CHICAGO — Once upon a time, there were two young men named Arny and Jerry who shared a dream and a passion for rock ’n’ roll, so they went about the risky business by founding what they would call Jam Productions and whether you know it or not, you know Jam.
If you have been to a concert or any of the thousands of other events and entertainments, mostly here but elsewhere too, over the last half-century, you have, in a real sense, been a guest of Jam.
You paid for these entertainments, of course, but it was Jam who made them possible.
This winter marked the 50th anniversary of the venerable company that has withstood competition both small (Cubby Bear) and large (Live Nation); dealt with performers demanding increasingly large financial guarantees, which drives up ticket prices; and maneuvered the tricky expanding corporate climate that is the concert industry. Rock promotion has represented for a long time the most perilous edge of the entertainment industry, and there is a graveyard filled with those who didn’t survive.
They are older now and unbowed, and Arny Granat and Jerry Mickelson are no longer partners in the business they started, Granat having split in 2019.
This break surprised some, alarmed a few but in the end … all seems well.
Mickelson says, “We blazed a trail and were always focused on the city’s neighborhoods and on bands just starting out. We helped lay the groundwork, and it’s not over.”
Granat says, “It was a great and long run. Fifty years. That really is hard to believe. But it came time for me to devote my energies to different things. It’s hard to keep any long relationship alive and thriving but I was drawn to explore other paths.”
It all began with a phone call between their fathers, a lawyer and a manufacturing executive who were card-playing buddies. They thought it would be a good idea for their sons to meet. Granat had graduated from Michigan State University and worked as a TV producer and door-to-door book salesman. Mickelson was a business student at Ohio State University.
The young men met over the telephone and then began working security for local concert venues, meeting bands, talking with promoters and audience members, and in short order started Jam with a $12,000 loan in 1972 out of a North Side apartment that they would share for the first six years of their venture in order to save money.
Their first “big” show, with special guest Fleetwood Mac in front of 10,000 fans, took place in 1972 in Minneapolis. But they built their client list by nurturing relatively unknown bands from the ground up at local clubs such as Alice’s Revisited, the Ivanhoe, B’Ginnings in Schaumburg and the Night Gallery in Waukegan. It worked, but it was a demanding road. Less than 10 years into their run, I sat with both men at Park West and we talked about how they did what they did.
Said Mickelson, “We’re hustlers, from the word go. We’ve got to be.”
Said Granat, “This is all a game of dice. Every concert is a new roll. We’re like (a modern) version of riverboat gamblers.”
Over the following decades, they would bring music to virtually every venue in this area, and around the country. I saw dozens, maybe hundreds of Jam shows, many in a professional role and many just for fun. Among the most memorable was the first local appearance of The Police in 1979 and the Rolling Stones at a sweltering Soldier Field in 1978.
Few people have seen more Jam productions than Greg Kot, my former colleague as the longtime rock critic for the Tribune and still co-host with Jim DeRogatis of the estimable syndicated radio program “Sound Opinions.”
As he told me earlier this week, “Arny and Jerry, no last names necessary, were synonymous with Chicago music for decades. They were street fighters who essentially invented the business of promoting rock concerts and helped turn a rude, rogue art form into a multibillion-dollar business. Even when the big multinationals rolled in to swallow up the independents that built the concert industry in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Jam refused to budge or succumb. Like Keith Richards, Jam should have died a thousand deaths by now, and yet here they still are.”
That is an accomplishment that deserves celebration but there is little time for parties as Jam and both men are energetically involved in projects that keep them as busy as ever. Crawling out of the pandemic, Jam has a full slate of upcoming shows and Mickelson is also forging ahead with his ambitious plans for the Uptown Theater, that iconic and massive movie palace that he has been working on since 2018 to transform into a state-of-the-art performance venue.
“I am involved in raising the money to make this happen,” Mickelson said. “I’ve got interested parties who understand this is not just about restoring the theater. Think of the social impact, what this can do for the economic vitality of the entire Uptown neighborhood.”
John Himmel is confident it will happen. The owner of John Himmel Decorative Arts, he has known Mickelson since they were both in high school. “We met playing poker then and have been friends ever since,” he says. “Jerry is the most competitive person I have ever known. He and Arny were giant killers, able to beat back over the years all of these national competitors.
“He is going to make the Uptown work. He is a total workaholic and, though always looking forward, has a real sense of the past. You know, Chicago should thank Jerry and Arny for what they’ve done with Jam and what they will do in the future to enrich this place we call home.”
Since leaving Jam, Granat runs Grand Slam Productions, through which he has produced or otherwise been involved with such entertainments as a Christmas lights extravaganza at the Chicago Botanic Gardens, the musical “Miracle” at the Royal George, and a series of cabaret concerts. Opening April 13 will be a pop-up “speak-easy” with entertainment called the Alley at Carnivale restaurant. And he’s also involved in movie projects.
Jason Brett knows movies. He produced the 1986 film comedy “About Last Night,” based on David Mamet’s play “Sexual Perversity in Chicago.” He has been an actor and, with pal Stuart Oken, founded the Apollo Theater. He has written for TV and film, worked with The Second City, and started an internet learning company. More to the point, he has known Granat for a very long time.
He says, “I first met Arny more than four decades ago when we (along with Mickelson and Oken) were guests on a local morning TV show featuring young Chicago entrepreneurs. All these years later, he’s still the model of a young Chicago entrepreneur, reinventing himself as an award-winning theater producer, talent manager, venue host, even an entertainer. He has a magic routine that is jaw-dropping and hilarious. His life would make a terrific movie.”
Granat is at work on a book about his life, tentatively titled, “I Said This, But I Meant That.”
For all of their high-profile shows, Granat and Mickelson have kept a relatively low profile. Of course, the two men have had their detractors over the decades but when they look at the past, they can point to all sorts of high notes, among them being part-owner of what was once one of North America’s biggest amphitheaters, the 28,000-capacity New World Music Theatre in Tinley Park, where they staged hundreds of concerts since its opening in 1990; helping start and nurture what became WXRT; presenting nearly 40,000 concerts; and on and on.
“I can still get a remarkable thrill when I walk into a club or arena or theater where Jam is producing a show,” Mickelson told me.
Says Granat, “I do think that Jam should have an honorary street named in its honor.”
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