AEG Presents’ SVP Susan Rosenbluth Retires After 46 Years, Leaving Indelible Legacy (Cover Story)

AEG Presents Senior Vice President Susan Rosenbluth is not only a beloved figure in Southern California, where she’s promoted shows and managed premier venues across six decades of her career – she’s also something of a celebrity in South Korea, too.

Goldenvoice President & CEO Paul Tollett, who worked with Rosenbluth after she came to his company in 2003, tells Pollstar his two K-pop-loving nieces, one of whom now lives in South Korea, are also huge Rosenbluth fans.

“My two nieces speak Korean and one of them lives there, she loves it so much,” Tollett tells Pollstar. “One day, she calls me up and said, ‘Wait a minute, you work with Susan Rosenbluth?’ They had not only heard of her from the [Korean] press, reading about her in the papers, but they knew of her importance. It was so cool to have my nieces calling me out of the blue to ask if I worked with her.”

Rosenbluth’s efforts go far beyond simply turning Tollett into a cool uncle. “She really helped push all the different genres of music for the company and opened up my eyes to see anything’s possible,” he adds. “She came in and was promoting all the Latin music, K-pop, Middle Eastern music, country, all this different music and she worked effortlessly through them all. That was really impressive, and it really inspired me.”

The unassuming Rosenbluth likes to share the credit, or at least not take it, when it comes to bringing K-pop to the attention of American audiences. For example, BLACKPINK has appeared at the Goldenvoice-produced Coachella festival twice in the last five years, including in 2019 when the most many Americans knew of K-pop was BT

“I think [Tollett] knew about BLACKPINK before I knew about BLACKPINK,” Rosenbluth says, laughing. “Maybe he brought it to my attention. I worked on the two tours of BLACKPINK that we did, which were terrific, and we did a stadium tour on their last round, and that was one of the highlights of my career.” (On Pollstar’s 2023 200 Worldwide Tours chart, BLACKPINK grossed $61,468,319 and sold 299,080 tickets from only 12 reported shows in nine cities, leading the ranking of top K-pop tours that year).

AEG Presents CEO Jay Marciano seconds Tollett: “Susan has had an extraordinary career. The kind that we all aspire to when we start in this business. She’s done it all and was at the forefront of breaking down borders on so many genres that people might have said ‘American audiences aren’t ready for.’ But she proved them wrong. And absolutely led a major change in pop music in the process.”

Rosenbluth officially retired from her music industry career Dec. 20, having spent 46 years in live entertainment, 13 of those managing and programming historic venues like the Greek and Pantages theaters in Los Angeles. She also oversaw the Honda Center in Anaheim, Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa and Rabobank Arena (now Mechanics Bank Arena) in Bakersfield, California, for Nederlander Concerts before moving over to Goldenvoice and then AEG Presents.

Friends and colleagues gathered at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles Dec. 2 to honor and celebrate Rosenbluth. The accolades were profuse and well-deserved. Rosenbuth leaves more than one legacy: helping bring K-pop and Latin music to the mainstream in the U.S. and worldwide; her expert guidance of multiple Southern California venues spanning her work for Nederlander Concerts, Goldenvoice and AEG Presents; and her leadership and mentorship of a generation of women through her establishment of AEG’s Women’s Leadership Council.

Rosenbluth came to California with her husband, Roy, after graduating from Southern Methodist University near Dallas, having studied theater management. She quickly got a job in the box office at LA’s Greek Theatre in 1978, which was then booked by Nederlander Concerts. Within three years, at the age of 24, this trailblazing woman executive became the iconic building’s general manager.

When Nederlander Concerts CEO Alex Hodges onboarded the company as chief operating officer in 2007, Rosenbluth was invaluable in helping smooth his landing.

“I got a lot of advice from different people at different times when I moved to L.A., but the day I started working at Nederlander, I realized that I didn’t know what to do with some of these hundreds of artists and what their prices should be,” Hodges says. “But there was Susan Rosenbluth, and she had a unique feel for it. She was invaluable in helping me in all those aspects.”

Hodges also tells a story of venue competition that Rosenbluth’s formidable creative skills helped win for the Greek.

“We were in the middle of the booking season before the opening, and we had this idea to have these agency lunches outdoors at the Greek,” Hodges explains. “Who was going to drive up there and show up for lunch? I didn’t think I would. But Susan believed in the idea. It was quite fun. It really energized our booking season, by something like 50%.

“During one of those lunches, we looked up and Universal Amphitheatre was flying an airplane with a long advertising banner overhead that said, ‘Universal calendar deadline is such and such a date,’” Hodges continues. “But the wind suddenly picked up, as it does in the canyons, and the pilot had to get the plane down; it just disappeared. So I sent a telegram over to Universal – we still did telegrams back then – that said, ‘I guess we shot your plane down.’ But that’s where we had a creative and competitive edge.”

Rosenbluth has many fond memories of not just business but incredible shows at the Greek Theatre in her nearly a quarter-century there, and at other venues in Southern California where she managed or co-promoted. And she’s seen plenty of others as a fan.

“Amy Winehouse at the Roxy, which was incredible. The White Stripes at the Glass House [in Pomona, California] on their first tour. I got to see Vicente Fernandez at Pico Rivera Sports Arena on Mothers Day weekend, which he played every year for several years. Prince, when Concerts West promoted him. Joni Mitchell is my all-time favorite artist and I got to see her at the Gene Autry Museum Theater, which is about 200 people at a time. That was amazing,” says Rosenbluth, whose first concert was The Beatles with her mom and brother in Indianapolis when she was 8 years old.

“We did the B-52s at the Greek one time and the audience wouldn’t leave,” Rosenbluth reminisces. “They just kept cheering. The stagehands started breaking down the stage and they still wouldn’t leave. ‘This is crazy. How am I going to get them out of the building?’ Then there was Paul McCartney when he first went out on a solo tour and played like five nights at the Forum over Thanksgiving weekend. An amazing set of shows.

“Rudolf Nureyev dancing at the Greek and almost landing on a mother raccoon with her two little babies in the wings. The O’Jays performing and a raccoon started peeing on one of the overhead pipes. The head carpenter from Local 33 was like, ‘We need a towel over here. There’s a pipe leaking!’ The first time I saw Genesis at the Greek, one of them fell into the audience, and got body surfed up to the mix and back again.”

In those days, that mother raccoon could well have been the only other female working in the wings. Rosenbluth was acutely aware of the dearth of women in the male-dominated concert industry of the day and went to work mentoring, promoting and supporting women in the workplace – despite the fact she’d had no women showing her the ropes herself.

Christy Castillo Butcher, senior vice president of programming at SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park in Inglewood, California, is one woman whom Rosenbluth took under her wing. One of the top stadium execs of any gender, she’s a Pollstar Awards nominee for 2024 Venue Executive of the Year. Castillo Butcher’s first job out of college was working the box office for Rosenbluth at Anaheim’s Honda Center.

“My whole career has been with Susan,” Castillo Butcher tells Pollstar. “She has been a force, not just in the industry but in touching so many people. [At Honda Center] We were all learning the business, how to build shows. It seemed to me like a new language, like with the manifest, scaling, all that stuff.

“She would send faxes with all these details, in her writing, to decipher. She would send these directives and call me like, ‘Have you done this?’ ‘Have you released a hold?’ I really learned from her the attention to detail and staying on top of it. I got to work with her there for four years. And then she and I were able to kind of do the same dance a few years later when I joined Staples Center.”

Castillo Butcher and Rosenbluth are founding members of AEG’s groundbreaking Women’s Leadership Council, and she and many others credit Rosenbluth with making the industry more inclusive for women, regardless of where they worked.

“I get emotional when I think about this,” Castillo Butcher says. “And I know she did that not just for me, but for so many people. She didn’t have the support that we all have now. She wasn’t protective of what she knew, her knowledge or contacts. And she treated everybody the same whether you’re the highest-level executive or like me. What she has is a legacy in the hundreds, if not thousands, of people she touched, mentored and befriended.”

Rosenbluth cites the late Barbara Skydel of Premier Talent Agency; Cara Lewis, founder of Cara Lewis Group; Marsha Vlasic, Independent Artist Group vice chair, music division; and, in particular, Claire Rothman, the powerhouse former president and GM at the Forum in Los Angeles, as women who influenced her, as well as her colleagues at AEG Presents.

“There were a few women at AEG who felt that there was a need to advocate,” she explains. “In 2015, with a great deal of support from senior management, from [AEG President & CEO] Dan Beckerman and [AEG Vice Chairman] Ted Fikre, we formed the Women’s Leadership Council. It had about 30 people on it, and we helped advise the human resources department to set policies for parental leave and for leadership training, things that would help women to be more numerous among the C-suite and senior management people at the company. And it was a group effort, but yes, I am very proud of that.”

Melissa Ormond, COO of festivals for AEG Presents and COO of Goldenvoice, says of Rosenbluth, “She was a concert promoter at a time when there were very few women doing it. She was married, she had a family. She worked a lot of nights. She had integrity and she conducted herself so well and set such a great example for everyone in the business but, in particular, for women in the business. She helped a lot of women see what the possibilities were. That was true throughout her career, and it created a lot of opportunities for her and for the companies that she worked for.”

And, according to Ormond, Rosenbluth’s advocacy was not limited to women.
“She was booking Korean music for the first time in the U.S. and then really having a groundbreaking role in terms of bringing Korean music and then subsequently K-pop to the U.S. But she was also promoting early Latin shows for the first time on behalf of a mainstream concert promoter,” Ormond stresses.

Rich Schaefer, AEG president of global touring and talent, affirms Rosenbluth’s impact in the Latin music space.

“I’ve had the privilege of working with Susan since I joined AEG and was blown away by the depth of her knowledge, the strength of her relationships, all the work she’s done as a trailblazer across all genres, especially Latin and K-pop,” Schaefer said at her Fonda Theatre tribute. “We learn so much from her. If not for Susan, I would say that the world may not know who Karol G is, because she early on said, ‘We’ve got to tour her.’ She helped bring Karol G to what she is today.”

Rosenbluth also helped bring the annual KCON Korean music and culture festival to Southern California and introduced artists like Rain, BTS, BLACKPINK, ENHYPHEN and more to American audiences. AEG Presents became an early leader in the U.S. K-pop space, producing the SM Town concert at Staples Center in 2010, regarded as the first blast of K-pop in the U.S.

AEG Presents Global Touring SVP Michael “Harry” Harrison, having come from Australia to Los Angeles, addressed Rosenbluth at the Fonda Theatre, saying he developed “a great appetite for Korean barbecue, a fistful of light sticks and the blinding laser beams of K-pop. … You’re well-loved and immensely respected in the Korean music industry. Everywhere you go in Seoul, everyone knows you were bringing K-Pop acts to the U.S. long before it became a global phenomenon. Your dedication and support for this genre of music have been key to the incredible success K-pop enjoys worldwide today.”

In recognition of Rosenbluth’s love of K-pop, AEG commissioned customized light sticks, similar to those ubiquitous at K-pop concerts, to be distributed to those attending Rosenbluth’s tribute at the Fonda. A clear globe at the end of the stick contained the initials “SR” which were surrounded by a crown. The insignia on the lights is “Queen. Susan, we love you and thank you.” And it says the same in Korean.