Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Michael Cohl

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

Michael Cohl is an internationally acclaimed Emmy and Tony Award-winning live entertainment producer and concert promoter. In his 55-year career, Cohl’s expertise spans a broad range of live experiences, from music to sports, theatre, and film. He is the Chairman of EMC Presents and founder and CEO of S2BN Entertainment, which brings highly immersive and interactive live entertainment to global audiences, including music and film experiences, as well as the Harry Potter exhibition and Pink Floyd exhibition.  Cohl has notably overseen the tours and related merchandising for over 150 world-renowned artists, including David Gilmour, Barbra Streisand, Phil Collins, Genesis, and The Rolling Stones. One of the most prolific figures in his industry, Cohl has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, and he is the subject of CBC’s 2006 documentary, Satisfaction: The Life and Times of Michael Cohl. He is the recipient of the NAACP Image Award, GLAAD Award, Peabody Award, and Billboard’s Legend of Live Award. Currently, Cohl continues to shape the entertainment landscape with projects including A Night with Janis Joplin, Bat Out of Hell: The Musical, David Gilmour’s Concert Tour, Asi Wind: Incredibly Human, and The Big Apple Circus. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra ------ Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra ------ Lucy https://lucy.co/tetra ------ House of Macadamias https://www.houseofmacadamias.com/tetra

Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. So I went into the merch business not to be in the merch business, but because if I'm in the dressing room or my reps are in the dressing room all over the world, because merch, you could do the world.

They didn't divide it up the way they did concerts. So I said, I need to go in the merch so that when some smart-ass agent says to some manager, we're not gonna use coal, I'm gonna count on them being good people and saying, no, no, no, coal's our merchandiser. He was just in Melbourne with us. He was at London. You'll use coal.

And everything always went back to that core, I have to control the music in my territory. So now we have a merch company. We have the agency. In 84, Michael Jackson has Thriller, and nothing's ever been that hot. I don't think Taylor Swift's as hot as he was then, relatively speaking. Even the Beatles, they were hot, but oh my God, Michael Jackson.

But I go to the bank and I borrow $3 million to get the merch rights to Michael Jackson. And we're ecstatic. And I'm thinking it's gonna get us the tour too. Who's involved in that? A guy named Frank DeLeo and Norman Perry. And we do the deal for the merch. Who on the Michael side, Frank DeLeo?

Frank was his manager. I see. Frank's gone and he was great. He was at CBS Records and he looked after Michael's account and he managed it all. And so we do a deal and we do a deal for the retail merch. Now we're fine, we know there's gonna be a tour, we're hoping to get the tour, but nothing's happening.

Then there are these rumors that they're all locked up negotiating with somebody. Nobody knows who it is or what's happening. Then suddenly it's announced it's Don King. And Don King ever done music promotion before? No, no, no, he was a boxing promoter. Boxing promoter. Muhammad Ali's promoter, Yes. Yes. Yes, absolutely

And convicted of manslaughter did it like ten years in jail. I don't know if you knew that part. Hmm We're a bit nervous though. We've got three million and It's Don King. I'm sitting there with Norman going This isn't the best news like this is the next level for our company. We're gonna go, holy shit, Michael Jackson. Bill Graham has everything under the sun at that point and he's the king. He's got the number one merch company. We were number two, but the truth is,

those numbers are misleading because we should have been number eight. There was nobody big enough to be number seven. Bill Graham controlled so much. But then there's a whole scurry of Don King, and there's really a backlash, and they need to kind of move Don aside. Now there's a rumor.

Nobody knows who they're negotiating with. Nobody. I just assume it's Bill Graham, because if it's nobody, I can't hear. Lo and behold, they do a deal with a guy named Chuck Sullivan. And Chuck's claim to fame was that his family owned the New England Patriots. I think we'll be okay.

Boom, the tour starts. It's unbelievable. It's wacky because Chuck has decided they're gonna do three shows a week, only Friday, Saturday, Sunday, which is nice, I always wanted that, everybody wanted it, Chuck got it, I'm jealous, Michael agreed to it, good for you, so we're feeling, okay, we're good.

And then it's three, two, three weeks into the tour and Norman calls me and says, there's a real buzz out here that the tour's in trouble. And I'm going, that's ridiculous. They're selling out, they're doing three shows in every city, no one's ever done. Even The Stones were doing one, the odd place, two. Calls back a week later, he says it's true.

Everybody knows. Truck's in trouble. They raped him on the deal. And this is a great lesson in life, creativity, whatever. Don't do too good of a deal, because if both sides can't survive. And I go, hold on, what's gonna happen? They say, the tour's gonna go down.

Frank DeLeo had to call me and say, as part of this deal, this is how I found out that they were doing the deal with Chuck Sullivan, I have a bid for the retail rights, which you owe. And I said, but I have to match it, right? And he said, yeah. I said, don't tell me what it is.

Let me go home and figure it out, because I don't want to be enticed by your number. I can talk myself into anything some days. I come back in the morning, I said, my people, we talked, my people have said two million It's worth two million. I'll give you three. He said we got 25. I said it's yours. You owe me one No problem waved it and he did the deal with Chuck So it turns out that Chuck is done. He got the tour, but he's done a terrible deal with Michael

And the over pain to the point of where he can't go he cannot and not knowing what he's done a terrible deal with Michael. And the tour's been- Overpaying to the point of where he can't put on the show. He cannot, and not knowing what he's doing, and gutting in with a lot of sharks. The promoter had two trucks. Do you know anything about touring? The promoters don't need trucks. Right, exactly.

The promoter, I've never had a truck. The promoter had two trucks. Like, the first day I took over the tour, I fired 103 people. So like, but he was going, bro, poor Chuck, who cares? Michael's not gonna give me back the three million. He's not gonna give us back the three million if the tour goes down.

So I didn't know what to do, so I needed inspiration again. It always came when necessary. I thought about it and I thought about what am I gonna do? My inspiration was to look on the calendar. I found out October 5, 6, 7, they weren't booked yet because he was waiting till the last minute to book everything. I said, I see that you're not booked on October 5, 6, 7.

You need to let me take over the tour. I will that you're not booked on October 5, 6, 7. You need to let me take over the tour. I will save you. I will save the tour, but more importantly, I will save me. And he says, we're not in trouble, and I don't need your help. I had found out what his deal with was Michael. So I said to him, even though it's Yom Kippur weekend and my parents are gonna cuss me out,

I will work it out. And I worked it out because I had to go find out what time was sunset. I started the show at nine so the rabbi wouldn't scream at me. He came into my office screaming at me, what are you doing? You're doing Michael Jackson on Yom Kippur,

on Colnidre, you can't have Michael Jackson on Colnidre, you can't have Michael Jackson. I went, first of all, we're not playing on Colnidre, and I made the next one after sundown. So Yom Kippur's over. And so, I go to Chuck and I said, here's the deal. I will pay you what you need to pay Michael. It'll be the first show you break even. I will pay you what you need to pay Michael.

It'll be the first show you break even. And I'll give you 100,000. And then we'll stay up all night and we'll negotiate a deal for me to take over the tour and save you. That was one of my most inspired business thoughts. And I got Michael Jackson in Toronto for three shows. We sold out. Everything was great.

I walked into the settlement, like I'd said to Chuck. I went, here's the check for Michael. Here's the check for 100,000. And you did really well for a one third partner. And he looked at me and he went, you made 200. I said, I made 200. And the difference is you should run football games and I should run your tour.

We stayed up all night and I took over the tour. Now that was just North American. And it was the only tour that we only went after North American. How many shows did you do? There was 52 shows of which I think there were 13 deep when we took over. The first one we took over was in Houston

at the Astrodome, and I went down with Billy Ballard, Harold's son, who was my best buddy and partner at the time on behalf of Maple Leaf Gardens. And I'm down backstage, and somebody comes and says, Mr. King and Joe Jackson would like to see you up in this box. I go, no problem. I go upstairs, and there's just the four of us.

And Don King looks at me and he's a big, have you ever met him? I've seen him once in person. He's a big mother, and he had hair another foot high, I don't know if he still does, at least a foot high. And he says, how you doing? This is great, good to have you aboard. I know Chuck needed help.

But I do want to say one thing to you. Are you sure you want to do this? There's a lot of boys that have come down, a lot of white boys have come down from up north in Canada, down here to the south in Texas, and their momma's never saw them again. I look over to Billy Ballard and it's like, you don't really want to take over this tour, do you?

And again, I'm trying to figure out, fuck, is he threatening to kill me? What is, like over, I'm trying to save the tour, like what the heck? I said, I said Billy go down have something to eat Please I go out in the hall. I said he said we're going back to Toronto I said we're not going back to Toronto because if we go back to Toronto We're always only just in Toronto and that's not who we're gonna be We're not gonna be told that we can't come to the United States or we can't just go downstairs

I got this and I walked back in and I went, look, this is about your tickets, right? And he goes, yes. I said, I'm not here to interfere with whatever you're doing with your 200 tickets. I don't care. I know, and I don't want to know exactly what you're doing, but I know what you're doing. It's like Bill Maher, you know, we don't know, but we know. And I said, you got it. Two things are gonna happen here.

One, your tickets are totally protected, and two, you're gonna see that we know what we're doing, and at the end of this time, Mr. King, when we're finished this, you're gonna let us promote all of your close circuit fights in Canada. I'll be happy just with Canada. Which did happen. But we did the Michael Jackson tour.

So you completely turned Don King around also from wanting to take you out to becoming a... Yeah, but it was the worst tour. I like to work, I still like to work. I just like what I do. And by the end of the tour, I took the whole family, her parents, her mother, my father, my mother, everybody, our kids, we had like four kids in five years,

and I was so bummed that we all went to Hawaii for like three and a half weeks. I'd never taken a week off. It was just such a depressing tour because Michael, in my opinion, made a flawed, flawed, flawed announcement the week the tour was starting that he was leaving the group.

And it was his last gig with them. So now the brothers are so, what do we do? Just tension the whole time? Yeah, it's just like, are we gonna be nothing? Are we gonna be something? Are we gonna be something? Are we gonna ever make money again? All legitimate thoughts that should have come the last week of the tour, not the first.

And it was just an awful tour. At the end of that tour, I had this purple file where I put all of the P&Ls, because while it was a mess and I helped Chuck, Chuck taught me a lot on that tour without realizing it, because he booked all of the stadiums through the NFL owners.

So I took that purple file, I put it in my drawer, and I kept it. And then how did the worldwide thing happen? It wasn't supposed to happen. 87, I did Pink Floyd. Oh, tell me about that. Okay, because here's what happened. How did you end up with Pink Floyd?

Again, it wasn't supposed to happen because ITG represented Pink Floyd. Roger leaves, 78, 79, and there's a huge fight, and there's a lawsuit and an unbelievable. When Roger leaves Pink Floyd, he believes Pink Floyd's done. That's right. He's thinking, I'm the Roger leaves Pink Floyd, he believes Pink Floyd's done. He's thinking, I'm the leader of Pink Floyd, I leave the band, that stops it now,

just be Roger Waters. Is that correct? That's right. He also thinks he owns it. Him and his manager say that he's Pink Floyd. Many people will say he's the most influential member. Mm-hmm. You know, by the way,

having worked with all these people all these years, and you probably know this your own way, I don't think there really is such a thing. It's kind of like there's a story about Comfortably Numb, and it's the last night, and they're mixing, and Esrin says there's something missing, and Gilmore goes home and comes back with the guitar solo. Who cares who wrote it?

Without that guitar solo, that isn't voted by Rolling Stone as the greatest guitar solo in history. And not the song that we have to close with, with the global, you know what I mean? Like, it's a moment in time, they all contributed, and I don't know why they can't be satisfied. Maybe it's the nature of the beast. But anyway, so we're back to, I get a phone call.

We got to always remember the circle. We got ITG, which is the agency that represents Pink Floyd. We got Brockham, which is the merchandise company that represents Pink Floyd. We got CPI, which is the promoting company that promotes Pink Floyd in Canada, and it's all in a big circle. And Roger leaves. And now it's 87. And all of a sudden, I get a phone call from Steve O'Rourke.

May he rest in peace. And says, the tour's off. And I go, holy shit, what happened? Premier Talent have written a letter to all the promoters saying that if you work with the new fake Pink Floyd, you can't. Meaning Pink Floyd without Roger Waters. Yes.

The same Pink Floyd. Yes, but the. But without Roger Waters. The same Pink Floyd who's won the lawsuit to say no you aren't Pink Floyd and no you don't own it. But if you work with Pink Floyd, you can't ever have Roger Waters dates and you can't have any premier talent.

And every single promoter sided with premier talent. It's like a blacklist. Absolutely. Blacklist. Absolutely. Blacklist. Absolutely, it's like the mob again, right? And they all choked. So now they're calling Mike Farrell and Wayne Forte and Steve O'Rourke and I are on the phone.

And it's like hard to believe, but believe it or not, and I know exactly where the inspiration comes from. Because now I'm a fan. I'm depressed. I'm going, no, this can't be. There can't not be a Pink Floyd. Do you guys realize, of course they did, but I'm just spewing, do you realize

that if we give into this, there's no Pink Floyd anymore? And they go, yeah, there's no Pink Floyd. We're dead. I said, we're not dead. I'm doing the tour. I'm breaking the rule. Mike and Wayne, you can have your commission. I'll hire you to book the halls and everything.

We're doing the tour. Oh great, let's think about it, what should we do? I said, yeah. Now that was a big statement. You'd never thought about doing anything like this before, correct? I was perfectly happy. Yeah, this is great.

You're solving a particular problem. That's right, correct? I was perfectly happy. This is great world. You're solving a particular problem. That's right, that's exactly what it is. And it's a big danger too. Yeah, absolutely. So I take 15 minutes and say, what did I say and what does it mean? I call them back, I said everybody on the phone,

I said don't interrupt me and when I tell you this and you tell me I'm insane, you need to think about it because I'm right. And they said what? I said, we're not moving to arenas like you want us to. We're playing stadiums. And I said, we're playing stadiums because we have to stand up, it's Pink Floyd for fuck's sake.

You know, it's Rolls Royce, it's Cadillac, the equity and the brand is what this is about. The fans don't care. This is how it'll work. They tell me I'm absolutely out of my mind. We scream and yell at each other for 20 minutes and Aurora gives in. It's also, if you think about it, Pink Floyd was not Elvis.

It wasn't about the face. Pink Floyd was about the show and the spectacular light show and the psychedelic music and the experience. No question. But you know, when I called back, I did say things like, you've done some homework on this, you've thought about it, and they said yes, they said, well, how many songs does Roger sing lead on?

How many does David sing? And they said, well we know this from prior publicity, 62% of all the singing is David. So I said, well what are we worried about? We'll just use songs with David's lead vocals. Nobody's gonna care. Like stop it with Pink Floyd. They'll be happy to go to a Pink Floyd concert.

And we've had some amazing moments together, because we had a show in Hamilton. Do you know where Hamilton is? 35 miles west of Toronto, because none of the halls in Toronto would take the show. We're not having Pink Floyd. Rock and roll, disease, screw you. We had to go to court,

because once they found out it was Pink Floyd, I didn't tell them. They wanted to cancel it, but our lawyers were really good, and we won the case. to court because once they found out it was Pink Floyd, I didn't tell them, they wanted to cancel it, but our lawyers were really good and we won the case. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] LMNT, element electrolytes. LMNT. Element Electrolytes.

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it was tough it was tough listen in 70 whenever it was Keith got convicted I was his bail bondsman as they say he got convicted in Toronto and that punishment because very wise judge rather than put him in jail, he said, we're not gonna put Keith Richards in jail. You have to do two concerts for a charity. I couldn't find a charity to accept it. Then I couldn't find a hall, but let's go back to Pink Floyd, because if I get too distracted.

Amazing. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Nobody would take the Rolling Stones. Yeah. So anyways, we got Hamilton, we do the show, phenomenal, 55,000. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Nobody would take the Rolling Stones. Yeah. So anyways, we got Hamilton, we do the show, phenomenal, 55,000, I love it, one of my favorite groups, especially because they did something nobody ever did.

The first half of the concert before the intermission, no opener ever, is we've been recording some new songs along the way. We've been in the studio and we'd like to play our next album for you, and they played Animals. Wow. Like an hour and five minutes, however long that album is. The whole album. But nobody does that. You know, 55,000 people have never heard a tune. It really helps if they, as Harry Belafonte used to say, get them to sing their song before you walk in.

But anyways, they play it, it's the end of the tour, O'Rourke says to me, I'm gonna go to the studio and sing their song before you walk in. But anyways, they play it, it's the end of the tour, O'Rourke says to me, halfway through the show, what are we gonna do? We gotta do something to the band on stage during the last song because it's the end of the tour.

And we hook up all of the hoses with whipped cream and shaving cream, and during the song, we're dousing the whole band. Arthur, who subsequently goes on to win Academy Awards for special effects, but we hear him say, oh, you think that's something, well, you see what I can do. It finishes, we're gonna have a huge barbecue with ribs and the greatest food.

I go down underneath to sit and do the settlement. The cops are there with their guns, the cash is there, and there's this explosion. My first thought is, it's the neighbors trying to kill us because we had the concert that they didn't want. It turns out Arthur took all of the explosive for the concert that hadn't been used, went up to the top of the steps

and blew up the scoreboard. Wow. I know. I run out, the cop says, nobody move. It was like, oh my God, what are we doing here? Unbelievable. So now we go to 87 and I'm going, this can't stop. Yeah.

This cannot stop. So they agree to do it, then we have the next issue. This was also a fairly inspirational point. I say to Steve, I don't know how to put this to you, but we have to announce this tour and go on sale before you release the album. And I said, and you have to tell the band. I'm not telling the band.

I'm their promoter, you're the manager. It's your job to do that. No, you're gonna do that. Why did you wanna do that? Because it didn't matter what the album was, people are gonna criticize it. Because critics think they should criticize. Oh, there's no good without Roger Waters.

Oh, Pink Floyd, oh, Roger Waters. I think the album was great, actually. The truth is, sidebar, we had the most successful tour Pink Floyd ever had. More people, more tickets, better fans, and they created a better show than they'd ever had. But anyways, he finally agrees, yeah, okay, I'll tell the band.

Nobody in America knows the candidate exists yet. We'll announce Toronto, Pink Floyd. One show. We'll put one show on sale. If it doesn't work, my exact quote was, David will get sick. And there'll be no Pink Floyd, and we'll have a funeral for them.

And they agree. Now it's the week we're going on sale. This may be my favorite part of the story. It's Monday, I announce the show. There's quite a buzz. I reach out for O'Rourke, no answer. I reach out for Gilmore, no answer. I call Farrell and Forte and they say,

yeah, we can't reach them either. Now it occurs to me, let's stop being so defensive. What if it's good news? I call Tuesday to say, hey, can I announce a second show? Because we've only ever booked one show, we have nothing. We don't really even have a show or a production of trucks. And there's a chance that Pink Floyd without Roger Waters doesn't belong in the stadium.

Yes. We don't know that until this moment. We know it, but we don't know it. And Tuesday, no answer. Wednesday, no answer. Thursday, there's big lineups. We're not into ticket master time. There's big lineups at the Outlets, and master time. There's big lineups at the outlets,

and it's like you can feel it, you can taste it. I'm going, I gotta get a hold of them. I don't wanna put a second social on sale without their permission. I can't get an answer. So it's Friday morning, first show sells out quickly, I announce a second show. I'm calling, I'm getting no answers. I'm leaving messages on the machine though. First show's sold out, I'm announcing a second show

going on sale now, an hour later I call. Second show's sold out, I wish the hell somebody would call me, I've announced the third show going on sale, half an hour later. We've sold 35,000 out of 55,000 for this third show. I wish somebody would call. I don't know if they're dead or what's happening. Half an hour later, we sold 35,000 out of 55,000 for this show, I wish somebody would call. I don't know if they're dead or what's happening.

My secretary walks in and says, David Gilmour's on the phone. And I said, it's just some yanker, walker looking for tickets, tell him to fuck off. She walks back in and says, David Gilmour will not hang up. I said, tell the guy to go away. I've been trying to reach David. The third time she comes in and says he won't hang up,

I realized, oh, you know how you have that? Uh-oh. Uh-oh. It might actually be David Gilmore. No, it is David. I go, hello, and he says, you couldn't sell them out faster. And I go, thank you, where have you been?

And he says, we got freaked out on Monday, realizing that if it didn't work, it was the end of Pink Floyd. And we went up to my cabin, and we'd been taking LSD all week. Amazing. So had you not had that. It was over. Unbelievable. Yeah, yeah, I agree. And then how did the tour go?

So it ended up being your first tour promoting The tour was so good. The whole country. Like people think of Steel Wheels as the barometer of new tours and it did 3,700,000 people and was like, that tour did like 3,006,000. How many years before that?

Pink Floyd was silent. It was silent. It was silent. of new tours and it did 3,700,000 people and was like, that tour did like 3,006. Pink Floyd was silent. Well one was 87 and one was 89. But people, they always, it's hard, they flew under the radar and yet the universe knew, but the media didn't. It's funny, cause everything we're talking about is counterculture, but Pink Floyd is more counterculture than the Rolling Stones. Yes. I agree. It's more of a muse Oh band

It's a muse Oh bad, but it's also a tough guy man the worst crowds more bikers Pink more violence. Let me get there were some tough nights. I didn't know that. Yeah. No people don't know tell me about Bill Graham When we first aware of him? 1974, he did the Crosby-Steels-Nation Young Tour. Again, I was ascending, and he called Maple Leaf Gardens, who said, call Cole, and he called me. So that's how we met. And we did Crosby-Steels-Nation Young

at the Varsity Stadium. And in those days, you didn't really know to hire people, so I did everything, you know. Bought the groceries, helped with the load-in. Nobody knew how to make a capacity, so we figured it out and we went 40,000. So we sold 40,000 tickets. Just nothing but every song.

Heaven. In fact, it was the night before the show, everything finished about nine o'clock. Blazing Saddles was playing at the Varsity Theatre across the street. I went to see it and fell asleep. And the next day, the stadium's full and they're still lined up around the block,

and I go, oh my God, what have you done, Michael? Somehow we got them all in. Unbelievable. But that's the first night I met Bill Graham. Yeah, and what was your thought? He was my hero. He was doing the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young tour. He'd done all these other tours.

It was like, holy shit, I wanna be that guy. So we get to 89, 88, and he's doing the Amnesty show. I've got the three o'clock call from Bob Mitchell who says, there's this lunatic. Not everybody's aware of everything, right? So Bob kind of knows who Bill Graham is, but not the way we would, oh, Bill Graham. He's, oh, this guy's, it's Bill Graham's show.

You know, roadies are roadies. Bob's a roadie, a great one, but it's like, look it, I quit. I said, you can't quit, this is a charity show, we're raising money, we're doing our bit. What are you doing? He said, there's this guy spewing at me, I'm worse than Puke, and they're like,

I went, oh, is it Bill Graham? And he says, yeah. I said, just don't quit, I'm in my car. I go down there and I say to Bill, look it, enough. Don't ever talk to any of my people ever again. I didn't really mean it. I didn't think I meant it. I said, but for the rest of today, just talk to me.

Anything you need, we'll get through this. And when we're finished, we're never gonna work together again. We do enough stuff with United Appeal and the various charities. We do tons of stuff, raise millions. Even in those days, we're comfortable in our skin. We don't need this crap from you.

We agree, we're working through it. So now it's the next morning. And this is how The Stones comes about. And again, this one I don't know where it came from, and I wasn't trying to figure anything out at all. Lo and behold, my staff all come into the office, led by Bob Mitchell, who's been anointed, and said, boss, we gotta talk to you.

I go, what is it? And he says, we know you promised us that we would never work with Bill Graham again, and we appreciate that. But, and I stopped him. I said, just stop, I know what you're gonna say. I don't keep my word, I'm all about the money. And I said, just stop, I meant it.

We need, the next thing in our growth is we need total Self-respect and belief and we need to demand it of everybody else now go back to your desks and do your job And I did mean it yes when it came out yes, and I and I ultimately did mean it the rest of my life Yeah, and they say to me But you can't mean it I go why and I said because if we don't work with Bill Graham We'll never get to work with the Rolling Stones because he was there promote and I said well that this is Six years since he did the one-on-one tour. See some people are bigger than life Yes, he only ever did one tour. Yeah, and it'd been six years

Yes, but it was still him at this moment in time that we're talking about What are the stones up to they don't exist the stones don't exist No, they've been pissing all over each other in the press for seven and a half eight years So I haven't done anything it is dissolved the corporation Wow, which is like the stones are final degree So for seven ish years, they don't exist. They don't exist. That's right. I am gonna put them together because we need self-respect and we need to prove that we can do it

and screw that because we don't wanna be abused by Bill Graham, we're never gonna work with the Rolling Stones. Wrong, we're going to work with the Rolling Stones. Okay. And we're gonna let that ultimate lesson of self-respect and moving forward and discipline all work. What happened next?

So what next is in less than an hour, I call O'Rourke. I said, well, I figured out I'm gonna put the stones back together, I'm gonna give them 40 million. He interrupts and says, it won't happen. There's no chance they're pissing on each other. It'll never happen. I said, I'm gonna give them 40 million for 40 shows. So much of today's life happens on the web.

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website. Visit squarespace.com slash tetra and get started today. Just to understand the marketplace, how much more is that than anyone had ever gotten for anything? Two or three times. Yeah. Two or three times the biggest store in history. Yeah. And you have never done anything on that scale? Not, well, didn't do for myself, but I did for Chuck Sullivan, Michael Jackson, and I

saw how much Michael Jackson made, and it was more than that. But here's the thing about the Chuck Sullivan thing. There's the industry, and there's the people outside. Chuck was an outsider, and I went to the outsiders to do that tour. Nobody in the industry knew exactly what was going on or what happened.

If you did it the normal way, you couldn't have done it. No, no, couldn't have done it. And he says, okay, but now I'm not going to call Rupert. I go, why? He says, because you're going to go bankrupt and you're my friend. We love you. We're Pink Floyd. We can't do that.

I said, you're wrong. Is this another case where you don't have the 40 million, by the way? I don't have a nickel. No, I do not have the 40 million. Okay, just had to ask. Absolutely. Just want to make sure. It's a given. No, I do not have the 40 million. Okay, just had to ask. Absolutely. Just want to make sure. It's a given.

Okay, I want to make sure I understand the story. But I am with Labatt's. It's a long story. I was with Molson's and I was with the Gardens. They screwed me. At the closing, they screwed me. Then I said to them, you screwed me, Mr. Wolfsons, and I will be back to you in the next two years.

Within a year, I sold my company 50% to Labatt's. And the family that owned it was Charles Bronfman, the Bronfmans, the infamous. Okay, so now I've done a deal where they own half my company, and I'm thinking Charles will give me the money. I don't even ask how the money works. I'm so relieved.

You're already the most successful promoter in Canada at this time. Yeah, but I. For years. Yes, but I always bid off this much and generated this much. It was a successful company. You've been, just so I understand,

you've been wildly successful now for about 17 years, if I do the math right. Well, 74 we got successful, so this is 13 years. Okay, so 13 years of great success, you're offering $40 million for something, and you have nothing. We're just living, yeah, we're living beyond our means. Yes, okay.

I just want to understand the picture clearly. You got it, you nailed it. I understand that. And I don't have the picture clearly. You nailed it. I understand that. And I don't have the 40, but I offer it. And you want to know how impactful 40 million was? There's better ways than saying more than anybody. Rupert said, Steve O'Rourke called me and said, you have an interesting offer to make. And I said, didn't he tell you what it is?

And he said, yes, but I need to hear it from your mouth. And I go 40 million for 40 shows. And he says, I'd like to meet you halfway. And he laughs. I said, okay. He says, I'll take the Concorde to New York tomorrow. You fly in and meet me for lunch. Is that okay?

And I said, fine. So he's not waiting. This is late in the day, and he's getting on the morning Concord. Unbelievable. By the end of the lunch, he says, you've got my vote, and you've got the tour. But you have to get Mick and Keith.

Very significant statement, because I've worked with The Stones. Yes. I've been a local promoter in Canada, and I was their local promoter in Buffalo. But I don't understand where Rupert fits, because he's never showed up at a single show. But now I'm having lunch with him,

and he says, you've got the Stones. I go back, I say to Laurie, I had this really weird lunch with this guy who for some reason thought it was appropriate to blow smoke up my ass and tell me I have the Stones, which couldn't possibly be happening, because we just met.

I still think he's blowing smoke up my ass, so we have dinner. Then I come home. At the dinner, he says, well, we've got to figure out what to do with Mick and Keith. You have to meet with them. They have to like you, they have to trust you. Mick's in love with Bill Graham.

Do the we part, and we figure out. We'll talk again in a few days. I start to do a little homework and some people tell me, yeah, Rupert hates Bill Graham. Bill Graham calls him fatty. He was a short, really rotund Brit who Bill Graham was too arrogant to and didn't respect him. And so I go, okay, there's hope.

And we're talking and talking. And then suddenly we've looked at a budget, we've looked at, and it's kind of like, wow, I'm actually maybe gonna get this. Yeah. So now we're making the deal, and we have to have a meeting with the Rolling Stones. I've met them, I've worked with them, but I'm coming in as a different,

you know what I mean? Yes. I'm everybody's buddy now and coming in trying to marry your daughter. Yeah. Oh, I never noticed that scar in your face. Step two, how do we get them? To talk to each other. Yeah.

So we can cock the thing, me and Rupert. The goal is to get Mick and Keith to talk. Yes. But we do it without getting them to talk. We go to Yarn Winter and Rolling Stone Magazine and get them to induct them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Because we know that A, Keith lives in Connecticut, B, he'll go, C, that you have to play after. We also know

from chatting that all the rest of the band will show up and that if Mick doesn't, they don't care. They'll do it. And Mick won't allow that to happen. And Mick will never allow that to happen. And you can't go, and Jan and Mick are friends, so we know that when it's time for the Stones to play, there's no chance Mick won't play with them. It works. They get inducted, they play, and the next Monday Rupert calls me and says,

they liked it. We're gonna have a meeting with you, come to New York a couple weeks later, and see if we can stand each other. Great, plan worked. Now it's time to go to the meeting. Meeting's on a Monday. I go to New York on Thursday. I lock myself in a room at the Parker Meridian and I just talk to a mirror with room service for four days

answering every question that they're ever going to ask me. I'm gonna be ready. It's all set. It's Monday morning, meeting's at noon, nobody gets up before that. I've got my Def Leppard jacket, and I got my Pink Floyd jacket, and I don't know which one to wear.

I'm very superstitious. And I go, I gotta wear my Pink Floyd jacket. I walk in, it's done and over when I walk in because I walk in with my Pink Floyd leather jacket, which is nicer and better than any merch that Stones had ever produced. And Mick stands up and looks at it, turns to the rest of the band and says,

you see that jacket? That's what I've been talking about. And I knew we had to have a meeting and talk about it, but it was kind of like, wow, it wasn't over that I was gonna get it, but it was over that I was in the running. Well, it was also over that you had something that they wanted.

Yes, just bumped into it. In that moment. But everybody wanted it. Yeah. It was just, we were doing it for other bands and for whatever reason, Winterland and Bill Graham weren't doing it for the Stones. They were still stuck in black tease.

And we were trying to do other stuff because we started to realize, who are the Stones audience? So this is late 80s, so the original Stones fans were all grown up, successful people now. to the next... Because this is late 80s, so... This is late 80s. The original Stones fans were all grown-up, successful people now. Exactly.

So the next thing is, we have the meeting, it goes really well. We keep going, and now we're down to the deal. And we've negotiated and negotiated and negotiated the deal.

And... What are some of the points in the deal beyond, because the main event has already been covered. Well, but then there's the expenses and who pays the expenses and when there's overage. So now it looks like it's real. I gotta go back to Charles Bronfen and get the money.

We have a meeting. He said, glad you brought me a deal. This is why we did business with you. Then we go to the Labatt's board. They start asking questions. Charles got really mad, slammed the table and says, what are you asking questions? It's the Rolling Stones. If you're not going to back the Rolling Stones, why are we in business with this lad?

Stop it. And I went to them for 65 million, by the way, because I said, I think we're gonna get it for 40, but I'm telling you, we will get it for 65. Yeah. So anyways, they approved the 65. I'm bidding 40. Time has moved on. It's late winter, February, March, 89.

We're doing the deal. I think I've got it. I don't know that they're still talking to Bill Graham. I don't know that they're still talking to Bill Graham. I don't know that Mick is still pushing for Bill Graham. But I hear a story of Bill Graham flying over with Mick on the Concord because he was having an affair with one of Mick's secretaries. And ultimately I do hear from Mick later on that that was true. And that Mick in the end was gonna give it to Bill, really,

and just said, Michael's bid's 10 million higher than yours. So I felt good that I knew they would only bid 30. Michael's bid's 10 million higher than yours, and do you not think, I'm responsible for protecting the band, and do you not think that two million each is a lot for us to pay to work with you?" And Bill said, no.

And Mick later told me that's when Bill lost. I was like, why would the Rolling Stones work for 10 million less? Where are the Rolling Stones? Of course. In some ways, it's a funny world, because in Bill Wyman's book later, he talks about how they had a big tiff with Bill

over three million that he stiffed them for and refused to pay, and the band swore they'd never work with him again. So you have the other four Rolling Stones thinking the negotiation with me, and Bill Graham is just a ruse to get me up as high as possible. There's no chance on earth they're gonna work with Bill,

and Nick's still cavorting with Bill. I go to Barbados for the closing. Bill's there. What? Bill's there pitching. You didn't tell me that. No, I'm telling you now. That's unbelievable.

Because I've gotten to the closing. And Bill's there making his pitch kind of thing. Unbelievable. I know. The reason I think we've got it is because one night we're at home in Douglas Drive, and it's like really late, and there was a bad meeting I knew it and Rupert told me they were making a decision They called us at about 1130 at night and and all the bad were there and Rupert with his fantastic Prince Rupert

Oh, Michael the Rolling Stones have decided to be employed by you for the purposes of touring And the band are all here say hi boys. That's so funny have decided to be employed by you for the purposes of touring. And the band are all here. Say hi, boys. That's so funny. Well, I never forgot, employed by you. And I went, yeah, employed by me. Yeah.

Exactly. Fantastic. Exactly. So now we're in Barbados and we're doing a closing. Yeah. But why is Bill there? Well, he was some last minute pitch to save the day. To save the day.

Well, the first, sorry, I skipped the first Barbados. I gotta go to Barbados when they're making steel wheels and hang around with them for a week. I go to the studio, they're recording, everything's great, things are happening. I'm worried about one thing, but I save it for the rehearsals because I don't have the tour yet.

Anyways, now it's, okay, what do you guys do at night for relaxation? And Mick says, we're going dancing. Be in the lobby at 6.30, you, me and Keith, we're gonna go dancing. I go, great. I think it's Jimmy Cliff has a club and he's buddies with the Stones.

So we're gonna go there, we're gonna eat, have our own room and we're gonna be dancing. We're walking down the hallway and I see this good looking blonde and I go, oh God, Mick and Keith, I won't see them again tonight. We get up there, we're walking in, the three of us, two security guards, and what's the first thing she says?

Michael, I haven't seen you for so long. And it was a girl I knew from camp. But it's kind of like later when Keith and I are sitting at the bar and mixed dancing with every good looking girl there is, he says, how did you get that girl here so fast? Keith was like, but anyways. We have a good week. Everything goes great.

We go back to New York, and we have to go back to Barbados later on for the closing. We do the closing. It's happening. Bill's tried everything he can. Forbes magazine's making an article about the Wonder Kids blowing his brains out again. He gave them $40 million. He sunk his ship this time around. It has been cherished in tribal wisdom traditions for thousands of years.

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a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, a cigarette, and modulate the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. Experience the power of this natural nootropic by visiting lucy.co.c-o-slash-tetra and discover next level smoke-free nicotine. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. is an addictive chemical. One of the reasons I was excited to meet you was I remember a quote from Bill Graham.

He didn't say this to me. This was a public quote. The Stone said supposedly that if he would meet your offer, they would do it with him. Mick said that. And he said, I can't do that. It's not about the money, it's about the money. And I thought that line, it's like there's so much in that sentence.

Yes, yes. It sounds like Bill. Yeah, and I'm picturing Bill Graham, the beatnik slash hippie entrepreneur of the people, and I'd never met you before today. And I assumed you were the suit from Canada who had more money to beat out Bill Graham. And I thought, that must be interesting, just that.

And then you turned up. Yeah, here I am. And it's a different story But you know what? I'm not the suit from Canada, and he wasn't the hippie well when you walked in I could see you Yeah, yeah, but he wasn't the hippie. Yeah, Bill Graham was a businessman Oh for sure, and I don't want to talk ill about the dead as they say yeah, but We were saddled with Bill Graham and his inadequate We were saddled with Bill Graham and his inadequate business thoughts for years.

This is the thing about Bill. He thought it was okay to keep ticket prices low so that the scalpers would make more, and he was part of that thing with the scalpers. I was able to change things. How did I change it? I think my biggest contribution, and a lot of promoters hated me,

there was a huge promoter meeting. Bill called one, he didn't invite me because I was meaningless, and I wasn't meaningless, but I wasn't meaningful enough for Bill. But then there was another promoter meeting, which was like 98 promoters voted me the devil and the only one that didn't was my representative. I refused to go to the meeting.

But the thing about Bill was, he just was making too much money. And I changed that, and the promoters hated me in a way because I just took everything. It's funny because I haven't thought about a lot of this stuff for so long. Why would you? I would.

You move on. But it's really, it's just, you know what it really is? So interesting. It's a fan learning how to do business. And Rupert was unbelievable. Unbelievable lesson because, I mean, you do a deal with the Rolling Stones, I'm just a promoter.

I sign up, I'm used to my role. It's about a week before the first show and I'm calling Rupert and saying, when are you coming to Philadelphia? And he says, I'm not. I need to take a breath. I'm a promoter who works with the bands, but when the crisis comes, I go to the manager,

and now, what do you mean you're not coming? When are you coming? He says, well, I'm coming to New York. And I go, but that's five weeks into the tour. If there's an emergency in those five weeks, who would you talk to? Myself and the band. Now we're in the late 80s.

But let's walk through the numbers for a minute. But you know how important 40 million was? My deal with the Stones was in 85-50. Amazing. That's how much 40 million. We're never gonna get into percentage. This guy's nuts. Yes.

Let's do the 90-10 for the interest. I didn't know, by the way, that I had to fight with Bill Graham. That was something that Bill Wyman, who I became very friendly with as the tour started. Why did he leave the band? Do you know? He hated flying.

He hated flying. And so what happened was we went through it's opening flight. We're going from rehearsals to fly to the first gig for the Stones. I'm with the band because I'm the tour director and the promoter, I'm the quasi-manager. And we had almost all the same staff

that there were on the previous tour, but they were getting used to me. I was a bit edgy, like, oh god, they're all of Bill Graham. I have a different management style. He's got, he's involved in every nickel and dime. I drove them crazy at first. Some of them almost had nervous breakdowns.

Because I would go, like, why are you calling me? If you're not the best, like, this is the stones. We have the best truck drivers, we have the best caterers, we have the best everything. You must be able to make a decision. Call me when it's important. But Bill was involved best everything. You must be able to make a decision. Call me when it's important." But Bill was involved in everything. Understood.

But now we're going to the first gig and Alan Dunn has a big smile on his face and says, well, we've seated you up front with the band and you have the seat opposite Bill Wyman. And he goes, I don't catch that it's a trick. So we get to the first gig, we sit, we have our own plane. There's the table here, Bill sits down, lays out about six pills, puts it back.

I go, what are you doing? He says, well you know we're gonna die, don't you? He infected me. I couldn't fly for like five years, I was a nervous wreck like him. Oh, there's a leak from the plane, from the engine. Go talk to the pilot, there's no leak. But he was a rolling stone.

I'll go, I'll go. You have to maintain the protocol. You caught his paranoia. I caught his flu. Wow. By the time we got to Europe, which was called urban jungle, because steel wheels was costing them too much money and they were losing money, I was okay. We made a deal that made the 40 million work.

Anyways, we scrapped Steel Wheels and we created a new show that made everything work. But by then he'd given up. I can't fly anymore, he took trains. And it didn't work because sometimes the train was late and he missed sound check. There was friction with the band. Where's Bill?

How can we have sound check without our bass player? What's wrong with him? And it was over. Let's talk about before 9010 economics. And then when you first learned about the 9010, give me an example using numbers. Well, the difference was if the act would make 50,000, and the promoter would make 50,000, now the act's gonna make 90,000, and the promoter would make 50,000,

now the act's gonna make 90,000, and the promoter's gonna make 10. Understood. And would those have been about the numbers? It would have been like? Yeah, it's some nice. In that range. Yeah.

Okay. I mean, as it grew, you know, 180,000 and 20,000. But that's why a promoter had to learn to go, we better go in the ticket business, or we better have travel packages, or we better get a ticket rebate, or some scalped. I didn't scalp.

And we would do those things. And then eventually when you got to the point of the deal with the Stones, you were counting all of the, not just the tickets, but the t-shirts and the- Everything. Everything, and it the tickets, but the t-shirts, and the... Everything. Everything, and it was all going into the pot. Yeah. Well, I used to describe us internally,

Yeah. as an arena without walls. Mm-hmm. Because it's like the NFL. In movie theater. I'm sure they don't make money on the game. And eventually we've gone into everything, you know. By the stones, I was doing other stuff.

I'd already done Wide World of Sports, professional skating tour. Again, just opportunities where I met some skaters and I met some people with the skating and they were complaining that the Olympics was the worst thing ever because when it was finished they couldn't compete anymore, they worked, but they have to go to ice follies or ice capades,

and it was so useless and boring, and I said, well then, let's start a tour. So we started the professional skating tour. And then we, Bob Iger, when he was a Stunker, and I was a Stunker, we did a deal for, with Steve Lieber and Bob Iger, and myself did a deal to do the professional skating on ABC Wide World of Sports in Madison Square Garden.

Great. Tell me the history of Live Nation. It was Bob Sellerman, really, started a thing called SFX. I had tried it my own way and kind of failed. You know, at a certain point I had 12 different promoters and Bob was a more sophisticated businessman and it gave him a huge, this is how you do it. I watched him do it and went, wow.

But it really was called SFX, they just changed it to Live Nation. There was no Live Nation, it was SFX. It was Bob Silverman. Was he a promoter before? No, he was an Live Nation. It was SFX. It was Bob Silverman. Was he a promoter before? No, he was an aggregator. I see. He's a New York Sharpie businessman aggregator.

He aggregated radio, and you might know a thing called AM FM radio. And Bob and him were partners. I don't mean DJ like this. I mean, hey, good morning. This is Cousin Brucie. Oh, Cousin Brucie. I don't know if I did it I mean, hey, good morning, this is Cousin Brucie. I don't know if I did it. Cousin Brucie and Bob Sailorman,

he and Bob bought a radio station. Then they bought another station. Then they bought another one. Then they bought so many, and they had a company called AM FM Radio, which had a zillion stations, and that was Bob. And then he dumped it and made a bazillion dollars. And that became what's now iHeartRadio, I suppose.

That's right, well, kind of, because what happened with AMFM is that Bob took that money and he started buying promoters. He had an idea, now that I did the music, I'll aggregate the promoters. And so he gave this promoter 20 million, 30, and everybody thought he was nuts. And some people fought it,

my friend Arnie and his partner, they fought it. I think I was the last major to give in. And getting nine figure numbers, of course he spent 1.3 billion and sold it for, it was either three or four billion. So last laugh, ha ha. Yeah. And it's the whole idea of an aggregator that the more of-

AMFM became Clear Channel. Clear Channel. And then Clear Channel became iHeartRadio. That's what it is today. No, and it bought SFX. Yeah. Live Nation just became later, they changed the name. There was no formation.

But the idea was Bob bought all the promoters or as many as he could. And the idea was instead of it being a local business by scale, you could make better deals. Is that what it is? Yes, yes. It's as simple as that. It is that simple.

Ultimately, Live Nation, for example, there was a realization, what we do as many people as Disney. Disney does 35 million a year, we do 35 million a year. Disney does 100 million in sponsorship, we do two. We need to present ourselves better. We do too. We need to present ourselves better. Welcome to the house of macadamias. Macadamias are a delicious superfood

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and blueberry white chocolate. Visit houseofmacadamias.com slash tetra. Music. Music. Tell me about from your position you see this guy buying up your equivalents in other parts of the country. Yeah. When do you decide I want to be part of this or what's the thinking? Is it I'm going to get swallowed up anyway?

No, it wasn't that at all. I was doing great. I mean, I was still independent. I had Stones, U2, Streisand, Crosby, Stills, National Young. I was great. I didn't need them. But the offer got so big that I just went, okay, fine, this is stupid.

Like, that's 10 years money today. I can never catch up, even at 4%. Yes, yeah. So yes, let's do it. And then you were involved from the beginning once it was put together, yes? No, it had been put together, and a few years later, I came on board.

Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And what was the experience like? I thought it was pretty good. I mean, I lived through it. We all exited kind of when they sold it.

But I liked Bob. Yeah. It was also getting one of those things, you know, you reflect on life. I got up in the morning, I'm going to Bob's funeral. I'm getting up in the morning, Bob's died, he had throat cancer. I'm going to his funeral.

I'm sad, but I'm feeling good. I went, I'm gonna see all of those guys. I'm gonna see Mitch, I'm gonna see Larry, I'm gonna see all of those guys. I go to the funeral, I'm the only guy that showed up. Really? I'm the only frickin' guy that showed up. And it dawns on me, I'm gonna say this,

but all the Americans who ever listen are gonna hate me, but so be it, all you Americans. I'm Canadian. And I go, it must be they thought they were worth the money and I didn't. Wow. Because I'm there thanking him, my buddy, and saying, holy Christ, you gave us money

we never would have had. But I was so shocked. How do you know it's being a Canadian? You might just be a better friend than they are. I don't know. One of the things when I came to this country that I had the hardest time getting used to is how aggressive everybody was.

I mean, so aggressive. I know Canada's caught on now, but they were so aggressive. And maybe I'm still a bit of a high school kid. I'm still always shocked when what I thought was true is true, and when I find out people are who I thought they were, I'm never one of these guys go, oh, I knew. But there's so many people who go, oh, I knew.

All of those other promoters were, oh, I knew. But there's so many people who go, oh, I knew. All of those other promoters were, oh, I knew. And I've always walked around going, you didn't know. I don't know where you're somewhere lost and you're walking through life, but you didn't know, you know now. By the way, I give you my best, you knew story ever. The greatest thing about, I mean we've skipped 20 years, but so be it, but touring with the Stones,

I am in Barbados. We're closing the deal, so we're back to that. I'm leaving to go to Barbados and Lori says, I don't know how she could be this prescient, but women are like that. She says, great, go get the deal, but do not go on tour with them. Because it's 1989 and we have four children, six and under. So I said, don't you worry, I won't.

Now I'm in Barbados, next scene in the movie. I'm in the room, it's just the Rolling Stones and me, not even Rupert. There's one last deal point. And Mick says, so we were in Australia and Bill Graham wasn't at the gig and there was a problem with the signs. And the guy from the sponsors and Paul Dainty, the promoter, end up in the dressing room harassing me and I didn't know what to do

and I had to give him back some money and it was a very unpleasant conversation, Michael. So the band and I would like to say the following. We're gonna be on all the tour and at all the shows, where are you gonna be? I knew one thing from having been their local promoter, and I don't say this, because some people would say, oh, that's just stubborn. They don't bluff, and I knew it.

And so I hesitated for an eon, which was probably three seconds, and I went, well, I'm gonna be on all the shows. And they said, that's one of our demands. Yeah. What was the conversation when you got home? I didn't tell her. I'm embarrassed with her sitting there.

I didn't tell her till about four days till I left for rehearsals. Wow. Which was months later. I didn't have the balls. Wow. But now we're in Brixton Academy. But that's one of the things about being with the Stones

and being with these different groups is you get to be in these historical or interesting moments where you get to see the truth. Yeah. I'm sitting at Brixton Academy. Keith Richards is there. This is one of those great nights, one of the best half hours of my life,

and also one of the most embarrassing. There's a coach for two and there's a chair. I'm on the left of the coach for two, and Keith's in the chair. We're just chatting, our pregame chat. Little small gig, 500 people. We did lots of those. They love them, they're the best gigs.

This scrawny looking guy in a beige trench coat with a hat comes in and he looks like he's 105 pounds and he sits down and Keith says, hi, how you doing? They're chatting for about three minutes. And Keith goes, oh, I'm embarrassed, Michael. I didn't introduce you. George Michael. And I look, I don't recognize him.

And I say to Keith, that's not George Michael. He said, it's George Harrison, you idiot. I know, I know, I know. What can I tell you? Pretty funny. It is funny, and it happens. So we're chatting. Yeah.

And then the guys come in and say, Keith, 15 minutes till you go on. So George says, this has been great. I'm going out to see the show. Oh, you're here? I'm just here by myself. I just live over there. I came over, I hadn't seen you for so long.

And then George Harrison stands up and he looks at him. He says, I'm so jealous of you guys. Wow. But it gets better, because Keith goes, what do you have to do to be jealous of us? You're a beetle. I mean, he acknowledges, like, you're a beetle. We're the stones.

And Harrison goes, yeah, but look at you guys. You're still together, you kept it together. We couldn't keep it together. It's like been decades, and Keith goes, why didn't you keep it together? And he says, you know, Paul had to control everything. And so you sit there and you go, holy shit, it's not going to the book, but maybe it can go on here.

It's like, my God. Yeah. Now, the other good part of the story is George leaves. I'm talking to Keith for about three seconds. Again, it seemed like a minute, and I realize, holy shit, he's got a trench coat on, he doesn't have a pass, he has a hat, nobody's gonna recognize him.

Be right back. I run out to try and rescue him, and I see one of the security guys carrying him out. Oh my God. And I go, put him down! And they go, what do you mean? I said, that's George Harrison, put him down. So it's like, if you ever wrote a book,

the chapter would be, put him down. So funny. Unbelievable. Unbelievable stuff. I was gonna say, tell me about Prague. First of all, we all were learning to tour. Stone's had done tours for 74 days, but during Steel Wheels, we're all learning.

You know, Mick has rules, no children, no wives. Everybody goes on strike. I have to go tell Mick that everybody's on strike. He gives in. He was just trying to hide everything from Jerry. But we worked it all out. Now we're out on Voodoo Lounge and we've got our families. But now we're in Europe.

Anyways, I get a phone call. And it's from Havel. And he says, hello, I'm Vaclav Havel's assistant. And he says, well, we need to have a concert. And it's important. And President Havel has authorized me to speak to you and you to speak to the band, and we'd like to have a concert in Prague.

And I go, that's great. I haven't really followed what's going on at all. So I start to get defensive, and I go, how do I know you're with the president? How do I know you're not just some guy trying to come and get go, how do I know you're with the president? How do I know you're not just some guy trying to come and get tickets, we're in Germany, and get tickets for this German show. He says, I don't want to come to them.

I said, well you have to get me a note with the official seal, but then I go and do some research. I'm somewhat embarrassed that I don't know that he got a million people to sit in the city square and throw the Russians out without a bullet. He's now my new hero. He's replacing Pete Seeger, who was my previous hero,

and now he's my hero. And he sends me the letter, I get it by delivery, there's no internet. And I look at it, it looks real. I don't really know if it's real, it could be a grand scheme. But anyways, I go to Mick and Keith and I said, you know, Havel, and they go, yeah, we know.

They want us to do a concert. Mick was always really good at this stuff. And I said, they don't have any money. We're gonna lose money. We're not even gonna break even. And the truth is, it's behind the Iron Curtain. What was the Iron Curtain? It's 1990.

Because that's when the Berlin Wall came down. It all happened very quickly. Like we've never sold records there. People might have smuggled them in. Where do they want to play it? I said, well, they have this stadium, Sparta, is the biggest stadium in the world that the Soviet Union, as it used to be called, it has six football fields where they would have

the gymnastics championships for the whole Soviet Union, and it holds 250,000. So a typical stadium holds? 60, 60. We're playing to 50 to 60,000 LA had a hundred we did three nights because you know there was Beatles there was Michael Jackson's and then there was steel wheels. I mean it was unbelievable So now we have to have the discussion. What the fuck do we do? What do we do? I?

Get maps of it. I think about it, I go back to Mick. They're convinced we're gonna sell out. Yeah, but Michael, you know they don't know what they're talking about. But I get it, I'm starting to get a feeling. I'm phoning people and it's like, it's the poet who became president. I said, let me meet with them.

I called them back and said, this thing might happen, come with your best pitch, and they're gonna meet me in Holland. So scene three in this movie, it's 8.30, my phone rings. I was in Keith's room until 6.30. It's my assistant, she says, the people from President Havel's office are here. And I go, I'm dying, I don't believe it,

I completely forgot. Like, ask them if they could just have coffee or something, I'll get shower and dress, tell them 20 minutes. I scurry about, send them up, I open the door, and it's Jerry Garcia and Alice Cooper. I mean, he looked like you with sandals, and he's the president's assistant, and the minister of economics has black mascara,

all black, and I go, this is my kind of meeting. The beatniks have taken over the country. Amazing. I actually woke Mick after the meeting, say, you won't believe it, the beatniks have taken. He says, I knew that. I went, I know, I'm an idiot, and I know you, he does follow those things more than I do.

The best they could offer was to send his plane. He had a plane, and I went, but we have a plane. Like, they had nothing to offer. But we spent time, we looked at the map, and I said, we have to compromise. So instead of the stage going here, and playing to 250,000, we're gonna put the stage here, and play to 115.

Which still risky in a country that, the music had been illegal in this country until very recently. Yes, this was like six months. So six months ago you could not buy or hear. There were bootlegs. Legally it was against the law. That's right. Well everywhere we went in those days, it was the Stones couldn't go to Japan. Yeah. But we agree to do the show and we we're gonna lose money. But it's okay. The band are fine with it.

We're all very excited. We're worried, because we're gonna go on sale. In fact, we had a pool amongst all of us. I took 78,000, I was closest. We sold 115,000 the first morning, period. We sold out, bingo. Now we made it cheap, it was like 20 or 25 dollars. And the interesting thing then was,

he's the most super person, gentle, gentlemanly. He invites us, Laurie McGorin ends up on the front page of the New York Times, Bondi McGorin, with the Rolling Stones because the Prague Castle, which I think they've torn down, but is the largest castle in the world, and we're invited to go for tea with President Havel and his wife.

We go in, we walk, and we walk, and we walk, but the Russians have stolen everything. They stole the floorboards, they stole the lights, they stole the wallpaper, have stolen everything. They stole the floorboards. They stole the lights. They stole the wallpaper. They stole everything. This is the most decrepit-looking, nonsensical palace for a president you've ever seen.

We walk into the room where Havel is, and he's got a desk and two chairs. There's like, I can't remember, five or six Rolling Stones, me and Laurie at the time. And we're chatting. And the concert's the next day, but he wanted to see us. Do you speak English? Yeah.

He spoke English. And we hear this noise in the courtyard. And then finally, could you explain to us what that noise is? And he says, well, that's the courtyard. There's about 15 or 20,000 people in the courtyard. We're hoping you would say hi. But I go, what are they chanting? And he says, they're chanting,

thank you so much, President Havel, for bringing the Rolling Stones. Now we know we're truly free. Wow. Which was what they told me in the hotel. Yeah. And I told the band. I forgot this part. But the reason we had to do the concert

was so that they'd know that it was legitimate. It proved that they were free. The Rolling Stones. So he opens the doors. We go out on the balcony. They're screaming. And the press are there, which is great. It's fine.

Havel goes out, the band goes out. Everybody's crying. Even Charlie Watts, the hardest human on Earth, has tears in his eye. And there's a picture that goes to the front page of the New York Times and everywhere else in the world. And Laurie McGorn happened to be standing there next to the Rolling Stones.

But. Crazy story, beautiful. But what a story. Beautiful. And then we play the show. Yeah. And it's like. How'd it go?

Phenomenal, it was like beyond phenomenal. We got to know the president and his wife and our slogan for the show was, tanks roll out, stones roll in. Wow. And so everywhere you went in town was stone stones. There'd be one bread in a bakery, there was no furniture.

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TETRAGRAMADIN.COM TETRAGRAMADIN.COM Tell me about the music world in 1969. You started in 1969? Oh, Jesus, yeah, I did. I started in 1969. I was 21. Nobody would sell me anything.

Ricky goes, I got a great idea. We're going to open a strip club, which was perfectly legal. I said, you're right. We're going to have the first all nude strip club. What is this G-string and pasties crap? We'll shut down all the other businesses because we'll have- And is it legal?

Well, we're hippies. We got a beard like you, hair down to here. It's the 60s. How can the human body be illegal? Of course. The lawyer tells us it's illegal. We go, screw them, they're wrong. And we do it.

We open it up. We run out of money. We find a bowling alley. We fix it up. We get it ready. And we're out of money. We don't know how to promote it. And we thought that the best idea

was to bring the press in and some public. And we called it the undress rehearsal. So we had our undress rehearsal. Now in these days there's only one TV channel in Canada. It's called the CBC, Canadian Broadcast Corporation, like BBC, we're part of the Commonwealth, it's the CBC. They come to the undress rehearsal amongst other things and we say to them, you can film, but don't film the girls.

Don't film the girls and don't put it on TV because if you do, we're all going to get in trouble. I wasn't worried about them so much as I was worried about... There goes all our money. Ricky and I had like 10,000 in the world, some of which... To this day, when I think back of it, we each went to the bank of commerce and borrowed $5,000. That's where the 10,000 came from's where the $10,000 came from, because all the drug money had gone to the lawyers to get us out on bail. So anyways, what happens is they come, they film it, and there's only one national news at the time, and they show

it and they show the girls nude. Wow. So two things happened. We're on the front page of every newspaper. My mother calls from Toronto to say, I have an appointment for you with a psychiatrist. You clearly need help. My uncle calls and says, you're about to get arrested. You're in trouble. And we get arrested.

Wow. So our next, we're going into legitimate business idea, as we got arrested 34 times. They would come in every day. 34 times? Well, it took a while for our lawyers to ultimately, you learn all these new concepts. Yeah. Talk about a different kind of creativity.

Yeah. Where the lawyer finally goes to the judge and says, you have more money than they're making in bail. They're bailing the girls out every day. Ricky would go in Monday and I'd bail him and the girls out. I'd go in Tuesday, he'd bail. We had to take turns. And then ultimately the judge went, yeah, you're convicting them without a trial.

No more arrests until there's a trial. Wow. The guys we're partners with are in the music business. And we're starting to do music in Toronto. And we're starting to get a feel. Tell me starting to do music in Toronto, what does that look like? Tell me what that means. Well, it was a friend, one of the dope dealers,

three of the dope dealers, Saul Nicky, Gord Bregman essentially, started a company called Saul Nicky, Gord Bregman. We were all a company called Salnicki Gord Bregman. We were all pissed off with them because we went, that's such a good idea, why didn't you include us? And they went, well, we were just a bit up, and somebody said, why don't we bring the who? And so we all invested, and that's what I mean by starting.

They did everything, I gave them $2,500. And do you know, I have a feeling this story is not unique in that people your age all over the United States Who were? entrepreneurial Might have had a similar story at that time that was in tune with what was going on in the world I think you're right. Although ultimately a few years later we would describe it as oh my god Somebody just offered four times for the moody blues what we offered and I said, oh my god, somebody just offered four times

for the Moody Blues what we offered, and I said, oh, somebody had a Bar Mitzvah. Just step aside. You can't fight that battle. Hopefully he loses money, and away we go. Was that a typical thing? There were so many newcomers, but we were the newcomer. Like when we got into it, there was a guy in town

named Marty Onrotton. He was the man. And how big was music at this point in time? Like what would be the size of the venue that you would be dealing with? How many people would come? The first show, nobody would sell me anything. So eventually, there was a guy in California

named Jack McFadden. I don't know if you know him I don't know him, but I've heard his name. Yeah, he had buck Owens. Uh-huh Kind of Ricky and I had never heard of buck Owens So we went out and bought five buck Owens records at Sam the record man as opposed to Sam the Chinese food man As opposed to Sam the strip club man and we went and bought five buck Oh records went and smoked a lot of pot and listened to Buck Owens and went, this guy's fantastic. Like, holy smokes.

And nobody wanted to bring Buck Owens, so we did a deal for Buck Owens to play Maple Leaf Gardens. So our first show was at an 18,000 seat, but we didn't know anything. And I'm not saying anybody did anything crooked, because I don't have any proof, and in these days you can't even prove the truth. But Buckethead had 15 number one albums and 20 number one singles, and we didn't fill the floor.

The floor holds 2,500 seats. We didn't fill the floor. We sold 2,300 seats total. Out of how many again? 18,000? 18,000. Yeah. We lost everything.

Yeah. And actually, you know how things work out sometimes? Yeah. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me because of intermission. And Buck's backstage, my buddy Jack, isn't even there. And Buck doesn't want to know about withholding tax he's not going on unless we give him back the withholding tax because Somehow he doesn't recognize. He's in a foreign country. I don't have the withholding tax. I've lost everything in the world the

Jesse James of all names is the guy who manages the building he's there and he's saying I'm calling the police I'm closing the show, it's over. I said, oh my God, you can't, you can't, you can't. And I know the guy, Harold Ballard, owned Maple Leaf Gardens at the time. So I said to him, is Harold in the building? He says, yes, but he won't see you. I said, I think he might. My father is Phil Cole and he buys boilers.

Harold had a hockey team in a building but his real business was making boilers for all of the Manufacturing in Toronto and I said just tell him Phil Cole sons here. Don't even tell miss Michael Phil Cole son I'm at Harold Ballard for the first time that night. He handed me the money He said you're never gonna fucking pay me back. It's exactly how he said it. But I like your father. And I said, I'm gonna pay you back. And I got to meet him.

Now, ultimately, he's my benefactor. He takes me in. He trains me. He backs me. And it's all because Buck Owens refused to pay his taxes. Amazing. Tell me about getting sober. I'd had it.

I got up in the morning one morning going to work and I was like, I couldn't feel my face. I'd fallen down and that was it. I stopped. I was lucky. I had great willpower because I didn't go to group or AA or anything, I just stopped. Amazing. But for me it was harder to quit smoking. I mean, it was my smoking, I've been in an addict all along

because I quit drugs, I immediately went into gambling, bankrupted the whole family. Laurie had to threaten to leave me and kill me. So I had to quit gambling, which is where the superstition came in because I think she came in one day and said, I didn't sign up for this three TVs and bookmaking, oh, I was bookmaking too, and betting 25,000 a game,

and getting stiffed by the guys who'd kill me so I'd pay, but not getting paid for the guys who, and she went, this isn't what I signed up for. And I said, again, that moment, same thing in the business, I said, you know that stomach ache you've been having? Which my sick view of the world is, is either our next son or cancer,

either way you need to go to the doctor in the morning, you go to the doctor in the morning and I swear on his life, I will never bet again. Amazing. You've seen amazing things. What a life. I have seen some good stuff. And I think because you've come at it

from the point of view of a fan. I'm still a fan, yeah. I think that's the secret. It's like that's why. Yeah, it's part of it. No doubt. I think so. No doubt.

I think so. I remember once saying to my mom, how come you never lined up to go and see any shows? And she says, because there were different generations, so secretive, she said, well I slept out all night at the Winnipeg Arena to get Frank Sinatra tickets in the 40s. Wow.

And so, there's just, it's all happened the same only different, right? Amazing. Yeah. How's Broadway different than the concert business? It's much, you know, Broadway and being a producer is much, much harder than being a promoter. It's the hardest thing, well that in film.

I've done a lot of films. It's all still connected, but it's really, really, really hard because you don't have the songs recorded by Pink Floyd and you don't have the 100 million albums. You have a blank sheet of paper and you wanna do something, but it's like so hard to get it right. And we failed so many times. We've had some success.

I like to say we've done slightly better than Jeter and he's in the Hall of Fame, so that's what you need to do. I'm a big Yankee fan. Are you a baseball fan at all? No. The only thing I watch is pro wrestling. Pro wrestling. I may believe Garden is a classic wrestling venue.

I did the first Hulkamania. Amazing. At CNE Stadium. I convinced Vince to go outdoors. He'll remember this. And we're at CNE Stadium, and it's being broadcast worldwide, and we got Hulk fighting Andre the Giant for the title. And it goes live broadcast at eight o'clock, and the ticket company screwed up the map on the floor.

So if you were supposed to be A16, there's no A16. And it's 715 and Vince McMahon is cussing me and cursing the day he met me, and we don't know what to do, and we've sold 50,000 tickets, they've never played a stadium before. I loved wrestling. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a wild story. So we just told everybody to sit down, if you weren't happy, ask for your money back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So nobody got to sit in their seats. But there's one of those nights that, again, in the book it would be unbelievable

because we ended up at a Greek restaurant, and Hulks to my left is a big fella, and then Andre, the biggest, big fella, is on the right. And my first thought is, if they fart, I'm dead. It's like, if they fart, I'm dead. What's the craziest ticket request you ever got? Oh God, what a story. Again, it's another one of those,

I've been in Keith's room, I go back at six o'clock, What else do you ever got? Oh God, what a story. Again, it's another one of those, I've been in Keith's room, I go back at six o'clock, seven o'clock, the phone rings at 715. I am fog-bound. But I hear, shh, I go, hello, hello? He goes, yes, is this Michael Cole? I'm not gonna admit I'm Michael Cole, because I always think it's some bowhead

looking for a Stones ticket, and it's on a Stones tour. And we're in Washington, and it's the lead up to the first night. And I go, who's this? Buck Rogers. Do you know Buck Rogers? The character? Yes.

I go, well this is Captain Kirk. What would you like? I'm going, this is such shit, Buck Rogers. He says, no, no, no, this is Buck Rogers. And he goes, I'm aboard Air Force Two. I don't know there's an Air Force Two. I start laughing. I go, ah ha ha, hold on, I'll get Spock.

Hello, this is Spock. And he goes, no, this is Captain Bug Rogers aboard Air Force Two, and Vice President Gore would like to speak with you. Now, I am so freaking embarrassed. Get on the phone. We've heard that there's a rehearsal tomorrow night where you're running through the show

and it would be great if I could get my two daughters. Of course, we arranged it. But it was like Captain Buck Rogers on Air Force Two. Take a hike, buddy. Amazing. Thank you.