Worth: $14.00
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Cast:
Bruce Springsteen, Jimmy Barnes, Paul Kelly, Sting, Shirley Manson
Intro:
… bursting with footage and interviewees …
Michael Gudinski, who died in 2021 at the age of 68, was by any reckoning, a hugely important figure in the Australian music industry. Though this documentary starts with some pointlessly distracting and flashy graphics, it soon settles down into a pretty good – and basically chronological – summary of his extremely busy and productive life and career. It’s bursting with footage and interviewees, as it needed to be in order to even come close to covering what he did.
Gudinski hit the proverbial ground running, promoting bands in his school holidays. Next thing you know, he was the stage manager at the Sunbury festivals … managing Carson and Chain … and of course co-founding Mushroom Records in 1972. The massive local success of Skyhooks followed, and then it was onward and upward to Split Enz, and a wide array of activities involving innumerable local bands and every aspect of the music biz, from recording and merchandising to tour promotion. Along the way, he started Frontier Touring and Liberation Records – the latter after selling Mushroom to Murdoch’s News Limited … On the other hand, he also organised the massive charity events Sound Relief and From The Home Front. So, it’s all – as they say – swings and roundabouts.
The roll call of major figures Gudinski brought out here is staggering. A very selective list would include people like Dylan, Rod Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra, Leonard Cohen, Sting, The Rolling Stones and Neil Young. Some of these people give emphatic and evidently heartfelt testimonials about the sheer fun of hanging out with him, and more importantly, his reliability and integrity. So of course do a host of Australian artists, especially Paul Kelly, Archie Roach and Jimmy Barnes. Perhaps most surprisingly, there are glowing tributes from relatively leftfield people like Shirley Manson from Garbage.
Michael Gudinski had his critics and detractors, but you won’t be hearing any of these in Ego – it’s mostly hagiographical, as you would of course expect from Mushroom Studios. But he was indisputably a dynamo, and a tireless advocate of Australian music.
