Celebrity- charity love fest matures

Carlos Santana was once a young music pioneer who fused Afro-Latin rhythms into ‘60s rock ‘n’ roll. But when he stood alongside South African Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu this summer, he was debuting as an elder statesman.

Dressed in a funky black blazer and cap, Santana told a news conference about the impulse that drove him to donate not part, but all of the profits of his summer tour -- $2.5 million -- to fight AIDS in South Africa.

“To feel compassion you have to feel connectedness to all the brothers and sisters all over the globe,” he said. “We invite you to create a masterpiece of love on this planet. When you get to the other side, they will not ask you if you are a Christian, or a Mexican, or a Buddhist. They will ask you what you [did] with the energy and light and love that we gave you.” Tutu, a retired South African archbishop and a world-famous leader of the movement that overthrew apartheid, stood by, for once upstaged. “He’s a great preacher,” Tutu acknowledged with a bemused smile.

As rock musicians like Santana mature, so has rock philanthropy.

It has outgrown its ragtag roots as a ‘60s consciousness-raising party and been adopted by a growing number of mainstream charities. Philanthropists view rock musicians as a way into the hearts and minds of potential young donors -- and a way into the pocketbooks of older, more financially established baby boomers. The next big event, in Columbus, Ohio, on Sunday, is the latest concert for Farm Aid, a venerable organization that has raised $24 million since its first music event in 1985.

Rock stars such as Sting and Elton John are becoming staples on the traditional gala circuit, blurring the line between rock benefit and charity ball. In the last decade, the Elton John AIDS Foundation has donated more than $30 million to community AIDS efforts in the United States, Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Pearl Jam, which formed its own foundation several years ago, has helped raise close to $10 million for Kosovo refugees, abortion-rights groups and Seattle community services for AIDS sufferers and the homeless. Pearl Jam even has its own philanthropy consultant. “It creates good energy,” said Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard, 36.

After Sept. 11, a Madison Square Garden benefit for families of the World Trade Center and Pentagon victims earned $30 million in a single concert, with performances by such artists as Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and David Bowie. Bruce Springsteen and other musicians helped pull in $150 million with the “Tribute to Heroes” celebrity telethon after the attacks.

Such financial clout has not escaped the notice of the nonprofit world. In June, the New York-based Foundation Center, which tracks philanthropic activity, hosted its first-ever “Rock and Roll Foundations” panel in San Francisco as part of its ongoing “Meet the Grantmakers” series. Representatives of 80 nonprofits showed up to hear how they might tap in. Panelists included staffers from foundations founded by the Grateful Dead, Santana, and a foundation founded in the name of the late legendary rock promotor Bill Graham.

“We’re trying to build the next generation of philanthropists,” said Cynthia Bailie, director of the Foundation Center’s Cleveland office. “Young people are interested in celebrities of all types. And quite a few musicians are involved in philanthropy.”

Today, even the most mainstream of charities are testing the waters of rock philanthropy. Five years ago, the San Diego chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society experimented with a rock-’n’-roll marathon, a race during which rock musicians play at pit stops along the course and runners collect pledges. Since then, the events have spread to chapters across the country, raising $85 million, and they are the organization’s most popular fund-raiser, according to Donna Grodan, the senior national manager for the society.

“It’s the right demographic,” said Keith Turner, the San Diego chapter’s executive director when the event was launched. “We were raised on that music.”

Elite Racing Inc., a sports marketing and management company based in San Diego, which helps promote the rock ‘n’ roll marathons, is also involved with a similar event in January to raise money for the stroke division of the American Heart Assn., Child Help USA, the American Diabetes Assn. and, possibly, a national arthritis foundation. Headiners at the marathons have included Pat Benatar, Counting Crows, Huey Lewis and the News, Hootie & the Blowfish, Chicago, Smash Mouth, Sugar Ray and Chris Isaak. “There’s a certain magic to rock ‘n’ roll, period,” said Dave Hussa, the charity liaison for Elite Racing. “It keeps people’s hearts pounding and keeps people thriving and searching for more.”

Stacey Palmer, executive editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, said there are no hard figures for rock fund-raising, but Pete Manzo, the spokesman of Los Angeles’ Center for NonProfit Management, said he has seen growth.

“Nonprofits are pursuing it more. There’s a ‘me too’ effect,” he said. “Performers want to give back, but they also realize it’s a smart marketing tool, and an acceptable way to build loyalty and your fan base.”

Although rock performances are working their way into the philanthropy establishment, many issues linger from the early days of rock benefits. Concerts are costly and, in a best-case scenario, perhaps half of the gross goes to charity. Nonetheless, rock benefits have come a long way since George Harrison’s pioneer event to help starving children with the 1971 concert for Bangladesh. The proceeds were to go to UNICEF, but the concert was handled by a for-profit corporation and an IRS snafu tied up the $13 million in proceeds for 10 years, during which time millions of children starved to death in Bangladesh.

‘Years of trauma’

The concert for Bangladesh was “the worst-case scenario,” said David Crosby, whose book, “Stand and Be Counted,” recalls his days as a member of a small coterie who have sung regularly at benefits since the early 1970s.

“[Harrison] was really trying to help people in need, but the U.S. government got hung up on a technicality,” Crosby said. “He was deeply hurt by that. He went through years of trauma.”

Jackson Browne is also a veteran of the rock benefit Stone Age.

“The first benefit I tried to do was so badly run we had to do another one to pay for it,” he recalled, of a 1973 concert for the legal bills of a former Black Panther. “The whole thing was just being invented.”

That changed with the appearance of a handful of promoters who specialized only in benefits. For Browne, the most influential was Tom Campbell, the son of activists with a deep commitment to social causes and music.

Browne met Campbell at a 1973 Santa Cruz benefit to stop redwood logging where he played with Maria Muldaur and Jesse Colin Young.

“He was so organized,” Browne said. “He stood at the juncture of traditional organizing skills and the revolution that happened in terms of people’s consciousness.” He also liked Campbell’s esprit de corp.

“There’s this perception that activists are these grim, cheerless people who are a moment away from realizing all is lost,” Browne said. “With Tom this is not the case.”

Campbell’s mantra of selfless giving helped musicians like Browne deal with their commercial success. When Browne’s managers wanted to hawk “Jackson Browne” T-shirts at gigs, Browne balked, seeing it as “tacky.” But Campbell made it palatable by printing anti-nuke messages on the shirts and giving the money away.

Campbell eventually attracted funding from the Vanguard Public Foundation, a progressive grant-maker, to help put on fund-raising events. Vanguard staffers were impressed by the way he could blow into town with donated T-shirts and paper cups -- though they were amused by some of his cost-saving measures. Campbell would recruit volunteers from the cause -- say, an Indian rights group -- which “saved a tremendous amount of money, but created tremendous problems, because no one knew what they were doing,” said Obie Benz, a co-founder of the Vanguard Public Foundation.

Now in his 60s, Campbell is still a whirling dervish backstage at concerts, shepherding exhausted-looking musicians to post-concert receptions where patrons pay $250 to meet their idols.

“Tom makes sure you don’t spend a nickel you don’t absolutely have to,” said Crosby. “He gets people to volunteer food and help because people believe in him.”

Experts like Campbell also safeguard busy musicians from questionable commitments, such as one that came to light recently when an A-list of musicians donated songs to benefit an AIDS program. Some of the artists and their managers were surprised to learn that the program’s figurehead was a Swazi king accused of having a schoolgirl abducted to make her his tenth wife.

Campbell also understands a fundamental limitation of rock philanthropy: Costs can eat up at least half of the proceeds of even the best-run concerts.

Last year, Campbell helped organize a benefit for the Carl Wilson Foundation for Cancer Research at Royce Hall, featuring Eric Clapton, Brian Wilson and Sugar Ray. It earned $119,000. But $49,000 went to backup musicians, equipment, credit card commissions, insurance, custodians and electricity.

At last year’s Farm Aid benefit, the starring musicians, including Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, paid their hotel, air fare, band costs -- everything. The televised concert earned $1.5 million, but Farm Aid netted $600,000 after expenses.

“It’s expensive to throw a rock concert,” Campbell said. “What about it is cheap? Nothing.”

Some nonprofits don’t even try to make money, but organize concerts simply to raise their profile. In February, the Rolling Stones held a free concert at the Staples Center to “turn up the heat on global warming” for the Natural Resources Defense Council -- “our first venture into big-time rock ‘n’ roll” according to NRDC spokesman Alan Metrick. For nonprofits, the publicity to their cause can be as valuable as any money raised.

Amnesty International was one of the first organizations to use rock ‘n’ roll as a publicity vehicle. A 1988 world tour actually lost money, an estimated $2 million, covered by its corporate sponsor, Reebok. But the tour raised the profile of the London-based group and pulled in tens of thousands of new members. Amnesty officials believe it even helped win the release of three political prisoners who had been spotlighted at the concerts.

“These were cases we had worked on for years,” said Curt Goering, a senior director for Amnesty USA. “To have someone like Bono or Peter Gabriel or Sting saying ‘Please do this, it will make a difference’ transformed our movement.”

The use of entertainers to publicize causes is now a staple of the organization. Amnesty now employs full-time people in Hollywood who work to get product placement shots of Amnesty posters on TV shows such as “The West Wing.”

In addition, Amnesty International is developing a television program, “Conversations in Exile,” in which musicians such as Sting and Alanis Morrisette would have informal discussions on human rights with such personalities as Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel and Ariel Dorfman.

“It would allow people to learn about the country, the culture, the indigenous music and the human rights message,” said Bonnie Abaunza, director of the Los Angeles-based Artists for Amnesty.

Musicians hold sway

At a sold-out Coldplay concert in Los Angeles, activists passed out postcards for the fair trade campaign of Oxfam, a development and relief agency.

At the Warped Tour of punk rock in Ventura, a punk rocker cum social activist, Arielle Bielak, orchestrated the so-called social awareness activities at the festival, educating young concertgoers on everything from mental illness to suicide awareness.

“People know and trust musicians,” said Gloria Steinem.”If Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam or Ani Di Franco says, ‘Here’s how I feel about this issue,’ people who care about them take it into consideration.” For some musicians, like Indigo Girl Amy Ray, rock benefits are a pleasurable outlet for a career that is no longer at its zenith, giving musicians time to support causes they’ve always believed in.

Ray plays at benefits for environmental groups and women’s groups, like the Georgia Abortion Rights Action League, and like many musicians, she is increasingly courted to play at the $1,000-a-plate galas.

But somehow, “it just feels wrong,” Ray said. “The overhead is really high, with the food, the wine, the little gifts. It’s like perpetuating something you’re fighting to begin with.”

But nowadays, as every cause celebre searches for a cause celebrity, it’s not uncommon for musicians like Don Henley and Seal to play galas for a children’s charity -- or for David Crosby and Paul McCartney to don a tuxedo and attend gala dinners.

“Underwriting a concert is more prohibitive financially than a gala event,” said Amnesty’s Abaunza. “We give musicians the opportunity to make a statement, and they are incredibly moved, because we ask them to present an award to a survivor of torture. We allow them to say what they want, which they can’t often do at a concert.

“We used to invite prisoners of conscience to walk onstage at a concert,” she said. “Now it’s a flip. It’s a natural fit.”