GUNS N' ROSES' Booking Agent Says 'Not In This Lifetime' Tour Has Been 'An Amazing Ride'

In a recent interview with Pollstar, United Talent Agency talent agent Ken Fermaglich — who oversees the booking of GUNS N' ROSES' concert performances in the United States — discussed the success of the band's ongoing "Not In This Lifetime" tour.

"It's been an amazing ride, clearly," Fermaglich said. "You hope to get yourself in a position where you can handle when something like this happens. At the end of the day, this has been fun and there are really great people I've gotten to work with in their camp."

Fermaglich also discussed how the band seems to have matured since the days of notoriously late-starting concerts and onstage tantrums. "The experience people are having right now, from a consumer perspective but also from a business perspective, is really good," he said. "Whatever happened in the past is past. I asked people early on in this project to suspend their opinions from the past and try to focus on the here and now and the future, because that's how we're looking at it. It's a whole new day for the band and we believe in their ability to do incredible things and we're seeing it come to life. Luckily, our business partners have done an amazing job, and I give credit to a lot of them. [Many] lived through problems 20 years ago and took all of that, parked it and said, 'Okay, show me what you can do today, and the band has delivered."

Fermaglich believes that the group's appearances at the Coachella festival near the start of the "Not In This Lifetime" tour were key in the tour's success. "That was a very strategic first look," he said. "It's something we thought about and talked about a bunch. We felt very strongly [that it] could be an amazing launchpad for the band, and sort of a statement saying, 'We're not just what you thought we were in the '90s, but we can still be very relevant in this decade.' Clearly, it was impactful from that perspective, to be a part of that festival, to headline that festival, to be a part of the culture of Southern California."

The complete interview can be read at Pollstar.

Pollstar previously reported that the 2016 and 2017 legs of the "Not In This Lifetime" tour grossed a combined $480.9 million from 125 performances around the world.

GUNS N' ROSES recently kicked off its first tour of 2018, a 19-show European trek that includes performances at Download festivals in Paris, Madrid and the United Kingdom.

Photo credit: Katarina Benzova