School of Rock

SCHOOL

LARRY WEBMAN ’92GOT EDUCATED IN THE BUSINESSOF MUSIC AT CLARK. TODAY, HE REPRESENTS COLDPLAY, DROPKICK MURPHYS, BARENAKED LADIES, AND BANDS YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF — BUT YOU WILL

OF

by jim keogh

PHOTO BY STEVEN KING

OCK

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LARRY WEBMAN SAT IN A LONDON PUB AND TALKED TO A MAN ABOUT A BAND.

Larry Webman with Sara Bareilles before her concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheater outside Denver.

he year was 2000. Webman and a colleague, Marty Diamond, both of them talent agents, had journeyed across the Atlantic to meet with the artists’ manager. The two had listened to the early recordings made by the young musicians, who, outside of a small ring of fans in the U.K., were largely anonymous. Not only did they appreciate the music they heard, they sensed the potential of the music yet to be written. This band was special.

Thanks to good timing and an even better pitch, the agents emerged an hour later with an agreement to represent Coldplay.

“[Lead singer] Chris Martin told us, ‘We’re never going to be a big touring band,’ ” Webman recalls. “Obviously, they’ve evolved.”

Have they ever. Webman helped take Coldplay from 500-capacity ballrooms to sold-out stadiums; from English music festivals to global tours. “We didn’t set out thinking we would be representing one of the biggest acts in the world,” he says. “It’s actually a great case study in how to develop a band.”

As an agent at the highest levels of his profession, Webman can boast his share of case studies. He also knows that while game plans are important, hustle and instinct can rule the day. You don’t wait for lightning to strike; you seed the clouds.

It’s how he’s built an enviable career in a competitive-to-cutthroat industry fueled by egos that sometimes outflank talent, one that exploits what’s hot even as it scrambles to answer the eternal question: What’s next?

In high school in Norwich, Conn., Webman aspired to be a professional drummer, and performed at all the typical venues: teen parties, talent shows, assorted garages and basements. He toyed with the idea of attending Berklee College of Music in Boston, then going on to play alongside some of the biggest acts in the business. Webman didn’t just want to make music — he wanted to make NOISE.

His father offered support and encouragement to his musician son, leavened with a dose of parental practicality. Chase your dreams, he counseled, but get an education that will allow you to have a meaningful life and productive career just in case the music thing doesn’t work out.

“When you’re a teenager, the thought of failure never crosses your mind, but what my father said made sense,” Webman recalls. A family friend who was attending Clark told him about the University’s active music scene — regular concerts in the campus pub, bands at Spree Day, and shows in Atwood Hall, where Jimi Hendrix and The Grateful Dead once played.

He was all in. Webman arrived at Clark in 1988, quickly joined the Pub Entertainment Committee, and found himself lugging PA speakers and cables, sticky from soda and beer, up and down basement stairs to the performance venue. The unglamorous labor was a small price to pay for hearing some great

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about working in the business end of music. I was still thinking about a career as a musician,” he says. “It wasn’t until my senior year when I thought, ‘Maybe I can do this.’ ”

music that first year: Fishbone, Ziggy Marley, Little Feat, and ’Til Tuesday, the Boston-based band who performed in Atwood just before breaking up.

In his sophomore year, Webman took over as Pub Entertainment Committee president. “By dumb luck, the three seniors who ran PEC graduated, and I was the only one interested in taking it on,” he recalls. “I got a two-minute tutorial in how to fax offers to agents and talk to them on the phone. And then it was, ‘Okay. You’re in charge now.’ ”

He made his first offer to the band-of-themoment, The Replacements — $7,500 for a show at Clark. The band’s agent immediately called him and unleashed a stream of invective, denouncing the offer as an insult and Webman as a schmuck. What was The Replacements’ asking price at the time? Webman chuckles. “Probably $15,000.”

Undeterred, Webman brought all kinds of bands to campus — reggae, blues, and rock of all stripes, including acts incubated in the MTV

universe, like the Spin Doctors and the Psychedelic Furs. The genre-bending Vermont band Phish landed at Clark years before they became a phenomenon. Webman haggled with their manager, who wanted $1,500, and got them to play for $1,350.

Hiring bands on the rise came with challenges. In a pre-digital world, raising students’ awareness of the talent soon to be in their midst meant plastering campus with promotional flyers and, well, that was about it. Word-of-mouth was not a euphemism: He literally had to ask Clarkies to attend. “We’d have a great band in the pub, and maybe 30 or 40 people would show,” Webman recalls.

His three years as PEC president allowed Webman to foster relationships with talent agents in New York and Los Angeles, to the point where they began calling him to offer bands. The rapport also gave him insight into a potential career path.

“I was a business major with a minor in music and I played in bands, but I wasn’t thinking

Webman returned home following graduation and applied for traditional jobs in marketing and human resources, with no luck. At his father’s urging, he paid a visit to a small Connecticut agency that booked tribute bands.

“I begrudgingly went down there, a 22-yearold know-it-all,” he says with a laugh. “I walked into the owner’s office — he worked out of a space above his garage. Turns out, his assistant had just given her notice that day, and he hired me on the spot.”

After two years spent finding work for musicians channeling Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and AC/DC, Webman was bored.

“I asked my boss for permission to book a couple of original bands, and he said fine, as long as I kept the tribute bands working,” he recalls. Webman went out and signed the Boston independent band Letters to Cleo, which eventually signed a deal with major label Giant Records and had one of their videos featured on the popular TV show “Melrose Place.”

“At the time, all these agents from L.A. and New York started calling the band’s manager, trying to sign the band. They’d say, ‘This little mom-and-pop agency can’t take you to the next level. You should dump this guy and come with us.’ So what was I going to do? Do I lose this band and continue booking tribute bands, or am I going to try and figure out how to take the next step?”

He figured it out. Through an introduction from Letters to Cleo’s attorney, Webman connected with an up-and-coming agent, Marty Diamond, who was then at a large New York agency but was forming his own company. In March 1994, Webman joined Little Big Man Booking, and moved to New York.

“My dad drove me to the New Haven train station to take the Metro North Railroad into New York, where I was going to crash on my soon-to-be boss’ couch until I could get an apartment. He said, ‘Look, I hope this works out for you,’ ” Webman remembers. “Again, in my early 20s I wasn’t worried about failure. I just wanted to keep working in music, keep

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Webman convenes with Barenaked Ladies as they get ready to go onstage.

booking bands. This was an opportunity for me, and I was going for it.”

From inside a windowless one-room office, Little Big Man was launched. Webman and Diamond outhustled larger agencies to sign acts with record labels — the lack of bureaucracy in their small company helped keep them nimble (Webman eventually became a partner). The two haunted small clubs and festivals, hit every music showcase they could, and traveled to England a couple of times a year to scout talent and network with record labels and managers. They signed musicians at various stops along their professional journeys, from independent bands with small-yet-fierce

followings to popular performers at the top of their game, to once-popular acts looking for a reboot. Their roster grew to include Sarah McLachlan, Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Arctic Monkeys, KT Tunstall, Sigur RÓs, and Jason Mraz, among many others. For 12 years, the company grew and thrived.

As the music business began diversifying, it became clear that more than hustle was needed. In 2006, Little Big Man agreed to a purchase by the larger Paradigm Talent Agency in New York, whose reach extends into all corners of the entertainment industry.

“As artists progress in their careers and have families and kids, they don’t want to be on the road all the time,” Webman says. “They’re looking to write books, they want to act, they want to score films. As a small boutique agency, we didn’t have those capabilities. Sometimes

agents lose an act because the artist wants those other things. Now, we have that capability, and do it better than our competitors.”

Digital music has dramatically altered the landscape, he notes. Record labels have seen their controlling influence over artists’ careers diminish, as music gets released through streaming channels and other means. Still, the agent’s role is stronger than ever, Webman insists, because without labels doing the grunt work of helping emerging artists launch their careers, agents are even more critical to shepherd them through the process.

Ultimately, there is no substitute for pure talent. Webman cites the trajectory of Sara Bareilles, whose 2014 anthem “Brave” became a radio staple. Bareilles has since composed the music for the hit Broadway show “Waitress” and portrayed Mary Magdalene in

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PHOTO BY MAURICIO SANTANA/GETTY IMAGES

the NBC live Easter production of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Yet she was unknown until she showed up at the apartment of Webman’s colleague with her portable keyboard. “She was having no luck getting an agent, so my co-worker agreed to hear her play. That day, he said we had to sign her.”

Among his other clients are the Dropkick Murphys, best known for their hit, “I’m Shipping Up to Boston,” which director Martin Scorsese incorporated into his mob film “The Departed.” The band came into the fold in 2011, seeking to enhance their profile. Webman went to work, helping package the Celtic-punk band into an act that’s gone from playing mid-size clubs to 5,000-person venues. “We figured out how to grow their audience and grow them on the financial end,” he says.

They’ve added fresh artists from the U.S., U.K., and Iceland like David Gray, MGMT, Of Monsters and Men, Santigold, and Bastille. Webman can’t attend all his clients’ shows, which take place around the world at any given time, but that doesn’t mean his fingerprints aren’t all over them.

A tour starts when a band’s manager informs the agent they want to go on the road. Webman puts together the itinerary of venues, gauging location, size, and availability. He determines how the act will be traveling, assesses the parameters of the tour, negotiates expenses, and is the final word on a host of marketing and media strategies. “Every aspect touches my desk at some point,” he says.

“I always go to the first show of the major tours, the New York and Los Angeles shows, and big festivals. You’ve got to remain visible to the artist, because other agencies are always telling them they can do a better job. It’s the nature of the business — the grass is always greener for some people, and you always have to prove yourself.”

Bands just a few years removed from playing in their parents’ garages today are tearing up dive bars in New York, Boston, and Miami. They are the undercard at music festivals, where audiences impatiently wait for them to finish their set so the headliners can go on. They lug their own gear, buy their own beers, sing their original music.

And they are talented — it’s just that few people know it yet. But Larry Webman does, and he’s working to ensure one day you will, too. That’s his job.

Webman can’t attend all his clients’ shows, which doesn’t mean his fingerprints aren’t all over them.

Webman’s client, Coldplay, is one of the world’s most popular bands.

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