It used to be called the Aspen Artist Development Conference. But then file-trading killed record company largesse, and the conference turned into a concert confab.
And all the action is in the show.
So the guest star today was Louis Messina.
You have to know, back in the seventies, there were a coterie of people who read “Billboard.” They didn’t subscribe, but they bought occasional issues, assuming the newsstand carried it, and read it at the library, because they needed to get closer. They needed to be closer.
I remember being wowed at the success of Humble Pie’s “Smokin’,” which was not only inferior to the band’s previous work, but was nowhere near as good as Frampton’s debut, “Wind of Change.”
And then came Clive Davis’s book. With the red cover. Mana from heaven. There wasn’t another music business book this big, this impactful, until “Hit Men” in 1990. Here we got the inside story. “Rolling Stone” was for the consumer, Clive’s book had business nuggets, as well as gossip, and then there were “Cashbox” and “Record World.” The labels were king, those who ran them were cultural icons. To be able to meet Mo Ostin? Walter Yetnikoff? Even Bhaskar Menon? They were untouchable. The acts came and went, but they maintained.
And then it all fell apart.
Alain Levy was the Merck Mercuriadis of his day. He made offers that could not be refused to Herb and Jerry and Chris Blackwell and suddenly A&M and Island were part of PolyGram. Building a label and selling it? Irving Azoff saw how much money was being made and he jumped from running MCA to starting his own label, Giant.
And then it all imploded.
Back to Irving, back to 1994, when Hell Froze Over. Irving priced the Eagles tickets at what they were worth. A hundred bucks. And they all sold. And then everybody started thinking of the possibilities.
Ticketing was no longer regional and inefficient, Fred Rosen came along and built Ticketmaster. Then came the internet and professional scalping, brokers reaping profits heretofore unheard of. Furthermore, you no longer had to know a guy, because these scalped tickets were available to everybody online!
And there are only brokers because the tickets are underpriced. So then there were Platinum tickets. Sit up close and personal, get a tchotchke, meet a band member and pay multiple hundreds. And then it turned out the external elements didn’t matter. People were willing to pay hundreds of dollars for guaranteed good seats.
This was a revelation and a revolution. Because antiquated thinkers still thought it was the seventies, that high ticket prices would reflect negatively on the act, undercut their credibility. But MTV changed the business, it was all flash, all the time. Bruce Springsteen might have been a secret in the seventies, but in the eighties, he was everywhere!
Younger generations didn’t care what the price was, they just needed to be inside the building. Their only complaint was they couldn’t get a ticket. And those on the inside knew and still know that those complaining loudly, gaining attention, are a distinct minority and delusional. They think they should be allowed to sit in the front row for fifty bucks. What next, a Mercedes-Benz for 15k?
And now there were only three major label groups. And unlike in the past, they didn’t build talent, they poached it off the internet. Furthermore, they only signed that which was easy to sell. Like the movie studios and comic book movies. There’s a whole slice of the public, a huge slice, that won’t go to a Marvel movie, have never even seen one. The studios stopped serving this audience and lost control to the streamers, i.e., Netflix. And funnily enough, it’s the same people who go to Marvel movies who listen to the Spotify Top 50. So now the interesting action is in the independent sphere. Live music is burgeoning. Record labels are moribund.
And the promoter is king.
However, the promoters started being rolled up in 1996. So we end up with a few titans. Michael Rapino. Jay Marciano.
And Louis Messina.
You probably don’t know who that is. Well, maybe you do, but most people do not. What was the biggest story of the summer? Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. And Louis Messina is the promoter.
And not only Taylor Swift, but George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Eric Church, the Lumineers, the list goes on. Who is this person and how did he do this?
Well, concert promotion is very different from the record business. The turning point in the record business came a bit over fifty years ago, when Atlantic and Elektra became part of Warner. Suddenly, it was all corporate.
But in the concert business? It was still renegade.
And hard to get into. Because it was a license to go broke. You guaranteed the act money and then you had to sell the tickets, and sometimes you did not.
And those who survived… Are business-savvy in a way you cannot fathom. They’re street smart in a way that Lucian Grainge is not. Certainly not Rob Stringer. And Robert Kyncl at Warner? He came from the visual side of entertainment, tech, he’s not down and dirty.
And all the promoters are. When it’s your money…
And concert promoters never retire. They gain all this wisdom, and they use this knowledge and their wiles to get business, to do business.
Louis Messina has been around forever. He was responsible for Texxas Jam.
This was a thing way back when. After Woodstock, when it was almost impossible to do a festival. Promoters would find an established location, maybe a racetrack, and do a show there. There was California Jam… But this was before people traveled for shows, you could only dream, you felt left out.
And you always wanted to get closer. You needed to get closer.
So once you get into Louis’s force field, you’re done. Because Louis doesn’t sit at home in the office, he goes on the road. So when Ed Sheeran opened for Taylor Swift, Louis sat in the front of the bus talking to Ed and…
Soon Louis was Ed’s promoter too.
It’s a weird combo of personality and skill. And it’s based on experience. A teen can’t do it, nor can a twentysomething. You need the miles, the dead ends, you may not get a degree from a university, but your experience is even more valuable.
These promoters are square pegs who can’t fit into a round hole. You can’t learn how to do what they do, because they’re unique characters, they’re stars. They need to do it their way, not the man’s way. And isn’t that the essence of art?
So Louis is sitting on the riser and unlike every other successful person he’s not denigrating himself, rather he’s owning his status and power.
And you could feel it. This strange charisma.
This is what the record label titans used to have, used to deliver.
Now you get it in the touring business.
These are today’s icons. These are the people those who need to be in the business want to get closer to. These are the people who make the show happen.
And now it’s all about the show, a unique experience you can’t get anywhere else.
Who are these people who put on the show, who risk all that money to create an extravaganza?
They’re magicians, and we’re dying to know the trick.
