You may know him as the rock and roll impresario who brought you the American debut of The Who’s Tommy at his legendary Electric Factory venue in 1969 — for all of $4. Or as the guy who stared down Frank Rizzo — his era’s Donald Trump — when the then-police captain waged all-out war against Philly’s youth culture, including shameful attempts to prevent Ray Charles, a drug addict, from performing within city limits. Or you may know him as the producer of Live Aid — the groundbreaking benefit concert watched by 1.5 billion people worldwide that turns 40 this year — or of his good friend Billy Crystal’s one-man, Tony-winning Broadway play, 700 Sundays.
In entertainment circles, Larry Magid is a national name, but what you might not know is just how all-Philly he is, all the time. It is Magid’s constant repaying of his hometown that makes him a worthy recipient of the Edward G. Rendell Citizen Lifetime Achievement Award. The Citizen will be honoring Magid along with his fellow Citizen of the Year winners on February 25 at Fitler Club; read about all of this year’s winners and get your tickets here.
There are the scholarships he underwrites at Temple University — $1 million each in the name of his friends Crystal, Bruce Springsteen and Bette Midler, not to mention ones for Miles Davis and Steven Van Zandt, among others. “It doesn’t mean anything to get a Larry Magid scholarship,” he says, nothing if not self-effacing, the guy who’d rather put on the show than star in it. “Now a Miles Davis scholarship — that’s cool.”
Larry Magid made Philly the epicenter of a social movement with a rocking soundtrack.
Magid has raised in excess of $1 million for Philly schools and other charities by auctioning off rock memorabilia. Bob Dylan would famously refrain from signing anything, but for Magid — who helped the Bard come back from his late 70s foray into gospel music — it was always, “What do you need?” At the old Factory — where Magid kept prices uncommonly low — 25 cents of every ticket price was siphoned off for those in need.
It was Magid in the 80s who came this close to securing for his hometown the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, were it not for our vision-impaired political class. (“Your mayor is a smacked-ass,” Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun said of then-Mayor Wilson Goode.) Undeterred, it was Magid who founded the Philadelphia Music Alliance (full disclosure: I’m a new Board member, because when the Godfather of Rock and Soul asks …), which has brought those Walk of Fame plaques to Broad Street and educates aspiring musicians. And it is Magid publishing the definitive history of Philly music this spring.
The Rolling Stones. Van Morrison. Bob Dylan.
Long before he spent nights making sure Janis Joplin had her bottle of Southern Comfort with her on stage, the sound of Philadelphia coursed through Magid’s arteries. He grew up hanging on the rough and tumble corner of 60th Street and Cedar Avenue in West Philly; he remembers one classmate hearing from her mother that “she’d better do her homework, or she’d end up like Larry Magid, walking around everywhere with his record collection.”
Even back then, he had a sense that music could be, in equal measure, salve and liberation. The day JFK was assassinated in 1963, Magid made the trek from West Philly to North Philly’s Uptown Theater, as he often would, the lone White face in a grieving audience to see a bill that included the Temptations. “It eased the pain for a couple of hours,” he remembers.
In the late 60s, The Factory took off, and morphed into the legendary Electric Factory Concerts — a nationally renowned driver of the counterculture. Magid is quick to credit his partners at the time — the Spivak Brothers — and his crack staff. But if you grew up here and had older siblings in the 60s and 70s, there was one guy who was the pied piper of a generation of long-haired kids looking for some meaning while their country went to war.
“There was music in the cafes at night, and revolution in the air” Dylan sang, and none of that feeling — anything could happen! — would have taken hold without Magid. He’d be the first to tell you he was no conscious visionary; but he did sense that music could set a soul free.
Magid is 82 now, soft-spoken and kind, hardly reconcilable with his reputation as a hard-driving West Philly street-kid turned business macher in the lawless world of rock-and-roll. Catch him just right, and the wisdom and stories flow.
The Rolling Stones? “July 4, 1975,” Magid says. “Memphis, Tennessee. Mick gets it in his head that he wants to come on stage riding an elephant. I had to scour the country, and finally found some elephants through a Ringling Brothers troupe in Minnesota. But when we tried to get them on stage, the stage collapsed. Years later, I run into Mick in Paris. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking about with that elephant,’ he said.”
Van Morrison? “Robbie Robertson calls me, says the Band needs Van to open for them on tour,” he says. “Van was a drinker. I’d put an organ in his dressing room and lock him in there before he went on. One night on the tour, he climbed through a tiny window and disappeared. He found a bar and came stumbling back. We rushed him on stage, where he almost strangled himself with the microphone cord.”
“July 4, 1975. Memphis, Tennessee. Mick [Jagger] gets it in his head that he wants to come on stage riding an elephant.” — Larry Magid
Dylan? “At The Factory, he was kneeling down backstage, painting on six canvases at the same time,” he says. “‘Bob, I collect art and was so sorry to miss your show in London,’ I said. Without looking up, he said, ‘Take whatever you want. Friends and family price.’ I took three pieces.’”
Where are they now? Magid shrugs. “Donated ’em to charity.”
That’s Magid, who lovingly boasts of how his wife Mickey won’t winter in Florida like many of their well-to-do acquaintances because she rails against those who are “entitled.” She’s been Philly’s first lady of rock and roll for 55 years and what binds them is a certain down-to-earthiness. Magid says Mickey “can sense BS” and he not only talks about his blue collar roots, he remains friends with those he grew up with since the second grade — they all go away together on a yearly jaunt.
That West Philly household Magid grew up in? It was of immensely modest means. Yet his grandmother had a jar in the pantry — a pischke, Yiddish for nest egg, they’d call it — but it wasn’t for household savings. It was to give away to others. Every time you made a buck, you were expected to drop something in the pischke, so the load on someone down the block might get just a touch lighter. To whom not a lot is given, much is still required. No wonder that pantry produced someone who’d go on to orchestrate his city’s greatest communal moments.
Today, Magid is as engaged as ever in a way that never manifests as get-off-of-my-lawn dismissiveness. Our phone calls run the gamut from the Phils’ pitching staff to the messes at City Hall to the Dylan biopic; in the same way that he came up with arena shows and general admission seating — he called them dance concerts, because “who wants to sit down to see the Stones?”— Magid still leans toward supporting what’s next, often with a mischievous glint in his eye.
Larry Magid made Philly the epicenter of a social movement with a rocking soundtrack, and once in a while he allows himself to look back in wonder. Like the time he recalled the two 19-year-old girls who were regulars at The Factory. One day, they jumped into a convertible and made their way cross-country. “Their names really were Thelma and Louise,” he says, smiling wistfully. “The music set everybody free. It was a time when anything was possible.”
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