Jonathan Mayers, a founder of the Bonnaroo music festival, dies at 51

Boston Globe

6 days ago

Mr. Mayers grew up outside New York City, and after graduating from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1995 got his start in that city's storied music scene. He worked with Tipitina's, the nationally famous music venue, and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, known as Jazz Fest.
In 1996, he joined Rick Farman, Kerry Black and Richard Goodstone to found Superfly, a music promotion company. Their first concert, in New Orleans, featured the Meters, a venerable funk band; saxophonist Maceo Parker; and the Rebirth Brass Band.
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Bonnaroo started in 2002, the result of Superfly's partnership with Ashley Capps, of concert promotion company AC Entertainment, and Coran Capshaw, founder of Red Light, a music management and promotion company. The festival's name was inspired by the Dr. John 'Desitively Bonnaroo,' meaning roughly 'a really good time' or 'good stuff' in Louisiana slang.
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Without the help of newspaper, television or radio advertising, the Bonnaroo organizers sold some 70,000 tickets to the three-day event (it later expanded to four), held on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tenn.
Bonnaroo was a virtual Woodstock for the jam-band set, with performances by the likes of Phil Lesh and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, the band Widespread Panic and Trey Anastasio of Phish.
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The following year's festival expanded the offerings, with appearances by James Brown, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Jamaican reggae group Toots and the Maytals, and New York noise-rockers Sonic Youth.
With most festivalgoers camping on-site in the remote location about an hour from Nashville, the vibes were good.
'Music fans at rock festivals are, by and large, abused by sound, security, visibility, parking, aggressive advertising and ugly surroundings,' music critic Ben Ratliff wrote of that year's event in The New York Times. 'But the organizers of the Bonnaroo festival -- built on jam-band rock and expanding that genre beyond recognition -- are aiming much higher.'
Ratliff added, 'This is mostly a festival of backpackers: the world of peaceful collegiate rebellion.'
Bonnaroo was an 'escape from reality,' Mr. Mayers said in a 2014 interview with Tastemakers Music Magazine: 'You're not going back home; you're totally immersed in the experience. It kind of feels like summer camp to me.'
It has since become an institution, with recent incarnations featuring Post Malone, Stevie Nicks, Tool and Kendrick Lamar. (This year's gathering was canceled midway through because of heavy rains and flooding.)
For three years, starting in 2005, Superfly and AC Entertainment also ran a Las Vegas variation called Vegoose, held over Halloween weekend. The festival, which had its own wedding chapel and lured an array of bands including Daft Punk, Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine, drew 35,000 or so spectators to various locations in the city.
In 2008, Mr. Mayers and Superfly partnered with Another Planet Entertainment, based in Berkeley, Calif., to create a new festival called Outside Lands.
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Radiohead, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Jack Johnson headlined the first year's gathering, which sold more than 130,000 tickets and grossed $11.1 million, according to a 2023 article posted by concert data company Pollstar.
'When you're enveloped in the fog, it feels like you're a million miles away from everything,' Lars Ulrich, the drummer of Metallica, which headlined the festival in 2012 and 2017, was quoted as saying in the article.
Headliners in recent years have included Tame Impala, Lizzo, Green Day and Sabrina Carpenter.
Mr. Mayers also ventured into comedy. He and the Superfly team partnered with Comedy Central in 2017 to produce Clusterfest, an indoor-outdoor comedy and music festival in San Francisco featuring heavyweights like Jerry Seinfeld, Sarah Silverman and Kevin Hart. The event was held again in 2018 and 2019.
In 2021, Mr. Mayers left Superfly. The next year, he sued his ex-partners, accusing them of breach of contract and fraud. His lawsuit was dismissed in 2023.
No information about his upbringing or survivors was immediately available.
'When we launched Bonnaroo in 2002, almost no one thought a rock festival was a smart thing to do in the United States,' Capps said in an interview. 'There had been some great festivals, like Woodstock, and of course a history of jazz and bluegrass festivals, but rock festivals had a mostly checkered past.
'The fact that it sold out in 10 days by word of mouth -- it was a game changer.'
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