I turned down doing press and radio interviews about the late Mr. Clark because those things tend to inflate your connection to the deceased and I didn't think I knew him well enough to be quoted that way. But the other day, I was telling a friend a story Dick told me and I thought I'd share it with you here.
You have to remember two related things about Dick Clark. One is that he hated to waste time. There was something of an unspoken rule around him: He wouldn't waste yours so don't you waste his. If you had a meeting with him at 11 AM, you were there at 11 AM and he would see you at 11 AM. And while the meeting would be very cordial and friendly and there would be small talk and joking, the meeting would not last any longer than it had to in order to accomplish whatever it was intended to accomplish. You would leave at 11:19 and on the way out, you'd see someone waiting for their 11:20 meeting.
And the other thing — and I was by no means the only person to notice this — is that while Dick was a major figure in the music business, it was the "business" part that interested him the most. He said he liked the music itself but if he got to talking about, say, Chuck Berry, it was talk about how many records Chuck had sold, how many shows he'd sold out, how much his performance fee had gone up or down, etc. I didn't even feel it was about the money as much as about the success. Dick ran his business like a business, which meant he had occasional clashes with music folks who didn't see or live it that way.
One time in connection with an upcoming project, Dick had to have a meeting with the members of a very successful rock group. I'm not sure I'm accurately recalling the name of the band so let's just call it The Rock Group. They were very big at the time and Dick needed to have what he figured would be a fifteen minute conference with them…at most. Their manager suggested he come to a local concert they were doing, see the show, then come backstage after for the meeting.
Dick didn't want to do that. He had no interest in sitting through an entire concert and wasting that much of his life. Could he just come over before the concert? Or after it? Could he drop by rehearsal? No, said the manager. The group was insisting that Dick be in the audience for the concert and then they could meet after. As Dick explained it to me, "Those meetings are always the same. We shmooze and talk and finally they say, 'We love you, Dick, and anything you want to do is fine with us if it's okay with our managers' and it's over. But in this case, I didn't have a choice. I had to go."
The manager said they'd arrange for the best seats, right in front. Dick said, "Thanks but I really like to be back a ways when I go to a concert. Could you put me in row 20 or so?" The manager said that would be arranged. Dick had learned from past experience that if you're in row 20, it's easier to sneak out to the lobby to make phone calls (or to just plain leave) without the performers on stage noticing your seat is empty. He also asked not to be introduced, ostensibly to prevent him from being mobbed for autographs. But the real reason was that you don't want to have them introduce you when you're not on the premises.
The concert was supposed to start at 8 PM, which meant Dick took his seat in row 20 at 7:59. By 8:10, the concert had not started. It hadn't started at 8:15, either. By 8:25, the audience was restless but not as restless as Richard Wagstaff Clark. He was annoyed that his time was being wasted like that and appalled at the baseline unprofessionalism of the whole enterprise.
Around 8:30, he was seriously thinking of walking out and not doing business at all with The Rock Group. That was when someone on their staff came to his seat and took him backstage. They said, "The guys were thinking you could have your meeting with them now." Dick was puzzled but he figured there were technical problems of some sort preventing the show from commencing. Perhaps one member of the band was stuck in traffic or something. Anyway, Dick was pleased someone had thought to fill the time by seeing him now. He was already figuring that when the show did start, one seat in row 20 would be unoccupied.
He was led back to a fancy dressing room and there were all the members of The Rock Group, sitting around, eating from a huge buffet and drinking spirits and smoking. Everyone was glad to see Dick and they quickly got down to business and discussed the matter he had come to discuss. It took around five minutes for the members of The Rock Group to get to "We love you, Dick, and anything you want to do is fine with us if it's okay with our managers."
With that done, Dick asked them what the delay was. By now, it was 8:45 and you could hear the crowd in the hall stomping their feet and chanting the group's name, demanding that the show start. The Rock Group seemed to be in no hurry to go out and play, and one of them said, "We're going to start at 9:10."
Dick didn't understand that attitude. He asked, "Why are you keeping your audience waiting an hour and ten minutes?"
And like it was the most obvious answer in the world, one of the band members said, "Because the last time Aerosmith played here, they kept the audience waiting an hour and five minutes."
