Short of a Blockbuster : Only 44 Major Concerts Were Booked in ‘93, the Sparest Season in a Decade

In a year of drastic change for the local outdoor concert market, Orange County music fans were left to choose from the smallest menu of major-venue shows in the county since 1982.

The two big outdoor concert bowls, Irvine Meadows and the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, combined for only 41 concerts during the 1993 season that ended last weekend--28 at Irvine and 13 at the Pacific.

Factor in two additional summer dates at the indoor Anaheim Arena, and a rare Anaheim Stadium show (by Paul McCartney), and the O.C. market attracted only 44 big-venue concerts.

To find a season with leaner pickings, one has to go back 11 years.

Irvine Meadows hosted 38 concerts in 1982, its first full season of operation. The Pacific opened the following year, marking Orange County’s arrival as a heated concert market and launching a frequently cutthroat competition in which the two venues booked as many as 99 shows in a season (1988).

Even when the Southland economy faltered in 1992, Orange County attracted 62 big-venue shows during the outdoor concert season, which lasts roughly from March to mid-November. This year, the downward trend accelerated.

Executives at the two amphitheaters cited the lingering poor economy as one reason for their conservative approach to booking in 1993. But two new developments also contributed heavily to a 29% drop from the number of major concerts staged in 1992: the sale of the Pacific Amphitheatre, and the opening of the Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion in San Bernardino County.

In May, the Nederlander Organization, which had built and operated the 18,700-capacity Pacific, announced that it would sell the venue to its landlord, the Orange County Fair, for $12.5 million. Under the deal’s terms, Nederlander continued to promote shows at the Pacific until season’s end.

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But the agreement called for tighter noise restrictions, in deference to amphitheater neighbors who had long complained, in and out of court, about loud concerts at the Pacific. All 13 shows at the Pacific had been booked before the deal went through; they were allowed to go on under the more liberal noise requirements that had prevailed before the sale was announced. Nederlander did not book any additional dates under the more stringent noise rules that would have applied.

Promoters at both Irvine and the Pacific said that, of the shows they did book, most proved successful.

“If we hadn’t been in the process of selling the venue, we would have done another dozen shows,” said Alex Hodges, Nederlander vice-president in charge of West Coast concert promotion.

“It went great in terms of the concerts we had.” Hodges put the Pacific’s total attendance at “just under 200,000” for the 13 shows. In 1992, the Pacific staged 30 shows, with a total announced attendance of 250,000.

Hodges said that the down economy helped Nederlander at its Los Angeles open-air venue, the Greek Theatre, which he said had a record year with 76 events, 70 of them in-house promotions by Nederlander.

Rather than try to sell out single shows at such bigger venues as the Pacific, Irvine Meadows and the Hollywood Bowl, Hodges said, some acts, including Orange County no-shows Rod Stewart and Tina Turner, chose to play several nights at the 6,200-seat Greek.

The noise restrictions at the Pacific sent Nederlander into the arms of an old rival. It promoted two shows at the 15,000-capacity Irvine Meadows, which had been booked almost exclusively by Nederlander’s longtime antagonist, Avalon Attractions. Nederlander, a national theatrical company, and Avalon, an independent promoter based in Encino, even co-promoted a Dwight Yoakam concert at Irvine.

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This level of cooperation between competitors began as a mutual opponent emerged.

The Blockbuster Pavilion, which holds 16,800 people, staged 21 shows after opening in July. Blockbuster presented 10 acts that skipped Orange County, including Don Henley, Stewart, Turner and Linda Ronstadt.

Eight other acts tried to play both markets. Steely Dan, a hot ticket as it played its first tour since the mid-1970s, sold out shows at both Blockbuster and Irvine Meadows.

But some other acts--promoters mentioned heavy-metal bands Poison and Def Leppard--spread their support too thinly, and promoters said that shows in both markets suffered.

“I would suspect (Blockbuster) bled off as many as 100,000 people out of our attendance,” said Bob Geddes, managing partner at Irvine Meadows. Geddes said that the 28 concerts at Irvine attracted about 315,000 fans, down slightly from last year’s announced total of about 325,000 in 31 dates.

“We did well,” Geddes noted. “We were pleased with what we had. We would have liked to have more quantity, but we were pleased with the quality.”

Geddes said that Irvine’s ’93 season included sellout concerts by Steely Dan, UB40 and two each by Jimmy Buffett and Oingo Boingo. Boingo, Buffett and Van Halen, which played two near-sellouts at the Pacific, were the only headliners who played more than one show in Orange County.

As Hodges and Geddes tell it, Blockbuster Pavilion, an offshoot of the video rental giant, laid out huge sums of cash to entice some big names away from the Orange County amphitheaters and into the Inland Empire.

Hodges said that some of Blockbuster’s offers to acts were even more extreme than what prevailed in the high-stakes bidding wars for talent that historically had raged between Irvine Meadows and the Pacific.

“They made us look like pikers,” he said. “I made an offer for Spin Doctors (to play the Pacific), based on the business I thought we could do . . . and they made me look like chump change.”

Geddes said that Blockbuster “put enormous amounts of money on the table so they would get area exclusives” on performers such as Henley and Stewart. “Blockbuster was in the process of trying to (establish) the facility, and they paid outrageous numbers” to land acts that would give the new amphitheater instant visibility and cachet.

Alan J. DeZon, general manager of the Blockbuster Pavilion, strongly disputed the rival promoters’ complaints about high bidding.

“That’s sour grapes and completely untrue,” he said. “The fact is we were very competitive and became an attractive market. There are some cases where we may have paid a few dollars more, but if a deal doesn’t work, we pass on it. We’re not into the act of throwing stupid money around.”

DeZon said that Blockbuster attracted 175,000 fans--fewer than the 200,000 that the new venue’s operators had hoped to draw in its first year, but enough to make a profit. DeZon declined to say how large a profit it was.

According to Blockbuster’s assistant general manager, Dom Roncace, the venue’s ledger took into account the operating cost of putting on concerts, plus a $300,000 payment to San Bernardino County--the first annual installment that Blockbuster owes the county for advancing $11 million of the pavilion’s construction cost of $13 million.

Based on figures derived from ticket outlets, DeZon said, Orange County residents made up 12% to 13% of Blockbuster’s attendance. DeZon said that the figure rose to 21% for the two shows by Rod Stewart, the most popular act to play Blockbuster and skip Orange County.

DeZon said that next year, with a full season to book acts, Blockbuster is projecting 36 to 40 shows.

In Orange County, promoters foresee a rebound.

“I think it was just one of those things,” Hodges said of the lean 1993 season. “It was real, but it’s an anomaly. I think (Irvine Meadows) can support 60 or more shows (in 1994) if they buy them right. There’s no reason artists should just skip the market, because Orange County is a market where you sell a lot of records, certainly more than out in the Inland Empire.”

With its aggressive competitor, Nederlander, no longer running the Pacific Amphitheatre, the bidding wars within Orange County figure to be reduced, Geddes said. He expects that will enable Irvine Meadows to branch out in its bookings.

“We obviously have an opportunity now, without the fierce competition and significant bloodletting, to do more prospecting on more alternative programming. It’s nice to have a position where any artist who wants to be outdoors in that market has to come to Irvine Meadows.”

In the past, Geddes said, artists’ agents frequently would avoid committing to one of the two Orange County venues in hopes that the bidding would escalate. By knowing early on what the season’s biggest-drawing dates will be, he said, Irvine bookers will have more freedom to put riskier or more unusual shows into the gaps. Geddes said he hopes Irvine will host 50 or more shows next year.

If the Pacific’s new owners have their way, however, Irvine Meadows won’t have the outdoor concert market to itself.

Norbert Bartosik, general manager of the Orange County Fair, said that he intends to seek bids from concert promotion companies to manage and book the Pacific.

“It’s too premature to talk about” who might be enlisted to run the venue, Bartosik said, but he named such leading Southland promoters as Avalon, MCA Concerts and Bill Silva Presents as the kinds of companies he would approach.

Whoever runs the Pacific, it promises to be a different, much smaller venue than in the past--and therefore no rival to Irvine Meadows in terms of booking most of the hottest-drawing acts.

“I don’t see it as an 18,000-seat facility, but a down-scaled version of the facility that was there,” Bartosik said. The Pacific’s vast lawn, which accounted for more than half its capacity, would not be used, he said, leaving it a venue of about 9,000 to 10,000 fixed seats.

At that size, Bartosik said, a wide variety of acts, including rock bands, could continue to play the amphitheater without rekindling the old noise complaints. Noise would not be a problem, Bartosik predicted, because there would be no need to pump music at the high decibel-levels needed to reach fans on a distant lawn.

He said that the loudest rock bands--such as heavy metal acts and the noisy alternative rockers found on Lollapalooza bills--would be off-limits.