about Michael Gudinski. I’ve always liked the one about the humble rocker who approached the Australian music biz powerbroker backstage to thank him for everything he’d done to make him a star. Gudinski shut him down and waved him towards the stage. “Don’t thank me here, thank me publicly,” he barked.
It makes sense, too, to leapfrog through the vast catalogue of Mushroom artists on the back of a few key success stories: from Skyhooks to Split Enz, Hunters and Collectors to Jimmy Barnes, Paul Kelly to Archie Roach, Kylie Minogue to … Peter Andre? As the zeitgeist morphs, also-rans might cop a flash in the montage, but it’s only the sweet smell of success that pop history has time for.
For those of us who know this justly proud storyline well, it’s the dark holes in the bunting that arrest attention. The older sister apparently murdered as the Gudinskis fled Nazi Germany is an early gut-punch, all but lost in the whirlwind. No time to interview Deborah Conway either, even after she’s identified as one of the few Mushroom artists who would give as good as she got in the Gudinski cage fight.