He founded Mushroom Records in 1972 before expanding his business to the extensive Mushroom Group.
Michael Gudinski, the Australian music pioneer whose Mushroom Group would become the model for independent music companies and who, with his undisciplined and exuberant personality, became the face of his country’s music scene, died. He was 68 years old.
Gudinski died peacefully while sleeping at his Melbourne home on Monday night, his passing a shock to everyone connected with Australia’s music industry.
Speaking with Advertising panel last week, Gudinski was with his typical enthusiasm, looking forward to new TV projects, the launch of vaccines and the return of large-scale tours in these parts.
No other figure has done more to shape the Australian music industry than Gudinski.
In a key interview at the 2010 Bigsound conference in Brisbane with this reporter, Gudinski told how, at just seven years old, Michael flexed his growing entrepreneurial muscles on the day of the Caulfield Cup, when he charged race participants for parking spaces in a empty block.
Gudinski would go for bigger things.
In 1972, at just 20 years old, Gudinski launched Mushroom Records, which would become the largest independent record label in Australian music, and later its editorial arm Mushroom Music, which remains the country’s leading independent label.
Mushroom had initial success with Skyhooks, whose debut album, Living in the 70s, stayed 16 weeks in the first place in Australia, selling 240,000 copies, a feat that no Australian album had achieved at the time.
Over the decades, Gudinski would guide the careers of countless artists, from Kylie Minogue and Jimmy Barnes to British signings Ash and Garbage.
In 1998, he sold Mushroom Records to Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited Group (now News Corp), whose profits allowed Gudinski to realize his dream of building an independent music powerhouse, covering tours, record labels, publishers, merchandising, reservation agencies, films and television production and creative services.
Today, the Mushroom Group covers more than two dozen businesses and brands, from Frontier Touring to The Harbor Agency, I Oh You labels, Liberation and Bloodlines, Mushroom Music Publishing, neighboring rights operation Good Neighbor and the new addition, Reclusive Records.
Frontier Touring, founded in 1979, is Australia’s leading independent promoter and a record holder. Gudinski and Frontier Touring produced Ed Sheeran’s achievement Share tour of Australia and New Zealand, which handled more than 1.1 million tickets, a historic record for a single journey.
The last tour under the Frontier Touring flag, Makarrata Live Midnight Oil Tour, started on Sunday at Mount Cotton in Queensland.
With the pandemic disrupting tours in 2020, Gudinski found a way to keep the music playing. He led the series of online and television shows Song From the Home Front, The sound and The State Of Music.
“This is not about my record labels,” said Gudinski Advertising panel in a 2020 interview. “This is about Australian music.”
On the pandemic that threatened to bring the industry down live, Gudinski said: “I learned that you have to turn something negative into something positive”.
Gudinski has achieved almost everything in his extraordinary life and career, including an Order of Australia (AM) Member Medal in 2006 for services to the entertainment industry and a Melbourne Cup victory. With his passing, he loses one thing that he coveted silently: America’s number one.
He leaves his wife Sue, his son Matt and his partner Cara, his daughter Kate and her husband Andrew and their children Nina-Rose and Lulu, and more than 200 employees of the Mushroom Group, which he often calls “family”.
This story first appeared in Billboard.com.