“Booked ’Em”: Clark’s Backstage Pass with Dan Portnoy ’79

Beginnings on the Student Activities Board

It was 1976 and the Student Activities Board (SAB) was in the Little Center then. The fellow who preceded me was Larry Pinckney. I wasn’t a music person; he was. Since he was like 11 years old growing up in Philadelphia, he was promoting acts in the music business—he managed major acts when he was a teenager or something like that.

When we were freshmen, the group that preceded him running SAB had a major scandal. My sense was they spent a lot more money than they had and broke the budget. Clark had to back it up. They were ousted. Larry, who was a freshman and knew the business backwards and forwards, took it over.

I just got involved because I was down the hall in the dorm. We were friends, and when he decided to go and design sets for major acts, he chose me to take over. Even though I was not the most into the music business, he thought I was responsible. I kind of am.

Learning the Music Business

I kind of slid into it and had a blast with it. It was great.

We (Clark) had a lot of advantages—if there was a band booked in Boston and booked in western Massachusetts, we were right in between. If they had an extra day, Clark was a good place to slot in.

I spent a lot more of my time doing concert stuff than doing my academic work. I was in the SAB office all the time.

It was pretty wild, me being a sophomore or junior, signing these contracts with no faculty oversight.

Talking Heads (February 6, 1977)

When I booked them, they were already pretty famous. Back when Larry was doing concerts, punk was coming into vogue, and we just said, ‘We need to do a punk band.’ Turns out it was the Talking Heads before Talking Heads: ’77 came out. Nobody had heard of them. Larry told me he paid $350 for them.

I was like ten yards in front of the Talking Heads (during the concert). I wish in retrospect I paid more attention to what they were playing, but it didn’t sound great—it was too loud and reverberating for that small of an area. That became my favorite band for the longest time.

Later, when they were huge, WCUW asked if I could get a band like Talking Heads for a benefit. I called the agent, and they remembered we’d booked them when they were nobody, so we booked them again for a pittance of what they were able to charge then.

They came up. I said, ‘What kind of sound and lights do you want?’ They said, ‘Actually, just put two trees on each side of the stage with no gels—just all white light.’ It was the most incredibly creative use of lighting I’ve ever seen.

Sad story: I had a box of my college things in my parents’ attic which was thrown out when they moved—it contained the contract with both my signature and David Byrne’s on the bottom. I wasn’t as concerned with the academic items that were lost!

The Cars (September 24, 1978)

Getting that band was a real coup. One summer I spent in Worcester, I just heard a demo—it wasn’t out yet—it was ‘Just What I Needed’ by the Cars. As soon as I heard it, I called the record company, got in touch with the agent, and said, ‘I want to book the Cars.’

I booked them for about October. It was a good move—lucky and fortuitous. By the time they played at Clark, the cost to book them was 15–20 times higher. I’m pretty sure it was $3,000, and I think they were going for $30–50,000 depending on the size of the arena.

Booked Shows & Stories

‘Dizzy’ Gillespie (February 26, 1978): I’m not a big jazz fan, but we tried to book different types of music. My mother is a huge jazz fan and couldn’t believe I booked ‘Dizzy’ Gillespie. Every contract had riders—the typical clichéd stories of only red M&Ms. Most of them weren’t like that, Dizzy’s manager gave me his home number and said to ask him what he wanted.

Earl Klugh (September 30, 1978): We did a coffeehouse in Dana. We rented tables, cappuccino machines—it came off really well actually, though my artistic sense is poor. I bought all these mylar strips to look cool—it didn’t. But it was fun.

Taj Mahal (March 12, 1978): During that time, I was most into reggae. I hitchhiked to New York, found this ska band from Dominica called Moja Nya. They opened for Taj Mahal—came out in full African attire. They were in dashikis, as opposed to jeans and t-shirts when I first found them.

We also had Meatloaf, Be Bop Deluxe, Dwight Twilley Band, Robert Palmer (who painted the mirrors in Atwood with mustard and ketchup) and Chicago blues acts from Alligator Records.

Memorable Moments

When Patti Smith played (March 16, 1979), she told me directly: ‘When we start ‘Because the Night’ and we put our hands up, turn on the lights.’ I was up above the stage on the catwalk—the booming intro drumbeat from down below hit my heart. It got all the excitement up, and at the same time, when they left, the lights being on signaled no more encores.

After Clark

I do think it [the experience] had influence—I got two offers in the music business after Clark, including from Alligator Records. It wasn’t my style everybody was hip and cool and yet you’d get stabbed in the back nonetheless or you’d have to stab somebody else in the back. That wasn’t for me. I liked the much more calm and demure atmosphere of investment banking.

My first job in finance was at Morgan Stanley. I think they were impressed that I was spending 40+ hours a week booking concerts while going to school.

Reflections

Sometime after I was booking the concerts I didn’t think of myself as too much of an egomaniac, but there was this one editorial…The Scarlet did a story about me without interviewing me. It had this one cartoon sketch—it was purportedly me, a guy in a big top hat plugging in a thing with lights coming on. I was the mover and shaker. I didn’t feel like the mover and shaker.

Funny story: Whenever a Talking Heads (or Cars, among others) song comes on the radio, I always call out, ‘Booked ’em!’ My kids, of course, roll their eyes. Hey—it’s only been a couple thousand times.