“When I was starting out, I was doing Nirvana, Mudhoney, and all these bands and the manager of Metallica or AC/DC, he came up to me and he said, ‘Your stuff’s nothing. It’s tiny. It’s never going to amount to anything. I’ve got all the power. You’ve got nothing’.
“And then a year later, everything got flipped on its head. All of a sudden, Nirvana’s huge, all these other bands are huge. And that metal stuff’s not as huge anymore. But I’d just followed what I wanted to do. And I was right.”
That story explains a lot about Lefko’s success in the industry. At the time, the boastful manager was right. Lefko’s shows were tiny in comparison to the Metallicas and AC/DCs of the world.
He would book bands like Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and the Pixies for around $500 and have to grind to get people into Toronto’s 300-capacity venues.
“All these bands, used to sleep on my floor in my apartment,” he laughs.
“There were a few times I lost all my money when no one came. I had to borrow money at the end of the night from people in the bands. Sometimes my electricity would be cut off. Sometimes I’d wonder what I was doing. But, they were just speed bumps. I knew I was on the right path.”
This path began early. His love of live music hit hard when he was about 13. He’d go to as many shows as he could, frequenting folk clubs and going to see Genesis, Miles Davis, or his beloved Lou Reed play whenever they rolled through town.
“I would leave the dinner table, take a bus and go see shows. In my mind, there was no doubt that I was going to be a concert promoter. I would watch what was going on onstage and what people backstage were doing and take notes. But it was just a crazy thing where I knew this was going to be my gig.”
He’d learnt there was a subculture of booking agents in New York so he booked a cheap flight to New York and went and spoke to them.
“You didn’t need much money. There was an informal network where everybody had a place.”
Then he smiles and says, “and they needed me”.
He quickly became the go-to guy for indie and alternative bands wanting to break into Canada’s most populous city. Not only was he a promoter, but he was also a genuine fan of the music.
“The grunge scene was earth-shattering,” he smiles.
“They were creating a movement and people were feeling it. As soon as the Seattle band scene started happening, I was right there. Nirvana were amazing live and they drew. It was crazy.”
One of the booking agents Lefko befriended during his regular trips to New York represented a lot of New Zealand bands that were trying to break America. They soon found an enthusiastic fan in Lefko.
“At the time, there were all these American indie bands like Violent Femmes or The Replacements and then you’d have the New Zealand indie bands, like The Chills, The Verlaines, Straitjacket Fits. It just seemed like they all got on the scene. They’re really good memories all of that.”
His favourite of the Aotearoa invasion was The Chills.
“They were always very good. A very melodic band, but also great live too,” he smiles. “Eventually they had a bit of a hit too with Heavenly Pop Hit and got a little bigger than they were before. I always thought they were a great band.”
He liked them so much in fact that when he was first approached about coming down for Going Global he asked if he could do a panel interviewing The Chills’ founder Martin Phillipps.
“They said, ‘Oh, he’s not well’, and unfortunately he died afterwards. But that was one of the ideas I had, to interview him about his story and try to convey my passion and enthusiasm for what’s going on here.”
Those two qualities, enthusiasm and passion, have been, and remain, the driving force behind his career that started with putting on gigs in dingy clubs to 300 people to looking after a festival that draws 650,000 punters across two weekends. The funny thing is, talking with him, it seems like his heart seems to be with those smaller shows.
“Well, yeah,” he laughs. “I spent so much time doing that. It’s really what made me. I carry that inside of me. All those gigs like The Verlaines and the Straitjacket Fits, all that stuff. It’s really, really important to me.”
Then he smiles and says, “I’m still the same person. Whether I’m doing Nick Cave or Sigur Rós or Courtney Barnett, all these people that I work with these days, I treat them the same as if they were sleeping on my floor.”
Elliott Lefko appears on two panels today at the Going Global Music Summit. Tickets at undertheradar.co.nz
Karl Puschmann is an entertainment columnist for the Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.
