Enjoying massive popularity with monster hits I Wanna
Make You My Lady, Last Romance and Never Gonna Fall In
Love Again in the 70s made Mark our very own pop idol.
Girls practically fainted if they were given one of his
trademark red carnations during his performance. Mark's
albums achieved platinum success, he won three Logies
and scored numerous roles in TV dramas and films.
Living in the USA in the 80s, Mark worked with film star
Milla Jovovich, Mowtown gurus The Temptations, Belinda
Carlisle, Andrew Strong of The Commitments and actor/singer
David Hasselhoff.
Returning to Oz in the 90s, Mark formed artist management
company, MarJac Productions, which manages Vanessa Amorosi.
He co-wrote hits Absolutely Everybody, Shine, Have A Look
and The Power and has written songs recorded by Delta
Goodrem, Sophie Monk and Nikki Webster. He is passionately
focussed on developing new Australian talent and brings
his own unique experience as a singer, songwriter, producer
and international artist developer to the team.
||
Marcia Hines
Gracious Australian musical goddess, Marcia Hines, has
been singing professionally for more than thirty year,
her first solo performance was at the tender age of seven.
Marcia first came to Australia (a place she'd never even
heard of!) from the US when she was just 16 years old,
after she scored a role in the radical musical "Hair".
From there, her career skyrocketed with eight multi-platinum
albums, eleven top ten hits making her enormously successful.
Previously voted the Queen of Pop, Marcia was Australia's
number one selling act for much of the 70s. Her popularity
surged again in the 90s and she is considered one of the
most successful recording artists this country has ever
seen.
Marcia brings a wealth of experience and energy to Australian
Idol and is looking forward to "watching the talent metamorphose
and grow".
||
Kyle Sandilands
Shock waves
April 18, 2005
Sue Javes reveals the demons and ambitions of radio's
bad boy, Kyle Sandilands.
There are many faces of Kyle Sandilands, breakfast radio
host on the rise. There's the conspicuously wealthy media
star relaxing at his harbourside home in exclusive Woolwich,
publicist, manager and personal assistant at his side.
The beautiful pop singer girlfriend. A grand piano has
been ordered and the boat comes next. "A big, long
one, like in Miami Vice."
There's the little boy lost: the former
street kid standing outside his aunt's home in Townsville
at 17 with all his possessions in a suitcase held together
by a belt. Rejected by his feuding parents, facing court
for numerous driving offences.
There's the loud-mouthed shock jock, swearing on air,
staging peeing contests, outing the gay teenager on his
staff, talking dirty with a prostitute, humiliating people
on air. There's the bully boy, throwing tantrums at work,
intimidating colleagues, demanding junior staff be sacked
for incompetence, threatening to bury the band Frenzal
Rhomb.
There's Kyle Inc: the budding entrepreneur, ambitious
and egocentric, walking the red carpet with slicked-back
hair. The MTV presenter, soon-to-be Australian Idol
judge, music video investor and owner of the King Kyle
record label (one artist so far).
He's crass, a confessed liar with a questionable past,
but at 33 Sandilands has forced himself to the front
rank of Sydney radio. From here he could go anywhere
- up or down.
Sandilands saw himself as a future breakfast star long
before his bosses at Austereo. Station executives found
the former Brisbane radio jock high maintenance from
the moment he arrived in Sydney five years ago to replace
Ugly Phil O'Neil on the night-time Hot 30 show. A former
manager describes him as a very passionate guy with
a massive ego. "It was confronting because he was
just so open about being in it for himself."
Colleagues say Sandilands was an explosive character
back then, a bit of a bully who intimidated junior staff
and was prone to bursts of rage. But they also paint
a picture of an insecure, even shy, loner who needed
constant reassurance from management and surrounded
himself with a small coterie of supporters.
From the beginning, Sandilands adopted the persona
of the shock jock - a poor man's Howard Stern or, as
one executive put it, Stan Zemanek jnr. Co-host Jackie
O became his foil, the good cop to his bad cop, giving
the show its dynamic.
Despite management reservation about Sandilands's behaviour,
the audience lapped it up. His big break came last year
when executives, with some trepidation, let him and
Jackie O take over the drive slot. At issue was whether
Sandilands could tone down his coarseness and add enough
sophistication to appeal to commuters and mothers doing
the school pick-up. By year's end, Sandilands and Jackie
O had the most successful show on 2Day. Meanwhile, Judith
Lucy's breakfast show was critically ill, and the station's
ratings were in free fall, so management took a risk
and, in December, the breakfast slot was his and Jackie
O's. So far, it has worked.
It's a dramatic rise when you listen to Sandilands's
account of his childhood, which includes months as a
street kid in Brisbane living in a horse float. "Most
of my friends from that time are either dead or in jail,"
he says. Bosses who'd learned to take his yarns with
a grain of salt rolled their eyes when he first revealed
the story, but there's no doubt Sandilands had a rotten
childhood.
At 10, he was an unhappy spectator to his parents'
bitter divorce. Both remarried but Sandilands says he
rebelled against a physically abusive stepfather and
felt displaced by his father's new family. He became
the class clown "because when you're the class
clown, you don't really fit into any group. You just
float around."
At 15, his mother and stepfather ordered him from the
house after he held a party and damaged their car while
they were away. He never went back, moving between friends'
houses and the streets. At 17, his father sent him to
live in Townsville with his aunt, Jill Stevens.
"Oh, my God, what I let myself in for," Stevens
says with a laugh. "He would lie and cheat and
take things from the house. He was in trouble with the
police. We called him Lord Davenport because of the
grand stories he made up about himself. But I felt so
sorry for him. He used to listen to that Tammy Wynette
song D-I-V-O-R-C-E and just cry and cry. He's never
gotten over his parents' divorce ... When he was living
on the streets, he used to sit outside his father's
house at night and watch the lights go out."
Sandilands admits his first attempts at work were uninspiring.
He was retrenched from a meatworks company, let go from
an electronics store after pocketing some of the takings,
and sacked from Cadburys after sharing his fuel card
with friends. His aunt was despairing when a friend
showed him around Townsville radio station 4TO. Sandilands
says he was offered a job after impressing an executive
with a fake resume, which claimed he'd worked at Triple
M in Brisbane. His aunt says he hung around doing work
experience until they took pity on him. His first role
was driving the promotional vehicle and handing out
freebies. Within a few years he says he was running
the promotions department for Mike Willesee's Queensland
radio stations, which eventually led to an on-air role.
Sandilands shares his Woolwich home with his girlfriend
of five years, Tamara Jaber, who used to sing in the
girl band Scand'l'us before setting out on a solo career,
and with his manager, Ryan Wellington, 28, a radio friend
since Sandilands's Townsville days.
Wellington is rarely away from Sandilands's side. Until
last year he was Sandilands's producer, but 2Day severed
the relationship in September after an on-air blow-up
with Frenzal Rhomb.
Since then, Wellington has been working on Sandilands's
other business interests. In the works are an Osbournes-style
reality show on Sandilands (no takers yet); King Kyle
Records, with one artist signed so far (Jaber); TV roles
on MTV and Ten's Australian Idol; and investment in
a music video production company.
This year will be a make or break. The next two or
three months will reveal whether listeners who have
sampled his and Jackie O's mix of songs, gossip, celebrities
and surprises such as the prostitute interview will
stick around. In July, Sandilands takes over Dicko's
role on Australian Idol. He will have no trouble being
controversial, but does he have the credentials to be
a judge?
What Sandilands lacks in talent and education, he intends
to make up for with sheer determination and drive. "He's
a real fighter and extremely driven and focused, and
nothing will get in his way to where he wants to be,"
says Jackie O, who considers him a loyal friend and
"a big soft teddy bear" most of the time.
Austereo knows it's taken a gamble but Sandilands won't
hear of anything but winning. Of his chief rivals, Nova's
Merrick and Rosso, he says: "We'll beat them in
the next few months and once we beat them they'll never
be No. 1 again." And Alan Jones? "He might
be a bit harder, but I'm happy to wait until Alan passes
away."
