For nearly 50 years, Michael Gudinski served as a pillar of both Australian music’s industry and community at large. As founder of Mushroom Records, as well as co-founder of both Frontier Touring and later Liberation Music, the larger-than-life figure was instrumental in dismantling cultural cringe surrounding local music and assisting then-emerging acts like Kylie Minogue and Jimmy Barnes on their path to stardom. As a tour promoter, he showed global icons such as Sting, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel the joy of huge shows down under – making lifelong bonds in the process.
Whether you’re a boomer or Gen X, Y or even Z, at least a few of your favourite acts wouldn’t be where they are today were it not for the passionate, unwavering support of the man known as “MG”. From the daringly different glam-rock of Skyhooks (the first band ever played on 2JJ, which eventually became triple j) to the stadium-filling pop stardom of Ed Sheeran, Gudinski routinely made a point of investing in music he truly believed in. The upward index finger wasn’t just Gudinski’s go-to pose: it was his way of life.
This month sees the premiere of Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story, which tells the titular tale through not only extensive archival interviews with Gudinski himself but previously unseen interviews with his immediate family and his many, many friends in high places. Ahead of its official nation-wide cinematic release on August 31, here are five key takeaways from this one-of-a-kind Australian success story.
The Gudinskis came to Australia in the shadow of World War II, and faced early tragedy
One of the key reasons Gudinski was so proud of Australia and its music was the fact that he came from an immigrant background – acknowledging the hardships faced by his Jewish parents as they left their homeland in search of a better life. Kuba and Nina Gudinski left Russia for Australia in 1948, in the aftermath of World War II, and ended up in suburban Melbourne where MG was born four years later.
Though Michael was raised with only one sibling, Tania, it’s revealed in Ego that Nina had a third baby that was born during the war and, during an attempted smuggling across the border, was killed by Nazis. This determination to persevere was carried on by Michael in his own work, even when butting heads with his father, and although both parents passed away in the ’80s their legacy lives on through his granddaughter – whom his daughter, Kate, named Nina.
MG’s career began in the blues
Well before he was pulling together arena shows for Bob Dylan and Rod Stewart, and even before managing Skyhooks and a young Split Enz, Gudinski had the blues. The first international act he brought out to Australia was John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and soon after he brought out genre royalty in Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. The legendary bluesmen ended up bringing Gudinski back home with them, where the jokingly self-described “good Jewish boy” wound up in clubs across America as the only white person in the room.
His love of the genre manifested locally, too. One of the earliest bands MG managed was rhythm-and-blues outfit Chain, best known for the baby-boomer anthem ‘I Remember When I Was Young’. Their track ‘Black and Blue’ was the first of many homegrown top-10 hits achieved under Gudinski’s watchful eye. As far as MG goes, there’s simply no Kylie or Ed-level stories without them.
Gudinski pioneered the “360 deal” nearly three decades before they became integrated by US majors
When expanding Mushroom Group throughout the ’70s, encompassing everything from A&R to management to tour promotion, Gudinski wanted his artists to maintain artistic integrity and creative control while working under the umbrella. Simultaneously, he hoped his artists could effectively treat the company as their one-stop shop for everything they’d need – and thus, had his contracts with each act reflect this.
As pointed out in the documentary, what Gudinski was offering Mushroom artists was effectively what has come to be known as the “360 deal”. While major labels on a global scale came to introduce these as the 21st century progressed – and even had the cheek to present them as radical and new – Ego allows the history books to show that it was Gudinski who first brought this concept into circulation. While the value of said deals to artists may be up for debate, its pioneering force is not.
Even when he reached stadium status, MG never lost sight of small-scale gigs and bands
By the 2000s, Gudinski’s three-decade-plus career spoke for itself – he could have easily walked from the industry with his head held high. Even so, Ego showcases the fact he never lifted his ear from the ground, and still went out of his way to give a leg-up to artists he saw great potential in.
There’s an alternative timeline where The Temper Trap’s era-defining 2008 single ‘Sweet Disposition’ remained a well-kept secret, were it not for Gudinski pushing the song as hard as he could and ultimately re-releasing it in 2009 to multi-platinum global success. Had he not kept scouring tiny cafes and intimate gigs across Melbourne, we might not know the name Vance Joy. Then, of course, there’s the story of Gudinski getting tipped off about a scrawny ginger kid visiting from the UK… which would snowball into Ed Sheeran breaking the attendance record of the MCG within a decade.
Music from the Home Front and The Sound retrospectively served as MG’s last will and testament
Like most people in March 2020, Gudinski was an unkempt, going-mad-from-iso mess. It was in this period of great darkness for Australian music, however, that Gudinski rekindled the never-say-die resilience that shaped his career in its early years. On ANZAC Day that year, Gudinski presented the virtual concert Music from the Home Front – a national broadcast event filled with a who’s-who of Australian music performing from their homes – which is even more impressive with the knowledge Gudinski pulled it together within a week.
The ABC series The Sound followed, which gave music lovers a taste of artists performing live while they were unable to do so in person. Though MG couldn’t have known that he’d be gone less than a year later, it says a lot that he was fighting for live Australian music in any way, shape or form he could right up to the very end.
Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story screens in Australian cinemas from August 31.