Tune in today, March 15th, to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

Phone #: 844-6-VOLUME, 844-686-5863

Twitter: @lefsetz or @siriusxmvolume/#lefsetzlive

Hear the episode live on SiriusXM VOLUME: siriusxm.us/HearLefsetzLive

If you miss the episode, you can hear it on demand on the SiriusXM app: siriusxm.us/LefsetzLive

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3w6WZEE

What kind of crazy, fucked-up world do we live in where John Oliver gets the Ticketmaster story exactly right?

One in which customers and legislators are too stupid to understand how the game works.

He labels Irving Azoff as uncharismatic, which I don’t agree with, you don’t become that successful without charisma, trust me, but Irving lays it out straight to the government and people still don’t get the story straight. TICKETMASTER IS A FRONT FOR THE ACTS! That’s right, your favorite act is most probably a greedy capitalist whilst telling you they are not. Sure, there are exceptions. But in a world where credibility and entertainment rarely ever meet, where the buck is king, where the Kardashians become richer than any singer sans any visible talent, it’s a rare performer who can say no. Especially when no one finds out the truth! That’s right, they keep saying the fan is first (after God, of course), but in truth the fan is at the absolute bottom of the pyramid. Because they can get much more money from corporations, Fitty made much more money from flavored water than he did from music. So, the acts say one thing but do another.

Like Metallica.

Yes, Metallica was an AEG act. And then became a Live Nation act.

Now I’m going to tell you something you may not have heard, it’ll be a revelation, THERE ARE ONLY A HUNDRED CENTS IN A DOLLAR! That’s right, there’s only so much money that can be generated by a concert.

Now Jimmy Buffett’s ticket sales were so consistent, sellouts were guaranteed, therefore he was paid in excess of a hundred percent of the gross. You ask me, Bob, how can that be?

Well, there’s parking, and food and drink, and merch and…ticket fees.

You see the money has to come from somewhere. And if you want more money, be prepared for the shenanigans to rear their ugly head.

Let’s start with Michael Cohl, the Canadian concert promoter who invented this paradigm, most notably with the Rolling Stones. I’ll pay you an incredible sum, BUT DON’T ASK ME HOW I MAKE MY MONEY BACK!

The promoter isn’t going to lose, not on a guaranteed sellout. Maybe the promoter scalps his own tickets. He knows the show is gonna sell out, so he’s already come up with ways to make a profit, and the act makes the sign of the cross and pleads ignorance, it’s not their business. But of course it is, because they took the huge guarantee.

So, AEG was already paying Metallica as much as possible. To go to Live Nation…they had to get more. And one was a giveback, the ability to scalp tickets given to the band.

Now let’s be clear. This happens all day long. Oliver even referenced this. But by doing this one tour with Live Nation and getting caught out, the story will not die, because everything lives forever on the internet.

But I’m going to tell you a dirty little secret, THE BAND’S FANS DON’T CARE!

I know that sounds insane, but it’s only the non-Metallica fans who are bothered by this.

A perfect example being Motley Crue, who signed in blood that they were retiring, AND THEN CAME BACK!

Yes, you say you’re retiring so fans will come to the final show. But it isn’t. I remember one band on a farewell tour that had its new album scheduled for a few months later. This was years ago, AND THEY’RE STILL ON THE ROAD!

Which is why the Eagles called one of their recent tours “Farewell 1.” It was a joke, maybe a bit inside, and in truth subsequent tours have had different monikers, but the Eagles are a rare exception, BECAUSE THEY CHARGE WHAT THE TICKETS ARE WORTH!

They’re not the only ones. The Rolling Stones are famous for this, and they flex the prices, like airline seats, yes, the person sitting next to you could have paid less, too bad, you’re there, you’re happy, I mean it’s the Stones, RIGHT?

And my inbox is filling up with people complaining about $500 Paul McCartney tickets, and those aren’t even the best ones. But history tells us people will pay the price, it’s raw economics.

But these three acts are legends. They’ve nearly transcended the business. Everybody knows who they are, their songs are part of the classic rock canon, so they don’t bother to play the game all the rest of the acts do.

Now insiders have known all of the above from day one.

And it’s this way BECAUSE THIS IS HOW THE BUSINESS WANTS IT! Entirely opaque, with Ticketmaster taking the heat instead of the acts.

And needless to say, all those fees don’t go to Ticketmaster, but fans believe this. People run on emotion, not fact. And if you do this, you’ll never be a titan like Irving. This is business. And there are immutable laws. Like I said above, there’s only a hundred cents in the dollar. If the act is getting all of the ticket revenue, which is de rigueur these days, everybody else in the food chain must have some way to make a profit, and one of those ways is via the fees….to the promoter, the building and even the act.

Everything I’ve written above I’ve said before, but it just doesn’t penetrate. You’re telling me it’s a business and everybody knows the economics and the main drivers of the problems are the acts? That’s like killing Bambi, or saying there’s no Santa Claus, it can’t possibly be true!

And there was a definitive book about all this a few years back, but the writers broke the number one rule of writing….SOMETIMES YOU’VE GOT TO LEAVE THE BEST STUFF OUT, because it detracts from the story. It’s all in “Ticket Masters,” it’s just the end result is unreadable.

As for the government… These wankers can’t understand seemingly anything, they just grandstand so they can get re-elected.

But the news media is even worse. Parroting all the falsehoods the industry keeps feeding them. They never stop and ask themselves…IS THIS TRUE?

That’s right, they’re in the news business. But they just go on camera, even write exactly what the players tell them, it makes good headlines, and they like the access and the tickets themselves!

And then an English comedian, who has little kids and probably never even goes to a show, or if he does gets tickets directly from the act or promoter (there are always tickets for VIPs, however I must tell you they are not free, those days are long gone), goes on camera and in twenty minutes nails the story, gets it exactly right. Oh, you can complain he emphasized this instead of that, but let’s not nitpick, his presentation is the most accurate in the history of Ticketmaster.

So now what happens?

NOTHING! That’s right absolutely NOTHING! Because this is the way EVERYBODY LIKES IT!

Yes, the acts, the promoters, the buildings and Ticketmaster, they’re all making money, Live Nation’s stock keeps going up.

As for the fans… THEY LOVE SCALPERS! It’s the only way they can get a good seat to a show.

People are delusional. And the biggest complainers are those not really in the game, like the marginal acts complaining about Spotify payouts. The truth is the fan wants the seat, and you’d be surprised how they’ll pay the freight. Yes, someone working a service job will pay $500 to sit in the first ten rows for their favorite act. And the only way they have access is through a broker.

I’ll go one step further. In a lot of live events, those on the selling side LOVE the brokers. Baseball… You’ve got 162 games a year and there are people who will come along and buy every home game, hoping to make their money back when the Yankees come to town, if the team hits the playoffs. Who knows, your team could suck this year, but you’ve already made bank from the scalpers.

That’s right, the people bitching loudly are the ones who believe they’re entitles to a front row seat for superstars, Bruno Mars and Adele, for under a hundred dollars. First and foremost, demand for these acts far outstrips the supply. Only one act has superseded this paradigm. Garth Brooks. He goes to a market, charges little compared to other acts, and plays until demand runs out. Multiple shows. So there is no scalping. There’s no money to be made, the fans know they can get in for a reasonable price, face value.

And then there’s paperless. Which the fans HATE! Because the fans are scalpers too. They buy as many tickets as they can and then put the extra up on secondary sites and…

There’s no hope.

The only real hope is to have the acts charge what the tickets are worth.

And in truth, for many acts they’re worth a fortune. They can sell out the entire floor at $500 a ducat. But they’re afraid they’ll look bad. Which of course makes no sense, because they’re all bragging about how much money they’re making. They should be proud of their high ticket prices. One thing is for sure, THE FANS ARE GOING TO PAY THEM!

Unfortunately, the markup goes to the scalpers, third parties, which is why acts scalp their own tickets, to get in on the action.

Now while I’ve been writing this, they’ve finally put this Oliver episode on YouTube. That’s right, despite HBO being a pay service, they give it away for free, because it’s good marketing. How can it be that HBO is more savvy than musicians? The number one way you make a fan is expose them to your art, you make the barrier low. You want to eliminate the free tier on Spotify, which is supported by advertising, and therefore pays less…but be prepared for people to miss your act. And Spotify will tell you that the free tier converts listeners to the pay tier. But you don’t want to believe that, because it doesn’t FEEL RIGHT!

Which brings us back to the very beginning. John Oliver nailed the live entertainment business. I don’t know how many people watch his show on HBO, but seven figures watch the videos on YouTube every week. But what does this really mean? It’s like the acts complaining their songs are being streamed a million times and they’re not millionaires. In context, IT’S JUST NOT THAT MUCH!

But John Oliver has credibility. And in the news business, he’s got pretty good numbers. And he’s entertaining. So his show will edify a number of people.

But the ones complaining most won’t watch, they’d rather hate on Ticketmaster.

Which brings us back to the fact that despite Oliver nailing it, I doubt there will be any change, everybody in the food chain likes it this way.

Oh, let me just add one thing. The hysteria. You remember that Hannah Montana tour, with all the parents bitching they couldn’t get tickets for their kids, or they were prohibitively expensive? Well, the next time around Miley went out totally paperless. AND THE SHOWS DIDN’T SELL OUT! It was the mania, the perceived scarcity that drove people to buy tickets.

After all, it’s show business.

Can you trust the man behind the curtain?

No, but you can’t trust those on stage either!

P.S. Don’t expect any of the above to be reported in trade papers. They’re in on the game, they don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them. Even worse, “Billboard” is now consumer-facing, ever since trade advertising tanked, they don’t want to upset the fans who don’t want the truth anyway.

P.P.S. As for the straight media, they’ve missed this story for decades. They just can’t understand it. Which makes Oliver’s program so revelatory. I mean shouldn’t this be in the “New York Times”? Then again, video reaches more people and you can’t write an entertaining story in the “Times,” it’s got to be dry, leaving all personality out, which is why John Oliver has more reach. But no one reaches everybody these days. And if people can’t get it right when it comes to entertainment, don’t expect them to get it right on politics, which is the same game, I hate to tell you. Only in this case it’s all about fundraising and guarantees and payoffs…but the end result is the same, IT’S OPAQUE! The word Oliver used. No one else has been able to delineate the facts clearly outside of the music business. KUDOS!

You have no idea what William Hurt meant to the baby boomers.

Unless you’re a boomer yourself.

We went to the movies. There was a belief that television would kill the movies, but that turned out to be untrue. Movies superseded television, they were smarter, and although they ultimately reached fewer people, they impacted the culture much more.

We started off with Jerry Lewis and Disney pics. We remember going to the movies in the afternoon, seeing a cartoon before the main feature, buying ice cream and candy with the money our parents gave us. 15 cents got you in the door, nothing in the novelty case cost more than a quarter. I’d sometimes go for the ice cream cone. It was pre-made. With a flat top. You peeled the paper off and ate it, and the cone was soft and spongy.

And then came “2001.” And “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Graduate.” It was “The Graduate” that gave another injection of fame to Simon & Garfunkel, they’d been on the way down commercially previously.

And the seventies? The last golden age of film. It’s the fiftieth anniversary of “The Godfather.” I think “Godfather II” is the best film ever made. The first “Godfather” was close. That horse in the bed!

And the iconic pictures of the seventies are too many to mention. But in ’75, the screw turned. “Jaws” changed the business forever, into what it is now. Funny how Spielberg complains about the loss of film tradition, he’s responsible!

So by time the eighties came along, the pictures were more commercial, and generally less daring, but we continued to go. Which is kind of funny, because today most boomers don’t go at all, unless it’s to see the foreign features. You used to have to go to the movies because, like I said, they moved the culture, they were the coin of the realm, they were what everybody talked about. Have you seen it? You had to go to not feel left out. And the discussion could be endless. Analyzing films was a thing, to the point they were studied in college. Today? Who’d study a comic book character?

So we knew all the actors and actresses. We’d marvel that who we’d seen there was now here. You could be comprehensive, you could cover the sphere, you could be an expert. As for the Oscars… It was a ritual. And there was no E! channel and endless commentary on dresses, rather it was all about the movies themselves and who won. And the big pictures did win. The greats were commercial. Like “Tootsie.” And ultimately “Working Girl.” And one picture we needed to see was…

“Body Heat.” We didn’t know Kathleen Turner and we didn’t know William Hurt, but one movie made both of them stars, people who everybody knew. Today you can top the Spotify chart, be number one at the box office, and most people are clueless as to who you are.

But not then.

So “Body Heat” was steamy.

That’s one thing that’s been lost with the advent of the internet. Fantasy. Life fantasy, sexual fantasy. We were all dreamers, and we saw our desired lives on screen. Potential husbands and wives. The actors were larger than life. Nobody was tearing them down on the internet. And a passionate love scene…now you can just dial that up on the internet via Google, but back then?

The goal in acting is to have a career. And that’s very hard to do. Even if you make it to features, you can have one or two roles and then disappear. But if you get momentum and sustain, you become embedded into people’s lives. Especially when the film defines a generation, like “The Big Chill.”

Films about us started to be made. In 1979 there was “The Return of the Secaucus 7.” And then there was “Head Over Heels/Chilly Scenes of Winter.” Ann Beattie was an icon, for she captured the zeitgeist. Today the goal is to write a genre book, a mystery, to become rich and famous. Whereas forty-odd years ago, people were still interested in writing the Great American Novel, and reading it.

“The Big Chill” was not nostalgia, it was not a look back, it was present-day. In the Reagan years. The boomers were selling out, they were being labeled “yuppies,” but some were left behind, like Nick, played by William Hurt. Yes, some made the transition from the sixties to the eighties quite easily. They went from love everybody and money is meaningless to mine for me and money is everything. But not Nick. He was lost.

And he wasn’t the only one.

And there was “Broadcast News,” where Hurt played the empty suit. Representing the change in television news, which had really started in New York in the seventies, with Roger Grimsby. Suddenly the presenters superseded the events. The anchor team was a family. There were jokes. This had never happened previously, and the main criterion was how you looked. Still is, look at Fox News.

Now the last time I remember seeing William Hurt was in Amazon’s series “Goliath.” The first year was great, but it got progressively worse thereafter. Hurt was the villain. But he still had that slow delivery, unique to him. Hurt was not fungible, like so many of the pretty faces.

And I could cite more of Hurt’s roles, but I don’t think that will convey my feeling today. I mean William Hurt was one of us, he was born in 1950, he was a contemporary. We knew him, or at least thought we did. He wasn’t like one of the old stars, all fabulous, with their twinkling outfits. He was regular, in a world where everybody was trying to be exceptional. In many cases he was just a guy.

But dying? How can that be? William Hurt dead.

It’s not like we saw him decline on screen. And it’s not like he was a notorious druggie. We just accepted that he was there, gonna appear in roles down the line. But now he won’t.

Now when Hurt broke, he had a spouse, Mary Beth Hurt. She radiated spunkiness and intelligence, she was anything but two-dimensional. It was so interesting that they were together. Too many men make it and they want to marry a model, looks are everything. And let me clarify this, Mary Beth Hurt was plenty attractive, it’s just that there was something behind the facade, which was visible on screen. And she was present, not reserved like the models.

 

Mary Beth Hurt was in “Head Over Heels/Chilly Scenes of Winter,” but I bring her up because after they got divorced, I lost touch with William Hurt’s personal life. I was surprised to just find out he’s got four children. You see Hurt had a whole life we were not privy to. Just like us. Most people have no idea what goes on behind closed doors.

But today it’s all about exposing yourself to gain influencers. Subtlety doesn’t work online. It’s got to be in-your-face all the time.

The seventies are history.

But not in the boomers’ minds. They’ve become part of our DNA. To the point where when one of us passes it’s sad, but it’s also creepy.

I mean it’s one thing if you die by misadventure. But so many of my brethren are gonna be laid low by the Big C, and in this case I mean cancer, but it was also Covid, especially before the vaccines. It seems positively random, one gets it and the other does not. Even those who misbehaved, who smoked like chimneys, sometimes they survive and the clean livers do not. You start to contemplate this when you get old. And the boomers now are. And the younger generation doesn’t care about them. Wear masks? Stay home to keep your elders alive? Screw ’em, let ’em die. It’s a risk we all take. And that is true, we’re all gonna die, but you age and you’re confronted with it and you don’t know where to put your feelings.

Like with the passing of William Hurt.

1

“Left a good job in the city”

No one does that anymore. During Covid a bunch of high-earners decamped to their country home, taking their job with them, but the concept of telling your boss to take this job and shove it and heading out to the country, that’s history. As for the great resignation, many of those jobs were not that good.

But that was the ethos back in the sixties. You wanted to go on the road, you wanted to see things, and if you went to college you wanted to spend time in Europe, maybe flying Icelandic Airlines with a stopover in Reykjavik, then again you could fly from New York to London on Pan Am and TWA for two hundred bucks. And with your Eurail Pass… The goal was to do it cheaply for as long as you could. If you lived large, stayed in hotels with bathrooms in the bedroom, you were derided. You slept in hostels, you learned the code of the road from your traveling brethren, not all Americans, and you felt alive.

Today it’s no longer a dream to drive cross-country. Hell, since the deregulation of airplane travel you can jump on a jet and be where you want to soon. For bupkes. As for all the places in between…. No one seems to care about them anymore, and interestingly those who reside in the places in between have contempt for these jet-setters. Furthermore, fluidity of residence used to be a thing. An American thing. You yearned to get out of your hometown. You moved where the action was, to try and live out your dream. I’m not sure people dream the same way today, the odds are stacked against them, moving up the ladder requires more than hard work. Have you been following the Kim Kardashian kerfuffle? Her advice to women was to work hard like her, to get ahead. There’s been a ton of blowback. But what interests me most is the myopia of Ms. Kardashian. She obviously doesn’t know how the other half, the majority, lives, oftentimes from hand to mouth, doing two jobs.

And shelter is so expensive that moving is a huge hurdle many can’t jump. But when I came of age, you got out on the road and it was a melting pot of travelers. And you learned so much. One of my ski buddies paid for his winter by working on a fishing boat off the coast of New Jersey the summer before. I didn’t know you could make that much money fishing, and my father told me from day one he didn’t want me working with my hands. And then there were those with little dreams. It was a shock after college. They didn’t want to go anywhere, and they weren’t moving fast in any regard. A job at the phone company? Yes, one of the ski bums retired to do that. IN SALT LAKE CITY?? The City of Salt is completely different today, it’s got high tech and a bunch of wealthy immigrant retirees. But back in the seventies it was a backwater.

2

“Big wheel keep on turnin’

Proud Mary keep on burnin'”

Now if you rely on Wikipedia, you may get the idea that Creedence Clearwater Revival had traction on their very first album. But the truth was that whatever success it ultimately had was a result of people going back after the band’s breakthrough. Then you might have heard “Susie Q” on FM radio, but not before, at least not on any station I listened to.

But the band broke with this track from their second LP, “Proud Mary,” from “Bayou Country.” And “Proud Mary” broke on AM radio, not FM, which was now ruling the airwaves of the metropoli. AM was for the car radio at best, assuming you were a hipster. And there was definitely a dividing line, between those in the know and those who knew nothing. Some people believe this dividing line still exists, but in truth we now live in a Tower of Babel society where no one knows everything and there are no elite hipsters, despite some people believing they are so. If you put someone down for their taste today you’re ignored. It’s not one coherent scene, there’s a cornucopia of entertainment and no one knows everything, it’s utterly impossible, there’s just too much out there.

Now in truth FM radio skewed English. With a dose of San Francisco thrown in. “Proud Mary” didn’t fit in. Roots music was still in the future. So we heard the song on AM radio and thought it was a novelty, I mean the band’s name certainly sounded like that of a one hit wonder. But then came “Bad Moon Rising,” a string of undeniable hits, and Creedence was now one of the biggest bands in the land, finally embraced by FM radio. But it was “Proud Mary” that broke the door down, that set the stage for what was to come.

3

My favorite Creedence Clearwater Revival song is the opening cut on “Bayou Country,” “Born on the Bayou.”

Now you have to understand it sounded like it was cut in the bayou. And since the rock press was not omnipresent and solidified, it took years until everyone learned that John Fogerty had no connection to Louisiana and the bayou. But somehow he had the feel. And the feel of “Born on the Bayou”…

“And I can remember the Fourth of July

Runnin’ through the backwood bare”

You could picture it. Something like the bacchanal in “The Secret History”. You have to remember, there were no cell phones. It was easy to be out of touch, and a great swath of American youth wanted to go up the country and what happened there…you had to be there to find out. There were drugs, nudity, sex…and deep discussions about life. It was the peak of experience. This was before you could Google nudity, and sex, when marijuana was still illegal, never mind hash and anything harder. The feel of “Born on the Bayou” was magic, it was the other. Today everything is nuts and bolts, zeros and ones, but in truth life is messy and when you acknowledge it you have a much better ride.

And my second favorite Creedence track is “Green River.” Which in many ways is so simple, but those descending notes during the chorus…utter magic. It’s like Fogerty has ripped open his chest and we can see inside. And just like in “Born on the Bayou,” the lead guitar is simple, but stinging. This was long before acts saw a need to use the umpteen tracks on the recording machine to fill up the record such that listening to it was like looking through steel wool.

And, of course, “Fortunate Son” has become a political staple. It’s almost bigger today than it was then. Let me explain, of course “Fortunate Son” was all over the radio, but this was back when we were all rebelling against the government, “Fortunate Son” was part of a movement, but stripped from its original context it resonates even more, especially in these days of income inequality when a president avoided the war with supposed bone spurs in his heels.

And then there’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” which I didn’t cotton to until I saw the movie so entitled. It could be Tuesday Weld’s best performance, it was gritty and added gravitas to the title song, at least in my brain.

But none of these tracks is “Proud Mary.”

4

At this late date, many consider “Proud Mary” an Ike and Tina Turner song. Their version was never a hit record, Ike and Tina hadn’t yet crossed over to the white market, but when the band opened for the Rolling Stones in 1969, white rockers were exposed to a level of stage performance that was heretofore unknown by them. Tina Turner made love to the microphone and those who saw it never forgot it.

But as good as Ike and Tina’s take was, it was different from the Creedence Clearwater original.

“Rollin’, rollin’, rollin on the river”

That was the feel of the original. Just like you can hear the gallop of the horse in the original Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Rider” on “Idlewild South,” you can hear the paddle wheel turning on that boat on the Mississippi.

And as the years wore on, laying back was a goal. Not taking life so seriously, slowing down and watching the river flow, Bob Dylan even wrote a song about it.

We did a lot of sitting around back then. We didn’t have the world at our fingertips, handheld communicators were something from cartoons, science fiction. You didn’t want to stay home, you wanted to go out, to hang, to talk to the people. And music was a big part of the experience, someone always had a guitar, and they’d strum and we’d sing along, everybody would join in on the chorus, they’d sing at the top of their lungs, with all the power they possessed, as they looked at their brethren, this was what it was all about. Sure, you needed money. But not much. Life was about experiences. Not to shoot selfies during, but to savor and store in your mental bank, so you could make context of the world at a later date.

Most of the tracks of the sixties and seventies have not survived. The boomers might remember them, but the younger generation is clueless. And then there are certain tracks that are sui generis, that are of no time and place, that exist in their own ether, locked in wax, that we can just marvel at.

One of these is “Proud Mary.” It sounds as fresh as the day it was released. It’s not dated whatsoever. So when you hear it today you don’t worry about the way things might have been, you don’t look to the past, you reside in the present. “Proud Mary” can still ride shotgun. It can still inspire. You can count on it.

John Fogerty may have been screwed financially, and I feel for him, but money pales in comparison to “Proud Mary.” In years to come when newbies hear “Proud Mary” and the rest of Fogerty’s canon they’ll be stunned, they won’t believe one guy could be responsible for so much. They won’t care a whit about how much money he made. Music trumps money. John Fogerty wrote a song that’s FOREVER!