As Charity-Concert Organizer, He Rocks

From a hot second-story office in Hermosa Beach, surrounded by three decades of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia, Tom Campbell--one of America’s most unusual philanthropists--is cutting a deal with a musician.

“Listen, Jesse, we should do something that weekend,” Campbell booms into the phone with a proselytizer’s gleam in his eye. “They want to put the waste on a big mountain. We call it Mobile Chernobyl.”

The “Jesse” is folk rock survivor Jesse Colin Young. The outrage is the government’s controversial plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Campbell’s solution? A rock concert to raise money to fight it.

Because Campbell--a grizzled but energetic veteran of the 1960s who is possibly the youngest 61-year-old in the Free World--is a fund-raiser orchestrator extraordinaire.

In the past 27 years--since the birth of that venerable charity institution now known as the rock benefit--Campbell has pulled off more than 600 music events that have raised, by his estimation, more than $20 million for needy people, environmental concerns and civil rights.

This rock populist has helped everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Chaka Khan lend their voices to social causes.

Depending on when you drop by his office, you might find him arranging a fund-raiser for the victims of Hurricane Mitch, featuring Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt. Or drafting Melissa Etheridge and Pearl Jam to support women’s reproductive rights with performances that have made close to $1 million for Voters for Choice.

“I’m trying to play,” Campbell says, “my own small role in changing the world.”

When he gets all fired up about an issue, which is a lot, his kinetic energy--like his wit--is contagious. Tall and rangy, he paces the office in his faded jeans, his long silver braid brushing his face.

“He’s such a firebrand. I told him: ‘Tom, I’m here, I’m ready,’ ” said Young, who has already committed to a June anti-nuke benefit for Campbell in Raleigh, N.C.

Musicians often recruit Campbell themselves.

After Hurricane Mitch ravaged Central America, Raitt told Campbell the dates she was free. Soon the lineup included Browne, Sarah McLachlan, Keb’ Mo’ and Los Lobos. Weeks later, the performers played the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium and two Santa Cruz gigs. The $160,000 in proceeds was divided among a New York group, MADRE, CARECEN in Los Angeles and Doctors Without Borders, Campbell said.

His stature as a benefit impresario is due partly to his reputation for flawless navigation of the minefield of details, from plane tickets to parking, that can make or break a concert.

His mystique also rests on his fiscal sobriety. That means a lot to people who donate their time, money or reputation to a charity--especially when it involves organizing that hugely expensive micro-economy that is the modern rock concert.

Musicians still talk about the Houston Bob Dylan concert for the wrongly imprisoned Rubin “Hurricane” Carter--the profits of which were eaten up by costs. Or George Harrison’s Bangladesh imbroglio, in which most of $13 million in proceeds was tied up for a decade by a tax technicality. Browne recalls singing to pay a former Black Panther’s legal costs at a 1970s concert so poorly organized that the musicians did another show to cover its costs.

“Campbell is an insurance policy against that,” said David Crosby. “We don’t want the expenses of the benefit taking up all the money. I think he’s the best in the country, without any question.”

Campbell largely shuns publicity. But he loves telling tales of his seat-of-the-pants productions. Like the time he told a Greenpeace founder there was no way to organize a Grateful Dead environmental benefit in four days--but then did just that.

Or the time, hours after Hurricane Iniki ravaged the Hawaiian island of Kauai in 1992, that Campbell got a call from the wife of musician Graham Nash.

“We’re going to have to do something,” Susan Nash said urgently, her voice crackling over a cell phone. Campbell told her: “Count me in.”

Campbell arranged two benefits. But as he settled into his plane flight, he was startled by a newspaper interview with Graham Nash promising everyone a third, free concert. Campbell knew nothing about it--but he helped make it happen.

“When we do these types of things,” Campbell said, “we don’t do them like the Red Cross.”

The decidedly noninstitutional office of his Guacamole Fund is like an American contemporary history course narrated by rock posters from the post-psychedelic age.

There’s the rising sun design of the 1979 “No Nukes” concerts in Madison Square Garden, where Bruce Springsteen shared the stage with Tom Petty, the Doobie Brothers and a score of other distinguished musicians. A classic burnt-orange Aztec eagle dominates a poster for a 1977 United Farm Workers’ benefit featuring Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon.

Browne has worked with Campbell for years, so it was a moving experience for the singer to present the fund-raiser a public service honor at the recent California Music Awards.

“In a funny way, we’re family,” Browne reflected. “We kind of all belong to the same church . . . of people who have the same beliefs and are moved to work together often.”

Once upon a time, Browne recalled, “we were all hippies. Some of us got rich off music. Tom is a moneymaker who gives away the money.”

But self-sacrifice is not a central theme of Campbell’s lifelong consciousness-raising party.

“If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself,” he said. “If it went this quickly, I must have had a hell of a good time.”