Talking Heads: Mark Holden

Mr. “Touchdown” former Australian Idol judge Mark Holden chats to Peter Thompson (pictured) on Talking Heads next on May 3rd.

Holden will talk about his career from Countdown pop star to producing albums for David Hasselhoff to Idol and his new career as a barrister.

Mark Holden has been a ‘boy candy’ pop-star, music producer, Australian Idol judge and now a barrister. But his bare-chested appearance on Countdown in 1976 clutching a carnation is the unforgettable image of this Talking Heads.

“We created this really well-manicured, highly stylised creature and that creature, ‘carnation boy’, cut through.”

After a whirl wind of music and media offers, Holden moved to Sydney, transferring his studies to the University of New South Wales. Something had to give and he ended up bailing out of his degree just before the end.

Music had become Mark’s life but as he tells Peter Thompson, there was a steep learning curve ahead. “The best advice to me was, ‘You don’t have a great voice Mark, so you’re going to have to make the words mean something!’”

The image one gets is of a man unafraid to completely reinvent himself. Holden feels this was in reaction to his father’s safe and solid life, which was in turn a reaction to his father being unable to join the Holden family’s circus and never working.

For 18 years Holden was an R&B record producer in Los Angeles. He wrote one of The Temptations’ biggest hits, but then bizarrely ended up cutting albums for David Hasselhoff of Baywatch. But when his wife fell pregnant Holden wanted to return to Australia, to ‘plant’ his daughter in Australian soil.

After a high profile stint as a judge on Australian Idol, he’s now in a real courtroom, becoming a barrister 38 years after starting his law degree.

“I’m a baby barrister. I’m starting again, it’s all new. I am that person that’s trying to break in!”

It airs 6pm Monday May 3rd on ABC1.