MILESAGO - Industry - Record Labels

Festival Records

Sydney based recording label and distributor, 1952 - present

Category:
Australian independent label

Ownership:
Mainguard Ltd, 1952-60
News Ltd, 1960 - present

House labels:
Festival
Infinity

Australian labels distributed:
Action
Clarion
Downunder
Kommotion
Leedon
Mushroom
Spin
Sunshine

International labels distributed:
A&M
ABC-Paramount (Ampar)
Atlantic (until 1972)
Brunswick
Coral
Evolution
Island
Liberty
20th Century
United Artists
Scepter / Wand

Much is made of the company's status as an "independent" label, and it's a claim that is made more than once in the literature produced for the Powerhouse Museum's "Spinning Around" exhibition. Certainly, Festival was independent of the major multinational companies that have controlled most of the music business for the last 40 years -- the Netherlands-based Polygram group, the three American-owned media conglomerates RCA (now BMG); ARC (later CBS and now Sony), Warner Bros (later WEA, now Time-Warner-AOL), and EMI, the British giant that had enjoyed a virtual monopoly over the Australian music scene between the wars.

Former Festival executive Warren Fahey claims in his introduction to the "Spinning Around" catalogue that

"The key term ... has been 'independent', fuelling its management, entreprenuerial spirit, power base and passion." (1)

While it's true that Festival was independent of the other major music companies and operated with relative independence on a day-to-day basis, it was not independent in any objective corporate sense. The undeniable fact is that, despite claims to the contrary, Festival has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation for all but the first few years of its history.

On the plus side of the equation, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch is reputed to have little interest in music, which was doubtless accounted for the nominal attention that he paid to the company. Despite it being one of his most consistently profitable holdings, he reportedly visited Festival's Pyrmont head office only a handful of times during more than forty years of ownership. On the minus side, it has been claimed that Murdoch regularly siphoned off much of the company's operaing surplus during the good years in order to bankroll other ventures in his ever-expanding empire. According to Herald journalist David Higgins (2) this could be as much as 90% of their operating profit in a given year.

Nevertheless, Festival played a crucial role in the early years of the Australian pop industry. It was first Australian label to released the new "rock'n'roll" music in the 50s, the first local company to have hits with rock'n'roll records, and the first local label to sign local rock'n'roll artists, beginning with the legendary Johnny O'Keefe.

After its aquisition by News in 1960 the company went from strength to strength, scoring a hit after hit on its own label and through the various independent labels which it distributed, including Leedon, Clarion, Sunshine, Spin and Du Monde. In the late 50's, thanks to a former a former A&R employee Bruce Gyngell, Festival formed a close and valuable relationship with Frank Packer's Nine Network. Their pioneering pop show BANDSTAND became a virtual shopfront for Festival artists and most of the so-called "Bandstand Family" including Col Joye, Little Pattie, and Judy Stone, were Festival artists.

The Beat Boom of the mid-60s was the golden era for Festival, although many of the classic recordings of the period were made by the independent labels it distributed. The Bee Gees began their recording career with them and most of the leading artists of the period -- Tony Worsley & The Blue Jays, Ray Brown & The Whispers, Normie Rowe, Mike Furber, Ronnie Burns, Johnny Young and many others -- were all "Festival" artists.

Of tremendous importance was the influence of Festival's staff producers. Robert Iredale was their first, from the 50s and mid- '60s and he recorded many eary classics with local acts like O'Keefe and a young british-born vocal trio called The Bee Gees. Another imortant if shortlived name was producer-arranger Bill Sheppard, who took over the Bee Gees and who with independent studio owner Ossie Byrne produecd some of their first important recordings, including the classic Spicks and Specks.

With the departure of Iredale and Sheppard, the multi-talented Pat Aulton took over in, working as house producer from the mid-60s to the early 70s; he had also produced many hits for the Spin and Sunshine labels before joining Festival in 1967 and besides as the many Australian classics he oversaw, he also worked with big international names like Neil Sedaka.

Moving into the 70s, Festival continued to thrive with another former independent, Martin Erdman, who produced Festival's biggest succeess of the period, Sister Janet Mead's international smash hit The Lord's Prayer. Another very important name in this period was staff engineer-producer Richard Batchens, who worked on many early hits for Sherbet as well as progressive classics like Blackfeather's At The Mountains Of Madness.

Festival

History

The early years, 1952-64

The Festival story began after WWII,when former Australian Army commander Paul Cullen founded Mainguard, one of Australia's first merchant banks. Mainguard was an entrepreneurial outfit, and during the late 1940s it set up a variety of businesses in insurance, building and construction was well as financing high-risk ventures including a rice farm in the the Northern Territory, a whaling company in Moreton Bay, and Solar Salt Ltd, a scheme to recover salt from sea water.

Cullen hired old two army buddies, John Dalhunty and Cyril Beavis, as "investigating accountants" to look for ailing businesses that could be bought cheaply and then worked back into the black. Dalhunty found a likely candidate in Casper Precision Engineering in Redfern, and thought that it might be made profitable by converting it into a record pressing plant. Dalhunty knew that the new vinyl microgroove LP record sales were booming overseas and he also knew that EMI, then the dominant label in Australia, seemed to have no interest in the new technology, although a couple of Aussie firms were doing a brisk business pressing the new format, including Melbourne engineering company White & Gillespie who were pressing LPs for a number of local companies and for their own house label W&G.

Dalhunty then sought the opinion of Les Welch, the popular and prolific Sydney bandleader who had already recorded some 200 songs for Sydney's ARC label. Dalhunty was acting on the advice of on the advice of Cullen, who had seen Welch perform in 1950 and told him that "if you can get Les Welch you can have your record company". Welch seconded Dalhunty's opinion that there was money to be made in the record business and he recommended that Mainguard also purchase two 10-inch record presses which he had knew were being held in bond on a Sydney wharf. Mainguard took over Casper Engineering, installed the presses, put Welsh on the payroll and began business by pressing custom shellac discs.

In late 1951 Dalhunty went overseas on a buying trip and came back with a swag of licencing and distribution deals from prominent American and European lables including Westminster, Remington, Savoy, Regent, Atlantic, Vox and Metronome. The name for the new company was suggested by Dalhunty's wife Judith. With Dalhunty as its first managng director it was incorporated as Festival Records Pty Ltd on 21 October 1952, housed in offices on the fourth floor of 126 Phillip St, Sydney, formerly the home of the famous Smith's Weekly.

Festival rented (and later bought) a old cinema at Gladesville where they installed ten presses, and production started in March 1953. A young Sydney electronics buff called Robert Iredale was hired as the company's first recording engineer. After several months of experimentation and struggles with the pressing process, they began manufacturing the various recordings they had licenced, although they had little iniitial success. To overcome the resistance of local publishers and radio stations, Festival adopted a strategy that was to become a standard procedure for years to come -- recording cover versions of well known overseas hits with local artists.

Their first record on the Festival label was Les Welch's Meet Mr Callaghan, released on 14 November 1952. It's catalogue number FM-1019 was a sleight of hand -- they gave it a higher number rather than the expected FM-0001 to give the impression that the company already had a number of releases to its credit. It sold very strongly, some 10,000 copies withing six weeks,

References / Links

1. Peter Cox - Spinning Around: the Festival Records Story - Powerhouse Museum, 2001

2. David Higgins - A Long Way To The Bottom - Sydney Morning Herald, Decemeber ?? 2001