Spinning Around: Music Retail Legend Barry Bull On His New Show

Barry Bull was one of the most influential independent music retailers in Brisbane – and nationally – running Toombul Music for 25 years.

The brick’n’mortars store in Toombul Shoppingtown was famous for getting names such as KISS, John Farnham, Tommy Emmanuel, The Corrs, Ronan Keating, The Veronicas, The Village People and Cliff Richard to appear or perform there.

Toombul Music closed in 2008, a victim of consumers moving online in droves.

The shopping centre itself closed two years ago after significant water damage in the 2022 southeast Queensland floods. This year, demolition works have begun at the complex.

As part of his farewell, Bull will present a two-hour show called Listen To The Music – Remembering The Toombul Years With The Man From Toombul Music on Saturday, June 1.

Through stories, songs from that era on his 1962 Fender Jazzmaster guitar, and videos of the in-store appearances, Bull will recount his 60 years in the music business, as well as the legacy of Toombul Music and Shoppingtown.

“It’s a concert to celebrate the closure of Toombul Shopping Town and also a reunion to bring together past staff and customers for one last time,” Bull explains.

In-Stores

With its in-store appearances, meet and greets and photo sessions, Toombul Music turned new releases into events that TV networks ran on their evening news.

“Cliff Richard came every time he was in the country, and fans came from Perth in the west and Cairns in the North to meet him, and he loved every minute. 

“When Gene Simmons came in 2004, the KISS Army queued right out to the car park holding on to their T-shirts and memorabilia to get signed.

Tommy Emmanuel came ten times, and regular visitors included Michael Crawford, Tina Arena, Human Nature, and John Denver. Country performers Slim Dusty, Lee Kernaghan, and Troy Cassar-Daley also showed support.

“We had 20 security people each time and we made sure everything was safe, because usually we’d get about 500 people turning up.

“But The Wiggles would consistently have 1,000. One time, Blue Wiggle didn’t make it because he was sick. The band said, ‘Barry, you’re comparing, just slip on a blue T-shirt and join us onstage’. I did Hot Potato with them, and the fans were chasing me for autographs!” 

Toombul Music wasn’t the only store to have in-store appearances. But it consistently had big names who had big turnouts. That made the store significant for record companies pushing their latest releases.

Toombul Music was one of 500 stores around the country from which ARIA (the Australian Record Industry Association) collected sales data to compile its new weekly charts.

In-stores would see a spike in the artist’s sales, usually 500 at least. This would guarantee the record a Top 10 entry in the Queensland charts, which could spill over to the national charts.

A high ARIA chart placement was important because the mass merchants like Coles and Myers, which bought in bulk, were only interested in records in the Top 20. Once the big players started selling, a Number One was inevitable.

At CBS 

Bull knew about the imperative need for exposure for acts because, before Toombul Music, he had worked as National Marketing Manager of CBS Records (now Sony) in Sydney in the mid-70s.

When he joined, CBS was conservative and middle-of-the-road. But the American parent company had just signed Bruce Springsteen and wanted the culture to be rocked up.

Bull and future CEO & Chairman Denis Handlin brought in hotshot A&R executives, producers such as Peter Dawkins and Peter Karpin, and younger marketing and sales teams. They signed Dragon, Men At Work, Mi-Sex and Air Supply, all of whom had varying degrees of overseas success.

“We became very aggressive about breaking records,” Bull recalls. “For every major release, we’d throw cocktail parties for radio, the music press and retail. We made it an event.”

The Australian company soon had a reputation for breaking records early. Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell was a slow starter overseas. But it shot out of the gate here with sales of two million and an eight-week stay at the top spot.

That triggered interest in other territories. Bat Out Of Hell ended up becoming one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, with total global sales of 43 million.

Boz Scaggs’ Silk Degrees, for which Handlin devised the ‘Boz is the Buzz’ catchphrase, also reached Number One and close to 400,000 local sales.

“With Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds, we rang him direct when he was in Canada touring, and encouraged him to tour here. The double album sold one million copies in Australia.

“When Billy Joel issued the Piano Man album, he wasn’t that well known here. We got him to cut the song Piano Man to three minutes for radio. He was initially dead against the idea. He was booked for three Opera House shows, but he ended up doing ten.”

The punishing workload created success, but Bull admits he got burned out. He had a young family whom he hardly saw, so he returned to Brisbane and, in 1981, bought Toombul Music. 

Stop Gap

Running a retail store was supposed to be a stop-gap, but he ended up doing it for 25 years. Bull’s record company contacts and his understanding of record consumers and the music industry worked in his favour.

“Putting money into the till was not the priority for me; creating a vibe was. Some of the footage of the meet-and-greets and the crowd excitement is quite entertaining.” 

Superfans is a buzzword now, but Bull had already worked out that many of the people who came were not necessarily hardcore fans but wanted autographed products for keepsakes.

In those pre-computer days, the staff manually entered each customer's name and contact information into the database and advised them of new releases and specials. 

VIP clubs were created for Farnham, KISS, Cliff Richard, Elvis Presley and, strangely, US cult figure Jimmy Buffett. “Jimmy had a huge following among the boaties because he was always singing about boats and sailing. Whenever we had an event for him, they’d come en masse and buy up.

“Like KISS, Jimmy had his own merchandising company with a wide array of items, which we would import.”

Order of Australia

Bull’s success as a music retailer and charity work, including raising awareness for hearing-impaired children and the Mooloolaba Surf Club, resulted in him being awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM).

He published business books such as A Little Bull Goes A Long Way, My Little Book Of Bull, The Bullseye Principle, and Take The Bull By The Horns and compiled for Sony Music the Music For Cruizin’ CD series, which sold 50,000 copies. “I got a gold record for that…and I can’t even sing!”

Toombul Music went on to win 30 Westfield retail awards, including the prestigious National Individual Specialty Retailer Award three times. In 1997, Bull was an inaugural inductee into the Westfield Hall of Fame for retail excellence, presented with a Westfield Legend Award in 2001, and honoured with a Commonwealth Centenary Medal for distinguished achievement in business in 2003.

Since the return of vinyl and cassettes, there’s been suggestions that independent music stores could have a resurgence. He doubts it.

“Technology has changed everything too much. It doesn’t surprise me about the vinyl renaissance; it’s about souvenir value and nostalgia. I can’t see indie stores surviving with rents and costs going up the way they are and with retailers only getting a 30 per cent margin. How can you exist on that?”

Listen To The Music – Remembering The Toombul Years With The Man From Toombul Music is happening on June 1 at 1.30 at Kedron Wavell RSL Club in Chermside. Tickets are $25 plus a booking fee from barrybull.com/toombul or call 07 3359 9122.