Phil Rodriguez Thanks to Phil, Panama witnessed the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the height of their fame in 2002
couldn’t get the gear out. The Rock-it Cargo rep was hiding in the bushes watching the planes. “The little code the band had for when they were holding coke was five fingers on their heads, sticking up. And when they landed in Chile, some of the guys were doing that on the plane and the locals thought they were insulting them, calling them Indians. In Argentina, nationalists said Axl had insulted Argentina and they claimed to have put a bomb in the stadium. “Every city, it was just crazy. By the time we got to Rio it was like Genghis Khan and his horde coming into town. It was like sitting on a powder keg. But it was great, it was rock & roll.”
¡Salud!
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t took until the 1990s before the major South American markets began decisively to move towards the healthy, if occasionally geopolitically turbulent position in which they now find themselves. Although a tour with Guns N’ Roses from 1992 illustrates why rock & roll and a developing, very foreign continent haven’t always been an easy mix. “That was a hell of a tour,” says Rodriguez with a whistle. “In every city we went to, there was some sort of clusterfuck. The first show was in Venezuela, just as Chávez took power – the infamous coup d’état. They closed the airport; they
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Beyond Rio
n the years since, Rodriguez has firmly established himself as one of the continent’s key live figures. He booked Rock in Rio for 30 years – though he retired the gig in 2015 to focus on Move Concerts – and produced the South American leg of Live Earth in July 2007 for over 500,000 people on Rio’s Copacabana Beach. On the schedule for this autumn are Green Day, John Mayer, Bruno Mars, Depeche Mode and others. Rodriguez’s business partners over the decades haven’t always had the same staying power. “What would happen was the following: a lot of the partners I worked with went into other businesses that were more profitable. Like, ‘we have taken nine hits and made money on three shows, I give up.’”
Rock in Rio’s Madrid edition in 2010 saw Bon Jovi, among many others, on the bill, courtesy of Phil
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IQ Magazine November 2017