🎤 Michael Cohl: The Concert King Who Reinvented Live Music

From scrappy Toronto hustler to architect of the modern tour, Michael Cohl’s story is one of wild deals, corporate showdowns, and the billion-dollar blueprint for rock & roll on the road.

In 1989, an unknown Canadian promoter shocked the concert world by outbidding Bill Graham for The Rolling Stones’ comeback tour — guaranteeing the band over $65 million and rewriting the rules of live music forever. That deal, known as the Steel Wheels Tour, marked the beginning of the global “package tour” era: ticketing, merchandising, sponsorship, broadcasting — all under one promoter, all built to scale. His name? Michael Cohl.

Over the next 30 years, Cohl masterminded tours for 150+ major artists — including Michael Jackson, Pink Floyd, U2, Barbra Streisand, Madonna, and more. He pioneered the “360° deal” long before Live Nation made it a corporate strategy, and turned concerts into cross-platform media empires. But it wasn’t all standing ovations. There were scandals. Lawsuits. A few high-priced flops. And one time he had to throw Donald Trump out of a Rolling Stones show — with Keith Richards wielding a knife.

🎙 In This Episode

• How a strip club in Toronto led Michael Cohl to rock promotion
• The birth of Concert Productions International (CPI) — and how Cohl turned Canada into a world tour destination
• The Steel Wheels tour: ousting Bill Graham, rewriting contracts, and selling out stadiums
• The rise of package touring — where one promoter handled everything from merch to broadcast rights
• Behind-the-scenes stories from tours with Jackson, U2, Pink Floyd, and the Stones
• The CNE ticket tax scandal — and how $3 per seat turned into millions
• How Cohl helped launch Live Nation Artists and land Madonna & Jay-Z on mega-deals
• The Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark disaster — and how Cohl took the fall

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📍 Why It Matters

Michael Cohl didn’t just promote concerts — he industrialized them. His deals paved the way for today’s billion-dollar tours, VIP ticketing models, branded experiences, and corporate crossovers. The modern music business — from Live Nation to the rise of tour-first artists — owes a massive debt to his blueprint.

Whether you see him as a genius, disruptor, or deal-hungry capitalist, Cohl changed the game. And his story is full of backstage drama, brilliant ideas, and moments that redefined what live music could be.

Follow for more deep-dive music industry stories.

🔗 Bonus Links

• Michael Cohl – Canada’s Walk of Fame
• Satisfaction, Guaranteed – Washington Post
• Keith Richards vs. Donald Trump – Vanity Fair

Press play and step inside the empire that changed everything.

🎙️ ROOTS, RIFFS & THE MAN WHO BET THE HOUSE 🎸

Step into the studio haze, vinyl crackle and highway roar of late-’60s/early-’70s rock - where one Canadian producer mortgaged his home to launch a band, and a major label answered the call. Jack Richardson did more than produce hits; he rewrote the rules of the game. In this immersive two‐host episode, we trace Richardson’s journey from ad-agency jingle writer to legendary architect of acts like The Guess Who, and beyond. When he mortgaged his house to bankroll their breakout album and engineered their world-smashing hit “These Eyes,” he wasn’t just making music, he was staking everything on belief, grit and vision.

With the support of RCA Records (aka RCA Victor), Richardson and his band broke Canadian ceilings and stormed American charts. From “American Woman” to “Night Moves,” the records became anthems of working-class swagger and cross-border ambition. RCA provided the muscle, but it was Richardson’s ear, his bold choices and his refusal to compromise that shaped the sound.

Meanwhile, in Canada, Richardson helped build the infrastructure for a national music industry, founding Nimbus 9, mentoring future stars, pushing for CanCon rules, and teaching the next generation of producers.

Our two hosts sound off on:

• The heart-stopping gamble of mortgaging your home to record a band
• What RCA’s global reach meant for a prairie rock group in Winnipeg
• The countless studio innovations, risks and behind-the-scenes fights Richardson fought for authenticity
• The legacy he left: awards renamed in his honour, producers he mentored, and a Canadian music industry he helped give an identity

This isn’t just nostalgia. It’s a time machine. Expect deep storytelling, candid host banter, vinyl-needle moments, and a love letter to artists and the man who fought for them.

Tune your headphones, hit play, and join our two hosts as they unpack the sound, the stakes and the culture that Jack Richardson helped shape.

Featuring:

Jack Richardson · The Guess Who · five decades of rock legacy · RCA Records · Canadian music revolution.

#ClassicRock #JackRichardson #TheGuessWho #RCARecords #CanadianMusic #MusicIndustry #Podcast #RollingStoneStyle

🎸 ROOTS, RIFFS & RCA: THE SOUND THAT BUILT THE '70s

Step inside the smoke-filled studios, vinyl-cluttered boardrooms, and snow-dusted highways of early-1970s North America, when Canadian grit met American swagger and RCA Records quietly built the sound of blue-collar rock.This feature-length episode pulls the curtain back on how a major label once famous for Elvis pivoted to electric guitars, bar-band realism, and cultural rebellion. From The Guess Who’s thunderous “American Woman” to Five Man Electrical Band’s defiant “Signs,” our hosts trace the rise of the RCA sound, a fusion of high-fidelity craft and road-worn honesty that defined an era.Follow the story from Winnipeg basements to Los Angeles studios: producer Jack Richardson mortgaging his home to cut “These Eyes,” Les Emmerson scribbling “Sign, sign, everywhere a sign” on a diner napkin, and RCA engineers capturing the hum of live amps with precision that made FM radio shimmer. It’s the moment when working-class rock found its megaphone and a corporate giant learned to speak the language of rebellion.Along the way, our two hosts dig into:

• The cultural crossroads that let Canada’s prairie poets storm U.S. charts
• How RCA’s engineers and marketers turned bar-band grit into radio gold
• The label’s battles over censorship, politics, and authenticity, from Jefferson Airplane’s “Volunteers” to the Youngbloods’ peace anthem “Get Together”
• The birth of the “roots rock” sound that would inspire Springsteen, Seger, Mellencamp, and every band that ever sang about small towns and big hearts

Close your eyes and you can almost hear the tape reels spinning at RCA’s Chicago studios, the faint buzz of a Fender Twin, and Burton Cummings’ howl echoing off the walls. This is the story of a label that gambled on honesty, and the musicians who turned that gamble into legend.

Featuring:

The Guess Who · Five Man Electrical Band · The Youngbloods · Jefferson Airplane · Lighthouse · April Wine · and more from the RCA Victor vaults.

Produced in the spirit of

Rolling Stone Music Now

-- where journalism meets rock ’n’ roll mythology. Grab your headphones, drop the needle, and join us for a road trip through the heart of the RCA era: a journey of riffs, rebellion, and the relentless pursuit of real.

✅ What is RCA Victor

• • It originally started as the Victor Talking Machine Company (founded 1901) in Camden, New Jersey, best known for the “Victrola” phonograph and the “His Master’s Voice” dog & gramophone logo.
• • In 1929 the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) purchased Victor, and the label became the “RCA Victor Division”.
• • For many decades (through the 1930s–1960s) RCA Victor released a wide variety of music: classical, popular, jazz, country, and eventually rock.
• • Around the late 1960s/somewhere near 1968 the label branding shifted: RCA dropped “Victor” on many popular releases and became just RCA Records (or RCA) for many rock/pop records.

• That said, the “RCA Victor” name continued to be used in some contexts (for classical, red-seal types, and in some territories) even after the branding shift.

🔍 A few interesting label-history tidbits

• • In 1949, RCA Victor introduced the 7-inch 45 rpm single format in the U.S. that format is very connected to the “hit single” era of rock/pop.
• • In the 1950s-60s the label had several subsidiaries or specialty labels (e.g., Bluebird, Vik) for different genres.

• The label also had significant recording studios (e.g., in Nashville: RCA Victor Studio B) that produced many country & rock recordings.

#ClassicRock #RollingStone #RCARecords #TheGuessWho #FiveManElectricalBand #Signs #AmericanWoman #RootsRock #CanadianRock #MusicHistory #Podcast