College Discourages Concert in Stadium

College administrators last week derailed a Harvard Concert Commission (HCC) proposal to use the Harvard Stadium as a concert venue this spring.

HCC organizers had hoped to lure either the Dave Matthews Band, REM or Pearl Jam to play a benefit concert in the stadium in late April or early May. James Taylor played a benefit concert in the stadium in 1989.

Citing logistical problems and cost, Associate Dean of the College David P. Illingworth ’71 and Assistant Athletic Director for Operations Jeremy L. Gibson have strongly discouraged the HCC from pursuing the spring concert.

Quincy House Undergraduate Council representative and HCC Director of Operations Brian R. Smith ’02, who shepherded the proposal from its inception, expressed frustration with not being able to use the stadium.

“It was very clear from the start that the administration wasn’t interested in doing this,” Smith said.

“Nobody in the administration intended to back this, to stand behind it and say, ‘It’s going to be risky’—and everything has risk—‘but I think this is something that’s good for the students and good for Harvard University.’...That’s a shame, because you have a beautiful venue you use about six times a year for football games,” he said.

Smith first suggested holding a concert in the stadium last October. Gibson, whose office controls use of athletic facilities, suggested he submit a proposal for the concert.

In August, Smith drafted a proposal in cooperation with HCC co-chair Sujean S. Lee ’03 and Matthew P. Cohen of Green Room Productions, a Boston consulting company specializing in bringing concerts to campuses. Lee, Cohen, Smith, HCC co-chair Natalie Hershlag ’03 and UC President Paul A Gusmorino ’02 presented the proposal to Illingworth on Sept. 10.

The proposal anticipated an event comparable in size to the Harvard-Yale football game, with an audience of 37,500 people—30,000 in the grandstands and 7,500 on the field. It proposed 9,000 tickets be sold to students at $30, and the remaining tickets sold to the general public at $40.

The proposal called for $200,000 of the proceeds to be donated to a charity chosen in cooperation with the “socially conscious artist” who played at the concert.

Harvard Director of Community Relations Kevin A. McCluskey ’76 also expressed concern about a potential concert.

“I don’t anticipate an overwhelming vote of support from our Allston neighbors for the idea of 60K-plus people arriving at the stadium in the spring. My single vote on this issue would be against going down this road,” McCluskey wrote in an e-mail to Smith earlier this fall.

McCluskey told The Crimson he did not think the concert was akin to the 1989 James Taylor concert, in which he was involved.

The Taylor concert “involved a much smaller audience,” McCluskey said of that concert’s approximately 11,000 attendees. “James Taylor plays to a different kind of audience demographic, so we were not as interested in issues of crowd control.”

Because major bands book their spring tours far in advance, the HCC has been forced to abandon its hope of having a concert in the stadium this year.

Smith said that the HCC still hoped to host a “second-tier” band in the Bright Hockey Arena in February or March.

“We were throwing around names like Blues Traveller or Indigo Girls,” Smith said.

Gibson said that an event on the scale of the proposed concert “takes a lot of years to plan. This is something on the scale of the Harvard-Yale football game, and that’s something that takes almost the whole University to plan. There are just a lot of things that go into it.”

But McCluskey expressed doubt that the Harvard Stadium was the right venue for a major concert.

“We are not in the concert-producing business here, and there’s a lot that goes into it. And even with professional assistance in putting it on, there’s a lot of staff time that would be necessary to have this happen smoothly, and the staff time certainly does not exist on my end,” McCluskey said.