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Australia Day Ambassadors |
Glenn A. Baker
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"He can vividly conjure up images and feelings of periods which remind us of episodes in our own lives - like a kind of cultural photographer." - "It is said that Glenn A. Baker is the most thorough and knowledgeable music journalist in the world today. He is also a nice bloke...not bad eh?" - Glenn A. Baker occupies a unique niche in Australian entertainment and public life, or as Barry Humphries sees it, "Mr Baker is a mercurial man". Music expert, intrepid traveller, radio and television presenter, best selling author and effusive enthusiast; his voice and face have become extremely familiar over the past twenty five years. His capacity to elucidate upon his favourite topics, with accuracy and humour, has been likened to "talking under wet cement". His unique knowledge, similar to that of a Bill Collins or Don Burke, and his range of experience have given him a rare level of credibility in a notoriously ephemeral area. "He's put pop into perestroika and he syncopates the soul" says Ray Martin. David Fricke, Music Editor of Rolling Stone (U.S.) once declared "Glenn A. Baker is not just Australia's top pop scholar, he is a world-class rock journalist who writes with the enthusiasm of a true fan." Oscar-winning lyricist Tim Rice dubbed him "The Allan Border of popular music history and analysis". Or in the words of rocker Jimmy Barnes: "Glenn is a madman who is totally dedicated to music." Yet it is not only in popular music that Glenn has been acclaimed. His diversity is dramatic. In the mid-eighties he thrice won the BBCs Rock Brain of the Universe title. At the end of 1995 he took out the inaugural Australian Society of Travel Writers' Travel Writer of the Year award, having visited over 80 countries. He took out the award again in 2000, having been runner-up the previous year (his country tally by that time was over 100). It was in 1991 the Glenn particularly displayed the breadth of his talents by appearing simultaneously as the travel presenter on the Ten Network's Good Morning Australia and the resident judge of the network's Starsearch. (During that year he was also short-listed for a Raward for his nationally syndicated Triple M-FM radio show Back To The Future (high rating for four years) and was profiled by both A Current Affair and The Australian Magazine, with Burke's Backyard and Sydney Extra profiling him the following year.) Since the early 70s when he began his career as a concert promoter and artist manager, and the mid 70s when he created and managed the multi-platinum rock act 0l'55 (for whom he co-wrote a number of hit songs), Glenn has been active in myriad areas of media and entertainment. The Australian editor of the international Billboard magazine for more than 20 years, he has also been a prolific feature writer (on music and travel related subjects) for hundreds of major Australian and international magazines and newspapers, including Rolling Stone, Variety, Cashbox, Musician, Music Week, Sunday Times Magazine (UK), Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Penthouse, Good Weekend and a slew of leading in-flight magazines. He has written the programme notes for such stage productions as Hair, Superstar, Elvis The Musical, Looking Through A Glass Onion, The Revolution Will Not be Televised, A Tribute To Carole King, Oh What A Night and Shout! His song compositions have appeared on the soundtracks of the films The FJ Holden and The Sum Of Us. Glenn has undertaken more than 1500 television appearances; including, in his early years, compering ten episodes of After Dark for the 7 network and 19 episodes of Beat Club for SBS, co-compering 65 episodes of Music Video for the Ten network and appearing as a'regular'on the Nine network's The Midday Show, Live At Five and Eye on Australia. Throughout the 90s he was a regular face on Good Morning Australia with Bert Newton for six years, and in 2001 hosted the show Baker's Dozen for the Foxtel channel Music Country. Glenn began his radio career in the late 70s, presenting the Rock'n'Roll Trivia Show on the fledgling 2JJ (moving on soon after in became Triple J). After a stint with 2WS (which embraced the writing and co-production of the 36 hour radio documentary ... And The Beat Goes On), he joined forces with Bob Hudson at 2BL for a five and a half year run of the infamous Friday night Music Buffs' Talk Back Show. After Back To The Future for the Triple M network (which ran on almost 50 stations) he was heard nationally through the Sky Radio network in 1993 with a revived version of Back To The Future and then on 2SM for another year with the programme. For some fifteen years he has been heard on Qantas inflight, presenting such two hour shows as Glenn A. Baker's Greatest Hits and Reelin' In The Years, and occasionally comedy and interview programmes. At the end of 1987, at the Avion Awards in Florida, one of these unique inflight shows took out the coveted and hotly contested award for Best Single Inflight Audio Programme (in the world). As a specialist public speaker and compere/host/presenter, Glenn has undertaken assignments for such organisations as Toyota Australia, Hewlett-Packard, Inter-Continental Hotels, Fender Australia, Virgin Records, Festival Mushroom Records, Malaysia Airlines, Finnish Tourist Board, Royal Caribbean Cruises, NRMA Ltd., SIDA Inc., Parkinson’s NSW Inc, David Jones, the National Library of Australia, National Trust, Powerhouse Museum, Ted Noffs Foundation and Air New Zealand. He has appeared on panels at the Australian Book Fair and anchored seminars for the Australian Society of Travel Writers and other travel bodies. He was recently decreed a Life Member of the ASTW, was the recipient of the music industry’s 2000 Golden Stave Award, and has been honoured on the Australian music ‘Walk of Fame’ at Velvet Waters in Caloundra, Queensland. In 2001 he was one of the hosts of the two-day Gimme Ted all-star benefit concerts for Ted Mulry and in 2002 he joined the likes of Britt Eckland, Richard Wilkins and Kerrie Anne Kennerley as one of the stage presenters at the massive Corporate Countdown charity event at Sydney's Hordern Pavillion. Each year he is master of ceremonies for the Australian music industry’s Music Trivia Challenge in aid of Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Australia. For the past four years he has been an annual Australian Day Ambassador, addressing ceremonies from Parkes to Broken Hill. Driven by exceptional energy, Glenn has written fifteen books, annotated and/or compiled over 500 anthology albums, scripted radio specials and television documentaries, authored the Rock Academy board game, been a stage presenter at ARIA, APRA and AMA Awards and on the Legends of Rock tour of Australia and Wizards of Oz tour of Japan, and was senior judge at the Rock Eisteddfod for a dozen years. He operates a record label and an archive service, and for thirteen years his name appeared over large Sydney retail emporium Time Warp. And still he had time to be the father of six children! Glenn has enjoyed a unique relationship with artists and performers over his long career. In 1986/87 he toured Australia with INXS and Jimmy Barnes (having found for them the song that became their collaborative smash hit - Good Times) on the Australian Made concert tour, writing the official book of the event, Gonna Have A Good Time Tonight. "The respect he commands within the international music industry can be read between the lines of this book" said John Farnham about the 1990's External Combustion, which carried the tale of their joint visit to Moscow for the launch of the Greenpeace album Breakthrough. In 1999, the year that he was heard regularly on the radio programmes of such personalities as Mike Gibson, Tim Shaw and, on national ABC, Angela Katterns and Tony Delroy; was profiled on Foxtel's Laws show; and was a guest panelist, alongside Jimmy Barnes, Molly Meldrum, Debra Byrne and others, on the Nine Network TV special Simply The Best ... Music. he undertook a return visit to Cuba, where (in the company of the likes of Woody Harrelson, Jimmy Buffett, Bonnie Raitt and Mick Fleetwood at the Music Bridge songwriting workshop) he had a brief personal audience with Fidel Castro. In 2000 Glenn accompanied indigenous rock act Yothu Yindi to the still-ravaged East Timor, where they played before 10,000 at an event to mark the first anniversary of the referendum for independence. His encounters with the Gusmaos - Kirsty and Xanana - formed the basis of a key story in his fifteenth book - On The Road To Damascus and Other Fabulous Thoroughfares, published by Penguin late in 2001. This was his fourth book of travel tales. Of the first, Perpetual Motion in 1993, Radio National's Phillip Adams offered the opinion: "Glenn A. Baker should be kneecapped by the travel industry because he writes about far away places so vividly that it no longer feels necessary for one to visit them." "It takes an inveterate traveler to know one and he's certainly that" added George Negus. Glenn was engaged as a music consultant for the closing ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics and wrote a considerable portion of the programme book for the event. His writing continued to appear throughout the world, including an unprecedented nine page feature in Discovery, the in-flight magazine of Cathay Pacific Airways, dealing with the city of his birth, Sydney. Apart from writing text for the acclaimed coffee-table book Sydney In Black & White, he has contributed essays to the books Off The Rails, Virtuosity and Susan Kurosawa's Places In The Heart. In the spaces between this array of activities (and chasing polar bears in the Arctic and whales in the Antarctic) Glenn is the advisor to Australian Post for their series of Australian rock/pop postage stamps and a creative consultant to the Long Way To the Top TV series and concert tour. He also submits himself to interviews for such international media organisations and shows as The Big Breakfast on U.K. television, BBC's Radio Five Live station, Chrysalis Television, and America's VH1 (notably their Behind The Music documentary on AC/DC). His is the opinion and analysis which Australian radio, television and press turns to when a major event or passing occurs in rock. He has even had a Prime Minister ring him to locate classic song lyrics to use in a parliamentary debate! |
