If you’ve never heard of Nick Panaseiko, that’s entirely understandable. He was a backstage guy, making sure that the act onstage is playing to a full house, making sure their records were on the radio and in record stores.
He was a promo man. Kelly Jay of Crowbar referred to the Canadian music industry of the era as a matter of ‘six degrees of Nick Panaseiko’. Taking off from a popular Panasonic ad campaign of the day, legendary rocker Ronnie Hawkins dubbed him, ‘Nick Panaseiko, a man slightly ahead of his time’. And at his induction into the Jack Richardson Hall of Fame, Alice Cooper, Ronnie Hawkins and Peter Criss of Kiss all sent video tributes.
Promo Man places Nick Panaseiko in the zeitgeist of the music industry in the 60s and 70s and his work with the acts who were - and in some cases still are - the aural soundtrack to our lives. How Nick made his way to the epicenter of the Canadian music industry and made his way out alive is the story of Promo Man.
Promo Man takes the reader from the 17-year-old kid who booked The Supremes to a sold-out show through his success breaking Kiss in Canada to his time with Quality Records and WEA in the 70s.
While Nick Panaseiko’s metier was promoting acts, his other duties as assigned including finding Freddie Mercury and Liberace Toronto gay bars, playing board games with young Marlon Richards, finding cocaine for his father, Keith and Ronnie Wood, having to deal with a racist Bill Cosby, being the de-facto minder for Keith Moon at a party and being an extra in a Van Halen video.
The book truly lives in his tales of a breakneck lifestyle, working with and promoting acts including Queen, Liberace, The Cars, Van Halen, and finally The Rolling Stones. This is an insider’s look at the freewheeling times of the Canadian music industry as it came into being, told by the consummate insider. Key to the book are the many photographs by acclaimed rock and roll photographer John Rowlands of Nick with artists including Debbie Harry, Donna Summer, Kiss, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Johnny Cash, Liberace, Keith Moon, and Freddie Mercury. The fast pace of the narrative coupled with the photos brings to life a much mythologized time in popular music.
He was the best record hustler I’ve ever seen
Ronnie Hawkins
In the Canadian music industry, it was always 6 degrees of separation to Nick Panaseiko
Nick was definitely driven. Bill Graham was driven in the same kind of way. He had the same kind of drive, ambition and energy to wake up, pick up the phone and just go all day. Nick had it.
Graham Lear (drummer REO Speedwagon, Santana, Gino Vanelli)
Praise for Nick Panaseiko and Promo Man…
Nick Panaseiko has led a remarkable life filled with adventure, fueled by a love of music and the music industry. A promotion man extraordinaire, Panaseiko is also an accomplished raconteur from the old school who loves to tell often hilarious stories of the stars he has worked with and what he was willing to do to promote a record.
Rob Bowman, Grammy Award-winning Professor of Music
Klanac has written an engaging and fascinating portrait of Panaseiko, the Promo Man next door who became a big-time player in a burgeoning Canadian music industry that literally grew out from under his feet.
- Paul Myers, author of It Ain’t Easy: Long John Baldry and the Birth of the British Blues, and A Wizard A True Star: Todd Rundgren In The Studi and Kids In The Hall: One Dumb Guy.
