Stuart Coupe’s amazing life in music

Back in the pre digital era of music magazines and free street press, there existed a cult of music writers of which musicians and their followers hung on every word written.

This small coterie of writers were often egotistical, damaging and always self opinionated.

In fact, it was that self opinion that won a writer followers, and equally as importantly, haters, and for much of this period Stuart Coupe was at the head of the pack.

Now, in his book Shake Some Action, Coupe recounts his immersion into the music scene from his early Launceston fan boy days to his wild, wild ride of some fifty years in the Australian music scene.

“The book is about a kid who grew up in Launceston in the sixties and seventies, who first bought “Friday on My Mind” by the Easybeats, listening to Chris Winter on “Room to Move” (ABC Radio 1) on a crystal radio set — and I had a desire to share my enthusiasm about music and books,” Stuart Coupe said.

“I learned to never talk down to a reader, but to have a conversation with them.”

Getting his start on Adelaide street press magazines, while attempting to attend Flinders University, Coupe soon came to the attention of RAM, one of the two national music magazines in the late sixties and early seventies.

Coupe writes insightfully about his relocation from Adelaide to Sydney, and how the new and more professional work environment and Sydney’s sheer size and its ability to alienate at first filled him with dread.

Seemingly in no time, Coupe finds himself at the epicentre of Australia’s booming rock music scene that is also attracting the top bands in the world.

Opportunities abound and kid finds himself in Paris, backstage with Bruce Springsteen, discussing the difficulty of playing “Friday on My Mind”.

On another trip, also to Paris, the six foot plus Coupe found himself asking Mick Jagger for a photo together.

The much shorter Jagger only assented after a milk crate was found for him to stand on to make him equal in height to Coupe.

Back in Sydney Coupe would embark on managing the Hoodoo Gurus and Paul Kelly, while also attempting a career at tour promotion, running a record company and writing trivia questions for Twisties packets.

“A lot of it was being in the right place at the right time, and my life was shaped by a lot of people who didn’t believe in the misuse of power and gave freely their insights,” Coupe said.

Coupe cites promoter Michael Chugg and Mushroom Record’s Michael Gudinski as being just two  of many people who influenced his outlook and approach to writing about music.

None of Coupe’s achievements came without a cost to himself and those he cared about.

In his self effacing manner Coupe describes his increasing reliance on cocaine and alcohol across many years and how that affected his personal relationships, his finances and his finer judgement.

“I thought the coke and the booze was pertinent to the story I was trying to tell, the stuff about panic and anxiety and agoraphobia periods,” Coupe said.

Much of this occurred over a time when drugs were the secondary currency of the music industry and the question was not ‘who didn’t take drugs’, but ‘what drugs were they on?’

Shake Some Action is essential reading for those who experienced the Sydney and wider Australian music scene over the last fifty years, as told by an insider who never lets his achievements overwhelm the story.

“I wanted to convey what it was like in the late ‘70s and early  ‘80s and what the music scene was like and the lifestyles and collective experiences of all of the people who inhabited my world,” Coupe said.

 

Shake Some Action by Stuart Coupe