THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 30, 1995 TAG: 9508290132
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY TOM HOLDEN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 223 lines
FROM HIS YOUNGEST days, Bill Reid has aimed just a little higher than his peers.
Eighteen years ago, when other students at Hampden-Sydney College were digging deep to buy the latest Bruce Springsteen record, Reid was on the telephone booking the man himself for a concert.
Tickets were $3.
When a young entertainer from Hicksville, Long Island, N.Y., was warbling autobiographically about the Piano Man to an adoring public, the 19-year-old Reid was on the phone, booking Billy Joel for a show.
And when the once white-hot television show ``Saturday Night Live'' featured a bright young comic and his ``wild and crazy guy'' routine, Reid was settling on the details to bring Steve Martin to entertain the students.
Of the hundreds of shows that followed, Reid found himself time and again in the company of people far more famous than he, people who have defined pop music for generations of Americans.
Tonight, the president of Cellar Door Productions of Virginia will raise the curtain on the second annual American Music Festival, a mix of performers heavy on nostalgia and aimed squarely at middle-brow, middle-American baby boomers who populate hotel rooms from Rudee Inlet to 42nd Street.
To the 41-year-old Reid, it matters not. He is happy to be there, in territory as familiar as an old ticket stub. Be they the hottest bands on earth or a collection of old one-hit wonders, show business is his business.
It works because Reid, as any promoter will tell you, knows a little secret about performance artists and the public.
``I bet if you put anyone on a lie detector and asked them if they would like to sing before 13,000 people who love you and think you're just the greatest, I bet every one of us would say yes,'' Reid said.
``But most of us can't do that. Most of us can't sing, or write songs that people like. So I get to do the next best thing. I get to stand next to them,'' he said.
If ever a word comes to mind when mentioning Bill Reid, ``stand'' seems oddly out of place. Reid remains in constant motion. He comes off like some force unto himself. He prowls his cramped offices off Lynnhaven Parkway like the tenacious deal maker he has become: shirttail half out, necktie askew, a telephone strapped to his ear, his feet on the desk, then on the floor, laughing, talking, cajoling musical agents.
At any given moment when he is on the telephone, three more calls are stacked up waiting. The PBX switchboard at his office is a panel of blinking green lights. On show days, Reid comes close to frantic. He likely can be found pacing the apron of a stage while settling last-minute details and thinking about next month's act.
But never does he just stand there. It has been a trait most of his life.
In high school, when he was a member of Circle K, a service organization, Reid's ambition surfaced early and often. For the Westminister (N.C.) High School junior-senior prom, a classmate thought it wildly hopeful to book a regional top 40s act.
Reid aimed higher and asked the Allman Brothers Band to tune up. The Georgia guitar wizards had a devoted national following in the mid-1970s and early '80s with the underground hit ``Whipping Post'' and their only No. 1 song, ``Ramblin' Man.'' The Allmans never played Reid's high school prom, but Reid hardly flinched.
Like countless awkward teenagers of his day, Reid was happy to shell out money for Cream records, or offerings by proto-heavy metal stalwarts Iron Butterfly or rocker Alice Cooper. He put the Temptations, the Four Tops, and the Byrds in his collection, too. But any notions of being star struck faded for the rangy kid from Winston-Salem.
While some kids sought autographs, Reid sought contracts.
His love of music emerged in St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Winston-Salem where every Sunday his parents belted out hymns as loudly as anyone in the room. His sister played the guitar and sang Joan Baez songs.
``Music was never something foreign to us,'' said Reid, who admits he has little musical skill. He cannot sing. He has never written a song, and the guitars in his house are merely autographed presents from hit makers Tom Petty, Aerosmith and Garth Brooks.
``I'm the only person in my family who does not have a good voice,'' he said.
At 18, he settled into college life, majored in English literature and American history. He set his sights on graduation and, eventually, law school at Wake Forest University. Upon graduation in 1980, he interviewed with entertainment lawyer Marvin Katz, whose New York City firm handled the biggest American acts. Katz gave the young Reid a small bit of advice that really stuck in his head.
``He asked me, `Do you want to be a small fish in a really big pond or do you want to be a big fish in a small pond?' '' Reid said. ``I thought about it for awhile and decided it was better to be the big fish.''
But where, exactly?
He interviewed in Nashville to be on the corporate staff for Tree Publishing, one of Guitar Town's first publishing houses. But it was a friendship with Ray Bottom, whose family once owned the Newport News Daily Press and who was a trustee at Reid's college, that eventually brought him to Hampton Roads.
Bottom had contacts that helped Reid get his first job with the former Whisper Concerts, a Virginia Beach-based company that today is called Whisper Concepts. He became the talent buyer for the company, specializing in the college circuit of the Southeastern United States.
It was then that all of Reid's experience came into focus. He left Whisper and went to work for Cellar Door, taking with him the contacts he had developed over the years.
He took a little more. In the music business it's called having an ``ear.'' Either you have an ``ear'' for music or you don't. Either you can spot an upcoming star - the next super group that makes the cover of Rolling Stone - or you pick performers whose talent offers up one good song and then fades like bleached flannel.
``He has an excellent ear for music, and it's an extremely hard talent to find,'' said Jack Boyle, who as Cellar Door's chairman of the board runs the company from a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., office. ``I have no ear for music. He is fortunate in that he understands unknown musicians and the mainstream. In this way, he's multitalented.''
Reid, Boyle said, appears singularly focused on his work, someone who thinks nothing of putting in punishing hours on the expectation the time will pay off with loyal bands and formidable influence.
``I always accuse him of being a white knight on a Cellar Door charger,'' Boyle said. ``When he takes a stand, he will not back off, and that's a good trait. He's very bright, probably one of the best in the business of making things happen, of taking a negative thing and making something positive happen, of creating alternative venues and making them work.
``We had an office for five or six years in Virginia before I ever saw it, if that gives you some idea of the confidence I have in the man.''
No clearer example of Reid's talent for ``making something happen'' emerged than along the shores of the Elizabeth River in 1983. Norfolk entrepreneur Stanley Peck owned a parcel of weedy property there, which was home to one building of note, a dilapidated fish processing plant.
Reid and Peck worked out a deal where the building would be repaired and Cellar Door would promote concerts in it. Not everyone was enthused about the plan, the least of them being Jane Elizabeth Reid, Bill's wife of 14 years.
She recalled the first time Bill took her to see the decrepit building.
``It was completely dark inside,'' she said. ``It had not been used in years. There were rats literally running around on the floor, rats and spiders, a real nightmarish place. And I remember he said, `This is going to be my new nightclub.' I said, `Have you have lost your mind?'
``I just did not see it at all, not in a million years. I mean, we all like to have our own projects in life, but this?''
The building opened as Bessie's Boathouse and it quickly gained attention from local rockers who were thrilled that Cellar Door would funnel top-name national and regional acts into the red barn by the water.
When Peck sold the land to the city of Norfolk, which wanted to build its new baseball stadium on the site, Reid negotiated with the city for a new, long-term lease.
``More than once I've had to eat my words with Bill,'' Jane Reid said. ``My mother didn't always know how he made any money. He always goes for something that's way out. He likes to take a challenge.''
Consider this challenge. For years, the city of Virginia Beach handed its entertainment contract over to a close-knit group of local volunteers who ran a modest, if uninspired program of events. Virginia Beach Events Unlimited liked its hold on Oceanfront activities and it appeared a permanent arrangement until Reid showed up, promised more entertainment than a traveling circus, and eventually won the lucrative contract away from the insider's network and put it under Cellar Door's control.
He followed that act of derring-do by then cutting a deal with the city to build a $17.7 million amphitheater, which is now under construction. Its opening, scheduled for next spring, could invigorate the local music scene as nothing ever has.
Reid's greatest challenge, however, came a year after he opened the Boathouse. He was invited to Washington to help oversee President Ronald Reagan's second inaugural ball. For Reid, it was a singular experience and a little intimidating.
``There's nothing quite like being able to tell the president of the United States what to do,'' Reid said. ``One day the Secret Service came in and said, `OK, what do you want the president to do?' I was just amazed. But they really counted on us to know what was going to happen.
``So I said, `Well, he goes here, and then he walks over here. And then he does this.' They had it completely orchestrated. It was just amazing.''
That experience, and many others involving politicians - he counts Virginia Gov. George Allen among his friends - has left Reid wondering if maybe he, too, has a political future.
``I've toyed with the idea. My view is that people who are in a position to do something, should act for the betterment of the community. I've always felt that way. And I think I am in a position to do that, but I really don't know if I would run. Maybe I'm just kidding myself.''
But if there is talk about political office, Jane Reid knows well enough that experience has never kept her husband away from projects. Take the time 10 years ago that they bought their house in Linkhorn Park.
Jane was about seven months pregnant when she and Bill settled on the terms. It's an older house, built in the early 1930s. They got the house for next to nothing, but the lot was not for sale. So they had to move it to the lot next door.
``The day we cleared the lot, Hurricane Gloria moved in, so there was non-stop rain,'' Jane said. ``Mud was everywhere. I can tell you this much, our house weighs 22 tons, and it was amazing how long it took to move. Once it was moved, we had no heat, no water, no electricity for a while.''
Today, the walls of the 4,000-square-foot Colonial are decorated with gold, platinum records of bands that Reid has promoted, including one from his Williamsburg buddy Bruce Hornsby.
But for all the fun of this near-glamour life, nothing is more gratifying for the Reids than raising their three boys: Angas Alexander, 9; John Anderson, 8; and Andrew William, 5. A fourth child, a girl, is expected in November. They will name her Virginia Elizabeth.
Life in the pop music promotion business has given the Reids opportunities that might surprise some of their neighbors. Jane has cooked dinner or entertained for Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Bruce and Kathy Hornsby, David Crosby, Gregg Allman and members of REM.
``You would be amazed who has shown up here,'' she said. ``But we never say much about it.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Cover]
A REAL PARTY GUY
[Color Photo]
Bill Reid
Staff photo by CHARLIE MEADS/Cover photo by D. KEVIN ELLIOTT
Bill Reid in a rare moment: Standing still in his Cellar Door
Productions office. He's usually prowling about with a phone to his
ear, wheeling and dealing to book top entertainment for events like
the American Music Festival, which opens tonight at the Oceanfront.
Staff file photo by DAVID HOLLINGSWORTH
Throngs of beach music lovers packed the Oceanfront to hear the
Beach Boys at the American Music Festival last year.
LEFT: Reid took a decrepit, unusued ``nightmarish'' building,
crawling with rats, and turned it into Bessie's Boathouse, which
quickly gained attention from local rockers who were thrilled that
Cellar Door would funnel top-name national and regional acts into
the red barn by the water in Norfolk.
File photo by
RALPH FITZGERALD
by CNB