Glenn
Wheatley

Speaker Profile

Glenn Wheatley's 40 year career in the entertainment industry is centred around contemporary music. His business interests have expanded to encompass sport, film, television, radio, mobile and internet.

Born in Brisbane in 1948, Glenn's career commenced as the bass player for the Masters Apprentices, a band that had many top ten hits in Australia during the late 60s and early 70s. This ultimately lead to roles in personal management, music publishing and recording, event management and promotion. Among the artists managed at the time were the New Seekers, who were achieving major international success. In 1973, Glenn moved to Los Angeles and in the subsequent two years his experience included co-ordinating three concerts for the 1973 Presidential Inaugural celebrations at the JFK Centre in Washington D.C. for President Nixon, and co-ordination of the Michael Jackson program at the 45th Academy Awards.

In 1975, Glenn returned to Australia to form and manage Little River Band, who became the first Australian based band to achieve multi-platinum record sales in the U.S. Little River Band went on to sell over 25 million albums worldwide.

Glenn has played a pivotal role in the Australian contemporary music business, managing and promoting Australian artists locally and overseas including John Farnham, Australian Crawl, Ross Wilson, Pseudo Echo and Delta Goodrem. In 1986, his record label Wheatley Records produced Farnham's album Whispering Jack, which remains Australia's biggest selling album by a local artist. Delta Goodrem's debut album Innocent Eyes is Australia's second highest selling album by an Australian artist giving Glenn the honour of having produced the two highest selling Australian albums.

A direct involvement in radio started in 1980 when he was a founding director of Melbourne based EON-FM (now 3MMM FM). EON FM was the first commercial FM radio station to go to air in Australia. In 1987 he negotiated a series of acquisitions which resulted in the amalgamation of Wheatley Communications into Hoyts Media. Glenn played an integral role in formation of the national Triple M FM radio network. From 1987 to 1989 he was managing director of the publicly listed Hoyts Media before the sale of the Triple M network into Austereo.

In 1990 he amalgamated his sporting division, Wheatley Sport, with Advantage International and built up a superlative talent base including golfers Ian Baker-Finch and Wayne Grady, tennis players John Alexander, John Fitzgerald and John Frawley, cricketer Simon O'Donnell, racing legend Peter Brock and footballer Paul Salmon.

He has been a recipient of the Advance Australia Award for Outstanding Contribution in the Entertainment Industry and the Business Review Weekly Australia's Business Award for Marketing. He has been a director and part owner of the Sydney Swans Football Club and a Board member of AUSMUSIC, Tourism Task Force, the AIDS Trust of Australia and a Council Member for Screensound Australia (formally the National Sound and Film Archive).

In 1999 Glenn was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame (Masters Apprentices) and in the same year published his long-awaited autobiography Paper Paradise: Confessions of a Rock 'n' Roll Survivor. He was honoured in 2003 with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Services to Music Management by the Australian Music Managers' Forum.

Talentworks, founded in 1996, allows him to focus his expertise on artist management, music recording and publishing, tour promotion and event management. He currently represents John Farnham, Glenn Shorrock and rock bands Rushcutter and Juke Kartel.

Major events produced by Talentworks include all of Farnham's national Australian tours: The Jacks Back Tour (1988), The Talk of the Town, (1994), Jack of Hearts (1996), I Can't Believe He's 50 Tour & Street Party (1999), Man of the Hour (2000) and the phenomenally successful Last Time Tour (2002-2003) that toured nationally for nine months attracting 460,000 patrons.

Other events include Sir George Martin: All You Need is Beatles (Associate Producer 1998), The Main Event (Associate Producer 1998), Kate Ceberano's Greatest Hits Tour (1999), the Tour of Duty - Concert for the INTERFET Troops in East Timor (1999) and the Kostya Tszyu v. Jesse James Leija World Title Fight at Telstra Dome in Melbourne (2003).

Talentworks has also been a partner and co-promoter of the Melbourne International Music and Blues Festival, the Point Nepean Music Experience and the East Coast Blues and Roots Festival at Byron Bay.

Glenn is currently an Ambassador to the Armed Forces Advisory committee on Entertainment for the Australian troops deployed overseas.

Glenn is also the founder of Stripe, Australia's first mobile radio subscription service and the first digital radio network to launch in Australia utilizing broadband and the Telstra and Optus 3G networks.

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