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NEWSMAKERS_ARTS AND ICONS<br />
The Starmaker<br />
“I just love it that Stevie is a star!” says David Forest, the<br />
Hollywood porn super agent who began his storied showbiz<br />
career managing gay and rock icon Stevie Nicks back in<br />
1966. Back then both Nicks was a student at San Jose University<br />
and Forest attended Stanford University.<br />
“I was a freshman and social chairman of my dorm,” Forest recalls.<br />
“Seeing a chance to make money by getting other dorms and<br />
fraternities and high schools to book the top local bands that I<br />
was hiring at my dorm, I created the David Forest Booking<br />
Agency. Most of the litt<strong>le</strong> groups were happy if they made $125 for<br />
four 45-minute sets. I’d make a $25 fee on top of that. But not<br />
Stevie’s band, The Fritz Rabyne Memorial Band [later shortened<br />
to Fritz]. They’d only do three sets and wanted $150 net. I had to<br />
get my $25 fee ‘on top’ and they refused to do the 'must-do' fratgig<br />
songs, Louie/Louie, Gloria and – most importantly – Satisfaction.”<br />
///////////// 106 FUGUES.COM AVRIL 2013<br />
David Forest went on to work for <strong>le</strong>gendary rock promoter Bill<br />
Graham (who owned the Fillmore) before David Geffen asked<br />
Forest to head up the contemporary music division at CMA in<br />
1970. There they moulded the careers of Leon Russell, James<br />
Taylor, Caro<strong>le</strong> King, Van Morrison and The Carpenters, who,<br />
Forest says, he took “from a litt<strong>le</strong> boy-and-sister act to international<br />
headliners.”<br />
Whi<strong>le</strong> Forest flaunted his gayness, Geffen was closeted. “But we<br />
were open to each other,” Forest says.<br />
In those heady years Forest also personally managed, among others,<br />
Stevie Nicks, Mickey Thomas of Jefferson Starship, Elvin<br />
Bishop, Shaun Cassidy, Nikki Sixx of Möt<strong>le</strong>y Crüe and Quiet Riot<br />
(whose singer Kevin DuBrow died of a cocaine overdose in 2007<br />
and whose onetime guitarist Randy Rhoads died in a 1982 plane<br />
crash after joining Ozzy Osbourne’s band).<br />
But Forest – then one of the top concert producers in the western<br />
USA – lost his shirt in 1978 financing a TV special with Alice<br />
Cooper, The Kinks and Nazareth. So he turned to the gay-porn<br />
biz, literally turning Ryan Idol and Ken Ryker into superstars.<br />
Along the way he also became the world’s most famous “ma<strong>le</strong><br />
madam,” arrested twice for pandering.<br />
In other words, Forest went from rock to cock.<br />
Now he’s writing all about it – warts and all – in his upcoming<br />
memoirs.<br />
“I’m talking about everything – the arrests, prison, my famous<br />
clients. And there’ll be a who<strong>le</strong> chapter just on Stevie.”<br />
Nicks appears to be the one client Forest was most fond of. “Fritz<br />
weren’t as popular as<br />
Santana or Big<br />
Brother & the Holding<br />
Company, and<br />
[when] the Grateful<br />
Dead and Quicksilver<br />
Messenger Service got<br />
recording contracts,<br />
Fritz was still playing<br />
high schools. But I<br />
knew Stevie would be<br />
a star the night Fritz<br />
opened for Janis<br />
Joplin and Big<br />
Brother at the Fillmore.<br />
After her band<br />
members <strong>le</strong>ft I told<br />
Stevie, ‘Stay and meet<br />
Janis.’ Stevie looked<br />
at Janis and she saw<br />
herself in her.”<br />
Eventually the egos of<br />
the ma<strong>le</strong> band members<br />
kil<strong>le</strong>d Fritz.<br />
“The boys didn’t want<br />
PHOTO_ROBERT LALIBERTÉ
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