John Watson

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Sex podcast
recorded Love Australian Musical. My guest today is manager Extraordinar
John Watson. John, good to have you here, Thanks for
having me. So we were working at Sony. How did
you decide to leave to manage Silver Chair. Well, they
already had a record that was exploding all around the world,

(00:29):
so it wasn't really that hard. Now usually it is.
I mean you have the security of you know, a
weekly paycheck or by weeek paycheck, and so for you
it was really no problem. Look, when John Adunlan and
I first saw the band, we saw them. You know
it's a proverb your gig with six people and four
of them are watching a TV a place called Jewels
Tavern outside of new Castle, and they did three sets

(00:50):
and included most of the folk Stomp album that you
know we're gone to sell three minute around the world.
And as we were driving home that night, I said
to John, I love my job here, but if I
was ever going to leave to manage a and this
is the one I remember saying it in the car
driving my Mitsubishi Magna back down the highway. Well, you know,
it's really funny, because that's how the music business is.
If you stay with your are, it's a game of
musical cheers. If you stay where you are, eventually you

(01:12):
tend to be out. It's very true. Yeah, okay, yeah,
they can't shoot a moving target. Okay, So how did
silver Tare get signed to Sony so Um? Silver Chair
had won a demo competition that SPS had had run.
In the first instance, it was sort of what we
were a little bit slower for those people don't know
what is SPS. So Silver Chair had one a demo
competition that had been run by a national public broadcaster

(01:35):
called SPS, and it was in many ways the blueprint
for what Triple J would go on to do with
their Unearthed program, finding unsigned artists and giving them profile.
So Um, the prize for winning this demo competition was
a day's recording at the Triple J studios, and so
we had got a tip off that this band had

(01:57):
been in on the weekend and they've done this song
and everybody at Triple Jay was talking about it are
probably going to actually start playing it, which was a
very rare thing to plan unsigned band at that time.
And so we got the call, you know to to
check it out. We loved the song. We called them up,
actually we called their mums up because they were fourteen
and fifteen at the time, and we John and I

(02:18):
was John's second day working at Sony. We started up
this Murmur label and he was literally sharing my office,
so sitting across from my desk, and we called up
the parents and we said, well, great, we'll come up
and see them play. And they were playing on playing
two shows, one on the Tuesday night, one on the
Friday night. The Tuesday night we couldn't go because the
head of Sony International was in town, so it was

(02:39):
put on a suit and go out to dinner with
the boss um. But we said we're coming up on
the Friday. Mushroom went up on the Tuesday. That was
my next question, was there any competition? So Mushroom went
up on the Tuesday and um and then Michael Godnsky
got told by the Mushroom people who've been up there
about it. He flew up on the Wednesday, and so
on the Thursday, John and I call up just to

(03:01):
confirm the times for the gig on the Friday, and
we're told, look, you shouldn't you probably shouldn't buy the card. Um,
you know we're going to be signing with Mushroom Like, well,
we're coming anyway. So we went up on the Friday,
and then you know, it proceeded to be a sort
of an interesting bidding war situation thereafter. So how did
you convince them to go with Sony? Well, it's a

(03:21):
good question. Peter Carpins in the audience today. He was
my boss at at Sony at the time, and so
we had started this new independent label, alternative label. It
was the early nineties. Everybody had an alternative label to
get their Nirvana um and the whole point of that
label was that it couldn't get into sort of financial
bidding wars. So we had to find a different way

(03:42):
to provide an incentive. And there were two options. One
was to do a one album deal, so make it
so that the parents was a low bar for them
to jump. You know, when the kids turnading, they can
make up their own mind. Then the other was to
do an Australia only sort of deal give them which
is very important as you would been talking to other
people about lots of Australian artists don't like to sign

(04:03):
for the world out of Australia. So I went to
Peter and I said, look, we've got these two options.
I'm thinking we should probably just sign them for Australia.
They're gonna be too young to tour internationally anyway. That's
you know, there's already a lot of bands that sound
like this in America. Difficult for them to compete over there.
And Pete with sort of the longer ranged perspective, when yeah,
but there's always little river band meaning an Australian band

(04:26):
that sounds so much like an American band that they
beat them at their own game. Follows you. I'd go
the other way, and in that one statement probably made
so many tens of millions of dollars um. So we
offered them a one album deal. My few with that
was that they would think that we were saying, um,
we don't have long term faith in you. Was Our
pitch was the exact opposite. Our pitch was always, if
they're capable of this at fifteen, imagine what they'll do

(04:47):
at twenty five if they're just given the chance. So
our pitch was very much, look it's a one album deal.
There's options which you guys have that you can exercise.
For more albums. Were definitely keen for more albums um
and then A Eventually that deal was extended. So we
we competed with Geninski, not by sort of throwing money
at the band, by by by throwing greater control and

(05:09):
a greater long term vision. And I guess the fact
that John and I at the time was sort of
the younger guys that you could give them, you know,
unreleased pearl jam c d s and stuff like that,
gave us a little bit of an edge. And as
I say, the deal flexibility helps a lot as well. Okay,
so did Mushroom really come back and try to get
the band or Mushroom Mushroom were definitely could be other

(05:30):
labels and then came to the party, and there were
people around the band, as there always are, who are
sort of leaning them one way, leaving them the other.
So but Mushroom with the main competition. Others subsequently came along,
but it was always sort of U saw them and
then so we signed them in the I think that
the Juno July by the August September of ninety four
tomorrow had gone to number one in Australia. It stayed

(05:51):
there for six weeks April. The following year, Frog Stomp
came out here in March April and debut at number one.
And that's in That song was the most played song
on modern rock radio in America for the year. Okay,
so a little bit slower. So you signed the band,
you make the deal, what do you do about the recording? Um?

(06:12):
So they had the first DP had already been done
at Triple J with Yeah. Look, it was their first
recording in a studio and Phil mccally did a great
job with them. Um. There was a guy called Kevin
Shirley who went on to do a Millionaires Journey, a
million aero smith and he now does cultures or for

(06:34):
us and Jimmy Barnes. He's now based back in Australia,
South African originally, but he's been around the world. Um,
we thought Kevin was perfect because he had a really
no frills, lean kind of rock approach. And the other
thing is the fastest engineer producer I've ever seen, Like,
you've never seen somebody who can capture a sound for
a band like this guy. And they were teenagers. They

(06:55):
had teenage attention spans. You know, if you didn't get
it in the first twenty minutes to half an hour.
You are going to get it. This band needed to
make please Please me. You know, they needed to get in,
make a record, fast, get out. They had the songs,
it just needed to be captured and sound great, and
so Kevin, and Kevin was a big kid himself, so
they'd get in. You know. We sent him in for
a day to sort of do a tryout with keV.

(07:16):
They walked out with two completely finished masters in a day,
which is pure massacre and a song called leave Me
Out that was the B side of it, and and
then Kevin did the record in. He did it about
nine days, but three of that was chause Daniel blew
his voice out from all the singing. He really did
it in six and then mixed it thereafter. So it
was super fast. And all the songs were written before
they went in the studio. Yes, yeah, they had every

(07:37):
single pretty much every song and time on that album.
There's like two or three that they wrote after we
signed them, but none of the singles. All the singles
were there the first time we saw. So the album
was finished. How long after it finished does it come out?
So the album's finished really quickly because tomorrow was already
exploding in Australia and we're starting to get buzz around
the world. Um, the band was on the big day out,

(08:00):
so it was probably only eight to ten weeks between
delivery of master and first CD going in the shop.
It's always funny because labels have their schedule, but if
the change of priorities, they can get things out much
very true, very true. I think about that Silver Chair
arc now and you know it was all super quick
at the time. It was explosive, right, but it still

(08:22):
took the better part of twelve months for this song
to travel from its first Triple J spins to the
band getting played on k Rock. And but once it's
played on Triple G at that point, it's breaking in
all of Australia, right correctly, it's a national station. At
what point do you quit? Sony, I don't leave until

(08:45):
like the formally until the June of ninety. I'm I'm
in every manager's dream situation. I am a secret agent
withinside the record company, um, knowing that I'm probably going
to leave in six months or so to manage this band.
So you could have a meeting we sort of should
we fire this band to Europe to do a few
promotional shows. Yes, we very much should um, but it

(09:08):
worked out pretty well for everyone. Okay, so they didn't
have a manager at the time. Now the mums, Well,
we had this situation where each of the band's mother's,
the band's agent Owen, authored their lawyer, Brett Oton, John O'Donnell,
and myself between us kind of divided the management responsibilities
and their accountant. So it was sort of management by

(09:29):
committee for a while, with most of the career direction
stuff that record company side, the global strategy side stuff
coming out of John and I Are the touring stuff
coming out of Owen. Brett was kind of looking after
the band members interests and the moms were kind of
helping with a lot of the sort of the day
to day organizing and just making sure that they were
kept ask of the theoretical fifteen percent. Did that all

(09:50):
out up to well? There was There was no one
really getting paid for the management first period. No one
was getting paid for it. It was just everybody was
doing it. It was a labor of love for everybody. Okay,
sure the record explodes in Australia in terms of international
they find you or you pitch them so my I
had two roles at Sony Australia. I was by then

(10:10):
I was a and R and I was international marketing,
which sounds strange from an American perspective. It's like think
of the assembly line on the first step in the
last step. UM Melissa, who's the general manager of my
company has been ever since, was the domestic marketing person.
So between us we sort of had the assembly um.
So we had UM through that international marketing role. I

(10:34):
was already had been spending a few years traveling around
the world meeting people at Sony. We've had some success
with Tina Arena around the same time she had a
top ten hit in the UK. UM there were other
artists that we had had sort of worked, probably with
less success, but it had helped me build some relationships
and I've been able to kind of slipstream on the
very back of Midnight Oils global career, sort of walk

(10:57):
in where you know, they were already a very established band.
Was just a kid walking around bumping into things who
knew nothing. But it was a great way to meet
people and build relationships. So by the time Silver Chair
came along, after two or three years of doing that job,
I was really well placed to be able to find
the right supporters in Sony. So David Massey had just
taken on his role um at Epic working for Richard

(11:17):
Griffiths at the time, and he was a big early
champion for it. And simply in some other territories, it's
always the type of record if you pleaded for somebody
once they got it. Yeah, and I think the Australian
successful well yes and no, I mean Tomorrow obviously sounded
a lot like Pearl Jam And you know, there was
always that thing of like, oh was it a teenage

(11:38):
novelty act, you know, so that most people could see
the commercial opportunity in it. That wasn't what we were
looking for, though. We were looking for people who could
actually sort of see something more than that, who could say,
hang on, if they're capable of doing this at fifteen,
imagine what they'll do at twenty five if they're given
the chance. So those were the kind of believers we
were looking for. It wasn't hard to find people who
thought they could make a quick buck. It was hard
to find people who thought they could make a long buck.

(12:01):
And did it end up on Sony labels all over
the world or did you make deals with other independence. No,
it was a worldwide signing to Sony because of how
the deal went down in the first place, So other
Sony affiliates released. It was just a matter of convincing them.
There's no if the Sony affiliate in some country didn't
want it, you couldn't take it independent. Um. Well, look,
had they not wanted, I suppose we could have taken independent,

(12:24):
but it just was never necessary because of the um,
you know, the heat that the song happened. So it's
happening in Australia. Where's the first other country it happens, Um, America.
And it's a great question, Um, it happens in This
is a great example of how breakouts happen in slow motion.
Now they happen in such fast motion that it's hard

(12:45):
to go back and figure out. You know, did the
blog happen one minute before the playlist dad, or did
it happen two minutes after the you know? Um, it
was more slow motion in those days, so you could
actually see it was that then it was that, then
it was that. So there were three separate American radio stations,
one of which is notionally on the Canadian side of
the border. But it plays him to Destroit who all

(13:08):
started playing the record. So it's key rock now, I
don't know it's it's not the ones you expect. So
Brian Phillips at the time was programming x in Atlanta,
which was the big alternative station in Atlanta. He had
been flow in to Australia on a junket to see
the Cruel Sea, an Australian band that probably aren't familiar
to your overseas listeners, but of familiar to everybody that's

(13:29):
here today. M Brian had come to Australia seeing the
Cruel Sea, hadn't been that impressed with them, but it
heard tomorrow on the radio. I thought this is fantastic,
went back home and played it, added it to his station,
as said of his souvenir of being in Australia. Completely
different record company. By the way, so PolyGram have paid
to flame down. He's picked up the Soniac, gone home
and added that. And that was before the record was

(13:49):
even out in America. Yeah, way before, way before um.
He then decided to call his radio show the Big
Day Out as well. So he had had a really
good to Australia. Poley gramp brilliant. Um. Meanwhile c I
M x n X, which was north of Detroit, as
I say, on the Canadian side of the border, but

(14:09):
played into the Detroit market. Um, someone there had a
There was a person who had a sibling who was
backpacking in Australia. I was a brother or a sister.
The siblings sent them the CD and they added it,
and um, then we had and they were the two
that went first. And then there was also air play

(14:31):
in Chicago. Um from another coincidence of that sort that
I'm just blacking on at the moment, but it was
an equal Oh, I know what it was. People had
flown to Australia. We we'd flown down on a junk
at some people from a trade mag from like in
those his album network and Gaps and those sorts of things. Yeah. Yeah,
So a couple of those people had come to Australia.

(14:52):
They had picked up I'd sent some of them the
music they'd come down before to see other artists, and
so I had given them some music. They had shared
it with the end in Seattle and m Q and
one in Chicago at the time, and so they started
playing it as well. So epic is getting um these
calls from radio programmers saying, this is our number one UM,

(15:13):
you know phones record, this thing is, why don't you
release it? So it's the perfect world and it led
to a situation for us that was highly unusual, which
was that within epic Um, the promotion department was actually
the band's biggest fans. Usually the promotion department, of course,
is the hardest one to sell exactly. But you know,
Sue Burgan and Ron Serrito and Jackie Saton, Evan Prague,

(15:36):
those people were all very instrumental in the band's career
across all three records that we put out on Epic
and even when sort of other people within the company
were may be less interested in them because they were
an inherited project, they were foster kids, not firstborn's. Um.
They we still had the promotion department out there working,
and we had supporters in radio, so we sort of

(15:57):
work backwards into a record company. Okay. The perception from
my viewpoint across the pond is that it breaks up,
breaks out immediately, you know, I get the record, etcetera.
But it didn't appear that the Subjequent records were as
successful in America. Is that true or just my perspective. Well,
it's true, but they were still successful. So the second one,

(16:20):
the third one was more successful than the second one
because they had a big TRL video top ten TRL
video at the time on MTV. UM. They both gold records,
well and truly gold records. The first one was double platinum. UM.
The other thing that was interesting with it with that
band is because k Rock was late to the party.
They were one of the latest stations. They never felt
the same ownership that they did on many other artists.

(16:42):
So Silver Chair had the opposite as well. Very inside baseball,
but the Silver Chair had the opposite kind of career
in America to most international artists. They were much bigger
in the middle than they were on the coasts. Um.
So the BIGG in Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, UM, you know,
not as big in New York and l A. They're
always proportionately quite weak market, so the industry perception of

(17:02):
them was always probably a little weaker than what the
reality was. But yes, the second and third records were
not as big. The band had had a successful career there.
Of course. The difficulty was that being at high school,
they just weren't able, and they did go through all
of their school and they finished the first two records
came out while they were still full time high school students.
UM So they weren't able to do anywhere near the

(17:24):
same sort of touring they were doing here. So our
ability to convince people that this is a really good
rock and roll band that you should see live, um
was diminished in America compared to what we were able
to do in this market, where they had very different
standing in Canada because it was a smaller market and
we were able to play more. They're probably twice as

(17:44):
strong per capita there. So it's very much about our
ability to have people see the band play live. Once
they saw them play live, they're like, oh, it's not
a novelty act that this is a seriously So in
a couple of years when they were still in high school,
how many deeds would they do in a year? Well,
it depend how long school holidays were, um, so they
only worked on the schoolhole And I'm being a little
bit but like it's largely yeah, I mean, you know,

(18:05):
they we were touring probably a fifth to a quarter
as much as your average rock and roll band would
have been touring, particularly at that moment. Now didn't whose
idea was to stay in school, the parents, the kids,
probably not the kids. Um, I think it was everybody
else's idea other than the kids to some extent. Although
having said that, you know, as things got nutty for them,

(18:27):
and it did get unbelievably nutty, tabloid photographers camped outside
the school taking photos to put on the front page
of the Sydney tabloids and all that stuff. Um, having
that some sort of anchor within the school environment was
pretty good for them, you know. I mean they turned
down playing with the Chili Peppers at Wembley in order
to go to a mates sixte birthday party in Newcastle.

(18:50):
So during this run, would you say they remain relatively
well adjusted? Yeah? Um, I think Daniel was always going
to um. And you know, if you listen to the
lyrics on frog Stomp, which were all written before he
was famous, clearly you know he was a guy that
felt things deeply and was battling with some issues. Um.

(19:14):
Those issues were not helped by the pressures of fame,
and despite everybody's intentions, best intentions, the best efforts to
try to kind of protect him from from all of that, stuff.
There's no doubt all of that. You know, it took
a toll as well. Okay, so as they say, we're
in America, we're very focused there. How about the rest
of the world in terms of the records acceptance, they

(19:37):
did well on the continent. The UK never liked, the
UK never likes anybody Australia from Australia, and really, well,
it's a two sorts of Australian artists that that's that's
that's not what I meant. There's two sorts of Australian
artists that succeed in the UK in my opinion, artists
that they can laugh at. Look at those silly bit
of Australians that can make kangaroo jokes, you know in

(19:58):
their way, Kylie, Rolph harr It was a couple of examples,
Kylie minog Rolf Harris, um you know more than novelty
pop band Peter Andre, the pop stuff that they can
sort of almost giggle about, you know, stuff that has
a neighbors connotation the TV show neighbors or artists that
they think are way too cool and smart to be

(20:19):
Australian and that only the English could appreciate them. So
if you go Betweens or the Saints in the early days,
wolf Mother and Jet and the Vines stuff. That's you know,
the enemy can get but you know Australians couldn't possible
because they're you know, all just sport playing, you know, convicts.
Um So, if you but if you go back historically
and look at them, the sort of the middle of

(20:39):
Australian artists, they've typically sort of done very poorly in
the UK compared to everywhere else. Meant at work, it
was the last territory in the world. Peter could speak
to it and he signed them. But you know, the
it's one of the last territories in the world to
have success. They did have success with them, but it
was the last to get there in excess. Same thing.
It was only you know, when Michael and Paula got together,
it was X that was the record. They're not kick

(21:01):
with Midnight Oil. Diesel and Dust sold six and fifty
thou copies in France and twenty thousand copies in the UK.
I mean you can swim from one country to the other.
Um so you know I could go on so for
Silver Chair, Yeah, the UK, they had a support there
from Koreng and whatnot, but it was always you know,
koala and kangaroo jokes. Germany and France were much stronger
for them, and that's often the case for Australian rock bands. Okay,

(21:24):
So in the US it seems like a period of
time for silver Ture, But I was talking to people
last night and they see Silver Ture could do multiple
arenas in Australia. So bring us up to now in
terms of the Beyond's career. So that the really sad
part of Silver Chair's career, um is so they had

(21:44):
three albums on Sony. The third of those albums, as
I say, had a big TRL hit on Up brought
a lot of audience and there's a lot of fans
you panick of the disco fall, that boy, that sort
of vintage of bands, the good Charlotte. That third album,
Near ball Room is considered a classic for for a
lot of those sorts of musicians. Four years later, um,

(22:06):
they made an album called Diorama, which most Australians would
say is their classic album. Atlantic had signed them for
America for that record. Unfortunately, Daniel got a condition called
reactive art writers, which is a genetic predisposition where um,
your hands and feet swelled terribly. It's very painful, completely debilitating.
It hit him about a month before the album came
out and didn't a bait until nearly a year after

(22:28):
the album came out, so they were basically unable to
tour and promote it. In America. It went on to
win heaps of Area awards here and you know, it's
considered a classic Australian album. Um. Van Dyke Parks did
a lot of work on it. It's a record that
unfortunately most people overseas, if you weren't already a fan
of the band, haven't heard, but most Australians would tell

(22:49):
you it is worth checking out. Very different from what
you expect, sort of a a strong beach boys kind of
touching things. Um, they're quite quite original. It's the album
that you know, I think we were always trying to
get to know. In their mid twenties, and then in
two thousand and seven they made an album called Young
Modern which had a song called straight Lines on it,
which was next to Tomorrow their biggest hit um here

(23:09):
and probably around the world. It was a top five
modern rock radio hitten in America. K Rocks sparted a
lot actually what was aliable then, so then we put
out through I LG. So Stu Bergen, who had been
our guy at EPIC was then running ILG and so
he picked it up and did a great job with
his team. And you know that record did quite you
know that the song did very well, um, and it

(23:31):
was again a big success here. So in Australia, yeah,
they're perceived and sort of they've won more Area Awards
WI our Grammys. They've won more Area Awards than any
other artist. Um, you know, they've had five number one records.
But in America there is any most other territories. Understandably,
people remember the fifteen year old version. They don't remember
what happened in all twenties. You're the manager, what about today?

(23:53):
What do you do well? Unfortunately, the band after two
thousand and seven has sort of imploded in terms of
the internal relationship since Daniel has gone through a lot
of struggles. So, um, you know, we no longer manage
daniel solo career. We did, you know for for a
long period of time, um and released a solo album
from Dan. But you know, um, there probably needs to

(24:14):
be lots of changes, you know, at at a human
level in order to get the band, you know, back
into a place where they can actually work together. Usually
they call that money. When pop'll run out of money,
they'll do a Guns and Roses, Black Crows. You know.
The one thing that you could never say about, you know,
Daniel in particular, the band, you know, the band as

(24:36):
a whole, Danna particular, you could never say he did
stuff for the money. You know, Please God, I wish
he had done more of it. Um. But you know,
he was avowedly all about the work and the art
and doing the things that felt right to him. And
you know, they're probably the last band on earth that
would get back together for the money. Okay, So just

(24:57):
going back through history, how did the end up in
Atlantic UM? So after three records UM on Sony Australia
that was released by Epic, we wanted to have a
direct relationship with an American label. Our view was that
just to go back there because historically it was fifty

(25:18):
cents on the dollar and other territories. Was it still
that deal at your time? Yeah? There was. You know.
So there's a number of problems that come when you're
signed to a satellite come from UM. The first is financial,
which is that you know, the a the artist. There's
there's three picks in the trough instead of two. There's
the American record company, the Australian record company, and the artist.

(25:41):
So obviously both everybody, well the artist in the American
record company both make less money than they would make
if the artist was directly signed for American label. So, um,
there's a financial reason that you would want to be
directly signed, but there's also a more sort of intangible
emotional reason which is that obviously, um, you know, everybody

(26:06):
wants to support the things that they strongly personally identify with.
They want to know people want to break the act
they signed. It's a priority, you know, it's an emotional
investment that you know, when when Richard Griffiths saw not
a single Richard because he was a great supporter, but
when understandably as a man from England, when Richard Griffiths
saw Oasis his name going up the charts and he
and David Massey knew that they had signed Oasis, of

(26:28):
course they couldn't help but feel very personally proud of that.
In a way, that wasn't really going to be the
case with Silver Chair. As much as they were happy
for us they hadn't been directly, If they hadn't been
the ones driving to Newcastle and competing with Mushroom for
and in the studio with the band, it's a different
type of involvement. You're a foster child rather than you know,
a firstborn. So what we wanted at the end of

(26:49):
those three Sony records was we wanted that kind of
skin in the game. We wanted someone behind a desk
in New York and all a who's who were likely
to get a bonus if we had a hit and
likely get fired if we didn't, and was that person.
So Sony were not willing to allow the band to
kind of do that because I guess it would invite

(27:10):
mutey from every other artist signed to overseas territories. So
we were forced to look elsewhere. So we signed with
Craig Calman, Kevin Kevin Williamson and Tom Storms with the
A and R guys, and Craig Calman sort of was
driving the deal out of Atlantic once again huted it
in with Sony because of Sony. We we said at
the end of three albums with a three album deal

(27:30):
um with with Murmur of the Australian label as I said,
it was a short term deal. He said it was
the uption of the arcs, so that's right. So there
was that was sort of formalized that not long afterwards
into a three album deal. Um so, as it was
a three album deal, the band had filled it and
we then swered right, well going forward, we're real happy
to stay signed to Sony in Australia, um, but we

(27:53):
would like to be signed directly to Epic or in
America and they were not willing to do that deal,
so which is fine that they're prerogative, and so we
went and looked for other options. So um Atlantic were
the keenest to sign the band, um and and so yeah,
we we signed there for the Diorama album, which, as

(28:14):
I say, was unfortunately you know what label did it
come out in Australia. So then we started our own
label in Australia called Eleven. John O'Donnell, who I had
worked with as I said in signing the band, not
long afterwards, ended up running am I here. Tony Harlow
had done the deal to bring the Eleven label to
em I in Australia, and so Eleven released the band's

(28:35):
recordings in Australia from that point forward. Okay, so you
leave Sony, you're managing Silver Chair, you're on the rocket ship.
At what point do you say, hey, I want to
get another raft? Um. It's a good question. Um. So
I think that the period from ninety five through two
thousand was really sort of my apprenticeship, I suppose in

(28:57):
being a manager. You know, we'll stop there for a second.
In retrospect, how ignorant or bad were you? Um? Great
question to um. I think that I was good on
the label side of things. I was good on the
music side of things. I was okay on the personal
side of things. I was weak on the touring side
of things. Because my background was I was good on media.

(29:19):
So my background, um, was that I had done media.
I'd worked in record stores. I've been in a band, um,
I had worked at a record company. I've done a
bit of promotion. So I understood those sides of the
business well or you know, reasonably well. Um. But I
hadn't really, I didn't come from being on the road.
I wasn't someone who came out of you know, six

(29:40):
years as a tour manager or being a booking agent.
So the live side of things was my weakness. Now
that was probably less of an impediment in a way
with Silver Chair because they weren't being driven by touring. UM.
But I was learning the touring business as I went, So,
you know, in hindsight, there were definitely things that I
did or didn't do with their tour ring that I
would do differently now. But I don't know that it

(30:03):
made that big a difference really, And I think that
what I would like to think that sort of what
I brought to it in terms of having that longer
term vision and so forth for them more than made
up for sort of the downside. What were the couple
of lessons you learned? Um? I think I've probably gone
harder when it was there to be had. Um. You know,

(30:23):
the band went very quickly into a second album and
thinking probably more from a label mentality of like let's
get another album out, um, where probably what they should
have done was going to spend a summer touring in
America make the money while it was there to be made. UM.
I probably also tried to please multiple territories rather than

(30:47):
sort of doubling down in the areas where we were successful. Realistically,
in hindsight, we because the band was so impeded in
terms of being able to tour um we were never
going to break everywhere, So it was a waste of
time going and doing a gig in Manila, as as
interesting as that was, you know, it was a waste
of time investing in UH shows in Austria or even

(31:09):
getting to Scandinavia. What we should have done was being
more targeted our touring and doubled down and actually just
properly served a smaller number of markets, which we did
do in Canada and it really worked to what did
we in retrospect you think you were ripped off of

(31:29):
the touring sphere. I'll probably the usual amount because there's
a lot of where everybody you know, takes years to
figure out what's going on there. But anyway, you have
those five or so years with Silver Cheer, the cloud
starts to lift, and you think the cloud starts with
the band quitt breaking up like has happened. So at
the end of the third album, you know, Daniel was
for a while going out, hadn't enough I want to

(31:51):
do this anymore. So that's that's sort of an existential threat.
So we had our label just as I say, three
Am I. So we started looking to sign other artists.
Had you signed any ortists previous? Paul Mac? We were
managing hers sort of an early E d M act
in Australia, real dance music piety. And when the band
breaks up, there's someone I wanted. You work at Sony

(32:12):
five years are you start worrying about the weekly paycheck?
I was never. I've never really been sort of a
financially driven person, and I guess I've always been egotistical
enough to figure out that. So you feel you would survive,
that it'll be fine later. I had one of those
moments that you're looking for. So in two so when

(32:32):
Daniel got the react of arthritis. So we've got we
have at this point signed Mr Higgins, which we can
come back to, but she's not released anything when she's
off backpacking. We've got Paul Mac, who's done well, but
it's not going to put food on the table um
in any major way. We've got her. I've just my
wife and I have had our first child. He doesn't

(32:53):
start for a second. How did you meet your wife?
She worked at Sony and in fact, and in fact
first silver Jet too of America, which was we went
and did Atlanta, Detroit, and Chicago. We went in. That
was the other unusual thing we did with them in
the start, which we went to just the markets where
they were strong, and we made it people from New
York and l A fly to those markets where the
shows were sold out to see them, which really worked. Um.

(33:16):
She came on that trip because the band didn't have
a manager, so you know, we were wearing multiple hats.
She was the promotions person of the year for Sony,
so the prize was an overseas trip and she got
to come along and help wrangle these teenagers. So um,
you know, at a pancake parlor and Detroit, I thought
to myself, this could be good. And at what point
did she leave son She left soon after that. She

(33:37):
then worked in New York for a number of years,
actually with Wendy Lacester in managing Aero smith and managing
Tena Arena for a while, and then there was a
long courtship. Yeah, yeah, we had a place together in
New York. It took a little while to figure out
the opportunity she was missing, but she got there eventually. Okay,
so an even you can see the sun setting on
silvery chair, you have your label. So it's that I'm

(34:00):
seeing the sun setting. It's the opposite of that. Diorama
has come along. We've spent years doing these new deals
with Atlantic. We're ready to take on the world, and
then Daniel gets really sick. The record comes out, you know,
it plummets down the charts in Australia and Jet come
along and Um. There was a management company that I

(34:20):
had sort of helped out informally who had been managing
the Vines, who are the hot new thing at the time,
and it came down to either that management company or
myself to be the co managers of Jet was the
other manager. So it's a company called Windhaman Goldstein. So
three friends of mine, Andy Kelly, Andy Castle and Pete Lusty. Um,
good guys, and you know, we've sort of talked informally

(34:41):
around the Vines. I was a fan, you know, but
I've been sort of a little bit of a mentory
sort of thing at different times to them and definitely
felt like, Okay, I've got more runs on the board
right at that moment. They've gone on to be phenomenally
successful with all sorts of artists. Um, but at that
moment I felt like, you know, well, if I'm competing
with him, I should probably get this. But the it
went with the Vines guys because they were the cool ones,

(35:03):
you know, and we had a newborn baby at home
two months old. Um, the Silver Chair record was eighty
in the charts with an anchor American Atlantic wasn't even
sure they were going to release it. And that was
the That was the moment where I thought, Okay, I'm
going to have to go back and you know, call
up Dennis Handle and so, Dennis, would you please give
me a job, go back to work at Sony because

(35:27):
now they won lots of arias a few months later,
Missy exploded. Everything turned around, and you know, but that
six months in two thousand and two was was my
h There was a very It's amazing. I think the
ringer must have been broken on my phone. It just
went really quiet. Oh yeah, so how do you sign
Missy Higgins? So Missy not dissimilarly from Silver Chair. Really,

(35:50):
Triple J had been a fantastic A and R department
for US. Um Missy one Triple jown Earth And because
she was still at high school, I tended to get
the phone calls every time somebody had a kid who
with that guy. I was that guy, like the lawyer
would call and hey, we've got another high school band.
Would you give them some advice on you know, all
the things not to do. And by this point my
advice was don't be in a hurry, you know, please

(36:11):
take your time. Given all the struggles that we had
had with Silver Chair, it was like, just make sure
you're really wanted it. They wanted the big success. No,
I don't know that they did, know. I think that
I think lots of artists think they want success, and
when they discover what it is, they very quickly decide
they don't want it, or you know, they get ambivalent
about it. Truthfully, they just love the noise it made

(36:34):
when they played in the little space above Ben's garage.
You know that they loved making music and everything else,
and and so all the success that came to them
was not really what they got into it for. It's
quite unusual, like, you know, success to them was like
a bicycle to a fish, you know. Um so, so, no,
they didn't want it, and that a lot of you know,

(36:55):
or at least they are ambivalent about it, and a
lot of the problems that ensued really in shoot from
that basic core disconnect and so Missy when when she
first won Triple Janna okay, but if the fact that
she even enters the contest would tend to indicate that
she has an interest in having a career. Her sister
editor um in the contest, um, So she didn't know

(37:17):
even what the contest was um at the time. She
was at school. She was at high school. They've done
a demo. The school had bought in a little mobile
recording studio and allowed a few of the kids to
make recordings. So she'd done a demo of this song
off Believing, and Triple J picked it up and UM, yeah,
I got a phone call from from the mother and
I had heard the song on the radio. I really

(37:38):
liked the song, and they sent me a live when
when she had one on Earth, they've done a little concert,
you know, to sort of celebrate. It was like she
done four or five songs just acoustically on the piano,
just a live recording, And so she sent out that
CD and I never forget sitting out the back of
the Terrorice house we were in Surry Hills at the time,
putting that CD in the car while I was waiting
for Melissa to come out and get in the car

(38:00):
or off to a meeting, and it was forty five
seconds into the first song and Melbourne to the car.
I said, if this girl is even halfway sane, we
are so going to do this. Not only was she
halfway saying, turns out she's about the same as Statust
have ever met, um you know, and unbelievably blessed association

(38:20):
for us. So yes, so we then signed her. But
which does anybody else want her in any competition? Yeah,
Sony actually, um so that was very competitive, very competitive,
but our ability to use eleven as a device to
split deals became really fundamental to getting that a little

(38:42):
bit slower. So what would you offer? So she would
sign to eleven in Australia, her masters would revert to
her UM some years down the track, but she would
own her own masters with us. Our deal would specify
full creative control, because if we're managing her realistically, she's
going to have it anyway, and she's going to get
control over where those masters are assigned internationally, so she

(39:03):
gets to pick who her overseas label is going to be,
Unlike what Silver Chair had in those first few records. So, um,
those are three pretty compelling advantages. And she's going to
make more money because whereas managers, we are not taking
a piece of the recording revenue, so she's saving the
management commission on her recording revenue and royalties and getting

(39:24):
a higher royalty rate as well. And who distributed leaven
in Australia. My okay, so you signed her? You see
you want to go more slowly this time since she's
in high school. Yes, So when when she's she's one
unearthed and she's only got a small handful of songs
and she's not really sure she even wants to do
this as a career. Um, she loves making music, but

(39:45):
she's like, I'm not really ready yet. And she and
her best friend had been planning for years to go
backpacking around Europe and do a gap year after high school.
We're like, you should totally do that. Don't get on
the merry, go around until you're ready. Um, even when
you think you're ready, you're dobably not ready, but certainly
not ready. If you think you're not ready, um, so
I said triple j Unusually for media, organizations are the

(40:09):
kind of organization that will still support you in a
couple of years time when you come back. Everybody else
was telling her, telling her getting now while it's hot,
you know. So we were the hey, sign with us,
will stick the contract in a drawer for a year,
We'll see you when you get back from Europe, and
that's what we did. But then what was funny was that, um,

(40:29):
I think it was Rob Scott, who's here today as well,
sent that same live recording that I had heard, the
Triple J live recording to Sat Bisla, who was then
working at Album Network, and Sat shared it around to
a few friends in l A, including Chris to Readis,
who was a caseyr W, and casey W started playing

(40:51):
off the live version of All for Believing, Chris in
particular and CASEYRW being one of those stations that lots
of taste makers listen to. All of a sudden, the
own started ringing. So mrs backpacking around Europe and it's high.
It's Warner Music High. Its Craig Kelman again. I know things.
You know, we've already got this going on with Silver Chair,
but which interesting talking about this Miss Higgins artist. Hi,

(41:13):
I'm calling from Mr Davis's office. Would you know so
Missy literally at one point Um went from a backpackers
hostel in Amsterdam. Um Clive Davis was then running the
J label. His his J label, which had this incredible
office directly opposite the Plaza Hotel looking over Central Park
with a grand piano in it. Um and Missy got

(41:36):
flowing business class from the backpackers hostel in Amsterdam to
New York to play for Mr Davis and we sat
in the room on the grand piano gazing out at
the at the Plaza Hotel. She then got back in
the very nice car. We drove down to the Empire
State Buildings so that you know, she could actually see
something in New York, went back to the airport, she
went back to stay in a backpackers hostel in Amsterdam.

(41:59):
So it was a very surreal sort of process finding
a label. It did come down to ja Or Warner brothers,
Andy Elephant and James Dowdle with a sort of the
then R Point People was Tom Walli's era there and
we signed to Warners and on a similar developmental basis.
And so then she spent about a year going through

(42:19):
the the writing and co writing thing and looking for
producers and made that record in l A. And of
course the other benefit to having a split deal for
her was that all of those costs were quarantined in America.
So from the first record she sells in Australia, she's
making royalties, and all those costs are quarantined against the

(42:40):
royalty she's making in America. So it's a very beneficial
range for her, getting all of the A and R
expertise of the American label and the songwriting help and
so forth, but without having to sort of recoup it
out of your Australian success. Okay, what did Close see?
What did Claride Nevers? He liked it and he was positive.

(43:05):
But I don't think that the problem miss always had
in America was that there was no gimmick, Mrs Gimmick,
was that there was no gimmick, and that was a
very hard thing to convince people in America, partic of
the time the height of you know, the big pop
music boom. About later when you saw the success of Adele,
who of course is very different vocally and everything else.

(43:26):
But authenticity can be an amazingly powerful connector to audiences
you don't necessarily have to have, you know, um, some
other gimmick, which we won't need to sort of you know,
explore the other artists. But you don't have to have
something else if you've got an authentic ability to connect
to an audience. And that proved to be you know

(43:49):
true in Australia where her albilem end up going nine
times platinum. Um, but in America they always struggled with,
you know, what's the gimmick? And so miss I think
Mr Davis struggled with what's the gimmick because usually he
wants also to change the music too, which is something
acts from me and not be willing to do. So
if we jump forward to today, you're still involved with

(44:10):
Missy today. Uh. So she put out Guard a couple
of years ago. There's great video and song having to
do with the environment. What do you do with someone
like Missy today? So Missy has had an incredible career.
She's actually probably got the perfect career. Um, you know,
we just put some shows up in Melbourne. She sold
nine thousand tickets in a week, you know, across three shows. Um.

(44:33):
She's she toured with Ed Sheeran doing stadiums here last year.
You know, Um, she can she's got two young children.
So she's not really that interested in sort of trying
to have a global career anymore. But you can have
a really great career in Australia. She can get to
speak out on issues that are important to her. You know,
she's done a lot of stuff with refugees. Her father

(44:54):
is very active in the refugee support groups and as
is she is very in active on environmental causes. UM.
So really the thing with Missy is that there's something
about the way that her voice wraps itself around a
song that um connects deeply with people. It connects in
a one. I'm a fan and so there was a

(45:17):
moment in l A I mean in the United States
and there was no more product and I certainly follow.
I know she's married, has kids, etcetera, etcetera. But is
the lack of international exposure because of her domestic life
or is it something that's a choice, well this we
have this. It's both of those things. But it's something

(45:37):
more than that, which is that says she had two
records on Warners UM Sound of White in two thousand
and five six and On a Clear Night in two
thousand and seven UM. And then at the end of
on a clear night, which just when you kindly wrote
your first great thing about her, and I had two
emails from all around the world, all of whom thought
they were the only person that read your news. Later. Um,

(46:00):
and on the back of that, because she'd got to
the point where she could sell out, you know, sort
of two three thus capacity venues across America, we had
a gold single like we were for someone that had
never really had a radio hit in America. We'd built
it through sync, we'd built it through a touring, pretty
much the opposite of the silver chair approach. Um. She
decided that she no longer wanted to do it. She
took me out for for breakfast and said, anytime your

(46:24):
Melbourne call up, I'd love to see you. Just please
don't call me about work anymore. I'm out. I'm going
to UNI. I'm going to study Indigenous relations. And so
she did, and she did that for about eighteen months,
and then we got a phone call about her doing
a week of Little of Fair dates. And she'd always
loved Little Fair was right near the end of her affair.
And I was like, well, if ever something is going

(46:45):
to sort of tempt her back, it's this, And plus
it's a little fair. It would be wrong not to
tell her about because I know she's a massive, massive
fan of Sarah McLaughlin and the whole. So she went
over and did it and sort of had that sort
of great Road to Damascus moment of like what am
I doing with my life? I love playing piano, these
people love what I'm doing. Um, And so she decided

(47:06):
to make another record. But that from that point forwards,
she was always making music because she loved making music
for the audience that she had and for anybody else
that wanted to join in. She wasn't interested in, you know,
trying to go climb the mountain. She was quite happy
to just do the show she was doing and have

(47:27):
the career that she was having, and it was a
great career. You know, she makes a really good living.
She gets to do. She doesn't have to do anything
that sucks. You know, the people who haven't been around
artist day to day don't understand how much stuff artists
asked to do. It really does suck. You know, when
you've been up till two or three in the morning
on two and you've gotta get up at five to
do breakfast radio and you go in and they don't
know the name of your song, and you know they

(47:49):
ask you to play pluck a Chicken with them. Um,
Like it's pretty sole destroying, you know, day after day
after day and a thousand other things like it. You
know you're gonna let your song be used. We really
want to use it in this ad. It's going to
be great exposure for it. That's not I wrote that
about that heartbreak. It wasn't really designed for toothpaste. Um.
So you know, there's a there's a liberation of freedom

(48:13):
that comes from going I just choose not to play
that game. And there's also a power that goes to
what the audience, how the audience is that at some
level the audience that might not necessarily know that you're
doing that, but they can sort of smell it. The believer.
I mean they always say I think a lot of
people are percentage partners and they say do this, do this,
the agent, the manager or whatever. They can always get

(48:33):
a new client. But the act is the act all
the time, and the average person is not being asked
to endure something. And I think credibility is key. But
staying with Missy, will there possibly be another attempt to
have further exposure. You think you're just on this path. Look,
I think it's unlikely. She's far too balanced. You know,
she's she's a healthy she's mentally healthy, she's emotionally healthy.

(48:57):
As a person. She doesn't need to hear people call
her name. And I think that at some level it
takes a certain amount of dysfunction to want to, you know,
to go Madison Square Gardens wasn't big enough. I need
Shay Stadium, you know, like you actually need a certain
level of dysfunction to drive that. She doesn't agree more
and she and you know, and the and I mean
it as the greatest possible compliment when I say she
doesn't have that dysfunction. Okay, but at this point in time,

(49:19):
she can live comfortably on her music revenues. Yeah, absolutely, Okay,
tell us the good years story. Um So Gautier had
a Gootier as as we call it here, has had
had success in Australia's an independent artist with his album
like Drawing Blood Hearts and mess um It's a classic

(49:40):
song in Australia. Were involved, No, I was not involved
that requisit? Danny Rodgers managed Wally his real name managed
Wally through that period and Hearts and Mess was a
very very acclaimed, much loved song in Australia. UM in
two thousand and seven or thereabouts, UM he had Danny

(50:04):
wanted to partner up. He wanted some help on the
management side, so I co managed, took on while his
co management with Danny. Danny was going to be based
in the UK, so I'd be based in Australia. I'd
sort of America, where I spent most of my time working.
Danny was kind of going to largely focus on Europe. UM.
I'd kind of do the label stuff, Danny would do
the touring stuff. It was a pretty good yin Yang
and eleven signed while his next record for Australia, UM

(50:29):
took him forever to make it, quite as long as
it's taken to make the follow up, but it still
took him a long time. UM and he had Somebody
that I used to know, which we all thought was
a good song, potentially a big Triple J hit. We
thought it would struggle to get played on mainstream radio
because if you listen to it, the arrangement is actually

(50:49):
quite unconventional. It takes a long time to get to
the chorus. It has a long intro on it UM.
Pretty much every A and R person when we played
that song from the first time went yeah, it's great,
but I'll need an edit for video. UM. And so
we then Melissa worked with a very talented video director
and Wally to come up with the idea for the video.

(51:10):
UM And this is sort of a good story of
the kisms stupidity of the music business. So we have
the video for something that I used to know, and
it's going to be premiered on the Triple J website
on a Thursday, because we really want to lock down
Triple J because we think this is a big Triple
J track A little did we know? Um On the Tuesday,
somehow other it's put on a website that's like someone

(51:32):
sticked the wrong box and the video is visible on
the back of this website. You have to know to
look for it. Someone looks for it within twenty four
hours without anyone actually saying it's available. It's had a
minion views. It's invisible, this thing, right, And I can
remember on the Wednesday, it means that the Triple J
premiere is now off the table of the video. I
remember our marketing person in the office literally sopping because

(51:53):
of this mistake has destroyed the project. Right, it's all over.
It's never going to have rules, and we've screw it up.
You know, the videos leaked. I remember saying to it
just to try and make it feel better. Really, I
didn't mean it, Um, I just said, you know, well,
sometimes these things turn out to be a blessing, you know,
sometimes it just sort of takes on a life of
its own. Well, of course, you know, hundreds of millions,

(52:13):
in fact, over a billion views later, the video continued
to sort of carry the song to the world, and
and um it was Record of the Year at the
Grammys and an extraordinary success. But again, you know, I
do seem to specialize in artists who don't want to
be successful. Um so whally much like, in fact, more

(52:34):
so than anyone else I work with, is um completely
was making music for his own self expression. UM, and
I really wanted to control every facet of the process
and struggled greatly with the inherent compromises in working with
a different PA every night, or um, you know, radio

(52:57):
stations taking it upon themselves to do a mix of
his train, you know, and things like that, which which happens,
Um that that's that's it's quite poorly with him, but
so he he um. He struggled at different points, but
we had a phenomenally successful run. My my usually when
people ask me about go to Here, and I say,
the story is very simple, ten times fifty times bigger
than we thought it would ever be and ten times

(53:20):
smaller than it could have been because had he been
willing to, for example, include Hearts a Mess on that record,
which we then got into the basil Iman version of
Great Gatsby, but it came much later that it was
supposed to come, so that was we didn't really have
the opportunity. But had we been able to follow up
somebody that I used to know with Hearts and Mass,

(53:41):
which most Australians would say is at least as good
as song Um, it could have people could have discovered
the artistry of the guy. Because he's a real genuine artist.
He's quite relaxed with the fact that he's sort of
perceived as as a one hit wonder, has been beavering
away in a really intense way on follow up project
that's massive and sprawling and brilliant um in two thousands,

(54:05):
So this was all two thousand eleven twelve, the Gurtier thing.
By about two people were saying, where's the follow up?
And my joke used to be it was a joke.
He's making up the album of the year, and I
think I might have fallen one year short. I think one.
But he's so yeah, you know, he bet again. He
just wasn't made for these times in the in the state,

(54:26):
but it was if he hadn't had such a huge success.
Do you think the next album would have come sooner?
That's a great question, you're probably, I don't know. Yeah, probably,
but not for the reason that you would expect, only
in that he now has just about unlimited resources to
explore his creativity. Well, we've seen this movie a couple
of times. We saw the Guns and Roses. RAXL Rose

(54:49):
essentially got rid of all the band members, took ten
years to make Chinese Democracy, which was perceived as a failure.
And then we have the situation of Atlantis War Asset,
who had made two records in cana but they had
with a different sound, you know, the most gigantic debut
essentially since something in the seventies, Angie could never equal it.

(55:10):
So I was wanting to what degree he's inhibited after
this monumental success. Look, there's probably a dose of that,
but I don't because he wasn't doing it for the success.
I don't. I don't think he feels a need to
match the success. I think he feels a need to
do a better piece of work. Now it's not as

(55:31):
different Michael Jackson needed the same level of success. But
certainly as an artist who works, you know, Michael Jackson
was all a collaboration anyway with Q etcetera. Something like this,
you feel the pressure to artistically, you know, go to
that level to artistically excited. I mean, you know that.
The probably unfair shorthand for it is to say, you know,

(55:53):
Mike Love wants the next record to be Biggert, Brian
Wilson wants an ext record to be better. Right, So
while he's from the Brian Wilson camp of you know,
I want it to be better and if that, if
that means that I can spend as he did, do
months in a cave in Virginia miking up this amazing
naturally occurring organ that plays on Stella tites and Stella

(56:15):
mtes just for example, that sounds amazing. The stuff he's
done in there Um, then he'll do that because he can.
And it's very interesting when you put someone in a
position where they can do absolutely anything that they want
to do. They can do anything, What do they choose
to do? Do they go to the Bahamas, get a coke,
habit and you know, fly in supermodels? Do they know

(56:40):
swan around New York? You know in limousines? Do they
go and try and save the world? Do that? When
you can do anything, when you move all the boundaries,
who are you in that moment? I think the fact
that Wally has chosen to double down on the artistic
and creative side of what he's doing says a lot
about who he is as a person. I really genuinely
don't think that the motivator for him was charts. It

(57:04):
was never was, so it never is. But if this
record in his mind and to him and to the
handful of peers that he respects, if this next record
is on a better record than Making Mirrors and like
drawing Blood, then he will feel he has failed. But
just to look back, to what degree do you think
the record would be successful without that video? Yeah? I

(57:26):
have no idea. I mean, it's it's it's like saying
you know, how essentially is your left leg to walking right.
The video without the song is nothing. The song without
the video is less than it would otherwise be. Um So,
I think the song the song is still the engine,
but you know, the video is definitely part of the train, right. Okay,
So how did you get involved with Midnight Oil? So

(57:48):
the Oils, I've literally gone with both minight o land
cultures or from having their posters on my bedroom wall
as a kid to having those same posters on my
office wall as their manager and co manager respectfully. Um
I did work with the Oils sort of somewhat peripherally
during my time at Sony in the in the in
the nineties the early nineties. Um So, I knew them

(58:10):
a bit from that, and I knew Pete a bit
from from politics and from sort of being involved in
some issues. In two thousand and five we put on
a huge benefit gig at the SCG for the tsunami
the Asian tsunami called Wave Aid, which a number of
our clients played at and Midnight or reformed for that show.
So um and Jim mcgeanie had had worked with a

(58:34):
little bit on He'd be contributed to a few of
the Silver Chair Records, so I'd sort of had dealings
when Pete left politics. You know, we started having breakfasts
and lunches which seemed to have no agenda, which I
figured meant there was an agenda, and one thing led
to another, and when the band decided they were going
to get back to zero, yeah, well we knew each
other already. And Gary, their former manager, had stood down

(58:56):
in or fourteen, so he had been to the picture
for a few years after having been there pretty much
from the start, a couple of years from the early eighties,
late seventies, early eighties where he stepped out, but otherwise
he had managed been effectively the six member of the
band throughout their career. Um. So when they wanted someone
to put together, you know, this kind of reunion to

(59:17):
a thing, um, they came to me, and you know,
I'm kind of made a pitch for what I thought
they should be doing, and you know, many lengthy band
meetings and shoot. So is there anybody else we've missed
in this story? Well, from an international standpoint, the other
success we had was wolf Mother on their first album.

(59:40):
I only looked after them on their first album. Okay,
well that was the only album that meant anything in America.
So why did you start working with them? Usually they
fire you, but you know, no, I stepped down. Um.
The band, I think is all three of those guys
would admit, was a very dysfunctional band. Like all bands
are dysfunctional, but they were a very dysfunctional band. And

(01:00:04):
um that made it a very stressful process. Individually they
are reached fine, but collectively it was just really really difficult. Um.
So at the end of that album, the drummer and
bass player, based players, keyboardist left the band, So Andrew
was sort of left without those two guys, and we

(01:00:27):
had just had our third child and I was like,
I can't saddle up for more of this. So um,
there we stood down from from the process we had organized.
We had a great team around that band. They had
really good and our people and agents that deals were
well set up. Um, they had a great base in America.
You know, I was just saying to someone yesterday. You know,

(01:00:48):
with lots of international artists they do that too, which
is Vancouver, down to San Diego, fly to Denver, fly
to Chicago, and then sort of zip up around Toronto
and come back down the East coast and they think
they've toured America. They haven't. You know, that's the Blue
States Tour of America. UM, wolf Father actually broke America
because they they in the Blue States, they were sort
of viewed as kind of ironic postmodern neo rock thing,

(01:01:12):
whereas in the Red States it was like fantastic, We're
still listening to Zeppelin and Sabbath, you know, So they
got taken both ways. Um. But by the end of
that tour, we we did Bonnaru and then had to
do Milwaukee Summerfests. So you know, Tennessee up to Wisconsin,
straight up the middle of America, and there's a week
in between. So that's literally dartboard touring, right. You just
got to fill the nights, which is why we ended

(01:01:34):
up in Tulsa, Oklahoma on a Tuesday, and they did
two thousand people in Tulsa on a Tuesday. And you know,
when you do two thousand people in Tulsa on a Tuesday,
you've broken America absolutely. So anything you're working on now
that you think we'll have international success, now, I've made
a really deliberate decision after good here to pull back

(01:01:54):
from working internationally. UM. It had been my passion for
over twenty years, and I do really miss being engaged
in the American business. Like a lot of friends there,
there's definitely a sense that you know, um, that's the
main game, and so it's more engaging, it's more challenging,
it's more stimulating. Um. But with three young kids, my

(01:02:15):
wife went back after having worked a regular company, she
went back and studied medicine. So she graduated as a
doctor two years ago and is now out working in hospitals.
So I made a really deliberate decision to sort of
work just in this market and only have very sporadic
kind of you know it or did to our overseas
and that was great, but it wasn't like they're trying
to break overseas markets. Was more about going over and
reconnecting with an audience that was fun to do. UM.

(01:02:38):
So we've sort of quite deliberately engineered a business and
a career that works in this market. So in addition
to the artists, we discussed cultures and Jimmy Barnes have
been a big, big part of the last you know,
sort of decade for me. Not a band that that
sort of would be familiar to most of your overseas listeners,
but their household names in Australia like quite literally um

(01:03:01):
and so that's been phenomenal on every level for me. Um.
We look after a band called Birds of Tokyo who
had a minor sort of success in America not long
after go It' Here with a song called Lanterns. But
again that the singer from that band is in two bands,
so that impedes their ability to tour and they're a
bit older now. They're very successful in Australia, but they

(01:03:22):
don't really have international aspirations. And we also managed the Precess,
but we've got an American co management for them, so
we've quite deliberately scaled back. Um. You know what we're
seeking to do, and it's my version. You know the
reason I agreed to do this by other than being
grateful for the support you've given Missy many times over
the years and aware of your reach. It don't like

(01:03:43):
doing sort of personal promo stuff. I'm a big fan
that behind the scenes people beg believer that behind the
scenes people should stay behind the scenes. But I loved
your Jim Gurno podcast and if anybody hasn't listened to it,
they should press stop now and go and listen to
that instead. Um. It's phenomenal. And you know, a lot

(01:04:03):
of the things he grappled with in terms of you know,
work life balance and um, you know, keeping meaning your
life as you get into your fifties and everything else,
I've grappled with two And because of that podcast, I've
made a real dent on me. And so when you
asked me to do this, I'm like, well, given how
much I've got from that, they can't say no. Um

(01:04:23):
but I think that. So what I've chosen to do
with my career is draw a different kind of boundary.
Jim went back. For those who spoiler alert, Jim basically
have to having managed nine inch nails and no doubt
and back and the offspring. He now teaches maths in
San Diego. Um and you know, I'm not planning to
teach maths anywhere, which is good for everybody. Um but um,

(01:04:47):
but I have made a real decision and conscious choice
to try to find a way to work to live
rather than live to work, and narrowing your boundaries to
working in Australia only has been my way of doing that. Um.
And you know it's I missed the challenge. I missed
the engagement, and I think that the times right now

(01:05:08):
would have been much better for me. Um. You know,
we've talked today about a number of different Australian success
stories from two thousand and twelve, from Gortier through missrs
Higgins and wolf Mother, sorry, from Silver Chair through missr
Higgins and wolf Mother onto gort here, and the velocity
at which those if you look at all of those,

(01:05:29):
the velocity of which the Australian story translated internationally was
getting quicker and quicker across that time. Now it's quicker
than it's ever been so tones and I can go
from you know, unknown here and unknown there to know
and everywhere in the space of weeks. You know, what
took Silver Chair a year now takes a week or two.
And you know, there's still those incense successes like Lord whatever.

(01:05:50):
But generally speaking, even though you can reach the world
in an instant, everything including stuff that's domestic in the
United States, takes longer break. I think it takes longer
to break big right, Like she takes longer to get
to home base, But you get to first and second
base so much faster than you used to. Um, you know,

(01:06:11):
it's interesting is Your Big Lord as a case in point,
because you know, there's so much development time behind that, right,
the years that went into it to get her to
the point where she could be an overnight success. But
the difference is this right from Perhaps this is sort
of irrelevant to most American listeners, but um, it used
to be that there are a great many records released

(01:06:32):
around the rest of the world that never got hurt
in America because there was some overweight, middle aged white
guy behind a desk in l A and New York
who just said, nah, you know, I own the rights
and I choose to say no. Um. And we all
know as Australian music fans, we can go through and say,
I just cannot believe that they know in excess and

(01:06:53):
they know not all, but they don't know Cold Chisel,
you know, um, well that they know beds are burning,
but they don't know the tent to one album by
the Oils, you know. Um. And this was largely because
the gatekeepers, right, and the business has changed, as you know,
and you talk about a lot um, it's changed so
phenomenally now that gatekeepers are largely following audience rather than

(01:07:16):
dictating towardsience. And so the fact that the audience is
now more in the artist and the audience now have
more power than they ever had before is a great
thing for when you're an international artist, because it means
that you can show you don't have to rely on
Brian Phillips happening to be in Australia on a junket
to get your song exposed in Atlanta. You know you're
gonna put it on SoundCloud and within sixty two someone

(01:07:37):
in Atlanta can be listening to it. Um. And that's
that's a radically different and a really wonderful world. It
predingts its own challenges, of course, brings its own challenges
of you know, if you can be discovered overnight, then
how do you actually take time to get ready? Um?
If you're going to attract attention, how do you sustain
that attention once you've got it in the first instance,
when there's so much competition for evil is ears and eyeballs, um,

(01:08:01):
And you know, are the humans behind it ready for
the success when it comes to them? Mother do they?
And how much capacity do they have for all the
extra work they now have to do to sustain these
audience connections? Not just writing songs and making records, but
taking great photos for Instagram and being pithy on Twitter,
and you know, making great videos on YouTube and all

(01:08:21):
the other stuff. It's it's a great time if you're
an artist and a manager who wants to be engaged
in a challenging time. If you're not, you know, the
good news is you can do more than you um
could ever do in the past for your own career.
The bad news is you've got to do more than
you ever had to do in the past for your
own career. And so um, as somebody who's always been

(01:08:42):
very motivated and been engaged by the creative process, I
find now actually a lot more. I feel more opportunity
now than I felt then. I think it's a better
time for a strained artists, or English artists, of German
artists or any artists to be able to get hurt globally.
And you can see it in Australian music. There are
artists who are making waves internationally that we just never

(01:09:05):
got hurt before. You know, they might not be artists
that are broken big. So if you take Tash Sultana,
where you take Rufus still soul Um, these are not
artists who are household names in America. But they can
sell out red Rocks. They can sell out you know,
there's a lot of tickets they have. They And the
thing that people don't understand when they come from other
markets is, you know, when you're in a small market

(01:09:27):
like Australia, it can be like So there are a
lot of artists whose careers end up getting stifled by
the fact they're like fish that grow too big for
the tank. They have no new challenges, they have no
new stimulation, they have no new m mountains to climb.
So the Australian artists that endure are those historically I'm
old now, so you know, going back, the Australian artists

(01:09:50):
who have endured and made the best records and had
the long careers are those who've been engaged in working internationally. Um,
they're not always broken around the world, but they've been
still climbing the mountain. They've gone and play at a festival,
you know in Europe in the middle of the day,
got their ass kicked and thought we need to get better.
You know. They didn't just set off for working in
the same studio with the same producer that they always

(01:10:11):
work with here, they went overseas and found someone new
who you know, poked them with a stick. Um, they
were challenged. And that's the thing that happens when you're
engaged globally. It doesn't happen if you just stay working
in a smaller market. And so the process of being
internationally engaged it's more than financial, you know, it's also
part of the creative um challenge for artists. So I

(01:10:35):
really you know, as you can tell from how I
talk about it, that the process of of working a
train artists around the world, you know, is something that
I believe. Australia makes great music. We have a lot
of music that hasn't been heard overseas that should be heard. Um.
But it's being heard more now than it's ever been
and that's a great thing. So if you achieve your
dream mm hmm, I hope not. Um, you know, let's

(01:11:01):
change a little bit where you were today when you started.
Did you always want to be in the music business?
So my my time, my glib line on this is that,
you know, my career in the music business has been
one long downhill spiral. So I began working in record
stores part time when I was still high you were,
You were that guy. You were very passionate about it. Yeah,

(01:11:22):
I just I was. You know, spring if you've seen
Blinded by the Light, I was the North Queensland, Tropical
Australia remote version of the Pakistani kid in that movie.
I cannot begin to tell you how much that was.
My wife and I was that. She just kept laughing
at poking be the average. It's you, it's you. It's
so true. It's me. It's me. Um. Springsteen was telling

(01:11:45):
me everything you know, Um, as Jimmy Barnes once said
to me, but you know, I was describing the feeling
of being trapped in North queens and he said, yeah,
I get it. I said, this is one my favorite
record was darks on the Edge of Town You know,
a whole album about being trapped in the whole album
about needing to escape right until you get into the street,
Utah desert. It's so great. But you know so, and

(01:12:06):
I say to him, this record about being trapped, you know,
it just spoke to me as a teenager in a
way that, um, you know, you can't believe you get you.
I get it. Darkness on the Edge of Townsville, that
if I was if I was if I was going
to do a I never would. But you know, if
I was ever going to write a book would be
the title. But so I grew up in North Queensland
work in a record store, and um, as as I said,
it's been a long downhill road ever since. Anybody who's

(01:12:26):
ever sort of worked in a record store, um knows
that that's kind of the height of purity. You know,
you get to be Jack Black in high fidelity right
and all working in playing an independent band. So I
had bands in my early university years. One of them
started getting plaid on Triple j We threw everything in
a car and we drove off. What did you blow?
I played bass? Of course, Were you any good? No?

(01:12:49):
It was pretty average, But the songs got played on
Triple joke, Yeah, songs got played on Triple JA. We
got to support a lot of good bands, um, like,
who did you support? Du Gurus, Stems, the Saints, loads
of Was it a lark or in the back of
your mind to say, well, maybe I just couldn't believe
we were actually getting to, you know, make music and

(01:13:11):
be around music. I just wanted to be around music.
I loved it, you know it was magical. So you're
working in the record store. You graduated from high school?
Then what did I start studying at university? Studying politics
and education? My gliblind being a degree in politics has
coming hand in the music industry. That's good, so we

(01:13:32):
we they've the band. I dropped out of union at
the end of my third year. I subsequently finished the
degree down here. But story you dropped our way to
chase the dream. Yeah, well, we went off to Sydney
for sort of you know, the summer with the band
was what we told our parents, but we knew we
weren't coming back. Um, so so yeah, you know, we
started from the position of greatest purity work in a

(01:13:53):
record store, being in a band. Anybody who's been in
a band knows that the greatest arseles on earth journalists.
They write those ill informed, idiotic reviews. So after you
or two of playing in a band, I started mouthing
off to someone at a magazine about this. They threw
some records at me and said, if you think you're
so smart, go and review them. So I became a
music journalist. Anybody who's been a music journalist knows that

(01:14:16):
the real scum of the earth R and R people
they signed the idiots that are putting this stuff out.
So having slipped from musician to journalists, I then succumbed
to being an R person. And then if you're an
A and R person, you know that the true sporn
of Satan A managers, they're the ones that drive your
nuts all day. So eventually I became a manager. So

(01:14:39):
my only career options the reason I've done it for
so long since then, my only career options from here
are like acts murderer, Okay, just when did you go
back to college? So from my band, because we left
Towns at the end of my band was sort of
active for a couple of years eight and then through
that period ninety I did six or seven different jobs

(01:15:03):
around the music industry to avoid getting a real job
works as a music journalists. Still worked in a record
store on a Sunday, managed independent band, did a bit
of free lance publicity um for people, work for an
indie label for a while servicing their records the Triple
j Just hustling around the fringes doing anything I could
to be able to get given free cd s and
be on a guest list. And then in the end

(01:15:25):
of ninety or start of ninety one is when I
got my job at Sony and then, as I said,
I left in ninety five to manage Silver Chair. But
when did you go about you? Well, so I didn't
answer your question, Um, I should be in politics. Um.
The So through ninety I was also studying So I
finished a diner honest degree in politics. I started studying law.

(01:15:45):
But did you go back because you said, wait a second,
here this music that using go on the road way? No,
definitely not. I needed one subject to get my arts degree,
like if I've done three years, needed one more subject.
So I went back and studied politics just so that
I could get the arts degree, and then really enjoyed it,

(01:16:07):
and so did a full time honors year while working
full time doing all these other things. Probably in the
first instance of I'm being honest about it, did the
extra subject to make my mom happy and to stop
her from nagging me about it. Um. But you know
then I actually really enjoyed it. And I've always enjoyed
the studying process. I studied um towards an m b A.
I've studied law, I've done a lot of different study

(01:16:29):
the thing about the music, but just to be clear,
you have an m b A, so the NBA units
at the Union New South Wales. You have to do
twelve units from MBA and you can cash in for
for a graduate Certificate in Management, eight for a Graduate
Diplomary Management, or twelve is the Masters. I've done the
eight units, so I have the Graduate Diploma ym Management.

(01:16:49):
But to do the last four you had to do
a residential component. You have to go live on campus
for three weeks and I had three kids under the time.
Just like this freaksy record otherways said you get still
to go back there still time? And then what about
the legal aspect of it? I'm thinking about the Roxy
sepy eight boot leg with that UM sorry the legal also,
I studied law um as after I did the honors year,

(01:17:12):
I then did two years of night school law, so
I got about the way through a law degree. And
then when I got the job at Sony UM, I
kept trying to study for about a year, but I
was working at Sony, so there's an overlap there where
I was studying at nights while it's Sony and but
it just became untendable to be an an R guy
and studying at night Okay, how did you get the

(01:17:33):
job as an n R guy? UM? A few different things, really.
I think I had the guy who had had a
previously was a previously a part time job, and they
wanted to make it full time, and he had other commitments.
And I knew him from round the traps, so he
recommended me to Peter Carpon. I was working in a
record store in the city and the woman who managed

(01:17:55):
I managed it on a Sunday, and the woman who
managed at the rest of the days her husband worked
at Sony. And she said to me, you should send
an application into Dennis handlet as well, send him a
personal um application. And she mentioned to her husband as well.
So I think the fact that Dennis, Dennis always you'd
like to say, he loved getting the application that I had.
Hadn't just sent it to the address in the ad.

(01:18:15):
I had sent it to him as well. Um. So
Peter and Dennis gave me the child there. And what
did your parents do for a living? Um, My dad
was a builder, had a small contracting company in Townsville.
My mom had worked in the public service. But you know,
as was the want in those days, as soon as
you got married, you weren't allowed to be employed anymore.

(01:18:36):
So how many kids in the family, only child? Only child?
So you were like the angel or you got the
abuse or what was it? So look, you know, I'm
probably a little touchy on this point, but the the
my dad had a stroke when I was nine, and
um and became disabled, and then had another stroke when

(01:18:57):
I was fifteen, died when I was sixteen. So while
I had a lot of the advantages of being an
only child in terms of my mom's focus, I also
had to grow up at a very early age. There
wasn't really room for much in the way of teenager rebanion.
It came much later, as described with running away in
my union years. So, um, I had a great child

(01:19:19):
with my mom, you know, did an amazing job to
ensure that I wasn't really compromised as much as I
could have been by all that stuff. But my whole
life has been spent with people sort of thinking I'm
older than I am. You Usually it said like this,
oh you're only X age. I thought you were older
long pause, or not that you look at So I've
had that my entire life. So I've had to be
I've always had to be sort of the responsible one.

(01:19:40):
That's sort of you know when everybody else's off their heads.
When your father driving, when your father pause was their
financial stream, there was big financial stream. When he had
the first stroke, we ended up his partners didn't do
the right thing and so he was on a disability pension. Yeah,
it was pretty difficult. And is your mother? Was your mother?

(01:20:04):
If you still here, I'm not sure. She passed away
to three years ago. Okay. Was she proud of you? Yeah,
very proud and she had always loved you love show
business her version of show business. As my parents were
quite old as well, so my dad was forty eight
when I was born, my mom was thirty eight resolved
for six. Um, so my mom's version of show business

(01:20:25):
was you know, Sinatra and the rat Pack and the
movies and Judy Garland and all that stuff. So I
always grew up around you know, she was always playing
musicals at home and all that sort of stuff. So
she loved she loved the entertainment side of things, um,
but probably the rock and roll thing was a little
bit much for her. As a good Catholic lady from

(01:20:45):
from rural Australia growing up in the north of Australia's
like growing up in the South of America being the
land down under. Everything's upside down, So so we're kind
of the you know, the rednecks, I suppose of the
of the piece. But you know, it was certainly not
common in that part of the world. You know, when
you're living two thousand miles away from from anything else,

(01:21:05):
was not common to run off and join the circus
as I did. And once you were successful in the circus,
did you make any grand gestures, any purchases for your mother? Um?
Mom got to fly around a lot um so she
loved to travel. So she came to New York when
Silver Chair did Saturday Night Live. She was in the
audience for that. Um she Yeah, she did a lot

(01:21:27):
of She got to see a lot of things like that,
you know, around for a lot of the great Missy
moments and so forth, and she loved she She was
a big Tina Arena fan. And so my wife, managing
Tina Tina sang at our wedding. My mom just thought
it was the coolest thing that ever happened. So what dreams,
what what would you make to do with the thirty

(01:21:48):
or forty years you have left on this mortal coil
or do you think it will be still be in
new music or what do you think? Yeah, that's that's
the challenge and why the Gym Gurno podcast made such
an impact on me. You know, I definitely feel like
there's more to life than than this. UM. I definitely
feel like I'd like to do more with my mind
than the music sometimes allows. UM. I definitely I've always

(01:22:12):
been interested in politics and causes and you know, UM
have pretty strong and disturb views about a lot of
things that's going on in the world and would like
to try to kind of you do your bit to
help push that rock up the hill UM as opportunities arise. UM.
So yeah, I don't think that the next thirty or
forty years looked like the last thirty years for me.
You know, but our kids are now seventeen, fifteen, and twelve,

(01:22:35):
so we're also entering a very different chapter with that.
You know, another five or six years that will all
be behind us, and not that it's ever behind you,
but you know that the day to day uper driving
that I currently seem to spend half my life doing
for my kids, UM will be behind me. And you
know that will open up an opportunity as well to
hopefully return to being overseas more. You know, I love

(01:22:57):
living in Australia. I've had many opportunities to live in
New York. We still have a place in New York, um,
but we've always resisted living there full time because we
love the quality of life here. However, there is definitely
a sense of engagement that you get from being in
particularly for US New York as well, particularly for US
New York, that you just don't get here, you know.

(01:23:18):
Like so when I was a kid growing up in Townsville,
you know, we very rarely got to come to Sydney, UM,
but I can vividly recall the times that we did,
you know. And later in my teenage years, I'd save
up every cent for the whole year and come to
Sydney for two weeks and see bands, go to see
plays and by records. That's been my whole year's worth
of wages in two weeks, and then go back and

(01:23:38):
work for another fifty weeks to come and do it again.
The first time I went to New York in the nineties,
the first couple of days and say, oh my god,
this feels familiar. Okay, not my believer in sort of
past lives or something. But it was really like, I
have felt this feeling before. Why does this feel so familiar?
Not for two days I realized it was exactly the
same feeling I used to have when I went from
Towns for the Sydney. All of a sudden the fences

(01:23:59):
were further back. So they're feeling you get at the
airport where you step onto the moving walkway, you know,
whish um And yes, so New York still gives me that.
It gives me this energized feeling. Um. You know, there
are things you'll see when you go out at night
or during the day, or just when you go out
that you will not see anywhere else. And I love that.
I love the sense of you know, when when John

(01:24:21):
Lennon moved to New York, people said, someone said to me,
how could you possibly leave England behind? He said, but
I've lived in ancient times. I've lived in Greece, if
I lived round the birth of Christ in Rome. It's
the twentieth century. So I'm going to live in New York.
And so that's still you know, our our sort of dreams.
Some people have the dream of you know the kids
leave home when they go up the coast. When our

(01:24:42):
kids leave home, we're going to New York for three
months a year. We'll see you on the card to them,
thanks so much for doing this job, and you will wonderful.
Thanks

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Bob Lefsetz

Popular Podcasts

Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}John Watson