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Q’s With Concerts West’s John Meglen On Rescheduling A Stones Tour
AP Photo / Michael Euler – The Rolling Stones
Mick Jagger struts his stuff when The Rolling Stones play U Arena in Nanterre, France, Oct. 22.
Late last week The Rolling Stones announced rescheduled dates for this year’s “No Filter” tour following Mick Jagger’s thankfully successful heart valve surgery in April.
Pollstar spoke with the Concerts West co-CEO and president John Meglen, who let us in on what it was like having to start, stop and restart one of this year’s biggest tours
Pollstar: Because of the start and stop again, was this a really difficult period of time for you?
John Meglen: Not really. I wouldn’t call it difficult, it just is what it is. It’s like, “Did you want to have to go and do all the things you got to do?” No. But, you know, you do it. It just comes down to you do what you got to do. Obviously, we’re excited about the Stones starting back up again.
It’s unprecedented to have a tour at that scale, cancel, then have to re-figure it all out and do it all over again.
Yeah, but what are you going to do? You do it one, so it’s proper for the artist. And two, so it’s proper for their fans. Those are the two main things you want to keep in mind. There is the old adage here, “If everybody starts freaking out, do the right thing and things have a way of working out.”
What do you mean by that?
If everybody just spent more time focusing on doing the right thing than how they can shave a little off here, put something on the side over there, then we’d be better promoters. Louis Messina doesn’t let that stuff get in his way. That’s why he’s such a good promoter. He just focuses on what he needs to do. I feel we’re the same way. If you do what you need to do, the results will take care of themselves.
I would think there would be a few other artists out there who could recover from something like this and not have it derail the whole tour.
Correct. But the organization is just full of pros. It really is. Everybody in the Stones organization is as good as you get. Everybody knows how to handle things. Everybody just goes, “Okay.” They just go and do what they need to do. That’s what’s great.
Was anybody freaking out or hair on fire? Or was everybody just calm and collected like, “We got this, we’ll deal with it.”
Very calm and collected. You never want to have to cancel anything. Your worst case is you got all the people in the building, and you got to cancel a show. We’ve been through it all. We’ve been from before it started, all the way to until 10 minutes before the artist is supposed to go on stage. So, you just deal with it, and just try to make good decisions.
Who is on the team?
First and foremost Joyce Smyth, their manager, most importantly we follow her direction and what the guys want to do. We’re also in constant touch with Tim Woolley, the tour manager. We go back decades working on tours with Pink Floyd, David Bowie and Paul Simon – he’s the best financial tour producer out there.
Dale ‘Opie’ Skjerseth is the best production manager out there. He does GNR and AC/DC. And of course Paul Gongaware, nothing happens without him.
There’s also people in our office, Kelly DiStefano our COO, she’s brilliant. She’s the connection to the back office and knows how to get everything done within the company – she’s an incredible bridge. Stacy Welk does all the ticketing, and Marc Feinberg does all the premium ticketing. Amy Morrison does an amazing job on marketing. Jane Rose, who is Keith’s manager, is essential. With The Rolling Stones you do it their way. They’ve been doing it really well for a long time, we just follow their directions.
We were trying to talk to Quint Davis at Jazz Fest after the Stones canceled and he was just completely unavailable.
That was a hard phone call to make. He worked so hard for so long to put that together. Those are the things you hate. You hate when just human circumstances or environmental circumstances affect everybody doing a really good job working really hard on something, and then stuff like that happens.
Life gets in the way.
Yeah, that’s live. You know what our motto is at Concerts West? We may doze but we never close.
How was the Stones 50th anniversary tour? How would that rank in your pantheon of greatest hits with the Stones?
Taking the Rolling Stones to Cuba was really special. I got to work with the Stones when I worked for Michael [Cohl], who worked on their tours then. But they’re Michael’s tours. What was really special was for Paul and I to go, “Wow, we’re now promoting The Rolling Stones.” You’d like to think we’ve done a better job than anybody else. We’ve definitely made them more money than anybody else. We’re constantly figuring out how to get money from all the brokers and scalpers on our side of the fence. That’s why a lot our grosses get so good.
How do they sound now?
It blows me away how incredibly they are playing today. I don’t know if that’s just growing up and getting a little better with age, or whatever it is. But man, it’s just like you sit there and watch them and you go, “Man, they are just so on.” And by the way, there’s nothing enhanced up there. It’s all them.