THE AZOFF ETHOS: OUR LUNCH WITH IRVING

Over the years, mega-mogul, über-manager and entrepreneurial wizard Irving Azoff (the GOAT) has occasionally agreed to nosh and chat with HITS dweebs, dropping knowledge on (and frequently off) the record. For our most recent summit, we sat down with Irving and his ever-present straight man, Larry Solters, for lunch at Beverly Hills eatery Nate ’n Al’s. Celebrity preservationists Shelli Azoff and Irving had purchased the venerable deli from the original owners in 2019, a year before they bought The Apple Pan and six years after they’d masterminded the restoration of the Forum, another L.A. landmark. We asked Irving about the spectacular U2 opening at Sphere in Vegas, the Eagles as they were prepping for what’s billed as the group’s final tour, his early days in L.A., his Iconic Artist Group and early action at the recently relaunched Giant label, as well as the burgeoning careers of his kids. For Irving, we were reminded over cheese omelettes, French toast and Apple Pan pie à la mode, it’s all about family, nuclear and extended alike.

SG: Let’s get into the opening of Sphere and U2’s performance.

I can safely now for me say that everything I had hoped and imagined for it over-delivered. Once you got 18,000 people in the place, the sound got even better.

Yes, the sound was tremendous.

It was even better than it was in rehearsals, which I didn't think was possible. And the visuals, the screens, came off without a hitch and were mesmerizing.

It struck me, when I was watching it all unfold, that a lot of bands probably would've been overwhelmed by all that visual razzle-dazzle. But U2 not only stood up to it all but stayed in the foreground.

It just fit like a glove to me—what they put on the screens plus the repertoire they chose to perform and how it delivered. I was enthralled.

On Friday I watched some of the show from the suite and then went to the soundboard. On Saturday, I went down on the riser on the floor, and oh my God, the crowd reaction was incredible. People were screaming and singing every word. It was euphoric.

So you had an old-school rock concert going down on the floor, and then you had the seated experience with the visuals, especially [visual designer] Es Devlin’s piece there at the end where the globe opens up and just engulfs the whole room from down on the floor. I'm just glad I don't take drugs.

We also premiered the speaking baby on the Exosphere from the afternoon until the end of the concert. The baby's amazing. But you can't really get the full feel of the Exosphere from right nearby. You've gotta be a half a mile or more away, like from the hotel rooms.

Seeing it from the car on the way in was stunning.

God bless Jim Dolan, man. He delivered.

I would imagine that when other artists saw all this, their brains started boiling.

I'm not at liberty to say anything except that there's a line out the door. Jim is gonna be very careful who's next, you know? There's no shortage of people lining up.

He's got a preview of [Darren Aronofsky’s film] Postcards From Earth going on right now. I'm going Thursday to see the Eagles and Steely Dan open their second leg in Denver. Then I'm gonna go [back to Vegas] for the Postcards premiere and stay for U2 next weekend. It's like a dream come true.

How much flexibility do you have in capacity by adjusting the configuration?

I think we had 2,500 on the floor. It feels to me like 17.5 to 20,000, depending on where you put the stage and how much GA you put in on the floor.

And obviously you’re developing other kinds of events beyond just concerts.

Listen, this is all Jim and MSG. I'm not developing anything. I'm his friend and I help him as a consultant. He'll make announcements. What happens in the Sphere Experience, which just opened, is you go in and it takes you about 45 minutes to go through the atrium and you learn all about the tech, and there are holograms and robots that talk to you. It's gonna just be phenomenal. And then you go in and watch the film, which is about 45, 50 minutes.

Here's what I know from the opening. It's inevitable that [Dolan] will program it with great vision—movies, more music, everything. And there will be Spheres built around the world.

We’re looking at putting the HOLOPLOT sound system, which was inaugurated there, in our arenas. So if you're an act, you could come in and use that system, which is in the Beacon already too, by the way, and works flawlessly. If that system gets installed in enough places, acts could actually tour using the house system every night and sound better.

Without having to bring their own giant rig. That’s revolutionary.

Could be.

I just wanna say again that we're honored to work on this with both Madison Square Garden and U2. I felt like I was witnessing something really historic in terms of what the future's gonna bring in live entertainment.

How many dates are they supposed to play?

It’s 25 shows—25 sellouts at 17,000.

The entire run is sold out?

It started at six, and went to 12, and went to 18 and went to 21. And then we ran out of time at 25. But the response has been incredible and phenomenal. It’s for sure the biggest residency in a single year in Vegas. I didn’t check the numbers. I assumed Celine Dion may have grossed more dollars since she played there for 15 fucking years. Or Wayne Newton. But in terms of a one-year or one-season residency… U2 are a phenomenon unlike anything I’ve ever worked with.

Did you know them well before that?

Yeah, I knew Bono. And if you told me to pick any three people that you want your company to represent in the whole management business everywhere, I’d say three of the top three for me would be Harry Styles, the Eagles and U2. So I’ve died and gone to heaven with this. I’m really proud of what Jeffrey and his team have accomplished with Harry. Watching that has been incredible. And Jeffrey and I are doing U2 together, so it’s really been fun.

Thinking back to Achtung Baby and that period of commenting on mass culture, it’s interesting to see U2 staking a claim in Vegas.

Las Vegas isn't what it used to be. In the old days, as a rock band, we used to pass Las Vegas. It was a place for, shall we say, more mature artists.

The aforementioned Wayne Newton.

Yeah, it used to be a place for Wayne Newton and the Rat Pack. It’s now one of the most important sports and entertainment capitals of the world. The Las Vegas Raiders have the highest-priced secondary-market tickets in the whole NFL. MSG selected Vegas for the Sphere not as a Las Vegas attraction, but as a worldwide entertainment destination.

So a sort of global embassy, apart from the casino world.

Exactly. And we were very careful to market their tickets worldwide, and to create travel packages from all around the world. So this is akin to a world tour, except for this incredible, immersive arts and music show. The only venue in the world that could handle it is the Sphere which just happens to be in Las Vegas. So it’s not a Las Vegas residency, per se, as some other artists play. It’s about bringing the fans together in the only building equipped with the technology to handle their vision for the music show of the future.

And for all these fans that come from around the world, we have an additional destination at the Venetian—a temporary installation where we'll be exhibiting U2 materials and screening all their old films.

You said the rock & roll bands used to roll past Vegas on tour…

It wasn’t a rock & roll town.

But did you ever go there just to raise some hell?

Not my bands. But we brought the hell with us wherever we went.

Being that this is the start of the last Eagles tour, let’s reminisce a little bit about when you came to Los Angeles. I came here in ’74. I think you came here in ’72 or ’73, right?

Fall of ’71 for me.

And what was the scene like when you first got here?

So when I first got here, I went to work at a small agency called the Heller Fischel Agency. I had a relationship with David Geffen before I came to town, but Jerry [Heller] introduced me to these funny, crazy people. There was a big PR agency called Gibson & Stromberg: Bob Gibson, Gary Stromberg, Patti Mitsui… I was 22 or 23. A normal night with Gibson & Stromberg was insane. It would start late Friday afternoon at their offices, which were on Sunset. Obviously a lot of drugs in those days, a lot of gambling, card-playing. But they all kind of befriended me and showed me the town.

I was here for a few months when Dan Fogelberg came out, and then a year later, REO Speedwagon moved out here for a long stay.

There were shows everywhere. One of the big venues then was the Greek Theatre. And I remember, “Wow, first time ever, Chicago at the Greek Theatre.” They were friends of mine because I helped book them when I was back in Illinois. So the first time I went to the Greek, I went to see Chicago. The big hang was always the Troubadour bar, and Dan Tana’s next door. We would eat at Dan Tana’s and go hang in the bar at the Troubadour. And there were hoot nights, and these were the days when the Troubadour was really getting rolling. So the major places were the Whisky, where Susan Markheim, who’s been with me for 50 years, was the booker, and then of course, down the street—the Roxy wasn’t even built yet—we had the Rainbow. So you’d hang at the Rainbow to go to the Whisky, you’d hang at Dan Tana’s to go to the Troubadour, you’d go to the Greek.

I remember David Bowie at the Palladium early on—there were some great shows at the Palladium. And the Forum was rocking, and so we would go to shows at the Forum, but the hangs were mostly the Troubadour bar, the Rainbow and a little bit later, Roy [Silver] opened Roy’s restaurant on Sunset, which was kind of a menu of Chinese and cocaine.

Was that the year when you first met the Eagles?

That was a little over a year and a half later. Desperado [released in April 1973] wasn’t out when I met them. It was in a theater in Riverside. That was the first time I saw them live, and I met them at that show.

So the first album was out. They were starting to get attention.

I thought they were fucking awesome. When you saw them live, you could tell “Take It Easy” was a career-making song. They were being booked by Premier Talent, opening for people like Yes and Jethro Tull that they shouldn’t be opening for, which I think really held them back. They had this incredible hit, “Take It Easy,” but they weren’t really being taken seriously. One of the reasons they weren’t taken seriously was because the touring was badly booked. Glenn used to say they were opening for “Jethro Dull.”

Everybody knows this history, but I went from Heller Fischel to Associated Booking Corporation, and then, when David [Geffen] merged Asylum with Elektra and he went to run Elektra Asylum, I went over to the management business with Elliot [Roberts].

I was working at Geffen-Roberts, which must have been the fall of ’73, the Eagles were with Glyn Johns in England recording On the Border. I was told, “They need Christmas money.” So I was enlisted to book a tour in late November, early December, and they worked a couple, three weeks before Christmas to have Christmas money. That was the first tour I booked, and I put Dan Fogelberg on to open.

So I went out to the first Eagles show; I think it was Springfield, Missouri. I met them in the airport, St. Louis, and we drove in rent-a-cars down to Springfield. I was driving one car and Bernie Leadon was driving the other car, and when we pulled in a gas station, I crashed into the back of Bernie’s car—as a joke. Bernie got out of the car and said, “The next time you do that, I’m going to kick your ass.” That’s one of my earliest memories of really hanging with them.

In those days, I think they slept every other night. And I seem to remember a party at a sorority house. I don’t think we ever made it to the hotel before we went on to the next city. That was my first road experience with the Eagles.

Where did Fogelberg fit into the picture?

We went to school [the University of Illinois] together. I think he was doing better in school than I was, but we both quit. I booked the rock bands in town, and Dan played at a local folk room downstairs at a church. The rock & roll crowds and the folk crowds stayed away from each other.

What was behind the impulse to go to the West Coast?

I was making too much money booking bands already, and I wanted to get Fogelberg and REO record deals. And L.A. was the lesser evil of New York and L.A. I couldn’t fathom not owning a car, coming from the Midwest. If I go to New York, I’m not going to drive a car in New York. I didn’t understand that. And my grandmother and my aunts lived out here, so I liked it better coming to L.A. Also, I was considering working for Frank Barcelona at Premier Talent in New York. When I went up to Chicago to meet him at Aaron Russo’s Kinetic Playground to see Led Zeppelin, it had burned to the ground. I took that as a sign to go to L.A. instead of New York.

Any insights about the Eagles’ Long Goodbye tour?

I just got back from the start of the Eagles/Steely Dan tour in New York. In my opinion, it’s one of the greatest fan experiences I’ve ever seen. The intent is to go and make the fans happy. We haven’t set an absolute end to it. So health willing, if people still want to see it and we put dates up and they sell out, we’ll just keep going for a while. I can’t predict how long it’ll go, but I can tell you that it’s gigantic. And we intend to soon announce a big run with the Eagles and Steely Dan together at the Forum in L.A., with January play dates.

[Eagles and Steely Dan currently have four nights scheduled at the Forum: 1/5, 6, 12 and 13. Steve Miller and others replaced Steely Dan on October dates due to Donald Fagen’s illness. Steely Dan is scheduled to return to the tour in November.]

The response has been overwhelming.. When the Eagles played Hyde Park, there were time restrictions, so they had to do the greatest-hits set there, and it went down as one of the greatest shows of their career. So that kind of inspired them to go back to greatest hits. You can’t argue with the Hotel California set either.

So the band’s the same. Deacon [Frey, son of Glenn] is on every show. He’s going. Vince [Gill], Joe [Walsh], Timothy [B. Schmit], Don, Steuart Smith, Will Hollis, Scotty Crago, all the same. No changes.

How’s Walsh doing these days? He seems revitalized.

I’m happy to say Joe got sober in ’94. Joe once said to me, “I got drunk once for 30 years.” Now, who would’ve thought that he’d be sober for 30 years? And I think that’s a big part of his ability to continue to deliver top-notch performances.

How did Deacon become part of this whole thing?

When Glenn passed away, we thought the Eagles would never work again. It was actually Don’s idea; he said, “There really needs to be a Frey in the band.” So Don mentored Deacon, we tried it and it was really good, so we did it.

It must’ve been emotional for you the first time you saw him up there.

It’s emotional every time I see him up there. As a matter of fact, when I see Deacon up there, I close my eyes, I open them, and it looks to me like it’s Glenn Frey without the big nose.

Ha. What would Glenn think about that?

Glenn’s the one who told me that Deacon was him without the big nose, who also sang and played guitar better than he did.

We wanted to get your thoughts about the passing of Clarence Avant, Jerry Moss and Abe Somer.

It’s been a sad, bizarre time when you have Randy Meisner, Robbie Robertson and Jimmy Buffett on the artist side, and you have Clarence, Abe and Jerry on the executive side all die within a week of each other. It seems like the business is passing us by—particularly the fact that Abe and Jerry were best friends for 60 years, and they passed away on the same day. Just crazy.

Losing Jimmy is far more than losing a recording artist, as I think we’re all seeing with the coverage; he’s getting the accolades and tributes that he certainly deserves. And he fought a fucking incredible fight, but he had a really aggressive cancer.

I feel for you. When did you guys hook up?

There was a point in time in the early to mid-’70s when Don Henley, Glenn Frey and I all had houses in Aspen, and Jimmy Buffett was also an Aspen resident at that point. The hang in Aspen was the Jerome Bar at the Jerome Hotel. I was in there one afternoon and I was about to leave the next day for an Eagles tour that started in Carolina. In those days we had no cell phones or anything, so there’s this payphone right in the Jerome Bar. I call my office and I’m trying to hear because it’s loud, and my office tells me the opening act canceled.

I hung up the phone, turned around and who’s sitting on two stools at the bar but Hunter Thompson and Jimmy Buffett. I go over to Jimmy, who I knew, but not that well, and said, “Hey, what are you doing?” And he says, “I’m just home writing songs, hoping for a break.” And I said, “Do you want to go open for the Eagles? We lost our opening act and we’ve got a tour starting in a couple days in Carolina.” And he said, “Hell, yeah.” I said, “Okay, I’ll grab you a ticket. Meet me at the airport for the 9:30 flight from Aspen to Denver tomorrow.” And off we went. So that was really the start of it: the Jerome Bar, Jimmy and Hunter Thompson. And then we became really close friends.

There’s an anecdote in a story about Jimmy’s passing in Graydon Carter’s Air Mail where I’m leaving Madison Square Garden on that Eagles/Buffett tour when somebody taps on my window, jumps in the car and says, “Hi, I’m Jane Buffett. You have to manage my husband.’”

Speaking of memory lane, what caused you to restart Giant?

I had nothing to do with it. Tubby [Shawn Holiday] and Jeffrey were the inspiration for the label. And Tubby said, “Hey, we got to call it Giant.” And I went, “Eh, no.” And then Jeffrey went to Max [Lousada] at Warners, and Max was very cool and said, “Sure, you can have the name.” So that’s what they did, but they’re calling it Giant Music. Now, this is their baby. I work more in Iconic; they work on Giant. I just happened to waltz into a meeting they were having last week. And oh, my God, they’ve got three or four streaming things that are happening [including That Chick Angel’s viral hit “One Margarita” and Mike WiLL Made-It & Lil Uzi Vert’s “Blood Moon,” which is being used in a Beats campaign]. Dude, the setup feels amazing. It’s totally independent, has nothing to do with any of the majors, and it feels great.

They put out any records yet?

They’ve got one record [FendiDa Rappa’s “Point Me 2” with Cardi B] they tell me is popping. And they’re about to put out a record by Mitch Rowland, who’s Harry Styles’ guitar player. I’m excited about that one.

A rock record?

He’s a sensitive singer-songwriter. But he’s a pop sensitive singer-songwriter. I’m sure the Harry-fans factor will give it its chance.

You must be pretty excited about your kids’ careers so far.

My kids’ careers are in great shape. Cameron is at Beats at Apple. When you go to work at Apple, you take a code of secrecy, so I couldn’t tell you what he’s working on, but it seems to be going really well. And Allison’s branding business is going great, and she shares a lot of clients with the Full Stop guys. Harry just finished touring, and Jeffrey and I are up to our elbows in U2 at the Sphere, which has been just so fucking exciting.

It’s gotta be great to work with Jeffrey on a big project like this.

Yeah. And wait till you hear John Mayer’s album. What a genius he is. We do Mayer and The Black Keys with Steve Moir.

The Black Keys? I didn’t know that. Love that band.

Just wait until you hear this new record. We have partnerships with a lot of people. Working on The Black Keys with Moir’s been great too, amazing. Everybody’s doing great: Earth, Wind & Fire, record numbers; Doobie Brothers, record numbers; Steely’s going out with the Eagles. Mayer/Dead & Company were ridiculous, and John’s solo tour was great. John has grown. He’s the American Eric Clapton, plus some. And everything at the management company has just been great.

Next year will be the return of Bon Jovi, the 40th anniversary. Jon’s going to reappear with a wonderful Gotham Chopra-directed documentary series and a new album in the 40th year of the band. Jimmy Buffett has a record coming out. Gwen Stefani’s been on The Voice without Blake, and she’s had an amazing year—and her cosmetics brand exploded. We have real artists, and that’s paid off over decades of making the right decision. The company’s become really broad-based and really fun. That’s why I keep doing it.

That’s a good reason. It sounds like you’re delighted with your life.

Well, let’s not get carried away. I am Jewish.

Pictured (from top): Sphere and U2 on night one; Swirv with Jeffrey*; tolerating a deli visit from HITS putzes Lenny Beer and Simon Glickman; with super-attorney Allen Grubman, Live Nation ruler Michael Rapino and Netflix's Ted Sarandos; with Gwen Stefani and Meghan Trainor*; with Shelli**; with Glenn Frey and Dan Fogelberg; with the Eagles and Bill Graham; with Joe Walsh; with MSG's Jim Dolan, Walsh, Frey and Timothy B. Schmit; with Clarence Avant; with Jimmy Buffett over the years (later pic**); with Giant's Shawn Holiday, rapper Tay B and Giant's Matt LaMotte; getting the last word, as usual
*Photo: Alex Berliner
**Photo: Kevin Mazur