[...]

It's that last fact that has captured the attention of music watchers here and abroad. For Ivy League has shown it has something of a Midas touch when it comes to taking Australian bands to the big time. In 2003, they did it with The Vines. In 2004 they did it again with Jet. Could 2005 be Neon's year? Or is the weight of expectation more than this softly spoken three-piece can possibly bear?

'They're just really great guys," says Pete Lusty of his young charges. "They're really good songwriters, and they look cool, which is the main criterion."

Lusty is joking. But as one-third of the confusingly named Winterman & Goldstein - the Sydney-based management company that looks after Neon, Jet, and The Vines - he has a clearer view than most about what works in the music industry.

Lusty is sitting in a bar beneath Spectrum, the Darlinghurst venue where Neon are about to play a show as support to Bluebottle Kiss. A former music lawyer, Lusty is open-faced but slightly wary, hesitant to emerge from the managers' traditional place in the shadows, lest too much focus be placed on himself and his partners Andy Kelly and Andy Cassell rather than on the band they are trying to push. "Don't make this story about us," he warns a number of times.

But there is obviously a sharp mind at work behind the self-effacing exterior. "He's the smart one," colleague Andy Kelly said to the Rock Feedback website in 2002. "On top of that, he has actually got great ideas, and is incredibly persistent. He just sets himself a task and does it. If Pete wasn't there, we wouldn't have a business, because Andy and I would be running around going, 'Oh my God, look at that band'."

Lusty may be business-minded and cautious, but he is a sucker for a well-written song. Songwriting is what first attracted Lusty and his colleagues to Neon, it is the recurrent keyword in our conversation, and it is ultimately the essential distillation of Winterman & Goldstein's management philosophy. "It's all about songwriting to us," he states firmly. "With Jet and The Vines, it's songwriting - I don't think it's style. When we heard The Vines' songs, rock wasn't back, rock wasn't popular, it was just that these songs were great songs. And when we heard Jet, people were going, 'Oh, the new rock movement's over'. But it's perfect songwriting."

Lusty and co's singular focus has its roots in the Canberra band scene of the mid-1990s. Ten years ago, Lusty had just graduated from law school and was playing bass in melodic garage-rock quartet the John Reed Club. Andy Cassell was the guitarist in 10-piece dance-funk outfit Birdseed, and although the two bands were stylistically very much at odds, it wasn't long before the two met and hit it off.

"We ended up becoming friends and living together," Lusty recalls. "We just wanted to sound more important, so we made up the name Winterman & Goldstein and pretended we were managing each other's bands. It just really started there."

The two found themselves in Sydney when the John Reed Club began to attract record company interest, and Cassell answered a call from an old Canberra buddy to join the band Youth Group. There they caught up with another Canberra expat, Andy Kelly, bassist of dreamy guitar-pop contenders Glide, and decided to start a record label together.

Ivy League's initial output consisted of limited-edition vinyl singles by their own and their friends' bands. At management arm Winterman & Goldstein things proceeded in a similarly low-key fashion until Cassell tuned into community radio station FBI one day in April 2000 and heard some home recordings by a young band called The Vines.

Today, Lusty still glows with excitement at the memory. "Have you heard The Vines' demos?" he asks. "They're incredible."

Even so, he and his partners felt no one at a mainstream label would get it. "They would have probably thought, 'Oh you're just a '60s-influenced rock band, you won't sell any records'," he says. "But we realised that they were a great band and deserved to be big internationally."

Lusty and his partners took on the management of The Vines (under the Winterman & Goldstein banner), signed the band to Ivy League publishing. In the process, they transformed their operation from a classily named front for a bunch of lo-fi slackers into a dedicated team with a mission.

The Vines' frontman Craig Nicholls was ambitious, charismatic and volatile, but the band's new management sensed he probably didn't have the patience for the years of "paying your dues" that is the customary route to success in Australian rock. So, eschewing the slow building of a fanbase through endless gigs in pubs and clubs around the country, Winterman & Goldstein went directly to the big guns overseas. They sent The Vines to the US to record with big-name producers, and financed the sessions themselves - reputedly at a cost of $200,000. Lusty and co were determined that the product they were about to pitch should be as perfect as they could make it.

It was a massive gamble, but it paid off. Winterman & Goldstein negotiated deals for The Vines with major labels in the US and the UK even before getting a record deal with EMI in Australia. In July 2002 their album Highly Evolved debuted to rave reviews and healthy sales around the world - No.3 in the UK, No.11 in the US and No.5 in Australia.

But Lusty, with typical self-deprecation, refuses to take any credit for this achievement, putting it all back at the feet of the band. "The Vines opened up a lot of doors," he says. "People forget how far away Australia is, and The Vines really showed a lot of people that Australian bands can make it. Jet will be the first people to tell you that without The Vines, it would have been a different matter."

[...]

How Ivy League sold Australian rock to the world

• 1996 Pete Lusty and Andy Cassell meet in Canberra, and dream up Winterman & Goldstein (W&G) as a management company for each other's bands. They move to Sydney together and hook up with Andy Kelly to start Ivy League Records.

• 1999 Britt Spooner moves to Melbourne from Mildura, meets Josh Bitmead and Jamie Gurney, and Neon are formed.

• 2000 April Andy Cassell hears The Vines demos, tracks down the band and signs them to a management deal with W&G.

• 2001 July Neon play their first gig. The Vines begin recording their album in LA with producer Scnapf (Beck, Elliott Smith).

• October Roman Tucker of Rocket Science passes on Neon's demos to Pete Lusty and the band sign to Ivy League.

• December Capitol Records signs The Vines in the USA. Heavenly Records (part of EMI) signs them in the UK.

• 2002 Early Neon sign a management deal with W&G.

• April EMI sign The Vines in Australia.

• July The Vines' Highly Evolved is released and becomes a hit in the USA, UK and Australia.

• Late Jet and their managers Matchbox Music bring in W&G to help the band score an overseas deal.

• November Neon head overseas for the first time to play showcase gigs in LA, London and New York.

• 2003 October Jet  release Get Born on Elektra in the USA and EMI in Australia. It goes on to sell more than 2.5 million copies worldwide.

• November Neon fly to LA to record with producer Steve McDonald.

• 2004 March Neon, The Vines, Jet and the Living End embark on the 26-date Aussie Invasion Tour of the USA

• April Graham Coxon (ex-Blur) releases Neon's A Man EP on his UK label Transcopic.

• August Transcopic release Neon's Hit Me Again EP.

• November Neon sign to V2 worldwide.

• Jet part ways with Matchbox Music, making W&G their sole managers.

• 2005 April Neon release Dizziness single.

• July 4 Neon's debut self-titled album is released.