Bob Belber – An Xperience Interview

Bob Belber – An Xperience Interview – by Liam Sweeny.

If you’ve ever had a good time at the MVP Arena, or any of its past incarnations, you have Bob Belber to thank. He’s the man behind the scenes, and his new book, “Life with the Stars,” takes you there.

RRX: Tell me a little bit about yourself and your new book, “Life with the Stars.” Was it something you endeavored to write on your own, or did someone encourage you to write it?

BB: I’ve been in the business for 41 years. I was the general manager of the old Starlite Music Theatre in Latham for 10 years, and then I’ve been at the MVP Arena, formerly known as the Times Union Center, formerly known as Pepsi Arena, formerly known as the Knickerbocker Arena, for the last 31 years. And you know, I would be at various family functions or social gatherings and people would say they went to a concert. Then I would, you know, mention something that happened backstage that was crazy, whether it was Michael Buble, playing table tennis with him (and by the way, getting my ass kicked), or whether it was Willie Nelson up on his bus, drinking tequila out of the bottle, passing it back and forth, just some really fun and crazy times. And all of my friends and family would say, ‘You know, you should write a book someday.” So I started writing it back in COVID. It took me probably the better part of three years, because I couldn’t just stay at it. I still had to operate the building and take care of all the things. So it was quite a process.

RRX: Take us through a spotlight show, a major name coming to MVP Arena. What has to happen before the lights go on, and in particular, what has to happen that you think people may not have any kind of understanding about?

BB: There are a lot of things that happen before the doors open, and during the course of the day. Let’s start right from the beginning of the day, and load-in. The crews with the tractor trailers – sometimes there are 20 tractor trailers worth of equipment that have to be loaded into the building, hung from the high steel. In some cases, the stage sometimes travels with the artists. Sometimes they use our stage, but at the end of the day, the crews arrive after having been on whatever number of other shows or tours, or tour dates. They might have just done 25 dates, and they’re arriving at your building on the 26th date. And it’s 8 o’clock in the morning, whether they slept the night before, coming from the prior city, who knows? But the first thing that they do when they get off the bus is look for a hot breakfast. And so if your breakfast is not good and hot, it ruins the entire day because that crew then becomes really nasty and not very happy. So every single element that it takes to make a show happen – and I don’t mean just happen, it has to happen in a way so that the artists and the crew feel really good about the building, because you want them leaving your building telling other people how great it was, so that additional shows will want to play here. So you’ll get more bookings, and the agents that represent these artists will feel like Albany should be on the routing because they’ve had so many great experiences with other artists that they’ve represented.

It’s extremely important, all throughout the day, to do everything right. Our crew at the MVP Arena: I have to say, many of them have been there for years and years, and there are new folks as well, but the culture that we have is backstage, front of house, public, artists, it doesn’t matter. Every single person has to be treated as though they’re family. And everything that we need to do or have promised we’re going to do has to be done better than whatever other venues are getting that tour date or that artist. And so, that’s something that I preached to my people, and they carry that out, I think, very well. And we will constantly double-check it. We’ve got ways to make sure that the public can even let us know how their experience was and where we need to make improvements; we try to get those made immediately.

Then, obviously, the night before the doors open up, you want to make sure that everything from a security standpoint is 100%; so that’s extremely important too. We actually button down, lock down our arena, right from the morning on, but before we get to the doors opening, we make sure that there’s not a single person who could get in and out of any doors around the arena without being double-checked, going through metal detectors. And we’ve got Albany County Sheriff’s deputies that are inside and outside the building. They’re taking care of traffic, there are so many things. We work with Homeland Security, we work with the FBI, and there are things that happen that people don’t know about. We’ve got some agents from Homeland Security and so forth that are in on the sellout shows that are in the crowd. They’re just in the crowd, they’re not in uniform. Nobody knows they’re there, but they’re there, and if something ever happened, we’d have people right there ready. So, you know, there are a lot of things that you have to know. You have to know your game.

RRX: Some entertainers are famous for their riders, the details in their contracts that outline what they expect when they get to a venue. Seeing as how you’ve been backstage with so many big acts, what was the requirement that – you don’t have to name names or anything – but what was a requirement that you thought was very difficult to fulfill?

BB: There are different types of things that people will ask for, that artists will ask for. In the case of Michael Buble, not on this most recent tour, but on the one back about 7-8 years ago, he required every building where he performed to provide a ping pong table. And so we had to go out and get a ping pong table, set it up backstage, and in fact, 4 o’clock on the afternoon that he was there, he did a sound check and then he went and he started playing ping pong with his crew members. And I just happen to walk by and he was finishing up a game with a crew member, and he looks at me and I’m in my tie and jacket and everything, and he says, “You wanna try a little?” And I had played a fair amount in school back in my youthful days, and I thought, ‘Well, sure.” So I jumped on there and let me tell you what, there’s a reason why Michael Buble asked to have a ping pong table at every venue. Cause the man plays every day and he’s damn good and kicked my ass.
But there are other requirements. I remember when I was at the Starlite Music theatre, Tom Jones’ rider required two bottles of Dom Perignon in whatever venue he played in (mostly theatres, theatre of the rounds). You had to have two bottles of Dom Pérignon. And at the time, that was pricey. It was very expensive. And so the owner of the Starlite Music theatre wanted to take care of it and make sure that we had the two bottles there, just like all the rest of the owners of the theatres did to keep him happy, because he was selling out buildings back in the ‘80s. And so I go backstage. And towards the end of the show, Tom Jones was still on the stage doing his last song, andI see somebody bringing the two bottles of Dom Perignon, which weren’t opened out to a Ryder truck. And I look in the back of the Ryder truck, and the Ryder truck is full of boxes of Dom Pero. And so I said to the guy, “What are you doing?” He says, “Oh, well, we’re boxing these up. We’re driving them out to Las Vegas.” And I said, “So what happens in Las Vegas?” He says, “Well, we resell.” He said, “Don’t ask me where the money goes, but they resell them.” So there are things that happen sometimes that you have no idea, and you find out that they are just crazy.

RRX: Tell me about Lil Wayne. You were able to help him solve a problem and avert a sort of catastrophe, right?

BB: The Lil Wayne story. I don’t know how much you know about that, but that’s in the book. He had a cancellation in Boston. This was only a few years ago, when he cancelled the show in Boston because they wanted him to walk through a metal detector, and he wouldn’t do it. And it was a sold-out show, and they were in the building, waiting for him. And so the show had to be cancelled because he wouldn’t walk through the metal detector. So the very next day, I’m in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, ‘cause I had to oversee that building. And I had a meeting with the client, you know, just like Albany County owns MVP Arena, there’s a municipal client in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, that I was meeting with; 9 o’clock in the morning. I’m in the conference room, and just on the other side of the wall is a hallway and Lil Wayne’s production manager is out in the hallway and our operations manager for the building in Wilkes-Barre is there, and he says to our operations manager, “If you want Lil Wayne to walk through that metal detector back there in the back of the building, you better tell me now so we can stop the load-in.” So, our operations manager’s trained to tell everybody they have to walk through the metal detectors. So that’s what he did. Well, the production manager for Lil Wayne jumps on his radio and says to his whole crew, “Stop the bus. We’re not going to load in. The show’s not going to happen.” So I immediately got up from my meeting with the client, walked out into the hallway, and said, “I need to introduce myself as the regional manager overseeing the building.” And I said, “You know, maybe there’s another way we can handle this.” And he said, ‘What do you have in mind?” I said, “Well, how about if our head of security for this building takes a metal detecting wand and meets Lil Wayne with his girlfriend at a private side entrance where nobody will see him come in. And we’ll make sure he doesn’t have a weapon coming in, and there’ll be nobody watching, and nobody will even know that he came in the building.” So he goes on his cell phone right there, and he tells Wayne on the phone what I just recommended. And so Wayne yells out, “Now there’s a white motherf*ker that gets it.”
The show took place, but come to find out, he felt disrespected because there were 50 or 60 stagehands in Boston that were right at the backstage entrance, and he didn’t feel like he wanted to have other people watching him have to go through a metal detector. I’m not gonna say that I’m gonna defend him and say that that’s OK to cancel the show because of that, but that’s the reasoning why he did it. So knowing that, when I got to the Wilkes-Barre building, I thought I was probably going to have a problem like that. So I’d had an opportunity to think to myself, how could I change that narrative, you know, how could I make a difference, and, you know, maybe make it so he’s not disrespected. So it worked, you know, and that’s in the book; these kinds of things,

RRX: Now, what you do isn’t always just entertainment. You’ve had a chance in your career to make big impacts. What would you say was the most impactful thing you’ve ever been able to do?

BB: There’s one thing that I can point to that was the best thing that I’ve done in my career. And it’s not in Albany inasmuch as I’ve been here the longest. In my opinion, the best thing that I’ve done was when I was the director of booking for the US for a company called SMG. SMG was the biggest facility management company in the world, with 250 stadiums, arenas, and convention centers that we managed, and was merged about 5 years ago. They were merged with AEG Facilities. And a company by the name of ASM Global was formed. ASM Global exists today, and it has been purchased by a company called Legends. And Legends, as you may know, is owned by the New York Yankees and the Dallas Cowboys owners, and it’s a huge hospitality and food service company. So they have purchased ASM Global, and now there are over 350 stadiums, arenas, and convention centers that are operated by this company.

Back in the early 2000s, when it was still under SMG, I was (in addition to running the Albany Arena) the director of booking for the US, and I was routing shows into 75 arenas at that point. I routed the Vince Gill and Amy Grant Christmas tours two years in a row in the early 2000s. And we had just gone into Iraq. So the country was on edge. There wasn’t even any video coming out of Iraq yet. And the tour – the Vince Gill Christmas tour – was out on the road. And so in San Antonio, which is a really big military town, there were a lot of fathers and some mothers who were in Iraq that were serving, and the families that were going to the Christmas show. Didn’t have their full families, and they were separated.

I wanted to do something special to connect the families. So I went to the general who oversees the Army’s broadcast network, and I said to the general, “You know, here’s what I’d like to do. I’d really like to connect the families and do it via satellite with a big screen on stage and so forth, and do it live.” He said to me, “Well, son, you realize it’s gonna be 4:30 in the morning or so Iraq time?” I said, yeah, I understand that, but imagine what that will look like and feel like? And he said, “Well, I hope you’ve got a big budget, because satellite time is not cheap. And it sounds like you’re going to need a lot of satellite hours or minutes.” And I said, ‘Yeah, I think you’re right, and no, I don’t have a budget. But I think it’s something that your military and the families back home will really appreciate.” So he gave me the number of the vice president of the satellite company. And he said, “Good luck, son,” and you know he didn’t expect me to be able to do anything with it.

I called the satellite company. I explained what I had in mind. Guy said, “I’ll call you back in 30 minutes.” Fifteen minutes later, he calls me back and he says, “We’re in, it’s not gonna cost you a dime.” And so on the night of the show, Vince and Amy Grant performed an incredible first half of the show. The lights come up. Grant goes to the front of the stage, and she tells everybody, “Don’t get out of your seats. I’ve got something special for you.” And she calls seven people, seven ladies, up to the stage with their children. They had seven barstools facing out at the edge of the stage. The kids were sitting on the stage, more or less under the bar stools, and she went to the first lady and asked her name, and she said, “If you could have anything in the world for the holidays, what would you want?” The lady started tearing up, and she said, “I wish I had my husband home.” And with that, the back of the stage completely illuminated from edge to edge with this massive video screen with seven guys in chairs and 400 military personnel behind them in uniform, 4:30 in the morning or so, Iraq time. And they zoomed in on the one husband, and he said, “Hi, honey.” And, oh my

God, Liam, there was not a dry eye. I was in tears. Every single person in every aisle of that arena was in tears.

The reason the army did that was because from the start of the show, through the interaction with the families, and through the end of the show, that entire thing, the show and the interaction, was broadcast to 118 military bases around the world. And the uplifting of morale in the military, from what I’ve understood, was incredible.

Two weeks after the Vince Gill/Amy Grant tour is finished, I get a box, a big box, shipped to me, and it’s a framed gold record from Amy Grant. And the note in the box said that what we did in San Antonio to connect the families was the best thing that Vince Gill and Amy Grant have done in their careers. And, I have to say, it’s the best thing that I’ve done in my career as well.

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