Starting a Fire at the Box Office : What’s the secret of Joel’s new appeal? Look to the growing impact of his cross-generational attraction

Thanks to such hits as “Just the Way You Are” and “Allentown,” Billy Joel has registered seven straight Top 10 albums. Yet he’s never been able to sell out more than two nights at an arena in the Los Angeles area.

However, Joel has sold out five nights--starting Saturday--at the 14,000-seat Los Angeles Sports Arena.

His current album, “Storm Front,” has sold 2 million copies--respectable, but not spectacular for someone of his stature.

So why the popularity explosion?

A Calendar survey of concert promoters and booking agents around the country suggests that Joel’s years of hit singles and consistently strong word-of-mouth about his flashy stage performances play a part in the escalation of ticket demand.

The most crucial element, however, appears to be that Joel has tapped into the increasingly important factor in pop music: cross-generational appeal.

There have been instances of this twin generation lure ever since mothers and teen-age daughters screamed together at Elvis Presley’s shows in the early ‘70s in Las Vegas. The Grateful Dead also demonstrated early that it could draw from various age groups. But the number of artists who appeal to more than one age group has increased dramatically.

The key in Joel’s case is that he has held on to his longtime fans, most of whom are now in their 30s, while also tapping into the MTV generation with the hit single “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” He’s getting the yuppies and the “puppies.”

“Two things are very important when you look at Billy,” Miami promoter Jack Boyle said. “He puts on the best live show you’ve ever seen, so anyone who ever saw him wants to see him again. And his hit with ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ brought him the under-25s.”

Joel’s agent, Dennis Arfa, agreed: “ ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ reached a generation of school kids from five years old on up and that was a big deal.”

Joel is not alone in this regard. To varying degrees, Elton John, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart and Eric Clapton have also benefited from cross-generational appeal.

The twin generation effect is the latest wild card that promoters must bring into play when trying to measure the potential drawing power of pop attractions in a business where arena and stadium headliners in North America generated an estimated $670 million last year. Gone are the days when they could just rely on record sales to tell how many tickets an artist is going to sell in a given market.

“The concert business right now is excellent,” said Brian Murphy, president of Avalon Attractions, Southern California’s leading concert promoter, which is presenting the Joel concerts here.

“Since the first week of January, I don’t think a weekend has gone by without at least one major arena show going on sale, and I can’t think of one that hasn’t done well. Billy Joel, Janet Jackson, Phil Collins--it’s staggering, the kind of business going on out there.

“What’s amazing to me,” he continued, “is it’s doing it with a (slow) record market that’s not corresponding. I try to look at a correlation between album sales and ticket sales, but right now I’m not seeing it that way, like it used to be a few years ago. God, I wish I knew the answer.”

For one major booking agent, the answer lies in lifestyle of the yuppie half of pop’s twin generations.

“The demographic of the country has changed dramatically,” said one agent, who asked not to be named for fear of alienating potential clients. “The older 20s through early 40s demographic has increased tremendously and as those people grow older, they get less adventurous in what concerts they go see. The Billy Joel or Paul McCartney-type concert appeals to people who don’t go out a lot, but their (shows are enough of) an event to get them out.”

Concurred Missy Worth, who books shows at the Universal Amphitheatre: “The older baby boomers are not buying many records, but they’ll still go out and see the bands they love.”

“Young” bands--including the Cure, New Kids on the Block, Guns N’ Roses and Depeche Mode--can do sensational business at the box-office, but the veterans are generally the safest concert attraction.

“Whose tickets have done well recently? The time-proven artists who deliver a great show, like Pink Floyd and Genesis,” said promoter Boyle. “The price of concert tickets has gone up dramatically, and when (fans) put the money in, it’s not the new acts they want, but people who have proven over time they can deliver on stage.”

Statistics bear him out. The two biggest tours of 1989 were by the two bands with the longest history of active rock acts: the Rolling Stones and the Who. They grossed an estimated $98 million and $41.7 million, respectively. Add Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart and Tom Petty to the list, along with Pink Floyd and Genesis, and you’ve got a roster dominated by arena veterans.

The top concert draws today don’t even eally need new albums. Neil Diamond set the Forum record of 10 sold-out shows last year without having had a hit single since “I’m Alive” in 1983. Even acts with younger audiences can manage quite well on the road without regard to their records.

Even most of the so-called alternative attractions that have done well recently, such as the B-52’s and New Order, have relatively lengthy histories behind them.

The riskiest venture for a promoter is the new act. Even album sales comparable to Joel’s would rarely translate into the kind of concert action he’s creating.

“Concert promoting is not the seat-of-the-pants business it was 10 years ago when you’d listen to the radio and something would hit you and you’d say, ‘I’ll book it!’,” said Avalon’s Brian Murphy.

“We do audience surveys. We want to find out more about the concert-goers, the things they like and don’t like. . . . And we call up every (major record store) in the area and ask for their top 20 sellers in order.

“Then we call each radio station in the community and ask their Top 20s. If you’re getting airplay but not selling albums, there’s a danger. People who want to listen to but not buy it may not want to go see it.”

Same goes at the Universal, Worth said. “We look at all the factors,” she said. “We look at radio airplay, which radio station it’s played on, how many units sold in the L.A. area, the demographics of the audience that’s buying the record.”

But she added after a pause: “And then you go on a gut feeling.”

Among the gut feelings that proved recent successes for Worth were the B-52’s, who sold out four nights at the Universal, and New Order.

“With the newer or alternative bands you don’t know how they’ll do, but if they’re big on (Los Angeles FM radio station) KROQ and in alternative sales at record stores, you can pretty much sell out their shows here,” she said. “When (the B-52’s) played here, they had a national Top 10 hit. But they didn’t sell off that. They sold off the KROQ play.”

Alex Hodges, vice president in charge of concert booking for the Nederlander Organization, which in Southern California operates the Greek Theatre, the Pacific Amphitheatre and the Pantages Theatre, also likes to play some creative hunches, especially in package shows. Last year he was involved in putting together a tour co-billing guitar whizzes Stevie Ray Vaughan (whom Hodges also manages) and Jeff Beck.

“Stevie’s record had been out and he’d already toured part of the country, and Jeff’s album wasn’t out yet when we had to sell the show and make it work,” Hodges said, admitting that even he had some doubts about the package’s drawing power, hoping for perhaps 8,500 in Los Angeles. But when the show sold 14,000 tickets at the Sports Arena, it was viewed as a tremendous success. Scaled down expectations are the rule today, even with the biggest events.

“There were doubters even for McCartney and for how many stadium shows the Stones could do,” Hodges said. “Now people say, ‘McCartney, that’s great!’ But at the time no one really knew how well he’d do. And I knew Billy Joel would be a success, but I don’t know if I could have gauged how many nights he could do here.”

But one byproduct of all this success may be that expectations are being scaled up.

“The Stones and McCartney probably regenerated people into going out to concerts,” Hodges said. “And the New Kids on the Block (the one huge concert success among newer acts) have stimulated a new audience in big, big, big numbers.”

But New Kids aside, the future of the concert business is now on the cusp between generations, says Tom Ross, head of the concerts division of Creative Artists Agency, which numbers Jackson, Madonna, Diamond and Clapton among its clients.

“We weeded out a lot of the older acts that aren’t great performers or singers,” he said. “The ones that continue are great acts. Now it’s up to the younger ones to prove they are too, and unfortunately it’s the case that there aren’t as many great performing acts as studio acts.”

Billy Joel’s agent, Dennis Arfa, is looking forward to the flowering of the baby boomers’ children, whom he likes to call baby bloomers .

“I think the baby-bloom generation will want to have its own heroes,” he said. “Some of the true superstars from the earlier generations will sustain, but we’re still living in the ‘70s, ‘80s and even late ‘60s, under the wing of the Beatles. But the next generation has to get out from under that. Right now the concert business is healthy for superstars, but as time goes on we’ll realize how many stars there are not .”