“Ron Delsener was ubiquitous and New York was his town,” says Paul Simon, one of the talking heads in RON DELSENER PRESENTS, a just-opening rock documentary directed by Jake Sumner and distributed by Abramorama. It’s a big, fun, nostalgic movie-tour for baby boomers who lived the era. The doc’s subject, of course, is the self-made, unparalleled rock-and-roll impresario called by another of his artists, Bette Midler, “one of the strangest people ever—but fabulous.”
The cigar-chomping Delsener, a kid from Queens, comes off as slightly more nebbischy, but equally rugged as his charismatic West Coast competitor, Bill Graham. But he was and remains a smart and tenacious businessman. He’s the business gambler that fellow Queens native Donald Trump purports to be but wasn’t — and isn’t. The doc lifts the curtain on the nationwide network of machers who divvied the nation into territories, leaving the plum to Delsener: New York. And there he reigned supreme. (Graham entered with the Fillmore East, only to retreat three years later.) Meanwhile Delsener built and built. His first stadium show was as a junior producer for The Beatles at Forest Hills Tennis Club; Carnegie Hall lost its virginity as a rock venue with no less than David Bowie in his U.S. debut (1972); and, refurbishing the erstwhile Academy of Music, an East 14th Street vaudeville theater built in 1854, into the Palladium, there Delsener presented Patti Smith, Mothers of Invention, Clash, and Ramones (mid-’70s). (There I saw James Brown.) Delsener kept apace of the culture. That was key. Footage of the massive Simon & Garfunkel “reunion” concert Delsener produced in Central Park, in September 1981, is a reason to see this movie.
Clearly he hit a sweet spot of satisfying both audiences and artists. Bruce Springsteen says that Delsener treated him and his ragtag band, “like a king.” To say the guy is a character is redundant: he’s a native New Yorker. Among the fore-mentioned, his elite cadre of artists include Jon Bon Jovi, Jimmy Buffett, Cher, Art Garfunkel, Billy Joel, KISS, Patti Smith, all bringing best bon mots to this immensely entertaining movie.
RON DELSENER PRESENTS | opens in theaters Friday May 30
Arts journalist Debra Levine founded artsmeme in 2008, and has been at it since. Yes, she is the cinephilic dance critic.