Starmakers

By Larry Schwartz

SYDNEY-based John Woodruff was in London at the right moment three years ago to take charge of the career of a Perth-born singer.

“I saw Suze Demarchi on a video,” says Woodruff, who has helped manage the Angels, Cold Chisel, Do Re Mi, Icehouse, Boom Crash Opera and Johnny Diesel and the Injectors. “I thought she was spectacular.

I couldn’t quite understand why she was doing the song she was doing.” They met, Demarchi agreed to return to Australia, teamed up with Perth musician friends and a Sydney guitarist and the band became The Baby Animals, whose self-titled debut was album of the year in Australia last year.

Alan James was working as tour manager for the Northern Territory Arts Council in 1985. He took a group of African dancers into a small community in Arnhem Land, where he met a local school headmaster who had played in a band. Then managing a Darwin band called the Swamp Jockeys, James laughs when asked to explain why Manduwuy Yunupingu chose him for what would become the now popular Yothu Yindi. “It was probably as simple as the fact that not too many band managers pass through Arnhem land … and the fact that we got on well.” Other leading players among Australia’s 140 or more managers of high profile performers include: Michael Gudinski (Daryl Braithwaite, Diesel, Jimmy Barnes, Nick Barker & The Reptiles, Roxus), Grant Thomas (Crowded House, the Rockmelons), Rod Willis (Icehouse), Gary Morris (Midnight Oil), Brent Eccles (The Angels) and Terry Blamey (Kylie Minogue).

In New South Wales, music industry managers must register with a government body and pay $50 application and $100 licence fees. There is no licensing in Victoria.

The relationship between manager and performer is one that can lead to close personal friendship or be fraught with difficulties, sometimes ending in falling-outs or legal action.

Only this week, Supreme Court Justice Byrne heard action by Adrian Barker, former manager of the Models, seeking 20 per cent commission on the band’s earnings he alleges he is owed from 1980 to 1983.

Musicians Andrew Duffield, Sean Kelly and James Freud represented themselves in court, while Barker was represented by his solicitor.

Earlier this month, Woodruff organised a meeting of managers to try to form an organisation to lobby on their behalf.

The veteran manager called the meeting because he wants to be able to tell Music Industry Advisory Council what his peers think.

“The artist is everything,” says Woodruff. “They get the lion’s share. There are percentages but I think it’s not the thing to tell anyone else.” He explains the nature of a manager’s job. “This whole business is based on perceived value; it’s not based on actual value … That’s what the rock’n’roll business is all about. It’s a manager’s job to set up that perception.” Glenn Wheatley puts it this way: “My role is all-consuming. There is no doubt about that. We attend to every detail. If the band is not right we try to make sure that it is right … If John (Farnham) is not looking right we look into that as well.” A tuxedo in a garbage bin signalled the revival of Farnham’s music career in the early 1980s.

“He was doing a club date in Queensland and he had to use the house band,” says Wheatley, who has managed Farnham since 1980. “The band was so shockingly bad he actually stopped half way through one of the songs and counted them in again to get the right tempo.

“I just squirmed. I thought: `This is just not right for a singer of this calibre. This is not for John Farnham’. That night, I ceremoniously got his tuxedo and threw it into the scrap bin in the kitchen of this club. I thought: `Right, that’s it, we have to start again’.” Wheatley got the singer away from the club scene, surrounded Farnham with a “pretty hot band” of contemporary musicians, gave him more say in choosing both songs and arrangements, carefully vetted photographs when possible.

A Farnham arrangement of `Help’ from the album `Uncovered’ was “the start of the return for John”.

Farnham’s `Whispering Jack’ (1985) would break Australian music industry records, becoming the biggest selling (1.2 million copies) album in Australia by a local performer.

The two had shared a manager as well as a flat in St Kilda back when Farnham was known as Johnny and Wheatley a member of the band Master’s Apprentices.

These days they speak to each other almost every day. Wheatley says he has watched Farnham in `Jesus Christ Superstar’, its soundtrack recorded on his label, at least 60 times so far. “I pride my relationship with John. I treat him as my best friend and I think that’s helped the situation. We are foremost friends. We have been a great help to each other.” ASKED about rumors that Farnham had loaned him money when he was in financial difficulty then declined to call in the loan, he says: “I think it’s fair to say I helped him out at a time when he was very hungry too … and I think he was quite happy that he was able to do the same thing for me.” What exactly had Farnham done for him? “I can’t be specific. I got myself into a well-documented purple patch. John stood by me every step of the way and I think it gave him great satisfaction to almost repay what I’d done for him. Nothing more and nothing less than what real friends do for each other.” It’s rare that performer and artist get so close. Woodruff, talking of how he has come to part with some bands he has helped manage, says: “Diesel it happened because I got fired. I hate to open old wounds to be honest … At the time he wanted change. He went somewhere else. He felt that I wasn’t doing the job.” It makes it all sound like divorce. Yet he talks of management in terms of stable matrimony. “You are the only person that marries the artist in the entertainment field.

“Everybody else takes them when they’re hot, drops when they’re not.

You go up with them, down with them, up with them, down with them.

That’s the job, you know.”

The Sunday Age, 22-Nov-1992