Saffron Incorporated: The first King of the Cross and fifty years of sex, murder, music and mayhem

Let's get the story of Abraham Gilbert Saffron down. Just the facts, Your Honour.

Wherever you find entertainers performing in neon-lit pubs and clubs, chances are you will find a wannabe gangster or two hanging around. Selling sex and drugs has always been a way to make a fast buck - and potential customers are more open to temptation in pubs, bars, dance halls and nightclubs.

Abe Saffron figured all this out very quickly. He was a chancer who kickstarted his criminal career SP bookmaking and receiving stolen goods. While he earned himself a quid or two, he wanted much more, and he was ruthless enough to seize any moment to get it ... no matter what he had to do.

Running pubs opened up opportunities for young Abe. By the 1940s, American servicemen on leave from the war were flooding Sydney looking for booze, food, girls, sex and entertainment - and a lot of all of it. And they had cash. Lots of cash.

Saffron was ready to take their money. A wily operator, his rise coincided with the arrival of the nightclub era. He was not the first crime figure to tap into the world of entertainment, and others would emulate him, but he would become one of the most feared and most powerful in Australia. His tentacles stretched around the country and his name dominated news headlines and police briefs for decades. Even after his death, his shadow still hovers over the industry.

In SAFFRON INCORPORATED, music industry legend Stuart Coupe shows how showbusiness and the underworld are intrinsically linked - from nightclub fires, corrupt cops, cocaine, smack, illegal gambling, vice, celebrities, standover men and rock'n'roll promoters, musicians who partied hard and lost their way, dodgy accountants and gangland shootings -one man, the original King of the Cross, lay the foundations for more than fifty years of intrigue, murder and mayhem. 

Stuart Coupe is an author, music commentator, independent artist publicist and radio broadcaster who has been involved with music all his life. Amongst the books he has written, edited or collaborated on are The New Music (1980), The New Rock 'n' Roll (1983), The Promoters (2003), Gudinski (2015), Tex (2017), Roadies (2018) and Paul Kelly, the Man, the Music and the Life In Between (2021), which was shortlisted for Biography Book of the Year at the Australian Book Industry Awards.
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