Concert Venues Hope What’s Past Is Prologue to Profits

The Orange County area’s swankier concert houses are trolling for that prize box-office catch, the well-heeled baby boomer. To lure it in, along with some younger, rock-loving brothers and sisters from Generation X, the Irvine Barclay Theatre and the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts are experimenting by booking rockers who emerged in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s.

Pat Benatar, a dominant figure on the charts during the ‘80s, will play the Barclay’s first full-on rock show Sunday. The Cerritos Center has already made the plunge.

Long a bastion for strong country attractions, middle-of-the-road pop, ‘50s and ‘60s rock oldies and sleek, adult-oriented R&B;, Cerritos entered the ‘70s rock era recently with shows by Chicago and the Doobie Brothers.

Next come the ‘80s, with a July 9 bill of Rick Springfield and John Waite. The ‘90s arrive a week later, July 16, with Cowboy Junkies--the mood-weaving Canadian rock band that arrived to critical acclaim in 1988 and has continued to make vital music ever since. Folk-guitar ace Leo Kottke opens. Ann and Nancy Wilson, who led the band Heart to arena-rock status in the ‘70s and ‘80s, play Cerritos as an acoustic duo Aug. 20. Top ticket prices for the shows are $45 and $57.

“The audience’s tastes are changing,” said Wayne Shilkret, executive director of the city-owned Cerritos center. “As time goes by, there’s been more and more of an audience with the ability to pay the kinds of prices that are necessary to present some of these performers.”

The center first booked Chicago two years ago, and it was an instant sellout, Shilkret said. A return engagement in March also sold out quickly. A bill of the Doobie Brothers and Ambrosia brought another success, encouraging Shilkret to book the Springfield/Waite package and Cowboy Junkies during a month when the theater would normally be left dark for maintenance. He expects both shows to be profitable, projecting attendance at 90% of the hall’s capacity of about 1,700.

On the sidelines for the moment, but eager to jump into the boomer-rock market when the opportunity arises, is the 3,000-seat Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Jerry E. Mandel, the center’s president, listed the Bee Gees, Sting, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp as the kinds of acts the Costa Mesa complex would love to host. But acts of that caliber typically play theaters only on special occasions, rather than as part of their touring routine. And the center seldom has dates available for rock music, given its packed schedule of the classical music, dance and touring Broadway productions it was built to house.

That will change if the center’s plans to build a second, 2,000-seat concert hall in the next five years come to fruition. To date, a 1996 concert by k.d. lang and James Taylor’s 1995 performance with the Pacific Symphony have been among OCPAC’s infrequent dalliances with pop-rock of post-’60s vintage.

“With our expansion, clearly we will be able to do more of those,” Mandel said. “I would love to, but we would only be dealing with high-end acts who are very popular and very prominent. I don’t want to do those who were big names 20 years ago but aren’t really on top of it now.”

Ballet and symphony are expensive propositions that run at a deficit; “certainly pop acts help the bottom line.” The other motivation for booking rock shows, Mandel said, is the chance for the center to impress a new set of concertgoers and lure them back for some of its other offerings.