12 Apr 2019
“The ticket queen has moved to a new palace” – that sassy phrase was inside the card featuring the hilarious cartoon of Shelley Lazar with tickets flying out of her bum.
She sent it out in 2002 to announce her new company, SLO Limited, and her new San Francisco office.
But it has a whole new meaning now that Shelley, our beloved MFTQ, has left the planet. Her breast cancer that she survived two decades ago had returned in disguise.
The Queen of all tickets, Michelle “Shelley” Lazar, ascended at age 69 to the proverbial palace in the sky where she will undoubtedly have the ultimate VIP experience she deserves, like the kind she pioneered on this earthly stage.
The cover of her cheeky SLO card was teased with her even-cheekier catch-phrase, “There’s no such thing as a sold out show!”
Shelley’s mantra was an amazing gift to so many of us, as validated by the scores of posthumous online postings with Shelley love stories about how our Queen conferred her extraordinary generosity.
For me, Shelley was beyond royalty, she was more like a combination of the heavenly and mythical — a Jewish goddess-angel-unicorn.
But she was also so completely down-to-earth and relished her sobriquet “Mother Fucking Ticket Queen” as dubbed by Keith Richards (who else?).
She personified that nickname and displayed her infectious joie de vie around Halloween in 2006 at New York’s Beacon Theatre during “A Bigger Bang” tour. For the two Stones concerts (one in honor of President Clinton’s birthday), which would become the Martin Scorsese concert film “Shine a Light,” Shelley dressed the part of the MFTQ.
She delighted friends and fans by wearing a giant ticket costume with a crown emblazoned with a Rolling Stones tongue logo!
Shelley Lazar was so much more than the sum of her parts as a former school teacher from Brooklyn who worked hard to land – and to score – on the biggest playing field in the world of entertainment.
Shelley was a true legend in the testosterone-fueled world of rock and her larger-than-life personality charmed rock legends, heads of state, record company execs and the common fan.
She started her Ticket Queen ascent under rock promoter Bill Graham with her astute business savvy that she combined with her loving loyalty and incredible kindness.
Known for her gregarious personality, biting sarcasm and bawdy humor, Shelley loved a good laugh and had a keen sense of fun. She was a dog lover who brought her pampered superstar pups on the road where they graced/ruled her office and followed her around backstage.
Royal Blessing
Because of Shelley’s kindheartedness, I’ve had some of the most exciting and remarkable adventures as a rock ‘n’ roll fan. She was a true blessing in my life.
Shelley Lazar was the primary reason I was able to stop sleeping out on sidewalks overnight in front of the venue box office to wait for Stones tickets to go on sale in the morning.
Buying Stones tickets was always like a Holy Grail crusade for me and mine. The summer before I met him in 1972, my husband Billy drove thousands of miles with friends to the box offices of 14 US venues in the south and the east.
He’d arrive at the venue the night before he knew Stones tickets were going on sale, which he figured out was one month in advance of each show. Thirty days later Billy would again drive for hours and camp outside the city where later he would enjoy the sweet sights and sounds of his labors.
There was no Ticketmaster back then to buy tix over the phone with your credit card. So after driving hundreds of miles to the destination city, he’d stay up all night and was usually first in line when the box office opened. Billy’s diligence (and his Stones devotion) paid off handsomely when he scored front-row center seats for several shows.
But not in our hometown. When the tickets went on sale for the ’72 Spectrum shows in Philadelphia, which was to be my first Rolling Stones concert, it was a near riot. Billy and I both got shut out of good seats and had to settle for “shit tix.” When we met some months later at a Stones-themed party at my college, we fell in love over the mutual ticket fail and over our mutual obsession with the band.
Those days of Stones ticket struggles finally came to an end in 1989. I couldn’t believe our luck when we got amazing seats for two of the seven shows we saw on the Stones “Steel Wheels” tour. That’s where Shelley first began her personal and professional link to the band that would last for three decades as their MFTQ and their dear friend.
Our 10th row tickets for New York’s Shea Stadium shows on “Steel Wheels” came indirectly from Shelley and at that point they were the best non-scalper seats I had in my fangirl career. As a Stones virgin at the Spectrum concert in 1972, I tolerantly sat in the nosebleed seats before I knew how to give myself an “upgrade.”
I’ve usurped many a better seat at every show thereafter, like so many other fervent fans of the Rolling Stones who are lured to the front of house – and to other fan’s seats — by the band’s unavoidable magical musical magnetic force.
Security was much easier to breach during the concerts in ’72,’75,’78 and’81, so you could “score” better Stones seats on those tours. But you paid the price not knowing how you’d be received by fans when you crashed the front row (usually not very well).
So it was wonderful to be sitting in legit seats in ’89 through a hooked-up friend who got the tickets through Shelley but was elusive about the contact, only saying they were “from the Stones office and they are band tickets.”
Photo: Kevin Mazar Wire Image
Pleased to Meet You
I was personally guided to Shelley’s office by the hand of fate in 1994 when the “Voodoo Lounge” tour rolled into Washington, D.C for their opening shows. Billy and I were celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary that month and we had mediocre tickets to both RFK Stadium shows on August 1 and 3.
We decided to splurge by staying in the Ritz Carlton where we knew the Stones were booked and I overheard someone at the front desk asking for the “Rolling Stones ticket office.” When I heard the room number, fireworks of joy exploded in my head, just like at the end of a Stones stadium show!
I hovered nervously outside the door, watching auspicious fans enter for their golden tickets. Finally there was a lull in traffic and I went in to find the glorious Shelley.
With her short, stylish, white-ish (more-salt, less-pepper) hairstyle, heart-shaped face, and big pearly white smile, she resembled a mischievous, bespeckled pixie with designer eyewear on those twinkling eyes. She was quite elegant and sat regally behind the white tablecloth-draped folding table with her box of envelopes stuffed with manna from heaven.
“Hi, I’m from Philadelphia and a life-long Stones super fan,” I gushed to the bemused MFTQ. “Is there any chance I can upgrade my Ticketmaster tickets with better seats?”
“No,” Shelley said, “but you can buy new, better, tickets from me.”
I couldn’t get my credit card out fast enough. I didn’t even ask where the seats were located (they were great). I would learn through the later years that buying tickets through Shelley Lazar’s office meant that you would never really know the exact location of your seat, until you had them in hand. Seats were sold according to price level tiers.
“How can I buy Stones tickets from you for other cities,” I asked her in D.C., with Philly, New Jersey, Montreal, Atlanta and Mexico City in mind.
Shelley handed me her coveted Price List and told me to fax her the Ticket Form, which at one time was only given out very selectively. Friends and fans had to be sanctioned to buy tickets from the Stones VIP Ticket Office.
On the Ticket Form there was a line to fill in that asked who referred you and how you were affiliated with the band.
“Use my name as the reference and put ‘friend’ as affiliation,” Her Majesty instructed, as she turned to greet the next fortunate friend, among her thousands.
Eventually, with permission, I introduced a few of my own friends to Shelley. After she sold SLO Tix to Ticketmaster in 2008, and stayed on as chief executive, it was easier for in-the-know fans to “infiltrate” her office to request her form and to purchase her tickets. They were usually available to be picked up on day of show in her office in the artists’ hotel.
Her offices were always filled with flowers and there were trays of bottled water and sweets for the fans. She displayed the pile of gifts and Stones-related gags that fans would bring her to give thanks.
Photo: Ed Hemwall
VIP Access
She was connected to every wonderful entertainment event in the world and created many of her own. Shelley pushed the ticket industry envelope and introduced the expensive and expansive fan party “Meet and Greet” experience.
The packages varied from tour to tour and typically featured premium seating, food, drink and exclusive merchandise “swag bags. ” The pièce de résistance was a photo op with your rock heroes at a carefully orchestrated – and usually very brief – backstage meet up.
Her backstage tours, travel packages, access to sound checks and premium ticket bundles were the reason I was able to see my other rock gods up close and personal many times and in any convenient venue, including the Who, Bob Dylan and Neil Young.
My front-row tickets, VIP passes and backstage experiences from Shelley can’t be fully described in all of their glory!
My chance meeting with the Ticket Queen became the ticket to my rock ‘n’ roll dreams coming true. It fueled my life-long Stones passion and my subsequent travels across the globe to over 200 of their concerts.
I’m not fortunate enough to be among the “professional” Stones fans who have unlimited resources to leave their job, buy tickets and go to nearly every show on tour (and then some pro fans whinge to unsympathetic ears about how challenging and lonely it is traveling the world to see the Rolling Stones.) So it was a great gift knowing that Shelley would fulfill my ticket requests anywhere, including those sought-after VIP passes; she would often upgrade me as a surprise if I had to economize and buy less than top-tier tix. Shelley elevated this common fan.
Besides being the MFTQ for Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band in the World, Shelley was the Ticket Queen for many other top-ranking artists, including: Elton John, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Madonna, Adele, Celine Dion, Pink, Sting, Tina Turner, Paul Simon and Paul McCartney, one of her personal favorites.
There’s one urban legend with teeth about McCartney and Lulu, Shelley’s infamous black French bulldog who was known for taking a bite out of some people. It’s told that Lulu had to be put down after she took a chunk out of the former Beatle’s leg backstage.
Some folks were secretly happy with the dog’s demise, Lulu was a real bitch and Shelley was the first to warn you. She would always tell it like it is and she even knew how to say “no” kindly, so that the fans who got shut out of special shows didn’t feel quite so bad.
All-Access to Excellence
The MFTQ was a mastermind with multi-tasking. She began her career before personal computers were created and her brain worked like a mainframe.
Shelley also managed to seamlessly manage VIP tickets for many other events and shows, like “American Idol,” the Emmy Awards, MTV VMA’s, and appearances by Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict.
She was often fixated on her computer screen in her tour office in the ensuing years when her business grew and her super competent, fierce assistants took over the ticket distribution. But if you called out a greeting to her across the room, or caught her eye, you got a bonus warm greeting in return along with Shelley’s megawatt smile.
Of course, someone so selfless would be a philanthropist and Shelley supported many causes and nonprofits, including Tipping Point Community, Human Rights Watch, Elton John AIDS Foundation, plus she sponsored a yearly pledge drive with a walk for MS.
She promoted music education on the board of directors of Little Kids Rock, which provides free music ed and instruments to schools across the country. Shelley also served as the co-executive producer of the award-winning documentary, “Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars” with SLO associate Zach Niles.
Shelley was truly a self-made female executive, working her way up through the industry with jobs in catering, booking and logistics, before moving on to managing the box office at Madison Square Garden and working with the promoter Ron Delsener.
After her work on the Stones “Steel Wheels” tour in 1989 and “Urban Jungle” in 1990, Shelley moved to San Francisco to work with Bill Graham in 1991, the year he died in a helicopter crash. Shelley served as vice president of artistic relations and special projects coordinator at Bill Graham Presents and worked as a founding director of the Bill Graham Foundation.
Sadly, it’s impossible now to tap into all the stories about Shelley and the stars, shows and backstage shenanigans, which could have filled a juicy autobiography. I asked her for an interview several times and pled my case for her candor.
“I will archive and record your place as a major player and wonder woman in the history of the Rolling Stones,” I pledged. But Shelley said she couldn’t share the most delicious morsels of her life because of her own discretion and her non-disclosure agreements.
“I can’t talk on the record about any of the good stuff, so what’s the use?” she would say with a shrug. “But you never know. Maybe someday.” She was diplomatically blowing me off but giving me some hope at the same time.
I know I’m not alone when I say that I adored Shelley Lazar. Her death is a great loss to so many. She was such an incredible icon and a lovely human being. I am honored to have known her and very blessed that she allowed me to call her “friend” for 25 years.
RIP Your Royal Highness, MFTQ.
Scroll down for a couple of my favorite Shelley memories
Shelley’s 50th Birthday Bash, San Jose California
Shelley Lazar’s 50th birthday party in 1999 was one of the most memorable, happy, fantastic nights of my fangirl avocation! Her upcoming May 12th milestone was celebrated on April 21st at an amazingly fun party hosted by the Rolling Stones at the end of the “No Security” tour.
She was feted by all of the Rolling Stones in the Fairmont hotel in San Jose, California, the night after the second of two shows at the San Jose Arena on April 19 and 20.
I arrived early when the energy in the hotel’s small-sized party room was staid and low-key. Promoter Michael Cohl and Prince Rupert Loewenstein, the Stones financial adviser, were huddled at a round table at the back and I wondered what schemes those two power brokers were plotting.
Our MFTQ was holding court with friends and family. Some corporate “suits,” a few women in the Stones admin camp and a handful of the back line guys were scattered around other nearby tables. I felt a little awkward because the few people I knew at the party were otherwise engaged.
With Rolling Stones band politics, separate artist camps and the pecking order among the crew and entourage, well, it’s never cool to interrupt or insert yourself. So I got a bite to eat from the gourmet spread and then hung at the bar, sipping my designer water from its fancy bottle. I was an enchanted fan/fly on the wall.
You know when you’re at a Stones concert — and you’re not sure when it happens since it varies from song to song and show to show — but all of a sudden you recognize you’re in a rare supernatural Rolling Stones moment? That’s what happened at Shelley’s 50th birthday party.
Suddenly the suits and the execs were gone, the DJ started spinning a great mix of oldies, rock and pop hits and people started dancing. The amount of beautiful people in the room now equaled Shelley’s age, and the atmosphere completely changed from frump to fabulous.
The revelers included the band’s back-up musicians: Bobby Keys, Darryl Jones, Chuck Leavell, Bernard Fowler, Lisa Fischer, and Blondie Chaplin. Members of the horn section and the band’s family and entourage also stopped by. The birthday girl’s friends and family rounded out the guest list, including our hosts, the Rolling Stones.
Charlie Watts arrived and preceded his band mates by about 10 minutes. He gave Shelley a hug and kisses and then settled down at a long table. That was a rare sighting for me, I’d been to a few private Rolling Stones parties where Charlie was a no-show, like the one after the opening of the “No Security” tour in Oakland on January 25, 1999. I was thrilled this time to observe the gentleman drummer up close and personal in a relaxed setting.
Charlie’s appearance showed me just how much Shelley was loved and respected by all of the band. And there was quite a bit more show-and-tell-Shelley-love that night from the Rolling Stones.
Ronnie bopped into the bash next, full of charm and with open arms for the birthday girl. Keith strutted in shortly afterwards, and the party scene’s cool meter went up several notches past coolest. I didn’t think my excitement at being a guest at a personal Rolling Stones shindig for one of their own family could get any better.
And then Mick grandly made his entrance and re-started the party up on a whole other level. He pulled Shelley onto the dance floor, and Keith, Ronnie and Charlie soon followed.
I was quickly among the other 20 guests or so who wanted to get up, get out, get into something new, dancing with the Rolling Stones and their MFTQ!
The band danced in a circle with their arms around Shelley and I laughed out loud (LOL for real) picturing myself pushing my way into the middle of them all. I settled for showing them my moves when we formed two lines of dancers across from each other and took turns dancing down the middle – a line dance, Soul Train style!
I was laughing and crying at the same time, especially when Mick took his turn for the dance-off. He’s kind of a dorky dancer with only moves like Jagger. And I loved it! Keith was slick and sexy, Ronnie was bouncy and engaging and Charlie had great rhythm (not surprising) and was an uninhibited dancer (surprising).
The dancing seemed to go on for hours, song after song, spin after spin, and I was in a surreal state of consciousness, getting down alongside any and all of the Rolling Stones and their Ticket Queen. I rarely left the dance floor, even after the guest of honor and each of the band members finally returned to their table. They were all gathered ‘round together, eating, drinking, enjoying each other’s company in honor of Shelley Lazar, quite like a Thanksgiving celebration for her well being and her milestone.
At one point during the party, Shelley sat on a chair in the middle of the dance floor, smiling, laughing, hooting and hollering as some of us took turns giving her a personal lap dance. Someone rolled a giant cake in front of her and Shelley was beaming brighter than the 50 candles that were lit up while we all sang “Happy Birthday”.
Shelley’s associate Zach and his friends were die-hard partying and dancing machines and we rocked out until well after 3 a.m. The Stones had all gone about an hour earlier after about five hours at the BD gig; Mick took his leave, then Charlie shortly after. Keith and Ronnie lingered behind, leaving together about 2:30; I wondered if they were going to continue the party elsewhere.
I was one of the first guests to arrive and one of the last to leave. I was running on shear adrenaline and I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I collapsed in my hotel room and then tried to get up the next day in time for check out. But I had no regrets whatsoever, not even my achy legs. Except maybe not taking pictures to make a scrapbook for Shelley. I don’t remember anyone taking photos or videos, we were all too busy having a great time at the best birthday bash ever for one of the best people ever!
Some weeks later I got a thank you note from Shelley for my presents. I wanted to tickle that well-known funny bone, so along with a silk scarf I sent her some x-rated gifts, including a package of penis and tittie-shaped pasta. She told me later that she made it into pasta salad and it was delicious.
Last Time Ever I Saw Her Face, Had Her Embrace
I was uneasy about her health when, for the most part, Shelley was not on the first leg in Europe on the “No Filter” tour in 2017.
When I went to her office for my tickets for the Düsseldorf show in Germany on October 9, it was said she was recuperating from a back issue. But her associates’ glum faces said otherwise, I could tell they were concerned. She turned up in Paris for the last three shows October 19, 22, 15, and I was thankful and relieved when I heard she was there.
When I saw Shelley in Dublin on May 17, 2018, for the opening show of the second leg of “No Filter”, she looked great! The sweet Irish air agreed with her and she was glowing, bubbly and happy. Seeing her like that perked me up from an otherwise doom and gloom mood that temporarily overtook my usual opening show excitement.
I shared the very sad news with her that my husband had died and I was there to scatter some of his ashes during his favorite songs at the concert that night, the day before his 67thth birthday. Shelley came out from behind her ticket table and wrapped me in her lovin’ arms for a long and heartfelt embrace and we shed some tears together. We talked a bit about how time waits for no one. The conversation has new meaning for me now.
In Prague on July 4, 2018, Shelley looked and acted like her usual fabulous self and greeted me warmly when I picked up my tickets. We ran into each other backstage in line in band catering, where I landed in the inner sanctum by way of a twist of karmic synchronicity with an awesome, connected friend.
“Oh look who’s back here,” Shelley said with a laugh, as we filled our plates at the buffet and chatted about mundane topics. I wish I remembered every word. That’s the last time I saw her.
There are many definitions of friendship and ours was defined in its own rocker chick way. Her caring and warmth made me feel like I was in her inner circle and part of her family, but I was really just a member of the Ticket Queen’s royal court. I was in awe of her power and her capacity for love. And I’m happy I got to tell her how much I loved her in return.
