2018.06.19 - Pollstar - Q’s With UTA’s Ken Fermaglich: Powerhouse Rock Agent Talks Clients, Industry

Q’s With UTA’s Ken Fermaglich: Powerhouse Rock Agent Talks Clients, Industry

By Francisco Rendon

Pollstar has been chatting with Ken Fermaglich about his clients for more than 20 years, from a time when acts like Reel Big Fish, Creed, and 3 Doors Down were Hotstars. Over the decades, Fermaglich’s career has seen him move from Artists & Audience, to serving as senior VP for The Agency Group, to his current position at United Talent Agency after UTA acquired TAG in 2015.

Fermaglich took time to talk about his work with clients including Guns N’ Roses, Muse, and Paramore and how he has seen things change over the years.

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Tell us about what it’s been like to work with the Guns N’ Roses tour.

It’s continuing this year; there’s shows in Europe and more in Asia later in the year. It’s been an amazing ride, clearly. You hope to get yourself in a position where you can handle when something like this happens. At the end of the day, this has been fun and there are really great people I’ve gotten to work with in their camp.

Were you nervous about the project, given the band’s reputation from decades ago?

The experience people are having right now, from a consumer perspective but also from a business perspective, is really good. Whatever happened in the past is past. I asked people early on in this project to suspend their opinions from the past and try to focus on the here and now and the future, because that’s how we’re looking at it.

It’s a whole new day for the band and we believe in their ability to do incredible things and we’re seeing it come to life. Luckily, our business partners have done an amazing job, and I give credit to a lot of them. [Many] lived through problems 20 years ago and took all of that, parked it and said, “OK, show me what you can do today,” and the band has delivered.

Can you talk about what it was like to inherit a band with such a developed global audience?

Back in the day they did do a lot of touring, for better or worse. I wasn’t their agent back then, I can’t really speak to it, but you can look at their tour history and see they went to a lot of places. Certainly they understood the ethic of touring and the need to tour, and, to the point earlier, a lot of [that work] was to promote their album and tour in support of the record. Due to the fact that the band was absent for all of those years and didn’t tour together that absence made the heart grow fonder for the fan and for the consumer to want to see it.

How did Coachella figure into the band’s desire to stay culturally relevant and reach multiple audiences?

That was a very strategic first look, it’s something we thought about and talked about a bunch. We felt very strongly [it] could be an amazing launchpad for the band, and sort of a statement saying “We’re not just what you thought we were in the ’90s, but we can still be very relevant in this decade.” Clearly, it was impactful from that perspective, to be a part of that festival, to headline that festival, to be a part of the culture of Southern California – don’t forget the band is from there.

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https://news.pollstar.com/2018/06/19/qs-with-utas-ken-fermaglich-powerhouse-rock-agent-talks-clients-industry/