About TXM
Rick Tubbax has been active in showbiz since the tender age of 15. In the late 1970s his band, Rick Tubbax & The Taxi’s, was one of the first Belgian rock bands, together with De Kreuners and The Kids. In just five years, he performed over 500 times, and he released six singles (including Bojangle Plays Tonight) and one album. In 1980 he won the Radio 2 Zomerhit award with his single Breaking Up.
As a freelance journalist he worked for the punk magazine Dus, the newspapers 24 Uur, which no longer exists, GvA, Het Nieuwsblad and De Standaard, and he eventually landed a job at the TV and music editorial team of Humo magazine. In this position, he interviewed hundreds of artists (from Tina Turner to The Rolling Stones), he toured with Pink Floyd in Australia and he followed up the launch of TV station VTM from close-by. He also worked behind the scenes on several TV programmes for both VTM and VRT.
In March 1990 Hugo Matthysen asked him to arrange a small show at a café for his new band Hugo Matthysen & De Bomen. Fast-forward four months and the band had secured a golden record with Dankuwel, taken the stage at countless summer festivals and made Rick their manager. Popular TV-host Bart Peeters asked Rick to manage his band The Radio’s, which proved a success, because it immediately resulted in the worldwide hit single She Goes Nana, the sale of many hundreds of thousands of albums in Belgium and the Netherlands, and a three-year tour that took them from the small Belgian village of Boechout to Africa and the USA. In 1995 Rick won the Zamu Award for best manager and Bart Peeters entrusted his TV career to Rick’s management company, which resulted his much talked-about move to commercial broadcaster VTM and the launch of Tubbax TV. This was the production company behind many legendary TV programmes in both Belgium and the Netherlands, including De Liegende Doos and Het Peulengaleis, Nonkel Pop, De Droomshow and LaLaLa Live. Needless to say, other talents managed by Tubbax, such as Ronny Mosuse, Jean Blaute, Oscar-nominated moviedirector Stijn Coninx and of course Hugo Matthysen, also left their mark.
The management company slowly but surely grew to eventually include Bart De Pauw, Ben Crabbé, Bruno Wyndaele, Dina Tersago and many others. Bart De Pauw and Tom Lenaerts launched Belgiums most legendary and best watched TVshow ever Schalkse Ruiters via Rick’s production company. The sale of the format of Schalkse Ruiters paved the way for the international success of the The Mole/de Mol format. This programme won the Golden Rose of Montreux, the highest honour for European TV programmes. In just two years Rick visited over thirty countries that bought the De Mol format. In the wake of this success, he also turned De XII Werken and Man Bijt Hond into popular international TV programmes. These were particularly busy times for Tubbax Management, because other artists signed to the management company also deserved their fair share of attention, such as RonnyMo, De Kreuners, Pop in Wonderland (who released the hit single Beautiful People), Clement Peerens Explosition (Dikke Lu) and last but not least, K’s Choice. Their single Not An Addict became an international hit single and K’s Choice a worldwide touring band.
In 1999, after a particularly hectic decade, Belgian media-entrepreneur Wouter Vandenhaute encouraged Rick Tubbax to become a publisher and launch the magazine Bonanza. Rick waved all artists and companies goodbye and set out on a new adventure, launching the controversial magazine. In 2002 the magazine was sold to Sanoma and Rick took his family on a one-year trip around the world. The following year, Hans Bourlon and Gert Verhulst asked him to join their production company Studio 100, which once again resulted in a string of successes, such as Spring (the debut album of the band featured in the TV series sold over 100,000 copies in Flanders). Rick also helped launch Bumba and the production company De Filistijnen, and he secured the first international contacts for Studio 100.
In the end, Rick Tubbax returned to his old love. In 2005 he relaunched Tubbax Management and in no time established himself again as one of Belgiums leading artist managers.