Remembering a concert master

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/07/2017 (3258 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Iwent searching for Bones in the place on Earth where people can live forever: cyberspace.

It was on his Facebook home page where Carol Barbeau, a sister of Bruce (Bones) Rathbone, had left a message after her brother was found dead Sunday from an apparent heart attack. There will be a celebration of life on Tuesday at the Burton Cummings Theatre, the message said, for the 70-year-old eldest of five Elmwood-raised children.

Doors open at 6 p.m. The celebration begins an hour later.

“There will be a cash bar, with all proceeds going to a charity close to Bruce’s heart, the Winnipeg Humane Society. Please share this with others who fondly remember that wonderful space in time.”

That wonderful space in time.

I assumed that referred to the years when Bones was what amounted to Winnipeg’s concert master. He was the main guy during those big-act, big-money years through the early 1980s to the mid-1990s when Sam Katz was his Nite Out Entertainment partner, and Kevin Donnelly was the company’s first employee. They brought such acts as Kenny Rogers, Alabama, David Bowie and the Rolling Stones to the Winnipeg concert stage.

When it ended, Katz would go on to become mayor of Winnipeg and own a professional baseball team. Donnelly would become Winnipeg’s new concert master as a senior vice-president with True North Sports & Entertainment.

As for Rathbone, he would virtually disappear.

Occasionally, in recent years, I would see him walking his dogs, Chico and Charlie, in Peanut Park, near his house on McMillan Avenue. He was friendly, but he appeared frail and I wondered how he was doing, what he was doing and whether he had reached out to either of the two men with whom he had once shared a business and a close friendship.

Rathbone was cautious and said little about his relationship with Katz the mayor, back in 2010 when Bones and I spoke and exchanged emails. But he said Donnelly had hired him to do some work with True North, including a controversial anatomical exhibit of corpses from China called Bodies.

I spoke with both Katz and Donnelly this week.

Donnelly had reached out to Rathbone’s family and offered The Burt as a venue True North could donate for people to come and remember him.

Both Katz and Donnelly remember Rathbone much the same way: tough and gruff and even antagonistic on the outside. But tender inside.

“Like butter,” Katz said. “He was very, very soft and accommodating.”

Donnelly put Rathbone’s tougher exterior, the character he was and the role he played, in a business context.

“That gruff personality was necessary in that industry in that era,” Donnelly said.

The now-54-year-old was recruited by Rathbone as a teenager. “Every one of these independent promoters across North America led by a ferocious yelling ability. Whether they were in Miami or New York or Winnipeg. That was how the business operated. Whoever yelled the most, got the most dates and the better deal.”

Both Katz and Donnelly remember him for something else: generosity.

Donnelly recalled being with Rathbone at a Rolling Stones concert in Montreal.

“And as we walk out, a panhandler’s there, and he flips the guy 10 bucks. And again, it’s 25 years ago and $10 25 years ago, who puts $10 in a panhandler’s pocket like now? But he was, ‘Go buy a sandwich. Make sure you eat something with that.’”

So I suppose in a way, Donnelly tried to be generous as much as he could, when he could. His old friend needed work to pay the bills and feed his precious pets — all of which, thanks to the generosity of others, already have new homes.

But in early 2011 — long after being hired for the Bodies exhibit — there was a story in the paper about Rathbone being sued by the province over improperly obtaining welfare payments. Donnelly didn’t say this was when he basically became estranged with his friend, but the timing seems close.

“We probably haven’t spoken, quite honestly, in four years, at any kind of length,” Donnelly acknowledged. “But the emails went back and fourth. His mother passed away and we traded emails. That was about six months ago.

“Again,” Donnelly added, “we’d fallen apart and I feel terrible for it.”

Katz seemed to have a similar feeling about how his relationship with Rathbone trailed off.

“I’m sure we all have regrets,” Katz said.

He said Rathbone worked as a courier driver for a time — probably a short time, because he told Katz he didn’t like taking orders from people. The last time Katz saw Rathbone was a year and a half ago, at his old business partner’s house.

Katz said Rathbone had called and asked him to drop over.

“And I was there in 20 minutes.”

“He just wanted to talk to me about a few things,” Katz said. “Yeah, he just had a few things in his mind and he wanted to talk to me about ’em. And we had a chat.”

Rathbone was having some “challenges” in a “certain area,” Katz elaborated when I asked. Rathbone wanted some advice and wondered if Katz “could do something.”

I asked if Rathbone had approached him for help previously.

“No,” Katz began, then quickly added this: “He came to me when he did his… ah, he was looking for some… he was looking for monies.”

That was to do a revival of Sunfest, an outdoor concert that had been successful years earlier in Gimli. Rathbone wanted to try in the Kenora area. Katz said he helped out with an “investment.”

“But we knew it was never coming back. That would be the last time we talked about actually doing something. But it didn’t work out, unfortunately.”

Katz called that last meeting with Rathbone “difficult” because he was in declining health and not the same vibrant guy he knew all those years ago who wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

Donnelly also mentioned the complexity that goes with personal responsibility and combining friendship and business.

“A lot of people helped Bruce as best they could,” he said. “He was a hard guy to help.”

Still, in the end, Donnelly managed to help with the upcoming celebration of Rathbone’s life — a show of appreciation for a showman who was too big a character to have ever really been forgotten.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca