Riley O’Connor, chairman of Live Nation Canada, at the company’s Toronto office, on March 5.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
Live Nation Canada chairman Riley O’Connor has been in the concert business since the 1970s. “Since 1969,” he corrects me at the beginning of a long, rambling interview. He smiles when he says it, but there is a “get it right” undertone at work.
At the Junos in Vancouver this weekend, he will be presented with the Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award. Like Anne Murray’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Arts Centre at the Junos this year, the career honour seems long overdue.
Since 2007, O’Connor has headed the Canadian operations of the Los Angeles-based concert-promoting colossus Live Nation Entertainment, presiding over more than 3,500 concerts annually. That number is about three times more than it was in 2012 when the music executive was inducted into the Canadian Music Industry Hall of Fame.
We spoke at the company’s offices in Toronto’s Liberty Village. The giant House of Blues sign in his office is a neon relic from a different era. (Specifically, an era before Live Nation Entertainment bought out rival promoter HOB Entertainment in 2006.) Before he was a promoter, the native Montrealer worked as a stagehand at the old Montreal Forum, a guitar tech for Frank Marino of Mahogany Rush and a London-based lighting specialist on tours by Queen, Elton John, ABBA and the Who.
“Keith Moon was a real gentleman,” he says about the late crazed Who drummer. “He had a beer with us after a rehearsal.”
It is a substantially different live-music landscape in Canada today than it was in 1977, when O’Connor returned to Canada and co-founded Perryscope Concert Productions, a regional promoter based in Vancouver. For one thing, there are no longer many big regional promoters around – Live Nation Canada dominates now, has for a while.
For a second thing, concert promoters used to slot at the bottom of the live-music totem pole. They took the risks and were the last to get paid. Today, with concert tours outranking record sales, promoters are in the catbird seat.
“Now, people come to us,” O’Connor says. “We’re the gateway for artists to have a revenue stream. And that’s more fun for us.”
At 73, the electrician-turned-executive still gets a charge out of the concert business. Though publicity photos of him with long hair still float around the internet, he chopped off his ponytail years ago after losing a bet with his son. (The wager was tied to his son’s scholastic achievements.) Still, he’s a rugged-looking septuagenarian in jeans and a T-shirt whose face lights up at the mention of one of his favourite bands to work with, Iron Maiden.
“Back in the 1980s, they were my meat-and-potatoes band,” he says of the Run to the Hills rockers. “They were professional, hardworking and they would go anywhere you wanted them to play.”
This fall, Live Nation has booked Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson into History Toronto, one of the growing footprint of venues and festivals the promoter has either built, bought or acquired though partnership arrangements. It built History, which opened in 2021. “We saw a need for a 2,500-capacity venue for this city,” O’Connor explains. “Not a club, but a general-admission room. And it’s been a home run.”
O’Connor and Live Nation hope to keep the hitting streak alive with History Ottawa, a two-storey, 2,000-capacity expansion of the brand, set to open next year. Like its Toronto counterpart, it is being built in collaboration with Canadian hip-hop superstar Drake.
“He’s involved on a financial and creative level,” O’Connor says. “Drake is full-on invested in the community. That’s why he does it.”
On the bigger end of the scale, Live Nation is currently erecting Rogers Stadium at Toronto’s Downsview lands. The 50,000-capacity outdoor stadium is set to open on July 7, with melodic British rock band Coldplay christening the facility with four concerts. With the land set for redevelopment by the property owners five years from now, the seasonal stadium is temporary.
Because of its territorial ambitions, Live Nation is seen by some as an evil empire threatening the livelihood of independent venues and promoters. O’Connor isn’t having any of it.
“It’s just nonsense,” he says. “It’s never about shutting people out. We like working with people, and we don’t steal acts. Acts make their decisions on who they want to work with based on how much money they’re going to get paid.”
Case in point: Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which grossed US$939-million from 328 concerts. The tour was promoted by competitor AEG Live, even though Live Nation had worked with the Rocketman superstar previously. “We got outbid,” O’Connor says with a shrug. “It was as simple as that.”
O’Connor’s reputation is that of a straight-shooting problem solver, tough and gruff but fair. In short, says Jeffrey Remedios, president and chief executive officer of Universal Music Group’s Republic Collective, “When the situation calls for it, he kicks ass.”
The stories about him are legendary. When the Tragically Hip played what is now known as Scotiabank Arena on New Year’s Eve in 1999, a loading-dock door wouldn’t close. Cold air rushing into the arena caused singer Gord Downie’s voice to tighten. While others looked at the problem with puzzled expressions and hands on hips, O’Connor took an axe to the door frame to fix the issue.
“Riley does what needs to be done,” says Jake Gold, the band’s manager. “That’s who he is.”
Gerry Barad, Chicago-based executive vice-president of booking with Live Nation Global Touring, has known O’Connor since they worked together in Vancouver in 1978: “Riley’s not afraid of getting into an argument, if it’s about something he’s passionate about. He’s definitely not a ‘yes’ man – more of a ‘maybe’ man.”
Mark Norman, senior vice-president global touring with Concerts West, AEG Presents, has a history with O’Connor that goes back to the 1980s in Vancouver, when they were both with Perryscope. “He’s a tough son of a gun. He knows people and he knows what he’s doing,” Norman says. “He can be a curmudgeon, but he develops relationships with artists and managers and agents and record companies. He’s articulate and they trust him.”
Norman recalls a night when audience members rushed the stage at a Police concert at the Pacific Coliseum. O’Connor was settling up the night’s receipts with the band’s manager when he was asked to go on stage to calm the crowd, which he did. For taking charge and managing the combustible situation, noted music manager Bruce Allen, who had a radio show at the time, famously called O’Connor “Dad” on air.
O’Connor has his own stories. He talks about Bo Diddley fixing his station wagon, and he remembers pitching pennies against a wall at the Pacific Coliseum in the early 1980s with Neil Young. “We were bored,” he explains.
Though he regales with the best of them, O’Connor is something other than nostalgic. Now the chairman of a company that is building its own stadium, his beginnings were humble. In his first year as a promoter, he made $13,000. His first sell-out concert was a Stampeders show in a gymnasium full of 1,800 people in Prince Rupert. He made just $450 after everyone else was paid.
“It was just about survival back then,” he says. “You’re trying to make a living on a $3.55 ticket. But I’m still here, and I’m having the time of my life.”
