“I felt a good need to write this book,” Coupe says. “I talked to a lot of people and read up on a lot of other sources. My job was partly made easier in that Michael didn’t want the book, it isn’t authorised. Yes, he had the right to correct factual errors, but it was really my interpretation of events. Part of that was built on talking to a lot of people who were off the record and not credited, and really weighing it all up. There are a lot of cases in the Gudinski book where my interpretation of events is very, very different to what I think he would like to see portrayed.”
Coupe laughs. He has a rather affable and anecdotal conversation manner, but you don’t reach the position he’s in without having your eyes on the prize. He is a savvy guy, having worked in band management (Paul Kelly, for instance), radio and promotions. He’s also the director of Laughing Outlaw Records, and has some incredibly enviable interviews under his belt. If he isn’t living the dream, well, he’s at least on a neighbouring street.
“In my case it’s been a very charmed, lucky life,” he says. “I emerged at a great time for music journalism. I started a fanzine, then a music magazine. I came to Sydney to work in the late ‘70s and found myself on tour with Graham Parker, in a lift with KISS without their makeup on after a bomb scare, walking through Kings Cross with Tom Waits. Then I find myself in Paris interviewing Bruce Springsteen in ’81, and I think, ‘All right, it can’t get much better’. And then come along not one but two Bob Dylan interviews, you’re hanging at the George V Hotel with Mick Jagger. You just have to pinch yourself. And I don’t pretend to be outstanding. Sure, I can string a sentence together, but a lot of it is right place, right time.”
Coupe’s experiences have certainly helped pave his sense of narrative; Gudinski is an entertaining, brilliantly-paced construction. Gudinski is already such a larger-than-life figure that Coupe was cautious not to mythologise his life story. The author must appear balanced, and the subject must seem sincere, even if it is only ever going to be an approximation of the real thing.
“[Gudinski] sat for a couple of interviews at the end, but for the whole process, prior to finishing the book, I’d spent maybe six hours in his company. Not a lot of time at all. Stylistically, I tried to find a way for the prose to reflect Michael’s voice. There is a lot more swearing in the book than I would put in normally, there’s a lot more staccato writing. I have no real idea of course what’s in his head, but I would find myself writing like how I would imagine Gudisnki would speak, what people were thinking whilst they were dealing with him. And of course I’d met him back in the ‘80s, and I’ve spent a lot of time with friends who have various stories about him and Mushroom. I’ve watched and I’ve listened, and I really just tried to get the sense of this crazy, fractured world that is Michael Gudinski.”
This is a remark worth repeating; rather than an encyclopaedic exposition of Australian music since the ‘70s, or a history of Mushroom Records, this is the story of Gudinski the man. It is insightful, unexpected, well-researched, speculative – much like the man himself. Yet, arguably the most compelling thing about Gudinski is that, for all of the roll-of-the-dice fortunes and failures depicted, the central figure remains a very real and accessible individual.
“Michael, at the end of the day, is a rabid music fan with a lot of business acumen,” Coupe says. “One of the things I try to show in the book is that he knows as much about contemporary music as anyone. It’s not because he necessarily goes out of his way to go across it personally, but because he’s a very smart man, he surrounds himself with people who keep him informed. Michael listens. If you call him up and tell him he needs to listen to, say, She Rex, he’ll say, [Coupe drops into a low, gruff voice] ‘Never heard of ’em. Any good?’ And mark my words, you see him four weeks later and he’ll either have signed them, or he’s totally moved on. That’s why he is who he is – he has this innate ability to tap into what’s going on out there. He’s always looking, and he always listens to what’s around.”
BY ADAM NORRIS
