Legendary Concert Promoter Ron Delsener Looks Back on 60 Years of Live Music Madness
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Long before Live Nation, Clear Channel, Ticketmaster, Stubhub, service fees, gold-circle seats, and anything that even resembles the live music industry as we know it today, there was Ron Delsener. The 87-year-old concert promoter has been booking shows in New York City going all the way back to the summer of 1964, when he brought the Beatles to Forest Hills Tennis Stadium for two nights. (Tickets were $5.50 plus a 45-cent federal tax.)
In the decades that followed, Delsener grew into the undisputed live music kingpin of New York, booking thousands upon thousands of shows at Madison Square Garden, Carnegie Hall, Beacon Theatre, Jones Beach, Irving Plaza, the Wollman Rink in Central Park, the Great Lawn in Central Park, the Palladium, and many other iconic venues. He sold his company for $27 million in 1996, but continued to run it in the decades that followed. There isn’t a single prominent agent, manager, or veteran touring artist that doesn’t know him by name.
More from Rolling Stone
Aspiring Filmmaker Taylor Swift Invited to Join Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Hear Fall Out Boy's Updated Take on 'We Didn't Start The Fire' That Covers 1989 to 2023
But unlike his former San Francisco-based counterpart Bill Graham, he largely avoided the spotlight to the point where he doesn’t even have his own Wikipedia page. Longtime New York concertgoers will certainly recognize “Ron Delsener Presents” from countless concert posters over the years, but are unlikely to know much of anything about the man himself.
That will soon change thanks to the new documentary Ron Delsener Presents, which premiered earlier this month at the Tribeca Film Festival. Directed by Jake Sumner (Sting’s son), the film traces Delsener’s entire life story and features new interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt, Patti Smith, Billy Joel, Jon Bon Jovi, Paul Simon, and Art Garfunkel.
“I’ve known Ron peripherally for my whole life since I grew up around the music business,” Sumner tells Rolling Stone. “Ron would give me and my sister tickets to the Knicks and the circus when we were kids. I’d see him at shows years later, and he always had funny stories. He’d casually tell you a story about the Beatles or hanging out with Elton John in a hotel room. He’s such a character, and I thought he’d be a great subject for a film. And the more I talked to him, the more I realized the depth of history that comes with him.”
Sumner began the project before Covid hit, and originally planned on placing it largely in the present as he followed Delsener backstage at shows by Cher, the Who, Jimmy Buffett, and even into a Jones Beach parking lot packed full of rowdy Parrotheads. Once the pandemic shut down the live music business, he was forced to recalibrate. “It became much more of an archival-based film that looks back at the past,” he says. “I think it worked out.”
A big challenge was getting Delsener to sit for an extended time and tell his life story into the camera. “Ron is a larger-than-life guy,” Sumner says. “It’s not in his nature to sit down and tell you a story like that. He’s much more transient, and he’s sort of everywhere, always moving. He’ll tell you a story, and it’ll jump from 1964 to something that happened two weeks ago in the span of about two seconds. To get Ron to sit in a chair in the Beacon Theatre over three days and tell his story took a lot of effort, but he did great in the end.”
“What Ronny truly fulfilled for so many artists, was the dream and promise of, ‘If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere,'” adds executive producer Jon Kamen, chairman and CEO of RadicalMedia. “Music is such an important part of the DNA of New York, so Ron deserves every bit of credit and recognition for delivering on the gift that’s kept on giving to all of us, and we all love him for it, as crazy as he is.”
We hopped on a Zoom with Delsener to chat about the movie and his incredible life in music. As Sumner warned us, it was a wild ride that ricocheted back and forth through history. But it was a marvelous journey that touched upon everything from Bruce Springsteen’s infamous 1974 Central Park show with Anne Murray to Judy Garland’s triumphant 1967 free concert in Boston Common, Neil Young’s four-night stand at Carnegie Hall in 2014, and Bob Dylan’s 10-night residency at the Beacon Theatre in 2019. Along the way, he remembered throwing David Cassidy into the trunk of his car and seeing Frank Sinatra at the Copacabana in the Fifties. Strap yourself in and take the ride.
I really liked the documentary. What did you think?
I thought the kid did a good job. I pushed him a lot since I wanted it to be what I had to say, not him. And it came out pretty good. It was from the heart, how I came up with my parents in Astoria, Queens. I came from nothing. I started by going door to door selling stuff. My father was a salesman. He would sell anything. He took me to events and sports games all over New York City. And my sister and I would throw shows in our basement and charge other kids a nickel.
For me, it was always about showbiz. And later in life, I became best friends with Harry Belafonte. I got to meet a lot of people through him. And my career just went on and on and on. I like to help people when they need tickets or want money for stuff. I have a soul. I don’t lie. I keep it that way. And I feel good about it.
Tell me the backstory of the movie. How did Jake approach you about it?
Jake found out that I had a lot of what I call “junk.” It’s memorabilia. When he saw what I had in the attic above my garage, which is where I keep boxes and boxes of stuff from the early Sixties, the Seventies, all the way to now … it’s 50 years of stuff. I kept memorabilia, contracts, films … and when he saw it, he was overwhelmed. You can’t walk in my basement or my attic without stepping on something.
In the movie, you see a lot of the things you saved from Carnegie Hall.
They called me out of the blue not long ago. They said, “Mr. Delsener, you did 390 shows of rock & roll here.” What happened is that [Bill] Graham started putting on shows at the Village East Theater, which I first told him about. He renamed it the Fillmore East. He didn’t hire me to do anything with it. He gave it to someone else even though I told him about it.
And so I took all my acts and said, “I’ll go bigger than that.” I saw Elton John was playing at the Fillmore. I went there to see him and his agent, Howard Rose. I said, “Elton, this is the last time you’re going to have to play the Fillmore. How would you like to play Carnegie Hall?” He said, “Yes.” And so I set up a Carnegie Hall show a couple of months later.
And then there was me, Elton, and Harry Belafonte backstage. Elton was wearing a woman’s hat. He gave us all big hugs. Everyone loved it. From them on, everybody wanted to play Carnegie Hall.
Yeah. David Bowie played pretty soon after that.
I tried to book him there. They said, “We don’t want this kind of person. Is it a guy? Is it a girl?” I got this same kind of shit about Donna Summer. Then I had all this stuff about Pete Seeger. They said, “He’s a communist.” I had to fight all this stuff. I said, “I’ll sue you guys.”
I finally got Bowie put through. Then everyone said, “You know something, kid? You’re right. That guy is great.”
They weren’t communists. They weren’t doing bad stuff. They weren’t having sex onstage. I kept saying, “This is an act. This guy is a character. Don’t you understand this?”
What compelled you to save all of this stuff?
I’ve saved everything. For example, I’d go to the Copacabana to see Frank Sinatra at midnight or I’d go there to see Sammy Davis Jr. … wherever I went, I got a pack of matches or something as a souvenir. I just started collecting stuff, like laminates. I have over 3,000 laminates. I was going to make a book out of them. They are like artwork. I think they’d be beautiful in a book like that. Richard Prince was going to take pictures of them for the book. He was worried he’d get sued for [copyright infringement] though, so we dropped that.
I said to him, “Maybe you’re right, but what if we gave the money to St. Jude’s? People go there for free and kids get cured of cancer.” I just want to show these beautiful laminates that these people made since they are like works of art. I’ll take the cast of what it costs to print them. They can keep all the money at St. Jude’s.
Sometimes you have to go through someone else. For instance, I did a show with Sly and the Family Stone in Central Park that I taped. My friend was managing Sly at the time. But when it was done, we couldn’t get the rights to my own film, even though I paid him to do the show.
I still watched the damn thing, and it knocked me out. They were great. “I wanna take you higher!” We did this at Wollman Roller Rink in front of 8,000 people. They were 4,000 in the rink, and 4,000 above the rink in bleachers. People were hanging out of trees, falling down, to see this show.
What’s going to happen to your archive in the future? Might you give it to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?
Never. No Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I want to do what [Robert] De Niro did. He went down Austin, Texas, and gave [The University of Texas] his stuff. I still want to do a book though so I can help people at St. Jude. I don’t want a nickel. I swear to God. I don’t need money. I’m OK with what I do. I’m in the art world now. I love art. I love to collect things.
But the stuff I have in my house is too much. It’s overwhelming. If you come in my house, you kind of step on it. It’s all over the place. I need an archivist to do this, so I went to Carnegie Hall. They have their own archivist. He showed me a list of all the concerts I’d put on there. They knew who was singing that day, who was in the band, the numbers they played. They knew everything. There’s a book with that right there.
How did you feel watching the movie for the first time?
I was overwhelmed. When the applause came and the lights came on, I was overwhelmed. I felt like Ray Charles when he comes off the piano and he’s hugging everyone even though he’s blind. I felt like hugging the audience. My hands were up in the air.
They got it. This was a guy that really loves people. I talk to dogs and little kids in the street every day. Across the street from my house is a girl’s school. I talk to them and wave to them every day.
I love people. I’m that kind of a guy. I have money. I have enough money. I don’t drive with people driving me around in Rolls-Royces, although I do have a Rolls-Royce. I have one from 1965 since I said, “If I ever get rich, the first thing I want to buy is a Rolls-Royce.” And I bought one years ago. Of course, it’s peeling right now, but I’m not going to paint it anymore.
I know this is a tough question, but who is the best live performer you’ve ever witnessed?
Oh my God. Judy Garland was one of the best. I played her in a rainstorm in the middle at the Commons in Boston [on Aug. 31, 1967]. I put on a free show with her there. The Boston Red Sox were playing that night, too. We got 135,000 people in the rain. Judy came out of a limousine on this muddy hill. I had an umbrella for her. She was great. A lot of nuns were there watching her in the rain. She was just spectacular.
We went across the street after that to a famous hotel where the Kennedys used to stay. I was staying there, and so was Judy Garland with Liza Minnelli and Joey [Luft], her son. It was just great. We sit down after the show in the rain. We congratulate each other. Judy drank vodka and had a couple of pills.
She loved that show so much she came back later on to play Boston again. But I understand she didn’t do well because she wasn’t feeling well in those days. You never knew if she was going to make it or not. She was tortured all her life. They put her in a place where she had to do movies, had to do songs. It was bad. I felt sorry for her, and played her as much as possible.
Who are your favorite rock performers?
Definitely Tina Turner and Mick Jagger. It’s almost like they are the same person. I always make fun of them. The two of them are just incredible. Also, Prince. He’s right up there too. He was amazing. I saw him many times in Los Angeles. He was a nice, quiet boy, if you can believe it. But he could dance. He killed it.
Of course, James Brown was fantastic. Otis Redding always killed it. Frank Sinatra was my all-time hero. I played him many times at the Garden State Arts Center. I didn’t talk to him much since I didn’t want to bother him. I thought I was Frank Sinatra back then. I’d always go, “What would Frank do? He’d play it cool.”
I played Frank at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, and then I played him every year at the Garden State Arts Center. Then I came to Jones Beach and put him on a show with Don Rickles. They land in a helicopter. There was nobody there but Frank Sinatra, Don Rickles, and me. I went, “Mr. S, welcome.” Don Rickles says, “Hey, what are we going to do after this? Play Long Beach?” [Laughs]
The other biggest thrill was the Beatles, of course. When they came to town, their PR person invited me to the Delmonico Hotel, which is still there on 57th Street. I came with Joey Heatherton. She was a dancer-singer. Beautiful girl. The Beatles invited us both. [Editor’s note: During this same stay at the Delmonico, Bob Dylan came and introduced the Beatles to marijuana for the first time.]
The press were there to interview the Beatles. Kids were outside screaming. They played Forest Hills for two nights after this. They landed in a helicopter. It was great, but it actually wasn’t great since you couldn’t hear a word they said. They were screaming. I heard them go, “What are we doing this for?” The fans didn’t give them a chance to sing. I felt bad about that.
Tell me your best Bob Dylan story.
I used to try and get backstage since a lot of the gals wanted to meet him, but he wouldn’t see anybody. I thought I was doing him a favor. I was at a show in L.A. A lot of terrific-looking girls were outside. I said, “Bob, look at these girls. They want to come in and say hello.” He went, “Nah. Forget it.”
The best was when he did 10 shows in a row at the Beacon Theatre [in 2019]. It was the biggest run he’s ever had there. The place was going bonkers. Then his manager, Jeff Kramer, comes to me near the end of the show before the encore and goes, “Bob wants to speak with you.” I go, “Oh Jesus, what did I do now?”
The place is going apeshit. They want an encore. I go, “Bob, can I help you?” He goes, “Ronnie, look at this!” I go, “Bob, doesn’t this tell you something? You don’t have to even sing. You just walk onstage and the place goes crazy.”
It reminded me of Luciano [Pavarotti]. I gave him a million dollars to play at PNC Arts Center. He came offstage after the set covered in sweat. He goes, “I don’t know if I can keep singing.” I go, “Who cares if you can sing? They don’t know. Lip sync. I don’t care. They just want to see you.”
It was the same thing with Johnny Depp. I booked him with Jeff Beck. People came just to see Johnny Depp. That’s all they care about. It’s that kind of thing.
It was the same thing with Kiss or even Taylor Swift today. Who the hell gets $1,600 tickets? People like her don’t even need to sing to please the audience. They can show up, get a check, and go home. That’s what’s going to happen. I hope it doesn’t happen since live is where it’s at. Don’t watch television. Live is where it’s at. You want to see people in person. You want to see their warts. You want to see how they are.
Covid really proved that. I think people got so sick of being home for two years that they started really craving real experiences like a concert. It’s something you simply can’t download, and that’s more valuable now than ever.
You hit the nail on the head. It’s going to a basketball game live, not on television. Anything you see, you want to see live. That’s what makes it more interesting. You’re close up. You smell it. You taste it. Your eardrums get creamed. These heavy metal guys sit right in front of the damn speakers, blasting their ears off. Me, I have to go around with these big [earplugs] they wear at the airport. I’m deaf in one ear. Fans used to throw firecrackers at shows. The chairs would get piled up. I’d have to count the chairs at the end of the damn night. Music can be like a war zone.
I’m surprised you aren’t stone-cold deaf after all the concerts you’ve been to.
I have a ringing in my ear all the damn time. I just turn to it and go, “Shut the fuck up!”
What’s your favorite Springsteen memory?
Oh God. When I was doing shows for a dollar a ticket back in the Sixties, everyone wanted to go. It was a big hit. Janis Joplin would show up. Otis Redding would show up. At one show, I got a call that Mr. Springsteen wanted to play at Wollman Ice Skating Rink. I had Brewer and Shipley and Anne Murray on a show. The only thing I could say to Bruce is, “I don’t have any money left since my sponsor only gives me a little bit. I have to pay the rest. I can give you $100 to go out and play. You can play after Brewer and Shipley. And to close the show will be Anne Murray.”
Few people even knew Springsteen was going to be there. It was a last-minute thing. I was doing him a favor. The minute he comes out, he just blasted way. Nobody stayed around for Anne Murray. Shep Gordon was Anne Murray’s manager. I think Shep was fired for that.
Bruce always remembers Brewer and Shipley. Whenever I see Bruce, he brings that up. He also says, “Every time I open the paper, I see your name.” I go, “That’s called ‘marketing.’ You don’t need that though. I can open a window, yell ‘Bruce Springsteen is coming,’ and you’d sell out. That’s how big you are. I don’t have to take ads for you anymore.”
I used to have to take ads for Peter Frampton. What I did for him was pretty cool. He was called “The Face” since he was gorgeous. I took a picture of his face and put it on the back of all the busses on Madison Avenue so you’d see his face. It said “Call Me” with a phone number. That’s how I advertised the show. They’d call the number and hear, “Hi. This is Peter Frampton. Thanks for calling. I want you to know that I’m going to play Madison Square Garden.” They got the message that way. I didn’t have to do anything else. The phones were ringing. We sold out two nights.
Do you think ticket prices now are getting too high? Some people are charging upwards for $5,000 per ticket. Is that too much?
Yes. It’s disgusting, really. There’s no need for that. Some of these acts are doing very, very well. That doesn’t mean they should cut their prices higher. When I heard it was $100 years ago, I thought it was too high. When Diana Ross got $100 to play at Radio City Music Hall. I was like, “One hundred dollars to see Diana Ross?” It started with that. I was like, “I’m selling tickets for one dollar in Central Park.”
I didn’t like seeing $100, but I got into it when I started booking shows like Moody Blues and Pink Floyd. Those shows demanded bigger prices since they brought so many trucks. Pink Floyd brought like 44 trucks when they came. It took all day to unload, and we had to charge more. But those were extravaganzas. They weren’t just somebody singing with a guitar. This was an army. This was a real show. We had Pink Floyd play Dark Side of the Moon at Carnegie Hall once.
Why do you think tickets got so insanely expensive across the board?
People think they can get away with it. And they do. Little girls especially think, “I gotta have it!” People are flying with their parents to some city and they pay that kind of money. There has to be a better way. I think it’s terrible.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a demand for tickets like this Taylor Swift tour. She did three nights at MetLife Stadium. She probably could have done 20.
Years ago, David Cassidy was big. I had to put him in the trunk of my car to get him out of the venue. I drove him out to the Hamptons, hoping the whole time he was still alive. But what you just said is a phenomenon. The people that don’t get to go are very much unhappy, and it’s mostly children. Look at the guy that used to be in One Direction … Harry Styles. He has the same thing. In the old days, we had the Beatles. Women threw their underwear at them. They did the same thing to Tom Jones. People in the underwear business were making a fortune. [Laughs]
Why do you think so few rock bands are able to graduate these days from clubs and theaters into arenas?
Give an example of a rock band.
I mean that back in the Nineties, you’d have an act like Pearl Jam that would just explode. That largely just stopped happening.
First of all, Eddie Vedder is great. He doesn’t want his fans to pay a lot of money for tickets. He’s very careful where he plays. He’s very careful what he charges. There are very few people like that. You can count the people on one hand that don’t want to rip people off. Me, that was never my thing.
Years ago, when I started with $1 tickets, I had to charge a 25-cent facility fee. I didn’t want to cheat people. In those days, we didn’t have Ticketmaster. We had Ticketron. And then Ticketmaster came in and went, “Hey, charge more money on facility fees.” All of a sudden, the facility fee is $25 or $35 on a $50 ticket. It’s wrong.
Do you think the Live Nation merger with Ticketmaster was good for consumers?
[Laughs] I’ll do what Trump does. I can’t answer that.
Fair enough. To move on, why did you decide to retire?
Somebody said I retired. They put it in the paper. But it’s not true. I’m going to be working for Live Nation the rest of my life.
All those articles about your retirement were wrong?
I’m doing things that I like to do now with people that like to do it. It’s very tasty stuff. I like to work with Elvis Costello on projects. I respect a lot of those people, Rufus Wainwright, Ben Folds …
There are so many good acts out there, and I’m good at putting acts together. We have Steve Miller playing by himself soon with his band. I said, “Let’s put somebody else on the bill and make it a show. Why not Dave Mason?” We put on Dave Mason at the last minute with Steve Miller. Then we have people go, “I haven’t seen them together. That’s pretty interesting.”
It’s like putting a meal on the table, like [Bill] Graham used to say. You want to have a sizzling steak? You want to hear that sizzle? You gotta also give them a baked potato and a little parsley. That’s what I do. I don’t just go “An Evening With Phil Ochs” like I used to do.
I loved Phil Ochs, by the way. He was one of my favorites. He hung himself. There’s a guy that was tortured. There’s a guy who followed Bob Dylan around like people follow Van Morrison. Van was one of the greatest for me. We had a great run. One day in Hollywood, he calls me and says, “My friends here want to know what Ron Delsener really does?” I said, “You know, Van. All these years and you don’t know. I’m an illusionist.” I just love Van. He’ll be at my funeral one day. He’s one of the greatest artists in the world.
But the best lyricist is the Gershwin of music, and that’s Paul Simon. Paul Simon and Billy Joel, both of these guys, New York people, their lyrics are beautiful. Everyone can sing with them, and hum with them. Very few people do what they do. Every once in a while someone comes along, like Cat Stevens or someone like that, and does something unusual.
But Billy Joel has been around and does a show that everyone loves. It’s the same thing with one or two others. And you can’t top Paul Simon. I saw him at the Grammys thing the other day where they gave him a shout-out. The writing he does … you don’t find that too often. Now the writing is, “I want to touch your thing. I want to touch this, and hump this.” The language that’s going on here! And people are emulating this stuff.
Do you like hip-hop? Do you like rap?
Some of the stuff is OK. Ninety percent, no. I don’t care what you say. Ninety percent is not music. Sinatra taught me that. Frank Sinatra knew how to sing. I’d see him at 2 a.m. at the Copacabana. He’d do a song at 8:00, 10:00, and 12:00. Then he’d go out at 2 a.m. Who did you see out there after the show? Edward G. Robinson. Sammy Davis Jr. And I’d be there with my date.
What’s your favorite memory of working with Neil Young?
He was with Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Then he went off on his own. I called him one day and said, “You’ve never played Carnegie Hall. How about I give you a million dollars to play four shows in the middle of the wintertime?”
Elliot Roberts managed him. He goes, “Boy, that sounds good.” He comes to me and says, “Neil’s wife is complaining. They like to go away on vacation at Christmas.” I said, “You think my wife isn’t complaining? This is going to be the first week of January [2014]. Then he can hop on a plane and go on vacation. You can’t throw away this kind of money. It’s stupid money. Take it.” He did. He did four sell-outs. He played acoustic. He played piano. This was all just by himself. It was a huge success. He’s a great artist, too.
I love the way he sat at the old piano. Simple. He’s a working man. He’s also into helping the environment and getting rid of Monsanto and all those chemicals that people die from. He’s got it. He’s not afraid. He goes out and smacks you in the face. “These people are doing bad things. Don’t spray. Stop. Don’t spray fertilizers. Don’t do that.” People are getting cancer from this shit, and he has the balls to say something about it.
Can scalpers ever be stopped, or is it just hopeless?
No. They’re like shit. You step in it all the time.
It must drive you insane that people with absolutely no skin in the game are making money off your shows.
Yeah. You see them all over the places. They’re like flies. You can’t get rid of them.
Do you plan on working until you drop?
Yeah. I’ll drop dead hailing a cab. I want to be buried in a cab. Do you remember those old ones?
Checkered cabs?
Right! I did a show with Lily Tomlin called On Broadway. I got her a checked cab to take her around town. That was great.
I’ll let you go Ron. It was great chatting.
Let’s get together and have a lunch. Have your girl call my girl. That’s what they say in Hollywood.
Best of Rolling Stone
