STACK #224 June 2023

Sue, Matt and Kate Gudinski with Michael's statue (March 2022)

A BLOKE IN BRONZE

With finger held aloft to the clouds in Gudinski's famed '#1' gesture, the life sized statue of Mushroom's founder – erected in March last year – graces the lawn outside Rod Laver Arena within Melbourne's entertainment precinct. You might wonder how sculptor Darien Pullen managed to create such an accurate depiction of the man from 2D referents. The truth is, he didn't – Pullen took his measurements directly from his source, before Michael had passed. “He'd breeze in at 100 miles an hour, and then – 'Gotta go!'” Pullen tells us. “It was about making the most of the time you got.” The answer to how the statue was commissioned before Gudinski's death lies in a formidable friendship, and reveals that there's actually two statues. “The first one came about after Ed Sheeran's first tour,” Pullen tells us. “Michael and Ed became really good mates, and at some stage Ed decided he wanted a bronze statue of Michael for his own private pub [in Suffolk, UK], so that he could have a drink with him whenever he wanted. Michael didn't take it seriously, but Ed pestered him.” From Pullen's initial sculpture of clay, Fitzroy foundry Meridian cast the statue in bronze from a silicon rubber mould, adding an array of little mushrooms around the man's feet. “The one Ed's got, the mushrooms are painted in pretty garish colours – they're not botanically accurate,” Pullen smiles. When the Victorian government decided they wanted to honour Gudinski's contribution to the Australian arts with a memorial, it was just a matter of contacting Pullen: “'Here's one I prepared earlier,'” he quips. “One of the nicest things about Michael was he wasn't self-conscious about his features at all,” he adds. “He said, 'I've got a big nose – that's all character!'”

T his year marks the monumental Golden Jubilee (50th anniversary) of Mushroom Records, the fledgling label begun by the late Michael Gudinski in 1972 which has since erupted into a force for the good of Australian artists and the Australian music scene. From an idea sparked within his restless brain while selling watermelons at the Sunbury Rock Festival in the early '70s, Michael Gudinski established Mushroom Records at just 20 years old. In 1975, Skyhooks' Living in the '70s propelled the label to household familiarity; deals with Split Enz, Kylie Minogue, The Saints, Hunters & Collectors and more followed throughout the '80s, and after a merge with Festival in 1998, Mushroom Group proper came to be. When he passed away in 2021 aged 68, Gudinski had captained Mushroom into an astonishing array of creative ventures, also guided by savvy projects from his son Matt (who has worked in the family business since age 17, became Mushroom Group's Executive Director in 2013, and stepped into the Chief Executive role after his father's passing). Over the next several months we'll look into the fruit that the pair's passionate stewardship of the company bore – including some of its many labels, its touring arm, television, and fundraising ventures, and more.

THE LABEL STABLE

Julia Jacklin

Didirri

Jimmy Barnes Vika and Linda

DMAs

Confidence Man

In 2017, Jimmy Barnes' adorably grinning mug at the forefront of press material for the launch of Bloodlines gave us an immediate shorthand for the label's purpose. Gudinski explained he'd chosen the name “because it reflects ‘family’ and ‘pedigree’ and honours the past but, equally importantly, looks to the future." Now six years stronger-than ever, Bloodlines is the home of Mushroom’s juggernaut legacy acts: Vika & Linda Bull, The Church, Russell Morris, Tina Arena, Yothu Yindi, Baby Animals, Archie Roach, Hunters & Collectors, Ian Moss, and Barnesy himself (and many more).

RVG

Hatchie

MUSHFACT:

Gudinski signed Yolngu pop-rock legends Yothu Yindi to Mushroom in 1988, and two years later added Gunditjmara and Bundjalung singer-songwriter Archie Roach to the roster; this is at a time when Indigenous acts weren't given anything like the deserved attention by musical gatekeepers that they are today. Mushroom released every one of Yothu Yindi's six studio albums, and Roach released all ten of his albums with the label too, remaining with Mushroom until his death in July last year.

81