When Your Company Owns Madison Square Garden, Your Band Opens For The Eagles

(Flodigrip’s world)

If I was a billionaire CEO of a cable company, I’d buy an island in the South Pacific and get a house with one of those cool libraries with a ladder to reach higher shelves and dedicate myself to the art of cheesemaking. If Jim Dolan was a billionaire CEO of a cable company, he’d book his own band to open for the most rockin’ band he knows at the venue his company happens to own. Oh wait, he is, and he did book his own band to open for the Eagles at Madison Square Garden.

In a situation that works out quite nicely for Dolan, when it came time to choose which musical act would have the honor of taking the stage before your Uncle Jimmy’s favorite band, he had one already lined up to go: Turns out his band JD & The Straight Shot was available for the gig at Madison Square Garden, which Cablevision has owned since the mid 1990s. Imagine that.

They’re opening tomorrow night, reports The New York Post, with Dolan saying out there, on that stage, in front of all those people? He’s not CEO and chairman you all know him to be.

“I am the singer-songwriter,” he told the NYP, adding that the artist in him needs to be free to express is own opinion.

Fans can look forward to a ballad inspired by a dispute with ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer over relocating MSG in 2008, “Fall from Grace.” Sample lyrics: “See the shame on your face/Look at what you’ve become/And smiling at your fall from grace.”

“He [Spitzer] threatened me at the meeting,” Dolan said. “We were figuring we were going to have a big fight, and on Monday he started not being the governor anymore.”

But seriously guys, you’ve gotta give it to the guy for having the ability to enjoy his hobby by opening for a six-time Grammy-winning rock group by being a billionaire who Runs Things. He’s got feelings too, after all. Rock on, Dolan.

“You are definitely putting it out there and making yourself vulnerable and susceptible to criticism, and since it’s so personal, you run the risk of being hurt,” he said.

He’s not the only CEO who loves to get his jam on — British media magnate Richard Desmond is the resident drummer in his band with Roger Daltrey of The Who, RD Crusaders. I’m sensing a cross-Atlantic collaboration in the future, guys.

Jim Dolan’s band to open for the Eagles at MSG [The New York Post]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist