Billy Preston, Joe Bruno, and Press Abuses: "Pay To Play"
I co-owned, with one of my best friends, a 5,000 sq. ft. nightclub called The Main St. Cafe, for a year and a half. During that time, we had some classic rock acts play there, usually for around two thousand bucks a performance. We had Rick Derringer, Dave Mason, and Billy Preston, to name the biggest acts we could book. Okay, they were "B" list "over the hill" acts, even back in 1992. The point of this post is that some weeks before Billy Preston played, we were solicited for ads by Newsday, the largest Long Island newspaper. We regularly ran ads in the "free" Long Island "bar" newspapers, and were familiar with the fact that if you don't buy ads, you don't get stories about your club. We had no idea about "negative press." We didn't buy any ads in Newsday. A funny thing happened, a few days before the show. Newsday ran an article, on page 92, titled "Billy Preston is Back, Let Him Be." After more than 10 paragra...