Stuart Coupe

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Stuart Coupe (born 11 September 1956) is an Australian

music journalist, author, band manager, promoter, publicist and music label founder. A renowned rock music writer, Coupe is best known for his work with Roadrunner, Rock Australia Magazine, The Sun-Herald, and Dolly; the music labels, GREEN Records and Laughing Outlaw;[1] and the author of books including The Promoters, Gudinski, Roadies, and Paul Kelly.[2]

Coupe is a former manager of the Australian bands

Sydney Morning Herald
and for founding the Australian crime fiction magazine, Mean Streets.

Biography

Stuart Coupe was born in Launceston, Tasmania, where he grew up with his parents Pat and David Coupe and brother Martin. He attended

Sydney Filmmakers Co-operative to Launceston audiences. He was a squash player of note representing Tasmania in the Australian National Squash Championships in Perth in 1973 and Adelaide in 1974. On completing high school he studied to be an English speech and drama teacher in Launceston in 1975, and then moved to Adelaide and enrolled in an Arts degree Flinders University
at the beginning of 1976. He did not complete the degree, dropping out of uni to move to Sydney for a writing job in 1978.

Coupe has been married twice, divorced twice, has four children and is a major fan of the Sydney Swans football team.

Journalism and Publishing

Coupe started music writing in high school publishing one issue of a school newspaper, Labyrinth, at the age of 15. In 1977 he was one of the editors of Empire Times, Flinders University's student newspaper. In 1977 he started a punk rock fanzine, Street Fever, with Donald Robertson, which folded after one issue. In early 1978 he cofounded the Adelaide what's on guide, Preview, with Dennis Atkins, Kim Krummel, Terry Plane, and Phillip White. That year, together with Donald Robertson and others, he co-founded the Adelaide-based music magazine,

TAGG (The Alternative Gig Guide) and a year later started writing the Rockbeat column for The Sun-Herald, which continued through to 1991. During the eighties and nineties, Coupe was also a freelance music writer for The Age, The Canberra Times, Rolling Stone Australia, Vox (Melbourne), Nation Review, Australian Playboy, Sydney Shout, On The Street and Drum Media (now known as The Music (magazine)
, and he was also the first editor of Triple J radio network's JMAG. Coupe continues to contribute to Rhythms magazine. Coupe is frequently asked to participate as speaker and panellist at music industry events and conferences including Mumbrella Entertainment Marketing Summit 2016 and Australian Music Week 2019.[4]

Music Labels

In 1980 Coupe,

Spy vs Spy (Australian band), Super K, Tactics (band) and The Johnnys
. In 1996 he was involved with setting up early Internet start-up, Velvet, an online music and music news subscription service that folded in the first year.

In 1999 Coupe and Jules Normington (a co-founder of Phantom Records) set up the Laughing Outlaw music label focussing on new and emerging Australian artists and a selection on overseas acts. After 16 years he left Laughing Outlaw in 2015 by which time it had released over 150 CDs from artists including writer Andrew McMillan, Anne McCue, Black Cab, Dusty Ravens, Emma Swift, Jason Walker, John Kennedy, L.J. Hill, Mic Conway, New Christs, Perry Keyes, the Widowbirds and Clinton Walker's Inner City Sound compilation. In 2005 Coupe also opened and ran the Laughing Outlaw record shop in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Lewisham, which closed in 2014.

Band Management

In 1983 and 1984 Coupe was the first manager of Hoodoo Gurus and toured the United States with the band after the release of their first album, Stoneage Romeos. From 1984 to 1990 he was the manager of Paul Kelly (Australian musician) during the time Kelly released the albums Post, Gossip, Under The Sun and So Much Water So Close To Home. During these years Coupe also did stints as the manager of X (Australian band), the Flaming Hands, Drop Bears, The Amazing Woolloomooloosers and the Danglin’ Bros. He later managed Ian Rilen, Dan Brodie and Perry Keyes.

Publicity and Tour Promotion

Coupe's involvement in the Australian music industry has included providing publicity and tour promotion for Australian and international bands from the early 1980s to the present day. He worked on publicity for the tours by

The Dead Kennedys, The Gun Club, The Teardrop Explodes and Jonathan Richman
.

In the late eighties he formed the band touring company, BBC, with Bicci Henderson and Rob Barnham, and later dropped the name after objections from the British broadcaster, the BBC. Under the auspices of BBC and later with promoter Keith Glass, Coupe was the promoter of Australian tours for

Mary-Chapin Carpenter, Tom Russell, Dave Alvin, Ted Hawkins, Guy Clark, Chris Whitley, Harry Dean Stanton, Dick Dale, and Link Wray
.

Coupe was also involved in promotion and publicity for international crime fiction writers. He and Keith Glass brought

Ed McBain and P. J. O'Rourke. In the 1990s Coupe also appeared at writers festivals interviewing Walter Mosley, Michael Connelly, Lawrence Block and Ken Bruen
.

In 2016 he resumed providing publicity services for a range of international and Australian acts including

P.P. Arnold, Alejandro Escovedo and Steve Poltz
, the Out On The Weekend music festival and numerous Australian artists.

Books

Coupe has authored, co-authored, and edited a number of books since the early eighties. His first books were music encyclopedias, The New Music (1980) and The New Rock’n’Roll (1983) co-authored with Australian rock writer and historian,

Glenn A Baker. He later published The Edge Ultimate CD Guide (1989) and an authorised biography, Craig McLachlan
, the official book (1990).

In the early nineties, Coupe and Julie Ogden edited three anthologies of crime fiction: Hardboiled: Tough, Explicit and Uncompromising Crime Fiction (1992); and Case Reopened (1993), where crime writers were commissioned to write fictional solutions to real unsolved Australian murders and mysteries; and with Robert Hood Crosstown Traffic (1993), crime fiction that switched genres during the story.

Coupe co-authored Triple J’s Internet Music Guide,(1998) with Richard Kingsmill. Coupe's more recent books include The Promoters (2003), Gudinski (2015); Roadies (2018); and Tex (2017), co-authored with Tex Perkins. In 2020, he published a biography of Australian musician, Paul Kelly (Australian musician).[5][6] Also in 2020 came Coupe's book length collection of interviews with James Burton, Ron Tutt, Glen D. Hardin and Jerry Sceff who were Elvis Presley's TCB Band. The book is entitled On Stage With Elvis Presley (SEG Publishing).[7] Coupe's interview with Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg was included in Conversations With Allen Ginsberg, edited by David Stephen Calonne (University Press Of Mississippi).[8]

Broadcasting

Coupe's first foray into broadcasting was presenting the music program, Funk To Punk, on Sydney community radio station, 2SER in 1981. He was co-presenter with Bruce Stalder of the Sunday night Album Show on Sydney commercial radio station Triple M in 1987.

In 2003 Coupe began presenting a music program called Lyricism on

ABC Radio National while its regular presenter, Lucky Oceans
, was on leave.

Since 2013, Coupe has presented the weekly roots-based music program, Dirt Music, on 2SER, the first hour of which is syndicated nationally by the CBAA on community radio stations across Australia. In 2015 Dirt Music was awarded best 2SER music program.

Bibliography

Books:

'The New Music', Stuart Coupe & Glenn A Baker (Bay Books, 1980)

'The New Rock’n’Roll', Stuart Coupe & Glenn A Baker (Omnibus Press, 1983)

'The Edge Ultimate CD Guide', Stuart Coupe (Century Magazines, 1989)

'Craig McLachlan, the official book', Stuart Coupe, (Century Publications, 1990)

'Hardboiled: Tough, Explicit and Uncompromising Crime Fiction', (anthology) edited, Stuart Coupe & Julie Ogden (Allen and Unwin, 1993)

'Crosstown Traffic', (anthology) edited, Stuart Coupe, Julie Ogden & Robert Hood (Five Islands Press, 1993)

'Case Reopened', edited, Stuart Coupe & Julie Ogden (Allen and Unwin, 1994)

'Triple J's Internet Music Guide', Richard Kingsmill and Stuart Coupe (ABC Books, 1998)

'The Promoters: Inside stories from the Australian rock industry', Stuart Coupe (Hachette Australia, 2003)

'Gudinski: The Godfather of Australian Rock', Stuart Coupe (Hachette Australia, 2015)

'Tex', by Tex Perkins with Stuart Coupe. (Pan Macmillan Australia 2017)

'Roadies: The Secret History of Australian Rock’n’roll', Stuart Coupe (Hachette Australia, 2018)

'Paul Kelly: The Man, The Music And The Life In Between', Stuart Coupe (Hachette Australia, 2020)

'On Stage With Elvis Presley', Stuart Coupe (SEG Publishing, 2020)

'Shake Some Action: My Life In Music (And Other Stuff)' (Penguin Random House 2023)

Book Chapters:

'How to write Crime Fiction', edited by Marele Day (Allen and Unwin, 1996)

'Dear Santa', edited by Samuel Johnson OAM (Hachette Australia, 2018)

'Dear Dad', edited Samuel Johnson OAM (Hachette Australia, 2019)

‘Allen Ginsberg: The Last Australian Interview', edited by David Stephen Calonne (University Of Mississippi Press, 2019)

Awards and achievements

References

  1. ISBN 1-86508-072-1. Archived from the original
    on 19 April 2004. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  2. ABC Radio National. Australian Broadcasting Corporation
    . 25 April 2013. Retrieved 6 September 2018.
  3. Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media
    . 28 April 2003. Retrieved 6 October 2019.
  4. ^ "First Speakers & Artists Revealed for Australian Music Week 2019". The Music. Handshake Media Pty Limited. 17 September 2019. Retrieved 10 January 2020.
  5. ^ "Interview: Stuart Coupe on recording 200+ hours of interviews with Roadies for his book's ultimate, AAA pass". (The AU Review). 2018. Retrieved 18 February 2020.
  6. ^ "Roadies for INXS, Iggy Pop and others on the struggles of life on and off the road". (ABC News). 2018. Retrieved 18 February 2020.
  7. ISBN 9780578777467.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  8. OCLC 1061091483.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link
    )
  9. ^ "ABIA 2021 shortlists announced". Books+Publishing. 12 April 2021. Retrieved 12 April 2021.
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