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Berklee’s Dave Wentling Shares His Experience Managing Tony Bennett’s Tour

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Photo credit: Don Hunstein.

Photo credit: Don Hunstein.

By Dave Wentling

Berklee College of Music was well represented on Tony Bennett’s 2012 summer tour of Europe. Tony himself has been honored with a Berklee degree, and his daughter Antonia, an alumna, opened all of the shows. Bassist Marshall Wood and guitarist Gray Sargent both attended Berklee, and I was the tour manager. I’ve been working in Concert Operations at Berklee for two years now.

In my 37 years in the business, I have done many tours all over the world and considered myself happily retired from life on the road. Then the call came: “Dave, could you be Tony Bennett’s tour manager for the summer tour of Europe and North America? We have a private jet at your disposal. You’ll stay at five-star hotels, and Tony is booked in the best concert halls in the world. Plus, there is a big pile of money.” I checked my road dude handbook, and saying no to this was not a good idea. (Thanks to Brad Berger and Cathy Horn for granting me a special leave of absence from Berklee for this opportunity.)

So in June, off I went. The first stop was in London for two nights at the Royal Albert Hall.  On the third day, we went to a private party where I was sipping wine with Paul McCartney! He liked the fact that I worked for the Everly Brothers for 18 years; the four lads were big fans. Eric Clapton, David Bowie, Roger Daultry, Jimmy Page, Ron Wood, Bill Wyman, George Martin, and of course Tony Bennett were also at this bash.

We breezed through the UK, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Belgium, Holland, and Spain. The Montreux Jazz Fest was a blast. I used to tour manage Dr. John and they were playing the night we arrived, which was a bonus.  There were several other jazz fests in France, Spain, and Italy, and then over to Istanbul, Turkey. We had four days off in Monte Carlo, at Hotel De Paris, right in the center of town. Lucca, Italy is an awesome small city in the north that has amazing food. We buzzed up to Stockholm, Oslo, and Helsinki.  The Stockholm date was on Tony’s 86th birthday and we wanted to take him out to dinner — Italian, of course. He would call me from time to time and say, “Let’s all have dinner tonight.”  He treated us to some incredible dinners in Italy.

Our last stop overseas was in Reykjavik, Iceland. Believe it or not, Tony had never played Iceland! Tony had his art supplies with him and tried to paint every day. If it was a nice day, I would set up a car for him to go out and paint the Fjords or whatever was around us. His art teacher told him if he ever got to Iceland he had to get to the country and look around. I set up a sightseeing trip and we drove into the country to see some huge waterfalls and geysers. A very cool day indeed.

Getting around in a private jet was a big plus. We were doing about an hour and a half to two hours, hotel to hotel, in different countries. My job was to make this easy for Tony. Cars were waiting for us wherever we went. We were driven directly to the steps of the jet. I would phone the pilot when we were 15 minutes away and he prepped the plane. When we landed, my cars were there, and we just jumped in and rolled. Granted, this was not a little passenger jet, this was a luxury jet with captain’s chairs, couches, and dining tables with white linen dinner service. My tour bus had wings!

Our touring party consisted of 10 people, and Tony performs with a quartet. This made things considerably easier from a logistical standpoint. Everyone was a pro on this tour and all good people. I had done about a dozen Tony Bennett shows in the past, so we all knew each other already.

After we got back to the states, we took a week off before swinging through Canada and out to the west coast. We had four days off at the Fairmont in San Francisco, which was nice. Tony has a suite named after him there.  We went up to Seattle, stopped by Caesars Palace in Vegas then zipped to Charlotte to do a show at the Democratic Convention.

All in all, we went to 19 countries in 10 weeks! We played some amazing venues — I’d been to most of them before — but being there with Tony was very special. At 86 years old, this guy can bring it!  When he hit the stage, he opened his arms and the crowd jumped right in. Every night he would get at least four curtain calls; the audiences loved him.

I plan on hanging up my road clothes for good now and love being back at Berklee. Although… I did give my business card to Paul McCartney. If he calls me to be his tour manager, I’m in.


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