‘I Learned A Lot From Oliver, And I Hope That He Learned Something From Me’: Ossy & Oliver Hoppe Look Back On 20 Years Of Live Music Wizardry

Pollstar met Ossy and Oliver Hoppe in the middle of two sold-out open-air concerts by German rock giants Böhse Onkelz, Sept. 3, to talk about 20 years of Wizard Promotions, the business inextricably linked with Germany’s hard rock history. Company founder Ossy Hoppe, and his son Oliver Hoppe, who’s been running the firm since 2017, spoke candidly about Wizard Promotions’ past, present, and future, as well as Böhse Onkelz’s role in this great live music saga.

For the next 20 years at least, the Hoppe legacy will be carried on under the name Wizard Live, representing the wider range of services on offer. A lot has changed since Ossy launched the firm in 2004. Oliver has been making sure one thing hasn’t: Wizard’s philosophy of putting its artists’ needs first.

Wizard Promotions wasn’t Ossy Hoppe’s first business in Germany, but its launch in 2004 marked a full-circle moment. He got his first job in the biz from legendary promoter Marcel Avram in the early 1970s, starting as his driver, and working his way up to managing tours for MAMA Concerts. His can-do attitude eventually landed him a job as Ian Gillan’s assistant, and he worked his way up to becoming Deep Purple’s tour manager in 1973. The famous California Jam on April 6, 1974, where Purple performed alongside a stellar cast of Emerson, Lake & Palmer; Earth, Wind & Fire; Eagles; Jackson Browne; Black Sabbath, and others, is one of many fond memories from those years. Ossy has been back in Germany since the early 1980s, becoming the central figure in the country’s hard rock history, which includes launching the Monsters of Rock Festival, where Metallica, Deep Purple, Bon Jovi, Scorpions, AC/DC, Van Halen, Whitesnake, and so many more performed over the years.

“Rock was my love in music. When it became big, a lot of promoters didn’t want to touch it,” he recalls, “You had big companies in Germany, but they all stayed away from rock. That was our niche.” Having worked in various companies since then, he eventually decided to do his own thing. The launch of Wizard Promotions 20 years ago was realized with the help of Marcel Avram, the man who had given Ossy Hoppe his first shot.

He says he’s learned a lot working in the States. “What I like about the Americans is that they are very open minded. They’re very welcoming, very friendly. There are exceptions, of course, but in general, everybody gives each other a chance. I really enjoyed the open mindedness of people there. That was my big thing, and that’s what I tried to adopt when I came back to Germany a long time ago.”

Ossy is part of that generation of live music promoters, who pioneered the game. And it was a different game back then. “We really had no idea. With very few exceptions, nobody knew what they were doing. We were all young, we were crazy. We just did what we wanted to do. We enjoyed life, and music was our big joy. And in America, the audiences went even more crazy, because they’d been used to big concerts that much longer,” he says.

See: The Story Of Ossy Hoppe

Wizard Promotions was founded with a can-do attitude, and a spirit of unwavering loyalty that has characterized his work forever. It’s a spirit that is carried on by Ossy’s son, Oliver, who has been managing the firm since 2017, having joined the business in 2012. His coming on board was a pivotal moment, says the father. “To convince Oliver to finally come into the company wasn’t an easy job, trust me. For three years I was knocking on his door, and he was umming-and-ahing, but eventually he came in, and that was the biggest step for the company forward, because he’s dealing with things completely different to what I used to. The essence of the company has remained the same, which is still relationships, personal attention. We are here to understand the artist, their goals, and to create a plan that takes them forward. This personal relationship doesn’t count as much anymore. Quite a few companies hardly have any people on the road to look after the artists anymore. We take bands out for dinner, we look for a close relationship, and I think that’s very important. My bands are getting older, like me, and Oliver has a completely new perspective on things, and he creates a platform for artists that weren’t on my radar before. This is what makes us, and I don’t want to sound arrogant, but it makes us very special.”

Oliver was reluctant to even join his father’s business for a long time. “It pretty much had to do with the fact that, obviously, everybody knows my dad. And I still sometimes have an issue with just being the son of a legend, as stupid as it sounds, but that’s the external perception: ah, it’s Ossy’s son. I worked as a promoter rep for the company during my college years, and enjoyed it very much. I liked being in the industry. I was 20 years old, I could write off expenses, I showed young bands around Germany, and got to know every club inside out. I loved it, but I was always trying to be my own man, and not the son of the boss.”

Ossy remembers, “When he worked for us as a tour manager, he never gave his last name, because he didn’t want to be associated with me.”

“I never felt comfortable with that,” Oliver continues, “I needed a few years away from the business to find out for myself that I could be successful in my own field of business.” He was. In the years leading up to his joining Wizard in 2012, he was working as a senior advisor for German brand building experts Ledavi, whose clients include major businesses like Mercedes-Benz, Beats By Dr. Dre, and many more. When Ossy made one of his regular attempts to get his son to join in 2012, he was finally met with success.

Says Oliver, “I had reached a level where I felt I had paved my way. I was in a good position, had good clients, but didn’t necessarily want to do it for the rest of my life. I had proven for myself that I can sustain myself without my dad’s heritage, and that gave me a lot of confidence to just trust that I could be my own man at Wizard, too. Even if large parts of the industry would think that this was just another son joining his dad’s business because he’s a f–king nobody, I knew for myself that I could live with that perception, because I knew differently.”

Since 2017, Oliver has taken on full control of the operational management of Wizard Promotions. He’s found a way to honor the company’s roots, while exploring new horizons. “We still have a very rock prevalent roster,” he says, “When Ossy started out, rock ’n’ roll was for the misfits. And while I wouldn’t say that all of our artists are misfits, I would definitely say they’re outliers in the sense that all of our artists share a very special story that needs to be told in a special way when promoting them. The question that has remained the same in all the years is, how do we get them to the next level? It comes
from our history of prioritizing personal relationships, loyalty, but also the fact that we don’t deal with radio pop on a regular basis. Every one of our artists has something peculiar, something unique to them that we need to sell to the audience.”

Case in point: The comeback of infamous German rock band Böhse Onkelz in 2014. What Wizard Promotions realized together with the band and their team that year, as well as the year after, went down in German concert history. The Onkelz are one of the most controversial mainstream bands in German music. Parts of the country’s public and media are, to this day, hellbent on painting them as a far-right extremist band – notwithstanding the fact that some 700,000 peaceful people came to see them across six shows at Hockenheimring in 2014/2015. All because the band dabbled in the wrong circles in the early 1980, when the skinhead scene, historically a non-political movement, had only just begun developing right-wing offshoots. As the band realized they were being gradually instrumentalized by actual neo-nazis, they distanced themselves from any extremist ideology – in line with the original skinhead spirit, although most people today don’t associate skinheads with the spirit of ’69.

This was the context in the lead-up to the Hockenheim shows, when Oliver Hoppe orchestrated a unique marketing campaign that no more than teased at an Onkelz comeback, never mentioning the band’s name, only a famous song title, “Nichts ist für die Ewigkeit” (“Nothing lasts forever”), and a link to register. For what? No one knew. But 800,000 registrants across the first two weeks of the campaign wanted to find out.

“It’s interesting,” says Oliver, “in today’s world of algorithms, brands and musicians are actually shifting back to classic email-direct-to-consumer communication. We did that 10 years ago because we didn’t have any other choice. We needed to converge people that didn’t follow the band on Facebook, because the band didn’t exist anymore. There was no mailing list, or it got lost in the 10 years since the band departed. We had a product we knew hundreds of thousands of Germans would be interested in, but nobody had a way to contact them. That’s how we came up with the campaign. I think we ended up with 800,000 registrations over the course of two weeks. That gave us the confidence to say, ‘OK, maybe we not only do one Hockenheim, maybe we can do a few more.’”

Ossy remembers, “When I first heard rumors that the Onkelz may consider to reform after they had famously said ‘goodbye’ at the Lausitzring in 2005, I had a meeting with (bassist and vocalist) Stephan (Weidner), who I got on very well with. He said, I had to come to Ibiza with him, because that’s where Gonzo (guitarist Matthias ‘Gonzo’ Röhr) was, and they would only make a decision together. I asked Oliver if he had any idea how we could pull this off? Within a up with a whole scheme, pictures, information, everything. The boys were so impressed, it was the main reason we got the Onkelz. We didn’t get the Onkelz because they liked me. They could have liked anybody. What gave it the final touch was Oliver’s ideas on how to get this off the ground. To play Hockenheimring six times within 12 months … nobody will come close, certainly not in lifetime. The Stones did it once. Metallica did it. AC/DC did it. The biggest bands in the world did it once, so who else is there, who could do it six times?”

The Onkelz shows at Hockenheim are not the only, but the most prominent example of how seriously both Hoppes take their responsibility toward the artists they take on. According to Oliver, “it’s as much a financial responsibility as it is an artistic one. We don’t make financial decisions that go against their career, we don’t make career decisions that go against their finances. When it comes to this particular band, I’m very idealistic, because I think that they are able to change people’s perceptions. It’s easy to be a left-sided band, playing in front of a left-sided audience, chanting anti-right slogans, and getting handsomely paid for it. It’s very easy. Everybody loves you. But with this band, everybody f–king hates you. Everybody thinks they’re right wing, or at least insist that they used to be. Yet, this band stands in front of 25,000 people every night, and tells them that they should think about their f–king decisions, that racism doesn’t solve a single societal issue, that hate only creates more hate, and it is therefore one of the dumbest feelings you can indulge in the world.”

Ossy agrees, “They’re the only band that says something like that every night, ‘Don’t be on the extreme right side of politics, don’t be on the extreme left side, make up your own mind.’ That’s the message. Kevin (Russell, vocalist) often says: ‘Don’t take drugs. I’m 13 years free of drugs, I am the one who knows what he’s talking about. Please stay away from that shit.’ They make more statements like that than any other group. I’ve dealt with some very left-leaning German bands in the past, who never did that. There’s one big German band in particular, who love the Onkelz. And they’ve told the Onkelz as much in private, admitting that they could never say it in public, because their fans would not understand. What the f-ck are you, a man or a mouse? Most people just swim with the tide, thinking that makes them the good guys.”

Adds Oliver, “We don’t need to always agree with our artists, either. I think that’s what society as a whole has forgotten: that it’s okay to have a different opinion than the person sitting next to you.”

Those two years, 2014 and 2015, changed a lot for Wizard, not just because of the massive Onkelz shows, but, as Oliver explains, “because of the fact we had hardly dealt with domestic artists before. Ossy promoted some of the Scorpions’ tours in the early days of Wizard, but by 2014 we didn’t really have any German artists on the roster. Since 2014 we have one of the top three, and two of the top 10 German artists with the Scorpions, Nena, and the Onkelz. That changed a lot for us. Working with domestic artists is very different, it’s more demanding, they require more attention. It gives us a lot more responsibility, because we’re not talking about six shows in and out every two years. The question is ‘What do we do over 365 days of the year in a relatively small market?’ The Onkelz and Nena are very German-centric. They required us to change our perspective to a certain degree, to change or expand our partner network, do deals differently, be more of a producer in addition to being a promoter. On this tour, for example, every truck, every single person that is on this tour has been going through our desk. It’s a different approach to work. We still love dealing with international bands, but I think that’s one of the biggest shifts the company has seen in the last 20 years: we very much went from being solely a promoter for international bands, to being a promoter and producer for domestic bands, and very successful domestic bands at that.”

Oliver deals with a more complex industry than his father. “Deals have become more complex. Things have to be structured. The development of artists has changed a lot. Some just become really big, really quick, and then you never hear from them again. It’s always been a cutthroat business, but especially with global players moving in, looking at all facets of the business and artists of every size, we need to be clever. We need to be smarter. We need to deliver more service. It’s easy to say, ‘Live Nation is the devil’, but, at the end of the day, Live Nation has some of the best promoters in the world, who make very good deals for their artists. And the only way we can compete with that is to try and be the better promoters, to deliver more service to the artist, and more money into our artists’ pockets. Maybe not on the signing fee, but when it’s all said and done, when the show’s over, and all tickets have been sold, putting more money in their pockets than what most other promoters could. That’s what we achieve to do.”

His father agrees: “It’s not the guarantees, but the money you walk out with at the end of the evening. A big manager once said that to me, and he’s right. Guarantees are the carrot.”

Since COVID, when artists have been concerned with making up for lost business, high guarantees sound extra juicy, as does “the idea that you can go into bigger rooms and sell more tickets and make more money. But,” says Oliver, “that’s where the longevity part comes in. You might do that, and you might take the money, but you might also end up with only two-thirds of the room or less filled. And then it could be your last tour. That’s the reality of things these days. We see a lot of tours that are obvious money-grabs struggling. Some of them work, of course, so everybody’s happy, but a lot of tours, where people go too high on the ticket price, too big on the venue, they struggle. For some promoters, it doesn’t make a difference, but the artist’s career has come to a standstill, at least for another two, three years. It’s not that we are infallible, but at least we like to grow things organically.”

Ossy Hoppe said in a keynote interview at 2017’s Eurosonic Festival that he felt like there was something amiss with the live business of today, and it was “that the big shots were taking individuality away.” Seven years later, it has only gotten worse, he says. “We have to continue to make our point. Why are we doing this? In the old days — damn, I sound like my father — but in the old days, why did people go into music? They went into music because they couldn’t do anything else. They came from the streets. They came out of, maybe not poverty, but usually out of not very rich families. They played the clubs, they did the circuit for two or three years until they became what they became. Their love of music, in my opinion, was much more palpable then. There are some genres today, where people go into the studio, do a song, and all of a sudden it becomes a hit, but only for five to eight minutes, and that’s it. So, why do it in the first place? We’ve had CDs land on our desk, saying, ‘This is a great new band, they just can’t perform live yet because they have no live experience.’ What the fuck? The passion doesn’t exist to the extent that it used to. Look at Led Zeppelin. Why did Robert Plant turn down a billion-dollar offer in exchange for the band’s reunion? Because he didn’t want to ruin the myth of the greatest rock band of all times. Not a lot of people would do that today.”

When Oliver speaks with other professionals working in the industry these days, “they all are trying to catch the wave, but they are not able to build the wave anymore, not as you were able to 20, 30, years ago, when marketing could do a lot, when you decided that this was the artist you were going to break. Labels were able to break at least four out of five artists with the help of radio, and through physical sales. These days, it’s like surfing. Everybody’s just waiting in the water, half-submerged. And when they see the wave coming, they hope it’s big enough so they can ride it. I think that’s an issue every
single player in the music industry is facing today. Social media, streaming, etc, has obviously democratized music consumption, but it has also made it very hard to predict. It still all begins with the quality of the music. But an artist today has to also be a good communicator, a digital native, very strong on their socials. Then you can start cranking up the knobs as far as you can, and hope the impact creates a big enough wave. That’s what it all comes down to. I’m not certain how it will change in the near future, but I think it will be a long time before we can actually start building artists out of our own power, so to speak. But we can set up the best conditions for them to be able to ride the wave.”

To make bigger waves, Wizard Promotions rebranded to Wizard Live earlier this year, adding brand consulting, communications and data services, as well as an artist development program to its core business of being a show and touring provider. “Our main business will always be putting on shows. We are a promoter, but what that encompasses has changed a lot over the course of 20 years, and we’ve become really good at it. We have people in our office that have been in the music industry for more than 30 years, who know every bit of it inside out. And we have a lot of post-COVID, Gen-Z people in the office, who know their way around social media, and every aspect of how to develop brands and music in 2024. The magic happens when they get to work together, and have the business experience on the one side, and the knowledge of the new media, the understanding of new fan groups, sales funnels, etc. on the other. If you are able to bring that together, you can really create a benefit for every player involved. If a band wants to do their own touring, we can step out of the role of promoter, and act as a consultant. A lot of domestic artists are starting to do that. They’re saying, ‘I know I’m going to sell my tickets. I know how to approach my fan group. I just need somebody to rent the venue, and get me people to build the stage.’ That’s a role we’re trying to put out a little more aggressively.

“We see that a lot of festivals, independent promoters, local promoters and venues are struggling to promote a tour or show properly, and are a bit behind the times when it comes to all sorts of modern consumer communication, another aspect we try to help with. We have a very strong marketing team that’s done shows of every conceivable scale, that can help others sell tickets. And I wanted to bring more of my corporate experience into the company, because bringing artists and corporations together is more important than ever. I can tap into stuff I haven’t been doing for the last 14 years, and it’s great fun. I love it.”

The artist development program Wizard Live offers is aimed at raw and young talent struggling to reach their audience. “They’re struggling to communicate with their fans,” says Oliver. “They might be great musicians, but they don’t really know how to play Instagram. They don’t really go at it strategically, and that’s where we try to give a little guidance, build overall strategies for them. We are not looking to become a management company right now, but the more artists we can help grow bigger, the more tickets we will be able to sell for them in the long run.”

Ossy readily accepts that the business has changed, however, there are two developments that worry him. One is the loss of small venues, who’ve had to shut down during or after COVID. “The club circle is dead,” he said, “When I lived in England, you could go to probably 300 clubs. You had rock clubs, where everybody played. You always had great times. Today, in Germany, you can count them on two hands. In England, it’s probably the same, maybe not as bad. And with them goes the way to develop music. Those are the places where artists get a feel for their audience for the first time. That’s missing today.”

His other concern are rising ticket prices. “They get so out of hand,” he says, “we could charge a lot more for each ticket for the Onkelz, but the band doesn’t want to do it. Iron Maiden, same thing. It’s a way to thank their fans. 10 years ago, you could go to four, five, six shows a month, whatever. Today you can’t. An average family can’t afford that anymore, because if I pay €300, €400, and take my family, wife, girlfriend, buy a T-shirt, plus the cost of getting there — that’s already worth one week of holidays. It really pisses me off, to tell you the truth. It’s easy to blame the big boys, but the artist is also responsible. The artist is the one demanding a certain guarantee, which directly affects ticket pricing.”

Oliver disagrees to an extent. “I think dynamic pricing is a great tool, but there need to be certain limits to it. If you look at it the other way round, and there’s an act that is not high in demand, you have a chance to get very cheap tickets. Getting back to what Ossy said, there’s a responsibility that lies with the artist not to let it get out of hand. It’s great if you make 10 bucks more on a ticket if you can. It’s greedy, if you make double of what the ticket was at face value. And the sellers shouldn’t be playing psychological tricks, making you sit in the queue for three hours, and then putting you under the pressure of your lifetime to buy the f–king tickets for a price that’s way higher than you might have expected.”

If Ossy is the romantic, Oliver is the realist. You ideally need both to run a successful promotion business in 2024, but you certainly need to be realistic. “I know my limitations,” says Ossy. “I was a very good buyer. I can convince people. I know I can get the bands, because I spent so much time with them. But I needed someone who runs the company. I was not the guy to run a company, quite frankly. Everybody thought I did, but you have to have a good team around you, and it’s important it’s someone capable, who you can trust. And, of course, Oliver was the one, because I followed his career, and I knew he could do it. And, as I said, it took me three years, but eventually he said, ‘yes.’ And I’m very happy [he] did.”

He looks at his son, who responds, “And then it took another three years of not f–king killing each other,” and, seeing the look on his father’s face, adds, “Well, that’s the reality of it, too.”

Ossy says, “Yes, because we both had different ways of looking at things. He had a very strategic mind. I was deciding with my gut.”

Oliver: “I have been disowned on several occasions over the first couple of years. I think we both needed to learn that we’re only right 50% of the time, and it was difficult at first, to figure out whose 50% to go with.”

Ossy: “It was just the first year that was difficult, but that’s the way it is. I had to learn to accept that he has his own mind. He had to sometimes swallow his anger to say, ‘OK, let him do his thing, because so far, he did the right thing.’ We bounce off each other a lot. I learned a lot from Oliver, even in my old age, and I hope that he learned something from me. I think it works well. Today, Oliver runs the company. I’m just going out with my old bands and friends. It’s Oli, who calls the shots now, and he does that very well.”

“We work well together,” Oliver insists. “Ossy has always made the artists feel seen and understood. And it’s truly magical to watch him work with artists and speak to bands. Last night there were 25,000 people screaming their asses off, but the moment he told the artist that it was a great show, you could see it made his night. I don’t know how he does it, but he does it. He gives our artists the feeling that we can jointly build a better brand for them. The understanding is his part. The building of the brand is my part.”

As is the running of Wizard Live’s day-to-day, and the development of the product acquisition and utilization of Wizard Live parent company DEAG, where Oliver joined the board of directors in 2022 as executive vice president product and innovation. “I’m very proud of him,” says Ossy, “because he’s a completely different man than me, which is so important. I know a lot of sons, who are a spitting image of their dads. You close your eyes, and you think, it’s the old man talking. But he’s got his own agenda. He knows far more than I do. It’s a new day.”

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