Profile of Glenn Wheatley on Famous Like Me

Glenn Wheatley is a renowned Australian artist manager and entertainment industry executive, who began his career as a musician in Brisbane in the mid-1960s.

His first major musical outing was as the guitarist in the Brisbane pop band Bay City Union, fronted by singer Matt Taylor, who later came to fame as lead singer of pioneering Australian electric blues band Chain.

In early 1968 Wheatley was hired as the bass player in a new lineup of the Melbourne-based pop-rock band The Masters Apprentices, then one of Australia's most popular groups. Wheatley's four-year tenure with the group (until their demise in 1972) included many of their most successful recordings including the singles "Turn Up Your Radio" (1970) and "Because I Love You" (1971), and the acclaimed 1971 LP Choice Cuts, which was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London.

It was during Wheatley's tenure in the Masters that he became fully aware of the highly exploitative nature of the Australian pop industry. The band endured many "rip-offs" and in their later career they suffered greatly from poor management decisions and inadequate support from their record labels, problems which eventually led to the group's demise in 1972.

A key incident took place in late 1969 when the Masters took part in a nationwide package tour, "Operation Starlift". The concert at Brisbane Festival Hall, drew a then record crowd of over 7000 people, breaking the venue's previous attendance record, set by The Beatles in 1964. After the concert Wheatley reflected on the event, and it became the turning point in his life and career, because it finally drove home just how badly the group were being ripped off.

Wheatley knew that patrons had paid AU$5 per ticket, so the receipts for the night would have been around AU$35,000. But the Masters Apprentices, like all the other acts, were on a fixed fee and received a mere $200 for the show; even top-billed act John Farnham probably only earned about $1000. Figuring that the performers were probably only paid about AU$2000 in total, Wheatley realised that the promoters had walked away with upwards of AU$30,000 for that concert alone.

Tired of their ongoing management problems, the band eventually sacked their manager, with Wheatley taking over day-to-day business affairs and bookings, and the group also set up its own Melbourne-based booking agency, Drum, which soon boasted a roster of several dozen local groups as well as promoting several international tours.

The Masters relocated to England in 1971, recording two highly-regarded LPs there, but lack of success and continuing financial problems led to their break-up 1972. Wheatley remained in the UK for some time before going to the United States. During this time working for various management and booking agencies, Wheatley learned the intricacies of management and agency work, contract negotiations and tour promotions.

In 1975 he set up The Wheatley Organisation and became the manager of a new Australian 'supergroup', Little River Band (LRB), which comprised members of several leading Australian pop bands of the Sixties and early Seventies. After establishing themselves in Australia, Wheatley boldy took the band to the United States. He had learned first hand the futility of trying to break into the notoriously closed English music scene, where scores of other Australia bands had tried and failed to gain a foothold, with only The Seekers achieving any ongoing success.

Thanks to Wheatley's contacts, experience and skill, as well as the redoubtable talent of the band itself, LRB became the first Australian band to achieve major and lasting chart and sales success in America, and under his guidance they became by far the most successful Australian band of the period.

After the split of LRB in the mid-1980s, Wheatley returned to Australia and began managing an old friend, singer John Farnham, who had been a leading star in the 1960s but was now reduced to playing suburban club gigs. Once again, Wheatley's skill and perserverance paid off; he mortgaged his own house to help pay for the recording of Farnham's 1986 "comeback" LP Whispering Jack, and the gamble paid off handsomely -- it reestablished Farnham as major singing star and the record became (and remains) the biggest-selling Australian album of all time.

Wheatley became involved in FM radio broadcasting in 1980 when he was a founding director of Melbourne based EON-FM (now 3MMM FM). In 1987 he negotiated a series of acquisitions which resulted in the formation of Hoyts Media, a national FM radio network and from 1987 to 1989 he was managing director of Hoyts Media before resigning to pursue other business interests. He founded TalentWorks in 1996, focusing on artist and sports management, music recording and publishing, tour promotion and event management.

Wheatley has been presented with the Advance Australia Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Entertainment Industry and was the recipient of the 1988 Business Review Weekly Australia's Business Award for Marketing. He has been a director and part owner of the Sydney Swans Football Club, and a board member of AUSMUSIC, Tourism Task Force (promoting Australia as a tourist destination) and the AIDS Trust of Australia.

In 1999, he published his autobiography, Paper Paradise, which was based in part on a ribald memoir he had begun during his stint in The Masters, entitled "Who The Hell Is Judy In Sydney?".

In recent years Wheatley managed Australian female soapie actress and singing star Delta Goodrem, helping her to achieve major success, but Goodrem split with Wheatley under acrimonious circumstances in 2003.

Further reading

• Wheatley, Glenn. Paper Paradise: Confessions of a Rock 'n' Roll Survivor. (Bantam Books, 1999)

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