Stones Drop Croatian Promoter

Disgraced Croatian promoter Marijan Crnaric won’t be involved with The Rolling Stones‘ July 5th show at Zagreb Dinamo’s soccer stadium after European tour producer John Giddings decided it’s time to get rid of him.

“It’s bullshit,” Giddings told Pollstar after hearing that Saša Britvic – head of the city-funded Koncertna Direkcija (Concert Directorate) – had defended Crnaric’s involvement by telling journalists that the band’s management wants him on board.

“I’m sure the Rolling Stones haven’t a clue who Marijan Crnaric is and – as it’s causing so much trouble – I’ve told Wolfgang Klinger to get rid of him,” Giddings explained.

Klinger is head of the Vienna-based Rock & More and is the show’s main promoter. He would have been responsible for bringing in Crnaric.

Klinger confirmed that he took Crnaric “off the job” and that Rock & More will now be handling the local production, which appears to make nonsense of what Britvic told the press at the city’s Hotel Sheraton April 26th.

It could all prove an embarrassing episode for Mayor Milan Bandic and the city authorities, who put up a reported US$2 million to bring the show to Zagreb.

As Britvic’s department – which was charged with the task of organising the gig – only has experience in putting on such government-sponsored classical events as the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic, both Klinger and the city needed someone with big outdoor show experience to handle the local production.

Crnaric fit the bill since he was the local promoter for the Stones’ 1998 show. But the problem was that he also went on sale with a 2003 show that hadn’t been confirmed and didn’t refund the ticket money when the date fell through.

He also said he was involved in ’93, claiming that he acted as a consultant with a promoting company called Kajda. It went bust – owing punters money – when the show was canceled because of growing political unrest.

Crnaric also looked to be in the frame for getting the 2006 date himself. The February 2nd edition of the daily Jutarnji List named his Impresario company, Pula’s Histria Festival and Britvic’s public-funded Koncertna Direkcija as being the most likely bidders to try to bring The Rolling Stones to Zagreb.

The city government was boundlessly enthusiastic about the possibility of getting the show.

Duško Ljuština of the city’s cultural department, who had confirmed that Zagreb was doing its best to get the act to return on what might well be its last tour, took the opportunity to tell Jutarnji List that he once managed a band called Black & White that played Stones songs even better than the Stones do.

Although Mayor Bandic urged caution and warned people, “Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched,” he did let it drop that he was at the ’98 show at Zagreb Hippodrom and had the band “in his roots.”

On April 19th, Jutarnji List was able to reveal that “after long negotiations” the city’s bid had triumphed.

Getting the show seems to have been a media coup for the local government. Britvic wasted no time pointing out that the department he now heads did the Stones’ first show in ’78 at an 18,000-capacity Sports Hall.

The European live music industry has known Klinger’s Rock & More would promote this summer’s Zagreb and Belgrade shows for at least five months. Bandic, Ljuština and Britvic must have known that the voters of Zagreb probably weren’t informed.

A couple of major papers and at least one TV station don’t appear to have been taken in by all this and were still querying Crnaric’s role at that Hotel Sheraton press bash, a week after the three politicians had seemingly enjoyed some credit for landing the show.

On April 5th, three Vecernji List writers combined on a piece that quoted “well informed sources” saying Crnaric was probably no more than a “mediator.” Their story also suggested that for Mayor Bandic, amusingly referred to as “Zagrebacki Serif” (“the Zagreb Sheriff”), the only important thing was to get The Stones to come to the city, whatever the cost.

Vedrana Pribacic from Nova TV, a major national satellite station that also has an audience in Bosnia, Macedonia and parts of Serbia, said she used the April 26 press launch to round off the piece she was doing for her “Red Carpet” magazine-style show, which would be about the out-of-pocket punters from three years ago.

It aired four days later under a “Scandal With Rolling Stones Show” banner. Apart from the un-refunded 2003 tickets, it also focused on the 4,000 fans who lost their cash when Crnaric failed to refund for a canceled Metallica show in 2004.

He says he’s since refunded all but 600 of them, but his figures are at odds with those coming from the local Zagreb ticket sellers.

After the Metallica cancellation, he told local media that ticket holders would have to wait until the act returned the deposit he sent, although any money Metallica received upfront had actually been paid by Richard Hoermann’s Vienna-based Artist Marketing, his partner in the show.

“I hereby confirm and if necessary will prove at court that none of the ticket money for the Zagreb show has been taken away by me or my company to pay any deposits to the band,” said Hoermann’s official statement to Pollstar at the time.

Mindful that the Croatian media may still think he had received at least some of the box office take, he got an acknowledgment out of Crnaric that said, “Impresario hereby confirms that none of the ticket money of the canceled Metallica show in Zagreb has been forwarded to Artist Marketing Entertainment GmbH (Vienna) at any time.

“Artist Marketing is therefore not responsible in any way for refunding such ticket money to any of the outlets in Croatia or elsewhere.”

In December, shortly after the Bigger Bang dates were announced, Giddings told Pollstar that Crnaric wasn’t doing the Zagreb show and the contract would go to Klinger. He also said he tended not to get involved in business politics at a grass-roots local level unless he felt something might be going wrong.

Things probably started going wrong in Zagreb when questions from the likes of the three Vecernji List journalists and the Nova TV journalist got Britvic to not only own up that Crnaric was on board but also try to say it was the band’s decision.

Getting away with such a strategy heavily depended on nobody asking the act if it’s true and also if it approves of Crnaric not refunding ticket money for canceled or “non-confirmed” shows – including its own in 2003.

Despite Keith Richards recovering from surgery to his head following a holiday accident, the July 5th show at Zagreb currently looks to have a strong chance of happening on that date.

– John Gammon