A Plea to the Center: Let Bonnie Raitt Rock

Three blocks west of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, as the Fire Bird flies, is a sign of special importance for our most illustrious local concert hall.

The sign says Raitt Street. It points in a direction that could bring the Center profit, fame and the esteem of a large segment of the community. It also points forward, into a more versatile, artistically comprehensive future.

The Center should follow the sign and make a serious pitch to book Bonnie Raitt, who, at the moment, is the most celebrated rock ‘n’ roll singer in the land.

Take the four Grammy awards Raitt won last month, factor in her nearly 20 years of acclaim as one of the finest, most tradition-conscious performers on the rock scene, and top it off with the family link to Orange County that the Raitt Street sign signifies (the street is named after Raitt’s great-grandfather, a pioneer Orange County dairyman; Bonnie’s father, Broadway actor John Raitt, was raised in Fullerton). It all adds up to the perfect repertoire-broadening vehicle for the Center, which has never presented a rock performance.

A Raitt concert would be a fitting first step toward what should be a goal for the Center: squeezing occasional, select rock shows into its schedule. Drawing only upon performers who have shown unusual artistic merit, these concerts would take on the aura of special events, the kind that bring credit and cachet to the halls where they occur. Call it the Carnegie Hall factor, after the venerable New York City theater, where thinking-person’s pop has long coexisted with the classics.

So what are the prospects of the Center getting Raitt, or some other rock figure of comparable worth and prominence?

Don’t hold your breath.

Without naming specific acts, Thomas R. Kendrick, the Center’s president, said Tuesday that there isn’t any firm rule against booking pop or rock. But Kendrick cited a string of obstacles that, tied together, form a Gordian knot that would have to be undone for rock to play the Center.

Anyone have a sword?

Among the obstacles Kendrick points to:

* Rock doesn’t fall into the “Four Disciplines” of symphonic music, ballet, opera and musical theater that the Center sees as its primary mission.

* The Center is almost fully booked, making it difficult to fit anything outside the Big Four into the schedule.

* Even if the Center wanted to do rock shows, it wouldn’t be able to lure suitable attractions away from places like the Pacific Amphitheatre and Irvine Meadows, which have economic advantages that allow them to cut more lucrative deals with performers.

The first obstacle is arbitrary. Nobody disputes the notion that the Center’s first allegiance should be to the classics. Nevertheless, it has found room in the past for big band jazz and jazz-pop fusion. Johnny Cash played the Center in January, 1988--the only show so far by a performer in the postwar pop/rock musical tradition that springs from blues, folk and country sources. In a hopeful development, the Center recently announced a forward-looking contemporary jazz series with concerts by the Modern Jazz Quartet and the Kronos Quartet, Branford Marsalis, and a quartet that includes Pat Metheny and Herbie Hancock. Obviously, the Disciplines are not absolute.

That leaves money and scheduling as the thorniest barriers to rock at the Center.

With their larger seating capacities and their access to parking and food service revenues, Irvine Meadows and the Pacific Amphitheatre are in a position to top any bid the Center might make for a given act. In 97 or 98 cases out of 100, rock and pop acts may decide to maximize their profits by playing the amphitheaters (although the 2,500-seat Celebrity Theatre, in the same basic size range as the 3,000-seat Center, has managed to pull its share of rock and pop acts, including such highly regarded names as K.D. Lang and Luther Vandross).

It’s those occasional exceptions to the profit-maximization rules that would allow rock at the Center to be something special. Instead of the usual plastic and concrete setting, act and audience would be treated to the nicest performing space in the county.

It won’t be easy to land those special rock shows. When Bonnie Raitt plays Orange County again, she well may opt to cash in at one of the amphitheaters.

Raitt’s Los Angeles-based manager, Danny Goldberg, said in an interview that he is unfamiliar with the Orange County Performing Arts Center and that Raitt’s touring plans call for her to play bigger venues. “That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t get Bonnie’s interest. She might have an attraction to that sort of breakthrough, so I would certainly pass (an invitation to play the Center) on to her.”

It can’t hurt to try, with Raitt and with acts of similar merit.

The first step would be for Center officials to express clearly and firmly a desire to present an appropriate rock performer (meaning one with strong artistic credentials and an adult audience that won’t stomp on the chairs or tear up the carpet). Then it should solicit proposals from such leading area rock promoters as the Nederlander Organization and Avalon Attractions, who might be willing to divert appropriate acts to the Center during the outdoor season and who might welcome the chance to promote at the Center during the November-to-April off season for outdoor shows.

Kendrick said “we talked to Avalon a year and a half ago” but at the time, he said, the Encino-based promoter found problems of scheduling and economics at the Center to be insurmountable. However, Brian Murphy, president of Avalon Attractions, said he couldn’t recall any contact with the Center since “it first opened (in 1986) and we called down to find out information about it.”

Is Murphy still interested in promoting shows at the Center?

“Absolutely,” he said. “We would be very sensitive to their needs, and to what their facility is all about.”

In any case, another round of promoter contacts is in order, with the Center making clear that this time it is earnest about attempting a trial-run rock show.

What’s in it for the Center? If an outside promoter runs the shows--the most likely scenario given the insider-oriented nature of the rock concert business--the Center stands to make a building rental fee of $5,000 for each concert without any risk of loss. More important, it stands to make itself relevant to a broader cross-section of the Orange County public.

The pocket money, and that wider public, may seem unimportant for a concert hall that has had unusual success in filling its performance calendar and filling seats. But things change, including the flush economic times in which the Center has spent its infancy.

Boom times in Orange County have made it possible for the Center to live with large deficits--last year the gap between ticket revenues and operating expenses was $2.9 million, according to figures released by the Center. Private donors have made up the annual shortfalls. Add a recession to the economic picture, and fund raising will become far more difficult. The schedule also will become harder to fill, as local symphony and opera groups cut back offerings in response to money problems of their own.

Rock concerts won’t be a cure-all in a recession, but a few extra rental nights a year would be helpful in an economic pinch. For practical as well as artistic reasons, it makes sense for the Center to make a serious commitment to introducing itself to the rock world.