Chuck Negron, when he was with Three Dog Night, and Terry Bassett when he was Concerts West. (Courtesy Carl Dunn)
When Tony Tavares was running Providence (R.I.) Civic Center in the '70s and 80s, he met a national promoter who was above the fray, whom everyone loved, who didn’t bitch and moan at settlement, and who became a close friend in what was generally a cutthroat business. That promoter was Terry Bassett.
Bassett, who died July 26 at the age of 80 and was best known for his years helming Concerts West with partners Tom Hulett and Jerry Weintraub, was a people person. He knew how to promote, and he knew how to play and he made life easier and more interesting for a whole generation of up-and-coming promoters and often-unappreciated venue managers.
“Terry had this unique blend. We’re in a people business and he more than anybody was the first guy I saw who had mastered it – he could talk to anybody,” said Irving Azoff, Azoff Music. “He had the power of persuasion, he had the golden tongue. Whether he was talking to an artist or a CEO or whoever. You can tell from the outpouring of all those Concerts West people, that he could recognize talent, executive talent; all those people are still doing great. He nurtured people and nurtured artists. He really cared.”
Mike McGee, BarMac Consulting, first met Bassett 48 years ago when McGee was running the Monroe (La.) Civic Center and Bassett was promoting Three Dog Night. McGee was new to the business and just 23. That scenario plays over and over again with Bassett, who was generally less than 10 years senior to the future leaders he mentored.
“Terry was doing things early on that others followed. I always felt Terry was on top of the game, unassuming, not over the top like ‘look how smart I am.’ He was just steady,” said McGee, who is consulting for Smart Financial Centre, Sugar Land, Texas. “There was always a sincerity about him you don’t find in a business like that, then or now, for the most part. He just had a unique quality about him.”
And he made it easy for the venue manager. Claire Rothman, who was running the Fabulous Forum, Inglewood, Calif., when Bassett was most active, was “fascinated by him and I fell in love with him. He was so sweet, loving and fun … and easy to work with.
“He told you what he needed, and you told him how much of it you could do and there was never any argument,” Rothman recalled. Sometimes, promoters would request letting fans rush the stage when the act came on, for the thrill of it all. “You really can’t do that, it’s not safe for the audience,” Rothman said, but with Terry even that discussion would be positive, like letting just the first three rows come up. With all the lights in his face, the artist can’t really tell the difference.
“Things like that, he was easy to work with,” Rothman said. “And he was an honorable man.”
Even more than that, he had some very important artists, “that’s the first thing. Second, he did everything he could to please the artist while recognizing that the person in charge of the building had the responsibility of the safety of the audience,” Rothman recalled. “Our whole group always looked forward to a date when Terry would be there because it was a happy time without a lot of stress.”
Tavares totally agreed.
Bo Diddley with Terry Bassett backstage. (Courtesy Carl Dunn)
“Terry was such an interesting guy. If we go back in time when I first got started in the business, back then the business of being a promoter was not exactly for the faint of heart. Those were tough times. It was highly competitive. There was a lot of snippiness and a lot of rough guys in the business and, interestingly, no one ever had a negative word to say about Terry. That is nothing short of stunning,” Tavares said.
Especially given that Concerts West was the first real national promoter in a business based on regional, well-respected territories. “No one invaded territories, but these guys did. But I can honestly say I never heard a negative word about Terry, never,” Tavares said.
Azoff believes that is because Bassett would partner with important local promoters and because he was everybody’s friend. “There were artists who wanted consistency of marketing and everything being done the same every night. I think he softened the message a little bit,” Azoff said.
Dave Furano, currently with Rock &Brews restaurant chain, met Bassett in the early 70s when he was working for Bill Graham Presents, also a national promoter, but with a much more limited roster. “We would pay each other a toll when we passed through each other’s cities.” He recalled how Concerts West and Jerry Weintraub’s Management III worked directly with the bands and the buildings eliminating all the middle guys.
“They could offer bands more bottom line and that’s why they got the big tours,” Furano said of a scenario that sounds commonplace today but was highly innovative in the ’70s.
And Bassett knew the business inside and out. There was a “Bassett Way of Doing Business,” said Milt Arenson, Fanatics. Arenson started working for Bassett at Facility Merchandising Inc. in the late '70s.
“I was just a 20-year-old kid, played ball, just come out to California. I met Terry and we got back together when FMI started. He was one of the founding partners of FMI with Irving Azoff, Howard Kaufman, and Bob Geddes,” Arenson recalled.
“Howard Kaufman gave me my opportunity to get into the business, which I’m forever grateful for. But I’d unequivocally say that as a 22–year–old with eyes wide open in a business that can send a lot of people in the wrong direction, Terry Bassett was a real mentor to me,” Arenson said.
“He taught me a lot more than just go and cut a deal. It’s about relationships, what they mean, the long haul. It’s not a hit-and-run type of thing. That’s what I practice every day since. It’s not to do business with someone for five minutes, it’s for as long as I possibly can.”
Arenson worked with Bassett at FMI from 1981-1986, when the company was sold to MCA. And then Arenson bought the company back from MCA in 1995, before selling it to Fanatics two years ago.
His success, he says, tied into Terry Bassett, including the fun side of it. Arenson fondly recalls a gang of guys, most of them still in the business, hanging out at Bassett’s Santa Monica, Calif., house or on the beach to ride bikes or play tennis. “It was a pretty illustrious group of people. My friend Mark Graham whom Terry was also very close to, Irving, Fred Rosen (former head of Ticketmaster). Any given day it could be any number of people. It was the early 80s. I didn’t know who they all were; I didn’t know a whole lot about much. Terry brought everyone together.”
His strength was people. “Terry taught me most about people. You have to trust in relationships and keep them and it’s not something you do at a desk and a phone. You have to be out there and see them. It’s not just about a show or an event, it’s being with them when it isn’t important,” Arenson said.
Fred Rosen shared a little-known accomplishment he attributes directly to Terry Bassett – Ticketmaster’s rise to the top of ticketing. “The reason I went to California and the person who convinced me to come to California was Terry,” Rosen said. “If you go back to the beginning of Ticketmaster, we were in New York and Chicago. We got a chance to do the US Festival (in San Bernardino, Calif.) and I came out and met Terry and a bunch of people out here.”
Rosen then flew home and set up an office in California with leaders like Lou Dickstein, who came up from Dallas. “So, we’re up and running and Terry calls me in February in New York, after I only met him once, and he said, ‘Fred, if you don’t come out and do this, it isn’t going to get done the way it needs to be done.”
April 1, 1983, Rosen arrived in L.A. and Bassett proceeded to introduce him to key players, like Rothman at the Forum and Brian Murphy at Avalon Attractions and Ticketmaster, in six months, was off and running strong.
“I loved Terry. I called him TB and he called me Fearless,” Rosen said. “TB was a guy who, whenever he called you, you started to smile. His analysis, his understanding of the business, the people and the landscape … there was no one better. Even a meal with Terry was an adventure. He would order the meal and call for the check at the same time.
Charles Stone, who promoted all the Elvis dates; Terry Bassett; and, with his back to the camera, Merlin Littlefield, who once famously told Garth Brooks to take his songs and go back to Oklahoma. (Courtesy Carl Dunn)
Bassett was also “acutely smart; disarmingly smart. He knew where all the bodies were, where all the money was. He knew how to make a deal. He had great relationships,” Rosen said. If you wanted an analysis on how a band would do or how to get to a venue or promoter to have a conversation, “Terry was the guy.”
Sports was key to Bassett’s zest for life and business. He had nicknames for most everyone he was close to. Sims Hinds, who now works for OVG Facilities (Oak View Group also owns VenuesNow), was Bonus Baby to Bassett; Bassett was Coach to Hinds. Hinds got into the business, in fact discovered it was a business and not just a bunch of groupies hanging onto bands, back in Atlanta when he met Terry Bassett.
“He was combination great friend, boss, mentor, surrogate big brother, like a life coach, how to do things right,” Hinds said.
“He taught me the value of long-term relationships. I’d be in a settlement and he’d say, ‘Look, you can argue with the tour accountant over $100, but it may cost you many times over that in life.’ You want to build the relationship, build the trust because, believe me, at some point you will need that,’” Hinds recalled.
Tavares confirmed that Terry Bassett Way of Doing Business, remembering a Bad Company date in Providence. “Back in the day, every time you went to a settlement, promoters would bitch and moan about different charges, this seems high to me, why do you need so many police officers? Some were more difficult to deal with than others,” Tavares said.
“But with Terry, if he ever questioned anything on your settlement, it was done in such a gentlemanly fashion that you didn’t feel like someone was trying to chisel you down,” Tavares said. Even when Bassett questioned a 45-officer police detail, which was excessively high, for Bad Company, he just said, ‘Wow, quite a few police officers compared to what we usually do here. What is the rationale here?’”
Tavares responded that he was “as surprised as you are. I think the name, Bad Company, freaked the cops. They didn’t do their research to find out Bad Company weren’t bad guys.”
“He just laughed. I said there is nothing I can do about this, they showed up, but I’ll make it up to you in the future. Terry said, ‘OK, fine, no problem.’ Someone else would have been jumping up and down.”
Hinds was 21 when he met Bassett in Atlanta and learned from him to respect venue managers because he was interested in coming back to that building 30 times, not once. “He found out what the building needed to be successful. If the building manager needs a favor for the mayor and it’s doable, you help him out,” Hinds said.
Hinds’ first job was working in Concerts West’s Atlanta office with Jay Hagerman and Dick Curtis.
At the time, Bassett was based in Dallas and Hulett was in Bellevue, Wash., headquarters for Concerts West. The money side was handled by Kaye Smith Enterprises (Danny Kaye and Les Smith), who owned a number of radio and TV stations and were the original owners of the Seattle Mariners. When Jerry Weintraub bought in, Bassett moved to L.A. and so did Hinds.
Bassett also started a business with Azoff promoting John McEnroe Tennis Tournaments as celebrity tournaments like concerts, then FMI tour merchandise, then Eric Chandler, then opened Irvine (Calif.) Meadows Amphitheatre and owned some radio stations for a while. Late in his career, he promoted Warren Miller Filmfests, again treating it like a concert. He retired at the age of 50 to play softball and enjoy life.
The list of people Bassett mentored is long and illustrious, including John Meglen and Paul Gongaware, AEG/Concerts West; Jeff Apregan with Apregan Entertainment, and Bruce Lahti, retired, who worked for Olympia Stadium in Detroit at the time Bassett was promoting concerts nationally and later managed Roger Whittaker for 27 years.
“Back in the mid-70s until the '80s, I was Concerts West’s local guy in Detroit. I worked with Linc Cavalieri at Olympia Stadium. I did most of their advertising,” Lahti said.
Other promoters would do their own advertising, but Concerts West guys were on the road, so they used someone local to place advertising and handle catering, Lahti recalled. “They involved the venue in doing it in a lot of cases.” And that was the beginning of a new respect for the venue guys across the nation. And seldom did they go to the agents — they went direct to the act’s manager, also a new way of doing business then, though it’s more common today.
Bassett was “one of the first to say it’s not all about work — on the road he created a play atmosphere, whether it was softball games, renting out movie theaters, he did all kinds of just incredible stuff,” Azoff confirmed.
“He was one of the first guys to say, ‘Hey, music is a big commodity. It shouldn’t just be about sports.’ He got the buildings to respect how important rock and roll music was if you do it right.”
Bassett is survived by his wife, Carol.