The Lecture Circuit: A Solid State (1992)

A common question for creators of operas and musical theatre works is what comes first, the music or the lyrics?  There is no uniform answer.  When the question at issue is which costs more, words or music, the answer I have found in my half year as chair of the Lecture~Concert Committee is, almost invariably, words.

The total tab for all 17 lecturers the Committee is investigating for next year comes to $131,500 (exclusive of transportation, lodging, and meals) compared to a total of $59,160 for 15 music and theatrical performances.  On average, lectures cost 1.96 times as much as do musicians, and this ignores the facts that a number of the concerts feature multiple performers and that concerts are generally twice as long as lecture programs.

While most, though not all, of the musical artists we are investigating are young musicians who are starting to build their careers, the lecture prospects are not top of the line either.  For example, there is no thought of trying to bring to campus Operation Desert Storm commander Norman Schwarzkopf, who reportedly commands $40,000 a speech now that he is a civilian.  ($40,000 would absorb nearly three years of our budget.  How's that for a military cost-overrun?)  Nor are we trying to get Oliver North, who as a convicted felon was asking for, as I recall, $25,000.  Now that his conviction has been overturned, following the perverse logic of the lecture market his asking price is down.  (For those who want to hear a lecture by a convicted criminal let loose by those liberal judges on a technicality, North is set to give a "Spirit of America" speech at Crowley's Ridge College in the near future.)

Without giving away too many trade secrets, I offer for your consideration some of the quoted fees for lecturers.  The asking price for speed record-breaking pilot Chuck Yeager is, well, stratospheric.  A former Soviet broadcaster and analyst--who doubles as an acrobat having been first a Soviet spokesman, then a reformer, then a non-communist--asks for $15,000 and all expenses for two (he takes along an assistant; in your best Bette Midler voice: talk about your fellow traveller.)  For slightly less, Robert Fulgham, author of All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten, will enlighten us; obviously he had a different kindergarten teacher than I did (all I remember of that crone is that she checked our lunchbags to make sure we had eaten the whole sandwich, crust too).  Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo, is available for an amount in the low five figures plus first class airfare and accommodations; for that sum one would think he would throw in Mr. Moose as well.  And a well-known black writer will give a lecture for $10,000 plus one first-class airfare and first-class accommodations for two.

A $10,000 lecture.  Assuming a 50-minute lecture, which is standard, that is $200 a minute.  If you figure 100 words a minute, $3.33 a word.  A fast-talker by this logic might only make $1.67 a word.  Either way, they must be some extraordinary words.

Now, admittedly, I am partial to music.  But I think an evening with a piano quartet is well worth $2,100, especially if it includes Schumann's Op. 47 on the program.  A well-known Kansas City jazz pianist will play for $4,800 (and that figure drops to $3,360 if we take advantage of a National Endowment for the Arts subsidy program).  The Turtle Island String Quartet, which has been making quite a splash with musically sophisticated versions of popular standards, is currently negotiating for a slightly larger fee.   And, for the same $10,000 we might pay a lecturer, we can arrange a recital by a world-renowned pianist who is making a tour celebrating 50 years of concertizing (actually, because he will be enroute from another concert in the region, he might be available for $5,000).

What is the lesson here?  Aside from the need for a bigger budget for the Lecture~Concert Series?  The lesson:  Forget your piano lessons.  Fight a war, or lie to Congress, or have your children's show cancelled by CBS, and go on the lecture circuit.  The money is to be made in words.  Anyone can whistle.

Addendum--from a 2 December 1991 New Yorker profile of Kenny Shaffer who was hired in 1975 to find opening acts for the Rolling Stones' American concert tour:  "It was a very demanding gig.  For example, you might have some guy who would jump into a bathtub from a hundred-and-five-foot diving board for thirty-five hundred bucks or, alternatively, a fat woman who would jump into a somewhat larger tank from a forty-foot diving board, but she would do it three times and for only three thousand.  How do you decide?"