Rockers Rally for Jailed Promoter : Benefit: A Sunday concert will help pay legal bills for founder of Goldenvoice, who pleaded guilty to drug charges.

A good concert promoter tries to get an accurate reading of the numbers before an event.

Gary Tovar was widely considered an especially good promoter. He was a key force in fostering the Southern California punk and alternative-rock concert scene since 1981, when he founded the production company Goldenvoice.

Now Tovar has a big event scheduled, and he says the numbers don’t look good.

“I talked to my lawyer this morning and he said it’s a five to 10’er,” Tovar, 40, said in a recent interview. Tovar wasn’t talking about predicted margins of profit or loss. He was calling from Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix, and he was guessing at the number of years he will have to serve in prison on federal marijuana charges. Having pleaded guilty in November to four criminal counts, Tovar faces sentencing July 6.

While Tovar waits in jail, where he has been held without bail since his arrest on March 9, 1991, some of the rockers whose careers he helped build will play a benefit concert to raise money for his legal bills. Appearing Sunday at the Hollywood Palladium will be Social Distortion, Perry Farrell’s new band Porno for Pyros, Thelonious Monster, Bug Lamp, the Meat Puppets, Tender Fury and Firehose.

Social Distortion headlined two nights at the Palladium in April and normally wouldn’t consider a return engagement this soon, but the band’s manager, Jim Guerinot, said that Social Distortion “threw out the rule book” because of what Tovar meant to the Orange County band in its early-’80s scuffling days, when leader Mike Ness was having drug problems of his own.

“Time and time again, Mike Ness was in jail, and time and time again I was going to Gary to get money to bail him out,” Guerinot said. “It didn’t take half a second for us to know we were going to do (the benefit). He’d always been there for us.”

Paul Jarosz, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Tovar, said that the promoter was indicted as the “organizer or supervisor” of a marijuana-trafficking ring that sought to purchase its merchandise in Arizona for resale in California and elsewhere. Jarosz said that $681,000 in cash was seized from the drug ring during a 1990 investigation, and that authorities implicated the suspects in a conspiracy to acquire about 356 pounds of marijuana.

Tovar was indicted with eight others. Jarosz said that one of the nine stood trial and was convicted; all others have pleaded guilty. Jarosz said that Tovar pleaded to two counts of conspiracy to possess marijuana with intent to distribute, one count of attempted possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute, and one count of operating a continuing criminal enterprise. The prosecutor said that the possible penalty Tovar faces for those charges ranges from a minimum sentence of time already served, to life in prison.

Musicians and observers of the local concert business credit Tovar with transforming a club-based punk scene by booking major shows in venues that could hold 1,000 to 4,000 fans.

“He was one of the first to bring in some of the big punk bands from overseas, when no one else would bring in bands like PiL,” said Dean Naleway, co-owner of the Hollywood-based, punk-oriented record label Triple X.

“He pretty much cracked the whole thing wide open. If it wasn’t for him, a lot of us growing up in the area wouldn’t have been able to see some of these bands. None of the bigger promoters would consider taking a chance with these bands because of the violence that might occur, and nobody wanted to house a bunch of punk-rockers.”

“He was doing bands that not only would nobody else do, but they’d never even heard of them,” said Avalon Attractions General Manager Moss Jacobs, who has known Tovar since the earliest days of Goldenvoice. Goldenvoice and the larger, more mainstream Avalon frequently co-promote dates, including the upcoming “Lollapalooza” concerts at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre.

Today, punk-based alternative rock has become a huge commercial force, with the success of bands like Jane’s Addiction, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana--all of whom Goldenvoice presented before they were widely known.

“I was really proud of that,” said Tovar. “We carved our niche, and I knew eventually that if you hammered something hard enough, it would come about. It’s not like these heavy metal bands that get big in 15 minutes. With the kind of music I did, it took years. I’m proud of the Peppers and Jane’s and Social D, of course.”

Things were different when Tovar started promoting shows in the early ‘80s, recalled Jack Grisham, the Tender Fury singer who played on early Goldenvoice bills as a member of T.S.O.L.

“Gary was supporting bands that didn’t get on the radio, had no record company, had no booking agents--nothing. He took a lot of chances with people who were unknowns and underdogs. Doing big shows like that, it really opened the music up to a lot of people’s eyes.”

Tovar grew up in Los Angeles and Huntington Beach, where his family moved when he was 12. He attended Golden West College and Fullerton College, then moved to Santa Barbara and started promoting concerts. He moved on to the Los Angeles rock scene, and relocated back in Huntington Beach in the early ‘80s, remaining based there for most of his 9 1/2-year tenure as Goldenvoice’s owner.

Tovar’s concert promoting career stopped with his arrest. After he was jailed, he turned over ownership in Goldenvoice to two key assistants, Paul Tollett and Rick Van Santen. Tollett said that Goldenvoice promoted 110 concerts in 1991, and projects 180 shows this year.

The federal government invoked a law that allows it to seize assets linked to an illegal drug enterprise, but Goldenvoice was not affected by the seizures, according to Reid Pixler, the assistant U.S. attorney handling the property forfeiture case. Tovar forfeited a home in Hawaii and a 1986 Jaguar, according to Rick Jones, one of Tovar’s defense lawyers. Under a stipulation reached with prosecutors earlier this month, Tovar will be able to keep his condominium in Colorado.

Tovar said he didn’t want to comment specifically about his case until after he is sentenced.

“I’ve gotten used to my fate,” he said in an even voice. “Everything’s OK. I wish I could be with my wife. I miss her most of all.”

Tovar said that proceeds from the upcoming benefit will help him “clean the slate” on legal debts that he said have totaled $75,000 so far and will grow if he appeals his sentence.

“I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. Sometimes people get lost in the shuffle. I’m grateful they came through for me.”