Ego is a dirty word after all

While many think the life of a musician is fun, fame and fortune, things haven't been stacking up for some big-name artists this week. IA's music reporter, David Kowalski, spills the latest.

INTRA-BAND dynamics are heaven for psychiatrists. Human nature, mixed with ego and emotion, makes a highly combustible and volatile mixture, more tangled than a ball of wool. I have played in enough bands to see this first-hand and I’ve read enough rock ‘n’ roll biographies to attest to this.

While some of the big news stories this week include some big names and even bigger egos finding themselves in all sorts of strife, it is as inevitable as death and taxes.

In the news this week is the story about Darryl Hall and John Oates hitting the legal skids. Hall has served Oates with a restraining order, for reasons that weren’t initially disclosed. On the surface, that course of action seemed a bit dramatic, considering these two have been working together for over 50 years. As we dig a little deeper, it turns out it’s more serious than that.

Hall has slapped a restraining order on Oates to stop him from selling his half of their jointly owned company to a rights management firm called Primary Wave for a large sum of money. These sorts of deals have led to huge paydays for Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen recently, and who can blame Mr Oates for wanting to cash in?

It turns out that Darryl Hall blames him. The irony is that Hall himself has sold a stake in his half of the company to Primary Wave in 2006, for a significantly lower sum than what he could’ve made now. I find it ironic that Hall is trying to prevent Oates from doing the same thing he did himself!

If it's not drugs and alcohol that cause the collapse of a band, it’s always money.

In the case of the indie band The Brian Jonestown Massacre, it may well have been alcohol that exacerbated circumstances that led to their onstage implosion in Melbourne this week. There is plenty of phone footage online showing the singer Anton Newcombe coming to blows with long-serving guitarist Ryan Van Kriedt onstage at the Forum Theatre, which I won’t repost here.

However, Louder Sound reports that Newcombe was held up at knifepoint earlier that day and he was quite shaken up as a result. He then spent a good portion of the between-song banter sledging the audience and the other band members before demanding that Van Kriedt take off his guitar and get off stage. Newcombe has had a well-documented history of being a volatile artist, especially in the 2004 documentary Dig. Will this event be too big for the band to come back from? Time will tell.

Also in Melbourne, last weekend was the 50th Anniversary Celebration concert for Mushroom Records. The late Michael Gudinski started the small indie label in 1972 to promote young Australian artists and their music, as well as bringing overseas acts to Australian audiences.

The label has pretty much soundtracked Australia for years, through the likes of Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons, Jimmy Barnes, legendary First Nations artists Yothu Yindi, Paul Kelly, Kylie Minogue and loads more. They were on the verge of bankruptcy when Skyhooks dropped their debut album Living In the 70s in 1974 and having six of its ten songs banned from commercial radio guaranteed that the album held the record for the biggest-selling independent release for decades.

The label was always run as a family concern and the business is now in the hands of Michael’s son, Matt Gudinski. Under his watch, this concert brought out the big guns for the show. There was a crack band of incredible musicians, including Ashley Naylor of Even (as previously mentioned in these pages) who made incredible sounds behind a cavalcade of artists from all across the label’s 50-year history.

Vocalists Vika and Linda gave the Skyhooks chestnut ‘Livin' In The '70s’ a spirited performance, while Missy Higgins did justice to the Triffids classic, Wide Open Road. Mark Seymour of Hunters and Collectors pulled off a virtual duet with Ed Sheeran (via video link) on Throw Your Arms Around Me.

Not everything was all beer and Skittles, though. The opening sequence of Youth Group playing their version of Alphaville’s ‘Forever Young’ on the roof of the Rod Laver Arena with Budjerah and Mia Wray, and UK-based artist Sam Smith was a fantastic opening. However, couldn’t they have found an Australian song to play?

Also, Brian Mannix of mullets-and-spandex rockers Uncanny X-Men, whose biggest success came in the form of their 1985 album ‘Cos Life Hurts on Mushroom, was not invited to attend. He made his displeasure known on X (formerly known as Twitter), but as to why he was omitted is anyone’s guess.

So many great things to watch on TV tonight at 7. Channel 10, 9, ABC, Netflix, Stan anything but the insulting bullshit that is on channel 7. Do urself a favour and give it a miss! pic.twitter.com/QiEXMtfVfV
— Brian Mannix (@mannixbrian) November 26, 2023

None of the Mushroom 50 performances are on YouTube but they’re still available on the 7Plus app. I have included a handful of Mushroom records classics in the playlist below, too.

Until next time…

LISTEN TO THIS WEEK'S SPECIALLY CURATED PLAYLIST BELOW:

David Kowalski is a writer, musician, educator, sound engineer and podcaster. His podcasts 'The Sound and the Fury Podcast' and 'Audio Cumulus' can be heard exclusively here. You can follow David on Twitter @sound_fury_pod.