- by Jon Landau and Dave Marsh

Frank Barsalona didn't invent the rock concert business, but it often seems like it.

When Frank began his career as an agent (he'd had a brief career as a yodeler as a teen), rock'n'roll was, to use his expression, "lower than the rodeo," the absolute bottom rung of show biz. Because of the contempt in which rock and R&B were held, young artists were hoodwinked with promises of big-time movie, TV or night club careers, weaned away from the music that had made them famous, and then discarded.

Frank, who had represented the Beatles among others at GAC, began Premier Talent with a small group of artists--Mitch Ryder, the Who and Herman's Hermits--and with a simple premise: He respected the music. He wouldn't try to create performers suitable for show biz. (Premier not only never represented its artists for film work; it never opened a Hollywood office.) Instead, Barsalona determined to create a version of show business suitable for such performers.

He first labored to stabilize the fly-by-night concert promoting business itself, identifying the venues and agents where the transformation of rock from entertainment underbelly to an unparalleled world of its own could take place. The result became a truly professional environment in which the music prospered both financially and creatively.

This visionary became real for several reasons. The most important was that the music was coming into its own. Among Frank's early clients were bands like the Yardbirds and the Who, who played major roles in redefining the music. For bands like this, a fifteen-minute spot in a package show wasn't enough. At the same time, the rock ballroom circuit was developing, and with it a new breed of promoter closely associated with Premier--such as Bill Graham in San Francisco, Don Law in Boston, Larry Magid in Philadelphia, Aaron Russo in Chicago, and the Belkin brothers in Cleveland, to name a few. The importance of having venues where artists could perform at their best, and at the length they needed, with great lights and sound, was a breakthrough that is hard to fathom in today's more complex concert world--but the current concept setups would be unthinkable without that set of changes.

Frank Barsalona uniquely understood how to bring together these performers and promoters, as well as key figures from the record companies, and knit them into a community. There was nothing Frank enjoyed more than sitting after a show at the Boston Tea Party or The Fillmore East, with the artist, manager, promoter, record company folks, and assorted others (such as young journalists), talking about the future. There isn't any artist in the past 35 years who hasn't benefited from the changes that Premier initiated and nurtured, whether or not they were ever actually represented by the agency.

Those who drew closer to Premier benefited in other ways. It was a remarkably nurturing environment, partly because Frank himself played such and avuncular mentoring role with artists like Pete Townshend of the Who and Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band, as well as countless managers, record execs and even a few fortunate journalists. Bands like those, Led Zeppelin, Earth, Wind & Fire, Humble Pie, and on up through Bruce Springsteen, Journey, and U2 defined Premier Talent's musical world.

It is typical of Frank that several key figures at Premier were women, even at a time when female music execs were rarer that they are now. Most notably, there has always been Barbara Skydel, an especially adept agent and talent scout who was as ever-practical as Frank often was not; Jane Geraghty, long one of Premier's best agent's, and his wife, June Barsalona (who, as June Harris, had herself been an important figure in Beatles-era rock journalism). There were many others who contributed to Premier's family feeling--Frank was the only major figure in rock'n'roll whose driver, Willie Vacaar, played a long-term role as ever-present familiar, repository of experience and one of the industry's great raconteurs.

Frank is no slouch himself at yarn-spinning, and there can't be anyone who knows him well who hasn't set out to have a nice early dinner at the Barsalona's and nevertheless arrived home just past dawn, head spinning with anecdotes and ideas. (Never forget that Frank turned himself into a yodeler as a result of staying up all night as a kid listening to distant radio broadcasts out on Staten Island.) There will be dozens of those stories told tonight and almost all of them will have those who weren't there howling.

That's a good thing for many reasons, not least because Frank is a very private person, who has never accepted many awards or had his story told very often. The accomplishments he made with Premier are easy to take for granted--in fact, Frank probably takes them for granted--unless you happened to watch them happen. in retrospect, that one person played a key role in developing so many aspects to the live rock business is even more amazing because his name is virtually unknown outside the concert industry. Maybe that's another reason it worked out so well: Frank and Premier always knew where the spotlight belonged.

As we were preparing to write our version of Frank's story, Jon's teenage son Charley overheard our discussion and remarked, "Let me see if I understand this. You're going to write something about an ethical agent?"

Yes, and the best part is, we didn't have to invent him.