Theatre and concert promoter, producer, artist manager, 1940s-1990s
Regarded as the elder statesman of Australian showbiz, Kenn Brodziak OBE (1913-1999) will always be known to most Australians as the man who brought the Beatles downunder in 1964, but over the course of his long career he was involved in almost every aspect of the Australian entertainment industry.
Kenn was managing director of the promotion company Aztec Services (1946-79) and later of the venerable J.C. Williamson Productions Ltd (1976-80). He was involved in many famous Australaian stage shows and as well as The Beatles he promoted concert tours by many famous local and international artists. Kenn was also a keen collector of Australian numismatics, and assembled a significant collection of show business memorabilia.
Kenn started out in show business in 1945 as an assistant producer on the local vaudeville circuit. He established Aztec Services a year later to tour overseas acts. He mounted scores of successful tours including Winifred Atwell, Gene Pitney, Marlene Dietrich (his favourite performer), Normie Rowe, The Seekers, Freddy & The Dreamers, The Easybeats, Pat Boone, Fabian, Cilla Black, The Dave Clark Five, Duane Eddy, Robert Morley, Bob Dylan, Lonnie Donegan, Cliff Richard, Dave Brubeck, Marcel Marceau, Eartha Kitt and Jack Benny (from whose tour he reportedly made a profit of 10 shillings!)
A young man going places. Kenn at his desk in the Aztec Services office in Flinders Lane, Melbourne, 1953. This was one of his favourite photos.
Kenn's biggest coup as a promoter was of course his signing of The Beatles during a talent-scouting tour of England in July 1963. He made a verbal agreement for the artists he wanted on condition he also took on the up-and-coming Liverpool group. Four days before Brian Epstein gave his verbal agreement for The Beatles to come, the group recorded She Loves You, the song which sparked off the global explosion of Beatlemania. Eleven months later, when The Fab Four landed in Australia, they'd already had twelve hits in this country, and during one particular week in early 1964 they held all of the top six places in the Top 10.
The initial verbal contract price for the 16-day tour was £1,500 but by the time the formal contractwas signed on 2 December 1963, Epstein had raised the price to £2,500. Despite the fact that he was being offered up to fifty times that much for another US tour, Epstein kept his agrement with Brodziak.
"I had heard Brian Epstein was an honorable businessman," Kenn recalled in the 1980s. "One of the first things that George (Harrison) said when the band arrived in Sydney was, 'You got us at the old price, didn't you?' I said 'Yes', but he didn't seem to mind."
Years later Brodziak acknowledged that, in spite of his many other achievements, bringing the Fab Four to Australia would be his epitaph.
"It used to annoy me that people only knew me for bringing The Beatles here," he said in 1998. "Now I realise what a landmark moment that was. There will never be another group like them."
In the early Sixties, when the second wave of rock music was sweeping the world, local promoters vied to bring out the leading acts. Kenn's main rival in concert promotion was New Zealand-born entrepreneur Harry M. Miller. According to Miller, there was a lot of "low voltage friction" between them in the early days of their business relationship, although later on he and Kenn became good friends and business partners.
After arriving in Sydney from New Zealand in the early Sixties, Miller formed Pan-Pacific Promotions with Sydney restauranteurs Keith and Dennis Wong (owners of Chequers nightclub) and they had some early success promoting concert tours from using Chequers as their base. Miller managed to get the jump on Brodziak's Beatles triumph by singing several leading pop acts for the "Liverpool Sound" package tour in early 1964 with Gerry & The Pacemakers, Brian Poole & The Tremoloes, Dusty Springfield and Gene Pitney.
According to Miller, Brodziak was incensed at the timing of the tour and responded by putting Beatles tickets on sale at the same time as Miller's tour, and even accused Miller of stooping to "low tactics" when a group of students staged an impromptu demonstration aross the road from the Beatles' Sydney hotel, in support of another of Miller's touring acts, classical pianist Artur Rubenstein.
But then Miller and Pan-Pacific found themselves 'one-upped' in 1965 when Brodziak signed an exclusive partnership deal with Stadiums Ltd, owners of most of the major capital city venues including the Brisbane and Melbourne Festival Halls and the Sydney Stadium. The deal effectively locked Pan-Pacific out of these major venues at key times including the Xmas and Easter periods. Miller scored a counter-blow by signing The Rolling Stones for their first Australian tour, against stiff competition from Brodziak. He was able -- albeit at considerable expense -- to sidestep the Aztec-Stadiums lock-out by leasing and renovating the Manufacturers' Pavilion at the Sydney Showground.
Brodziak repsonded in turn, announcing another major package tour starring The Kinks, Manfred Mann, The Honeycombs and Tony Sheveton, which he scheduled to coincide almost exactly with the Stones tour -- in fact the two shows played on the same night in Brisbane -- and he put the tickets on sale on the same day day as those for the The Stones tour.
But by 1967 the pop boom was fading and tour costs were rising, so after winding up Pan-Pacific and starting his own company, Miller made peace wit his former rival and joined in a three-way partnership with Aztec Sevices and Stadiums Ltd, to promote pop tours.
"Commercial expediency ended the feud between me and Stadiums-Aztec. The business was in a slump and there was enough to divide between two major promotional organisations and a number of smaller ones. Kenn Brodziak and I shook hands on a deal which created a temporary triumvirate, Miller-Stadium-Aztec, although we still squabbled about the billing. It was the beginning of a long friendship and business relationship between Brodziak and me, although not an altogether smooth one. I soon found that Kenn was a fantastic loser, but a nightmare when our shows were making money. He was capable of writing a ten-page letter over a tiny discrepancy in the accounting of a hit show, but if we made a heavy loss he simply sent a cheque to cover his share and said something like 'We must find something else for next season'."
According to Miller the partnership "made a bundle" on their first venture, a tour by Eric Burdon & The Animals, but they lost heavily on two subsequent promotions which should have been major sucesses -- the tours by The Monkees and the controversial 1968 Big Show tour by The Who, The Small Faces and Paul Jones.
In 1968 Brodziak, Phillip Productions and Harry M. Miller jointly aquired the Australian rights to The Boys In The Band, a controversial new comedy-drama by American playwright Mart Crowley. It dealt frankly with with homosexuality, and featured a number of 'expletives' in the script. It was the first mainstream play produced in Australia to deal with with homosexuality and which presented openly gay characters in a naturalistic, sympathetic and non-stereotyped way.
These days neither the subject matter nor the language would raise an eyebrow, but in the conservative social climate of the late '60s it was almost guaranteed to cause a stir. Miller was particularly concerned because he knew that a recent Old Tote production of the three-part play America Hurrah! had been been forced to censor the script after it was threatened with closure over the use of "obscene" language.
Despite Miller's concerns, The Boys In The Band ran very successfully for seven months in Sydney and won major critical awards. In early 1969 it transferred to the new Playbox Theatre in Melbourne (which was, remarkably, Australia's first licenced theatre). In the middle of the third week in Melbourne two Vice Squad detectives attended a performance, and they took copious notes througout. After the show three of the cast -- actors John Krummel, Charles Little and John Norman -- were charged with using obscene language in a public place. When the case came to court, the magistrate Mr R.J. Kelly found the charges proved but said the offences were of "so trifling a naturethat it is inexpedient to inflict any punishment and without proceeding to conviction, the information is dismissed."
The Victorian Crown Law Department appealed to the Victorian Supreme Court, where Kelly's decision was overruled by Mr Justice Little, who referred the case back to Kelly for the imposition of penalties. Kelly was obliged to fine Krummel and Little a total of $25 and Norman $10. Miller appealed the Supreme Court ruling, but this was eventually dismissed but by this time the play had finished its successful thirty-five week run in Melbourne and was playing a return season in Sydney.
In 1969 Kenn was a major investor in the syndicate which backed Harry M. Miller's famous production of Hair. It was a wise investment -- according to Miller's memoirs, the investors made their risk capital back within ten weeks and over the run of the show they made a profit of over 600%.
In the early Seventies Kenn produced many important stage shows including Godspell and Canterbury Tales. He took a punt on the show Charlie Girl by casting teen idol John Farnham in a major role and susequently starred Farnham in the musical Pippin. He also gave pop star Samantha Sang her break into musical theatre when he cast her in a leading role in the The Magic Show.
Kenn, Colleen Hewett and John Farnham toast the success of the musical Pippin in 1974.
In 1974 Kenn teamed up once more with Harry M. Miller to promote an Australian tour by teen idol and TV star David Cassidy. These were to be Miller's last rock concert promotions and according to him they both lost money.
In 1976 Kenn headed a consortium consisting of Aztec Services, Stadiums Ltd and Edgley International, which purchased a major share in the famous theatrical firm J.C. Williamson Productions Ltd. The directors of the new organisation included Lady Viola Tait, widow of Williamson's long-serving director, Sir Frank Tait. The new company presented plays and musicals including A Chorus Line, before moving into concert promotions. In 1984, Willamson's was acquired by the Danbury Group.
From 1976 to 1978 Kenn was the personal manager for John Farnham, after John split from his original manager Darryl Sambell.
In 1998, Kenn and fellow promoter Edna Edgley received the inaugural James Cassius™ Award from the Australian Entertainment Industry Association for their outstanding lifetime contributions to Australian live entertainment.
Kenn Brodziak (with former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett at left) addresses the audience at the inaugural James Cassius Award in 1998.
Kenn Brodziak died at his West St Kilda home on 3 June 1999, aged 86. Paying tribute to him, theatre legend Jill Perryman lauded his role in Australian theatre:
"Kenn will be irreplaceable. He will always be very special to me."
More information about Kenn's life and work can be found in the book On With The Show, written by former Victorian Premier John Cain.
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Our sincere thanks to Kenn's niece Judi Parr, who kindly provided the images for this article.
Harry M. Miller with Denis O'Brien
My Story
(Macmillan, 1983)
John Cain
On With The Show: A glimpse behind the
scenes of entertainment in Australia
(Prowling Tiger Press, Melbourne 1998)
ISBN 0 9586647 3 0
EBid Newsletter
http://www.ebid.com.au/custom/newsletters/April%202002.htm#Brodziak
"Beatle Hero Dies At 86"
http://www.geocities.com/penneylayne/news/1999/lennonguitar.html
"Rock Snaps"
http://www.abc.net.au/arts/rocksnaps/essay/overseas.htm
immedia
http://www.themusic.com.au/im_m/archive/1999/990608-163/eliezer.html
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