Concert Company

The nation's largest concert firm and the industry's ticketing powerhouse may be headed for a behind-the-curtain tussle. At issue: control over the spiraling cost of show admissions that are turning off many music fans. On one side is Live Nation Inc. Chief Executive Michael Rapino, who has vowed to drive down prices that last year soared to an average of $57 per ticket for the most popular shows.

The reviews are in and George Fua is a hit. On the football field and on stage. Fua, a starter at tight end for the Cal State Northridge football team, is a man of many talents. And he displays them in strikingly different settings. In the Matadors' opener at 3 p.m. PDT today in Northern Arizona's Walkup Skydome, Fua will play the role of a 6-foot-3, 240-pound bruiser.

SFX is not alone in its involvement with brokers. A major ticket scalping scandal erupted eight months ago involving Hollywood-based House of Blues Concerts, the nation's second-largest concert promotion company. The management of the Backstreet Boys caught the company's Universal Concerts division selling more than 1,000 tickets for its Oct. 31 concert at the Pepsi Center in Denver directly to brokers, who resold them for as much as $350 each.

Tommy, can you sell me? Buoyed by a clutch of Tonys and an ocean of hype, "The Who's Tommy" has been raking in an estimated $600,000 a week at Broadway's St. James Theater. And while the musical has yet to recoup its $6-million capitalization, a growing school of pilot fish is already thrashing expectantly in the show's wake.

Pop star Madonna has dropped her long-term music label Warner Bros. and signed a multi-album, touring and merchandising global partnership with Live Nation Inc., the concert touring company said Tuesday. Los Angeles-based Live Nation said the deal would include making Madonna a shareholder of the company, though financial terms were not released in the statement.

After 11 often troublesome and seldom profitable years of promoting pop concerts under the stars at the Pacific Amphitheatre, the Nederlander Organization will try its luck indoors as the newly appointed exclusive concert promoter at the Anaheim Arena. Nederlander and Ogden Entertainment Services, the arena's co-owner and operator, announced the agreement but would not divulge the terms of the contract that they hope will bring 25 pop shows to the arena in 1994.

Tribune Co. Chief Executive Dennis FitzSimons spent part of his day in Los Angeles this week soothing fears. He wasn't holding hands at The Times, Tribune's largest publishing enterprise, where the recent breakup of Knight Ridder Inc. has raised concerns about the fate of big-city newspapers.

Beset by surging promotion costs, the music industry is planning to call for a federal investigation into payola in the increasingly deregulated radio business. Record companies and artist unions were busy Wednesday preparing a letter to Congress and the Federal Communications Commission, urging officials to probe questionable promotion practices by Clear Channel Communications Inc.

The music has stopped at the Celebrity Theatre. Actions in a pending bankruptcy case could determine when it can play again and who will be presenting it. Attempting to hold on to the theater is Edward J. Haddad, whose company, California Celebrity Theatre Inc., has leased the building since June 1987 from its owner, the Leo Freedman Foundation. Haddad's company filed for Chapter 11 protection Dec. 16 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Ana.

Crawford's restaurant and nightclub will open its doors to original rock shows starting Friday, adding fresh possibility to a grass-roots local music scene starved for venues. Ed Christensen, a Cypress-based rock promoter, said Thursday that he had entered a three-year agreement to book shows for owner Jim Crawford, whose club at 11529 Carson St. is a short distance west of the Orange County line.