|
|
| mickmask |
Hey Canucks...Michael Cohl documentary airing Monday night.
CBC profiles Cdn. tour mogul
Michael Cohl. (CPimages/Adrian Wyld)
TORONTO (CP) - He started out as an 18-year-old strip club owner and today commands the biggest grossing rock tours in music history.
Michael Cohl may very well be "the most famous man you've never heard of," we're told in an upcoming TV documentary on the unassuming Toronto promoter.
From the Rolling Stones to Pink Floyd to U2 and Barbra Streisand, Cohl has managed concerts for the biggest and the best, but little is known about the private, shaggy-haired mogul who pushed the concert experience - and ticket prices - to new levels.
Cohl, however, claims he's simply another music fan.
"I was just a kid who would sit at home and listen to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd," he says recently from Milan, while on tour with the Stones.
"To get to know these people and to get to work with them and to do my bit... it's like, wow."
The story of his remarkable career is outlined in a CBC-TV Life & Times feature, airing Monday.
Through rare interviews with music legends Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and an appearance by U2 front man Bono, we're given a glimpse of a man who made his mark around the world, yet largely managed to escape celebrity at home.
"He truly is a mogul," says director Barry Avrich, who has documented the lives of Vanity Fair columnist Dominick Dunne, criminal defence lawyer Eddie Greenspan and Hollywood studio giant Lew Wasserman.
"It's important for Canadians to know that there are people like Michael Cohl, legends and heroes that have done so much and that are rarely celebrated," Avrich says.
"If you say to any American: 'Did you know that the man who controls the rock 'n' roll industry, the man who controls the Rolling Stones, the man who the Rolling Stones don't make a move without ... operates out of Canada?' (That's) quite staggering."
Cohl conquered the industry by first forming strong bonds with concert venues rather than agents, says Avrich. He then wooed The Rolling Stones away from rival Bill Graham and reinvigorated their careers with the monumental Steel Wheels tour in 1989, forging a long and lucrative relationship with the aging rockers.
Cohl built up a stable of loyal artists by assuring them multiple revenue streams through product endorsements, pay-per-view, DVDs and mechandising - exploiting and harnessing money-making tactics that previously had largely been untapped, Avrich notes.
"It's fascinating to watch that business brain, with no formal education," says Avrich.
"He can look at 15 markets on a tour with varying ticket prices and venues scaled at different prices and do all of this in his head and know what works and what doesn't."
With megatours under his belt, Cohl brought his larger-than-life sensibilities to the theatre world, producing massive stage productions that include the commercially disappointing Lord of the Rings, and Spamalot.
In recent years, Cohl took the concert experience to new heights with Toronto's massive SARS benefit concert in 2003 and Canada's Live 8 show last summer in Barrie, Ont.
He then orchestrated the Stones' massive free concert on Rio's Copacabana Beach, luring 1.5 million people earlier this year.
Now, the 58-year-old is producing Streisand's first tour in years, and although it doesn't begin until October, it is already destined for huge grosses.
Ticket prices top out at $750 US, while observers expect VIP tickets to cost well into four figures.
Avrich views the escalating cost of shows as a matter of course.
"Michael has found a way to bring Broadway to the concert business. Concert business to the Broadway world," says Avrich, who's now working on a feature film with KISS, expected to be completed next year.
"And to suddenly say that, you know what, fine, ticket prices aren't going to be cheap but I'm going to deliver value and you're going to walk out of one of my shows and say, 'Holy crap, what an experience.-"
"There's no such thing as a must-see or a must-do and Michael Cohl still manages to create must-sees and must-dos and that's a phenomenon in itself in the business."
Cohl denies suggestions he's a pioneer, saying his business strategy is simple.
"I add to the fire, I add to other people's ideas and at the same time I'm able to execute and get them what they want and need."
Satisfaction: The Life and Times of Michael Cohl airs across the country Monday on CBC-TV at 8 p.m. It repeats Sunday, July 30 at 2:30, across the country.
mm. |
|
