Maurice Jones began his career as an artist manager, overseeing the career of English rock band, Slade. He eventually started his own promotion company, helping popularize such bands as Def Leppard, the Eurythmics, AC/DC, and Simple Minds. In 1984, Jones joined forces with Bob Geldolf and Midge Ure to promote Live Aid, the massive fund raising concerts that were held in Philadelphia and London and seen by an estimated 400 million people world wide. The concerts featured the biggest acts in popular music at the time. After the success of Live Aid, Jones went on to create the Monsters Of Rock festival that ran for many years outside of England’s Castle Donnington and other locations from time to time. The festivals featured the biggest names in hard rock music. Maurice Jones was 64 when he died of cancer on November 13, 2009.
Bill Graham (Born Wolodia “Wolfgang” Grajonca)
January 8, 1931 – October 25, 1991
Bill Graham was a world famous concert promoter who played a key part in the growth of ’60s American rock ‘n roll. As a Jewish child born in Berlin, Graham barely escaped the Nazis by being placed in an orphanage by his mother. Fortunately, that orphanage relocated him to France before the Halocaust. Graham moved to New York City where he received his schooling after which he served in the Korean War and eventually ended up in San Francisco. In 1965, he landed his first show businees job, managing the San Francisco Mime Troupe which lead to him booking and promoting shows at the Fillmore Auditorium. Graham had a knack for finding acts that appealed to the city’s growing counter-culture scene and in doing so helped the scene itself grow. Some of the acts he featured in those early years were Janis Joplin, Country Joe & the Fish, the Fugs, Jefferson Airplane and of course, the Grateful Dead. By the late ’60s, Graham was the most popular rock concert promoter in the country. Besides the Fillmore and Winterland in San Francisco, he was booking the Fillmore East in New York City. He also promoted tours by the Rolling Stones as well as such concert events as Live Aid and Human Rights Now tour for Amnesty Now. On October 25, 1991, 60-year-old Bill Graham was flying home after a Huey Lewis concert in nearby Concord, California. The helicopter he was in crashed shortly after takeoff, killing Graham, his girlfriend, and the pilot. Reports indicate that less-than-ideal weather caused the pilot to crash into an electrical tower.
Brendan Mullen is best remembered for The Masque, the legendary Los Angeles punk club that he opened in 1977. After moving to Los Angeles from London in 1973, Mullen took over a filthy room that sat right behind the notorious Pussycat Theater in Hollywood and transformed it into a rehearsal space for local bands. In a matter of matter of months, the room became a venue that some consider the flashpoint of the local punk scene of the late ’70s. Bands like the Germs, X, the Weirdos, the Go-Gos, and the Plugz all played some of their earliest gigs there. As could be expected, Mullen clashed on numerous occasions with area merchants, the fire department and the L.A.P.D. before the club was temporarily shut down in 1978. It briefly re-opened in another location in 1979 before closing permanently. Mullen later went on to book shows at The Other Masque and Club Lingerie, both also in Hollywood. In later years, Mullen wrote such books about the L.A. punk scene as We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk, Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs, and Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley. Brendan Mullen died in a Los Angeles hospital on October 12, 2009. He had suffered a massive stroke.
Rob Tyner (born Robert Derminer)
December 12, 1944 – September 18, 1991
Rob Tyner was the lead singer of Detroit garage rock band, the MC5 who were heavy influences on the punk movement to soon follow. More than just another loud blues-rock band, the MC5 were endeared by fans for their anti-establishment lyrics. The band’s use of itself as a political voice inspired future generations to do the same. Later bands like the Clash and Rage Against the Machine have cited them as an influence for doing just that. The MC5’s “Kick Out The Jams” is one of the era’s most covered songs by countless young garage bands to follow. Even Tyner’s spirited “Kick out the jams motherfucker!” intro that he spontaneously shouted on a live recording is often repeated on cover versions. The MC5 broke up in 1972 and Tyner formed another band or two but was never able to get much going commercial. He did however, build himself a nice reputation as a manager, producer and concert promoter in the Detroit area. Rob Tyner died in a local hospital after suffering a heart attack while driving near his home. He was 46.
Born in New York, Howie Goodman grew up to become a passionate record promoter. While in college in Memphis during the early ’70s, Goodman began working at two area clubs. That lead to his work as an independent record promoter, working records throughout Memphis and some of the country’s biggest markets. He soon opened his own promo company, Good Choice Promotion. Howie Goodman died of cancer at the age of 59.
Sam Gesser was a Canadian concert promoter who brought the likes of Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and Janis Joplin to Montreal in the ‘60s. With a career that spanned over 50 years, Gesser started as radio and television writer, later joining the Folkways label as their Canadian representative. While with Folkways, he produced over 100 albums. He switched to concert promotion in the ‘60s and produced shows and tours by Harry Belafonte, Van Cliburn, Peter, Paul & Mary, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and many more. Gessar died of cancer on April 2, 2008 at the age of 78.
Ralph Mercado, a promoter who took his passion for Latin music and built an empire around it, not only staging concerts but creating a recording and publishing label, a film and video company, and nightclubs and restaurants, died on Tuesday in Hackensack, N.J. He was 67. The cause was cancer, said Blanca Lasalle, a spokeswoman, who gave no other details. Mr. Mercado managed stars like Tito Puente and Celia Cruz, and discovered and helped shape the careers of others like Marc Anthony and La India. He organized concerts of salsa music — that lively hybrid of Cuban rhythms, big bands and American harmonies — in large halls like Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. His RMM label recorded more than 130 artists in genres including salsa, Latin jazz, Latin rock and merengue. “Artists are on the map because of his label,” Eddie Palmieri the Latin jazz and salsa pianist, said in an interview with The New York Times in 2001. “He took us to Madison Square Garden and Carnegie Hall.” Mr. Mercado helped inject new energy into salsa with powerful percussion and brass lines as he took advantage of the surging population and purchasing power of Latinos. He promoted blending the music with other influences, including Brazilian and African. He expanded internationally, and even brought an 11-member native-Japanese salsa band to the United States. Mr. Mercado was routinely called the largest promoter of salsa music. He was compared to Norman Granz or George Wein in jazz, or Berry Gordy in soul and R&B. Billboard in 1991 called him “the entrepreneur who took salsa from New York to the world.” Ralph Mercado Jr. was born in Brooklyn on Sept. 29, 1941. His father was a Dominican dockworker and his mother a Puerto Rican factory worker. Mr. Mercado told The Boston Globe in 1998 that he learned to dance the merengue, which comes from the Dominican Republic, in the hallway of the family’s fifth-floor walkup as soon as he could walk. As a young teenager he went to the Palladium nightclub in Manhattan to hear his first live concert, the Machito Orchestra. He was “completely blown away,” he told The Globe, adding, “I came out of there knowing I had to be involved in this music somehow, personally involved.” But he couldn’t sing or play an instrument. Then he remembered he was good with numbers. He and some friends started a social club and began booking live music in the basements of apartment buildings for what they called “waistline parties,” in which a couple’s admission fee was based on the size of the woman’s waist. (The smaller, the cheaper.) The parties attracted thousands. Mr. Mercado stood at the door with a tape measure. Sometimes going beyond salsa, he was soon putting together concerts with big acts like James Brown. But he began losing money in concert promotion and turned to managing individual performers. By the 1970s Forbes magazine said that Mr. Mercado was the nation’s biggest salsa manager. When the music sagged a bit in the 1980s, he lent money to money-losing club owners. Mr. Mercado started RMM Records in 1987. He sold it to the Universal and Music and Video Distribution Corporation in 2001 after he lost a copyright-infringement suit and fell into financial straits. He then threw himself into the business of producing Latin music events around the world. – Douglas Martin (New York Times)
Greg Pineda, lead singer and guitarist of Aluminum Marshmallow passed away early Saturday morning, January 3rd at the age of 54. He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just a few short months ago. The news hit hard and traveled fast. Prayers and fundraising efforts began immediately, and a very well attended benefit concert and auction were held to help Pineda and family deal with the medical bills and treatments not covered by their insurance. TV personalities and professional musicians who Pineda has worked with, donated their talents to the show and expressed their love and gratitude to this man who was obviously so special to so many people. Members of the groups Chicago, Ambrosia, REO Speedwagon, Three Dog Night and Emerson, Lake & Palmer all participated in the “Gig 4 Greg.” Best friends since 5th grade, Pineda and Tom Behrens originally founded the group back in 1967 while attending elementary school, and reunited several years ago. Since then, they have become local favorites in Sierra Madre, California. Pineda also owned and operated a recording studio, All Media Services, in Westlake Village, California. It was there that he produced a series of music videotapes called The Hollywood Music Store with the help of Chuck Negron, as well as members of Ambrosia, REO Speedwagon, Chicago and more. – Information courtesy of Sierra Madre Sue
Maurice Jones began his career as an artist manager, overseeing the career of English rock band, Slade. He eventually started his own promotion company, helping popularize such bands as Def Leppard, the Eurythmics, AC/DC, and Simple Minds. In 1984, Jones joined forces with Bob Geldolf and Midge Ure to promote Live Aid, the massive fund raising concerts that were held in Philadelphia and London and seen by an estimated 400 million people world wide. The concerts featured the biggest acts in popular music at the time. After the success of Live Aid, Jones went on to create the Monsters Of Rock festival that ran for many years outside of England’s Castle Donnington and other locations from time to time. The festivals featured the biggest names in hard rock music. Maurice Jones was 64 when he died of cancer on November 13, 2009.
