Annette Sharp: Singer Guy Sebastian headed for legal showdown with ex manager
IT was one of those artist-manager relationships that looked like it might go the distance. But sadly the once close relationship between Guy Sebastian and his former manager Titus Day could now be headed for a legal showdown.
Confidential
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IT was one of those artist-manager relationships that looked like it might go the distance. Like John Farnham’s enduring arrangement with his manager and friend Glenn Wheatley, who once mortgaged his own home to pay for one of Farnham’s albums.
Like INXS’s long-running relationship with Chris Murphy, an association that was interrupted only by the dramatic arrival onto the scene of lead singer Michael Hutchence’s girlfriend Paula Yates in 1995 and which was in a state of repair when Hutchence died.
Like Cold Chisel’s 32-year on-off relationship with Rod Willis, the man charged with the thankless task of wrangling Jimmy Barnes, Don Walker, Ian Moss and their fellow rockers back onto the stage time and again. But sadly the once close relationship between Guy Sebastian and his former manager Titus Day could now be headed for a legal showdown with the two men no longer on speaking terms following Sebastian’s shock decision to sack the man who has successfully driven his career for 12 years.
Sebastian ended the relationship with Day in November, just days into his latest concert tour, something the two men had spent the previous year planning and booking.
There was no backstage blow-up over creative differences.
No fight over money by all accounts.
There may have been differences over the concert tour which Sebastian promptly cancelled after splitting with Day. The balance of the tour, designed to promote Sebastian’s latest album Conscious, was recently rescheduled for this coming June and July. It has a new name, Then & Now, but many of the towns and venues on the tour remain the same, which could be an issue if Day chooses to make it one.
Both parties are yet to open up about what went wrong with a relationship that for 12 years was so close the Days and Sebastians holidayed together with their young children including Sebastian’s sons, Hudson and Archer.
Day also launched and managed the career of Sebastian’s style-blogger wife, Jules, “as a favour to Guy…”, associates said. That affiliation, too, has now ended.
Friends say the birth of Sebastian’s eighth album, Conscious, had tested the relationship.
It wasn’t an easy birth. The album was delivered late — a year after it was due by all accounts — and was, Sebastian has admitted, a “labour of love”.
Due in November 2016, the album, which is now receiving positive reviews, was finally released in October 2017.
Reviewers at Sebastian’s November 2 Brisbane concert last year reported that record company Sony had to rush the newly completed album to the Brisbane show so it could be sold at the gig. They noted Sebastian hadn’t actually seen the album himself until that night.
His career has not been without incident and there has been the occasional sticky encounter that needed managing, like the time he was involved in a skirmish with a man who Sebastian claimed was trying to break into his Clovelly home prompting a targeted headbutt from Sebastian. Meanwhile, Day has enjoyed continued success as a manager. His Six Degrees Management company is no longer the small boutique operation it once was when Sebastian joined him, a few years after being discovered on Australian Idol in 2003.
The manager today represents some 30 celebrities including Sophie Monk, Grant Denyer and Ultimate Fighting Championship Middleweight Champion Rob Whittaker. He also has other investments.
It’s possible Sebastian, who is now self-managing, no longer felt special enough.
“They were like family,” said a friend of both men. “It was one of those relationships everyone believed would last to the grave.”
“It’s sad to think the two men may never speak again.”