Stuart Coupe (Shake Some Action)

Artist to Fan

On this episode of Artist to Fan, Daniel Johnson is joined by Stuart Coupe, acclaimed author, radio presenter, publicist, and former band manager, record label founder and concert promoter, who recently released the brilliant memoir, Shake Some Action: My Life in Music (and other stuff).

It’s hard to know where to start when trying to neatly sum up Stuart’s life and career to date in a few pars but I’ll give it a crack. Stuart was born and raised in Launceston, Tasmania, before relocating to Adelaide to enrol in an Arts degree at Flinders University, which he later dropped out of partway through to move to Sydney to further his then-fledgling writing career (for want of a better term).

He became Hoodoo Gurus’ first manager and also managed Paul Kelly early in his career; he was a long-time columnist for The Sun-Herald and staff writer for RAM (Rock Australia Magazine) and Dolly, and his yarns have appeared everywhere from The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Canberra Times to Rolling Stone Australia, The Nation Review and Playboy.

In addition to interviewing thousands of artists, including particularly memorable encounters with Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Sting and Bob Dylan, he’s worked as a publicist on tours for everyone from The Clash and The Dead Kennedys to Jonathan Richman and Teardrop Explodes.

He’s written or co-written at least 15 books, including 'Roadies: The Secret History of Australian Rock’n’roll', The Promoters: Inside Stories from the Australian Rock Industry, Gudinski: The Godfather of Australian Rock, Paul Kelly: The Man, The Music And The Life In Between and Tex (with Tex Perkins).

He also co-founded Green Records, which had a roster that included Beasts of Bourbon, The Lime Spiders, New Christs and Do-Re-Mi, and later, Laughing Outlaw, which released somewhere in the vicinity of 200 albums from a diverse range of artists including Ronnie Spector, Emma Swift, Bluebottle Kiss, Dave McCormack and the Polaroids, Dan Brodie and the Broken Arrows and Halfway.

As a concert promoter - an enterprise he says he “screwed up magnificently - Stuart has been responsible for bringing the likes of Lucinda Williams, Rosanne Cash, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Tom Russell, Dave Alvin, Ted Hawkins, Guy Clark, Chris Whitley, Harry Dean Stanton, Dick Dale, and Link Wray to Australia.

He’s also a radio presenter and currently hosts programs on Sydney stations FBI and 2SER, including long-running “roots” - think blues, rock ‘n’ roll, alt-country, soul, R&B, reggae and everything in between - show Dirt Music.

It’s worth pointing out he didn’t necessarily undertake all of the above-mentioned endeavours chronologically. In fact, he did - and continues to do - many of these things concurrently.

To get a vague idea of the broad impact he’s had on the Australian music industry and its participants, one need look no further than the clover of Shake Some Action, which includes endorsements from Tim Rogers, Kasey Chambers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who says, “Stuart’s passion and love for music is infectious”.