When I was first starting out, someone asked me to book a country show.
“Yeah, sure, that’s easy,” I said. “No problem.”
I look in Billboard and this one guy, Jim Reeves, had four out of the Top 10 songs. That was Beatles-like status!
So I got hold of the agency, which I believe was Lowry Talent in Atlanta, introduced myself, mentioned some of the shows I had done and asked to book Jim Reeves.
“Well, it’s awfully expensive,” the agent said. “In fact, let’s stop the agent stuff. Look – you can’t afford him.”
“Come on!” I said. “Give me a chance. It ain’t my money. Let me just try and buy it.”
This went on for a few minutes until I got indignant and the agent says, “The man’s been dead for two years.”
Then, in 1969, I was doing the Denver Pop Festival. I had a choice for the opening act on the third day between two bands, one called Aum and one called Santana. A fellow at Bill Graham’s office had sent me tapes of the two bands.
“Wow!” I said. “There’s no question!”
I booked Aum.
That’s another great Barry Fey moment.
Then there was the time I had a sold-out show downtown with Vanilla Fudge and Spirit. An agent named Ron Terry called me and said he had an act that I needed to add to the bill.
“I’m not putting on any more acts,” I said. “We’re sold out. I’m not spending any more money.”
He told me adding this act to the bill would mean a lot to me in the future.
“Listen!” I said. “Let me explain something to you. There were 7,500 tickets printed. They’re all gone. There’s no reason to spend any more money.”
He called me back in a half hour and he said, “Listen. Vanilla Fudge has agreed to pay half of the act’s fee out of their own money.”
“Well, that’s OK with me,” I said. “If they believe in them that much, so do I.”
And that’s how Led Zeppelin came to North America. December 26, 1968. But I fought hard not to play them.
In 1975 or ’76, Chuck Morris and I took over a tour with Willie Nelson. Poco had dropped off the tour because the previous promoter hadn’t paid them, so Jessi Colter joined the tour.
Chuck, who was the light of my life for 25 years, came into my office and says, “Waylon Jennings might want to play but he doesn’t want Jessi Colter on the tour.”
I thought for a few minutes and said, “Who is this guy Jessi Colter? Why is Waylon making such a fuss over him?”
Then there was June 5, 1983. Chuck and I were coming back from seeing a country act at the Us Festival. I had become a partner on the production of “Under A Blood Red Sky,” which was U2 at Red Rocks, and the show was that night.
But anytime there was inclement weather at Red Rocks, the City of Denver would give you an alternate site.
We land and there’s a light mist, almost like snow coming down. On instinct, I run to the phones to find where the show’s been moved to. I get in touch with backstage and everybody’s hemming and hawing. They finally put Paul McGuinness on the phone and he says, “Barry, your people wanted to call you all day but I wouldn’t let them. We have all our money invested in this. We can’t have it canceled.”
Then Bono picks up the phone and says, “I’ll call all the radio stations and tell them I’ll come back tomorrow, inside a place somewhere, and I’ll play for free but we’ve got to go ahead and play this tonight whether five people come or 5,000.”
Hundreds of thousands of people will tell you they were there that night, but of the 9,000 seats at Red Rocks only 4,400 were sold.
So we went home and changed into winter clothes and went up to Red Rocks. Magic is a much overused term but I had Neil Diamond playing that night at McNichols Arena and I was planning on going there at some point, but I just couldn’t leave. I just couldn’t stop staring at what I was seeing.
My own personal opinion why it was so great? It was my opening announcement when I said we were going to be seeing history tonight. Yup, it was all me, not Bono.
All kidding aside, I was completely oblivious to so much stuff. I had no idea of what I was doing. Mine is the ultimate story of being in the right place at the right time.
It just shows you how lucky I am to be alive, much less be in the business as long as I was. Really, how smart are we? Sometimes things happen with us or without us. We can’t be educators; we can only be messengers. We can’t tell the people what they want; we have to find out what they do want and bring it to them.
