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| CS |
PHILADELPHIA -- With his graying beard and gold-rimmed glasses, Michael Cohl looks like he could have played mandolin for the Grateful Dead. He smiles a lot, wears sneakers and has a Canadian accent. He does not, for the record, resemble Satan.
That's noteworthy because, on more than a few occasions, Cohl has been described as the Prince of Darkness. You get the sense this delights him.
"I was voted Public Enemy No. 1 at a promoter convention that Billboard held," Cohl says, smiling.
The scorn of peers doesn't bother Cohl, the man who has overseen all four of the most recent Rolling Stones tours. Whenever it hits the road, the band outgrosses all rivals in the live concert business, setting attendance records along the way. And each time there are grumbles beneath the cheers: The tickets are too pricey, the sponsors too prominent, the whole thing just too pickled in commerce. There are fans who will gladly part with $300 for a seat -- as thousands will during the yearlong "Licks" tour -- but isn't the whole production a little excessive?
Not to Cohl, 54, a former strip club owner and father of four who decided long ago the Rolling Stones were low-balling their earnings potential. In the late '80s he outmaneuvered every other promoter in the country and won over the Stones with an audacious offer: guaranteed paydays on a scale few thought possible.
$40 million promise
The Stones figured they could earn $500,000 per stadium show, according to Cohl. After crunching numbers and rethinking how concerts were run and sponsored, $1 million per show seemed possible. Maybe more. He promised the Stones they'd clear a then-staggering $40 million for 40 shows for "Steel Wheels," their first tour in more than six years.
"They'd been away for so long, I thought this would be the return of the gods," Cohl said recently at the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia, where the Stones were about to play at the Tower Theater. "I'd worked out that they could make way more than $1 million" per show. "And I thought that if the Stones couldn't sell out their shows, no band would, and I should just find another business."
Promoters will tell you Cohl didn't pioneer much of anything; he merely bullied everyone else involved to take a smaller cut, and he proved willing to work cheaper than his competitors. And the guy's resume does include some memorable fiascoes, such as the 2000 Diana Ross and the Supremes reunion tour, which sold poorly and was called off after a few shows.
Stones still king
According to Fortune magazine, the Rolling Stones since 1989 have generated $1.5 billion in gross revenue, coming from a variety of licensing deals; album, merchandise and ticket sales; and income from sponsors. No other act in pop comes close to those numbers. And the band, which now includes Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ron Wood and Charlie Watts, has done it without lobbing a major single onto the charts.
The group's mystique and the market power of its early material has barely diminished, defying all expectations. There's been this-could-be-the-last-tour talk since 1972, when Mick and Co. were hitting their 30s. Now they're hovering around the 60 mark, and nobody doubts the "Licks" tour will be the richest production of the year.
Michael Cohl started his career selling full-frontal nudity. At age 19, he and a friend opened Pandora's Box, a Toronto strip club that didn't require dancers to wear a G-string or pasties -- a first in Canada, he says. He left that business after watching a promoter friend earn $10,000 at a Guess Who show, gradually becoming one of Canada's most prominent concert executives.
Acting on a hunch
But when he made his $40 million phone call, he was winging it. Jagger and Richards weren't even talking to each other. If the Stones did get back on the road, everyone assumed rock's most famous promoter, Bill Graham, who had handled the '81 shows, had dibs. At any rate, Cohl didn't actually have $40 million. What he had was a hunch that Labatt's, the brewing company that had bought a 50 percent stake in his promotion company, would put up the cash if the Stones said yes.
Everything came together. He got in touch with the band's financial adviser, and the Stones parted company with Graham when they heard the figures Cohl guaranteed. Labatt's delivered the dough.
For "Wheels," Cohl and his backers put up all the money and hired local promoters for a modest flat fee. (Hence the designation as Public Enemy No. 1.) Cohl also wangled new and more lucrative deals with sponsors, buffaloed stadium owners for cheaper rents and raised ticket prices.
This new arithmetic, as Cohl calls it, infuriated more than a few people in the business. He says he exploited leverage the band didn't know it had. In towns where stadium owners weren't willing to take rent cuts and a reduced share of on-site merchandise sales, Cohl threatened to skip the city entirely.
Fans were part of the new arithmetic too. In 1972, Graham was promoting a Stones concert in San Francisco and tried to tack 50 cents onto the cost of a $6.50 ticket. He was slapped by the band's management, which worried that a group that would charge $7 for a seat -- about $30 in today's money -- would seem piggy. Those days are over, and Cohl isn't sorry to see them go. |
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| frankh |
It may be pricey, but they certainly deliver the goods. They are better now then they were in 81. Thanks for the post |
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| ginsoakedbaroomqueen |
Everyone has been getting on Chuck Levells case since 89', but this guy Cohl is the real enemy of the die hard Stones fan. Corporate greed personified a la Enron. He makes me sick. Too bad Bill Grahm died. He cared more about
THE MUSIC. |
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| Rolling1 |
Michael Cohn is a capitalist DICK.... and the true story is here after you get out of the major cities ticket sales are slow at best. in other years when the tickets were priced reasonable those middle market cities sold out in mins. I hope everyone see's the big picture here, that if and when the stones tour again you wont see a full blown tour what you will get is 4 or 5 major cities all over this planet with multi shows like a week in london, paris, los angeles, new york but no middle market cities. tickets will still cost around 300-400 a shot. it will cost a fan who dont live in those cities thousands of dollars for airfare/hotel/car/cab/food/etc to see them. Every fan of the stones/music should be totally pissed, i've seen every tour since 78 and this is a rape of the concert go'er. I dont care to hear people say the stones dont own the fans anything because they DO owe the fans everything they have ever gotten, and to charge fans 300/350 a ticket is BULLSHIT.. |
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