Power 50 - #21: Danny Rogers

Danny Rogers has been kept busy over the past year or so on both the Laneway and management front. Laneway may have had a few line-up hiccups the past couple of events – Young Thug in the 2017 event (which Rogers later admitted in a Reddit AMA that it was the first time in 13 years he’d had to pull an artist from the festival’s line-up), and Kirin J Callinan this year after Miss Blanks raised concerns about his behaviour to the organisers, following on from a flashing incident at the ARIAs. But when it came to the music itself, the line-ups have excelled. AB Original, Tash Sultana, Nick Murphy (formerly Chet Faker), Glass Animals and Tame Impala conquered it in 2017 (with the latter’s performance taking on more significance when word spread that these performances were the last before the band went on a break as it was the end of the Currents album and touring cycle).

2018’s highlights included Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals, Mac DeMarco, The War On Drugs and Stranger Things composers S U R V I V E. This year’s event also launched 1800 Laneway, a hotline for patrons to report inappropriate or disrespectful behaviour, while Laneway was also nominated at the most recent Helpmann Awards for Best Contemporary Music Festival.

When it comes to his management business Lunatic Entertainment, we saw Gotye return to the live stage, performing a tribute to Jean-Jacques Perrey at MONA FOMA and Sydney Festival and the video for Somebody That I Used To Know recently crack one billion views on YouTube, joining only two other Aussies with that honour (Sia and Iggy Azalea).

Mansionair were nominated for a Grammy for Best Dance Recording for their work on Odesza’s Line Of Sight (with LCD Soundsystem winning in the end). CHVRCHES has just re-emerged with their rst new single since 2015 and DD Dumbo, who Lunatic co-manages, won APRA’s Song Of The Year for Satan.

Rogers should also be praised for not only wanting to raise up to $80,000 via Laneway ticket proceeds to help the Yiriman Project and Oxfam’s International Crisis Fund, but also announcing he was personally willing to match dollar for dollar the amount raised.