The Sunday Profile – Michael Gudinski
Larry Schwartz
MICHAEL GUDINSKI smiles indulgently. “You’re obsessed about this, aren’t you?” he says, when asked about the whereabouts of the music label he founded in his 20s.
At 47, he’s more interested in talking about the future than an enterprise he shed with a $40 million sale of his remaining half-share of Mushroom Records to News Corp in late 1998.
For a year in which he remained contracted to “stick around”, his old record label remained in Albert Park. But it recently shifted to new premises in West Melbourne. The Mushroom building at 9 Dundas Lane is being renovated and Gudinski is looking ahead.
Gudinski last year won the Australian Marketing Institute’s Marketer of the Year award. He is a partner in the Mercury Lounge at Crown. He has Australia’s largest independent music publishing catalogue. His touring company has just brought Tom Jones to Australia.
He’s diversified his interests to other areas, including film production, and this year bought a quarter of mcm, said to be Australia’s largest radio production company. “I’m looking at developing businesses around my core business,” he says.
Except for the record company, he has retained the name Mushroom. “It was very important to me, just like when Richard Branson sold his record company, he kept the name, Virgin. I’ve kept the name.”
Mushroom Records late last year sued its founder for allegedly helping a former executive set up a rival business, Zomba Records Australia. “The action is very close to resolved and Zomba and Mushroom have settled,” Gudinski says.
In his office, Gudinski has a portrait of Mick Jagger by Andy Warhol on one wall. On a poster downstairs in the foyer, he’s the star. “The first sign of a new label,” says the new poster, hailing a rejuvenated Liberation Music. “Now open for business.” It will this week release a five-CD
compilation of 100 of Australia’s best loved songs of the past five decades.
Liberation is not new. Gudinski set it up several years ago using the name of an import record shop in Prahran he’d run before founding Mushroom.
“When we started to release international products through Mushroom, we used Liberation as a name,” he says.”I liked the name. It was just by pure coincidence I ended up owning it.”
Its third release in recent months, Australia’s Ultimate Songs was based on polling following a New Year’s Eve broadcast on Channel Seven and Austereo.
“You want The Encyclopaedia Britannica of Australian music? You’ve got it there,” Gudinski says proudly of the five-album box that ranges from Johnny O’Keefe’s Shout, to Killing Heidi’s Weir.
“From those e-mails we gathered songs we perhaps might have forgotten,” Gudinski says. Some suggetions could not be included. “AC/DC don’t let songs go on compilation albums. I would have rather had John Farnham’s You’re The Voice (his Age of Reason is here) but they didn’t want
to use that. .
“It was a mammoth task. It took months to get the clearance from different record labels. The challenge was to put it all together in one soup.”
Gudinski attributes his decision to sell the record company partly to concern over the possible impact of parallel import legislation that deregulated the CD market. He’d already sold the other half to News in 1993.
“It wasn’t because I wanted to stop,” he says. “…I wanted it to become a little more fun again and be a little more involved in the creative elements rather than being stuck in meetings with lawyers and accountants all the time.
“Look, it was hard. It was (like) letting my son leave home. That’s how. But I knew that once I’d sold it that after that period of time was over that I’d move on because I’m used to being the boss and I wasn’t go to be in there and be told what to do and told how to do it.
“… I am the founder of Mushroom Records and I’m proud to be.
“I started off in the business as a fan and as it became a bigger and bigger business, I guess, it became harder to be a fan …
“When I sold Mushroom Records, it gave me an opportunity to get back to listen to music more again, to be a lot more involved with a lot fewer artists.”
Gudinski seems unfazed by an unfavorable critical response to Cut in some quarters. “I think it was always going to get (that),” he says. “It’s hard to make a teen horror movie. You’re not going to get great reviews.
“We were happy with it. We sold it all over the world. It was our first movie … We made money on it. Not that that’s the issue. To be successful was more important.”
He has high hopes for the next film starring comedian Eric Bana and based on the life of Mark “Chopper” Read. “Chopper was always the one that was I was very keen on,” he says of the film that opens in July. “It’s taken us five and-half years to get to this point. I’m absolutely ecstatic. Eric
Bana is an absolute star. He’s going to win awards. I think it will be very critically acclaimed. I think it will become a launchpad for Mushroom Pictures. I’m very confident of it.”
He says Read “knows that there’s a movie being made and it’s based on the books. But he’s had nothing to do with it.”
He’s had a longtime interest in the genre. “When I grew up I was always very big on criminal movies and mafia movies and all that sort of stuff,” Gudinski says. “So I just thought it would be a viable way to break through.
“I figured there would be a bit of controversy over it. There has been when we first started but we’re proud of the movie and I think it could be a bit of a cult movie overseas. You just don’t know.”
Liberation has signed two new acts. One, he says, is “an unknown girl”, another a Newcastle band, called On, he says has “that modern sort of dance-DJ-driven” sound.
Gudinski has made his fortune and left his mark. But he has not lost his hunger. He’d like an Academy Award, a Melbourne Cup win. “I still haven’t got a No 1 record in America. So I’ll have to keep trying to do that.”
Michael Gudinski
August 22, 1952: Born in Melbourne. Attends Melbourne High.
1972: Founds Mushroom Records.
1973: releases first album, the triple-record `The Great Australian Rock Festival – Sunbury’.
1975: Skyhooks’ debut `Living In The 70s’ sells 250,000.
1985: Founds Liberation Records label.
1987: Signs Kylie Mingogue.
1993: Sells 50 per cent of Mushroom to News Ltd; opens Mushroom’s UK office.
1995: Founds Mushroom Pictures.
1998: Holds Mushroom 25th anniversary concert at the MCG; sells the other half of Mushroom Records to News.
2000: Liberation Music’s first Australian releases. Mushroom Pictures’ first film, `Cut’, debuts.
The Sunday Age 28th of May 2000
Larry Schwartz Writer 