Forty five minutes
Fifty five cents
Sixty five agents sitting on a fence
Singing, hey little brother
Look what we got for you
We’re gonna rope off an area
And put on a show
From the Canadian border
Down to Mexico
It might be the most
Potentially gross
Thing that we could possibly do
(From “Onomatopoeia” by John Prine, 1973)
Such was life in Atlanta during the run-up to the ’96 Summer Olympics. The Centennial Olympic Games would, so thought entrepreneurs, promoters and cheats, provide hundreds, maybe thousands of ways to make money. And there seemed to be tens of thousands who thought they’d make the money. It was a sad sight. John Prine’s song of hucksters came to mind often. The same went for Bob Dylan’s line from “Tombstone Blues“ — “Is there a hole for me to get sick in?”
But from time to time, as we watched our city sell its soul and trash its streets, those of us accepting cash tried not to pass judgement while having a good time. In fact, working for the advertising department of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) in the heart of Downtown Atlanta — the thick of the action — during summer ’96 was great fun. When the job was done right, you made money and friends in the same transaction.
For the better part of a decade, Atlanta was absorbed with the 1996 Olympics. At first, the very idea, conceived by real estate attorney Billy Payne, was considered pure folly. That didn’t matter to him. Payne, a wide receiver for some very fine football teams at the University of Georgia in the mid ‘60s and later on quite successful in business, would avoid a midlife crisis by launching a monumental project. That was in 1987. Payne was 40 and may have gotten past his fear of dying young after a heart attack at the age of 26 and undergoing a triple bypass at 34. He had survived all that, so why not roll the dice? To be sure, it wouldn’t always be pretty, but he could be satisfied with bringing home the gold, despite an AJC reporter once referring to him as “a screwball with a harebrained scheme.”
The 1996 Summer Olympics were in my hometown. A party atmosphere takes hold. Let’s see what happens.
It was early. I was at the House of Blues — brand new to Atlanta, just in time for the Summer Games — on a morning in late July, honorably representing The AJC, trying to give HOB a good deal and come away with some of their money. Their accounting department was preparing a check for the ads they’d run with us that week. I was there for the check and to go over design ideas with the guys for the upcoming ads. Getting through it all took a lot of time, but that’s because the three of us got on so well and would talk about this, that, and the other. “We may get Dylan to play here the last two nights of the Olympics,” said one of the guys. “But he wants a lot of money.”
“So does the AJC, ” I said, wondering what was taking so long for the check to appear. I reasoned Dylan was Dylan, not Junior Brown or the Mavericks, who’d also be playing there the last weekend. The booking guy was annoyed over how much Dylan wanted, repeating it was a lot of money. “You guys want a lot of money for a bottle of beer,” I replied, grabbing the newspaper’s check from a runner on my way out. The next day I was back. The marketing guy was all excited, saying, “We have to design a new ad. We got Dylan.”
On August 3 and 4, Bob Dylan gave two great shows at the House of Blues. People numbering in the thousands would tell you Dylan’s concerts were the highlights of Atlanta’s Olympic summer. Forget the Dream Team. Give Dylan a gold medal — along with however much money the House of Blues coughed up.
Tell Me Great Hero, But Please Make It Brief … As Dylan was getting ready to give his second House of Blues concert, nervous Atlantans waited to hear what International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranch would say in his closing ceremony address. Always jubilant with the Games under his helm, Samaranch had traditionally declared the Olympics just concluded as “the best Olympics ever.” Atlanta needed to hear him say it again, just as he said it four years earlier in his hometown, Barcelona, Spain. Instead, what Atlantans and the world heard was, “Well done, Atlanta,” and “most exceptional.” We saw it coming. The city with an inferiority complex had more to feel inferior about. Another PR pratfall to finesse; just like the flea market atmosphere close to game venues; just like the drivers of the media buses getting lost, just like the security lapses that allowed Eric Robert Rudolph to place a bomb in Centennial Olympic Park, just like the 30 pick-up trucks in the garish opening ceremony. Most exceptional indeed.
The next morning, Alan Gordon, an editor at the AJC, and I were outside the newspaper building as the downtown streets emptied. The flea marketeers had packed up and headed home with their tacky trifles, none the richer for taking part in the city’s vending scam. Considering their sad plights made us think of what all our town had experienced — the good and not so good. Many of the day-to-day events leading up to and through the Olympics were great fun. Dylan, Al Green, Dr. John, Bobby Blue Bland, Johnny Cash and other greats had performed at the old Baptist Tabernacle sanctuary — converted into what we hoped would be the permanent home of an Atlanta House of Blues. And appreciated most was the sense of vitality — quite rare for Atlanta’s downtown — that pervaded the city’s central business district. It was great for one’s hometown to be the center of the world’s attention for a couple of weeks, even with the embarrassments (which our employer added to).
Others, Jotting Down Notes . . . Alan and I took some sad looks up and down Marietta Street and sighed. We hated to see everyone go, especially the House of Blues, considering what a fine time we had there and the great press it received. Some of the praise that came its way focused on the glitz while ignoring the substantial. One AJC reporter wrote the club “was over-hyped but it was hot … and that it had more than exceeded expectations for drawing the famous and their fans.” Then the praise took a backhanded turn when she wrote that “Owner Issac Tigrett’s magic even managed to make Bob Dylan sound good.” That was typical of the newspaper’s coverage of rock music at the time. Perhaps if Dylan had learned to enunciate like Kenny Loggins, she would’ve enjoyed his shows.
Atlanta’s big party didn’t come off so great after all. Recriminations galore. We were experiencing the Peggy Lee Moment. Didn’t we have more to show the world when it came to our door? Sure we did, but a lousy presentation mixed with garden-variety corruption obscured the view. That’s all there is.
The world’s biggest circus packed up and left town. Day to day life in Atlanta was getting back to normal. The AJC made millions of dollars from Olympics-related advertising, but was scrambling to justify its reporting on Richard Jewell, wrongly suspected of the Centennial Olympic Park bombing the month before. The bomb, placed near the main stage in the park on the 9th day of the Olympics, injured more than 100 people, and killed Alice Hawthorne, a mother who had traveled to Atlanta with her daughter to enjoy the festivities. A Turkish cameraman, Melih Uzunyol, died of a heart attack responding to the blast.
The House of Blues closed shop, offering vague allusions about making the old Baptist Tabernacle building its permanent Atlanta home, but other promoters eventually took over the property, renaming it “The Tabernacle” and making it one of the more popular venues in town. Bob Dylan would grace its stage for two nights in April 2004. He and his band gave performances as fiery as any Baptist preacher in that building’s 93 year history, Billy Sunday included.
House of Blues newspaper ad designed by Bob Burkhart and Jeff Cochran. Photo of House of Blues building by Gena Cochran.
I was working at the tennis venue parking lot (we all had a scheme to make money and mine was to earn a whopping six bucks an hour directing traffic - it was more than my other nametag jobs paid!) and kept running to a payphone to get updates from a friend who was trying to get tickets, but apparently they told him it was a 21+ show and we were 16. I'm still salty about it. Saw all three of the 04 shows there, though.