Delsener Talks The Wall

His status in the pantheon of the music industry is well established.

Ron Delsener – the former chairman of Live Nation New York who now consults for the company – has been New York’s most recognizable concert promoter for 50 years. His latest project has been “The Wall Live,” the production marvel that is Roger Waters’ latest tour. It’s been a successful 2010 for the former Pink Floyd principal, and Delsener can lay claim to promoting and booking the tour (alongside the late, great Barbara Skydel).

In some ways, though, it’s just another in a long line of Waters tours Delsener has promoted since Pink Floyd first came to NYC.

“He calls me Uncle Ron,” Delsener says of Waters. “I call him ‘himself.’ There’s nobody bigger. He’s himself.”

Delsener was happy to discuss the tour with Pollstar, and it’s quite the yarn. For instance, it’s apparently not good to book stadiums then learn the show can only be in arenas. And an expensive production that kills a large number of seats can be a pricing nightmare …

When did you / Live Nation get approached with this concept?

Well, Roger, a few years back, about 2006, decided that instead of doing his new stuff to reprise the music he did when he was a member of Pink Floyd. He did Dark Side of the Moon and that was very successful for two years. He came back in 2008 and did Coachella, Denver, Houston and Dallas. And that’s when he put Dark Side to bed.

So the natural progression would be to flow into The Wall. Mark Fenwick, the manager, called me and said, “Are you ready? Roger has decided to do The Wall.” I thought that was great; we had been waiting for that. (Note: Fenwick is the former manager of Roxy Music.)

That was 2009, and Rogers had been working on it for a year and a half, updating it with Sean Evans and Andy Jennison. They’re computer experts, and Roger is a computer freak, too. They spent a year and a half working on the special effects. And I booked the tour with Barbara Skydel. She represented Roger and, at the time, she was in ill health but who knew she was going to pass on us?

But after a few months Mark called me and said we were going to have to put this thing to bed so he called Andrew Zweck, the tour promoter for the rest of the world – not U.S and Canada, where I am – and Zweck put on the finishing touches that Barbara and I started. We knocked it out in about 4-6 weeks with the help of Craig Sneiderman, an accountant at Live Nation. He’s more or less a routing guy, a numbers guy.

I worked with the local guys to gross the house out, push every seat we could because we’re very limited in seats. It took up so much of the arena. In some places we were only playing for 10,000 seats. Madison Square Garden was only 11,000. That’s really ridiculous, considering the cost of this show, to play to such few seats. So it was a real chore to gross the house out properly because the tour was so big and there were so many trucks on the road and there were so many people that we’d have to gross well over a $1 million a concert. Successfully, we did, even with what I call the “participation seats” where you might as well be listening to the concert and not seeing it. But they could see it. We didn’t get many complaints at all, actually. And we were ready for relocation seats in case we did.

But considering the production takes up half an arena, those seats are still pretty good.

Oh, yeah, you’re right in it. In fact, we thought the close seats were the worst in the house but people seem to enjoy being engulfed by the show. It’s almost like they’re in a 3D screen. People in the second and third rows say they have the greatest seats in the house. People like being involved in the quad sound and all that stuff. And I thought they were the worst seats. I like to sit behind the mixing board.

I must say that Roger changed the show every night. He added one archival camera. He reviewed the show every night. He went back to the hotel where he, Andy and Sean would go over changes as dictated by Roger. Little things that no one could pick up but Roger did, whether it be sound or visual. They also edited many, many photographs that were coming in from families all around the world. Roger’s on Facebook. He’d get the pictures, put new ones in, take old ones out of the deceased from the war, from every war starting way back. As you know, his father was killed in World War II.

And set designer Mark Fisher got involved at what point?

I had booked the tour by the time Mark came along, back in late May, early June. After they had a meeting in London, I got a call from Mark Fenwick, the manager. He said, “Fisher says we can’t do this thing outdoors because of the weather” and because we couldn’t fly anything unless we had a grid. And the grid would have to be awfully huge to hang all the stuff. We had 12 projectors; we had to go indoors.

Now, I had already booked Soldier Field in Chicago, Giants Stadium in New York and the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. And I believe I was pushing for the stadium in Boston. Anyway, there were at least four or five stadiums. We had to scramble, but we did get caught with a fee to the Chicago Department of Parks, which ran Soldier Field. They had actually postponed or canceled a college game that was going to be worth about $1 million in revenue. That took a lot of tricky negotiating by our local guy, Mark Campana, who did a good job and knocked that price down and made it palatable. The Rose Bowl was able to reschedule and the rest I was able to move because of my contacts through the years. We were very, very lucky to reschedule those stadium shows.

But, at the time, where you booking arenas too?

Yeah, we had arenas. It’s just that I think you need to make a statement in some of these markets where you can do three or four shows. You need to play the high-profile venues and I thought the Rose Bowl was synonymous all around the world. Soldier Field is certainly famous. Whether it be Fenway Park in Boston or Giants Stadium in the metro area here, they are high-profile places.

So you were booking the show not knowing what the stage setup was going to be. Is that easy to book?

No, it wasn’t easy because we had to plan a year in advance. There were football schedules in domed stadiums or hockey schedules in indoor arenas. Some of them weren’t even printed yet so we had to wait and just hope they’d surround our dates with hockey and basketball schedules, which they wanted to do because they were getting multiple dates. It was very financially rewarding to move a hockey or basketball game.

But it took a little trickery to do that kind of thing.

We’re assuming the calls are coming in for return dates.

Yeah. And you never know. Now he’s got Australia, two to six shows there, maybe more. And so, if they go to Australia, the question is where do they go from there? That’s a question for (tour manager) Andrew Zweck. Do they do Japan? I don’t know if Floyd was ever big there. That’s a question mark. Singapore? Where do you go from Singapore? China? I don’t think so. So it’s very tricky to take all that stuff over there and it’s huge for just six to 10 shows. So they’re trying to ascertain right now whether they should continue through the fall of 2011 or perhaps 2012. That’s up in the air right now.

Meanwhile, I’ve presented something that is currently very sketchy – to return to markets, very few, for a one-night-only encore performance and/or secondary markets where he hasn’t played. We’ve mapped out a little tour about that and it’s up to Roger whether he’s in the mood or if it’s financially feasible to make this thing work on the secondary markets where the ticket prices have to be a little lower. Especially with this economy. It’s hard to get a $250 ticket in Albany.

The word of mouth on this tour has been tremendous. It could be said that people who missed the dates are kicking themselves and will be ready for a second go-around.

I think so. If we go back to a Boston or a Philly – or Toronto where they’ve seen it three or four times – there are people who will want to see it one more time and may bring a friend. So that could happen. I’m a little hesitant about that though and we haven’t discussed it as a team. Fenwick, Zweck and I will discuss the numbers before we talk to the Live Nation guys – and I’m leaning toward the secondary markets instead.

Knowing your standing in the music industry, what is your background with Waters?

Well, in 1964 I worked at the Forest Hill Tennis Stadium (in Queens). We did a lot of outdoor shows. It was one of the few outdoor places in the country outside the Hollywood Bowl, and we had The Beatles’ first two outdoor shows in New York. In those days, Dylan opened for Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul & Mary opened for Harry Belafonte. And from that, in 1966, I was the one who came up with the idea of doing shows in Central Park. We did a free one with Barbra Streisand, and I did shows for $1 a ticket at the Wollman Ice Skating Rink in the park. I converted it into a temporary theatre every summer. And Rheingold Beer, a brewery in Boston, was my sponsor. They gave me $35,000 and I had Led Zeppelin for two shows in one night – 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., and B.B. King was the opening act. For $1. I was like the “people’s promoter.” Everything was cheap so the average person who couldn’t go away to the Hamptons for the summer could see all kinds of shows. I had tribute bands. Tributes to Israel, and Greek bands, Benny Goodman, and Fats Domino, and The Animals. Jimi Hendrix played this place. Sometimes they’d play for $100. I paid Jimi $100. In fact, Bruce Springsteen and Brewer & Shipley (“One Toke Over The Line”) opened for Anne Murray. That’s the kind of shows we had.

So that kind of established me and then Floyd came along in 1970. I played them at Radio City Music Hall. We did a Carnegie Hall date and I played them at Boston, and Madison Square Garden, of course. So I got to be pretty friendly with them and I stayed friends with the entire band all these years. But when Roger split I didn’t hear from him until one day he gave me a call and he had this album, The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking (1984). He was going to tour it and I said count me in. It was kind of successful; in the major markets he did well. But he was still creative and incredible. The other guys continued to tour as Pink Floyd. Then one day Mark must have said something, or I said something (because we were friends and neighbors out here), and Mark said, “Hey, he’s going to do Dark Side of the Moon.”

I went, “Holy Mackerel.” And that blew the whole thing wide open. Floyd was never exactly a faceless group but they were, you know, Pink Floyd. Now, Roger Waters was firmly Roger Waters and he’s still reaping all the rewards, as he should, for his genius in creating these massive productions. And he pulls it off! He still sings great. He’s such a professional. You’d be surprised – they’re constantly working on this. The musicians are top flight.

The thing that catches my attention is the mention of 2012.

I think the show should be seen. As long as we have the awards we have around it. He’s very much a political activist. In everything he’s done, even Dark Side, Radio Kaos and Hitchhiking, he says a statement. The theme runs through the entire production. The songs are all interrelated. And I don’t think anybody is doing that onstage today. In fact, there’s nobody doing what he’s doing. Call it old fashioned and dated but, man, it’s not to me. To me, it’s the rock opera the way it should have been.

The Associated Press, in a review, said that it is as if The Wall has been waiting 30 years for the technology it deserves.

You know what? That’s right on the money. I think that’s a good quote.

The opening, “In The Flesh,” with the plane crashing into the wall, and the pyro, it’s what you’d expect for a final number.

Yeah, you leave after that! “That’s it! Great! That was the best three minutes in show business! Wait, you mean there’s more?”

You didn’t have to go to all of these shows.

No, I didn’t, but I went to about 33 or 35 out of the 53. I want to show my support to Roger for being a good friend all these years and being so loyal. He’s a terrific guy.