Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the co CEO and president of
Speaker 1: Concerts West John meglan Don. Good to have you, hello,
Speaker 1: Bob could be here, okay, So tell me how you
Speaker 1: ended up deciding to put Celine Dion and Vegas. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, right to it. Um, Well, number one, it
Speaker 1: was actually her idea. Well really I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the idea was hers. I mean she went
Speaker 1: and saw. Oh it was when she had retired, kind
Speaker 1: of took time off because she was going to go
Speaker 1: have a kid and all that, and she went and
Speaker 1: saw oh. And after she saw it, she basically said
Speaker 1: to Renee, when I come back, I'd like to do
Speaker 1: something like that. And Renee being Rene and her husband
Speaker 1: and Rene Bian really the brilliant guy that he is,
Speaker 1: was um, you know, he he had that Elvis Colonel
Speaker 1: Parker mentality that it was a it was a belief
Speaker 1: in him. Of of he loved the colonel. He really
Speaker 1: loved the colonel when he loved the way the whole
Speaker 1: Elvis sing in Vegas. So that was a big part
Speaker 1: of it for Renee. So instinctually he knew how to
Speaker 1: put it together. Okay, So you've been working with them
Speaker 1: before I had, Well, I hadn't been working with them before.
Speaker 1: I had been working with Lloyd Brow who worked for them,
Speaker 1: And Lloyd originally worked for Donald Kay Donald up in
Speaker 1: Montreal when I was working for Michael Cole. So that's
Speaker 1: how we knew each other. I heard about the thing
Speaker 1: and thought it was a brilliant idea, but didn't have
Speaker 1: the money to do it. And at the time, what
Speaker 1: was happening at the time is that there was a
Speaker 1: man named Arthur Goldberg who was the president of Caesar's Palace,
Speaker 1: and Arthur and Renee we're going to do this steel themselves. Okay,
Speaker 1: there was no outside person. Arthur unfortunately passed away. When
Speaker 1: Arthur passed away, and the new president, I think it
Speaker 1: was a guy named Tom Who it was? Guy named
Speaker 1: Tom Gallagher was the CEO of park Place Entertainment. They
Speaker 1: owned Caesar's at the time. Um. He said, look, we'll
Speaker 1: build the building, but we're not in the show business,
Speaker 1: you know, find somebody else to do the show. So
Speaker 1: that was our window. Okay. So how many years did
Speaker 1: you make the deal for originally? Uh? Two? How many
Speaker 1: didn't end up running? Uh? Sixteen, almost seventeen, and you
Speaker 1: had an exclusive on the building, right absolutely, which just ended, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just ended. Well it will end July one. And you
Speaker 1: know some of these things you may or may not
Speaker 1: be able to want the answer, how can we decided
Speaker 1: not to renew the building? Well, wasn't that necessarily that
Speaker 1: we didn't decide? I think that one there was a
Speaker 1: miscommunication between our organization being involved in the arena at
Speaker 1: MGM UM and that had something to do with us
Speaker 1: operating the colisseum and that so um. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, you know, they picked their horse
Speaker 1: after all these years. I don't know why exactly, but
Speaker 1: you know we're not happy about it. Okay. So the
Speaker 1: original deal she did how many dates a year? Well,
Speaker 1: the original deal was two hundred shows a year, which
Speaker 1: was unheard of, and it was for two years, and
Speaker 1: it was five shows a week, forty weeks a year.
Speaker 1: We were keeping two weeks for maintenance of the theater
Speaker 1: or the show, and then we wanted to go out
Speaker 1: and find someone else to do the other ten weeks. Now,
Speaker 1: that other ten ultimately turned out to be Elton, correct,
Speaker 1: and he did all ten um initially. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: at the very beginning, it was only Selene and Elton,
Speaker 1: you know. Oh, I'm sorry. And then there was you know,
Speaker 1: a few weekends of Jerry Seinfeld. Okay, So the building
Speaker 1: was essentially open, like nights a year. Not only that,
Speaker 1: we would program Asian shows for New Year's Eve. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for Christmas Eve Christmas Day a different type
Speaker 1: of holiday for them. So I mean we tried to
Speaker 1: book that building as much as we could. But yes,
Speaker 1: that building was full all the time. Not to what
Speaker 1: degree was your company at risk? M Well, we're at
Speaker 1: risk for all of Well initially, I mean you're talking
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars um one. Nobody thought it
Speaker 1: would work. So you told me the famous story of
Speaker 1: Martyr looking, why do you tell the audience? Oh? Man, Marty,
Speaker 1: it was great, Barty. I think it was at the
Speaker 1: Grammys about a year after we had opened, and Marty
Speaker 1: walked up to me and he said, you know, Magdalen,
Speaker 1: only two people in this business I ever thought this
Speaker 1: thing would work. You and I still haven't met the
Speaker 1: other one. And of course Marty is the longtime manager
Speaker 1: of Barbara Streisan. But when you went into Vegas, no
Speaker 1: other rock pop stars were there right. No, I mean
Speaker 1: at the time, it was you know, it was Circus
Speaker 1: l A and Siegfried and Roy. That was it. And
Speaker 1: to what degree did the tickets sell? You know, it
Speaker 1: was it was a roller coaster at the beginning. Okay. Uh,
Speaker 1: the initial sales were great just because of such a
Speaker 1: tremendous fan base and and I swear Canada could have
Speaker 1: carried you know, the first one shows um, but it
Speaker 1: took a while. We kept saying to ourselves, this is
Speaker 1: not as sprint as the marathon. That was our That's
Speaker 1: always been our line. These aren't sprints. These are marathons.
Speaker 1: It's got to build over time, you know, don't try
Speaker 1: to do everything at once. Spread it out a little
Speaker 1: bit and it seems to work. So did business stay
Speaker 1: steady all the way through the run? No? Uh, we
Speaker 1: all everything dropped in two thousand and eight with the
Speaker 1: economic crash. Yeah, that went kind of across the board.
Speaker 1: Her popularity. No. The The amazing thing is it's stronger
Speaker 1: today than it ever was. Now. Yes, we're doing the
Speaker 1: end of the tour or end of the run in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, but you know, we just began pre sales
Speaker 1: this morning on her tour and they were massive. We
Speaker 1: were rolling into multiple arenas in many cities this morning
Speaker 1: just on you know, the American Express and the team
Speaker 1: Selene pre sale. So people have always underestimated this lady.
Speaker 1: And then how about the other acts that went in there,
Speaker 1: like Elton? How did they do? Elton was? He was
Speaker 1: a dream? I mean Elton was you know again, you're
Speaker 1: looking at somebody that was only doing at that time
Speaker 1: forty shows a year versus slid to two hundred shows
Speaker 1: a year. So Elton was virtually sold out the entire time.
Speaker 1: And um, and he kept with the theme of of
Speaker 1: let's create a show. Okay, let's do something. See what's
Speaker 1: happened today has kind of changed it, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of to me, it's a little bit depressing because one
Speaker 1: of my lines to artists was always, look, remember all
Speaker 1: that stuff you wanted to do but you couldn't take
Speaker 1: on the road. It was too big to travel with.
Speaker 1: This is the place you can do at all. And
Speaker 1: you know, and we wanted to make it a show
Speaker 1: that you could only see here and the only place
Speaker 1: you can see that artist become a bit bastardized to
Speaker 1: a degree where people are just driving through with their
Speaker 1: tour in shows and nothing special about it. So to
Speaker 1: what degree is Vegas a factor in your business? Now? Wow?
Speaker 1: I think it's become a big factor in everybody's business.
Speaker 1: The number of artists today that want to do residencies,
Speaker 1: let alone the ones that exist. Think about there's probably
Speaker 1: five for everyone that has one, there's five more that
Speaker 1: want one. You know what I mean. Everybody's looking for
Speaker 1: quote the residency I, and it is maybe we're maybe
Speaker 1: there's no MORATORI and maybe we just do residencies and
Speaker 1: festivals and that's it. Well, certainly we probably have a
Speaker 1: lot fewer drug overdoses if the fans came to see
Speaker 1: the bands. This is true, Okay. Um, anything that hasn't
Speaker 1: worked in Vegas, whether it be yours or competitors, it's tricky.
Speaker 1: I've always found that the Broadway stuff, it's really tricky.
Speaker 1: It's almost like the stuff that Clive Barnes trashes in
Speaker 1: New York should be in Vegas and it will do great.
Speaker 1: I remember years ago, uh, Jimmy Dean Atlanta jujor Jimmy
Speaker 1: a good friend about it week. He took me to
Speaker 1: Will Rogers Follies at the Palace Theater and Broadway, right,
Speaker 1: and and the show just got panned. And I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there going, it's a great show. I'm like all American
Speaker 1: guy going, I love this show. You know, the fact is,
Speaker 1: if that show had been in Las Vegas instead of
Speaker 1: on Broadway, probably would have been a hit. So the
Speaker 1: Mama MIA's the Jersey Boys, you know, that type of
Speaker 1: stuff is good. I don't think people go to go
Speaker 1: to Las Vegas. He's Phantom of the Operas, per Se
Speaker 1: or or Cats or you know. I think it's a
Speaker 1: little more. It's got to be more of a show
Speaker 1: and more musical. So generally speaking, what does the promoter
Speaker 1: do m in Las Vegas? In general, we take risks,
Speaker 1: we put up the we put up the risk capital.
Speaker 1: We believe that we could sell enough tickets to pay
Speaker 1: the bills, pay the band, and there's something left over.
Speaker 1: It's no more complicated than that. Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: know a guy works for Black Rock and New York
Speaker 1: big investment firm, and he said he hadn't gone to
Speaker 1: bed without being at risk for decades. So do you
Speaker 1: ever worry? Like you ever, you know, lie awake at nights, say,
Speaker 1: holy funk, this better work? Oh, I mean, look, you
Speaker 1: know what's the worst thing about getting tour is get
Speaker 1: the tour. I mean it's like talk about buyer's remorse. Okay,
Speaker 1: you get you know, you get into this competition, especially
Speaker 1: today with the dumpers that are thrown out there today.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like it's almost like monopoly. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is like monopoly money, you know. And and yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean one thing about Gongore and I We've always
Speaker 1: always that's your partner, that's my partner. We've always always
Speaker 1: we were taught at the beginning. You act like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're risking your own house here your mortgage, which
Speaker 1: by the way, we both did for a while. You know.
Speaker 1: So once you know that feeling of what it's like
Speaker 1: to really risk your own money and go, you know,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I'm gonna lose everything, and so go
Speaker 1: ask mom and dad from my room back and get
Speaker 1: a job at McDonald's. That's what a promoter is. Okay.
Speaker 1: So let's assume you have something that's not an instant sellout.
Speaker 1: How do you move the tickets? How do you make
Speaker 1: your money back? Mm hmm, Well, it depends on what
Speaker 1: what you're involved in. Okay, we are I like to
Speaker 1: think that we have a long term artists perspective, okay.
Speaker 1: And this goes back kinder to our upbringing, which was
Speaker 1: way back to the Jerry Wine Troub concerts West Management
Speaker 1: three Days, where you had guys like Tom Hewlett and
Speaker 1: Terry Bassett, Jerry Wine Trout amazing mentors, but they managed
Speaker 1: the artist and we toured the art. Yes, And so
Speaker 1: there were times I remember John Denver tours where you know,
Speaker 1: he had a hit record, he sell every ticket. The
Speaker 1: house didn't have a hit record, He sold half the ticket.
Speaker 1: And I did one tour where all I did was
Speaker 1: go out in front and quote paper of the house. Uh,
Speaker 1: because John never played in front of an empty house.
Speaker 1: So I've always believed that if you make the right
Speaker 1: decisions for the artists, for the long term of the artists,
Speaker 1: if you do that, the money is going to follow. Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: there's many ways to get out of it quickly, Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's unfortunately probably of our business. A
Speaker 1: zillion ways to get out of them. Give me a couple. Well,
Speaker 1: the secondary market on ticketing, people have been using that
Speaker 1: they've been you know, ticket rebates. It goes all the
Speaker 1: way back to you know, had n caterie bill for
Speaker 1: five hundred bucks. Okay. Uh, you know what happens with losers.
Speaker 1: It creates a system of insights of people, you know,
Speaker 1: making a little money here on the side, making a
Speaker 1: little money here on the side. You know, Fred Rosen
Speaker 1: started making a nickel right, right, So it was five
Speaker 1: sets of ticket back then. Okay, So it's uh. The
Speaker 1: way people now protect themselves is by other sources of
Speaker 1: revenue that they tried to to me hide from the artist,
Speaker 1: or hide from the business equation or you know, no,
Speaker 1: and they've got a lot of valid arguments. I meant,
Speaker 1: if a guy invest money in a venue, you should
Speaker 1: be able to get his money back right and make
Speaker 1: a profit on his real estate investment. Okay. Now, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: on these really big tours, your competition is Live Nation.
Speaker 1: What it does it? What do you find someone all
Speaker 1: to an act makes their decision on in terms of
Speaker 1: who to go with, Well, make it on basically two things, right,
Speaker 1: who's going to do the right job and how much
Speaker 1: they're paying me. The unfortunate thing is how much they're
Speaker 1: paying me. It most of the time, you know, is
Speaker 1: the deciding factor as opposed to who's going to do
Speaker 1: the right job. Okay, let's go back to the beginning
Speaker 1: for my audience. So you grew up where as an
Speaker 1: army brap but kind of beaute Montana and then the Northwest, Okay,
Speaker 1: in Washington. Okay, you know we're sitting here in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: Those places seem like backwaters relative to hollydood God, and
Speaker 1: they're very attractive, by the way, and it's where I'd
Speaker 1: like to be. No, I mean they are, but but
Speaker 1: part of that was we learned how to do everything
Speaker 1: back then. I mean I was running by high school
Speaker 1: dance committee. Oh really, So you got into it that, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did. I put my first concert on my junior
Speaker 1: year in high school don Zaga Prep and spokead and
Speaker 1: I saw this magazine in Father Gobel he was the
Speaker 1: head of our He watched over our dance committee and
Speaker 1: we did all city mixers in Spokane. And I'm in
Speaker 1: Gobs office one day, that's what we called him. And
Speaker 1: he had this magazine and they're called Performance Magazine. And
Speaker 1: I start flipping through it and I go, hey, Gobs,
Speaker 1: this has all the big bands and look it says
Speaker 1: where they're going, and it's got a phone number there,
Speaker 1: it says b A. And he said that means booking
Speaker 1: age and John and I went, well, I had this band.
Speaker 1: I just got their first record, you know. And the
Speaker 1: look they're up there playing in Seattle. Let's call the number.
Speaker 1: What was the Okay? Sold out two shows of the
Speaker 1: high school Jim Days and we made fifteen hundred bucks. Okay,
Speaker 1: But let's go back to the begetting. Did you call
Speaker 1: the agent? Yes, and you said what happened? I? I
Speaker 1: mean I just I called him and I said, hi, uh,
Speaker 1: I run a dance committee at a high school. It's okay,
Speaker 1: And and I see your band is in Seattle and
Speaker 1: you know what are they doing on Saturday night? And
Speaker 1: he took you seriously? Yeah, well I had I told
Speaker 1: him that father Gobel was with me, so I had
Speaker 1: my priest with me. It was pretty good, okay. And
Speaker 1: do you think you got ripped off? No, it was
Speaker 1: actually we paid them. We made money, So it wasn't
Speaker 1: about that. Back then. Remember it was all flats. You know,
Speaker 1: they showed up. You had to have you know, a
Speaker 1: p A system and some lights and uh you know,
Speaker 1: you had addressing room. And it wasn't even before riders,
Speaker 1: you know. So it was fun that when I went
Speaker 1: to college. Did you do any more shows in high school? Uh?
Speaker 1: Because after that I went off down to Washington State,
Speaker 1: um and uh and they know they had more of
Speaker 1: the college concert committees there all right. And in the
Speaker 1: mid seventies there was a lot of guys, a lot
Speaker 1: of guys that are around today came from that program.
Speaker 1: But um, they didn't have a coffeehouse things. So I
Speaker 1: started one. I started a radio station, I started a festival.
Speaker 1: I mean that's what. That's a lot of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that kazoo is now the number one station of Pullman, Washington.
Speaker 1: And my roommate and I started that thing. It was
Speaker 1: what do you call it? Ten want class D Remember
Speaker 1: those I remember you could hear like three miles away. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: not even that you know, but um, the they have
Speaker 1: when where I went to college, but it was there
Speaker 1: before I got out there. So you're basically an entrepreneurial guy,
Speaker 1: you know at Hart of course that's what this is about. Okay,
Speaker 1: how many kids in your family? Five? And what do
Speaker 1: the other four do? Uh? Well, they're all girls too old,
Speaker 1: too older and too younger ones of c p A.
Speaker 1: There are three of them are married to guys from Montana.
Speaker 1: So that's the good thing is we've got we've kept
Speaker 1: the Montana thing alive. But they're they're all over the country,
Speaker 1: and uh, they're all doing great. I mean they have
Speaker 1: the same personality as you. Like. You know, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make it work for myself. Um, i'd say half at half.
Speaker 1: There's two sisters that are definitely that way. They're there
Speaker 1: two that well, there's one that's completely happy living in Dila, Montana,
Speaker 1: never wants to leave. That is where. It's about sixty
Speaker 1: miles south of Butte. And what's there, um nothing Uh, Canyon,
Speaker 1: Ferry Reservoir, people river, the Big Hole River, Um, the
Speaker 1: salmon fly hatch if you're fly fishermen, those are all
Speaker 1: important things. So do you How long do you go
Speaker 1: to Washington State? I went three years? Yeah, I quit
Speaker 1: in my senior year. And why did you quit? I
Speaker 1: got hired by Concerts West, I thought I did. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll tell that story. Well, Um, there was a guy that,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, worked for Irving Dennis something anyway,
Speaker 1: artists touring so something I forget what it was called,
Speaker 1: but it was one of Irving's agencies and Irving off
Speaker 1: of course and Irving at the time, Uh, managed Tim Wiseberg,
Speaker 1: remember the of course and the duel and that. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So what year were in nineteen seventy seven? All right?
Speaker 1: So I was the block booking coordinator in the Northwest
Speaker 1: for the college campuses, and Tim Wiseberg just really caught
Speaker 1: on up there, and in fact I was doing to
Speaker 1: cut down and read it with Tim Weinsberg. So in
Speaker 1: five six thousand seats in Poland Washington, Tim Weinsberg still alive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a great guy. I haven't thought of him so long. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, he's really good. Was it Dan Fogelbergelberg Wisberg?
Speaker 1: Different mothers, twin SuDS, different mothers or something like that?
Speaker 1: That was another There was a part of the plan
Speaker 1: with what was no the Great Song? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it was part of the plan. Uh yeah, it was. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you're booking a book at Tim Weisberg and this
Speaker 1: guy Deists were just a little bit slower. You're where
Speaker 1: You're still at Washington State. Yeah, and you're booking for
Speaker 1: other places too. Yeah. How did that? Well? I got
Speaker 1: an office in the student union building and my roommate
Speaker 1: and I out, I guess I gotta back up a
Speaker 1: little bit. We first figured out that all these dorms
Speaker 1: and fraternities and sororities all had to book two or
Speaker 1: three bands a year for their little you know, uh
Speaker 1: proms or whatever they call them, their their little balls, right,
Speaker 1: So we started a little thing called the Student Booking Service.
Speaker 1: And what we did is we got one agent up
Speaker 1: and spoke in Washington, and we gave him an exclusive
Speaker 1: and we signed up all the dorms and the fraternities
Speaker 1: and sororities, and so the agents would all split their
Speaker 1: commissions with us, and we would book and we because
Speaker 1: we would tell the every year as a new social
Speaker 1: director fraternity and we're like, hey, guys, we don't want
Speaker 1: you to get ripped off. We know what the band's cost.
Speaker 1: We'll get you good deals and all of that. So,
Speaker 1: you know, fast forward to their we started, you know,
Speaker 1: block booking, and we called it so I'd get the
Speaker 1: guy in Bellingham, Washington to buy a show. Guy it
Speaker 1: you know huge its sound to buy a show, and
Speaker 1: the guy at Idaho State to buy a show, and
Speaker 1: the guy in Missoula to buy a show that was
Speaker 1: clip Mitchell, by the way, the way you were He
Speaker 1: was the guy in Mizzoula, and uh yeah, we just
Speaker 1: put all these together and then this guy called one day,
Speaker 1: this agent he worked for Irving. I remember that. He said,
Speaker 1: you know, you need to work for Concerts West. And
Speaker 1: Concerts West brought all their shows into Pullman because we
Speaker 1: had a pack eight thousand seat arena, and up in
Speaker 1: Seattle they had a seven thousand seat civic auditorium. So
Speaker 1: the big shows would come down and play Pullland and
Speaker 1: they had to go through the students. How far as
Speaker 1: Pullman from Seattle sixty miles south? Not from Seattle, Seattle
Speaker 1: three miles. It's on the Idaho's close to boise O.
Speaker 1: It's close to Spokane. Uh, court a Lane. You know,
Speaker 1: if you go down from Spoke candad cord a Lane
Speaker 1: sixty miles you have Pullman in Moscow wide. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: at Washington State University and the university about it? Okay,
Speaker 1: where were we a lost tracks? Okay, so you're block booking,
Speaker 1: you get tracked on by this guy says you should
Speaker 1: work at Conscience West. Yeah, so I got an interview.
Speaker 1: Uh and in fact, this is the first time I'd
Speaker 1: ever been on an airplane, and I go up to
Speaker 1: Spokene and a guy said, and me, remember when you
Speaker 1: got a prepaid ticket? Yeah? Right. I sat all day
Speaker 1: long and Spokene Little Airport waiting for my prepaid ticket
Speaker 1: to go through. Okay, I'm a kid in college, right,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, and my buddy's gonna pick me up
Speaker 1: and when I get there and drive me to this interview.
Speaker 1: And I go and have an interview with this guy
Speaker 1: named Tom Hewlett. And this is weird. Is in Seattle.
Speaker 1: So I flew over to Seattle, right and uh Cascade Airline, yeah,
Speaker 1: with this Cascade alleghany almost and it was like I
Speaker 1: go over there and I get I had this interview.
Speaker 1: I remember I wore I think I looked like the
Speaker 1: guy at Midnight Cowboy because I had on like a
Speaker 1: you know, like a tan like almost crest velvet pants
Speaker 1: vest right actually vest jacket, uh boots and and you
Speaker 1: know the collar out right. And I meet this guy
Speaker 1: Tom Hellett, and he's like, oh, yeah, I got all
Speaker 1: these tours going on, and I got this air Clapton tour.
Speaker 1: I I think I could use you on that, right,
Speaker 1: That's what he says. So I leave, I go back
Speaker 1: to school. I quit college I load everything in my
Speaker 1: car and I drive out to Seattle and uh move
Speaker 1: in and uh living on the floor by I had
Speaker 1: four buddies. They had a two bed of apartment, so
Speaker 1: I was a fifth guy. So I slept on the
Speaker 1: floor out in the you know, the couch around the
Speaker 1: living room. I've done that, yeah, I mean that's how
Speaker 1: it's art. And I would go every day and show
Speaker 1: up at this office. Right, So Conscience West had an office. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was in Bellevue, Washington, and you had Paul Gonda. Weare, um,
Speaker 1: Tom Hewlett, Bassett, Terry Bassett. I mean it's a really
Speaker 1: great Dan Fiala, um uh, Bill Leopold, I mean some
Speaker 1: great names. We're all out of that office. They were
Speaker 1: all out of the Bellevue office, all those guys. And
Speaker 1: then Terry went down and started the Dallas office. Sims
Speaker 1: Scott hired, he went out, he started the Atlanta office.
Speaker 1: And but no, I started showing up. But I didn't
Speaker 1: have a job. I mean I would sit there and
Speaker 1: I could tell Hewlett after a few days to be
Speaker 1: walking in and whisper to people, go who is that kid? Right?
Speaker 1: And I just kept doing things and walking around and
Speaker 1: asking people if they anything to do until I got
Speaker 1: like became whatever I was there, and I finally after
Speaker 1: about two three weeks, got the courage to walk into
Speaker 1: Bill mackenzie asked if I could get paid? And what
Speaker 1: are he's saying? He said, yeah, no, he was good
Speaker 1: by that, and I started two a week. That's what
Speaker 1: it was, um. And when you're on the road, you
Speaker 1: had twenty dollars a pretty and you Concerts West had
Speaker 1: a cool thing back then called show pay and it
Speaker 1: was like a sixty bucks show if you're on the road,
Speaker 1: but it was like the tour director's decision how to
Speaker 1: split the sixty bucks. So if you're like the guy
Speaker 1: out with Gong, were like one of the ones I
Speaker 1: started with second right, you know, he'd split it with you,
Speaker 1: no offense, Sims. But if you're out with Sims, you've
Speaker 1: got ten dollars, you know. And so what happened is
Speaker 1: you generated a brotherhood with these guys. But what was
Speaker 1: so cool about Concerts West is we were never really
Speaker 1: local promoters. You know, we didn't do We weren't in
Speaker 1: that club theater business, and every local promoter was. We
Speaker 1: were like a arena up touring company, you know, and
Speaker 1: it was just so cool to be back there and
Speaker 1: see that at that time. Now, that was all Jerry Weintraub, right,
Speaker 1: was Wintroub. It was Bassett, It was Irving and his
Speaker 1: relationship with Bassett. It was Bill McKenzie and and the
Speaker 1: relationships were deep, you know, they were Like the first
Speaker 1: thing I worked on was Swan Song. That's what I
Speaker 1: was assigned to. So and that was Peter Grant and
Speaker 1: Clive Coulson and so you worked on Bad Company, but
Speaker 1: if David went out, you had to work on David still.
Speaker 1: And like Paul and I were, we were putting the
Speaker 1: Zeppelin tour on sale when Bottom died. After that, I
Speaker 1: had to do the firm, which was you know, Jimmy
Speaker 1: and Paul Rogers. But I never got to do led Zeppelin. Okay,
Speaker 1: how much of the time are you in the office
Speaker 1: and how much of the time are you on the road.
Speaker 1: Back then you were on the road. I don't know,
Speaker 1: nine months sometimes, I mean you could be on the
Speaker 1: road for fourteenth straight months. We'll break for Christmas or
Speaker 1: something in that. And back then we did five shows
Speaker 1: a weeks. It shows a week traveled and the bus
Speaker 1: has slept sixteen guys today they sleep six at all different.
Speaker 1: It was different time. And were you ever making any
Speaker 1: money or just in for the experience at that point? Oh? No,
Speaker 1: you're for the experience. I mean, look, the first tour,
Speaker 1: first big tour idea was with Gaga were the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight Bad Company Desolation Angels, and that was multiple arenas.
Speaker 1: It was fact then as big as you got in
Speaker 1: the rock and roll. And I remember I'd ever been
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas, played the Aladdin in Las Vegas, and
Speaker 1: one night I lost everything I made on the tour.
Speaker 1: And are you still a gambler? No? No, I just
Speaker 1: like it was. You know, it was just stupid, you know,
Speaker 1: but but you didn't care. I mean it may sounds
Speaker 1: really weird. This is again all give part of this
Speaker 1: as a Gaga wear line. Okay, we don't think about
Speaker 1: the money, we really don't. We think about what's the
Speaker 1: right thing to do, and if you do the right things,
Speaker 1: the money will follow if you start and this is
Speaker 1: where God, if you start thinking about the money, you're
Speaker 1: going to compromise the decision making. So maybe that's why,
Speaker 1: you know, we just kind of live in our own
Speaker 1: world the way Paul and I do but it's pretty
Speaker 1: simple to us. No, that's a cool project. Here's how
Speaker 1: you could do it, here's how you could make it work,
Speaker 1: and let's go do it or not do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you work for Concerts West for how long thirteen years?
Speaker 1: It was? There were variations. It was called you know,
Speaker 1: it ended up being called Wine Traub Entertainment Group. But
Speaker 1: really from seventy eight to nine I was at concerts
Speaker 1: and then what happened. Then Michael Cole hired me to
Speaker 1: go up and I was the director of touring for CPI.
Speaker 1: This was right after right at the end of the
Speaker 1: steel wheel wheel right, and so I went up there
Speaker 1: and they kind of figured, I mean Michael told me
Speaker 1: and Arthur told me. They just said, look, you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to be at the story business. We figured
Speaker 1: we needed to hire a Concerts West guy because they do.
Speaker 1: They knew we We've grown up in that, in that environment.
Speaker 1: So I started there. My first day was July one.
Speaker 1: It was very funny though. I had this marketing kid
Speaker 1: named Jeff Shabon that was going to be working for me,
Speaker 1: and I knew him from before I think it worked
Speaker 1: for John Stall. And they put me in like one
Speaker 1: of those old court apartments and he and his little
Speaker 1: marketing buddy from Lobats comes over to pick me up,
Speaker 1: a little marketing buddy, little marketing buddy, Michael Repeat, and
Speaker 1: they take me out on a boat on Lake Washington
Speaker 1: Head where there's this DJ who Joey Scolari was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like you know, and by the way, what
Speaker 1: a great time. I mean I loved every minute up
Speaker 1: there and probably would have stayed if they you know,
Speaker 1: I hadn't moved down to Hamas or Perview to wherever.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was really the factor for me. So
Speaker 1: how many years were you there? Almost seven? Okay, six
Speaker 1: seven seven? And what was your responsibility there? Well, I
Speaker 1: was kind of I was the operations director of those
Speaker 1: tours citizens you know, we routed those tours. I did
Speaker 1: all the building, deal did all the tickety tickety was
Speaker 1: very different then than it is today with hard tickets.
Speaker 1: Back then, um so really routed, did the deals and
Speaker 1: of course the they did the stones. Who else were
Speaker 1: you doing it that we were doing? We did Pink
Speaker 1: Floyd's last tour, Vision Bell did Paul Simon. It was
Speaker 1: that was a great tour. What of the greatest bands,
Speaker 1: diversity of My Life. Uh, Stones of or Its Foodoo
Speaker 1: Lounge Urban Jungle Tours. Uh. David Bowie Uh did Bowie
Speaker 1: Bowie Nail's Tour. That was an experience. That was a
Speaker 1: tough tour. Bowie Morrissey with Morrissey walked off the tour
Speaker 1: halfway through it. Uh, and they were look and it
Speaker 1: was right at the beginning of the YouTube relationship. But
Speaker 1: I left a very very beginning. Uh. Well, they sold
Speaker 1: the company and they went to Bahamas for tax reasons.
Speaker 1: What happened to you? I got married someone you met Toronto? No, no, somebody? Well,
Speaker 1: actually I met her while I lived in Toronto, but
Speaker 1: she was a Uh. She was directed a show for
Speaker 1: Disney that we were touring, and it was called Disney
Speaker 1: Symphonic Fantasy. Uh. One of the mean an amazing show.
Speaker 1: But we were allowed to play arenas because of the
Speaker 1: Felt contract. Really yeah, the Feld contract prohibited Disney from
Speaker 1: producing a competitive touring attraction, right whatever. So we tried
Speaker 1: to see if we can put this in amphitheaters and
Speaker 1: that big mistake and the reason we actually did it,
Speaker 1: I remember because you know, Michael was doing a lot
Speaker 1: of you know, bus and truck Broadway stuff. Very very
Speaker 1: successful up through Canada and even into the States do
Speaker 1: cats and all that kind of stuff. So we wanted
Speaker 1: to get the bus and truck rights for you know,
Speaker 1: Beauty and the Beast. That was the first Disney Broadway
Speaker 1: thing they were doing, and Disney was kind of inferring that, well,
Speaker 1: if you do this tour for us, said you'll be
Speaker 1: in line to do the bus and truck. Of course,
Speaker 1: we did the tour, lost money, and they decided to
Speaker 1: do the bus and truck in house. But I got
Speaker 1: a wife out of it. Uh. We lost a million
Speaker 1: dollars on the tour, so worth it, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: your million a Yeah, okay, so they move away. You're
Speaker 1: now getting married. What's your next step? Well, while I
Speaker 1: was over in um that was the only this is
Speaker 1: the only time you've been married. Yeah, twenty five years
Speaker 1: coming up this September. Pretty rare in this absolutely, I know,
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty amazing. Well we got married later, so
Speaker 1: and on the road, everybody got their old fantasy exactly
Speaker 1: exactly thought about him. Um. So, Brian Becker started calling
Speaker 1: me while I was over in London with Bowie and
Speaker 1: he started going, hey, we want to get into touring business.
Speaker 1: Wherever you want to live, if you want to live
Speaker 1: in This is when he's running Live Nation is when
Speaker 1: you know, this is when he's running Pace Pace concerts.
Speaker 1: And then you know, he said, come on and we'll
Speaker 1: start this touring group. You and Louis are tight, so
Speaker 1: we came. I agreed to go work with them. Uh God,
Speaker 1: Ironically at or it just happened. Shelley Dyan is like,
Speaker 1: oh God, there's nothing. I just love that. I meant
Speaker 1: anyway right it at the last minute, Shelly calls me
Speaker 1: and gets my wife and I had to fly down
Speaker 1: in San Francisco because they're like, why did you come
Speaker 1: and start GPS story. Now, ironically both of them got
Speaker 1: bought by the same time, so I guess it would
Speaker 1: ended up the same place. But um yeah. They flew
Speaker 1: us and wine and dined us and all of that
Speaker 1: down at San Francisco, and very funny. The last night there,
Speaker 1: my wife got we were staying at the CASTLEMA drone
Speaker 1: out in Sasolito. Last night. We're gonna fly back to
Speaker 1: Toronto and go across streets some Italian seafood place. My
Speaker 1: wife has seafood us and by two o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1: We're in Barren County General the worst food poison. I'd
Speaker 1: see him my life. It was terrible. But that's not
Speaker 1: why I picked Pace over GP. But uh so, anyway,
Speaker 1: I ended up doing the Pace Storian thing and Louis
Speaker 1: and I kind of got together on that and we started.
Speaker 1: I remember we started oz Fest, then we did the
Speaker 1: first Fleetwood mac Reunion tour, and Louis started this sig
Speaker 1: called the George Straight Country Music Festival. And honestly, that's
Speaker 1: that's what kicked it off for him. That's what really
Speaker 1: got him to be in country. Louis. You know, good
Speaker 1: for that. We all knew Louis the rock promote Texas
Speaker 1: right and um, and we're I mean, Louis and I
Speaker 1: were having a great time because you know, I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm more the business structure operator kind of guy, and
Speaker 1: I mean he is greatest salesman over see it. He
Speaker 1: really is. I mean he's like, you can't beat Louis
Speaker 1: and the two of us would go in a room.
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't think we could get beat. I
Speaker 1: really didn't. But then the sellarman thing comes along at
Speaker 1: s f X buy his Pace and Pace story wasn't
Speaker 1: even two years old. And to be honestly, with the Bubber,
Speaker 1: I really hated seeing that happened, you know, And maybe
Speaker 1: that's maybe I had it like in my head ahead
Speaker 1: of time that I was going to get out of
Speaker 1: there anyway because of the consolidation and all of that,
Speaker 1: and I just hate that. And but I didn't. I didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't get along with the guy that
Speaker 1: question about that. I mean that was everybody knew that,
Speaker 1: and that's what I knew, you know, I got to
Speaker 1: get out of here now, and well everybody was running
Speaker 1: into this place. It's really weird because, yeah, I'm going, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quitting my job. My wife and I are
Speaker 1: adopting a baby from Romania, and I'm buying a house.
Speaker 1: I've been living at Gaga Ware's house, right and all
Speaker 1: of this at the same time, You're making all these
Speaker 1: commitments with no incoming nothing. Yeah, it was all I
Speaker 1: used to call it outcome. Then we're looking for income
Speaker 1: right now, it's all going out. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: thank God for Paul, you know, like my like my
Speaker 1: big brother, and you know, he came to me and said,
Speaker 1: come on, let's go be the other guys. No, uh,
Speaker 1: they're just we could just go out. We thought of it.
Speaker 1: We'll just go out there and maybe we'd be able
Speaker 1: to get one or two tours, you know, just say, look,
Speaker 1: we're the personal you know, the quality over quantity, hands
Speaker 1: on all the time, dona dada ah. The way we
Speaker 1: do Tori, it has never changed. We're doing Tori today
Speaker 1: the way we did it back to the concerts West,
Speaker 1: which is everything goes to the pool. It was a
Speaker 1: real easy line back there, which was I'd rather make
Speaker 1: my back then it was I'd rather make my of
Speaker 1: it a hundred times and steal all of it once.
Speaker 1: And that was always our thing, so we always put
Speaker 1: everything out on the table with the artists. It was
Speaker 1: always about the right decisions for them. So Paul and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, there was that's missing, you know, and
Speaker 1: we should be able to go out. And I think
Speaker 1: it more personally wanted to do that because of our lifestyles.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. It's like, I mean, didn't we get
Speaker 1: into the music business because we didn't want to wear
Speaker 1: a suit, I didn't want to cut our hair, I
Speaker 1: didn't want to work five. I mean, now, why is
Speaker 1: everybody pushing for that. Why is that, like you couldn't
Speaker 1: agree more even if this late date, I know it's
Speaker 1: and it's there. I mean, you know, but it's like so,
Speaker 1: but that's really what's see two be That's what's cool
Speaker 1: about it is that as things consolidate, it also means
Speaker 1: things will fracture. And I'm always a guy. I've always
Speaker 1: be one of the fractures. I think, whatever, but and
Speaker 1: I think it's because one guy. But we're dealing with art, Okay,
Speaker 1: our job. What does the promoter do? We marry art
Speaker 1: with commerce in the live business, that's it. I don't records.
Speaker 1: We just do live. We sell tickets, and we know
Speaker 1: how to do that right and how to control your
Speaker 1: expense is and how to do it your way. Okay,
Speaker 1: but I'm not getting off topic here. You know how
Speaker 1: you're talking about Pace Consulting, SFX and how you decide
Speaker 1: to go independent with Gongaware. It was we just felt
Speaker 1: like something was missing, okay, and we felt like what
Speaker 1: was bussy was really exactly what what we do, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, does anybody care about the artists in this
Speaker 1: equation in the life side. And I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: be idealistic or anything. Or I'm just trying to say
Speaker 1: that it's a perspective that you could take if you
Speaker 1: take them, because we learned that from Gerry Wantrump. Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, if I didn't do what was right for
Speaker 1: his artist, they got fired, right. Okay, that's that's simple.
Speaker 1: So I look at it that way today. If I
Speaker 1: don't do what's right for Seline, she should fire me.
Speaker 1: If I don't do what's right for the Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: Paul and I Doe, they should fire us. Okay. I
Speaker 1: want to make sure what we're doing is the right
Speaker 1: job up. So that's what we felt like was missing,
Speaker 1: and we felt like that's what we enjoy doing. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was talking to about this earlier today. What we
Speaker 1: really love doing is is doing what we love doing,
Speaker 1: and what we love doing is fighting a project and
Speaker 1: going out there and making sure we're doing it better
Speaker 1: than anybody else's trying to think through everything we could
Speaker 1: possibly think of. Every artist is different. How could how
Speaker 1: can you do the how do you take this tour
Speaker 1: model for this other artist apply to that artist? I mean,
Speaker 1: you can't look at it that way. You gotta look
Speaker 1: and say, Okay, this artist and they want to do live, right,
Speaker 1: let's just start there and then let's work it backwards
Speaker 1: from there. Um. When on our tours, the best type
Speaker 1: of touring deal is the deal that the guarantee is
Speaker 1: the last thing you get to, you know, because what
Speaker 1: it means is everybody's worked together. Okay, should be playing
Speaker 1: these kind of places? What should the ticket prices should be?
Speaker 1: How much we're gonna spend on production that? Who? What
Speaker 1: are we trying to achieve here? What's it going? Do
Speaker 1: you want to bundle the record? You not want to
Speaker 1: all these different things? Okay? What what is right for you?
Speaker 1: And then you sit down and go, okay, I'll bet
Speaker 1: on then I'm going to do it right. But it's like,
Speaker 1: go through the numbers, and here's what doing it right does,
Speaker 1: and I'll give it to you that. Okay. So what
Speaker 1: was the first tour you've got with Gone? I think
Speaker 1: it was it was but Shelly is West Coast for one,
Speaker 1: And and you know why we got it, everybody was
Speaker 1: we dynamically priced the first fifty runs let's go, and
Speaker 1: that generated a half a million dollars bore and our
Speaker 1: numbers were that much bigger. Whose money were you using? That? One?
Speaker 1: Was ours? Ok that one was like, uh, but we
Speaker 1: found uh uh. Then we did Beriah and the Dixie Chicks,
Speaker 1: where our next two tours I might have been Dixie Chicks,
Speaker 1: said Mariah, one way or the other. Um. And for
Speaker 1: that we had found a guy up in outside of Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: Alan James Bless his soul passed away. Um kind of.
Speaker 1: He was from Wilbur, Washington, which, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: that's a summer camp that I worked at high school. Okay,
Speaker 1: and nobody would know anyway, think about it was on
Speaker 1: it you took a y across an Indian reservation to
Speaker 1: get okay, so um, and he did like low budget films,
Speaker 1: and Paul and I explained our whole thing to him
Speaker 1: and Darren Libanatti, the kid at the time was that
Speaker 1: Thomas and Mac and he called us and said, hey,
Speaker 1: you should beat this guy. He's doing boxing promoting and
Speaker 1: he's doing some low budget films. And Paul and I
Speaker 1: went in and our you know, our whole thing is
Speaker 1: very we're very transparent. So our deal with investors was
Speaker 1: always looked the money gets half right and the work
Speaker 1: gets the other hand. Okay, And that's really how we
Speaker 1: conducted our business. Paul and I were responsible for all
Speaker 1: the people that work for us, So Paul and I
Speaker 1: didn't Paul and I with his funny we put ourselves.
Speaker 1: We had two fifty dollar weeks salaries for our first year,
Speaker 1: just so we'd have insurance and stuff like that, because
Speaker 1: anything we may basically gave to the employees. And then
Speaker 1: you ultimately sold that company to a G. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and a godfather of that to us was irving, of course,
Speaker 1: and he saw it. Uh. Ironically, Paul and I were
Speaker 1: actually beating with SMG because part of our whole pitch. Remember, Paul,
Speaker 1: we started a little company called Arena Network back and
Speaker 1: it was part of uh a fact his fuddy story.
Speaker 1: Back then, we couldn't afford to fly, so we drove
Speaker 1: back and forth to Vegas for meeting. It's right, so
Speaker 1: we're driving. I went to I got the name he
Speaker 1: said for this RITA thing. He said what I said
Speaker 1: as Rita's for excellence. And I would have been right.
Speaker 1: At the same time, it would have been great explain
Speaker 1: what Arena Network is. Rita Network and it still exist. No,
Speaker 1: we sold it back to the members. I don't know
Speaker 1: a number of your ago now, but it was it
Speaker 1: basically came from the concept that the arena managers retired
Speaker 1: to waken up and seeing that an act was seen
Speaker 1: in the Sunday paper that an act was playing at
Speaker 1: an amphitheater down the street and they never even got
Speaker 1: a phone call because their local promoter in the marketplace
Speaker 1: on the amphitheat So this was created to really protect
Speaker 1: the arenas. Concerts. West, I guess was always an arena
Speaker 1: company just because you know, the first ones who had
Speaker 1: amphitheaters were the needer Landers and there weren't that many
Speaker 1: of them, Okay, so uh we felt that those guys
Speaker 1: needed a you know, a voice. And at the same
Speaker 1: time there were a group it was Brad Mayne, it
Speaker 1: was Tim Ryan h Kevin tuwig Hat Spokane, Darren Libanoni.
Speaker 1: That's how we got tied with Darren um I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting somebody Jim from San Jose. They were like
Speaker 1: the core guys and they were like, look, our owners
Speaker 1: are our owners are you know? They're not happy with
Speaker 1: this situation? What's going on with these amphitheaters. Okay, what
Speaker 1: people forgetting our business is that because you've been around,
Speaker 1: you've seen a lot. Okay, you and I grew up
Speaker 1: with civic and university facilities. Okay, it was Spokane Civic Center,
Speaker 1: was University of Tennessee Arena, whatever. It was. Okay that
Speaker 1: the Amphitheaters came along as a cheap outdoor venue, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of the Dead Landers. And then they were owned
Speaker 1: by promoters, owned by promoters, right, But then the arenas
Speaker 1: went private, which the Palace gunned. Those were like the
Speaker 1: first And when the owners of the NBA and the
Speaker 1: NHL team said hell, I'm gonna go build my own places,
Speaker 1: that was another paradigm shift, okay, and that's what we
Speaker 1: kind of exist there today. Um, you know, the amphitheaters.
Speaker 1: Let's put it this way. I don't think the amphitheaters
Speaker 1: are as popular today as they were. They're not. I
Speaker 1: think a repeenum would agree with you owns most of
Speaker 1: them now. Hollywood Ball it's not anything. I know, it's great,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean I wouldn't call that at the Amphitheater,
Speaker 1: No I would. But because there was stuff that would
Speaker 1: sell at Hollywood Bowl before they turned tore down the
Speaker 1: Revine meadows that wouldn't that would lose money at Refinement correct, correct?
Speaker 1: You know? Well, I mean again they started back then
Speaker 1: there mixes. So at a certain point, I guess we
Speaker 1: all called it, ah, the Jimmy Buffett deals. We're paying
Speaker 1: a hundred and five percent of growth or whatever it us. Right,
Speaker 1: that was another that was the shift. Okay, So I
Speaker 1: don't know. Okay, so you're sold to a G. So
Speaker 1: what is the mission for Concerts West at this point?
Speaker 1: It's really funny the well, the bishop for Concerts West
Speaker 1: today is very different than the biship for a E
Speaker 1: G presents all of that because Paul and I we
Speaker 1: we were the original block of it. UM. We had
Speaker 1: touring and kind of golden Voice in our minds um,
Speaker 1: but we did have regional offices in our plan. And
Speaker 1: then if I go back to the original business plan
Speaker 1: that Irving Paul and I presented to Phil and his
Speaker 1: guys in Las Vegas, it had all that in it. Okay,
Speaker 1: but we said we wanted to start with the touring.
Speaker 1: UH actually wanted to buy a Golden Voice because of
Speaker 1: their relationship with developing artists. Okay, Coachella was not Coachella
Speaker 1: at that time. Because Paul Goga and I, you know,
Speaker 1: we're helping back Paul t Um after his first year.
Speaker 1: The first year they did it, they lost, they lost everything, okay,
Speaker 1: and then and Paul came. Then there wasn't the one
Speaker 1: the next year. And then Paul Ty came to our
Speaker 1: office and asked Goga and I if we take a
Speaker 1: ride out to the desert with him, and God, wear
Speaker 1: was like he got it immediately. He was like, hey,
Speaker 1: it takes three years to get these things to happen.
Speaker 1: So we backed them. Irving was part of that. UM
Speaker 1: lost money. But then when we sold the company, they're
Speaker 1: going like, what's this Coachella thing? You're throwing your ship
Speaker 1: at the deal here and you know, um, but our
Speaker 1: vision back then was always to be equality over quantity, guy,
Speaker 1: and I hope that is what it is today. In fact,
Speaker 1: I I forever telling people that were you know, in
Speaker 1: our group and all of that, and when they get
Speaker 1: into this competition thing, and I'm always like, don't compete.
Speaker 1: It's just a waste of your energy. Be different, be yourself,
Speaker 1: be you know you've got something to offer. You know,
Speaker 1: in our business, there's always horses for courses, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And when you're when when you have
Speaker 1: to match people up with personalities and not just the artists,
Speaker 1: but also the other personalities around them. A lot of
Speaker 1: times that are handling it. Sometimes it's simple as just
Speaker 1: having the right person, you know. So to Paul and I, here,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what this is. Here's our mission statement. Okay,
Speaker 1: this will say what we want Concerts West to be.
Speaker 1: It's exactly this. I don't want to buy companies. We
Speaker 1: want to hire good people. We want to empower them.
Speaker 1: Empowerment means that if you give somebody responsibility, you give
Speaker 1: them authority, you give them the resources that they need,
Speaker 1: whether it's the money, back office support, et cetera. And
Speaker 1: the most important thing to get the funk out of
Speaker 1: their way. Okay, and it's so hard for people to do.
Speaker 1: Everybody wants to listen. I know it's listen. I watched
Speaker 1: Jim Allison and John Nelson first Legal the job that
Speaker 1: they're doing on Selindi on right now, and there they're
Speaker 1: the ones doing the job. Okay, so you're working on
Speaker 1: Selene now, you're working on the Stones. We've got Asia's
Speaker 1: you know, we've got Edgar and running all over Asia
Speaker 1: right now. Uh uh. Seline is finish it at the
Speaker 1: at the policy and there's only sixteen shows left. That's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing, and there's some other tours were working on.
Speaker 1: I mean right now, my focus right now with Selene's
Speaker 1: tour and um, because it's we're an on sale week okay,
Speaker 1: so you're still an arena company looking for complete tours, correct, Okay?
Speaker 1: And a globally it doesn't happen us. We're stadiums too.
Speaker 1: I think we have a bunch of experience stadiums worldwide.
Speaker 1: Is anybody if not more? Okay, tell the story of
Speaker 1: how he got the stones? Oh god, it's better Paul
Speaker 1: telling the story. Uh he was the one that sat
Speaker 1: on Joyce's doorstep and that's their attorney manager. Correct And
Speaker 1: uh well at the time they had Dainty in Australia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I you know, I don't know. I can't really
Speaker 1: say what happened why that fell apart. I think they
Speaker 1: have to do with my But you know that's look,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why above all you got you love
Speaker 1: Phil Answers. Okay, I mean, if you really look at it,
Speaker 1: why are we able to get the rolling Stones because
Speaker 1: we have Phil Answers, somebody who's willing to write to
Speaker 1: check and who gets it and his guys get it. Okay.
Speaker 1: I mean when you really look at it. I mean
Speaker 1: dand becker By, Ted Vick Ray, Todd Golts, the Jay Barciato,
Speaker 1: Ted Tanner, the guys right there around Phil. They're really
Speaker 1: good guys. And the interesting thing is we say this
Speaker 1: internally that, but every single deal that I've brought to Phil,
Speaker 1: he has said yes, wow. And and that includes telling
Speaker 1: this guy about a thing called Seline on the show
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas and heard her husband want to do
Speaker 1: and everybody in the world thinks it ain't gonna work.
Speaker 1: And he says, well, how much are we risking here?
Speaker 1: And I said, rofully, a hundred and fifty billion dollars
Speaker 1: that ballpark is someone and he and he just looked
Speaker 1: at me and said, you know, John, I think we
Speaker 1: should do it. Okay. I mean, there aren't that many
Speaker 1: guys out there like I mean, that is like and
Speaker 1: to have, honestly, you know, I mean, it fills a
Speaker 1: much more conservative regular guy than the rest of us. Okay,
Speaker 1: to have the patience to put up with all of
Speaker 1: our crap. I mean that alone. You know, he's good.
Speaker 1: But I think Phil loves what's been created, like I
Speaker 1: think of it. I tell people this, it's like a playground. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you look around a e g. There's so many
Speaker 1: cool things to play with, and if you come up
Speaker 1: with something cool and it makes sense, Phil will say,
Speaker 1: let's go do it. The Bangkok arita that they're all
Speaker 1: working on like Strasbourg in Denver or there in the
Speaker 1: Mission ballroom, etcetera. But going back to the stones, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, talking generally and act like that, how do
Speaker 1: they let you make money? You're putting up all this money.
Speaker 1: They have a legend of take of getting these guarantees.
Speaker 1: Do you say, hey, you know, uh, we gotta make
Speaker 1: our expert sentage or how does it work? Uh? We
Speaker 1: put up in big guarantees. But I mean it's Look,
Speaker 1: they're very fair people. They understand. Look, they know this business.
Speaker 1: Well is anybody Okay, I give you a brother. Have
Speaker 1: no one been doing it and doing it at that
Speaker 1: level for as long as they've been doing it. And
Speaker 1: they have nothing but amazing people behind them. Choice or
Speaker 1: manager Tim Woolley who produced is all of the tours,
Speaker 1: all the financial supporting them, everything to do with that Opie,
Speaker 1: their production at Patrick Woodruff and then all of the
Speaker 1: people on our side, uh that are out there working
Speaker 1: these things. Um, what's so cool about the Rolling Stones
Speaker 1: is that every time they go out to another tour,
Speaker 1: do you look around the organization? Maybe one person changed.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like everybody's still there. Everybody wants to
Speaker 1: be there. It's as professional as you can be at all.
Speaker 1: So but there they're they're fair guys. You know, they
Speaker 1: get it, you know, and and Enjoyce gets it, and
Speaker 1: you know, I think, yeah, they they allow us to
Speaker 1: make money. They want us to make money, okay, but
Speaker 1: they know that our first priority is, you know, to
Speaker 1: do the tour the way they want their tour done. Okay.
Speaker 1: So famously, although you mentioned you did it earlier in
Speaker 1: your career when the Stones came back after their fifty
Speaker 1: you've been doing dynamic pricing. So explain the motivation and
Speaker 1: how that ultimately works. Easy motivation. Um, we had an
Speaker 1: open ticket, which I define as as soon as you
Speaker 1: sold it to the consumer, they were free to do
Speaker 1: whatever they wish with it. And uh, we were watching.
Speaker 1: We would sell a ticket for a hundred dollars and
Speaker 1: watch it get resold for five. It went, that's wrong, okay, Uh,
Speaker 1: you can't stop supplying to that, okay, So we said, wait,
Speaker 1: a minute, that money belongs to the artist. But he doesn't,
Speaker 1: you know, And again I always say the artists, because
Speaker 1: what we make is based upon what the artist makes.
Speaker 1: The artist makes more I make, So I look at it,
Speaker 1: I go, wait a minute, that money belongs to the artist.
Speaker 1: So it has been a concern. I know everybody is
Speaker 1: aware of it now. As you know, this has been
Speaker 1: a concerted effort of ours now for over a decade, okay,
Speaker 1: that we have been figuring out how to get that
Speaker 1: money that used to exist in what we call the
Speaker 1: secondary market. How do we get that back over onto
Speaker 1: at least the side of the fence of the industry
Speaker 1: be it goes to the artist. But even you guys
Speaker 1: are your building to get it back on your side
Speaker 1: of the fence. Don't have these outside guys they have
Speaker 1: they have no right to be in our business to
Speaker 1: the degree that they are today. Um. And and it's
Speaker 1: our own fault because we look at but now the
Speaker 1: stones legendarily starting decades ago, UH would charge with the
Speaker 1: the real price of the ticket, okay, the secondary market price.
Speaker 1: Do you think it call market value? Market value? Absolutely? Uh?
Speaker 1: Do you think of the who's other acts? Developing acts
Speaker 1: or acts with different issues of credibility to charge less
Speaker 1: or should everybody charge what the market will bear? No, No,
Speaker 1: I think it's a gad go back to the individual artist. Okay. Um,
Speaker 1: for the Rolling Stones, what they don't have is time. Okay,
Speaker 1: they're only gonna do X number of shows. If you
Speaker 1: remember when Paul and I did Princess Musicology tour, Okay,
Speaker 1: we had no scalping problem at all. We had no
Speaker 1: secondary ticket problem at all. Why because we kept at
Speaker 1: each shows so we were able to keep our price down,
Speaker 1: and we were at each show after show after show.
Speaker 1: And even Prince said back then, he said, look, if
Speaker 1: we've sold four Philadelphias and we think we can only
Speaker 1: sell a half of another one, we're already set up.
Speaker 1: Let's do the show. We'll figure out a way to
Speaker 1: take care of underprivileged kids and stuff like that with
Speaker 1: the rating tickets. So we never had the twenty one
Speaker 1: nights and London we never had a It was the
Speaker 1: theory behind the fifty Nights of Michael and Michael Jackson.
Speaker 1: That's the way you keep your ticket price down, and
Speaker 1: it is important for artists to keep your ticket price down.
Speaker 1: Younger artists should keep it down, but they have to
Speaker 1: play more. Okay, an older artist who can't tour as much,
Speaker 1: who's going to have less frequency on the road, has
Speaker 1: got number one a bigger you know, there's going to
Speaker 1: be more demand because there's less supply. And then if
Speaker 1: you get to let's call it, the artists have been
Speaker 1: around for four or five decades. Their generation is also
Speaker 1: at the time of their lives where they have money.
Speaker 1: I got a great analogy for that. I heard this
Speaker 1: when I was over in London a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1: You know, we always talk about how it's the boomer
Speaker 1: generation can afford all these hype prices. Somebody from the
Speaker 1: eighties came up to me and said, hey, you know what,
Speaker 1: I don't mind paying two hundred and fifty dollars a
Speaker 1: ticket to go see Duran Duran for being my wife.
Speaker 1: And I just started laughing at I loved it. It's
Speaker 1: great because that the only problem is that generation so smaller. Right,
Speaker 1: So going back to the stones, tell us how the
Speaker 1: dynamic pricing works? Well, um, oh yeah, how do I
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, what's a henway. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to explain. Let's just assume for the
Speaker 1: sake of numbers. You have an arena that's twenty people,
Speaker 1: the big arena, but let's just use that number and
Speaker 1: you go on sale, forget any pre sales. Whatever, you
Speaker 1: go on sale. How many of those tickets would actually
Speaker 1: be on sale at the beginning or do you just
Speaker 1: put a certain number to figure out what the price
Speaker 1: would be. Two things you've heard, like Marcus talk about it, uh,
Speaker 1: which is slow ticketing. Right. Okay, you kind of got
Speaker 1: to decide up front what you want to do. Okay.
Speaker 1: You can't say, oh I want quick ticketing and it
Speaker 1: didn't work, and then later you said, oh I really
Speaker 1: wanted slow ticketing, That right could get sucked up. Okay.
Speaker 1: So slow ticketing is something for where you don't mind
Speaker 1: taking the time to sell all of the tickets, but
Speaker 1: you're gonna be able to learn more and and the
Speaker 1: technology is all there today. You're gonna be able to
Speaker 1: learn more over a slower process and be able to
Speaker 1: adjust your prices. So, like Ticketmaster has a program called
Speaker 1: price Master today, and if you use price Master after
Speaker 1: you're on sale, it will say, hey, see those two
Speaker 1: roads of tickets that you have a hundred seventy Well,
Speaker 1: if you drop them to a hundred and fifty, they'll
Speaker 1: all sell in three days, or they just do its algorithms.
Speaker 1: So they know that here's here's a good way. I
Speaker 1: look at the ticketing world today. Okay, we just went
Speaker 1: through I don't know, maybe it was a couple of decades,
Speaker 1: but at least one decade figuring out the technology, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so you have to go today, and you've got to
Speaker 1: go the technology exists today to do whatever you want
Speaker 1: to do. Okay. So it's not about technology, it's about
Speaker 1: business rules. Okay. So that's going to be the challenge next. Okay,
Speaker 1: because there is transparency, we know that we could follow everything,
Speaker 1: so you can't hide anything anymore because a lot of
Speaker 1: people are like, I haven't explained now why they hid
Speaker 1: things a long time ago and why they hit them all. Um.
Speaker 1: Problem with lyon as you've got to remember them okay. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's become a very transparent world. Okay. We can
Speaker 1: see what the supply and demand is today on anything, okay,
Speaker 1: and we have the technology to do it anyway we
Speaker 1: want to do it. Okay. So it's really good to
Speaker 1: put the onus back on the business rules. Should I
Speaker 1: allow one company to exclusively sell all of my tickets?
Speaker 1: Should I do it a bunch a bunch of companies?
Speaker 1: You know, if I have one company sell all my tickets,
Speaker 1: maybe they'll give me more money. But I think we're
Speaker 1: I kind of think we're passing the big check from
Speaker 1: ticket Maaster. You know, well, well the ticket master a
Speaker 1: lot of times they have an exclusive with a building.
Speaker 1: That's so you don't have the option to use other
Speaker 1: ticketing companies. How do you think Coca Cola would have
Speaker 1: done if they could only sell a Ralph's stores? They
Speaker 1: would not have done well? And why have we been
Speaker 1: doing that for all these years? Now? I'm not saying
Speaker 1: you're wrong, I'm saying, say, do you believe the buildings
Speaker 1: themselves will not take that curate? I think it's either
Speaker 1: them or the artist. Okay, I think ultimately it's there.
Speaker 1: I mean I should guess I should be able to
Speaker 1: say it should be the promoter to since we're putting
Speaker 1: up the buddy. But remember we put up all the
Speaker 1: money and we're still at the very bottom of them
Speaker 1: food here. Yeah, but either the venue control the tickets
Speaker 1: because they have a civic responsibility, or the artist controls
Speaker 1: their ticket They're fucking their tickets. Okay, it's like we
Speaker 1: go back to Pearl's head, we go back to ever
Speaker 1: we want. Okay, I mean Pearl jab never went in
Speaker 1: and asked a simple question of can we sell our
Speaker 1: tickets without service charges, to which at the time Terry
Speaker 1: Barnes would have said, sure, here's how much it cost.
Speaker 1: Nobody wanted to talk about that, you know, so think
Speaker 1: of it as a leaky bucket, right, and the leaky
Speaker 1: bucket was really bad at the secondary market. Okay, Now
Speaker 1: we've started to learn how to close up our bucket,
Speaker 1: but we still need open distribution tools to not have
Speaker 1: open distribution for our product. Well, I know, if I'm
Speaker 1: talking to someone in your organization, they made a deal
Speaker 1: in Amazon sold some tickets for them, and they sold tickets.
Speaker 1: You know that they couldn't reach through the traditional ways. Correct.
Speaker 1: That was that over in London and worked beautifully. Okay.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, we all know there's giant communities out there,
Speaker 1: online community, these other it's just communities, right, and so
Speaker 1: why shouldn't we be reaching out to those people? Okay?
Speaker 1: We want you know, you try to get your music
Speaker 1: out to everybody. You try to sell your records everywhere
Speaker 1: I used to. But why aren't we make making our
Speaker 1: tickets available the airlines? Do I mean? Do you think
Speaker 1: American Airlines and United dislike Orbits? Of course they hate Orbits,
Speaker 1: but they liked that. But the only one that's independent
Speaker 1: is Southwest. Yeah, but everybody else I understand your point. No,
Speaker 1: my point, Okay, they have They're on Expedia, they're on Orbits,
Speaker 1: are on their own site. Because you never know where
Speaker 1: the customer might be. That happens to be all the time.
Speaker 1: I tell people to the Southwest, I didn't know well
Speaker 1: because it wasn't on Orbits and it wasn't on Expedia.
Speaker 1: It's like a buddy A Biden told me the story
Speaker 1: about uh to Me and Costco and how to Me
Speaker 1: said they would never ever put their product in Costco.
Speaker 1: They had a two thousand and eight they had a
Speaker 1: bunch of orders they couldn't get rid of. Called Costco
Speaker 1: and said you might taken some of it, and Costco said,
Speaker 1: how much do you have? We'll take it all. Guess
Speaker 1: who sells more to me than anybody else today? And
Speaker 1: I think to me just made a deal with Amazon,
Speaker 1: to one of those companies. Of course, otherwise you're putting
Speaker 1: yourself out of business. How about premium ticketing? Anything we
Speaker 1: haven't covered here well previously. Listen, here's what I think. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's because everybody gets really confused. So there's a couple
Speaker 1: of ways to look at this real simply, there's primary
Speaker 1: and their secondary. Okay, primary to me means and I'll
Speaker 1: use an old analogy, but what prints out on the
Speaker 1: ticket is what they paid. In other words, I have
Speaker 1: never in my life. I have never scalped a ticket
Speaker 1: of my life. I've never sold a hundred ticket that
Speaker 1: says a hundred dollars on it to somebody for five dollars.
Speaker 1: I have sold five tickets and they say five. I
Speaker 1: have sold packages, and those packages might be fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: dollars and include a five ticket, but they explain that. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, our responsibilities to keep things in the
Speaker 1: primary sale and keep things out of quote the secondary market. Now,
Speaker 1: secondary market always wanted to exist, you know, but I
Speaker 1: don't want them taking the lift as they have been
Speaker 1: for the last decade. I'm fine with them taking ta
Speaker 1: Then they're my orbits, got you, Okay, So how do
Speaker 1: you decide to walk us through the process of premium ticketing. Um,
Speaker 1: premium ticketing is at a reserved house, preferred locations, preferred roads,
Speaker 1: live nations, doing it now where you can pay extra
Speaker 1: to get the aisle. I pist I did come up
Speaker 1: with that. Um, you know it's uh because we live
Speaker 1: in the sliced up world today. You can slice it
Speaker 1: up and you can take little I mean, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen it yet, but I was told that you could
Speaker 1: buy seats sitting at a cocktail table on the stage
Speaker 1: at Lady Gaga's she does her jazz. And I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's what premium ticketing is. Okay. So if you have
Speaker 1: a show, if we get the stones with the dynamic,
Speaker 1: how many you were in an arena? How many tickets
Speaker 1: do you use for premium ticketing? It varies, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously it's gonna be more your majors. It could be
Speaker 1: how much should it be? It's probably running about well
Speaker 1: for us. I'm trying to run as hive a percentage
Speaker 1: of that as I can five inventory. I hope eventually
Speaker 1: we are in looking at our entire inventory in that
Speaker 1: way because we're capable of it. Okay, So um uh
Speaker 1: pets on the artists and the pets odd obviously the
Speaker 1: demand okay, how with the scarcity is going to be okay?
Speaker 1: And at what areas also could we diedabatically lift? Okay?
Speaker 1: In other words, we all know the front row of
Speaker 1: any balcony anywhere, it's usually a pretty cool seat, right,
Speaker 1: I mean like the front row the Dodgers, a front
Speaker 1: row of the first balcony Dodgers cap. It's a great seat, right. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we're applying that now, a lot of that just
Speaker 1: because we can so. But premium or platinum as it's
Speaker 1: called on Ticketmasters is about the more special. It's like
Speaker 1: you've got great car, gold card, platom card and the
Speaker 1: black one, right, So it's the same thing. It's first class,
Speaker 1: it's business class. It's a one term sweep. It's a
Speaker 1: one better sweet with a balcony. Okay, But do the
Speaker 1: perks matter? People just buying the tickets? Uh? I think
Speaker 1: it used to be, honestly, just the tickets of the location.
Speaker 1: Where does it sounds? I think everybody's really getting into
Speaker 1: the perks. Tell us some of the perks you've used.
Speaker 1: Oh god, I think the greatest perk was and continues
Speaker 1: to this day, that Shelley started with the Paul McCarty
Speaker 1: sound check package. I bought what myself get to sit
Speaker 1: and watch Paul McCarty to do a sound check for
Speaker 1: an hour. He acts back right right, all right, right
Speaker 1: right right right, and that you get an amazing seat.
Speaker 1: I bought two. I mean, you know, I mean it's
Speaker 1: a great experience. Okay, So um, I think kids today
Speaker 1: are bored to that experienced stuff. We are we think
Speaker 1: of experiences because we're old parts. We think of these
Speaker 1: experiences like like paying for first class. Okay, capture experiences,
Speaker 1: but capture it so everybody could capture it. That's where
Speaker 1: you make the money. Now switching gears again, we have
Speaker 1: an endless issue with the ticketmaster fees. Ticketing fees. Public
Speaker 1: hates them. StubHub included them and their business went back down,
Speaker 1: and they would what's the future of the ticketing fee?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, gotten way up there? Um, okay, what is it?
Speaker 1: We all now know it costs nowhere near that amount
Speaker 1: of money to sell at it. Okay, I mean we
Speaker 1: know that. Really, Come on, you're not even making anything now, okay,
Speaker 1: everything electronic? All right? Yes, I believe somebody should be
Speaker 1: able to make a profit at what they do. But
Speaker 1: I think by adding charges, creating charges, increasing charges, putting
Speaker 1: things on top, as they call it, Oh, push it
Speaker 1: on top, put the credit card charge up on top,
Speaker 1: and all of that you hurt of your product. Okay,
Speaker 1: because at the end of the day, you know, who
Speaker 1: are you fooling if you if if you say selling
Speaker 1: my tickets for a hundred dollars, but when the person
Speaker 1: shows up, they're paying a hundred. Trust me, the guy
Speaker 1: who paid a hundred forty five paid a hundred forty five.
Speaker 1: It's the other guy who thinks the only sold it
Speaker 1: for a hundred rightly sold tickets for a hundred dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he's playing on or fifty by the time all
Speaker 1: the charges are on top. Again, I think transparency is
Speaker 1: going to kill a lot of that, you know, I mean.
Speaker 1: And there's nothing wrong with choices, okay, Like you know,
Speaker 1: you want to go online shopping Costco or Amazon. You
Speaker 1: want the jungle chip, You want the jungle chim delivered tomorrow.
Speaker 1: You want two guys to set it up. Oh, you
Speaker 1: can do that for X amount of money. So our
Speaker 1: business is now capable of doing all these Okay, But
Speaker 1: it's kind of back of well did you get into music?
Speaker 1: Business because you wanted to be a computer geek. I
Speaker 1: I was just reading about that today. They were reviewing
Speaker 1: a book in the Wall Street Journal because they were
Speaker 1: talking about money ball, you know, the scouts as opposed
Speaker 1: to stats. And no matter what I mean, he says,
Speaker 1: you know, the facts have to come from somewhere. So
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, this becomes a because you're
Speaker 1: when you do arena tours. That's the top of the business,
Speaker 1: arenas and stadiums. And we grew up in an era
Speaker 1: when the record company supported the clubs, which they certainly
Speaker 1: don't do anymore. And the clubs don't exist. And I'm
Speaker 1: talking about a real club for undred fifty people. Now
Speaker 1: they'll say club. That's not a club, that's a theater
Speaker 1: of my book. So but uh, you know, the developing
Speaker 1: acts the other things you talk about in terms of
Speaker 1: selling tickets to different places, that's another issue where there
Speaker 1: are acts that sell out arenas that most people never
Speaker 1: heard of. You know, the message doesn't get out there.
Speaker 1: Let's stay on the technology for one more minute, though,
Speaker 1: the paperless. What's the future of that? Oh, it's mobile
Speaker 1: ticket like so it's so the ticket will be tied
Speaker 1: to the person who pushed it wanted, Yeah, it's got
Speaker 1: to be closed by clothes. I mean, just the same
Speaker 1: way you can't sell your hotel room or somebody else
Speaker 1: what's the hotel says it's okay or whatever. In other words,
Speaker 1: what I was making my point about the business rules.
Speaker 1: Our job is going to be the business rules. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying what those are today, but I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that that is good to be what we have to
Speaker 1: deal with. That makes sense. Okay, So in today's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you got into the business. I got into
Speaker 1: business because music really drove the culture. Music was everything,
Speaker 1: And despite some younger people saying otherwise, it does even
Speaker 1: though it's ubiquitous, it doesn't hold the same mind sure,
Speaker 1: the same place in the mind that it did when
Speaker 1: you had your transistor radio and your stereo and that's
Speaker 1: all you had. So obviously you're very excited by the
Speaker 1: business end of it. Are you still excited by the music? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But I gotta find what I like? Okay, like because
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a contrarian by nature. Okay, I'm not
Speaker 1: a big I'm not a big hip hop fan. Man,
Speaker 1: did I love R and B? And when I hear
Speaker 1: that in it. I love that, okay. Um. I think
Speaker 1: country is the one that's got a little click track
Speaker 1: ish myself. Um, it's like they all and that one's
Speaker 1: sounded a little too much alike to me, And I
Speaker 1: think there needs to be some branching out there. But
Speaker 1: then I look for the branching out. Okay. I'm one
Speaker 1: of those guys who everybody's saying rock and roll is dead.
Speaker 1: That that energizes me, okay, because I'm the guy who says,
Speaker 1: you know, the time to buy when you hear about
Speaker 1: buying gold, that means it's over exactly. I'm a big
Speaker 1: believer in I'm a country area too. Let's just go
Speaker 1: You mentioned that you got involved with Coachella, it took
Speaker 1: three years to ultimately make money. What do you see
Speaker 1: as a festival business in the health of it or
Speaker 1: the future of that in America today? There's one side
Speaker 1: of it I like, okay. But the side I like
Speaker 1: is the community side, Okay, that they're all going out
Speaker 1: enjoying the live experience. I don't know if the festivals
Speaker 1: today are the um the roller rink um what we
Speaker 1: call them pop shows back in the sixties when when
Speaker 1: you know you had Buddy Holly and and you know
Speaker 1: you had multiple acts. Um, it kind of represents that.
Speaker 1: It does represent this experience thing. Okay, I mean, um,
Speaker 1: but it'll always it's like anything else. The strong will survive,
Speaker 1: the week will die. There will be you know, there
Speaker 1: will be those that look like the bar business, which
Speaker 1: is you go down the street and buy the dump.
Speaker 1: You turn it into a hot place. A second it's hot,
Speaker 1: you sell it. You go down and buy it. So
Speaker 1: there will be a contingent of guys that go and
Speaker 1: do that, and there will be the wrong that survived.
Speaker 1: The ones that I think that will survive though, will
Speaker 1: be the ones that have a strong community based too.
Speaker 1: It sounds weird, but I see that more of coming.
Speaker 1: I see there's more. The festivals carry the greatest social
Speaker 1: message that we have in our business. Okay, I mean,
Speaker 1: without talking about the lyrics are the words of a song.
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying, where else do we have a
Speaker 1: better communal experience than a festival? Right? Okay? And if
Speaker 1: we loved it when we were kids, absolutely amenities and
Speaker 1: and and our concerts were almost festivals anyway because we
Speaker 1: had jay floors, okay, and and it was a whole
Speaker 1: Billity Jays ran around, so I that's an important thing
Speaker 1: to keep live entertainment alive. But then, but then Brian
Speaker 1: Becker's story and holograms and the selling tickets to Boom
Speaker 1: is it. Yeah, well certainly the first one. Roy Orbison
Speaker 1: in the UK did relatively well. So this has been wonderful.
Speaker 1: We could talk for hours. Anything you didn't come, we
Speaker 1: didn't cover that. You have to say, oh, um, since
Speaker 1: we're talking about concerts West, we're talking about Goggle and
Speaker 1: all of that. Concerts West is Honestly it's about our people.
Speaker 1: My g and A and is nothing but overheads, mating salaries. Okay, Um.
Speaker 1: We have the most incredible people who we lived by
Speaker 1: those lines. I mean the the the ladies and the
Speaker 1: gents that work at our place. They just love what
Speaker 1: they're doing. And Paul and is aug Is we could
Speaker 1: keep having fun to it this we're gonna do it.
Speaker 1: And corporate wearing a suit stuff always scared. I agree
Speaker 1: with You've been listening to John Meglin on the Bob
Speaker 1: Left Sets podcast. You were fantastic job. Thanks for coming.
Speaker 1: Thanks Bob