Music, Melbourne and My Memories
February 2014
Michael Gudinski walks through the current RMIT Gallery exhibition.
The fantasy recreation of Michael Gudinski’s office at the RMIT Gallery exhibition Music, Melbourne & Me: 40 Years of Melbourne’s Popular Music Culture features a wall of gold and platinum records, priceless sporting memorabilia and a massive desk with a phone, an original paging system decommissioned by Mushroom in 1999 and no computer.
This is not a retro homage to a record mogul’s inner sanctum – this is what Gudinski’s life – and world – is really like. It’s about the phone, the voice, the human connection, the hustle.
The RMIT Gallery exhibition is underpinned by academic research into music and memory by Dr Kipps Horn from RMIT’s School of Media and Communication, and co-curated by RMIT Director Suzanne Davies. The expansive show, which fills every nook and cranny of the gallery, boasts vast amounts of rock memorabilia from the Mushroom Group and from Michael Gudinski’s personal collection.
As the CEO of the Mushroom Group, Gudinski has had his finger on the pulse of Australian music for all of the 40 years covered in the exhibition. He was there at the Sunbury Festival in 1972; he was there managing Skyhooks; he was there behind Kylie Minogue as she went from her debut single (Locomotion) to becoming an Australian icon.
As he admits, he has done it all without personally using computers, email, a Facebook shout out or a Tweet. He has people who take care of that for him – old school, Gudinski uses the phone. In fact, trawl YouTube and you’ll note he answers his mobile in television interviews, throughout media interviews and he certainly had it in his hand during his talk at RMIT Gallery on the evening of 21 November. And – he answered it. Often.
The crowd was gathered to hear the man himself speak about his recollections of the Melbourne music scene. Gudinski didn’t disappoint, launching forth for nearly two hours on the past 40 years of Australian music history as he walked through the exhibition with friend and radio personality Lee Simon.
And neither did he stop answering his phone, ducking out to his fantasy office every few minutes to take calls. “He’ll have the Stones tour sewn up by the end of this,” one insider quipped. And he did – the Rolling Stones will embark on a full-scale Australian and New Zealand tour from March 2014 organised by Gudinski’s Frontier Touring. And the deals were done in his fantasy office at RMIT Gallery – during his artist floor talk. Possibly a first for an art gallery. Possibly a first, also, for Gudinski. He did proclaim at the exhibition media launch he would be working from his gallery office desk. And he was true to his word.
Not that the audience minded the frequent interruptions as Gudinski dashed off to answer yet another call. It was all part of the Michael Gudinski myth, part of the theatre of the music industry’s wheeling and dealing. Maybe other artists wouldn’t have been able to get away with this in an art gallery talk, but as a 1980 Juke Magazine article asked: “Michael Gudinski: is he the Messiah or just a very naughty boy?”
Whatever your view, the insider’s peek into Gudinski’s own music memories was enlightening. Here are some of the highlights:
On Live Performance
“Road testing songs is a good point – a lot of artists before they come to the studio, like the Foo Fighters, will actually have a go at this, they don’t mind doing it.
Kylie Minogue, believe it or not, when she did one of the really big tours, tested the song Can’t Get You Out of My Head. She’s an absolute gem, never had an argument with her in my life – and I’m a volatile prick – I’ve got the greatest respect for her. She’s Australia’s greatest ambassador. Kylie was doing rehearsal and Terry (Minogue’s manager) came up and said ‘do you think we should play a new song in the set?’ and I said ‘listen, well, what do you have to lose? You’ve got that many hits’. So she went out and performed the new song on that whole tour and even then we could see the crowd’s reaction. Now, I’m not the best ‘one listen person’ and I’ve got people in my office who can hear 45 seconds of a song and go ‘this is happening’ but throughout that tour, I’d heard it enough times, I’d worked it out and by this stage I was absolutely convinced. I remember saying to her, ‘This is an absolute number one.’”
On Success
It’s good luck and timing, believe it or not. It really is timing, it’s so important. I’ve always said this to artists, don’t let the media work you. You work the media. Don’t talk to them if you don’t have an album or something to talk about. If they ring up wanting an interview and it doesn’t work in with what you are doing, don’t do it. It’s basic sense but you know, you’ve got to set things up.
The whole American Dream for us, like umm, it was so frustrating to see Split Enz so close. We were about to explode in England with the Split Enz song Six Months in a Leaky Boat and then the Falklands War erupts.” [The BBC banned the song]. It’s out of your control, you just can’t stop it. It’s happened before – a new song Play With Fire by one of our artists was launched and added to radio play lists, then the recent Sydney fires break out and understandably it’s taken off Sydney radio stations. There are things outside your control.”
On Censorship
“With the Skyhooks, pretty much the entire Living In The 70’s album was banned by the authorities at the time. The songs and lyrics were considered risqué. It was the most benign album you could possibly think of. There was nothing really, profoundly offensive in terms of our contemporary way of looking at things, but back in the seventies, well… What the censorship did was make everyone really hungry for that album, they went out and bought it in droves. That wasn’t clever marketing, that just happened to be. The Skyhooks album being banned actually did work in our advantage but it’s about being leaders and not followers.”
On Songwriting Collaboration
“A lot of artists get precious about writing a whole song, yet it’s just a proven way of being too possessive. It’s OK if you need that extra bit of something for a song, there’s a top line writer, there’s a bottom line writer. Truly, if you start to look, many of the hit songs out there are written as collaborations where you’ve got songs co-written by anywhere from 3-6 writers. People forget that Motown and some of the greatest labels of that particular era – many of those artists didn’t write their own songs either.”
Music, Melbourne & Me: 40 Years of Melbourne’s Popular Music Culture shows at RMIT Gallery, 344 Swanton St, until 22 February 2014.
Images
1,2,3,4. Photo credits: Music, Melbourne & Me: images by Mark Ashkanasy, RMIT Gallery 2013.
[Inside Michael Gudinski’s office at Music, Melbourne & Me]
5. The Gallery at night with neon exhibition sign
6. Access All Areas: Michael Gudinski takes an audience on a tour of his recreated office at RMIT Gallery. Vicki Jones Photography, RMIT Gallery 2013.
7. Michael Gudinski and Dr Kipps Horn, Vicki Jones Photography, RMIT Gallery 2013.
Other Articles You May Like
When everything old is new again: Volker Albus talks design
As Professor Volker Albus prowls around the various gallery spaces at RMIT Gallery, unpacking some 63 large crates, and pulling…
Galleries
Weather
20°Latest Edition
