Michael Chugg

Michael Glenn Chugg (born 15 June 1947) is an Australian entrepreneur, businessman and concert tour promoter.

Michael Glenn Chugg was born on 15 June 1947 in Launceston to Victor and Lorna (née Hancock) Chugg, the eldest of four children.

His grandmother, Ella Chugg, was his "best friend".

He credits his great-grandfather with his idiosyncratic use of profanity "the first thing he did was taught me to swear. And it's always been a major part of my delivery of things. There might have been one or two instance over the 40 years where I was probably out of order but in the main it's usually been because it needed to be done".

He attended Glen Dhu Primary School and then Queechy High School.

In the late 1960s Gudinski, together with Michael Browning, set up the Consolidated Rock Agency, Chugg started working for them.

Chugg's career as a promoter began on 16 March 1964, when at 16 he organised a dance at the Trades Hall in Launceston for the local cycling club.

About 300 people turned up for a profit of £80.

He was an amateur cyclist, he volunteered to be a track announcer and then became a sports broadcaster for horse races, trotting, greyhounds and football.

His career as a Tasmanian radio announcer ended after he called a live Melbourne greyhound race: the lead dog was ahead by five lengths as he commentated, "Well, I'll be fucked, it's fallen over".

Chugg started "running dances all over Tasmania ... I was just a working class kid".

He became the band manager of local artists, The Chevrons, and arranged performances of visiting mainland acts, including Bobby and Laurie and The Easybeats.

Chugg moved to Melbourne in 1967 where he worked for the Australian Musicians Booking Organisation (AMBO), run by Gary Spry, Jeff Joseph and Darryl Sambell.

At AMBO he met a 16-yr old, Michael Gudinski, whom Chugg described as "this young guy there with red hair and a big nose who was booking all these new bands", they became friends, business associates and sometime rivals.

In 1970, Chugg married Liselotte 'Lilo' Reisner, later that year Consolidated Rock opened a Sydney office and Chugg moved there to run it with Phil Walker.

In June 1971 Consolidated Rock organised a concert at the Sydney Town Hall featuring Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs and Daddy Cool.

Whilst well attended the organisers were criticised by attendees and, in particular, a music newspaper, Go-Set.

As a result, Consolidated Rock launched a rival magazine, The Daily Planet, however its high running costs resulted in the closure of the magazine and Consolidated Rock.

Chugg and fellow agent Roger Davies then opened a new agency, Sunrise, in Sydney in late 1971.

Their clients included Sherbet.

It became a national company when it joined with Phillip Jacobsen's Melbourne-based, Let It Be agency, which handled Daddy Cool and Spectrum.

When Davies left in 1975, to continue his career in the United States, Chugg was invited to join Gudinski's Premier Artists agency.

At the same time, Chugg was managing acts and working as a freelance tour coordinator with Paul Dainty Corporation.

He also spent time overseas, including the United Kingdom, managing Richard Clapton, and Kevin Borich.

"In 1978 or 79, [Borich] took me to the Lyceum in London to see a new band – The Police. I was blown away, and back in Australia, I suggested we tour all these new U.K. acts that Dainty didn't want to know. At the same time, Gudinski came back from the U.K. He had signed the publishing of 90 percent of the punk explosion and we decided to start a touring company. We borrowed Ian Copeland's name, Frontier, and The Frontier Touring Company was born. Our first two tours were Ian's flagship acts – Squeeze and The Police."

As a promoter and manager he was a founder of Frontier Touring Company (1979–99) and Michael Chugg Entertainment (2000–present).

Frontier Touring Company was founded in 1979 by nine people: Chugg, Gudinski, Jacobsen, Ray Evans, Sam Righi, Frank Stivala, Glenn Wheatley, Steve White and Robbie Williams.

Wheatley and White left the company shortly after to concentrate on promoting their clients, Little River Band, in the US, with the remaining partners buying out their shares.

In October 1980 Chugg and Gudinski were involved in an attempt to revive a national Battle of the Sounds competition, which had last run in 1972.

The 1980 winner, Little Heroes, was one of three bands representing Victoria with three others from New South Wales, and three more from Queensland – other states were not represented.

Whilst arranging and promoting national tours for Squeeze, The Police, The Cure and Gary Numan, Chugg also took on the management of Jimmy and the Boys, The Church and The Sunnyboys.

In January 1983 Chugg, with other concert promoters, staged the first Narara Music Festival, which was attended by over 30,000 people and grossed over $1.5 million.

On 8 June 1998, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia with the citation "for service to music and the performing arts, particularly in relation to the promotion of Australian artists and to fundraising for youth and children's charities".

In 1999, Chugg left Frontier Touring Company after 20 years with the organisation, and founded Michael Chugg Entertainment (MCE) the following year.

He later recalled:

"I think the last couple of years, the company was losing focus on what was going on. I felt we weren't keeping up with technology. Also, I felt we weren't doing enough with young acts and building a client base like we had done back in the early '80s with acts like The Police, Bon Jovi, Bob Dylan, Bryan Adams, and we weren't really getting on top of the new breed of acts. I was getting frustrated with that and thought I'd like to give it a try on my own."

In 2000, Chugg was co-producer of the Opening and Closing ceremonies of the Paralympic Games in Sydney and he was awarded 'International Promoter of the Year' by Pollstar.

In 2010, he co-authored his autobiography, Hey, You in the Black T-Shirt: The Real Story of Touring the World's Biggest Acts, with journalist, Iain Shedden.

In March 2014 on the 50th anniversary of his start as a promoter, Denis Handlin (ex CEO of Sony Music Australia) opined "Chuggy is noisy, wild, cantankerous, the oldest teenager I know and very often a nightmare to deal with. But somehow we all love him because he lives and sweats the business with 100 per cent persistence and passion".

At the ARIA Music Awards of 2019 Chugg received the ARIA Industry Icon Award.