Chairman of Global Music Group & President of Global Touring Division, Live Nation Entertainment Inc
Arthur Fogel, Chairman, Global Music and CEO, Global Touring, Live Nation
Arthur Fogel's home base for nearly 9 years has been Los Angeles, but his route book spans the globe.
A Canadian, he is the undisputed top international tour producer in the world.
As chairman of global music, and CEO of global touring at Live Nation, Fogel directs its music division in the acquisition of live musical events around the world, and has overseen mega-tours of U2, Madonna, Pink Floyd, Sting, the Police, David Bowie and Neil Young.
Celebrity Interview
Arthur Fogel
Chairman, Global Music and CEO, Global Touring
Live Nation
Beverley Hills, USA
Interviewer
Larry LeBlanc
Senior Edi...
About Arthur Fogel
Arthur Fogel, Chairman of Global Music and President of Global Touring at Live Nation, has discussed the evolution of the global touring business, noting that it has expanded from 15-20 countries to 45-50 countries. He described the development of the Asia market as potentially entering a phase of acceleration after a slow start, while also citing logistical challenges such as the high cost of moving large productions in the region. Fogel emphasized that Live Nation has invested heavily to become a global distributor of live entertainment, and he described the company's global footprint as a marketing driver for artists. Fogel has reflected on his career and decision-making process, stating that he trusts his instincts when investing in artists. He described a $40 million commitment to Lady Gaga's tour as an easy decision after seeing her perform, calling her an incredible live performer with a strong connection to her fans. He also commented on the changing music industry, noting that live performance has become a primary income source for artists and that major acts like Madonna and the Rolling Stones can tour successfully without recent hit records. Fogel stated that Live Nation is focused on live promotion rather than the 360-degree deal model, and he described the secondary ticketing market as a fact of life that must be navigated.
Transcript (53 segments)
I
Interviewer0:12
I'll say somewhat similar if you were at an earlier panel that I did this morning with Michael Cohl. If you've gone to a concert in the last 20, 30 years, one of the people that was going to be behind it — this is not just Canada, it's not just North America, it's Europe worldwide — but one of the people almost certainly behind it would be Arthur Fogel. Now a star of his own film and TV series likely coming, endorsements, 360 deals, the whole thing. You're a private person, this is different for you.
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Arthur Fogel1:11
When I worked there, we continued our friendship through the years. Several years ago, he approached me about the idea of doing this documentary. I really had no interest and resisted for some time. Then he wisely went to my wife and suggested that she convince me because it would be a great thing for our children. She agreed, so she convinced me and I agreed to do it.
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Interviewer1:46
You happy with the results?
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Arthur Fogel1:48
I am happy. It really is quite good. It's difficult for me; I've only seen it once.
I
Interviewer2:12
Reading this week, they had a total of artists of what they made in their careers in 2012. Right at the top of the list was Madonna with $34.6 million. I realize that's a printed figure out of a magazine, but that was an extremely successful tour — 88 dates all together.
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Arthur Fogel2:38
Yes, it was 88 worldwide shows. The interesting thing about Madonna is that from the start of her career until I became involved in 2000, she had done a grand total of two tours. At that time, she wasn't a touring act and it really wasn't part of her ongoing career. So in basically 16 or 17 years, she had toured twice. Then since 2000 through the MDNA tour last year, it was her fifth tour in 12 years. Amazingly, she had been to so few places in the world prior to 2000 that it really presented the opportunity to go to a lot of places and ended up being very successful.
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Interviewer3:54
What takes into consideration being a global act?
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Arthur Fogel4:12
There has to be all kinds of other ingredients — cultural distinctiveness, different things within the country. For example, Lady Gaga is one of the newest artists to get within that echelon. At what level do you look at and think it's possible to put together a full-scale global tour? There are many ingredients. I think generally it's a lot easier today than it used to be on any number of levels. When we started in 1989 with our first global tour with the Rolling Stones, it was a very different landscape. Whether it's Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe as concert markets, it's really created an entirely new global landscape for touring. There never used to be venues in Europe certainly, and for years it wasn't the venues in China. Your competitor AEG has two venues and is building a third, so those roots are expanding. India has finally come in as a bigger market. The idea of global marketing and global touring 20, 30 years ago was: we'll do England, Australia, maybe go up to Japan and Germany. That was your global tour.
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Interviewer6:11
It was the Wild West. If you could get into some of these places at all, the promoters there didn't want you there either.
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Arthur Fogel6:19
No, promoters definitely didn't want us there. They didn't want us here. But it's an incredible transformation on a global scale. At the same time, overlaying this, you have the obvious transformation with recorded music and the sale of recorded music, and ultimately the importance of playing live. Today, it's tracks and streaming and all other different things, but the recorded album was the vessel that everybody sort of evolved around. Today, it's only one element of the overall package.
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Interviewer7:26
I was just sitting here thinking: does U2 ever need another hit record again? Does Madonna ever really need another hit record again? The Rolling Stones have not really had a real hit record in years and years, yet that's a high-demand concert tour if they do the 20 days they're talking about — if only to see if Keith Richards is still alive at the end of it. But what I'm getting at is, at one point, everything that was done in terms of touring or promotional activity was really about driving record sales, and the tour or shows was just one component or driver. But again, there's this amazing transformation where live shows, the concert business, has become the center of the universe and the driver for everything else. I don't think any of us could have imagined that would be how it unfolded over the last 20 years. It's pretty extraordinary.
It's interesting with the Rolling Stones going out and Paul Dainty dropping out. There are only two entities that can finance a tour of this ilk at this time: one is AEG, the other is Live Nation. I know talking with Michael Cohl, who had done five of the tours before, when you sit down and look at these figures, did Live Nation take a look at stepping in at any point?
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Arthur Fogel9:35
No, we didn't. The history of the Rolling Stones had always been Michael's. We had worked on all of the tours with him, but it was really his relationship. To a certain extent, I know this is going to sound strange, I think for Michael as well, there's a certain skill, experience, and ability that he has that I have in part learned from him. While the commercial side is critical, if you can't execute the way it should be executed for that level of artist, then I'm not sure you should be in the game. There's also a point where you got to sit there and go, these numbers don't make sense.
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Interviewer11:10
Somebody looked somewhere down the line and went, this doesn't make sense for us to do this. And you got to admit, Arthur, they've had a sweet spot in the concert market because everybody wants to see them. This may be the last tour, but financially for a promoter, there may be no future and the money level is really, really high. You sit there at night and go, does this make sense to do this?
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Arthur Fogel11:39
I think ultimately everyone, no matter what sector of this industry they're in, needs to maintain a certain level of integrity as it relates to risk reward and what they're paid for services. If it doesn't make sense, then maybe somebody else should do it. The unfortunate part of our business is that there are those people who undervalue themselves and allow the margins and formulas of business to get completely perverted.
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Interviewer12:33
Without getting into when or why Live Nation pulled back from 360 deals, you were involved in the early negotiations with Madonna as part of this overall deal, and after that came Jay-Z, Nickelback, a number of others. It's obviously working for you guys, but I understand why Live Nation wouldn't want to go too far and take on a whole slew of these. You've had now four or five years to evaluate what you did. What conclusions have you come to?
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Arthur Fogel13:30
I think we came to the conclusion that we made the right decision not to be in that business. Does it pay off on a one-off? I think it goes like this: no, they're all successful. We don't regret for a minute having done those 360 structured deals with those artists. The reality is that none made sense as one, and so the first order of business was to completely strip away all of the other businesses to the core of what we wanted to be, which was the biggest and best live promotion and concert company in the world. As you go along in time, we were very successful at doing that. Then there was this blip where there was the moment of maybe we should be in the 360 deal business, but the truth is we are, in my view, the best live promotion company in the world, and that's what we should be.
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Interviewer15:11
You pick that up from different sources. It's a little trickier today. How do you operate your global division separate from the rest of Live Nation? You've got global touring, Europe, a lot of your people are still here in Toronto. You work out of here, and at the same time, if they're building or doing different things over in Europe, you've got a responsibility to the overall company as well. How do you evaluate that?
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Arthur Fogel15:51
For me, I really have two hats at Live Nation. One is as the Chairman of Music, and at the same time, my other hat is that I'm the President of Global Touring. It in and of itself is a boutique operation within the company that specializes in promoting and producing global tours for a handful of clients. Within there, we do all our own marketing and everything. It's a self-contained unit. It's a particular skill set, and many of the artists that are a part of Global Touring we're fortunate to have had as clients for a long time. We've got a great bunch of people who have a great understanding of the world. When I'm talking about Tokyo or Abu Dhabi, I know what I'm talking about — it isn't just Cleveland or LA. If you're going to play on that level, you need to have developed your expertise on that level.
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Interviewer17:28
We talked about how you find or pick up artists. If I recall, Troy Carter talked to Paul McGuinness about who's the best promoter for Lady Gaga to go around the world, and your name came up. That's an odd relationship — Troy Carter having a mentor relationship with Paul McGuinness. But there are very few artists that work on that level. I found that really interesting. I don't know if that story is true, but I think it is.
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Arthur Fogel18:10
It is true. Paul has played such a vital role in guiding the career of U2 for all these years. Kudos to Troy and anybody else who looks to somebody like Paul to get advice. For all of us in whatever we do in the business, there's a million stories in the naked city, and probably most of them are true. So you sort of have to go where you can feel the trust and the knowledge.
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Interviewer18:44
We're not sure if you were at U2's first appearance in Toronto at the El Mocambo, but we do know you were at the second one. The second one is really interesting. When they played here at the El Mocambo, they used to bring in Irish show bands there. I know we thought it was a great idea. It was owned by a couple Irish brothers, and it made sense. It was a very cool room, but quite frankly, the only reason the show got in there is because it was U2, obviously Irish, and they had no interest in dealing with show bands. They did Irish show bands up there. There was an IRA bar down the street on Duncan Street. You could have had that might have worked a little bit better. Any idea how many people were there?
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Arthur Fogel19:42
I don't remember. I think about a thousand maybe.
I
Interviewer19:46
Wow, that's good. Did that help cement the relationship with Paul McGuinness and the band, or did it get cemented after they saw the work you did with the Rolling Stones?
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Arthur Fogel20:10
Bill Graham had done this in North America. You guys had done Victory and stuff like that. To go to Europe where some of these promoters had been out there for 200 years, nobody thought you could carry it off. I think that was one of the things that impressed Paul. It was one of those examples of shoot first, ask questions later. The good news was we got the tour, and then the bad news was, holy, what do we do now? You didn't have a clue, did you? The bizarre part is before we did that Rolling Stones deal, we were kind of sitting around at the 11th hour. We had just gone blindly ahead. We meet back at the end of the day, and we all have the same story: everybody thinks the Stones are done, it's over, we're out of our minds. I remember sitting there going, well, either they're all full of it, or... They had toured for a couple years at that time. It was four years, even longer — maybe eight years. It was one of those moments where you sit there and go, no, they're wrong, we're right. We went for it, and that was really the launching pad for so many great things, including in part the U2 relationship.
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Interviewer22:10
One of the things that Bill Graham laid into you guys, and you went head-to-head, and apparently you held your own. It was at the Billboard conference in New York?
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Arthur Fogel22:22
Actually, it was the North American Concert Promoters Association meeting at a hotel in New York. We were all in the boardroom, and somehow we got into it. Bill just kind of went nuts. He wasn't happy. I believe the word was, 'CPI is ruining the business and you're parasites.' It was even more personal than that. He had a problem with Canadians. Ultimately, they had decided to make a change. I think it worked out pretty well for the Rolling Stones.
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Interviewer23:21
You rolled out CPI USA going into the States. You were one of the ones involved with that. Not well loved — having the Canadians come into the American market. A lot of people were very vocal about that. Certainly Ron Delsner in New York, John Scher — I don't think has ever gotten over it. Our friend down in Atlanta, Alex Cooley, is still bitter about it to this day. Was there that much resentment against you guys because you started off buying Barry Fey and buying into a number of different agencies out of the Carolinas?
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Arthur Fogel23:56
I don't know. We were a real threat to a system that had been established. When you went to the core of it, it was a system that was established to make sure that the control of the business rested in someone else's hands other than the promoter.
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Interviewer24:34
You didn't give a damn. You broke up the system.
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Arthur Fogel24:36
Not at all. It was the smartest thing that we ever did, frankly. The truth is, in life, there are any number of systems or setups on how things operate, but it doesn't mean they're right or good.
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Interviewer24:50
Did you also see it as a corrupt system?
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Arthur Fogel24:52
It was very tightly controlled.
I
Interviewer25:10
The only person that jumped... We should explain to people that don't follow the industry and aren't as old as us. Back then, there were 20, 25 entities — promoters in each area — and they ran their little region like empires. Essentially, when a tour was booked, it was booked by Frank Barcelona or somebody at Premier Artists, and you went into those territories. There were a few people that would work with other promoters. Bill Graham sometimes would partner with it. Jerry Weintraub would take concerts West anywhere he felt like. Bill Graham's territory used to be the argument: any part of the United States that he flew over. But basically, our big picture point was that there are different ways that you can come at this. It just isn't about doing it that way. That system is still in place and is very effective and important for a lot of people in the business. I don't want to demean it whatsoever, but there has to be a way for us to do business the way we wanted to do it as well.
Concert Productions International morphed — I'll try to do this really quickly because there's about nine different companies here — into BCL, into TNA, which ended up getting bought by SFX. That's essentially the history. You and the organization of the people you worked with, growing up with the Canadians, all of a sudden being part of a bigger entity under SFX. Robert Silverman came in and gave everybody, 'We're going to put all these crying, fighting kittens in one bag.' All of a sudden, you're now working for Silverman and a whole bunch of different people. Then they get sold to Clear Channel. Uneasy days within those days?
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Arthur Fogel27:40
Not really for me. I had ultimate faith and confidence that we would get to a place that was great and with someone that was great in charge. That's exactly where we ended up. The evolution of our business, and certainly in my view how Live Nation has evolved, it's not bad at all. It is the best opportunity any smart manager could ever want. On the one hand, everybody sits there and wants to crap all over the recorded side of the business and how it isn't what it used to be, and it's hard for acts to break, and there's no budgets for promoting and marketing and tour support that used to exist for developing artists. So now we've created this incredible global machine, global platform that is the best vehicle for artists to develop. Smart managers that work within the Live Nation world have figured out exactly how to do that, and it's a great vehicle for them.
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Interviewer29:24
One of the interesting things was, under SFX, Silverman had a big meeting in Nashville with all the promoters he had bought. All the promoters were supposed to get up and drop their pants and show how they did deals, and nobody wanted to do it. How has Michael Rapino been able to manage this company? He took over this side in 2005 after coming from Europe.
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Arthur Fogel30:13
He's got great vision, he's a great strategist, and he's a great leader. People pretty much across the board have bought into those things — his vision, his strategy, and his leadership. If they haven't, they're probably gone. He had to make some painful changes in 2011 where he set up two separate things and had to let some people leave the organization who had been there a long time. It's a big company and it's a tough gig. It's global, there's a lot of moving parts and issues and politics. At the end of the day, he's done a masterful job in guiding it. Layer that on top of this great platform of local promoters that Live Nation has built around the world.
I
Interviewer31:20
It's interesting watching the different changes and growth of Live Nation in terms of an evolution. In 2010 and 2011, they went through ticketing issues, particularly over Lilith Fair where everybody lost money, including you guys. But essentially, the biggest complaint was when tickets are put on sale, at what point do you drop them? That was a big lesson for your organization: 'Hey, we're screwing up here. We got to figure something out.'
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Arthur Fogel32:11
The great thing about being in this business is that you're always learning something. You haven't seen it all. There's always stuff going on that causes you to pause and look at how you do business and how you come at things. Ultimately, that's a really healthy and positive thing. If we were right all the time, I'd probably be lying on a beach.
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Interviewer32:36
What about paperless ticketing? It's one thing that you guys have been really leading with. At the same time, Madonna goes over to the UK and works with a sponsorship with a secondary ticketer a couple years ago. That seems to be mixed messages. It seems to me that the industry still does not have its handle on the secondary ticketing market.
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Arthur Fogel33:10
The secondary ticketing market is a fact of life and it's not going away, end of story. You can say to people, 'Hey, can everybody just stop downloading music without paying?' Things evolve. You can't turn back the hands of time. The secondary market isn't going away, so you got to figure out how to deal with it and navigate through it, trial and error.
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Interviewer33:39
I see Greg waving. Greg, I'm going to take three minutes. No, there's no Q&A. Okay, but we got up stage here and it said 28 minutes. So how long can we go?
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Arthur Fogel34:11
You're good friends since you grew up, working together, somebody who shared your vision. You guys have built something. Don K. Doan might be here in the room — there he is over there. Donald, Michael, Norman Perry — you couldn't ask for three greater mentors. They gave me my shot, they taught me the tricks of the trade, some of which I don't use anymore. It was upsetting because there's a long history there, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for Michael. But it came and went, and things are fine. We talk often.
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Interviewer35:13
I agree. Are you enormously proud, as a number of us are, of the number of Canadians that are on the live music side? It isn't just your own company. We have Deborah Rothwell over at AEG. You can argue... I have a lot of fun when we talk about producers like Daniel Lanois changing the landscape of the world, and Bob Ezrin. Canadians changed the landscape of live music worldwide. Do you have to be a Canadian to work at Live Nation? That's the joke that Bob LeDuc made.
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Arthur Fogel35:51
Well, I... Oh, come on, he loves you. But the truth is, and again I go back to... They were behind a grocery store behind the dock where they threw out the rotten food. All true. But tremendous stable, great talent. Riley O'Connor who still runs Live Nation Canada, Deborah doing so well at AEG, Jerry Barrett who works with me, Mark Norman, Susan Rosenberg — you can go on and on. Now down in LA, you got Joy Scoller, you got Brad Gallagher, you got Steve Herman. I'm the only Canadian that never got a job at Live Nation, apparently. They're still working in the business. My son, maybe my daughter will get it. It's not too late. It taught us great skills, and we're all still out there using those skills.
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Interviewer37:14
You got four, almost five tours going out over the next two years. You want to name them?
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Arthur Fogel37:23
I hope I can name them. Through this year, I have a Rihanna tour that's just started worldwide, followed by a Beyoncé tour starting this summer, and Justin Timberlake touring solo this fall. He's doing some dates with Jay-Z this summer, some stadium dates, a handful. Next year, I think it's likely that U2 will be out on the road. It's hopeful that there will be a David Bowie tour.
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Interviewer38:10
Is David Bowie working? Because he should be working.
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Arthur Fogel38:16
I've tried every angle for eight years, and he doesn't seem too interested. But nobody thought he'd be recording too, and he's been recording with Tony Visconti for the last three years. They did 17 songs, got it down to 12. I'm talking to Tony, and we never know. But I will tell you one story about David. This recent Christmas, I sent an email to him. I had just signed a new deal at Live Nation, so I thought I would send him an email saying, 'David, the only reason I signed a new deal at Live Nation is in the hope that you would tour in the next five years before I'm unemployed.'
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Interviewer39:12
David Bowie's tricks. One thing people do forget, though, is that after Steel Wheels, the next world tour you did was with Bowie, I believe.
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Arthur Fogel39:23
Yes, it was. So that's a long relationship going back and forth. He's an incredible artist.
I
Interviewer39:29
I want to thank Arthur for being here. I want to thank you for being here. Thank you very much.