Sound Relief: How the biggest charity concert in Australian history came together in under five weeks
Spurred into action after the Black Saturday bushfires claimed 180 lives, a line-up of stars including Taylor Swift, Coldplay, Kylie Minogue, Kings of Leon and Midnight Oil came together for one of the biggest concerts in Aussie history. Here’s how it happened.
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EXCLUSIVE: Michael Gudinski is a man with an impressive CV that stretches back nearly 50 years.
However the charity concert Sound Relief, which took place ten years ago this week, holds a very special place in the music industry icon’s heart.
“It’s probably my most proudest moment,” Gudinski says.
“I still get emotional thinking about it.”
Sound Relief was held simultaneously at the MCG in Melbourne and the SCG in Sydney on March 14, 2009. Remarkably, the event was pulled together in just five weeks.
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Gudinski had been spurred into action after the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria on February 7, where 180 people lost their lives.
In Brisbane, after serious floods, the country was united by natural disaster — bringing promoters and musical acts together.
“I had been thinking about doing something,” Gudinski said.
“We get approached to do a lot of charity shows, we do a lot for charity as well, but you have to be careful. A lot of charity shows lose money, a lot of them have people taking fees off the top all over the place.”
Gudinski had two particular people in his ear — musicians Leonard Cohen and Jimmy Barnes.
“Leonard had played A Day on the Green in the Yarra Valley two weeks before Black Saturday,” Gudinski said.
“He was one of the most inspirational acts I’ve ever worked with.”
Cohen, who passed away in 2016, was playing another A Day on the Green show in Perth on the day of Black Saturday and was transfixed by the news coverage of the tragedy as it unfolded.
“He came up and asked me for a chat,” Gudinski said.
“He hadn’t done that on the whole tour. He said ‘Michael, I’m very concerned about all the fires and devastation going on’. I told him we were playing a show within a kilometre of those fires just a few weeks before. He made a donation that was over six figures. He wanted it to be anonymous.”
Gudinski’s long time friend Jimmy Barnes was also revving Gudinski up and floated the idea of a concert.
“Jimmy has a big heart,” Gudinski said.
“He was going ‘We have to do something. Something has to happen.’ Then I spoke to Chuggie in Sydney, my old (business) partner. It came together very quickly.’”
Michael Chugg had worked on 2005’s Wave Aid charity concert at the SCG (with Silverchair, Powderfinger, Nick Cave and Midnight Oil) and 2007’s Live Earth at the Sydney Football Stadium with Crowded House, Wolfmother, Jack Johnson and Paul Kelly.
He was instantly up for the challenge.
“You get Gudinski and myself and a few others in the same room and all of a sudden you’ve got the MCG and the SCG on board in the one day,” Chugg said.
“It was a bit like Live Aid doing New York and London at the same time. Michael and I have always been mates. Even though we’ve been rivals. We enjoyed it, we got to yell at each other for five weeks.”
The MCG offered the venue for free, bands performed for nothing and the Brumby Government in Victoria helped in getting the Sheffield Shield and NAB Cup moved from the MCG.
Around 450 event staff in Melbourne worked for free, while the MCG gave all the profits of food and beverages sold on the day to the Red Cross.
There were no free tickets — every person paid $75 — with 80,000 people attending in Melbourne and 40,000 in Sydney.
The event wound up raising $8 million, most going to the Red Cross Victorian Bushfire Appeal, with nearly one million going to the Queensland Premier’s Disaster Relief Appeal.
“So many people co-operated to keep the costs down,” Gudinski said.
“It’s the biggest music event in Australian history as far as making money goes. We didn’t do a telethon or anything like that.”
Chugg said the stress of the quick turnaround was nothing compared to what the victims of what the bushfires and floods were dealing with.
“It’s great when you can have three or four months to spend working on a tour, or even a year like we’re doing on these Elton shows, but the adrenaline and the rush and the buzz of pulling it off in five weeks gets your momentum going.
“We were raising money for hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have been shattered by some pretty horrendous situations. We don’t come together to do these things very often. This really galvanised everyone to work together. With an industry that’s so competitive and sometimes so divisive, to get everyone together to work under the one roof and pull something like this off is pretty special.”
The promoters started working the phones to organise the talent.
Sadly Barnes, like many key acts due to the tight turn around, already had a gig booked that clashed with Sound Relief.
“These things start from the top of the bill not the bottom,” Gudinski said.
“Hunters and Collectors hadn’t reformed, but they were up for it. Then came Midnight Oil, and we were away and running. Before long we could have done two days, but it wasn’t about that.”
Both Gudinski and Chugg had musical acts already touring Australia at the time who were eager to help out — some, like Coldplay, Jack Johnson and Kings of Leon, already had shows booked that night so wound up playing afternoon slots.
“Taylor Swift has never forgotten that show,” Gudinski, who would later become her promoter, said.
“That was a critical show for her in really building her popularity in Australia.”
Chugg had booked Swift, who had only just broken through in Australia with Love Story, to play the CMC Rocks festival.
“She was still playing relatively small venues here at the time,” Chugg said.
“To put her in front of all those people in a stadium was pretty incredible.”
Coldplay, on the other hand, were already stadium level at that point. Frontman Chris Martin pulled off the Bono at Live Aid moment by jumping in the crowd at Sydney.
“Things like that stay with people forever,” Chugg said.
Their Sound Relief set also saw Coldplay cover John Farnham’s You’re the Voice — with Farnham joining them on stage, giving him the world’s most famous backing band for four minutes.
“The first time John met Coldplay it was actually in the John Farnham Room backstage at Rod Laver Arena,” Farnham’s manager Glenn Wheatley said.
“Coldplay told us that You’re the Voice was one of the very first songs they ever used to play as a band. John’s sitting there thinking ‘The biggest band in the world used to cover You’re the Voice when they started out?’ They were fans of the first order.”
John Farnham arrived in Sydney early to rehearse the song with Coldplay — it was a hit in the UK during the 80s.
“Chris said it was one of the first records he ever bought as a kid, which was nice,” Farnham said.
“I asked him what we were going to do about the bagpipe solo and he just looked at me and said ‘We don’t do bagpipes’. OK, fair enough!”
US rockers Kings of Leon played around 1.40pm in Melbourne, as they had their own headline show in Melbourne that night.
Their big hit, Sex on Fire, was missing from their Sound Relief set.
“We discussed it, they didn’t feel right about it, just because of the title, neither did I,” Gudinski said.
In Melbourne, rock band Jet opened the show, then flew to Sydney to play both legs of the concert.
Gabriella Cilmi, Paul Kelly, Augie March, Bliss N Eso, Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson with guest Troy Cassar-Daley finished the first leg.
Liam Finn was joined by his father Neil and uncle Neil for Crowded House songs Don’t Dream It’s Over, Weather With You and Better Be Home Soon.
Carl Gardiner, working in marketing at Mushroom at the time, remembers the rain on the day starting during Better Be Home Soon.
“There is a story the rain that day put out the very last of the bushfires. I want to believe that’s true.”
Kylie Minogue returned home to perform an a cappella version of I Still Call Australia Home, walking on stage after a minute’s silence.
“There’s a thing we talk about a lot which is the spirit of Australia,” Minogue told the MCG. “I believe it’s in evidence tonight. I travel everywhere, that’s what people see in Australians.”
Jack Jackson, Wolfmother and the reformed trio of Hunters and Collectors, Split Enz and Midnight Oil finished the Melbourne leg of Sound Relief.
“It crossed generations,” Gudinski said.
“There’s very few things parents can take their kids to, it crossed over into a lot of different musical areas. It’s an amazing line-up when you look at it now.”
In Sydney, the event opened with Coldplay, then featured Hoodoo Gurus, Little Birdy, Architecture in Helsinki, You Am I, Josh Pyke, Marcia Hines, Taylor Swift, Eskimo Joe, The Presets and finished with Barry Gibb and special guest Olivia Newton-John.
Princes William and Harry sent their support via satellite — it was their first ever speech to the nation and, as such, made Australian Constitutional history.
Gardiner, who now works at the Australian Music Vault, said the Melbourne leg of Sound Relief was special for reasons beyond the music and raising money for charity.
“There’s often judgment of crowds of live music events, rightly or wrongly, but there were over 80,000 people there and only one person was ejected for unruly behaviour,” Gardiner said.
“Earlier that year at the Boxing Day test 70 people were kicked out. Music crowds aren’t saints, but there was something in the air that day. And Michael Gudinski was a force of nature. He did stuff to make Sound Relief happen that I will always be in awe of. Everyone involved from the music community was up for the challenge, everyone dropped every agenda and just worked together.”
Gudinski said the idea of doing another charity event on the scale of Sound Relief has crossed his mind.
“The music industry is renowned for getting behind charity and helping out. And it’s really the greatest thing for me, to be able to give back and pull something like that together. If you think that I’m not thinking about doing it again, doing something for all the farmers in Victoria, well watch this space. I’m not going to try and repeat Sound Relief, but there’s something I’m working on at the moment with a few people …”
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