Now that I have a bunch of dates it was time to go to work. A friend of mine told me about a band called Poison getting popular in L.A. I told my friend I have heard of them and thought they were a girl band, he told me that they were guys and they were a glam band. On an ad in one of the local music magazines was their photo and booking information. I called the number and a guy named Bobby answered the phone. Bobby turned out to be Bobby Dahl, the bass player. I told him I was from The Golden Bear which quickly got his interest because he has heard of the famous club. He asked me if the club was all ages and I said it was and it held 300 people. He told me that they never played Orange County before but felt they can do well as it was close to L.A. and they had a large teenage female following. I gave Bobby the first date i had, and he said that they were available and needed $1,000 with a $500 deposit. I really didn’t know what to do because he told me never to guarantee a local band money because I would lose money if I didn’t sell enough tickets and promoting is a financially risky position. I told Bobby I will call him back. I went back to my friend and told him the band wanted $1,000 and he told me I should do it because they have been packing the L.A. clubs and really had a strong following. $1,000 was a lot of money in 1985 and was nervous. I called Bobby back and made the $1,000 agreement. He had me drive to Hollywood the next week where I gave him $500 deposit. Our contract was a hand written agreement on back of a flier. The date was 6 weeks away and now it was time to get the word out. i didn’t have much money and used their flier and zeroed a 1000 copies, they were horrible looking. I also convinced the owner to list them in the L.A. Times.

Show date

The day has arrived and the band arrived for sound-check. I had the final $500 and needed to get paid on arrival. I didn’t sell any advanced tickets and didn’t have any ticket revenue to use. I was lucky I was prepared. I worked my ass off promoting but didn’t know what to expect. Our box office girl arrived a few hours before to answer the phones and to prepare to open. The phones were answered by automatic recording normally and still had no idea how the show was going to do. About an hour after the girl stared answering the phone she called me to the box office and she told me she was getting a lot of calls for directions. I said great and she pointed that all 5 lines were lit up and was answering as fast as she could. I was now feeling good. After sound check we fed the band and we had a great time joking around the dressing room. The $1,000 guarantee was a lot of badly needed money to them. Remember this was before they had a record deal and was playing as a local band. 15 minutes before showtime i walked outside to see if there was a line. There was a line that was very long that went around the corner. Tickets were $10.00 and I sold all 300 and turned away a bunch of disappointed fans.  I made $3,000, paid the band $1000 and had $2,000 profit. Not bad for my fist show . The owner could’t believe it and was happy because they did well selling food and beverages and I deducted $2,000 what he owed me. Life was good for all of us.Brett and i recently met in Las Vegas and he remembered the show over 30 years ago and was very happy to see each other again.

All of my dates at The Golden Bear, about 10 in total were all full and a couple more sellouts. The club closed and I was so disappointing that I was on a roll with my new career as a promoter. Now that I had money it was off to Hollywood to start doing shows at The Roxy Theater. I also ended up doing Poison’s record release party at The Whisky