Gerry Barad, COO, Live Nation Global Touring
It's hardly been a month since the mammoth Ticketmaster/Live Nation
merger plowed through the US Department of Justice -- they got through
the anti-trust proceedings with just a few nicks and bruises, like
giving away their ticketing technology to competing promoters -- so the
timing couldn't be better for a visit to Berklee College of Music from Gerry Barad.
Barad is the bulldog COO of Live Nation Global Touring and close to the center of what some people
are describing as a pretty scary power-grab -- a move that will change
the live entertainment industry. More than ever, clubs and stadiums
will be owned by the same people booking shows there, the same people
selling the tickets, the same people managing merchandise, and in some
cases, the same people selling the recordings. As far as Barad's
concerned, everything is still business as usual.
“It's not a
monopoly,” he told a packed crowd of 150 in Berklee's Back Bay
performance cave, the David Friend Recital Hall. “There are always
competitors.” Okay, in the case of Ticketmaster, maybe not so much – as
the LA Times reported last month, they sell 83% of tickets at any
“major venue” event, anywhere.
Barad – a stubborn rock &
roll foot soldier for years who outgrew the Vancouver punk scene in the
'70s and worked his way up through international merchandising
companies and promotions armies – was joined onstage for a “fireside
chat” by Berklee professor Jeff Dorenfeld, as they reminisced about Bay
Area Buzzcocks and Dead Kennedys shows and slam-dunk Rolling Stones
tours.
“There are probably more promoters doing things just in
this town than ever before. Has there ever been a time with more big
shows that weren't affiliated with Don Law?” Barad said, referencing
Boston's crown prince of concerts for decades. It might depend on what
you mean by "affiliated." According to a spokesperson for Live Nation
New England -- where Law is currently president -- he oversees
everything promoted by the company in the area "and the operations of
all Live Nation-owned venues (Bank of America Pavilion, Comcast Center,
House of Blues)." Additionally, he formed his own company last year to
buy the Orpheum, Paradise, and Opera House from Live Nation, a
transaction completed last September for $22.5 million. Keeping score?
“Nobody
but Bill Graham did shows in San Francisco for years and no one
complained," Dorenfeld said. “Guys worked hard to protect their markets
back then.”
But as Dorenfield knows perfectly well, Graham never had a fraction of the power or revenue that Live Nation now controls. The concert industry has ballooned several orders
of magnitude since Graham's day. With recorded-music sales plummeting,
tours make up a far bigger share of an artist's income. And Live Nation
isn't just a local or regional promoter: it has its hand in worldwide artist management, promotions, record deals, merchandising . . . and now ownership of a ticketing empire as well. (Next to that, it seems but a footnote that Live Nation owns Graham's old
haunt, the Fillmore – or, sorry, the “Fillmore brand.”)
John Peters runs the New
England-based MassConcerts, an independent concert-promotions company whose recent and upcoming shows range from Muse and Ray Davies on down to Dilllinger Escape Plan and Vivian Girls. Reached by email the week after Barad was in town, he says there's a bit of room for other independent promotions crews in Boston, but
not much. "I would agree
that there are more people putting on shows in more markets," he said
later via email, although that doesn't apply so much to Boston. "In this
area it is pretty much Live Nation and us." On top of that, like most
events in town, those promoted by MassConcerts have tickets for sale
through Ticketmaster and Live Nation.
"While the 'old school'
promoters are still very protective, most of them have sold their
companies to larger, publicly traded companies," Peters said. "Employees want to
protect what is theirs, but it is not the personal threats and attacks
that I have only heard stories about from the '70s and '80s."
Regardless,
Barad contends that no one has anything to worry about with the
mega-deal. “This merger won't affect anything in this town negatively.
There's always someone new who can own a club,” Barad said, invoking
Mr. Burns when he had to ask, “Do we own the Middle East?” (Nope. Whew!)
As
the talk went on, Dorenfeld hinted at the real competitor: time. Taking
a look at the Live Nation roster of superstars, you start to feel like
you're reading an endangered species list. The Stones, Paul McCartney,
Rush, The Who, The Police, Peter Gabriel -- they make U2 look like
Another Bad Creation. What's the company going to do when someone takes
these guys off life support?
Lady Gaga marks a rare score of
new blood for the big-time concert business, and Barad was eager to
praise Live Nation's decision to finally bring her on as a client this
year. But is there any more where that came from? Barad grew up booking
shows in Elks Lodges for bands like D.O.A. and the Pointed Sticks, and
still possesses a pair of ears geared for street-level, no-bullshit
judgments of new bands. (Though he got sick of the punk bands pretty
quickly: “They didn't want to listen to me, so I moved on.”) You'd
suspect that if there were 36 hours in the day, the guy would make a
monster artist development taskmaster (“I hate Auto-Tune, I have a
problem with Pro Tools – I like musicians”). For now, the old dogs are
doing most of the work.
Barad made no bones about the business,
though, and took shots at writers wagging their fingers at the deals.
“There's so much blogging and so much looking over your shoulder like
they know more than you do, and they bend artists' ears. That's my pet
peeve -- they don't know what they're talking about. Try making a
living at the business you're talking about.”
He also defended
recent experiments from Live Nation with “dynamic pricing,” like an
Eagles concert in Sacramento that just went on sale. The scheme is
basically a hyper-specific seat-pricing plan, in which ticket buyers pay more for the aisle
seats in certain rows and so on. You end up with VIP seats going for
$995 and nosebleeds dropping down to $32.
“I call it Robin Hood scaling,” said Barad. “The rich pay for the poor. We're lowering the prices on the worst seats.”
Critics
have accused the move of basically cashing in on scalping prices, which
it probably is, but who can feel sorry for anyone shelling out that
kind of dough for a crusty Eagles show in the first place?
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