Michael Gochanour

Early life

Gochanour grew up in Moline, Illinois. Gochanour studied film and music at Black Hawk College and played in local rock bands; he also worked in and alternative record shop in Galesburg, IL and was a founding member of The Pine Street Persuaders Blues Band before moving to New York City in 1981.

Professional Career 1981 - 1989

In New York Gochanour worked in entertainment management, overseeing concert tours for Billy Squier, Tears for Fears, Billy Idol, 10,000 Maniacs and many others. In the late 80s, he worked for Gramavision, and later TVT Records as a Controller assisting with the transition from a novelty label to a roster of indie bands including Nine Inch Nails, The Connells and later Sevendust, Aphex Twin and others.

1990 - Current

After leaving TVT, he formed MixUp NYC, a recording and production studio. He also toured with Peter Gabriel (Secret World Live), David Bowie (Black Tie, White Noise) and worked on the pre-production of Madonna's The Girlie Show. In 1993 he began his long association with Abkco Records. His most notable works for Abkco includes films for The Rolling Stones, Alejandro Jodorowsky and Sam Cooke. Gochanour also produced and/or directed music videos, commercials and promotional films for The Animals, The Herman’s Hermits, Metric, Virgin Air and others. As a sound designer, composer and musical supervisor, he has specialized in nature documentaries for Turner Broadcast, World Wildlife Organization and the Discovery Channel. He composed the soundtrack for T-Rex: New Science, New Beast (2007) for Emmy-winning director Ann Johnson-Prum. His songs have been produced and recorded by artist Ben Green, Jimi Zhivago, Percy Jones and others.

The Rolling Stones

In 1993 Gochanour was hired as an independent contractor by Abkco Films to produce a trailer for Jean-Luc Godard's newly restored film Sympathy for the Devil. Allen Klein, former manager of The Rolling Stones, Sam Cooke and The Beatles, asked him to research and work on the unfinished, never released The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. He and Robin Klein (long-time co-producer) were sent to London where they found missing footage of The Who in a storage vault. They spent another 2 years developing, editing and restoring the footage and soundtrack. The film premiered at the 1996 New York Film Festival.

For the DVD release in 2004, Mick produced (and directed) an additional 6 hours of supplementary content, including the music video for the Fat Boy Slim remix of “Sympathy for the Devil”.

In 2008, ABKCO approached director Albert Maysles regarding the coming 40th anniversary of The Rolling Stone’s legendary 1969 Madison Square Garden concerts. Mick and Ms. Klein were given access to the outtakes from the 1970 film Gimme Shelter, which included footage from the shows. The resulting film was the short documentary Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out, which featured cameos by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and The Grateful Dead.

While researching archives for the upcoming 50th anniversary of The Rolling Stones, Mick discovered several hours of unprocessed film shot by Peter Whitehead during their 1965 promotional tour. In 2012 he wrote, produced (uncredited) and directed Ireland 1965 (aka Charlie is My Darling) and also restored Mr. Whitehead’s original 35-minute unreleased film. The soundtrack won a Grammy in 2014.

Alejandro Jodorowsky

Gochanour’s familiarity with the abandoned Jodorowsky film project of Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway led to his being a champion for bringing Alejandro’s early films Fando y Lis, El Topo and The Holy Mountain back into the public, which were out of circulation and under Abkco Films’ control. He subsequently became co-producer of the restorations in 2002, working closely with the director. They were released in 2004. In early 2013, Alejandro invited Mick and co-producer Robin Klein to Paris where they were given an advanced screening of The Dance of Reality, which led to the acquisition of the film for Abkco. Gochanour won The American Graphics award for the design of the movie poster, which featured the on-set photography of artist Pascal Montondan.

Sam Cooke

In 2004, Gochanour won a Grammy for his work on Sam Cooke Portrait of a Legend 1951-1964, the first film/video biography of the artist, based on the Peter Guralnick book Dream Boogie.

Awards