM.
Speaker 1: So really the thing with Missy is that there's something
Speaker 1: about the way that her voice wraps itself around a
Speaker 1: song that um connects deeply with people. It connects in
Speaker 1: a one. I'm a fan and so there was a
Speaker 1: moment in l A I mean in the United States
Speaker 1: and there was no more product and I certainly follow.
Speaker 1: I know she's married, has kids, etcetera, etcetera. But is
Speaker 1: the lack of international exposure because of her domestic life
Speaker 1: or is it something that's a choice, well this we
Speaker 1: have this. It's both of those things. But it's something
Speaker 1: more than that, which is that says she had two
Speaker 1: records on Warners UM Sound of White in two thousand
Speaker 1: and five six and On a Clear Night in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven UM. And then at the end of
Speaker 1: on a clear night, which just when you kindly wrote
Speaker 1: your first great thing about her, and I had two
Speaker 1: emails from all around the world, all of whom thought
Speaker 1: they were the only person that read your news. Later. Um,
Speaker 1: and on the back of that, because she'd got to
Speaker 1: the point where she could sell out, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of two three thus capacity venues across America, we had
Speaker 1: a gold single like we were for someone that had
Speaker 1: never really had a radio hit in America. We'd built
Speaker 1: it through sync, we'd built it through a touring, pretty
Speaker 1: much the opposite of the silver chair approach. Um. She
Speaker 1: decided that she no longer wanted to do it. She
Speaker 1: took me out for for breakfast and said, anytime your
Speaker 1: Melbourne call up, I'd love to see you. Just please
Speaker 1: don't call me about work anymore. I'm out. I'm going
Speaker 1: to UNI. I'm going to study Indigenous relations. And so
Speaker 1: she did, and she did that for about eighteen months,
Speaker 1: and then we got a phone call about her doing
Speaker 1: a week of Little of Fair dates. And she'd always
Speaker 1: loved Little Fair was right near the end of her affair.
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, if ever something is going
Speaker 1: to sort of tempt her back, it's this, And plus
Speaker 1: it's a little fair. It would be wrong not to
Speaker 1: tell her about because I know she's a massive, massive
Speaker 1: fan of Sarah McLaughlin and the whole. So she went
Speaker 1: over and did it and sort of had that sort
Speaker 1: of great Road to Damascus moment of like what am
Speaker 1: I doing with my life? I love playing piano, these
Speaker 1: people love what I'm doing. Um, And so she decided
Speaker 1: to make another record. But that from that point forwards,
Speaker 1: she was always making music because she loved making music
Speaker 1: for the audience that she had and for anybody else
Speaker 1: that wanted to join in. She wasn't interested in, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to go climb the mountain. She was quite happy
Speaker 1: to just do the show she was doing and have
Speaker 1: the career that she was having, and it was a
Speaker 1: great career. You know, she makes a really good living.
Speaker 1: She gets to do. She doesn't have to do anything
Speaker 1: that sucks. You know, the people who haven't been around
Speaker 1: artist day to day don't understand how much stuff artists
Speaker 1: asked to do. It really does suck. You know, when
Speaker 1: you've been up till two or three in the morning
Speaker 1: on two and you've gotta get up at five to
Speaker 1: do breakfast radio and you go in and they don't
Speaker 1: know the name of your song, and you know they
Speaker 1: ask you to play pluck a Chicken with them. Um,
Speaker 1: Like it's pretty sole destroying, you know, day after day
Speaker 1: after day and a thousand other things like it. You
Speaker 1: know you're gonna let your song be used. We really
Speaker 1: want to use it in this ad. It's going to
Speaker 1: be great exposure for it. That's not I wrote that
Speaker 1: about that heartbreak. It wasn't really designed for toothpaste. Um.
Speaker 1: So you know, there's a there's a liberation of freedom
Speaker 1: that comes from going I just choose not to play
Speaker 1: that game. And there's also a power that goes to
Speaker 1: what the audience, how the audience is that at some
Speaker 1: level the audience that might not necessarily know that you're
Speaker 1: doing that, but they can sort of smell it. The believer.
Speaker 1: I mean they always say I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people are percentage partners and they say do this, do this,
Speaker 1: the agent, the manager or whatever. They can always get
Speaker 1: a new client. But the act is the act all
Speaker 1: the time, and the average person is not being asked
Speaker 1: to endure something. And I think credibility is key. But
Speaker 1: staying with Missy, will there possibly be another attempt to
Speaker 1: have further exposure. You think you're just on this path. Look,
Speaker 1: I think it's unlikely. She's far too balanced. You know,
Speaker 1: she's she's a healthy she's mentally healthy, she's emotionally healthy.
Speaker 1: As a person. She doesn't need to hear people call
Speaker 1: her name. And I think that at some level it
Speaker 1: takes a certain amount of dysfunction to want to, you know,
Speaker 1: to go Madison Square Gardens wasn't big enough. I need
Speaker 1: Shay Stadium, you know, like you actually need a certain
Speaker 1: level of dysfunction to drive that. She doesn't agree more
Speaker 1: and she and you know, and the and I mean
Speaker 1: it as the greatest possible compliment when I say she
Speaker 1: doesn't have that dysfunction. Okay, but at this point in time,
Speaker 1: she can live comfortably on her music revenues. Yeah, absolutely, Okay,
Speaker 1: tell us the good years story. Um So Gautier had
Speaker 1: a Gootier as as we call it here, has had
Speaker 1: had success in Australia's an independent artist with his album
Speaker 1: like Drawing Blood Hearts and mess um It's a classic
Speaker 1: song in Australia. Were involved, No, I was not involved
Speaker 1: that requisit? Danny Rodgers managed Wally his real name managed
Speaker 1: Wally through that period and Hearts and Mess was a
Speaker 1: very very acclaimed, much loved song in Australia. UM in
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven or thereabouts, UM he had Danny
Speaker 1: wanted to partner up. He wanted some help on the
Speaker 1: management side, so I co managed, took on while his
Speaker 1: co management with Danny. Danny was going to be based
Speaker 1: in the UK, so I'd be based in Australia. I'd
Speaker 1: sort of America, where I spent most of my time working.
Speaker 1: Danny was kind of going to largely focus on Europe. UM.
Speaker 1: I'd kind of do the label stuff, Danny would do
Speaker 1: the touring stuff. It was a pretty good yin Yang
Speaker 1: and eleven signed while his next record for Australia, UM
Speaker 1: took him forever to make it, quite as long as
Speaker 1: it's taken to make the follow up, but it still
Speaker 1: took him a long time. UM and he had Somebody
Speaker 1: that I used to know, which we all thought was
Speaker 1: a good song, potentially a big Triple J hit. We
Speaker 1: thought it would struggle to get played on mainstream radio
Speaker 1: because if you listen to it, the arrangement is actually
Speaker 1: quite unconventional. It takes a long time to get to
Speaker 1: the chorus. It has a long intro on it UM.
Speaker 1: Pretty much every A and R person when we played
Speaker 1: that song from the first time went yeah, it's great,
Speaker 1: but I'll need an edit for video. UM. And so
Speaker 1: we then Melissa worked with a very talented video director
Speaker 1: and Wally to come up with the idea for the video.
Speaker 1: UM And this is sort of a good story of
Speaker 1: the kisms stupidity of the music business. So we have
Speaker 1: the video for something that I used to know, and
Speaker 1: it's going to be premiered on the Triple J website
Speaker 1: on a Thursday, because we really want to lock down
Speaker 1: Triple J because we think this is a big Triple
Speaker 1: J track A little did we know? Um On the Tuesday,
Speaker 1: somehow other it's put on a website that's like someone
Speaker 1: sticked the wrong box and the video is visible on
Speaker 1: the back of this website. You have to know to
Speaker 1: look for it. Someone looks for it within twenty four
Speaker 1: hours without anyone actually saying it's available. It's had a
Speaker 1: minion views. It's invisible, this thing, right, And I can
Speaker 1: remember on the Wednesday, it means that the Triple J
Speaker 1: premiere is now off the table of the video. I
Speaker 1: remember our marketing person in the office literally sopping because
Speaker 1: of this mistake has destroyed the project. Right, it's all over.
Speaker 1: It's never going to have rules, and we've screw it up.
Speaker 1: You know, the videos leaked. I remember saying to it
Speaker 1: just to try and make it feel better. Really, I
Speaker 1: didn't mean it, Um, I just said, you know, well,
Speaker 1: sometimes these things turn out to be a blessing, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it just sort of takes on a life of
Speaker 1: its own. Well, of course, you know, hundreds of millions,
Speaker 1: in fact, over a billion views later, the video continued
Speaker 1: to sort of carry the song to the world, and
Speaker 1: and um it was Record of the Year at the
Speaker 1: Grammys and an extraordinary success. But again, you know, I
Speaker 1: do seem to specialize in artists who don't want to
Speaker 1: be successful. Um so whally much like, in fact, more
Speaker 1: so than anyone else I work with, is um completely
Speaker 1: was making music for his own self expression. UM, and
Speaker 1: I really wanted to control every facet of the process
Speaker 1: and struggled greatly with the inherent compromises in working with
Speaker 1: a different PA every night, or um, you know, radio
Speaker 1: stations taking it upon themselves to do a mix of
Speaker 1: his train, you know, and things like that, which which happens,
Speaker 1: Um that that's that's it's quite poorly with him, but
Speaker 1: so he he um. He struggled at different points, but
Speaker 1: we had a phenomenally successful run. My my usually when
Speaker 1: people ask me about go to Here, and I say,
Speaker 1: the story is very simple, ten times fifty times bigger
Speaker 1: than we thought it would ever be and ten times
Speaker 1: smaller than it could have been because had he been
Speaker 1: willing to, for example, include Hearts a Mess on that record,
Speaker 1: which we then got into the basil Iman version of
Speaker 1: Great Gatsby, but it came much later that it was
Speaker 1: supposed to come, so that was we didn't really have
Speaker 1: the opportunity. But had we been able to follow up
Speaker 1: somebody that I used to know with Hearts and Mass,
Speaker 1: which most Australians would say is at least as good
Speaker 1: as song Um, it could have people could have discovered
Speaker 1: the artistry of the guy. Because he's a real genuine artist.
Speaker 1: He's quite relaxed with the fact that he's sort of
Speaker 1: perceived as as a one hit wonder, has been beavering
Speaker 1: away in a really intense way on follow up project
Speaker 1: that's massive and sprawling and brilliant um in two thousands,
Speaker 1: So this was all two thousand eleven twelve, the Gurtier thing.
Speaker 1: By about two people were saying, where's the follow up?
Speaker 1: And my joke used to be it was a joke.
Speaker 1: He's making up the album of the year, and I
Speaker 1: think I might have fallen one year short. I think one.
Speaker 1: But he's so yeah, you know, he bet again. He
Speaker 1: just wasn't made for these times in the in the state,
Speaker 1: but it was if he hadn't had such a huge success.
Speaker 1: Do you think the next album would have come sooner?
Speaker 1: That's a great question, you're probably, I don't know. Yeah, probably,
Speaker 1: but not for the reason that you would expect, only
Speaker 1: in that he now has just about unlimited resources to
Speaker 1: explore his creativity. Well, we've seen this movie a couple
Speaker 1: of times. We saw the Guns and Roses. RAXL Rose
Speaker 1: essentially got rid of all the band members, took ten
Speaker 1: years to make Chinese Democracy, which was perceived as a failure.
Speaker 1: And then we have the situation of Atlantis War Asset,
Speaker 1: who had made two records in cana but they had
Speaker 1: with a different sound, you know, the most gigantic debut
Speaker 1: essentially since something in the seventies, Angie could never equal it.
Speaker 1: So I was wanting to what degree he's inhibited after
Speaker 1: this monumental success. Look, there's probably a dose of that,
Speaker 1: but I don't because he wasn't doing it for the success.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think he feels a need to
Speaker 1: match the success. I think he feels a need to
Speaker 1: do a better piece of work. Now it's not as
Speaker 1: different Michael Jackson needed the same level of success. But
Speaker 1: certainly as an artist who works, you know, Michael Jackson
Speaker 1: was all a collaboration anyway with Q etcetera. Something like this,
Speaker 1: you feel the pressure to artistically, you know, go to
Speaker 1: that level to artistically excited. I mean, you know that.
Speaker 1: The probably unfair shorthand for it is to say, you know,
Speaker 1: Mike Love wants the next record to be Biggert, Brian
Speaker 1: Wilson wants an ext record to be better. Right, So
Speaker 1: while he's from the Brian Wilson camp of you know,
Speaker 1: I want it to be better and if that, if
Speaker 1: that means that I can spend as he did, do
Speaker 1: months in a cave in Virginia miking up this amazing
Speaker 1: naturally occurring organ that plays on Stella tites and Stella
Speaker 1: mtes just for example, that sounds amazing. The stuff he's
Speaker 1: done in there Um, then he'll do that because he can.
Speaker 1: And it's very interesting when you put someone in a
Speaker 1: position where they can do absolutely anything that they want
Speaker 1: to do. They can do anything, What do they choose
Speaker 1: to do? Do they go to the Bahamas, get a coke,
Speaker 1: habit and you know, fly in supermodels? Do they know
Speaker 1: swan around New York? You know in limousines? Do they
Speaker 1: go and try and save the world? Do that? When
Speaker 1: you can do anything, when you move all the boundaries,
Speaker 1: who are you in that moment? I think the fact
Speaker 1: that Wally has chosen to double down on the artistic
Speaker 1: and creative side of what he's doing says a lot
Speaker 1: about who he is as a person. I really genuinely
Speaker 1: don't think that the motivator for him was charts. It
Speaker 1: was never was, so it never is. But if this
Speaker 1: record in his mind and to him and to the
Speaker 1: handful of peers that he respects, if this next record
Speaker 1: is on a better record than Making Mirrors and like
Speaker 1: drawing Blood, then he will feel he has failed. But
Speaker 1: just to look back, to what degree do you think
Speaker 1: the record would be successful without that video? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: have no idea. I mean, it's it's it's like saying
Speaker 1: you know, how essentially is your left leg to walking right.
Speaker 1: The video without the song is nothing. The song without
Speaker 1: the video is less than it would otherwise be. Um So,
Speaker 1: I think the song the song is still the engine,
Speaker 1: but you know, the video is definitely part of the train, right. Okay,
Speaker 1: So how did you get involved with Midnight Oil? So
Speaker 1: the Oils, I've literally gone with both minight o land
Speaker 1: cultures or from having their posters on my bedroom wall
Speaker 1: as a kid to having those same posters on my
Speaker 1: office wall as their manager and co manager respectfully. Um
Speaker 1: I did work with the Oils sort of somewhat peripherally
Speaker 1: during my time at Sony in the in the in
Speaker 1: the nineties the early nineties. Um So, I knew them
Speaker 1: a bit from that, and I knew Pete a bit
Speaker 1: from from politics and from sort of being involved in
Speaker 1: some issues. In two thousand and five we put on
Speaker 1: a huge benefit gig at the SCG for the tsunami
Speaker 1: the Asian tsunami called Wave Aid, which a number of
Speaker 1: our clients played at and Midnight or reformed for that show.
Speaker 1: So um and Jim mcgeanie had had worked with a
Speaker 1: little bit on He'd be contributed to a few of
Speaker 1: the Silver Chair Records, so I'd sort of had dealings
Speaker 1: when Pete left politics. You know, we started having breakfasts
Speaker 1: and lunches which seemed to have no agenda, which I
Speaker 1: figured meant there was an agenda, and one thing led
Speaker 1: to another, and when the band decided they were going
Speaker 1: to get back to zero, yeah, well we knew each
Speaker 1: other already. And Gary, their former manager, had stood down
Speaker 1: in or fourteen, so he had been to the picture
Speaker 1: for a few years after having been there pretty much
Speaker 1: from the start, a couple of years from the early eighties,
Speaker 1: late seventies, early eighties where he stepped out, but otherwise
Speaker 1: he had managed been effectively the six member of the
Speaker 1: band throughout their career. Um. So when they wanted someone
Speaker 1: to put together, you know, this kind of reunion to
Speaker 1: a thing, um, they came to me, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of made a pitch for what I thought
Speaker 1: they should be doing, and you know, many lengthy band
Speaker 1: meetings and shoot. So is there anybody else we've missed
Speaker 1: in this story? Well, from an international standpoint, the other
Speaker 1: success we had was wolf Mother on their first album.
Speaker 1: I only looked after them on their first album. Okay,
Speaker 1: well that was the only album that meant anything in America.
Speaker 1: So why did you start working with them? Usually they
Speaker 1: fire you, but you know, no, I stepped down. Um.
Speaker 1: The band, I think is all three of those guys
Speaker 1: would admit, was a very dysfunctional band. Like all bands
Speaker 1: are dysfunctional, but they were a very dysfunctional band. And
Speaker 1: um that made it a very stressful process. Individually they
Speaker 1: are reached fine, but collectively it was just really really difficult. Um.
Speaker 1: So at the end of that album, the drummer and
Speaker 1: bass player, based players, keyboardist left the band, So Andrew
Speaker 1: was sort of left without those two guys, and we
Speaker 1: had just had our third child and I was like,
Speaker 1: I can't saddle up for more of this. So um,
Speaker 1: there we stood down from from the process we had organized.
Speaker 1: We had a great team around that band. They had
Speaker 1: really good and our people and agents that deals were
Speaker 1: well set up. Um, they had a great base in America.
Speaker 1: You know, I was just saying to someone yesterday. You know,
Speaker 1: with lots of international artists they do that too, which
Speaker 1: is Vancouver, down to San Diego, fly to Denver, fly
Speaker 1: to Chicago, and then sort of zip up around Toronto
Speaker 1: and come back down the East coast and they think
Speaker 1: they've toured America. They haven't. You know, that's the Blue
Speaker 1: States Tour of America. UM, wolf Father actually broke America
Speaker 1: because they they in the Blue States, they were sort
Speaker 1: of viewed as kind of ironic postmodern neo rock thing,
Speaker 1: whereas in the Red States it was like fantastic, We're
Speaker 1: still listening to Zeppelin and Sabbath, you know, So they
Speaker 1: got taken both ways. Um. But by the end of
Speaker 1: that tour, we we did Bonnaru and then had to
Speaker 1: do Milwaukee Summerfests. So you know, Tennessee up to Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: straight up the middle of America, and there's a week
Speaker 1: in between. So that's literally dartboard touring, right. You just
Speaker 1: got to fill the nights, which is why we ended
Speaker 1: up in Tulsa, Oklahoma on a Tuesday, and they did
Speaker 1: two thousand people in Tulsa on a Tuesday. And you know,
Speaker 1: when you do two thousand people in Tulsa on a Tuesday,
Speaker 1: you've broken America absolutely. So anything you're working on now
Speaker 1: that you think we'll have international success, now, I've made
Speaker 1: a really deliberate decision after good here to pull back
Speaker 1: from working internationally. UM. It had been my passion for
Speaker 1: over twenty years, and I do really miss being engaged
Speaker 1: in the American business. Like a lot of friends there,
Speaker 1: there's definitely a sense that you know, um, that's the
Speaker 1: main game, and so it's more engaging, it's more challenging,
Speaker 1: it's more stimulating. Um. But with three young kids, my
Speaker 1: wife went back after having worked a regular company, she
Speaker 1: went back and studied medicine. So she graduated as a
Speaker 1: doctor two years ago and is now out working in hospitals.
Speaker 1: So I made a really deliberate decision to sort of
Speaker 1: work just in this market and only have very sporadic
Speaker 1: kind of you know it or did to our overseas
Speaker 1: and that was great, but it wasn't like they're trying
Speaker 1: to break overseas markets. Was more about going over and
Speaker 1: reconnecting with an audience that was fun to do. UM.
Speaker 1: So we've sort of quite deliberately engineered a business and
Speaker 1: a career that works in this market. So in addition
Speaker 1: to the artists, we discussed cultures and Jimmy Barnes have
Speaker 1: been a big, big part of the last you know,
Speaker 1: sort of decade for me. Not a band that that
Speaker 1: sort of would be familiar to most of your overseas listeners,
Speaker 1: but their household names in Australia like quite literally um
Speaker 1: and so that's been phenomenal on every level for me. Um.
Speaker 1: We look after a band called Birds of Tokyo who
Speaker 1: had a minor sort of success in America not long
Speaker 1: after go It' Here with a song called Lanterns. But
Speaker 1: again that the singer from that band is in two bands,
Speaker 1: so that impedes their ability to tour and they're a
Speaker 1: bit older now. They're very successful in Australia, but they
Speaker 1: don't really have international aspirations. And we also managed the Precess,
Speaker 1: but we've got an American co management for them, so
Speaker 1: we've quite deliberately scaled back. Um. You know what we're
Speaker 1: seeking to do, and it's my version. You know the
Speaker 1: reason I agreed to do this by other than being
Speaker 1: grateful for the support you've given Missy many times over
Speaker 1: the years and aware of your reach. It don't like
Speaker 1: doing sort of personal promo stuff. I'm a big fan
Speaker 1: that behind the scenes people beg believer that behind the
Speaker 1: scenes people should stay behind the scenes. But I loved
Speaker 1: your Jim Gurno podcast and if anybody hasn't listened to it,
Speaker 1: they should press stop now and go and listen to
Speaker 1: that instead. Um. It's phenomenal. And you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of the things he grappled with in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: work life balance and um, you know, keeping meaning your
Speaker 1: life as you get into your fifties and everything else,
Speaker 1: I've grappled with two And because of that podcast, I've
Speaker 1: made a real dent on me. And so when you
Speaker 1: asked me to do this, I'm like, well, given how
Speaker 1: much I've got from that, they can't say no. Um
Speaker 1: but I think that. So what I've chosen to do
Speaker 1: with my career is draw a different kind of boundary.
Speaker 1: Jim went back. For those who spoiler alert, Jim basically
Speaker 1: have to having managed nine inch nails and no doubt
Speaker 1: and back and the offspring. He now teaches maths in
Speaker 1: San Diego. Um and you know, I'm not planning to
Speaker 1: teach maths anywhere, which is good for everybody. Um but um,
Speaker 1: but I have made a real decision and conscious choice
Speaker 1: to try to find a way to work to live
Speaker 1: rather than live to work, and narrowing your boundaries to
Speaker 1: working in Australia only has been my way of doing that. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know it's I missed the challenge. I missed
Speaker 1: the engagement, and I think that the times right now
Speaker 1: would have been much better for me. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: we've talked today about a number of different Australian success
Speaker 1: stories from two thousand and twelve, from Gortier through missrs
Speaker 1: Higgins and wolf Mother, sorry, from Silver Chair through missr
Speaker 1: Higgins and wolf Mother onto gort here, and the velocity
Speaker 1: at which those if you look at all of those,
Speaker 1: the velocity of which the Australian story translated internationally was
Speaker 1: getting quicker and quicker across that time. Now it's quicker
Speaker 1: than it's ever been so tones and I can go
Speaker 1: from you know, unknown here and unknown there to know
Speaker 1: and everywhere in the space of weeks. You know, what
Speaker 1: took Silver Chair a year now takes a week or two.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's still those incense successes like Lord whatever.
Speaker 1: But generally speaking, even though you can reach the world
Speaker 1: in an instant, everything including stuff that's domestic in the
Speaker 1: United States, takes longer break. I think it takes longer
Speaker 1: to break big right, Like she takes longer to get
Speaker 1: to home base, But you get to first and second
Speaker 1: base so much faster than you used to. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting is Your Big Lord as a case in point,
Speaker 1: because you know, there's so much development time behind that, right,
Speaker 1: the years that went into it to get her to
Speaker 1: the point where she could be an overnight success. But
Speaker 1: the difference is this right from Perhaps this is sort
Speaker 1: of irrelevant to most American listeners, but um, it used
Speaker 1: to be that there are a great many records released
Speaker 1: around the rest of the world that never got hurt
Speaker 1: in America because there was some overweight, middle aged white
Speaker 1: guy behind a desk in l A and New York
Speaker 1: who just said, nah, you know, I own the rights
Speaker 1: and I choose to say no. Um. And we all
Speaker 1: know as Australian music fans, we can go through and say,
Speaker 1: I just cannot believe that they know in excess and
Speaker 1: they know not all, but they don't know Cold Chisel,
Speaker 1: you know, um, well that they know beds are burning,
Speaker 1: but they don't know the tent to one album by
Speaker 1: the Oils, you know. Um. And this was largely because
Speaker 1: the gatekeepers, right, and the business has changed, as you know,
Speaker 1: and you talk about a lot um, it's changed so
Speaker 1: phenomenally now that gatekeepers are largely following audience rather than
Speaker 1: dictating towardsience. And so the fact that the audience is
Speaker 1: now more in the artist and the audience now have
Speaker 1: more power than they ever had before is a great
Speaker 1: thing for when you're an international artist, because it means
Speaker 1: that you can show you don't have to rely on
Speaker 1: Brian Phillips happening to be in Australia on a junket
Speaker 1: to get your song exposed in Atlanta. You know you're
Speaker 1: gonna put it on SoundCloud and within sixty two someone
Speaker 1: in Atlanta can be listening to it. Um. And that's
Speaker 1: that's a radically different and a really wonderful world. It
Speaker 1: predingts its own challenges, of course, brings its own challenges
Speaker 1: of you know, if you can be discovered overnight, then
Speaker 1: how do you actually take time to get ready? Um?
Speaker 1: If you're going to attract attention, how do you sustain
Speaker 1: that attention once you've got it in the first instance,
Speaker 1: when there's so much competition for evil is ears and eyeballs, um,
Speaker 1: And you know, are the humans behind it ready for
Speaker 1: the success when it comes to them? Mother do they?
Speaker 1: And how much capacity do they have for all the
Speaker 1: extra work they now have to do to sustain these
Speaker 1: audience connections? Not just writing songs and making records, but
Speaker 1: taking great photos for Instagram and being pithy on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and you know, making great videos on YouTube and all
Speaker 1: the other stuff. It's it's a great time if you're
Speaker 1: an artist and a manager who wants to be engaged
Speaker 1: in a challenging time. If you're not, you know, the
Speaker 1: good news is you can do more than you um
Speaker 1: could ever do in the past for your own career.
Speaker 1: The bad news is you've got to do more than
Speaker 1: you ever had to do in the past for your
Speaker 1: own career. And so um, as somebody who's always been
Speaker 1: very motivated and been engaged by the creative process, I
Speaker 1: find now actually a lot more. I feel more opportunity
Speaker 1: now than I felt then. I think it's a better
Speaker 1: time for a strained artists, or English artists, of German
Speaker 1: artists or any artists to be able to get hurt globally.
Speaker 1: And you can see it in Australian music. There are
Speaker 1: artists who are making waves internationally that we just never
Speaker 1: got hurt before. You know, they might not be artists
Speaker 1: that are broken big. So if you take Tash Sultana,
Speaker 1: where you take Rufus still soul Um, these are not
Speaker 1: artists who are household names in America. But they can
Speaker 1: sell out red Rocks. They can sell out you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of tickets they have. They And the
Speaker 1: thing that people don't understand when they come from other
Speaker 1: markets is, you know, when you're in a small market
Speaker 1: like Australia, it can be like So there are a
Speaker 1: lot of artists whose careers end up getting stifled by
Speaker 1: the fact they're like fish that grow too big for
Speaker 1: the tank. They have no new challenges, they have no
Speaker 1: new stimulation, they have no new m mountains to climb.
Speaker 1: So the Australian artists that endure are those historically I'm
Speaker 1: old now, so you know, going back, the Australian artists
Speaker 1: who have endured and made the best records and had
Speaker 1: the long careers are those who've been engaged in working internationally. Um,
Speaker 1: they're not always broken around the world, but they've been
Speaker 1: still climbing the mountain. They've gone and play at a festival,
Speaker 1: you know in Europe in the middle of the day,
Speaker 1: got their ass kicked and thought we need to get better.
Speaker 1: You know. They didn't just set off for working in
Speaker 1: the same studio with the same producer that they always
Speaker 1: work with here, they went overseas and found someone new
Speaker 1: who you know, poked them with a stick. Um, they
Speaker 1: were challenged. And that's the thing that happens when you're
Speaker 1: engaged globally. It doesn't happen if you just stay working
Speaker 1: in a smaller market. And so the process of being
Speaker 1: internationally engaged it's more than financial, you know, it's also
Speaker 1: part of the creative um challenge for artists. So I
Speaker 1: really you know, as you can tell from how I
Speaker 1: talk about it, that the process of of working a
Speaker 1: train artists around the world, you know, is something that
Speaker 1: I believe. Australia makes great music. We have a lot
Speaker 1: of music that hasn't been heard overseas that should be heard. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's being heard more now than it's ever been
Speaker 1: and that's a great thing. So if you achieve your
Speaker 1: dream mm hmm, I hope not. Um, you know, let's
Speaker 1: change a little bit where you were today when you started.
Speaker 1: Did you always want to be in the music business?
Speaker 1: So my my time, my glib line on this is that,
Speaker 1: you know, my career in the music business has been
Speaker 1: one long downhill spiral. So I began working in record
Speaker 1: stores part time when I was still high you were,
Speaker 1: You were that guy. You were very passionate about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I was. You know, spring if you've seen
Speaker 1: Blinded by the Light, I was the North Queensland, Tropical
Speaker 1: Australia remote version of the Pakistani kid in that movie.
Speaker 1: I cannot begin to tell you how much that was.
Speaker 1: My wife and I was that. She just kept laughing
Speaker 1: at poking be the average. It's you, it's you. It's
Speaker 1: so true. It's me. It's me. Um. Springsteen was telling
Speaker 1: me everything you know, Um, as Jimmy Barnes once said
Speaker 1: to me, but you know, I was describing the feeling
Speaker 1: of being trapped in North queens and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it. I said, this is one my favorite
Speaker 1: record was darks on the Edge of Town You know,
Speaker 1: a whole album about being trapped in the whole album
Speaker 1: about needing to escape right until you get into the street,
Speaker 1: Utah desert. It's so great. But you know so, and
Speaker 1: I say to him, this record about being trapped, you know,
Speaker 1: it just spoke to me as a teenager in a
Speaker 1: way that, um, you know, you can't believe you get you.
Speaker 1: I get it. Darkness on the Edge of Townsville, that
Speaker 1: if I was if I was if I was going
Speaker 1: to do a I never would. But you know, if
Speaker 1: I was ever going to write a book would be
Speaker 1: the title. But so I grew up in North Queensland
Speaker 1: work in a record store, and um, as as I said,
Speaker 1: it's been a long downhill road ever since. Anybody who's
Speaker 1: ever sort of worked in a record store, um knows
Speaker 1: that that's kind of the height of purity. You know,
Speaker 1: you get to be Jack Black in high fidelity right
Speaker 1: and all working in playing an independent band. So I
Speaker 1: had bands in my early university years. One of them
Speaker 1: started getting plaid on Triple j We threw everything in
Speaker 1: a car and we drove off. What did you blow?
Speaker 1: I played bass? Of course, Were you any good? No?
Speaker 1: It was pretty average, But the songs got played on
Speaker 1: Triple joke, Yeah, songs got played on Triple JA. We
Speaker 1: got to support a lot of good bands, um, like,
Speaker 1: who did you support? Du Gurus, Stems, the Saints, loads
Speaker 1: of Was it a lark or in the back of
Speaker 1: your mind to say, well, maybe I just couldn't believe
Speaker 1: we were actually getting to, you know, make music and
Speaker 1: be around music. I just wanted to be around music.
Speaker 1: I loved it, you know it was magical. So you're
Speaker 1: working in the record store. You graduated from high school?
Speaker 1: Then what did I start studying at university? Studying politics
Speaker 1: and education? My gliblind being a degree in politics has
Speaker 1: coming hand in the music industry. That's good, so we
Speaker 1: we they've the band. I dropped out of union at
Speaker 1: the end of my third year. I subsequently finished the
Speaker 1: degree down here. But story you dropped our way to
Speaker 1: chase the dream. Yeah, well, we went off to Sydney
Speaker 1: for sort of you know, the summer with the band
Speaker 1: was what we told our parents, but we knew we
Speaker 1: weren't coming back. Um, so so yeah, you know, we
Speaker 1: started from the position of greatest purity work in a
Speaker 1: record store, being in a band. Anybody who's been in
Speaker 1: a band knows that the greatest arseles on earth journalists.
Speaker 1: They write those ill informed, idiotic reviews. So after you
Speaker 1: or two of playing in a band, I started mouthing
Speaker 1: off to someone at a magazine about this. They threw
Speaker 1: some records at me and said, if you think you're
Speaker 1: so smart, go and review them. So I became a
Speaker 1: music journalist. Anybody who's been a music journalist knows that
Speaker 1: the real scum of the earth R and R people
Speaker 1: they signed the idiots that are putting this stuff out.
Speaker 1: So having slipped from musician to journalists, I then succumbed
Speaker 1: to being an R person. And then if you're an
Speaker 1: A and R person, you know that the true sporn
Speaker 1: of Satan A managers, they're the ones that drive your
Speaker 1: nuts all day. So eventually I became a manager. So
Speaker 1: my only career options the reason I've done it for
Speaker 1: so long since then, my only career options from here
Speaker 1: are like acts murderer, Okay, just when did you go
Speaker 1: back to college? So from my band, because we left
Speaker 1: Towns at the end of my band was sort of
Speaker 1: active for a couple of years eight and then through
Speaker 1: that period ninety I did six or seven different jobs
Speaker 1: around the music industry to avoid getting a real job
Speaker 1: works as a music journalists. Still worked in a record
Speaker 1: store on a Sunday, managed independent band, did a bit
Speaker 1: of free lance publicity um for people, work for an
Speaker 1: indie label for a while servicing their records the Triple
Speaker 1: j Just hustling around the fringes doing anything I could
Speaker 1: to be able to get given free cd s and
Speaker 1: be on a guest list. And then in the end
Speaker 1: of ninety or start of ninety one is when I
Speaker 1: got my job at Sony and then, as I said,
Speaker 1: I left in ninety five to manage Silver Chair. But
Speaker 1: when did you go about you? Well, so I didn't
Speaker 1: answer your question, Um, I should be in politics. Um.
Speaker 1: The So through ninety I was also studying So I
Speaker 1: finished a diner honest degree in politics. I started studying law.
Speaker 1: But did you go back because you said, wait a second,
Speaker 1: here this music that using go on the road way? No,
Speaker 1: definitely not. I needed one subject to get my arts degree,
Speaker 1: like if I've done three years, needed one more subject.
Speaker 1: So I went back and studied politics just so that
Speaker 1: I could get the arts degree, and then really enjoyed it,
Speaker 1: and so did a full time honors year while working
Speaker 1: full time doing all these other things. Probably in the
Speaker 1: first instance of I'm being honest about it, did the
Speaker 1: extra subject to make my mom happy and to stop
Speaker 1: her from nagging me about it. Um. But you know
Speaker 1: then I actually really enjoyed it. And I've always enjoyed
Speaker 1: the studying process. I studied um towards an m b A.
Speaker 1: I've studied law, I've done a lot of different study
Speaker 1: the thing about the music, but just to be clear,
Speaker 1: you have an m b A, so the NBA units
Speaker 1: at the Union New South Wales. You have to do
Speaker 1: twelve units from MBA and you can cash in for
Speaker 1: for a graduate Certificate in Management, eight for a Graduate
Speaker 1: Diplomary Management, or twelve is the Masters. I've done the
Speaker 1: eight units, so I have the Graduate Diploma ym Management.
Speaker 1: But to do the last four you had to do
Speaker 1: a residential component. You have to go live on campus
Speaker 1: for three weeks and I had three kids under the time.
Speaker 1: Just like this freaksy record otherways said you get still
Speaker 1: to go back there still time? And then what about
Speaker 1: the legal aspect of it? I'm thinking about the Roxy
Speaker 1: sepy eight boot leg with that UM sorry the legal also,
Speaker 1: I studied law um as after I did the honors year,
Speaker 1: I then did two years of night school law, so
Speaker 1: I got about the way through a law degree. And
Speaker 1: then when I got the job at Sony UM, I
Speaker 1: kept trying to study for about a year, but I
Speaker 1: was working at Sony, so there's an overlap there where
Speaker 1: I was studying at nights while it's Sony and but
Speaker 1: it just became untendable to be an an R guy
Speaker 1: and studying at night Okay, how did you get the
Speaker 1: job as an n R guy? UM? A few different things, really.
Speaker 1: I think I had the guy who had had a
Speaker 1: previously was a previously a part time job, and they
Speaker 1: wanted to make it full time, and he had other commitments.
Speaker 1: And I knew him from round the traps, so he
Speaker 1: recommended me to Peter Carpon. I was working in a
Speaker 1: record store in the city and the woman who managed
Speaker 1: I managed it on a Sunday, and the woman who
Speaker 1: managed at the rest of the days her husband worked
Speaker 1: at Sony. And she said to me, you should send
Speaker 1: an application into Dennis handlet as well, send him a
Speaker 1: personal um application. And she mentioned to her husband as well.
Speaker 1: So I think the fact that Dennis, Dennis always you'd
Speaker 1: like to say, he loved getting the application that I had.
Speaker 1: Hadn't just sent it to the address in the ad.
Speaker 1: I had sent it to him as well. Um. So
Speaker 1: Peter and Dennis gave me the child there. And what
Speaker 1: did your parents do for a living? Um, My dad
Speaker 1: was a builder, had a small contracting company in Townsville.
Speaker 1: My mom had worked in the public service. But you know,
Speaker 1: as was the want in those days, as soon as
Speaker 1: you got married, you weren't allowed to be employed anymore.
Speaker 1: So how many kids in the family, only child? Only child?
Speaker 1: So you were like the angel or you got the
Speaker 1: abuse or what was it? So look, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: probably a little touchy on this point, but the the
Speaker 1: my dad had a stroke when I was nine, and
Speaker 1: um and became disabled, and then had another stroke when
Speaker 1: I was fifteen, died when I was sixteen. So while
Speaker 1: I had a lot of the advantages of being an
Speaker 1: only child in terms of my mom's focus, I also
Speaker 1: had to grow up at a very early age. There
Speaker 1: wasn't really room for much in the way of teenager rebanion.
Speaker 1: It came much later, as described with running away in
Speaker 1: my union years. So, um, I had a great child
Speaker 1: with my mom, you know, did an amazing job to
Speaker 1: ensure that I wasn't really compromised as much as I
Speaker 1: could have been by all that stuff. But my whole
Speaker 1: life has been spent with people sort of thinking I'm
Speaker 1: older than I am. You Usually it said like this,
Speaker 1: oh you're only X age. I thought you were older
Speaker 1: long pause, or not that you look at So I've
Speaker 1: had that my entire life. So I've had to be
Speaker 1: I've always had to be sort of the responsible one.
Speaker 1: That's sort of you know when everybody else's off their heads.
Speaker 1: When your father driving, when your father pause was their
Speaker 1: financial stream, there was big financial stream. When he had
Speaker 1: the first stroke, we ended up his partners didn't do
Speaker 1: the right thing and so he was on a disability pension. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pretty difficult. And is your mother? Was your mother?
Speaker 1: If you still here, I'm not sure. She passed away
Speaker 1: to three years ago. Okay. Was she proud of you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: very proud and she had always loved you love show
Speaker 1: business her version of show business. As my parents were
Speaker 1: quite old as well, so my dad was forty eight
Speaker 1: when I was born, my mom was thirty eight resolved
Speaker 1: for six. Um, so my mom's version of show business
Speaker 1: was you know, Sinatra and the rat Pack and the
Speaker 1: movies and Judy Garland and all that stuff. So I
Speaker 1: always grew up around you know, she was always playing
Speaker 1: musicals at home and all that sort of stuff. So
Speaker 1: she loved she loved the entertainment side of things, um,
Speaker 1: but probably the rock and roll thing was a little
Speaker 1: bit much for her. As a good Catholic lady from
Speaker 1: from rural Australia growing up in the north of Australia's
Speaker 1: like growing up in the South of America being the
Speaker 1: land down under. Everything's upside down, So so we're kind
Speaker 1: of the you know, the rednecks, I suppose of the
Speaker 1: of the piece. But you know, it was certainly not
Speaker 1: common in that part of the world. You know, when
Speaker 1: you're living two thousand miles away from from anything else,
Speaker 1: was not common to run off and join the circus
Speaker 1: as I did. And once you were successful in the circus,
Speaker 1: did you make any grand gestures, any purchases for your mother? Um?
Speaker 1: Mom got to fly around a lot um so she
Speaker 1: loved to travel. So she came to New York when
Speaker 1: Silver Chair did Saturday Night Live. She was in the
Speaker 1: audience for that. Um she Yeah, she did a lot
Speaker 1: of She got to see a lot of things like that,
Speaker 1: you know, around for a lot of the great Missy
Speaker 1: moments and so forth, and she loved she She was
Speaker 1: a big Tina Arena fan. And so my wife, managing
Speaker 1: Tina Tina sang at our wedding. My mom just thought
Speaker 1: it was the coolest thing that ever happened. So what dreams,
Speaker 1: what what would you make to do with the thirty
Speaker 1: or forty years you have left on this mortal coil
Speaker 1: or do you think it will be still be in
Speaker 1: new music or what do you think? Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: the challenge and why the Gym Gurno podcast made such
Speaker 1: an impact on me. You know, I definitely feel like
Speaker 1: there's more to life than than this. UM. I definitely
Speaker 1: feel like I'd like to do more with my mind
Speaker 1: than the music sometimes allows. UM. I definitely I've always
Speaker 1: been interested in politics and causes and you know, UM
Speaker 1: have pretty strong and disturb views about a lot of
Speaker 1: things that's going on in the world and would like
Speaker 1: to try to kind of you do your bit to
Speaker 1: help push that rock up the hill UM as opportunities arise. UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't think that the next thirty or
Speaker 1: forty years looked like the last thirty years for me.
Speaker 1: You know, but our kids are now seventeen, fifteen, and twelve,
Speaker 1: so we're also entering a very different chapter with that.
Speaker 1: You know, another five or six years that will all
Speaker 1: be behind us, and not that it's ever behind you,
Speaker 1: but you know that the day to day uper driving
Speaker 1: that I currently seem to spend half my life doing
Speaker 1: for my kids, UM will be behind me. And you
Speaker 1: know that will open up an opportunity as well to
Speaker 1: hopefully return to being overseas more. You know, I love
Speaker 1: living in Australia. I've had many opportunities to live in
Speaker 1: New York. We still have a place in New York, um,
Speaker 1: but we've always resisted living there full time because we
Speaker 1: love the quality of life here. However, there is definitely
Speaker 1: a sense of engagement that you get from being in
Speaker 1: particularly for US New York as well, particularly for US
Speaker 1: New York, that you just don't get here, you know.
Speaker 1: Like so when I was a kid growing up in Townsville,
Speaker 1: you know, we very rarely got to come to Sydney, UM,
Speaker 1: but I can vividly recall the times that we did,
Speaker 1: you know. And later in my teenage years, I'd save
Speaker 1: up every cent for the whole year and come to
Speaker 1: Sydney for two weeks and see bands, go to see
Speaker 1: plays and by records. That's been my whole year's worth
Speaker 1: of wages in two weeks, and then go back and
Speaker 1: work for another fifty weeks to come and do it again.
Speaker 1: The first time I went to New York in the nineties,
Speaker 1: the first couple of days and say, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this feels familiar. Okay, not my believer in sort of
Speaker 1: past lives or something. But it was really like, I
Speaker 1: have felt this feeling before. Why does this feel so familiar?
Speaker 1: Not for two days I realized it was exactly the
Speaker 1: same feeling I used to have when I went from
Speaker 1: Towns for the Sydney. All of a sudden the fences
Speaker 1: were further back. So they're feeling you get at the
Speaker 1: airport where you step onto the moving walkway, you know,
Speaker 1: whish um And yes, so New York still gives me that.
Speaker 1: It gives me this energized feeling. Um. You know, there
Speaker 1: are things you'll see when you go out at night
Speaker 1: or during the day, or just when you go out
Speaker 1: that you will not see anywhere else. And I love that.
Speaker 1: I love the sense of you know, when when John
Speaker 1: Lennon moved to New York, people said, someone said to me,
Speaker 1: how could you possibly leave England behind? He said, but
Speaker 1: I've lived in ancient times. I've lived in Greece, if
Speaker 1: I lived round the birth of Christ in Rome. It's
Speaker 1: the twentieth century. So I'm going to live in New York.
Speaker 1: And so that's still you know, our our sort of dreams.
Speaker 1: Some people have the dream of you know the kids
Speaker 1: leave home when they go up the coast. When our
Speaker 1: kids leave home, we're going to New York for three
Speaker 1: months a year. We'll see you on the card to them,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for doing this job, and you will wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thanks