STADIUM ROCKERS LOSE TURF BATTLE

He has played to sold-out crowds in Munich and London and on the grounds of Shane Castle in Ireland.

His shows have graduated from indoor arenas seating thousands to mammoth outdoor stages where the global following is in the millions.

San Diego had a chance to host Bruce Springsteen--and turned him down.

Several months ago, promoters approached Bill Wilson, manager of San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. The stadium has played host to the Rolling Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, and The Who. Wilson was asked about dates in September. Could Springsteen be squeezed in among Charger, Padre and Aztec games?

Wilson said no. He was worried at the time about a Padres pennant drive.

He said no despite the fact that, by his own admission, the City of Los Angeles may net $2 million in revenue from four Springsteen shows scheduled for the Los Angeles Coliseum later this month. He said no despite the fact that Springsteen has played to rollicking sold-out crowds in stadiums all over the country.

But not San Diego.

“There’s no way we’ll do it with festival seating, where everyone sits on the field,” Wilson said. “We won’t do that anymore . . . as a result of disasters that occurred in the past.”

No-festival-seating is now a policy of the Stadium Authority Board, according to its chairman, David Lippitt, and Assistant City Manager John Lockwood. Lippitt said the policy would stand. The only time festival seating would even be considered, much less allowed, he said, would be the winter, with a month set aside for re-sodding the field.

Michael Fahn, the promoter who approached Wilson, is half of the San Diego-based Fahn and Silva Presents. He had tried to book Michael Jackson in the stadium. The stadium had no interest in him either.

“There’s no question,” Fahn said, “that the current policy damages San Diego entertainment. I hope on a political level the city will someday see the light. After Proposition 13 and all the other fiscal calamities of the past few years, San Diego, like any city, needs the money.”

Fahn had been advised by Springsteen’s managers to “keep us posted” on the possibility of dates in San Diego. When it became apparent that no such dates would occur, they turned their attention elsewhere.

Lippitt said Springsteen was discussed four to five months ago but never voted on by the stadium board. Nor was it referred to the City Council, which has authority over the Stadium Authority.

“Three years ago we had festival seating for rock concerts,” Lippitt said, “and the area was so torn up with broken glass and cigarette butts that the turf was all but destroyed. We can’t do that to our major tenants (the Padres, Chargers and Aztecs). It’s not that we’re going to a Super Bowl or World Series in ’85 . . . It’s just that those tenants produce a lot of revenue (about $6.8 million a year), and we owe them our allegiance.”

But rock concerts also generate revenue for a stadium that is owned, not by the Padres, Chargers or Aztecs, but by the taxpayers of San Diego. George Mitrovich, a six-year member and past chairman of the Stadium Authority Board, said the 1981 Rolling Stones concert netted the city close to a quarter of a million dollars. He called it “the biggest single payday in city and stadium history,” which Lockwood confirmed. Springsteen, he said, would have brought more. And Mitrovich, for one, preferred “The Boss” to the Stones.

“He’s been doing shows almost everywhere,” he said. “He did one in Denver recently. They have a natural-turf field. He did one at Wembley Stadium in England. I fail to see why we myopically left ourselves out, especially with the luxury of a choice.” (Mitrovich said he didn’t remember the Stadium Authority Board even discussing the issue.)

A yes to Springsteen would have done a lot, he said, to pay off the $9.4-million debt the stadium accrued for last year’s expansion. It would have helped to pay off the nearly $21 million still owed for construction of the stadium in 1967. As it is, that debt won’t be retired until 2002, when Bruce Springsteen will be 53.

“With the Stones,” Mitrovich said, “we found a lot of foreign objects on the playing field. There’s no question that the turf sustained considerable damage. But I think the present condition of the field is far superior to what it was in the past.”

Since the Stones’ concert, and a litany of abuse that left the field in roughly the shape of ground beef, the old groundskeeper was canned and a new one brought in. He has the turf in immaculate condition--its best ever.

“The head groundskeeper (Brian Bossard, who held that position at Cleveland Stadium for years) has done just an exquisite job,” Mitrovich said. “I have so much confidence in his ability to bring the turf back to excellent condition. That’s a luxury we didn’t have in the past.”

Even so, Bossard is hardly excited by the notion of hordes of Boss maniacs rampaging over the turf he has worked to nurture and preserve.

Bossard said, “In relation to rock shows, groundskeepers concern themselves with one law: Murphy’s. Anything that can go wrong will, and almost always does.”

Bossard was forced to rebuild from scratch a Cleveland Stadium field torn asunder three times after shows by Rod Stewart, Fleetwood Mac and Springsteen. Rock fans, he said, were “Born to Run,” and trample, a groundskeeper’s artistry.

“It’s important for stadiums to make money,” he said, “but you have to look at the feasibility of putting in a whole new field each time you do a rock show. A concert brings so many variables. Will it be hot? Will it rain? How big will the stage be? How long will it take to put up? How much damage will it do? If I have ‘the window’ to fix the field--the time frame to reassemble the sod--I don’t mind a rock show. Wait a minute--yes, I do. But it’s a lot easier to fix with the time. Even with the time, it’s a royal pain.”

Bossard sees his “bottom line as professional responsibility. As a professional, I deal with other professionals, like in pro sports,” he said. “My job is to get it ready for them.”

But it is not owned by them. The stadium, by law, is a publicly financed multipurpose arena. Sports teams are the prime tenants, but no formal rule excludes major entertainment acts from serving others of the populace who may or may not like sports. Regardless of the yen of a fan, musical or sporting, the city has a duty, Mitrovich said, to pay off its debts as quickly as possible, and with as many bold strokes as it can muster.

Springsteen, he said, would have been a bold stroke.

The stadium has been the focal point of some of the city’s best moments in rock--the Stones drew 75,000, about twice the number for Simon and Garfunkel in 1983. But The Who played in a rainstorm. Their fans made the field a swamp. Two football games later, it was ruined. Its condition led, in part, to the firing of not only the groundskeeper but also the stadium manager (Wilson’s predecessor).

“The Mission Valley flood of 1980 also hurt tremendously,” said Lippitt. “The pipes underneath filled up with silt, failing to give proper irrigation. We had one game with the Dallas Cowboys in 1983 that was nothing but a quagmire. We fear such a thing happening again.”

The turf and its delicate condition appear to have given stadium management something close to a phobia over festival seating.

“Now, if we had an artificial surface,” Lippitt said, “we could bring in giant vacuum cleaners and suck up all that glass and debris. But artificial turf is impractical for a city like ours, where the weather is fine year round. We don’t mind having Springsteen, but not in our heavy season. And I doubt that he’d play here in the winter.”

Lippitt said the city spent $500,000 in re-irrigating and rebuilding the turf after the erosion of recent years. Not wanting to jeopardize such an investment makes sense. Several months ago, however, the stadium played host to something called the “Tractor Pull and Mud Bog,” in which giant vehicles sloshed through tons of mud in gooey competition. Wouldn’t that do damage to the grass?

“They operated only on the side of the field,” Wilson said. “They covered the ground with a ‘geotextile’ material and put plywood over that. They piled dirt on top of that. It’s a small limited track area. It’s possible. It worked.”

Wilson, who arrived last year after three years of managing the Rose Bowl, said Jim Hardy, a friend of his who runs the Los Angeles Coliseum, was making a huge mistake. Booking Springsteen for four shows, with festival seating, Wilson said, would torture Hardy’s turf.

“The Raiders and USC (the Coliseum’s two main tenants) will be furious,” Wilson said. “You can bet on it.”

But they don’t own the Coliseum. Wilson said San Diego could have hosted Springsteen this month with a “roll-on” stage and no one jiving on the turf. The Beach Boys and Linda Ronstadt performed under similar constraints, and, he said, their shows were smash successes.

Wilson, who is 53, admitted he is not a Springsteen fan. Lockwood, who is 54, said he isn’t either. If they were younger, would they have been more motivated to grant an exception and book the Boss for what could have been a landmark show in an otherwise drab year for the stadium?

Promoter Fahn thinks so, as does Brian Murphy, president of Avalon Attractions, who’s promoting Springsteen in Los Angeles. He said San Diego is, in 1985, a “closed door” for major rock acts outdoors.

Mitrovich said age, in such matters, looms as a factor. “You might say there exists among certain members of the Stadium Authority a generation gap,” he said. “Maybe that accounts for the absence of appreciation for the splendid talents of a Springsteen. But the generation gap is usually overcome by the chance of making a lot of money.”

In this case it wasn’t. And on Thursday, when the Boss has his first L.A. show, San Diego fans can only fantasize that such a night could have happened here.