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Best of 2022: Lucy Dickins – A tale of two cities

This festive period, we are revisiting some of our most popular interviews from the last 12 months ahead of the return of our daily IQ Index newsletter on Tuesday, 3 January. Here, WME’s global head of contemporary music and touring Lucy Dickins reflects on her path to the top…

Having left ITB just three years ago, Lucy Dickins’ rise through the corporate ranks has been extraordinary. Looking back on her first 25 years in the music industry, she tells Gordon Masson about her path to the top, transforming WME, the philosophy behind her clients’ triumphant return to touring and splitting her time between London and Los Angeles.

As the newly appointed global head of contemporary music and touring for WME, Lucy Dickins is one of the most influential people in the global music business. At the time of speaking to IQ, she has just relocated to Los Angeles and is sitting in her new Beverly Hills office suite, complete with a generously stocked bar. “I’m not going to lie, I’ve made a fair old dent in that already, and I’ve only been here a week,” she states, revealing the irreverent, self-deprecating charm that has helped her amass an army of allies throughout the music industry, as well as a steadily growing list of A-list talent.

Her impact on WME has been transformational. Having been appointed to head the company’s music division in London in June 2019, her leadership during the initial months of the pandemic prompted the corporate giant to promote her, one year later, to co-head of the company’s music division globally, alongside Kirk Sommer. At IQ’s press time she was elevated again, taking on the global head of contemporary music and touring role.

And while her confidence and skills as one of the world’s foremost talent agents are undisputed, there’s one significant person who questions her rapid ascent up the corporate ladder. “I’m my own worst enemy,” she admits. “I just get mad imposter syndrome. But then I start actually doing the role and I realise I’m really good at it.”

One long-term admirer is former WME chief Marc Geiger who reveals his campaign to lure Lucy to the company took patience. “To me, the available choices to helm WME in the UK were very low when considering the people who could rise up the ranks,” he says. “I was looking at who I thought had the upside potential to be both an executive and a super-uber signer.

“It’s like being a sports coach: you look at potential, and Lucy was the best choice in the world. I didn’t know how difficult it was going to be to convince her to leave ITB – that legacy and that family business. But I also felt that situation was holding her back from being one of the biggest agents in the world.”

“Everyone else saw my roster, but Marc saw something in me that I didn’t even know existed; that I could be a great leader”

Lucy contends, “The whole process of leaving ITB took about a year. WME approached me first, and then when the rumour got out that I might be looking elsewhere, everyone else came knocking at the door. But I really liked Marc Geiger. Everyone else saw my roster, but Marc saw something in me that I didn’t even know existed; that I could be a great leader. But to achieve that I needed to prise myself away from ITB, and he gave me the confidence to do that.”

Stating that she wanted to make her mark in any new workplace, she continues, “WME’s London office wasn’t necessarily in the best of places – it was a bit of a satellite operation, and if there was a scramble to sign a new act, you’d be up against CAA, and you’d be up against Coda, but you’d never hear the name WME. I wanted to change that and put my imprint on it, and while I didn’t quite know if I had that in me, Marc Geiger believed in me, so I just bit the bullet and trusted him.”

Now WME’s London operation is a very different place with Lucy helping to attract a number of high-profile agents to join the company, as well as a growing number of headliner clients. “It’s thankfully gone brilliantly well, and now everyone wants to be at WME,” she states.

Early days
Although the Dickins family is a rock & roll dynasty, Lucy reports that the no-nonsense way in which parents Barry and Gill raised her and artist manager brother Jonathan kept things grounded. “They were really humble and never made it feel that we were different to anyone else,” she recalls. “When we went to gigs, we never went through the front doors, but it wasn’t made out to be something special. Everything was always really pushed under the radar.”

Lucy’s recollection of her first gig was going to see Abba. “I cried because it was too loud,” she says. Dad Barry remembers it slightly differently. “The kids wanted to meet the band and were really excited. The band themselves could not have been nicer, but Jonathan and Lucy just went quiet – they couldn’t say a word. It’s probably the last time either of them was speechless.”

Another meet-and-greet involved a life-changing moment. “I wanted to be a boy when I was little, so insisted on my hair being cut really short,” says Lucy. “We met Bucks Fizz backstage, and they said, ‘Oh what a cute little boy’ because of my hair and the fact I was wearing these velvet pedal pushers and a little frilly shirt. And I had to tell them, ‘I’m not a boy. I’m a girl!’ And then that changed who I wanted to be.”

“She’s genuine, generous, and funny, and she can spot that sparkle in people that they often cannot see themselves”

Despite her parents’ attempts to normalise their lives, their popularity among childhood friends had a lasting impact. “All the kids wanted to come to our house because mum and dad were really cool – so my brother’s mates would always be around at our house, and my mates would always be around because it was just a cool house,” says Lucy.

While countless people in the live music industry want to be Lucy’s best friend, that accolade goes to Kim Ratcliff, who met Lucy in infant school. She attests to the family’s down-to-earth vibe but has countless tales of meeting artists.

“They treated me like one of their own and took me on holidays and to loads of concerts,” she says. “I remember meeting Claude Nobs in his house in Montreux in 1988 and having lunch with Tracy Chapman who was admiring the Swatch watches Lucy and I had bought. It was another world, but it was all very matter of fact, rather than made out to be special. And there were lots of surreal moments like that.”

Godparent to Lucy’s children, and the Barbara Dickson to Lucy’s Elaine Paige, Ratcliff contends that their friendship affords Lucy one of the few places where she can switch off from the industry and be herself. “She’s the best friend I could ask for – in more than 40 years we’ve never had a cross word. She’s genuine, generous, and funny, and she can spot that sparkle in people that they often cannot see themselves.”

But sometimes that sparkle just isn’t Lucy’s cup of tea.

When her teenage friends queued to meet 80s heartthrobs Bros at a record store appearance, Lucy found herself alone chatting to Aswad, whose promo session was a little less frenetic. “I just didn’t like Bros,” she says. “I always sort of went against the grain of what you’re supposed to like. So I had this long chat with Aswad and ended up going home with their record.”

“Between the ages of about 15 and 30, Lucy and I didn’t have much in common. But from 30 onwards, we’ve become really close”

With less than three years separating them, Lucy admits her brother influenced her musical tastes. “I have a strong memory of Jonathan playing music really loud in his bedroom. He did a Doobie Brothers remix, and I remember him playing them for ages before he came up with that tune. He’d play a lot of Neil Young, and then he’d go into Keith Sweat: he’d just play all different types of music. So that influenced me. But courtesy of my parents, I also grew up on a lot of Dylan and Diana Ross and Paul Simon, so I have pretty good breeding.”

For his part, Jonathan says, “Between the ages of about 15 and 30, Lucy and I didn’t have much in common. But from 30 onwards, we’ve become really close.” Indeed, when IQ speaks to Jonathan, he’s in the process of relocating from New York to Los Angeles into a neighbourhood near his sister – a move that he notes will also allow their children to spend more time together.

Accidental career
Despite music being the family business, Lucy initially railed against the idea of following those footsteps. “I didn’t want to go into music because all the men in the family were in it,” she declares. “I wanted to go into film. I wanted to be a distributor or a film agent.”

Dad Barry says, “When she finished school, I told her she had one week to find a job. When she didn’t, I brought her into ITB to help out, and she worked for me for a while before becoming David Levy’s assistant.”

However, the pressure of the family business could be overwhelming. “Jonathan was like a breed of racehorse because he had to be the next person to keep the Dickins name up there, which was shit for him because there was so much expectation on him,” says Lucy. “But that meant there was very little expectation on me. So while Jonathan might have been the thoroughbred, that allowed me to kinda quietly creep up on the outside.”

“I’d tell her that I wanted her at ITB because she was good, not because she was my daughter, so I was pretty tough on her”

With music running deep in the veins, pursuing other career paths soon became a fleeting distraction, but not before she explored other pathways in the business.

Her years at ITB were punctuated by a brief sojourn at record label PWL. “I vividly remember the job interview,” she tells IQ. “It was my first lesson in how to wing it.

“They put me in this boardroom and gave me a scenario where I was a product manager. I didn’t even know what a fucking product manager was. But they were obviously impressed by whatever bullshit I came up with, as I started out as a junior product manager and just kept getting elevated – label manager and then head of international.”

A wave of consolidation in the label business closed that chapter in Lucy’s career when she was made redundant. “I was back into the realms of ‘what do I want to do?’ Some people wanted me to move into management, and lots of people were knocking on my door saying ‘we want you to do this’ and ‘you should do that,’ but I wasn’t sure.”

A somewhat reluctant return to ITB led to some testing times. “I’d tell her that I wanted her at ITB because she was good, not because she was my daughter, so I was pretty tough on her,” confesses Barry. “For instance, I taught her how to promote a show, knowing that she might never use it but that it would help her when it came to negotiating deals.”

“I heard her yelling down the phone at a promoter ‘Woah woah woah! I don’t get paid enough to take this shit!’ At that point, I knew she was going to make it”

He adds, “It’s difficult being a Dickins – people used to say I only got acts because of my dad, Percy, even though he wasn’t an agent. And then they’d say I’d get them because of my brother [Rob] who ran Warner Music. So I can sympathise with the same accusations that get thrown at Lucy and Jonathan.”

Increasingly frustrated with the menial tasks delegated her way, Lucy finally confronted her father. “He told me, ‘If you’re such a fucking know-it-all, here’s a map: go and route a tour.’ And I was like, ‘Fuck you. I will.’ I sat there for about three hours, didn’t know what I was doing. But when I delivered my plan, he was pretty impressed. And that was the start of it.”

Asked when he knew that Lucy could make the grade as an agent, Barry recalls one key moment. “I heard her yelling down the phone at a promoter ‘Woah woah woah! I don’t get paid enough to take this shit!’ At that point, I knew she was going to make it,” he laughs.

Building a roster
Having taken on a couple of baby acts, Lucy says that the foundations for her entire career boil down to one band, Hot Chip, whom she still represents 20-plus years later. Recalling her introduction, Lucy points to record label executive Ferdy Unger-Hamilton. “He told me to check them out. They were supporting Athlete, I think, at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, and I just loved them.”

After meeting co-founders Joe Goddard and Alexis Taylor, they asked her to sit down with the rest of the band. “We met in a pub – the Newman Arms – and they were all lined up like at a fucking job interview,” says Lucy. “I didn’t have a roster, and I knew other big agents with rosters who were battling to sign them. But I’d really done my due diligence and thought about the strategy of how I’d do things for them. So when Alexis called later that day to say they’d chosen me as their agent, I just remember being beyond delighted and promising that I’d never let them down.”

That studious approach to signing acts, says her father, is a particular forte. “She puts together brilliant strategies and plans and has creative ideas that I’d never come up with, such as using unusual venues and stuff,” says Barry.

“When you’re an agent, you just need that one act that’s going to actually believe in you and give you a chance”

Lucy notes, “When you’re an agent, you just need that one act that’s going to actually believe in you and give you a chance. Hot Chip were that band for me. They have a very, very special place in my heart because they’re the band that basically made me who I am.”

Indeed, the act is giving Lucy one of her first transatlantic dilemmas. “I’m desperately looking at how to get back for their show on 23rd September, when I’m supposed to be in Aspen, because I’ve never missed a London show by Hot Chip. I even went to their Brixton show the day before my son was born,” she reveals.

Artist relations
Look down the names on her roster and it’s apparent that most clients have been with Lucy since the beginning of their careers, highlighting a trait that breaks one of the unwritten rules of the music business: don’t believe you can be friends with the artist.

“She’s friends with lots of her clients,” observes Barry. “She’s amazing at networking, she’s fiercely loyal, and people genuinely like her– she’s even remained the agent for some acts when they’ve decided to change manager, which is unheard of,” he adds

That doesn’t mean to say that Lucy Dickins hasn’t been dumped by clients.

“I lost a band called Tilly and the Wall,” she says. “They fired me because they wanted to play the Scala, and I didn’t think they were there yet. I’m in the game of selling shows out, but I’m not someone who pushes my artists to take out every single ticket in a market for the sake of playing a bigger venue. I want to play a venue that we’re going to smash because I want an artist to have a career. And I’m always quite vocal on that. Tilly and the Wall disagreed.

“I also lost Vance Joy, who had that one big song, Riptide. But I’m not crying over either of them, and I genuinely don’t think there’s been anyone else I’ve lost, so it’s not the worst record over 25 years.”

“It’s not about family: it’s about the best people. I work with Lucy because she’s one of the best, not because she’s my sister”

Rather than naming a side-of-stage moment, Lucy contends her “made it” moment covers a particular period in time, during the early noughties, when immersing herself in an emerging underground scene started to reap dividends.

“It was around that kind of Jamie T, Laura Marling, Blueflowers, Jack Peñate, Mumford and Sons time… there was a whole scene, and I was just very lucky to be in it, signing the acts who were just getting bigger and bigger. I had that entire scene sewn up, and that was a real ‘wow’ moment in my career.”

Jonathan also looks back on that time as key to his working relationship with his sister. “It really started with Jamie T,” he says. “He was looking for an agent. I recommended Lucy, but told him that if he only met her there would be a load of people in the business who would say she only got the act because of me. So I advised Jamie to go and meet a few agents on his own – I didn’t need to be there – and then he could come back to me and tell me who he wanted to hire. And he loved Lucy. So the choice was his, although you’re always going to get fuckwits who say otherwise.”

And addressing charges of nepotism, which he too has suffered, Jonathan adds, “It’s not about family: it’s about the best people. I work with Lucy because she’s one of the best, not because she’s my sister. If people don’t believe that or don’t get it, I don’t fucking care. We don’t run our lives based on other people’s opinions or prejudices.”

One and only
Her friendships with artists have delivered numerous additions to Lucy’s roster over the decades, thanks to word-of-mouth and her professional achievements, and it was a Hot Chip connection that led to her finding her most famous client.

“I had Hot Chip playing at King’s College, and Jack Peñate asked if he could come along and bring his friend, Adele, a singer. She sat on the steps at the back of the stage ordering Jack to run around and do things for her. She was hilarious, and I just really warmed to her.

“At the end of night, I said: ‘You’re a singer,’ and she asked if I wanted her CD. Then she literally tapped this bloke on the shoulder and said, ‘Excuse me, you know that CD I gave you? Give us it back, I need to give it to her.’ It was hilarious, and I remember it like it was yesterday.

“Actually, when I think back to a lot of the artists I’ve signed, it’s really vivid – I remember the tiniest details of meeting Mumford & Sons; I remember the minutia of speaking to Jamie T. Those moments are really stuck in my head. And now, when I meet new artists, I look for that kind of mad connection. And if I get it, I’m all in. It’s a gut thing.”

She continues, “Anyway, the day after that Hot Chip show, I was doing some housework, and I thought I’d give the CD a listen. Hometown Glory came on. ‘Fuck off, what is this?’ It was insane. Then Daydreamer came on and then My Same. I’d never heard a voice like it, so I rang my brother to let him listen, and he told me he’d already had meetings with her.”

“People don’t remember but it took a while with Adele – it wasn’t an overnight thing”

The rest may be history but it hasn’t all been plain sailing.

“People don’t remember but it took a while with Adele – it wasn’t an overnight thing,” she states. “The press were appalling, and I heard some really shitty comments, all about the way she looked. Thankfully, the world is changing now, but it’s Adele and people like Ed Sheeran who paved the path for everyone else.”

Her relationship with Adele has led to some incredible career highs.

“There was the 2011 BRIT Awards when Adele sang Someone Like You; Mumford and Sons won best album; and Laura Marling won best female. It was the best night of my life. I felt like I owned the BRITS,” she beams.

Other significant moments include: “Hot Chip playing the Astoria; Adele on the Australian stadium tour, and this year’s BST Hyde Park shows; James Blake winning the Mercury Prize; Mumford & Sons on the Gentlemen of the Road tour and also when they played my 40th birthday.

“And lately, this Jamie T thing. I think it’s pretty fucking impressive 15 years into his career that he lands his first number-one album, and now we’ve announced this huge London show for next summer, so I’m super-excited about his career going forward.”

Flying the nest
Having built such an impressive roster at ITB, the offers were never going to be lacking when Lucy Dickins decided to look to pastures new.

But it was not a simple decision.

Brother Jonathan opines, “Leaving ITB took a lot of courage. It was a big deal to come out from my father’s shadow. And it also took great humility for my old man to allow her to spread her wings without playing any kind of emotional card – it showed really great characteristics in both of them.”

“The old boys’ club meant promoters were always calling up dad about Adele, and that really pissed me off. ‘Barry didn’t sign Adele. I signed Adele. Why are you asking him if she’s available for things?’”

As difficult as the decision was, Lucy believes the timing was spot on. “I’m not sitting where I’m sitting today without being taught by the best person there is in the business. Dad is my absolute idol, and to learn from him was an absolute blessing.

“But I realised that I needed to move on. The old boys’ club meant promoters were always calling up dad about Adele, and that really pissed me off. ‘Barry didn’t sign Adele. I signed Adele. Why are you asking him if she’s available for things?’ It was really undermining.

“It’s definitely a misogynist thing because Jonathan doesn’t get the same shit. And it’s a major reason why I moved to WME – I had to show people that I’m not doing what I’m doing because I’m Barry’s daughter. I’m doing what I’m doing because I’m really good at it. And the proof has been in the pudding. I left ITB and I’ve gone from strength to strength.”

Commenting on Lucy’s new role from his artist manager perspective, Jonathan states, “WME’s a giant, but there was a lot of room for improvement, and that’s nothing against some very good agents who were in the company – stellar people, especially in the UK. But Lucy has given it an energy and a youthful focus that I think it needed.”

“Lucy is one of the only British people to run a global agency, and I know she’s going to be spectacular”

Recruiter Marc Geiger, whose departure as WME’s head of music facilitated Lucy’s latest promotion, was never in any doubt she would flourish. “The first time Lucy interrupted me five times in a conversation, I knew she was the right person – she took the verbal wrestling match and slammed me to the ground like a WWE champion,” he tells IQ.

“Lucy is one of the only British people to run a global agency, and I know she’s going to be spectacular. She has all the tools, it’s her time, and it’s incredible to watch where she and Kirk are going to take this thing. They get to run the world, and I think they’re going to be amazing.”

WME co-head Kirk Sommer is similarly enthused. “I’ve known Lucy a long time. I don’t know exactly how many years it’s been, but we always seem to have similar interests and admiration for the same people – we’ve shared Adele as a client for many years,” he says.

And reporting on the working relationship they’ve now established, he adds, “I don’t think I could hope for more. I don’t think it could go any better. You know, we laugh very hard. And we work a lot harder.”

Californian dreaming
Having enjoyed a whirlwind 2022 that has included Rex Orange County selling out Gunnersbury Park in London, and in the same city, Adele’s massively successful hometown return – headlining a female-only line-up at BST Hyde Park – Lucy has never been busier. “I’ve signed something nearly every week for the last three months,” she tells IQ. “I’m not going to be someone who just sits back and rests on their laurels because if I’m not relevant to my artists, or the people that I’m mentoring, I’m not relevant to the company.”

She cites Loyle Carner, and Max Richter as well as grime superstar Stormzy as new signings that prove the new WME regime’s plans are working well. “I’ve also got this new girl, Ruti, who I’m excited about. And since I landed in the States, I’ve had some meetings that hopefully will result in a few more new signings. I love music so I’m never gonna stop.”

“I’m an absolute nightmare for people in corporate – I swear like a trooper, I’m opinionated, I’m loud, but I’m 47 years old so that’s not going to change. My dad says I’m like a van driver”

Having only been in her new L.A. home for a few days, she understandably is reticent to start publicly naming areas where she thinks WME needs strengthening. Instead, she is scathingly honest about her own shortcomings. “I’m an absolute nightmare for people in corporate – I swear like a trooper, I’m opinionated, I’m loud, but I’m 47 years old so that’s not going to change. My dad says I’m like a van driver,” she laughs.

“But I think that’s probably refreshing in the corporate environment. Someone at WME asked me recently what is the one thing that I want everyone to know about me. It’s what you see is what you get. I’ll tell you straight. I’ll be upfront, friendly, and I’ll treat everyone the same. There is no other side of me.”

While the step-up to the top job at WME obviously entails a heavier workload, the relocation to Los Angeles has, she says, given her more of a life/work balance than she latterly had in London.

“Being a mum is the hardest bit with a job like this,” she states. “My kids are seven and nine and it’s, ‘Mommy, you’re always working.’ That was a major reason for moving to L.A. because the 17-hour days in London were brutal – when my kids were sitting having dinner, I’d be in another room on a Zoom call, and then I’d miss bedtime. It’s hard for kids to understand.

“Swapping the days around is a bit of a challenge. I start very early in the morning with the London side, but then my day finishes with everyone else in L.A., which means I can actually go out and have a normal life in the evening. It’s much better.”

“Even if I’m in London one week per month, I can be really productive”

Despite the improved home life, there are no immediate plans to make the Californian residence permanent. “I don’t want to feel that I’m not in London,” she pleads. “The bottom line is that I’m going to stay in Los Angeles for as long as I feel I’m needed and as long as they want me around. And in the meantime, I’m going to flip flop between L.A. and London – I’m flying back for my shows all the time this year. Even if I’m in London one week per month, I can be really productive.”

Pandemic planning
While many peers endured a tough time during the pandemic, Lucy used the time to concentrate on revolutionising WME’s London operations and, having been promoted to the top job globally, formulating plans for the company’s future.

“I was very lucky that a lot of my big acts were writing records,” she reveals. “I didn’t want to be one of those agents that was constantly rescheduling dates – none of us knew when Covid was going to be over, so I saw little point in rescheduling or rerouting until we knew things would be ok.”

She continues, “The fact my artists were not touring gave me the ability to structure my thoughts: that ‘why?’ and ‘where?’ and ‘when?’ stuff. And there were, of course, lots of conversations with promoters, because Covid was shit for everybody, and we’re determined to be the best partner to everyone we possibly can.”

With business now picking up, that calm, considered approach is continuing. “I’m always upfront with my acts, so I’ve been warning them about the bottleneck of shows at the moment. And if they want to tour, they need to look at what’s going to make them stand out from every- one else. And they need to think about the size of venues they’re going into because what they were worth pre-Covid versus post-Covid could be very different.”

“Part of my job is making acts aware that in different places there are different issues – you need to brief clients as thoroughly as possible before deciding on a tour”

She highlights the cost-of-living crisis and ticket prices as another concern. “Part of my job is making acts aware that in different places there are different issues – you need to brief clients as thoroughly as possible before deciding on a tour. But some acts are having a great time: Jamie T flew out the door, while Marcus Mumford ticket sales have been brilliant, for example.”

Business prospects
On a day-to-day basis, Lucy relies heavily on her core team, including assistant Phoebe Holley, Whitney Boateng and long-term colleagues James Simmons and Chris Payne, who also made the move to WME from ITB.

Simmons tells IQ, “You enter Lucy’s office with a dilemma, an issue you’ve been stressing about for days and you need her help, but in actual fact you spend 25 minutes in there, both chatting about everything other than the subject you had planned to talk about. Then, as her mobile rings (‘I’d better take this, babe’), she’ll solve your problem in 15 seconds flat, and you’ll leave the room far wiser than when you entered. In summary, she’s constantly good fun, it’s never boring and her advice is always spot on.”

Payne agrees, “Lucy is a force. Working with her for the last decade or so has been an exercise in keeping up with an unreal pace and breadth of ideas. There’s no problem that can’t be fixed, and her energy and positivity can make you think anything is possible.”

“I’ve never known anyone as fiercely loyal as Lucy”

Her assistant, Phoebe Holley, notes, “I’ve never known anyone as fiercely loyal as Lucy. We joke a lot that I’m her carer, and I regularly catch myself putting on an Essex accent and saying ‘babe’ at the start of every sentence. The way she has supported, pushed, and mentored me throughout my time working with her, is something I’ll never take for granted. Such a creative mind that runs at a thousand mph but never misses a trick. No problems, just solutions (and a few tequilas). There is absolutely no one like Lucy Dickins.”

That’s something that the newest member of her team, Whitney Boateng, is learning quickly. “To say it is a blessing to work with Lucy is an understatement, she is exceptional beyond words,” says Boateng. “Lucy’s work ethic, her drive, her ideas, and her ability to make sure everyone can still access her support are unmatched, and these are just a few things that make working for her so easy.”

Having assembled such a tight unit to run her operations, Lucy successfully integrated her mantra companywide in London and is now focussing on plans to do the same globally.

“We’re having an incredible year,” she reports. “We’re on course to where we were in 2019, which is pretty outstanding given what we’ve all just come through.”

“It would be remiss to say that I don’t think there’s going to be some hurdles next year. The cost of living and the sheer number of acts going out in the market is going to affect things”

However, she’s a realist when it comes to targets. “It would be remiss to say that I don’t think there’s going to be some hurdles next year. The cost of living and the sheer number of acts going out in the market is going to affect things. There’s going to be some bumps in the road, 100%. But I’m a massive believer that you just attack those when they come along.

“The bottom line is that people still want to go out and see live music, which is very refreshing. As long as the appetite is there with the fans, things will be good.”

Enthused about the future they can deliver for WME’s music division, Sommer says, “We’re just generally very excited about our plans. Obviously, it’s been a very difficult couple of years for the industry: nobody has been immune to this thing, but we’re back, and business is great.”

Keeping specific strategies close to his chest, Sommer adds, “We all know it’s a dynamic marketplace, and it’s always evolving. Thankfully, we have the support to kind of lean into different areas that we think are important to our clients.”

Noting the multiple avenues that WME can exploit, Lucy comments, “It’s not something that happens overnight, but the ability to be able to tell an artist that at WME there’s a million things that we can set up for them is massively exciting.”

“We’re trying to encourage younger talent to come through so we can develop new superstars in this agency”

Indeed, looking ahead to the next 25 years, it’s obvious that Lucy Dickins will be piloting an agency business that would have been unimaginable when she first cut her teeth back in 1997. “There are so many different areas where artists can grow their careers now, and at WME we’ve got experts in all of those areas. So we’ve got people working on Web3, and we’ve got people looking for opportunities in the metaverse, for example.

“That’s another of the many reasons I joined WME, because it allows you, as an agent, to pivot and learn different things so that you can offer your artists that full-service thing. And we’re going to use that to bring in new talent – both on the agents and the artist side.

“We’re trying to encourage younger talent to come through so we can develop new superstars in this agency. There are loads of really talented people at WME that just need that chance to prove themselves, so we’re ramping up mentorship and support systems to allow that to happen.”

With 25 extraordinary years under her belt and a job title that only a handful of agents will ever attain, Lucy’s goals for the future remain refreshingly simple.

“It’s just to be the best version of myself I can possibly be,” she concludes when asked about ambitions. “To learn as much stuff and meet as many people and make new relationships as much as I can. And that hopefully will reflect on the company, and the company will be in a great position.”

This article originally appeared in Issue 113 of IQ Magazine.

 


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Best of 2022: Phil Bowdery’s golden term

Ahead of the return of our daily IQ Index newsletter on Tuesday, 3 January, we are revisiting some of our most popular interviews from the last 12 months. Here, Gordon Masson learns about Live Nation legend Phil Bowdery’s remarkable 50-year career in the industry…

Education is a mantra in Phil Bowdery’s life. “I’ve said to my children many times, ‘Don’t do as I do, do as I say,’ because I was out of school by the age of 15, playing in a band,” he confesses. Still, as one of the doyens of the live music sector, his early departure from school hasn’t served him too badly.

Starting life on the road as the drummer for a band called Choc Ice, Bowdery’s early experiences saw him rubbing shoulders with some of the great and the good of the music business. “Our guitarist was Gordon Gaynor, who I still catch up with now and again,” he says. “But our claim to fame was we had a little bit of a break and made a record with Pye, which was the label in those days.”

Gaynor tells IQ, “I met Phil through Ray Stiles, who was bassist for the band Mud. So Phil joined us on drums, gigging most weeks, and when we stayed out the night I’d share a room with Phil, which was a laugh. When we went to Germany for the first time, we lived on pizza for a month, playing three [one-] hour sets a night – great fun!”

“We used to meet Stevie [Wonder] and his band at a hotel in Mayfair, and we all went on the tour bus together”

Bowdery continues, “We became the backing band for Mac and Katie Kissoon. Katie is now one of Eric Clapton’s backing vocalists, but she and her brother had quite a big hit at the time, and we ended up on the road with The Supremes and also Stevie Wonder, which were both Arthur Howes tours.”

Gaynor comments, “We used to meet Stevie and his band at a hotel in Mayfair, and we all went on the tour bus together. I remember to this day, Phil and I sitting in Stevie’s dressing room as he played us tracks from his first synth album, Music of My Mind; it blew us both away. I have some really fond memories with Phil.”

Indeed, another claim to fame was Bowdery’s part in one of Wonder’s biggest hits. He recalls, “One day at soundcheck, he had this huge boombox that he was using to record stuff, and he asked me to play a rhythm while he recorded. So, in theory, I played on the original demo of You Are the Sunshine of My Life, which is pretty nice because I now promote Stevie Wonder in Europe.”

“In theory, I played on the original demo of You Are the Sunshine of My Life”

When the wheels came off…
The heady heights of life as a support act were short-lived, however, and Bowdery put aside the drumsticks barely a year after hitting the road. “Things in the band were beginning to fall apart, and suddenly the van wasn’t working, and that was sort of the final straw,” he recalls.

“I was 16 at the time, but I still wanted to be involved in music, so I became the non-driving roadie for Mud, who were from my hometown. I got paid £12 a week. When I was old enough to drive, Mud started to have hits, and as the band got bigger and the crew got bigger, that enabled me to become their production manager, then the tour manager, and then I became part of the management team.

“With Mud we were doing clubs and things – there was a chain in Manchester that owned three venues where we’d open up the first club, we’d be middle of the bill on the second, and top of the bill on the third one. So you ended up doing three shows per night in three different venues, which made it worthwhile. When I think about it, we’d break our heads to play a show – I remember going from London to Sunderland [a distance of 275 miles (443km)] for a £40 gig.”

“I remember going from London to Sunderland [a distance of 275 miles (443km)] for a £40 gig”

Sound Moves
When Mud’s fame began to wane, Bowdery saw the potential to earn some extra cash for the act. “We purchased the sound system,” he explains. “I did the deal with Dave Martin, from Martin Audio, himself. And on the back of that, we started a rental company, which I was running as well.”

The shrewd piece of business opened unexpected doors. “The sound company did work with Renaissance, and when their manager, John Scher, decided not to fly in their regular guy from the States, I became their sound engineer,” explains Bowdery.

And his enthusiasm obviously impressed. “I quickly became the band’s tour manager and toured America with them.”
That introduction to America lit a fire. Following Renaissance, Bowdery found himself on back-to-back tours with Charles Aznavour across the States, and, thanks again to the sound rental operation, he also began his long association with Leo Sayer.

“I quickly became the [Renaissance]’s tour manager and toured America with them”

“I came to Barry Clayman via the sound company, as we were working with some of the acts that MAM were promoting,” says Bowdery. “Barry and I just hit it off from day one – I still speak to him on a daily basis, often multiple times.

“When I decided that humping gear was no longer for me, I became Barry’s promoter’s rep for a Leo Sayer tour. I think the first tour was 1979. Leo and I got on like a house on fire, so it got to the point where he asked me to work for him full-time, so I left the sound company and Mud and worked for Leo straight through to ‘85, when he came off the road.”

In the meantime, Barry Clayman made the decision to depart MAM having sold the business to Chrysalis. “I’d always recognised Phil’s potential, so a few years after the Chrysalis deal, I decided to start my own company – Barry Clayman Concerts [BCC] – and I asked Phil to come with me,” Clayman tells IQ.

“When I decided that humping gear was no longer for me, I became Barry’s promoter’s rep for a Leo Sayer tour”

Bowdery recalls, “A year or so into BCC, we got Michael Jackson and did our first tour with him in ‘88. That really helped establish the company as a serious player.”

Indeed, Clayman reveals, “We did seven Wembley Stadiums with Michael Jackson – 560,000 tickets, and every single one was a paper ticket bought in person at a box office or a ticket outlet. Phil ran all of those shows. In fact, at one date when Jackson failed to appear, it was Phil who went on stage to calm the crowd and explain the date would be rescheduled.”

Bowdery says, “I introduced computers to BCC. Michael Jackson’s tour manager, John Draper, had the first Mac I’d ever seen – this bright-green machine, and it just changed everything. Instead of sitting with a piece of paper, a calculator, a pencil and a rubber, doing costings, we started putting them into sheets with formulas.

“We did seven Wembley Stadiums with Michael Jackson – 560,000 tickets, and every single one was a paper ticket”

“I’ll never forget Barry asking what would happen if we put the ticket price up by 50 pence: he couldn’t believe that we could make all the calculations so quickly… I’ve still got all the old figures. I sometimes like to go back and have a look and just see how I did things.”

Leaving on a jet plane
Having Clayman as a mentor, Bowdery took on more and more responsibility, but his first fully promoted tour turned out to be a bittersweet memory.

“The first tour that I promoted, completely sold it myself, was John Denver in 1997. Even though it was a Barry Clayman tour, the credit line was ‘Phil Bowdery for Barry Clayman Concerts,’ which I really appreciated,” he states. Sadly, it would be the final time Denver would visit Europe.

“We played golf a couple of times, and he was talking about this new plane that he’d just bought as a kit and how he was looking forward to seeing it when he got back home. And that was the plane he died in, literally four or five weeks after we finished the tour.”

“The first tour that I promoted, completely sold it myself, was John Denver in 1997”

Immersing himself in the international side of BCC’s operations, Bowdery started to rub shoulders with many peers who have since become colleagues at Live Nation.

“It allowed me to learn the European side by starting to use different promoters around Europe. So, through the likes of John Denver or Tom Jones – for whom I sort of acted as his agent from about 1987 – I got to know Leon Ramakers and Herman Scheuremans and Thomas Johansson.

“That’s how I crafted my European knowledge, by getting to know all those guys – and most of them are now part of the Live Nation family, so it definitely helped that we had pre-existing relationships from when we were all independent.”

Johansson, who these days is Live Nation’s chairman of international music, recalls, “We met for the first time in Holland: Phil was there with The Rubettes for a TV show, and I was there with ABBA for the same programme. Ever since we have worked together with almost every artist in the world!”

“Through the likes of John Denver or Tom Jones, I got to know Leon Ramakers and Herman Scheuremans and Thomas Johansson”

Further south in Europe, Rob Trommelen at Mojo Concerts acknowledges Bowdery’s no-bounds enthusiasm in helping the artists he works with. Explaining that he knows Bowdery from his days as tour manager with Mud, Trommelen tells IQ, “I always enjoy Phil’s stories about his adventures [in the Netherlands] during the trips they made to a variety of clubs and local discotheques – he knows the names of many villages in the middle of nowhere. One day, he even showed me a video in which he joined Mud’s backing dancers!”

Of course, Bob Sillerman’s corporate kleptomania changed the live music business forever, and in 1999 when SFX turned its attention to BCC, Bowdery found himself as one of the principals in the new expansive operation – a position he built upon as Sillerman cashed out to Clear Channel Communications just four months after the BCC acquisition.

“When the company evolved, a position for a European touring chief became apparent,” says Clayman. “Phil was out of contract, but I suggested they speak to him and he became the new number one. I had great confidence in him because I always knew he had what it takes. He was a great learner and was always asking the right questions to expand his knowledge base – it’s me who asks him the questions these days.”

“[Phil] was a great learner and was always asking the right questions to expand his knowledge base”

With Bowdery given the title of executive VP, touring, Europe, when Live Nation spun off from Clear Channel in 2005, his role further expanded when he was promoted to executive president of touring, international, working closely with local partners to set up offices in Australasia, Asia and China, as well as Live Nation’s international touring activities.

Clayman adds, “I take huge satisfaction [in seeing] how successful he has been. On top of being a great music man, he’s a good guy, and he’s great with his staff.”

Born leader
Because there are a full 24 hours in a day, workaholic Bowdery’s role in recent years has extended outside of his Live Nation remit. For more than six years, he has been chairman of the UK’s Concert Promoters Association, while more recently he has been heavily involved in the creation of LIVE, the UK trade body that represented the live entertainment sector so well during the pandemic restrictions.

Explaining how he first became involved in trade associations, Bowdery says, “Barry Clayman was one of the founding members of the CPA, along with Harvey Goldsmith, Paul Crockford, Danny Betesh, Stuart Littlewood and Carole Smith, who just celebrated her 30th year as CPA secretary. If Barry could not make a meeting, I’d go in his place.

“On top of being a great music man, [Phil] is a good guy, and he’s great with his staff”

“Back then, it was all about a PRS fight: they wanted to increase promoter rates from 2% to 6%, but thanks to the CPA, we managed to contain it at 3%.”

Indeed, the CPA recently emerged from another negotiation with PRS that saw rates rise to 4.2% of gross sales. “It’s tough, especially in the current environment,” admits Bowdery, who nevertheless piloted the CPA’s campaign to stymie PRS attempts to increase the tariff to 8%.

“With VAT going back to 20% from April, along with the PRS’s 4.2%, we’ll have 25% coming off the gross before we even start,” he warns. “That’s why we’re challenged, in the UK, to try to match offers that promoters make, particularly in America where there’s no tax in some instances. But it could be worse if it wasn’t for the fact that the CPA has given us a voice.”

Tres Thomas, senior vice president of operations and the global director of touring for Live Nation, commends Bowdery for his leadership skills, both within the company and at the CPA.

“Like myself, Phil is pretty much the road guy who has done everything”

“Like myself, Phil is pretty much the road guy who has done everything,” says Thomas. “When I first met him, I was working with the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie James Dio, and Deep Purple, and Phil was the guy who started with production and settled the show afterwards – we’d argue over nickels and dimes and catering bills and all those things, but he was always a gentleman and always respectful.

“Phil taught me that the promoter/artists/agents table could be round – it didn’t need to be squared off, with battle lines drawn.”
Thomas adds, “Phil has done a wonderful job of mentoring the next generation – Sophia Burn, Ellen Proudlove, Gary McIsaac… He realises that the business will not be ours in ten years, so he’s making sure the next generation is prepared to take over.”

Covid
The importance of trade associations and support organisations has, of course, been underlined during the past couple of years, as the global pandemic shuttered touring activity around the world, leaving hundreds of thousands of workers without gainful employment.

“Phil taught me that the promoter/artists/agents table could be round – it didn’t need to be squared off, with battle lines drawn”

Revealing how his normal day-to-day routine simply stopped, Bowdery tells IQ, “I had Clannad playing the London Palladium on the 17 March [2020], on their final tour. At the meet-and-greet in Birmingham, three days before, they all had gloves on. That was the first sign I’d seen of any response to the virus. But then I got a call from UTA telling me that someone who was at the gig got Covid. It was all so new to us that we started scrambling to put in safeguards.

“Then, when I was at a meeting at Heathrow on March 16, I got a phone call, and I was told ‘The office is closing. And by the way, the Palladium is closed. That’s it. No show tomorrow.’ And from that moment, my study at home became my office.”

While the industry initially started rescheduling gigs by a matter of weeks, it became apparent to Bowdery that Covid could be around for much longer, and he realised, along with a number of peers, that live music was dangerously under-represented in terms of government lobbying.

“The theatre business got pretty loud pretty quickly. But nobody was talking for us: there were a lot of people jumping up and down, but nothing was happening for us, so there was an urgent desire to at least try to be heard and put our situation front and centre as much as we could.”

“The CPA still means an awful lot to me, but LIVE is something that is even better”

Bowdery, alongside Kilimanjaro Live’s Stuart Galbraith and ILMC’s Greg Parmley, set about creating the LIVE trade association and putting together a strategy to lobby government ministers about the plight of the hundreds of thousands of professionals that depend on live entertainment for their income.

“I think we achieved an awful lot,” says Bowdery, underplaying the complexity of the task. “I really believe the reduction in VAT was down to us. I believe that the government’s creation of the relief fund was down to us. And there was an awful lot achieved by doing the test events – Melvin Benn’s test events at first, then everybody else elsewhere doing test events to prove that our industry is adaptable, and if people wanted to go to events, then we were more than capable of finding a way of getting them there safely.”

Understandably proud of those achievements, Bowdery says, “The CPA still means an awful lot to me, but LIVE is something that is even better – it gives us that umbrella organisation we’ve always been missing. In saying that, it’s important that we have all the different organisations feeding into LIVE because that will help to keep the balance: particularly with the Production Services Association, which is the production side; with Mark Davyd and the Music Venue Trust; and also the concert halls and the National Arenas Association because that gives you representation from the grassroots to the biggest venues, again keeping the balance with everyone.”

“We all owe [Phil] a debt of gratitude for the time and effort that he spends for the good of the business”

Bowdery’s efforts have not gone unrecognised. “The work he has done with the LIVE group over the last two years has been stellar – a steadying hand during a very rough voyage,” notes Emma Banks, co-head of CAA’s London-based operations. “We all owe him a debt of gratitude for the time and effort that he spends for the good of the business, never looking for any glory for himself.”

DF Concerts chief Geoff Ellis says, “Phil is one of the best promoters in the world, and there are very few who command the same respect that he has internationally, so it’s been a pleasure to serve on the CPA board with him.

“His work through the pandemic with the CPA and LIVE has helped immeasurably. When I was meeting with all the political parties in Scotland to talk about the insurance problem, Phil took the time to meet with the cabinet secretary responsible for culture to make sure the Scottish government understood the problems of our industry.”

Bowdery himself tips his hat toward the unprecedented collaboration between industry rivals throughout the pandemic, noting that their willingness to work together for the greater good bodes well as the business recovers. “When something like a pandemic happens it just makes you realise how much the strength of coming together makes a difference,” he says. “Information is power, and sharing information with each other has worked really well.”

“Phil is one of the best promoters in the world, and there are very few who command the same respect that he has”

Universal Love
Many of the people that IQ spoke to for this article note Bowdery’s extraordinary communication skills, pointing out his ability to solve problems with ease, as well as the unique relationship he maintains with artists.

Bowdery believes those attributes were picked up through his desire to be in the live music business. “I left school at 15 with no qualifications – I was not academic,” he says. “But I was streetwise, and my education was being on the road: that taught me life. I had to think on my feet, and when you do that you are communicating.”

Hinting at where he honed his legendary negotiation proficiency, Bowdery recalls a game he’d play with musicians in hotels where the goal was to taste all the whisky behind the bar without paying for a drop. “That was all down to communication and building a relationship with the barman. There was no harm done, but it was all about the ‘gift of the gab’.”

He adds, “I’ve always made sure when I go to a club or theatre or wherever that the person who works on the door genuinely knows that they are as important to me as the guy in the office who is paying the band. Let’s face it, if the door isn’t open, nobody gets in. So I try to ingratiate myself with people and I’m not above communicating with everyone. Everyone is equal.”

Being the long-term manager for Michael Ball, and the agent and tour director for Tom Jones, his approach to dealing with artists is equally simple. “You need to have empathy,” he says. “Without artists, we don’t have jobs. We facilitate them to play to an audience: there is no industry without them.”

“I left school at 15 with no qualifications – I was not academic. But I was streetwise, and my education was being on the road”

Changing Landscape
Examining some of the technological breakthroughs he has witnessed during his distinguished career, Bowdery underlines the power of the Internet as a game changer. “It’s changed completely the whole marketing aspect of what we do,” he observes. “There was a time when it was only the younger artists that benefitted, but now it’s everyone.

“It really hit home with One Direction. Then agent Paul Fitzgerald and managers Richard [Griffiths] and Harry [Magee] tasked us to do the tour without using any print. And we sold out the entire European stadium tour on social media.” Reluctant to identify particular gigs as career highlights, Bowdery nevertheless namechecks certain acts. “Tom Jones, who I love, of course,” he states, while he admits he would have loved to have worked with The Beatles and Elvis Presley, especially as he has heard so many legendary anecdotes from Tom Jones about his Vegas days with Elvis.

He also lauds Live Nation chief Michael Rapino for his role in changing the live music business. “I was very fortunate to spend a lot of time with him when he worked in the London office,” Bowdery says. “That’s stood me in good character since because if I need to speak to him – and it’s not something I do that much – he’s always ready to talk. But I think so much of the global growth for the live music business is down to Michael Rapino. His vision is incredible, and he knows what works.”

“If everything pans out as planned in 2022, he’s looking at one of his busiest years ever”

The Future
With 85-year-old mentor, Barry Clayman, still going strong as a promoter, Bowdery, likewise, isn’t entertaining any ideas of stepping away. Indeed, if everything pans out as planned in 2022, he’s looking at one of his busiest years ever.

“Obviously, the huge success of Coldplay throughout Europe is just enormous, and Harry Styles has two sold-out Wembley stadiums plus Manchester plus Glasgow,” he notes. We’re actually getting into holding stadium dates for 2024,” he reveals. “It’s obvious that the need and desire of everyone to get back to business – and for fans to catch up on two years without live shows – is alive and well.

“I have Genesis, Crowded House, Sting and Westlife going out as the last artists I’ve had to reschedule. Wembley Stadium with Westlife, for example, should have been in 2020 and is now going to happen in ‘22 – we’ve nearly caught up.”

However, as with many in the industry, Bowdery remains concerned over the pandemic’s impact on the live music supply chain. “Talking to major staging contractors, trucking companies, production services, is worrying,” he reports. “It’s all very well me booking a tour, but if the sound isn’t available or if the stage can’t get there, then the artist won’t be able to perform.”

“The biggest thrill for me is actually seeing that show that I had the idea for; and then standing there watching it”

But he’s hopeful that the satisfaction he derives from organising gigs is also felt by others along the length of the supply chain. “There are so many people in our industry that have changed vocation, not out of desire but out of necessity, so we are going to suffer shortages, and that’s why everyone’s working so hard at the moment to try to make sure that they are aligned with their suppliers. But it’s not easy.

“The biggest thrill for me is actually seeing that show that I had the idea for; and then put the deal together, got it on sale, built it; and then standing there watching it. It’s still a rush, and I think lots of people who are involved in working on live music experience the same feelings, so I’m confident that we’ll get some of the people back from the likes of Amazon or whoever they switched their skills toward during the pandemic.”

He adds, “I’ve been very fortunate to work with some of the best acts in the world, from Streisand to Coldplay to Bruce Springsteen to BTS to Tom Jones. But it’s not one particular artist that I associate that feeling of joy – it’s every single show, be it at a club or a stadium, Dave Gahan at Shepherd’s Bush Empire or BTS or Springsteen at Wembley Stadium – the same effort has gone in, in theory, to actually put that together. Getting that satisfaction is what I love.”

This article originally appeared in Issue 110 of IQ Magazine.

 


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Best of 2022: 60 years of KJK

Ahead of the return of our daily IQ Index newsletter on Tuesday, 3 January, we are revisiting some of our most popular interviews from the last 12 months. Here, we celebrate 60 years of legendary German promoter Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion…

When Karsten Jahnke registered the company name back in 1962, the enthusiastic music man had already been immersed in his favourite genre –jazz – since the decade before but admits that running a company that would allow him to indulge in his passion was never really a goal.

“The first jazz ball I promoted was 1959 for a band of a friend,” he recalls. “Afterwards, I remember receiving a letter from the authorities telling me that I needed a type of licence to put on such a show.”

At the time, Karsten was working in an export company in Hamburg, but with his evenings free, he would organise shows when he found the time and otherwise spent his waking hours listening to jazz records and trying to contact the representatives of the artists he liked best.

Finally, in 1962, his employer persuaded him it was maybe time to chase the dream, and with the registration of Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion (KJK), he took possession of the licence that local government had been urging him to obtain for his concerts and events.

“When I started, I had one assistant and one freelancer because I have no knowledge about the technical side of things, so I made sure to have an expert for the technology,” he tells IQ. “I had a fantastic start because I was working with a German ‘nonsense’ group called Insterburg & Co. and every year we had between 80-150 sold-out shows with capacities of 1,000-2,000. So for ten solid years, we made money.”

““When I started, I had one assistant and one freelancer because I have no knowledge about the technical side of things”

The success of the boutique KJK operation also attracted the attention of Germany’s powerhouse promoters, and Karsten would often find himself working with Marcel Avram and Marek Lieberberg at Mama Concerts, as well as Fritz Rau, who dominated the German market from the 1950s right through to the 80s. Those collaborations saw Karsten working with the likes of David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Santana, and Neil Diamond, expanding his roster beyond its jazz routes.

Indeed, while losing money on the odd show was, of course, part of the reality of being a promoter, the first time Karsten experienced real difficulties was 20 years into his career. “It was 1983, and Marius Müller-Westernhagen cancelled a tour one day before it was scheduled to start,” says Karsten.

“I was insured by an English company who said they would pay, but all of a sudden it was six months later, so I employed an English lawyer, and after 18 months we got the money, which at that time was DM650,000. It was a lot of money [about €330,000 in today’s money], and if we had not got it back, the company would have been bankrupt.”

While a passion for the art lies at the heart of everything Karsten does, he is a realist when it comes to working in the industry. “I like music, but it makes no sense if you like the music and you can’t make money,” he states. “We had a lot of successful tours and, okay, sometimes you lose some artists – Depeche Mode we lost, Herbert Grönemeyer we lost. But some, like The Dubliners, we’ve booked for their entire 40 years. And we still have Peter Gabriel and we still have The Cure, so to be honest, I’m really happy.”

I like music, but it makes no sense if you like the music and you can’t make money”

Keeping it in the Family
Although Karsten was always keen to keep his eponymous company within the family, sons Torsten and Heiko found careers elsewhere, albeit Torsten still designs many of the company posters and artwork, while Heiko curates ÜBERJAZZ Festival and works with the company’s booking team on certain acts. Instead, the family business skipped a generation, with grandson Ben Mitha assuming the CEO role in 2014 alongside his grandfather and long-time chief Hauke Tedsen as the company’s three general managers. But it wasn’t always a certainty that Ben would take over the reins.

“During my school days, there was always this soft push and wish of Karsten to get somehow involved in the company,” he reveals. “But I kept my options open to do something different. So when I finished my A levels, it was a choice for me to either go into sports journalism or go Karsten’s way.”

The decision was made during an open house visit to Hamburg University. “Part of the programme was a journalism lecture,” says Ben. “There were, like, 2,000 people in there and about 2,000 more trying to get in. So I realised, no matter how good I think I am, pursuing a career as a journalist would be challenging. So I made the decision to go into music business and never regretted it.”

Keen to learn his trade, Ben found a role as an intern for Ted Kurland in Boston, while embarking on dual studies for both a bachelor degree and a merchant degree. “After three years, I had both degrees, and then I just started working my way through at KJK, starting as a booker and working my way up to managing director as I assumed more and more responsibilities.”

“We are now in a position where we pretty much have a specialist or a booker with knowledge of pretty much every genre”

“Of course, he started really when he was three years old in the StadtPark during the summer,” interjects Karsten. “Little Ben was always around, and he loved it.”

“It’s true,” says Ben. “My mom did the box office at Stadtpark, so I was always hanging around and playing in the bushes and stuff like that. So I suppose I got the experience from very early on.”

Karsten describes Ben’s path to the top as natural. “As a school pupil, he started to work at the company during his holidays. And after his A Levels, he started his own company, Digga Events, a full-service agency for security and stage personnel that now also handles concert production. So when he decided to join our company, it seemed like a very logical next step, and I was really happy to have a family member on board to have him leading the company into the future.”

And Ben’s impact on KJK’s activities over the past decade has been obvious. “When I started at the company, I started to open up the general roster in a more diverse and wider way,” he explains. “So we are now in a position where we pretty much have a specialist or a booker with knowledge of pretty much every genre except the classical market and German folklore (schlager) business, which we don’t cover.

“The first ILMCs I joined Karsten at, I could see that everybody knew him, everybody liked him, everybody respected him”

“While Karsten loves jazz, I originally come from the hip-hop and urban world,” he adds. “There are a few names I’m working with now, like Cypress Hill, Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, J. Cole, who definitely are some heroes from my teenager years. It makes me proud to be a small, tiny part of their art.”

That passion for music is something passed down the generations, and Ben is in no doubt about the legacy his grandfather has created for the family.

“Karsten’s 70th birthday was a big party at the Schauspielhaus in Hamburg with 1,200 guests,” recalls Ben. “It was remarkable how many domestic and international stars showed up – Paul Weller, The Dubliners, Nils Landgren, Til Brönner, Herman van Veen, Justin Nozuka – as well as loads of politicians and celebrities. It was really impressive to see how many people travelled to Hamburg just to honour this guy.”

And he says his first trips to the Royal Garden Hotel similarly underlined his grandfather’s status in his eyes. “The first ILMCs I joined Karsten at, I could see that everybody knew him, everybody liked him, everybody respected him and wanted to speak to him. Seeing his standing on the international stage showed me how well respected Karsten is throughout the business.”

“[Karsten] taught me that life is too short to deal with assholes”

So with such a sage to learn from, what has the grandfather’s best advice been to the new company leader? “He taught me that life is too short to deal with assholes,” says Ben. “Besides that, I try to follow his style and manner of doing business. We have a saying in Germany that he is a typical Hanseatic businessman, which means he is always laid back, calm, loyal, trustworthy and respectful. That’s something he showed me from the very beginning, and I try to keep that spirit alive. Your word is your bond.”

Covid
Marking the company’s 60th anniversary while the German market is still trying to manoeuvre its way out of Covid restrictions will undoubtedly put a dampener on celebrations, but it hasn’t stopped the KJK staff from working tirelessly to prepare for their return to action.

“During the last two years, there was a strong focus on local and domestic artists because those were the only ones available and the only ones present in Germany,” Ben observes. However, he pours scorn on suggestions that emerging domestic talent has benefitted.

“Germany only had a few newcomers that came through, because the only thing they could do was streaming or some social media stuff. Otherwise, there was a huge lack of options and possibilities for the newcomers to come through,” notes Ben. “Obviously, the more popular and well-known domestic artists had a platform because all the attention was focused on them. But everything that comes after them struggled during the last two years. So I wouldn’t say that the domestic scene has experienced much growth.”

“Germany is one of the very few countries that still has so many local promoters in place”

Examining the changes to the German market during the pandemic, Ben notes the arrival of both DreamHaus and All Artists Agency, but he believes the new sense of camaraderie within the country is also boosted by the very unique nature of the way in which the live music business operates in the nation.

“As it stands right now, we are all very cooperative and there’s a spirit of solidarity, but once you open the gates and the normal competition comes back in, this will be shifted to the side pretty quickly,” he laughs.

He continues, “Germany is one of the very few countries that still has so many local promoters in place. Everywhere else is more centralised and the big players can easily take over a whole country by storm. It doesn’t work that way in Germany because of our historic background and also from the cultural differences within the country – the people from Bavaria are very different than we are in the north; the people in Eastern Germany are very different than the Western people, and stuff like that.”

Nonetheless, KJK is not immune from attracting suitors, and the pandemic has seen a number of approaches from corporations keen to add the Hamburg-based experts to their portfolio.
“We had some offers, but I was not interested,” Karsten tells IQ. “I want us to remain independent, and with such a young guy by my side, I can be happy.”

“I want us to remain independent, and with such a young guy by my side, I can be happy.”

Ben says, “Yes, a couple of bigger corporates approached us. Corona has been hard for all of us, but the company came through pretty well because we had good years before the pandemic, and we had lots of money saved that we could use to get us through this crisis.

“If we were to sell the company, it would be because the deal would bring us certain benefits: maybe access to another pool of artists that we couldn’t get access to without being part of a corporate, or maybe synergies in the label world. But so far, everybody who approached us just wanted to give us a ton of money for 50% of our annual revenues. And that’s not interesting for us at all because we don’t need to sell anything or to generate money.”

Talking through KJK’s Covid experience, both Karsten and Ben emphasise the strength in remaining independent, as they managed to retain all 46 staff and used government furlough schemes to keep staff on full pay when they were not otherwise working normal hours.

Detailing some of the company activity during 2020-21, Ben says, “We started with drive-in concerts, and then we took on seated shows at the Stadtpark with a very reduced audience – only playing one-quarter of the overall capacity. We also did a streaming series, and we came back in summer 21 with a whole bunch of open- air social distance concepts.

Loyalty toward employees is one of the reasons that many staff remain at the company for their entire career

“None of the shows made us any money, but they helped to keep us busy and to keep the whole infrastructure around us alive with all the suppliers, the crews, the bands, and the artists. This was one of our main concerns, as we saw it as our responsibility to keep our suppliers and the people we need open, ahead of things getting back to normal, otherwise we might have a huge lack of suppliers. So, that was our main intention for our pandemic shows.”

That loyalty toward employees is one of the reasons that many staff remain at the company for their entire career. “I started on first of April 1994, which makes it 28 years and counting,” says Frehn Hawel, the company’s head of communications, noting, “I’m not the only person clocking in around 30 years – there’s our third general manager, Hauke Tedsen, there’s Peter Gramsch head of our local department, and in my team I have Kai Friedrichsen who has also been here around 30 years. We have a long history of people who dedicate their lives to this company.”

And Hawel epitomises the family feel to KJK, having worked his way up through the ranks organically. “I was friends at school with Karsten’s youngest son, and when we moved into our first bachelor pad together, Karsten’s wife, Girlie, offered us some box office jobs to boost our income,” says Hawel. “My job during the day ended at five o’clock in the afternoon. So it was perfect to go to Karsten’s office, pick up everything and start in the box office at seven o’clock.”

Determined to find a full-time job with Karsten, Hawel even spent his holiday time doing an internship in the booking department at KJK. And it paid off when in 1994 a vacancy arose. “Unfortunately, it was not as a booker, but as a bookkeeper. But it got my foot in the door, and a couple of years later our press team left to join BMG’s record labels and, after a bit of persuasion, Karsten trusted me to step into the job. He just said ‘I think you’re my new press guy then.’ And that was that.”

“Karsten is an artist man, first and foremost”

With the company now around triple the size it was in the mid-90s, Hawel oversees a team of five people, all of whom are being moulded in the KJK tradition. “Karsten is an artist man, first and foremost,” states Hawel. “Ben is similar but he has a laser focus on the business side of things, too – they kind of feed off each other in terms of that Ben comes from an economic point of view. A company that’s only looking at figures will not have the connections to the artists that we have with our artists, so it works very well and the transition has been smooth.

“I know it was a relief for Karsten when Ben joined the company because Ben has a strong entrepreneurial side that allows him to see opportunities and then do the research to make sure they will be a success. The good thing from an employee’s point of view is we know the leaders will steer the ship, and we can trust them totally, and that’s been underlined by this pandemic – thanks to their leadership we’re emerging even more closely knit than we were before.”

Reeperbahn Festival
That concept of considering the needs of the industry is a Jahnke family trait. The company is a partner in the massively successful Reeperbahn Festival, with Karsten being one of the event’s founders.

“I met Karsten for the first time in 2004, when the company [had] already existed for more than 40 years,” Alex Schulz, managing director of Reeperbahn Festival, tells IQ. “I was searching for a professional promoter for my idea for Reeperbahn Festival because it was quite clear that we could not establish this event with only my company, which had absolutely no experience in artist booking, etc.

“It wasn’t a new idea, but the Reeperbahn in Hamburg is the absolute right place to present new music”

“The option to establish a platform for new talents and established acts that Karsten personally liked – no, loved – was definitely one of the driving forces. And from the first edition of Reeperbahn Festival in 2006 until now, Karsten is present at as many programme events as possible, from midday until midnight, four days in a row. Every year, about one week before the event starts, Karsten will call me in order to ask me to send a list of recommendations for both the conference sessions as well as concerts.”

Karsten states, “It wasn’t a new idea, but the Reeperbahn in Hamburg is the absolute right place to present new music. And now the conference is getting very big, alongside maybe the biggest showcase festival in Europe. The first idea was to present unknown bands, but now it’s an international festival and I think we’ve developed it well.”

Schulz believes that Inferno Events’ partnership with Karsten Jahnke Konzertdirektion has been crucial to the success of Reeperbahn, while the close relationship between the operations involves many of KJK’s staff working directly on the event. “Petra, Alina, Anja, Jessica, Frehn, Karen and Stefan are just a few of the people in the team that we share our daily business with,” he says.

“About ten years ago, Karsten introduced me to Ben, and I appreciate his point of view and advice very much, especially since we have been working closer together for the last two years.”

For his part, Ben comments, “At the beginning, we had the wrong strategy [for Reeperbahn], so we lost a ton of money because we just had too many venues and too many unknown bands involved. We thought about bringing bigger acts to smaller venues and charging specific venue tickets or day tickets to make up the finances, but that wasn’t the case, so we made big losses and that forced us to adapt the concept.”

“No matter how efficient and how successful we are, [Reeperbahn] would not be possible without the gov funding we receive”

Expanding the remit of the event to appeal to an international audience was part of the solution. “In the end, this is the success of Reeperbahn – it’s now a global brand,” says Ben. “People from abroad know that if you want to take your first steps in Europe, you can do it via Reeperbahn because you have everything in one place.

“But no matter how efficient and how successful we are, the festival and conference would not be possible without the government funding we receive, as the capacity is just too small to generate enough income to cover the costs on our own. But thankfully, this is recognised by the German government and the city of Hamburg who provide funding.”

The Future
While KJK’s principals carefully plot the company’s path out of the pandemic, its independent style already has it a step ahead of some of its peers in Germany. A number of promoters in Germany participated in the nation’s voucher scheme when the pandemic first hit the events calendar, but KJK opted out.

“I think it was mainly a tool for people who had cashflow problems,” says Ben. “So we decided not to participate, and I’m now hearing a lot of partners are facing huge problems because the scheme ran out at the end of last year but people now want refunds of their vouchers.”

“We are more hands-on simply because it’s our own money that we might lose”

Smooth Transition
The passing of the leadership baton to his grandson gives Karsten satisfaction on a number of levels. “Ben is now doing all the great shows that I promoted before. And that leaves me to do my favourite music: jazz,” says Karsten, who has created a genre-specific series called JazzNights. “In this series, I work with live venues like the Elbphilharmonie or the Old Opera in Frankfurt or the Philharmonic in Cologne, all the concert halls and so on. And musicians and audiences like these venues, so it’s been a great success.”

He adds, “When I was young, jazz was the most important music in Germany, in the 50s. Rock came in the early 60s, but the 50s was all about jazz. And for me, it’s the most interesting music. To be honest, it’s a privilege to promote music that you like, and even better if you don’t lose money.”

Not losing money is a bit of a family mantra. “Live Nation or AEG can easily say, ‘Okay, we might lose money in Germany, but that’s not a problem because we can cross-finance the tour with the UK leg or US or something like that,’” opines Ben.

“From our point of view, we only have this one market in which we can compete, so we have to be more thoughtful and careful about the offers because if we lose money, it’s not shareholder money, it’s our own money. And we don’t want to get in the situation where we can’t pay our wages or Karsten has to sell his house.”

But Ben also sees that process as an advantage. “We are more hands-on simply because it’s our own money that we might lose. So we put harder work into projects to make them a success.”

As for company expansion, Ben believes that “smart growth” is the way forward.

“We’re quite happy with the independent position we have in the market right now”

“We’re quite happy with the independent position we have in the market right now, and we also get a lot of trust and respect from our clients and the managers we work with because they like our hands-on approach.

“But at the same time, we look left and right. So, for example, we just took over the Baltic Soul Weekender, which is a huge soul-, r&b-, 60s-, Mo- town-related event, which perfectly fits our company’s strategy and our company brands. It’s a smart acquisition that totally makes sense.

“We also launched a new company called KJ Projects, which is currently running a 4,000-capacity tent venue in Hamburg because there’s a huge lack of venues of this size in the city. This is another smart approach for us to grow the brand. And we’re talking to a couple of venues and a couple of smaller boutique festivals that might fit our brands and be good add-ons.

“This is more or less our strategy: we’re always pretty niche with most of our core business, so we want to stay in that niche and look left and right to identify other niches that could make sense for us.”

And with Karsten able to devote more of his time to jazz, he’s more than happy to leave the future in Ben’s safe hands. “I happened to develop real friendships with many artists over the years, especially with Herbie Hancock, but also Branford Marsalis, Gregory Porter, Herman van Veen, and, of course, John Sheahan of The Dubliners,” says Karsten. “I’m incredibly lucky that I’ve always worked with artists whose music I really like – it can’t get much better than that in this business.”

This article originally appeared in Issue 109 of IQ Magazine.

 


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Best of 2022: Phay ‘Phaymous’ Mac Mahon

IQ would like to wish our readers a happy holiday season and a prosperous New Year. Our daily IQ Index newsletter will return on Tuesday, 3 January. In the meantime, however, we will revisit some of our most popular interviews from the last 12 months, starting with the recipient of the 2022 Gaffer Award, production manager Phay Mac Mahon…

Having grown up in Shankhill near the port of Dún Laoire on the outskirts of Dublin, life could have been very different for Phay Mac Mahon, had it not been for his big brother, Mick, and a local punk band with ambitions to see the world.

“Mick was a DJ in the 70s, and he’d built up a lighting system and stuff for his mobile disco,” recalls Phay. “Although I was really young, I started helping him set up and everything, until he decided he wanted to wind things down a bit.”

Professional equipment was a scarce commodity in Ireland at the time, so it wasn’t long before Phay was approached by club promoter Smiley Bolger who was running the Much More Music gigs in Dublin.

“It was on a Tuesday night, and it turned out Boomtown Rats were regulars. One night, Bob Geldof and I were chatting, and he asked if there was any chance of them using the lights and the van to take them around the country. And that’s literally how it started.

“The lights were very basic, just Par 36s on homemade boards. And because I didn’t have a switcher, I used to literally plug the lights in and out in time with the music. In fact, when I turned 60, halfway through the party, the music went down and Geldof and all the [Boomtown] Rats marched into the party. And they presented me this golden plugboard, which they’d hastily made in their hotel because that’s how they remembered me originally.”

“One night, Bob Geldof and I were chatting, and he asked if there was any chance of them using the lights and the van”

Phayze 1
Without each other, The Boomtown Rats and Phay may never have left the Emerald Isle. When they met, Phay was an apprentice toolmaker, but as The Rats began to build momentum, they tried to persuade Phay – with the van and lights – to take a risk and move to England with them.

“He was a kid working in a no-hope job in a lightbulb factory,” says frontman Geldof. “Phay drove us round in his brother’s mobile disco van and started doing the lights for us – plugging and unplugging each lamp from a standard domestic extension cable. When he wasn’t blinding us, he was shorting the house and amps.

“I told him he should come with us on our mad bid to get out of Ireland. He said he didn’t know if he was allowed and I’d have to ask his mum. So, over a tea-time pork chop, peas and mash, Mrs Mac Mahon said she wasn’t sure: the job was steady and he could easily be a foreman by the time he was 32 –in 13 or 14 years’ time. I assured her he could still do that.

“‘Give it a year,’ I said. ‘We either do it or we’re all coming back to Dún Laoire.’ Phay had one condition; that if we did make it, besides the lights, he’d be allowed to drive ‘wunna dem big troox dey have.’ So off we went. He got to drive the truck, us, and everything else. We never went back to Dún Lao-ire.”

Thus started a lifelong relationship and Phay switched his apprenticeship from toolmaking to everything involved with taking artists on the road – with The Rats’ frugal nature and Phay’s clapped-out vehicle very much at the centre of things.

“Richard Branson and Simon Draper offered Geldof a cheque for nearly a million pounds, and he turned it down”

“Geldof did all the dealing on everything,” explains Phay. “One day, before a gig, he told me that Richard Branson and Simon Draper were coming to see the band, ‘So let’s get this set up quick so we can go out and pick them up in the van.’ I pointed out that surely when it’s a record company, you should be sending a limo or something. And Geldof looked at me like I had two heads – he was always cheap,” he laughs.

“At the time, I was stockcar racing and having fun with old cars. So we had a bench seat from an old Zephyr that I’d thrown in the back of the van, and of course it would slide around on the floor, and the band would all moan and groan: I’d hit the brakes and it would slide forward, their knees up in their mouths. So… Richard Branson and Simon Draper found themselves squashed up against the sidewall of the van when I had to do a sharp turn, and there’s Geldof just staring at me, about to kill me.

“But that night, they saw the show and offered Geldof a cheque for nearly a million pounds, and he turned it down because he thought the band could do better. We thought he was mad, but he got a deal with Ensign and we did better.”

Part of that deal involved a house in Chessington, Surrey, where bass player John Giblin already lived in the garden flat while Allan Holdsworth was in the attic. “The house had a huge rehearsal room, a tiny sitting-room and a tiny kitchen, so it was a little community, and it was hilarious, to say the least,” says Phay.

“I ended up doing two Queen tours and a Rolling Stones tour on the steel team”

Stars’ Truck
“When the Rats weren’t touring, I’d go off and do my own thing. My brother Shay taught me to drive trucks properly and I finally got my HGV license. This allowed me to legally drive trucks for Edwin Shirley, and I ended up doing two Queen tours and a Rolling Stones tour on the steel team.”

He also learned more about lighting, working with Pete Clarke’s Supermick Lights. “I did tours with Pete and all sorts of one-offs, as well as the Roundhouse every Sunday.”

As his skills repertoire grew, Phay realised that work elsewhere meant moving out of The Rats’ Chessington home. “It was 1980, and Simon Austin from LSD called to say this young band from Sheffield were looking for a lighting designer for a theatre tour. So I met Def Leppard’s manager, Peter Mensch, and he offered me the job.

“Jake Berry was the production manager, and we got along great, but it came to the situation where he had to go back to AC/DC, who Mensch also managed, meaning he couldn’t do Leppard’s first tour in the States. Mensch also needed a lighting director that he couldn’t afford.

“Jake pitched the idea that I could do both. It was kinda true – with The Rats I did everything because we didn’t have a PM. Robbie McGrath was the tour manager and sound guy, and I was the sort of production manager/LD. But the real first time that I put the hat on properly was for Leppard in the States.”

“I went out on the Joshua Tree Tour as the lighting crew chief; Jackson Browne as lighting crew chief; The Communards as LD”

It wasn’t his first trip stateside, but it was a different ballgame. “With The Rats, we played clubs and things. We did a show at Frederick’s of Hollywood, which is a lingerie shop, as a promotional stunt. Geldof always wanted to do stuff that was different.
“But Leppard was much bigger as they were supporting Ted Nugent. John Conk was the production manager on that, and I learned a lot from him.”

Indeed, picking up tips from others became the norm. “Support tours were the way people broke in the States,” Phay tells IQ. “Queen toured with Mott the Hoople and they broke; and then Thin Lizzy toured with Queen and they broke… After the 1980 tour, Leppard were back out in 81 with Ozzy and the Blizzard of Oz.

“It was a great way for everyone to learn – artists and crew – because you saw the bigger tours and figured it out,” he says, naming the likes of Jake Berry, Charlie Hernandez and Bill Leabody among his mentors.

In between outings with Leppard, Phay worked as LD for The Pretenders. “I was back and forth with lighting. But once I hit 83, production became more prominent because it started to get very serious.” After Leppard, he took on the production/LD gig for Adam Ant for a few years.

“And then it was Paul Young after that but still back and forward into lighting and stuff – I went out on the Joshua Tree Tour as the lighting crew chief in Europe; Jackson Browne as lighting crew chief; The Communards as LD.” But the arrival of children brought a rude awakening.

“Two days after [Eoin] was born, I was off on a Paul Young tour to the States, Japan, all over the place”

“Our eldest boy, Eoin, was born in 1987, but two days after he was born I was off on a Paul Young tour to the States, Japan, all over the place. Then I went straight to U2’s Joshua Tree, and from that to Hysteria with Def Leppard. So I was gone the entire year – I had to get my wife, Ann, to bring Eoin out so that I could see him. And then Hysteria kept going for so long. It was nearly a two-year tour.

“At home, we had the phone on the wall in the kitchen. So when I got home on a break from Leppard, Ann said to our son, ‘Eoin, where’s your dad?’ And he pointed at the phone. My heart sank and I realised I needed to put the brakes on.”

Out of Phay’s
Committing time to home life again brought out the entrepreneur in Phay. “Along with a friend, we came up with an idea of a mobile stage in Ireland – combining my toolmaking past with all the stuff I’d learned on the road. We developed this truck and I got Terry Lee from LSD and Chris Cronin involved in its design.”

The result was ingenious: a 45-foot trailer with a 75 kV generator built on the front end; a backroom with amplifiers, dimmer racks, etc; and an opening of 35 feet in the middle so that the sides would fold down to give a stage of 24 feet in depth.

“LSD were building their own truss at the time, so we used that for the roof and hinged two sides on the truss so that it literally folded out using hydraulics,” Phay explains. “Two crew could basically set up in an hour. It had its own sound-system, lights built into the roof. Turn on the generator and there it was: a gig in a box that we’d take to car parks and football fields and stuff like that.”

“I found the break [from touring] was good because it was refreshing”

The concept caught the eye of Guinness who bought it for use around festivals. “I was able to drive it, and through my toolmaking, I knew the hydraulics and how it all worked, so I did that for a few years. But I kept going back on the road doing bits and pieces – bits of lighting, corporate stuff, and a Formula One project in 2000 with Orange Arrows that took us around the world for about three years.”

Once More Into The Phray
With three young children now at home, when they all reached school age, Phay thought about returning to touring. “I found the break [from touring] was good because it was refreshing.” He observes, “I see people getting easily wound-up, but it takes a lot more to wind me up, and I think when you have a break, you’re not as burned, so you can deal with things better.

“I did some local work for Peter Aiken in Ireland, then I started back on the road full time as site co for George Michael, PM for Meat Loaf, 30 STM, Shakira, Seal and many more and the rest is history.”

Citing a calm attitude as crucial to becoming a top production manager, Phay also highlights the camaraderie of the PM fraternity. “We all cover for each other,” he states. “I’ve covered for Bill Leabody many times on things; I’ve covered for Springo (Mark Spring); I’ve gone out as a site coordinator for both of them. It’s all experience. We’re all friends, we talk all the time, and we all muck in when needed.

“If you come up against something, you ask around if anyone else has come across it. I’ll call Bill; he’ll tell me to speak to Jake, or that Charlie did that, or Opie (Dale Skjerseth) has done it, so we all chat, and we all help each other out.”
And that communication has never been required more than in the past two years.

“I started back on the road full time as site co for George Michael, PM for Meat Loaf, 30 STM, Shakira, Seal and many more”

Live-ing La Vida Loca
Recounting his pandemic experience, Phay tells IQ, “I got on board with Ricky Martin at the end of 2019, and we did a bit of TV stuff and then straight into a month of rehearsals in Puerto Rico, where he’s from. It was a really smooth job to start with – Ricky is one of those rare artists that you could set your watch by: he’s meticulous.

“When he says he’ll be in at two and he wants to be out at seven, he’ll come in at two o’clock sharp and he’ll be gone at seven on the dot. It means you can schedule everything perfectly and give slots in the day for everyone else – lighting, programming, dancers, everything, so it’s very professional.”

That first tour was cut short, but not before they had played three arena shows in Puerto Rico, Colombia’s massive Barranquilla Carnival, and dates in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, before travelling to Mexico where a number of shows were scheduled.

“We were hearing at the time that this corona thing was building and building, but because we were in South America, unless you watched CNN, nobody was paying attention to it. Little did we know, a week and a half after we landed in Mexico, we’d be gone. Tour over. It was four o’clock in the afternoon on 14 March 2020, and we were setting up for a sold-out show in Monterrey when I got the phone call.”

The crew managed to load out, and Phay quickly arranged passage for production back to the States. “When I got to Mexico City, I bumped into Roland Greil, the LD who was out with Guns N’ Roses at the time. And he told me I’d just missed Opie, who had flown out. We were all gathering in Mexico City Airport, flying out all over the world. We were two of the last ones standing – Ricky Martin and Guns N’ Roses.”

“I was rehired in May last year, just to start putting the next tour together – Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias”

While the industry was initially speculating about how many weeks of business they needed to reschedule, the reality, of course, was horrendous.

The downtime allowed Phay to spend some much-needed rest at home and in the industry’s most infamous pub, The Dog House, which was his garage until a few years ago and now serves, on occasion, as a fundraising hostelry for local cancer charity Purple House.

“Every production that passes through Ireland seems to want to visit The Dog House – maybe because I have Guinness on tap,” he says. And he recalls a time when AC/DC’S crew did just that, supplemented by egg and onion sandwiches supplied by his wife and daughter.

“When I saw Opie in the production office at the show the next day, he wasn’t happy. Apparently, the stage rolled an hour late because the stagehands refused to be in the same place as the crew because of the gases coming out of them.”

Rather than sitting around waiting for the phone to ring during the pandemic, Phay got behind the wheel of a truck again. “Ardmore Film Factory is nearby, so I ended up driving around for the Matt Damon movie The Last Duel, before doing the same for Irish Film Location Facilities. Some people thought I was mad, but it saved me a fortune because it meant that Ann didn’t divorce me.” And it’s just as well he kept busy, as weeks and then months rolled by.

“I was rehired in May last year, just to start putting the next tour together – Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias. We loaded in on 14 September 2021 – exactly 18 months to the day from loadout to the next load in,” says Phay.

“We were one of the first full indoor arena shows, so we had to be very, very careful”

Observing Protocol
With Covid still raging, Phay and Iglesias’s PM, Andrés Restrepo, faced the challenge of developing a strategy to keep the crew and touring party safe. “It was quite difficult because you had two artists and two managements,” notes Phay.

“But both artists agreed that everybody had to be vaccinated to be on the tour. There was only one guy, who had worked with Ricky for quite some time, who said he was not getting vaccinated. And he stood firm on it. We didn’t have any arguments about it, I just had to go off and find someone else.”

While the vast majority of tours remained postponed, a few brave pioneers were hitting the road, meaning normal communication between production chiefs intensified.

“We were talking to lots of people who had started going out in amphitheatres and stuff – Green Day were out doing stadiums – but they were all outdoor-type venues. We were one of the first full indoor arena shows, so we had to be very, very careful.”

Knowing that every state had its own Covid protocols and cities within each state would have different rules, Phay quickly learned that every venue also had its own protocols. “My suggestion was that we just create our own protocols and implement them from the barrier back,” he reveals. “We realised that if we lost one of the two artists to Covid, we’d be in big trouble. But if we lost anyone else, we could somehow get around it.”

The Enrique Iglesias and Ricky Martin tour locked down everything from the stage to the backdoor

As a result, the Enrique Iglesias and Ricky Martin tour locked down everything from the stage to the backdoor and relied on the venues to take care of front-of-house. “They’re running venues for a reason: they know what they’re doing. My thing was, we keep our own house in order, rather than worrying about anywhere else.”

He continues, “Everybody got onboard very well, and we put a Covid officer in place. Most arenas have security at the backdoor anyway, so straight out of the security station we set up the Covid station to temperature-check people. We also had scanners on the buses, so people would scan that in the morning, fill out a form about what they’d been doing, how they felt, etc. We’d register everything on computer, they’d be given a wristband for the day, and that was that.

“But once we hit certain areas, like in Florida where nobody was wearing masks or anything, we realised that a lot of the stagehands weren’t vaccinated. So we had to put serious Covid testing in place there. If they had a vax card, they’d come in, get a quick check, and be given a wristband. If they didn’t, they had to wait for their test result before getting a wristband.

“It was sensible but expensive. Getting stagehands in some situations was tough. But we were following Harry Styles, so we’d talk to Ski, his production manager, to see how they’d handled things in certain cities. And they had an even tougher world where they would not let anybody in that wasn’t vaccinated, so they were having to fly in crew, stagehands, from different areas with
vax cards rather than testing.”

Phay’s strict strategy worked well. “We had one guy who caught the virus, ironically on the very first day at the MGM in Vegas: Alfredo, the video guy. He was not feeling well, and when he tested positive, we literally put him in quarantine in the hotel for ten days. And then he came back. It was a rude awakening for us. But it made people take it seriously, as everybody toed the line and that was it. We never had another case.”

“We got Dead & Co’s protocol, and different protocols from different people, so we could look it over and figure out ours”

Who’s Zoomin’ Who?
Once again, communication with peers proved vital. “We chatted a lot with Ski on the Harry Styles tour. We got Dead & Co’s protocol, and different protocols from different people, so we could look it over and figure out what ours should be,” says Phay.

Renowned for his sense of humour, the situation also allowed Phay to pull some spectacular practical jokes. “We’d gathered for a beer – Andrés, the stage managers, Gino Cardelli and Ethan Merfy, and myself – ahead of speaking to Ski to get tips on how we would approach Atlanta, where the stagehands and riggers didn’t have to be vaccinated.

“Anyway, Andrés was telling me that Ski had sent him pictures of his home after he’d renovated it. And he shows me a photo of his laundry room, so, of course, I used it as my background for the Zoom call.

“So there’s was a bunch of Live Nation people on the call – Ski sitting on a couch on his day off. I come on and he goes, ‘Hey, man, how are you? Blah, blah, blah.’ And then he realises. ‘Are you in my fucking house?’ And I’m sort of rooting around and all they can see is the washers and dryers. And next thing, ‘click’ on comes Andrés, sitting in the living room with Ski’s wife pictured behind him. So the call took about 15 minutes to get going because we caused complete chaos.”

“Paul Young was one of the nicest guys I’ve ever worked with… Spandau Ballet were a great bunch of lads”

The Road Ahead
Speaking from home in Bray, Ireland, Phay tells IQ he’s heading back out to Los Angeles in mid-February to resume touring with Ricky Martin – this time for his own headline tour. And although restrictions are being relaxed, he confirms that he will be imposing the same Covid protocols for this outing.

“We’re going to keep everything the same,” he states. “A lot of people feel it will become like the common cold or the flu, but we’re not there yet, so we’re going to keep everything in place for the time being.”

In a career that dates back to the 70s, there are hundreds of highlights that Phay can call on. But one in particular springs to mind. “Live Aid,” he says. “Andrew Zweck ran that one, but we were all part of it. I just remember at noon when Status Quo kicked in, literally I just got goosebumps. And then there was Geldof flailing around like a flippin’ lunatic.”

And he got to share that day with some of his favourite artists, too. “Paul Young was one of the nicest guys I’ve ever worked with… Spandau Ballet were a great bunch of lads. It’s an awful shame they broke up – one of the nicest tours I’ve ever done was with them. They were a lot of fun.”

When it comes to particular cities or venues he looks forward to visiting, New York, of course, tops the list. “Everybody says ‘Madison Square Garden, oh my God, it’s a nightmare.’ And yeah, it’s a pain but as a venue it’s fantastic – they really have it down.

“It ended up me and Pete [Granger] in the truck, Barrie [Marshall] in the middle, driving over the Alps”

“Chicago’s another great one. A lot of it’s down to the local union or building management. And there are some great buildings around the place: Manchester Arena has always been a great spot, you know, The O2 in London is great. They’re managed well, they’re really good venues. And, of course, a lot of it is down to the promoter.”

Asked about his favourite promoter, the reply is instant. “Barrie Marshall. Who else could it be?” And he recalls one story that he says sums Marshall up. “The Commodores were out on tour and the drum tech got ill,” he says. “When I was with The Rats, I’d set their drumkits and every damn thing. So I got a call from Tag (David Hall) who ran Concert Sound, asking if I was free for the next two weeks.

“So I found myself in Germany with The Commodores, and as their promoter, Barrie was with us. One night, the truck broke down in Mannheim. Barrie found another truck, but they didn’t have a driver. Pete Granger and I were the back-line guys, but we both had artic licences so we volunteered, and because it was nearly two o’clock in the morning and we had a gig in Montreux the next day, there wasn’t another option. So it ended up me and Pete in the truck, Barrie in the middle, driving over the Alps. And he was an absolute gentleman. What other promoter would have got into a truck with the crew? He’s one of a kind.”

UnPhayzed
Trucking comes up a lot in Phay’s history. Frank McGuinness of McGuinness Forwarding tells IQ, “We were in Stockholm, with a triple drive to go to Brussels, but just before load-out, one of the tour drivers became seriously ill, and because of our delayed departure, we were going to fall short of the venue. We discussed the issue with Phay, who in his calm, assertive manner said, ‘Okay, just get the truck away, and I’ll figure out what happens at the other end.’

“At the venue, the next morning, as the truck reversed to the loading door, the driver was heard to say, ‘Come on lazy fuckers, let’s get this truck tipped!’ Phay had met the truck halfway and had become the tour driver overnight. Nothing ever phases him, and he’s always willing to muck in. His door is always open, and he always looks after his crew.”

“Nothing ever phases [Phay], and he’s always willing to muck in”

Production guru Jake Berry also tells a transport story. “We were on a Def Leppard tour and had finished playing St Austell in Cornwall and had to overnight to the Lyceum in London. In the middle of nowhere, the throttle cable broke, so Phay and I rigged the cable so it worked by hand. Picture this: one person driving and changing gears and the other on the throttle cable: the co-ordination was amazing! The motorway was not so bad but driving though London… Well, put it this way, it’s something I will never forget.”

And long-time friend and stage manager Robbie McGrath recalls, “The first time I saw Phay step up to the plate and save the day was on an early Boomtown Rats tour, when half the crew ended up in jail after a wild night’s entertainment in Dublin.

“One guy missing on parade the next morning was the truck driver. We had a 40-footer at the time, and I had no idea how we were going to get the bloody thing from Dublin to Belfast, until Phay perked up and with all the confidence in the world said, ‘I’ll drive it.’

When I arrived in Belfast with the band later that day, the truck was perfectly parked and all the gear unloaded and in the venue. ‘You know, Phay, I never knew you had a HGV licence,’ I said. He hit back: ‘I don’t even have a dog licence… The first time I drove an articulated truck was yesterday at the TV studios when I spun it around the car park.’

“His attitude to work hasn’t really changed because if there’s a job that needs doing, it’s definitely going to get done. He never cuts corners or takes shortcuts and always maintains a happy demeanour,” adds McGrath.

“[Phay’s] attitude to work hasn’t really changed because if there’s a job that needs doing, it’s definitely going to get done”

Indeed, leaving his own Mac Mahon-shape on the business, one of Phay’s proudest achievements is seeing his children, Eoin, Ros and Pearl, forging their own successful careers in the production business.

“I’ve worked with all three and tried to whip them into shape,” he tells IQ. “As Ros said, the worst thing you can do is work with your father because you’re a target – he’s always watching you, and you get it way worse than anybody else. And it’s true. I nearly killed all three of them.

“Anyway, they’re all going out with Ed Sheeran this year; all on the video side,” he reveals. “Eoin is the video crew chief, so he’s also in charge of Ros and Pearl. I feel like I’m missing out, so I’ll probably call Chris Marsh to see if he needs a double driver, so I can get the whole family on it…”

This article originally appeared in Issue 108 of IQ Magazine.

 


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O2 Academy Brixton licence suspended

London’s O2 Academy Brixton had its premises licence suspended following the crowd surge at the venue that resulted in two people losing their lives.

The temporary closure, imposed by Lambeth Council, will apply until 16 January when a full review will take place. It follows the 15 December show by Afrobeats singer/songwriter Asake, which was abandoned following reports that a large number of people were attempting to force entry to the 4,921-cap venue.

Rebecca Ikumelo, 33, of Newham, passed away in hospital on 17 December, while 23-year-old Gaby Hutchinson, who was working as a contracted security provider for the event, died in the early hours of 19 December.

“A tragic incident has happened in our borough and we are dealing with its devastating impact on our communities”

“A tragic incident has happened in our borough and we are dealing with its devastating impact on our communities,” ays Cllr Mahamed Hashi, Lambeth’s cabinet member for safer communities. “Our thoughts are with those who have suffered, especially the families and friends of Rebecca Ikumelo and Gaby Hutchinson who have tragically lost their lives.

“I wish to thank my colleagues on the sub-committee for their careful and rigorous work in looking at this issue at this first stage of the process. We will now continue with our work to reassure our communities about safety at the venue, get the answers needed about how this happened and support the Met police investigations into these tragic events.”

Lambeth Council’s licensing Sub-Committee took the decision at a meeting on Wednesday (21 December) after the Metropolitan Police submitted an application for a summary license review the previous day. Representatives of the venue and the police attended and made representations at the meeting.

A separate criminal investigation is also being carried out by detectives reviewing CCTV, phone footage, speaking to witnesses and carrying out forensic examinations.

Planned concerts at O2 Academy Brixton by 2ManyDJs (15 December), Pusha T (19 December) and DnB Allstars presents New Year’s Eve show (31 December) had already been postponed in the wake of the tragedy.

A social media post by venue operator Academy Music Group earlier in the week says it is “devastated by this tragic situation and are fully supporting the ongoing investigation”.

 


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Happy holidays from IQ

At the end of a resurgent year for the international live music business, IQ would like to wish our readers a happy holiday season and a prosperous New Year.

iq-mag.net has notched up well over one million page views during 2022 and we are grateful to each and every one of you for your support.

Looking back over the previous 12 months, the business has achieved remarkable results, all down to the creative and hard working individuals that make it up. So as you all take a very well earned break over the coming days, we will update the website with some of our most popular features from 2022, along with any significant breaking news over the festive period.

Our daily IQ Index newsletter will return on Tuesday, 3 January, and we look forward to continuing to support and reporting on the business in 2023.

 


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MSG using face-scanning tech to eject lawyers

Madison Square Garden Company is using facial recognition technology to prevent anyone who works for a firm that is suing it from entering its venues.

The ban covers venues including New York’s Madison Square Garden (MSG), Radio City Music Hall, the Beacon Theatre and the Chicago Theatre, reports Rolling Stone.

“MSG instituted a straightforward policy that precludes attorneys from firms pursuing active litigation against the company from attending events at our venues until that litigation has been resolved,” says a statement from MSG Entertainment. “While we understand this policy is disappointing to some, we cannot ignore the fact that litigation creates an inherently adversarial environment.”

“We have always made it clear to our guests and the public that we use facial recognition as one of our tools to provide a safe and secure environment”

According to the report, lawyers to have been removed from shows include Grant & Eisenhofer Barbara Hart, who was escorted out of MSG by security guards prior to a Brandi Carlile concert, and Davis, Saperstein & Solomon’s Kelly Conlon, who was asked to leave an event at Radio City Music Hall.

MSG Company faces a lawsuit from “dozens of attorneys and their firms” over the policy, but has defended its use of face-scanning tech, which it has deployed since at least 2018.

“We have always made it clear to our guests and the public that we use facial recognition as one of our tools to provide a safe and secure environment and we will continue to use to protect against the entry of individuals who we have prohibited from entering our venues,” adds the statement.

 


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Festival organisers visit Ukraine for tour project

Festival, event organisers and night mayors from across Europe and Canada visited Ukraine earlier this month for the Music Ambassadors Tour project.

The social and cultural initiative is designed to attract music professionals from other countries to become cultural ambassadors of the war-torn country, as well raise funds, provide humanitarian aid and ensure the stable operation of volunteer initiatives.

Guests included Pohoda Festival founder Michal Kascak, Login Kochishk of North Macedonia’s largest music festival Taksirat, act5culture head David Lezhava, ISKRA Festival and Bassiani club co-founder Zvyad Gelbakhiani, Mathieu Grondin of Montreal-based nightlife organisation MTL 24/24, and Fund for Democracy promoter Ilze Jankovska.

The visiting contingent stopped off in Kyiv, Irpin, Borodianka, Hostomel, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa and Lviv as part of the trip, which was organised by the Ukrainian Association of Music Events (UAME) in partnership with Night Ambassadors.

“We have been planning this project for almost two months, and when Kherson was de-occupied, we knew we had to go there,” says UAME president Oleksandr Sanchenko, who is also co-founder of the Music Saves UA initiative. “Our team cooperates with the Support Kherson Foundation and we have already managed to send humanitarian aid and generators to Kherson to help people who stayed in the city.

“We warned all guests that it was dangerous and some even refused to go because their families were against it. However, most agreed. As soon as we got off the train, we immediately heard the sounds of explosions, which did not stop the whole time we were there.”

“Cultural life here is blooming, events are happening despite the difficult situation”

Sanchenko continues: “We visited several humanitarian headquarters where the aid from Music Saves UA is delivered, saw a queue of hundreds of people, although it was raining and there were explosions outside. When we got to the central square to see it and the city administration, we were able to stay there only for a few minutes, the shelling was getting even closer and the military administration ordered us to leave the city immediately. A few days later, that same building was bombed.”

Two UA Night Summits were held in Kyiv and Lviv, where guests discussed the creative and entertainment industry in times of crisis.

“For several days we were constantly talking about how we can support Ukraine now,” reflects Grondin. “First of all, it is to talk and talk, so this topic is still in the news and on the front pages, and we also have to do networking with various festivals.

“I know some people in Montreal, and I could involve them in fundraising initiatives, and it would be interesting to do a cultural exchange with artists from Canada. This is what impressed me – cultural life here is blooming, events are happening despite the difficult situation. It’s a great idea for Canadian artists to come to Ukraine and vice versa.”

A short documentary about the project is planned for release next month.

 


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Splendour in the Grass organisers fined $100k

The organisers of Australia’s Splendour in the Grass (SITG) have been fined A$100,000 (€63,000) for the traffic chaos that marred this year’s festival.

The first day of the Secret Sounds-promoted event in North Byron Parklands on 22 July was called off amid what was described as the worst weather in its 20-year history.

Thousands of festival-goers had been forced to wait up to eight hours to get into the site the day before due to the conditions, leading the main campsite to be closed to new arrivals. Those still queueing the next morning were redirected to an off-site camping ground, 13km away.

As the knock-on effects caused significant delays to local traffic, NSW’s Department of Planning and Environment has ordered SITG’s parent company Billinudgel Property to pay $10,000 each to 10 schools within a 10-kilometre radius of the venue for failing to comply with its traffic management plan.

“Traffic queuing resulted in short term, but significant traffic delays to the community, including school children travelling home from school on Thursday, 21 July 2022,” says a spokesperson for the authority. “After considering all of the options available to us, we have decided that the best outcome for the community is for the company to contribute financially to improvements to nearby schools through an enforceable undertaking.

“We place strict conditions on events such as Splendour in the Grass for a reason, and organisers need to abide by them.”

“We faced an unprecedented weather event, unlike anything we have seen in our 30 years of presenting festivals”

“Our compliance officers will once again be on the ground at that festival, to ensure those revised plans are followed,” adds the spokesperson.

Secret Sounds co-CEO Jessica Ducrou apologises to those impacted by the delays.

“Residents and schoolchildren were frustrated by unusually long queues, made worse by the weather, as Splendour festival goers tried to access their camping accommodation,” she says.

“We had a rigorous planning process in place through the Department of Planning which included council involvement and local committees such as the local traffic committee, local emergency management committee and a regulatory working group.

“However, we faced an unprecedented weather event, unlike anything we have seen in our 30 years of presenting festivals.”

Billinudgel Property will also be required to carry out an independent audit of the event a year early. In the meantime, the firm has been warned it needs to review and update its management plans ahead of its Falls Festival scheduled for later this month.

“Our compliance officers will once again be on the ground at that festival, to ensure those revised plans are followed,” adds the spokesperson.

 


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Inside The O2’s ‘year of two halves’

The O2’s Steve Sayer has reflected on a “year of two halves” for the London venue in a new interview with IQ.

The 21,000-cap arena is finishing 2022 strongly following a difficult first few months, initially due to the spread of the Omicron variant and then damage caused by Storm Eunice, which caused it to close for a week in February.

“Overall, we’re really happy with the year and we’re ending on a high,” notes Sayer, The O2’s VP and general manager. “We’ve had some incredible shows but it was only 10 months ago that we were dealing with the storm ripping into the tent. We were just coming out of Covid wave number four or five with a lot of new team members and contractors, so it was a challenging start to the year.”

The venue, which celebrated its 15th anniversary this year, recovered to host a string of triumphant shows by the likes of Dua Lipa, Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish, Rod Stewart, Lewis Capaldi, Travis Scott, Diana Ross, Little Mix and a 10-night stint by Queen + Adam Lambert.

“I think the recovery from Covid is going to take a little bit longer than we all anticipated… It’s just the aftermath that we’re now dealing with”

“By the time we got to Queen + Adam Lambert for those 10 shows in June, Diana Ross, which was another highlight, and Billie Eilish and the Overheated climate conference, I said to the team that it felt like we were getting back into our groove – and we’ve kicked on since that point,” adds Sayer.

“I don’t think anyone anticipated coming out of the global pandemic into the economic environment that we find ourselves in, so there are plenty of headwinds. We have some challenges around the cost base that are no different to any other venue and we’re working hard to figure out how we can mitigate that, so there’s still a little bit of uncertainty ahead. But then when I look at the diary, I think it’s going to be a solid year.”

Shows lined up for 2023 include Panic! at the Disco, George Ezra, Lizzo, Tom Grennan, Michael Buble, Elton John, Sam Smith, Paramore, Maroon 5, Kiss and Iron Maiden, among others, along with a monthly residency by comedian Peter Kay that stretches all the way to 2025.

“In terms of the number of shows that are already confirmed or strong pencils, we’re exactly where we need to be,” says Sayer. “I think the recovery from Covid is going to take a little bit longer than we all anticipated. I think the C-word is pretty much done, it’s just the aftermath that we’re now dealing with.

“We know that there is still a lot of pent-up demand from the fan for tickets. Some shows are doing incredibly well and there are one or two shows that perhaps aren’t doing quite as well as they would have done in normal times, but that might be a function of ticket price and cost of living, but what we have seen is that when fans are coming into The O2, they’re still spending money.

“What I take confidence from is that at times of recession, in recent memory, it tends to be that sport and music is the stuff that people don’t want to give up on. So I feel reasonably confident, but of course we have questions about how next year will play out.”

“We’re planning to deliver a net zero show. If we can prove the model for a single night, I’m pretty sure we can scale it up and replicate it over the medium and long term”

Sayer also discusses the knock-on effects of Eilish’s multi-day climate festival Overheated, which coincided with the singer’s six-night residency at the venue. The O2 implemented various changes within the arena to reduce single use plastic, promote a plant-based menu, and better enable customers to make informed and responsible choices.

“It’s been a real catalyst for us and has stimulated at least one if not two conversations with artist management about shows next year where the act has a particular leaning towards climate activism and the climate agenda,” reveals Sayer. “Whilst we probably won’t repeat the Overheated model, we’re planning to deliver a net zero show. If we can prove the model for a single night, I’m pretty sure we can scale it up and replicate it over the medium and long term.”

Last week, The O2 became the first arena in England to achieve its Greener Arena certification thanks to its sustainability practices and commitments.

“We’ve reduced the amount of meat we’re serving around the campus with out catering partner Levy UK & Ireland, and have been developing a Green Rider,” adds Sayer. “We appointed Jamal [Chalabi] and A Greener Festival to work with us on that and turn all of those learnings from the shows we’ve been running where the artist had a real leaning towards doing the right thing when it comes to sustainability.

“We’ve brought in an energy manager and AEG Europe is soon to be appointing a director of sustainability, who will support The O2 in 2023 and give us some additional expertise in terms of building our plans. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but I think both of those hires are going to be key for us.”

“We’re going to be improving our premium spaces… Our new super-club lounge concept on level 3 is going to be the best place to watch a show”

Having served as a transformative force in the venues sector ever since opening in 2007, Sayer is adamant The O2 is not about to rest on its laurels.

“It’s just about not being complacent,” he explains. “We’re going to be improving our premium spaces; we’re removing 12 suites and putting a new super-club lounge concept on level 3, which will have an incredible view of stage and is going to be the best place to watch a show.

“We’re planning a number of investments to ensure that our back of house areas are renovated and brought up to an even better standard. We’re investing in the fan experience – introducing kiosk ordering in some of our busy bar areas to try and reduce the queues – and are also planning to introduce  frictionless payment kiosks in a couple of areas. We invested in Evolv Express security scanning technology earlier this year, which continues to keep everybody safe but also ensures that fans get into the building a lot quicker.”

Sayer continues: “We’re also upgrading our Wi-Fi over the next six months and rolling out 5G across the venue because, while we don’t want fans to spend all their time on their phones, we know they want to put stuff on their social media channels and we want to give them the best experience to do that.”

 


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