A wise and wily chairman of the board with impeccable community relations is critical to a venue manager’s success in running an arena.
From booking the show to hosting the show to the afterglow, the chairman of the board can make life so much better.
None know this better than Kim Bedier, who was blessed with a chair named Earl Dutton, of Dutton Electric fame, when she ran Everett (Wash.) Events Center for what was then Global Spectrum private management and Everett Public Facilities District. It was Earl Dutton who saved the day more than once and she made it happen by keeping him well informed ahead of any inquiries about what was going on.
Earl was in his 80s when Kim met him. A retired electrician, he made all his money wiring the big Boeing plant in Washington, the biggest building in the world by volume at the time. “He was so unassuming, a suspenders-and-belt, farmer-looking guy. He was pretty quiet and retiring until he had something to say and it was always a zinger, said with a grin on his face,” Kim recalled.
When Kim booked Guns N’ Roses Chinese Democracy Tour in December 2006, she prepped everyone for what might happen. Axl Rose was notorious for not showing up on time.
Earl had a suite for his family and “he literally came to every show we had, whether it was hockey (he was a huge fan) or Cher or someone he never heard of. I’d bring him down for a photo whenever I could and his favorite was Dolly Parton,” she described the man.
He was quite aware the show would probably start late. In fact, it was close to 11 p.m. (advertised showtime was 7:30) before anything happened. “Earl was in his suite, probably napping because he had his recliner there,” she said.
“And then these women come on stage and it turns out their opening act is called the The Suicide Girls and they are basically strippers. So they’re on stage smearing each other with pudding and doing stripper-things. It’s late at night. Guns N’ Roses goes on stage at midnight. Earl hangs in to the bitter end and sees the show.”
The next morning, the venue staff started to get calls from parents who had their kids at a Guns N’ Roses show and who were insulted by The Suicide Girls and “how could we condone such a thing? My first default in my head was ‘why did you bring a kid to a Guns N’ Roses show?’” The Suicide Girls were advertised (then and now) as burlesque.
Her first reaction after her own heads up was to call her board chair.
“Earl, I think you’re going to get some negative feedback and you may get some calls from the media.”
When the media did call him, he was ready.
“What, there were naked girls on stage? I’ve got to get my eyes checked. I didn’t see a thing. I wish I had.”
That expression “the mic dropped,” says it all. “He totally diffused the whole thing. It totally diffused the negativity and media attention,” Kim said.
Behind his sound bite lies the actual meaning of what he said and what he did. It was all the usual platitudes — It is what it is. What do you expect when you come to a concert like that? We are all things to all people — but said with humor by a man who had earned their respect.
His eyesight was not bad at all.
“The first thing Earl ever told me I needed to do was make sure there were no surprises. There were only one or two times I didn’t get to the board chair before someone in the community did. They are the face to the community and they don’t understand our industry necessarily, but it’s our role to educate them and make sure they can speak and advocate on our behalf,” Kim learned long ago. — Based on a true story as told to Linda Deckard
(Photo of Guns ‘N’ Roses courtesy of Pixabay)