Fact #63801

Geoff Ellis (booker, The Marquee Club) : . Paul MacAvoy who booked the Marquee before me had booked some Donington warmups in for Poison and Aerosmith. I’d been in the job about a week when Rod MacSween of ITB dispatched his right-hand man Mike Dewdney down to The Marquee to renegotiate the deal. So we were sat in the office on Charing Cross Road at about 11.00 o’clock at night …and in those days The Marquee worked exclusively on a percentage basis and didn’t pay guarantees, but they were like, "Look, we need guarantees," because these were important bands. The shows weren’t confirmed, they were just held in the diary. My attitude was that there was no question that Aerosmith and Poison wouldn’t sell out such a small venue, so ITB knew what they would earn, so what was the point of a guarantee? The only guarantee I gave them was that it would sell out, but that was enough so that Mike could go back to the managers and tell them their money was safe. Every rock band wanted to play at The Marquee because it was a legendary venue.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, January 2019)