https://www.abramorama.com/film/rondelsenerpresents

It’s hagiography, but…

Unlike most of these documentaries, this one was not made on the cheap. There’s tons of footage to go with the narrative, but…

You don’t learn a whole hell of a lot about Ron. He’s a hustler. That’s what we’re missing in today’s concert world. That was the music business from top to bottom prior to consolidation, a cabal of hustlers who wouldn’t fit in anywhere else. Now, it’s corporatized. And something has been lost.

I think Tom Ross puts it best at the end of the flick, when he talks about money now leading instead of music. Isn’t that the essence from top to bottom? One of the most amazing things about seeing the concerts of the sixties and seventies was that they played in small venues. Sure, Bill Graham folded the twenty six hundred seat Fillmore East, but… You see the bills, the acts he presented, and if you remember them at all many can still play arenas.

So…

There’s this gobbledygook about Ron Delsener being infatuated with Sol Hurok growing up, going to the show… Then again, those are Jewish roots. Very cultural. My parents took me to the symphony, there were unlimited funds for the arts. But then Ron works a connection to get in bed with the concert promoter at Forest Hills (THE BEATLES!), and then it all folds. He’s writing copy for advertising and then…

He comes up with the idea for concerts at Wollman Rink. Which either you know or you don’t. Either you’re a New Yorker or you’re not. Either you’re aware that shows were a buck (and then two, right?) and there were shows all summer.

You get to see Tina Turner in her prime, and even the Eagles. Everybody played there. And Ron made it work with sponsorship, first Rheingold and then Schaefer. Do you even know what those were? BEERS! You saw pics of Miss Rheingold in the subway…

The aforementioned Ross says Ron was the first to use sponsorship in the promotion of concerts, and I don’t know if this is true, but one thing is for sure, they were making it up as they went along.

And then you get concert promotion history. Not all of it, not Jerry Weintraub doing national tours and… But there is the story of Frank Barsalona, how he controls the talent and parcels it out according to territory, to keep rivals from poaching.

Barsalona puts the nix on Howard Stein for going outside his area… I always wondered what happened there. Barsalona gave all his acts to Delsener and that was it. Although Stein did write a book…

So Ron opens Carnegie Hall to rock in 1971, I went to that Elton John show. He puts Bowie in Carnegie on his first big tour, Ziggy Stardust, and he opens the Palladium and…

This is when those on the outside will feel left out. You see yes, it is a giant party, a giant hang, and either you’re in the club or you’re not. And in the seventies and eighties EVERYBODY wanted to be in the club. Hell, in the eighties there was a 24/7 music TV channel!

So it’s one household name after another, the Boss and Little Steven, Patty Smith and Lenny Kaye, and…your jaw will drop when you watch the footage of the famous Simon & Garfunkel concert in the park back in 1981… Because Paul looks so young, and today Art looks so old, and when they step up to the mic and sing “Mrs. Robinson”…

That was then and this is now.

Jon Bon Jovi says how you don’t even know your promoter today, it’s all done nationally.

And ultimately Ron sells to Sillerman, starting the ball rolling into what is now Live Nation, and then after getting his forty million, he ultimate retires (gets squeezed out?), but never gives up, Peter Shapiro gives lucid commentary.

However, the two most poignant insights are…

One, his wife lives in a separate apartment during the week. Ron knows she hates the apartment he loves, on a dead end street, but…there’s obviously more to the story. Ron’s daughter gives some insight into his personality…

Ron is working all the time.

His wife talks about burning out on going to the show… It’s exciting and then it isn’t.

And then Shapiro talks about Ron really being a loner.

Bingo, THAT’S IT!

He’s gladhanding, talking on the phone, being the straw that stirs the drink, but…who exactly is the person inside?

Oftentimes you see him alone at gigs, albeit enjoying the music, but does he need the action in order to keep himself sane, keep himself going, to avoid looking at who he really is, slowing down and looking inside?

That’s the movie I want to see… Who exactly is this guy.

And if you know these guys, and they’re mostly guys, they’re not like your next door neighbor. They think outside the box, they need success, they’re gamblers and they believe not only that they can open doors, but they can do things no one else has ever conceived of!

But you’re never out front. That’s someone else. You see John Lindsay and Ed Koch… You’re reminded how charismatic and good-looking Lindsay was, how Koch always asked people how he was doing (can you imagine Adams doing that today?), and Ron…he’s behind the scenes.

So, if you want to know concert history, this is a good place to start. However, we need a film with these production values that truly tells the story from soup to nuts.

And some of the footage is priceless. Pre-internet I would have said unavailable anywhere, but in the era of YouTube…it might be somewhere, but how do you find it? Well, it’s here.

The growing up story… It’s necessary, but there’s just not enough negative.

Life is full of ups and downs. Ron talks about winning at the Garden and making only ten to fifteen thousand bucks, and losing over two hundred grand on David Lee Roth’s solo show, but the emotional roller coaster, staying in the game, as much as this is a movie about Ron, I don’t think we really get to know Ron.

Other than he’s now old and his friends are dead and he lives in the past.

Then again, those days were magic, and gone, and they’re not making them anymore.

This was like tech, like app-mania. People sans portfolio came out of the woodwork to try and triumph. However, music is more visceral, more alive, more meaningful than tech.

Those were the days that were.

And they’re in this movie.

And for that reason alone, it’s worth watching.