O’Donnell Returns To
EMI Australia

Pollstar Staff
2:15 am, Wednesday, 02/27/2013
Industry Hotwire

Cold Chisel co-manager John O’Donnell returns March 4 to EMI Music Australia as its managing director.

He will oversee the EMI, Capitol and Virgin labels, as well as the creative direction for their Australian acts. O’Donnell was CEO of EMI from 2002 to 2008, during which the company signed Empire of the Sun, Silverchair, Angus & Julia Stone, Jet and Missy Higgins.

After he left the company, he took over management of the veteran platinum-selling Cold Chisel with John Watson.

Their contemporary marketing of the act saw its 2011 Australian tour sell 350,000, the highest-grossing tour ever by an Australian-based band. Both O’Donnell and Watson worked in the 1990s at Sony Music’s Murmur imprint: in their first week, they discovered Silverchair.