Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story charts the rise of ’a larrikin and a maverick’

The music legend’s trailblazing feats will be told in a documentary that sheds new light on what the Mushroom Group boss was like behind closed doors.

Superstars Bruce Springsteen, Dave Grohl, Sting, Ed Sheeran and Kylie Minogue have sung the praises of Michael Gudinski in a documentary film about the late music industry legend.

The movie, titled Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story, which traces the trailblazing feats of the Mushroom Group boss, will have its world premiere in Melbourne on August 10.

In a trailer for the film, Springsteen, Grohl, Sting, Sheeran, Minogue, and Jimmy Barnes pay heartfelt tribute to Gudinski, and his larger-than-life ways.

“Michael had this unique gravitas around him that attracted people,” Sheeran says in the film.

Springsteen added: “Michael was an old time showman. He was loud and brash, but he invited you into his life in a personal and intimate way.”

The poster for the upcoming documentary. Picture: Mushroom Creative

Gudinski started the film with director Paul Goldman in 2019. But Covid-19 lockdowns, then Gudinski’s sudden death in 2021 almost derailed the project.

Goldman remodelled the film into a doco about Mushroom’s 50th anniversary, which ticked over last year, but anchored it with Gudinski’s story.

Michael Gudinski, a high school dropout, launched Mushroom Records in 1972.

Skyhooks was the label’s first success story. Others included Kylie Minogue, Jimmy Barnes, Paul Kelly, Hunters and Collectors, The Angels, Yothu Yindi, Peter Andre, The Church and Vance Joy.

Ed Sheeran says Gudinski had ‘a unique gravitas around him that attracted people’.

Gudinski started Frontier Touring in 1979, and lured superstars like Springsteen, Sheeran, Rolling Stones, Foo Fighters, Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, and many more, Down Under.

“The film is an amazing love letter to Michael Gudinski, to Melbourne and to the Australian music industry,” Goldman said.

“Michael loved the camera, loved the limelight, and he loved promoting the business and himself. I knew him to be a larrikin and a maverick. What I didn’t know was behind closed doors he was a very complex man with lots of different moods.”

Goldman said Ego was one of many film titles he discussed with Gudinski early on. “The title is meant to be provocative,: he said. “But it talks about someone’s ambition. This is a man who left school before Year 12, got thrown out of home, and was hell bent on beating his own path.

Michael Gudinski and Kylie Minogue. Picture: Tony Mott

“To do that you need a lot of self-belief, and what fuels that self-belief is ego. Michael was a much more complex character than just having a big ego. The documentary reveals a sensitive soul who was, at times, very shy.

“But that public persona of beating his chest and being the loudest in the room — given the music industry at the time, that was the only way it was ever going to work.”

In the doco trailer, Gudinski says he started Mushroom to promote Australian talent, and get it played on the radio. “I couldn’t understand why people weren’t supporting their own more,” he added.

Later, alluding to the rock and roll lifestyle, Gudinski admitted: “There was every chance I could’ve been another one that had gone off the rails. But we give it everything we’ve got.”

The movie will premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival on August 10, and hit cinemas nationally on August 31.