A ‘Craggy Life Force’

NEW YORK —  It is the day after the Grammys, but Rock and Roll Hall of Famer David Crosby is sitting in his Manhattan hotel room concerned about a politician he’s never met.

Crosby can’t remember her first name. He knows her last name is “Sanchez.” But he wants to help the freshman Democratic congresswoman from Orange County who is still fighting an election challenge by the man she defeated last fall, former Republican Rep. Robert K. Dornan.

“Boy, I want very badly for her to make it,” says Crosby, who has pledged to perform at a future concert benefiting Rep. Loretta Sanchez. “I don’t normally do politicians. Very few.”

For many years, Crosby and his musical collaborators--Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, and sometimes Neil Young--have lent their voices to social causes, but rarely to politicians directly.

So why Sanchez, a political unknown until her upset victory over Dornan?

The answer is Tom Campbell, an obscure producer of benefit concerts who has seen much social and political upheaval in his 57 years. Campbell’s friends describe him as a Renaissance man who helps bridge musicians’ social conscience with the world of politics.

“He’s not a producer for profit; he’s a producer, for social change,” says Donald Miller, Jackson Browne’s manager, who has known Campbell for decades. “He’s a great priest.”

It was through Campbell and his close alliance with Voters for Choice, an abortion rights political action committee founded in 1979 by Gloria Steinem, that some artists heard about Sanchez’s effort to take down Dornan.

“Tom watches very carefully and he said [Dornan-Sanchez] was a close race, and everything we could do would be appreciated. So I gave and so did my wife, Susan,” Nash says of the combined $2,000 they sent to Sanchez in the waning days of November’s campaign.

Browne, Bonnie Raitt and Linda Ronstadt also answered Campbell’s low-key plea for donations, which was unbeknownst even to the Sanchez campaign, for a combined $2,500.

Other successful California Democrats benefiting from the Voters for Choice/Campbell alliance last year included Rep. Walter Capps of Santa Barbara, who unseated Rep. Andrea Seastrand (R-Santa Barbara), and Rep. George Brown of San Bernardino, who barely escaped a challenge from Republican Linda Wilde.

An affordably-priced Raitt/Browne concert last year in San Luis Obispo County for Capps, for example, netted about $40,000, and increased his profile in a part of the district that previously had not supported him.

Though Campbell has set the stage for cause-related benefits for more than 22 years--he insists he is not the story. He does not want to talk about himself, nor about the two barely-staffed groups he heads in Southern California.

To do so, he maintains, would shift attention away from the liberal social and political issues for which major recording artists have raised millions through concerts, rallies, receptions and their own personal donations.

Campbell’s reticence implies he is just an asterisk; the fine print in a concert program benefiting the women’s rights movement, for example; not even worth the special “thank you” dutifully issued from the stage by Raitt at benefit concerts he organized.

Nor should he get all the credit, one critic points out. While Campbell is a major cog in the wheel that for decades has turned the liberal political movement, he is not alone.

Don Henley’s political involvement, for example, includes some shows produced by Campbell but also others organized by Henley’s own management group. He also was among the top givers to federal campaigns between 1991 and 1996.

For all the work done by others, however, Campbell’s friends say some things just wouldn’t get done--from issues research to organizing a concert--if it were not for his dedication to the “cause.”

The list is long: women’s reproductive rights; preservation of the Black Mesa of New Mexico; the Bolsa Chica wetlands in Orange County; the rights of American tribal nations; blocking oil rig construction off the California coastline; and opposing nuclear energy everywhere. In 1994, he helped Nash stage concerts in Hawaii to benefit victims of Hurricane Iniki.

“[Campbell’s group] has never hired a limousine in their lives,” Crosby says of Campbell, who accounts for every dime spent on events.

One look at this tall, sturdy figure with the ruddy complexion tells the story of a man of conviction.

Alongside his right cheek hangs a thin, beaded braid inspired by his admiration for Chief Crazy Horse. Campbell began growing the braid at a 1989 South Dakota music festival he helped stage in support of returning the mineral-rich Black Hills to the Dakota people.

Later, when one of his co-workers had treatment for breast cancer and lost her hair, Campbell, in a show of solidarity, shaved his head--except for the braid.

His one-room base of operations, above a Hermosa Beach chiropractor’s office, has a post-psychedelic look.

Almost every inch of wall space is covered with faded posters and photos of past concerts and rallies Campbell organized--a montage of protest music and political activism headlined by Bruce Springsteen, Jerry Garcia, James Taylor and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Papers are stacked everywhere but Campbell and his two co-workers seem to know where everything is. On one afternoon, the phone rings constantly; there’s a rush to deliver a newspaper advertisement for an upcoming Voters for Choice concert and the flight schedule for blues artist Keb’ Mo’ needs to be changed.

Campbell is not exactly a political boss. In the corporate vernacular of the ‘90s, he’s a facilitator--a well-connected one with deep political roots.

“I come from a political family,” Campbell says, mentioning that his mother and father met at a Young Communist dance.

Born in Nevada, he grew up in California and earned a living for a while in the Disney promotions department.

The future political activist aspired to be a folk songwriter, but he admits, “I butcher the guitar.” Capitol Records didn’t release the only album he ever made, but he reluctantly reveals that some of his songs were recorded by others, including Ronstadt, John Denver and Heart’s Nancy Wilson.

The first concert Campbell staged was born out of his concern for the environment.

In 1974, Earth First! founder Dave Foreman needed more money for a project to protect wilderness areas in northern New Mexico. Campbell pulled together a fund-raising show featuring Ronstadt, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and comedian Steve Martin.

His most celebrated event was the 1979 “No Nukes” series that was organized by Musicians United for Safe Energy, whose executive board included Browne, Nash, Raitt and Campbell. The concerts, still occasionally televised on VH1, also featured Springsteen, the Doobie Brothers, James Taylor and Carly Simon.

One rally brings a sparkle to his eyes: the Earth Day/No-Nukes protest at the U.S. Capitol on May 6, 1979.

He remembers its place in history: the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania had just experienced a near-meltdown, and the anti-nuclear film “The China Syndrome” was playing.

Seizing the opportunity, Ralph Nader gave Campbell three weeks--from inception to execution--to organize the rally. It drew an estimated 250,000 people.

Early the next day, the exhausted organizers were summoned to meet with President Jimmy Carter. Campbell showed up at the Oval Office in a Mexican wedding shirt and a pair of jeans.

The environmentalists’ anti-nuclear message evolved into a rap session with the prez on other random thoughts, like moving the United Nations to Jerusalem.

“We were pretty naive then, you know,” Campbell says with a laugh.

Nearly 18 years later, Campbell is walking briskly around Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., making sure all is ready before the Voters for Choice concert begins.

“This craggy life force” is Gloria Steinem’s description of the producer. “The fact that artists trust him is a large part of the reason that they are going to [perform].”

How’s the security? Campbell asks, talking into a two-way radio.

Abortion rights opponents are outside the hall, protesting the 24th anniversary of the landmark Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision.

In Campbell’s line of work, protesters can be a hassle, especially in the same week as an abortion clinic bombing in Atlanta.

But Campbell knows what it means to stand up for a cause. So if abortion rights opponents feel like holding up a sign in sub-freezing weather, it’s OK with him.

“Just keep them moving,” he orders over the radio. He releases the talk button and laughs. “They have their rights, too.”

Raitt, Browne and John Trudell defended their own civil rights last fall when protesters tried to disrupt their benefit concert in Jacksonville, Ore., on behalf of environmental groups.

Loggers lined the fence bordering the amphitheater and shouted, pounded their car horns, and fired up chain saws.

City officials spent $10,000 to $15,000 on extra police, and then became aggravated when Campbell declined to split the cost.

“He sort of thumbed his nose at us and left town, so we don’t have fond feelings for him,” says City Administrator Paul Wyntergreen.

Campbell says he refused because the artists followed the rules and, unlike the loggers, had a permit to make noise.

Environmental and abortion rights causes may best demonstrate the synergy between the entertainers, the promoter and political committees that has resulted in a steady rise of financial support to federal candidates.

As Raitt was asking Campbell to find an abortion rights group she could help, Julie Burton, executive director of Voters for Choice, was looking for new ways to raise money. Campbell and Burton met.

In 1991, Raitt began adding high-priced “meet-and-greet” receptions to her concert tours to benefit Voters for Choice. A year later, Campbell produced the group’s first benefit concert.

“David [Crosby] said, ‘You know, there needs to be some men involved. This is a men’s issue too,’ ” Campbell recalls. “So David and Graham [Nash] helped by putting people in touch with people. They knew Melissa [Etheridge], they knew the Indigo Girls.” Political comic Barry Crimmins and Mary Chapin Carpenter were enlisted by Campbell and Voters for Choice.

So far, the annual benefit concerts have netted the group about $850,000. In the 1996 federal elections, the PAC donated $360,000 and 21 of the 25 “targeted” races were won by candidates favoring abortion rights, including Sanchez.

A young, politically untested candidate, Sanchez wasn’t sure what to expect when she first climbed the stairs above the chiropractor’s office and entered the world of Tom Campbell.

All Sanchez knew from Burton and from her political consulting firm was that Campbell was considering a benefit concert for her campaign.

“As soon as I heard from [Campbell], I placed a call to . . . her campaign and said, ‘Do not ignore this guy,” says Andrew Kennedy, Sanchez’s campaign consultant.

So here she was, a nervous, buttoned-up investment counselor, about to meet the man with the long braid. “I was definitely there for him to see what I was about,” she says.

They agreed to try for an Orange County concert, maybe with Los Lobos. But Sanchez fell short of getting the package deal; she didn’t get her own fund-raiser.

Her campaign was in disarray and Campbell didn’t have enough time to find a suitable venue--preferably a 3,500-seat facility, to preserve a “community” feeling.

On election night, as the vote totals favored Dornan--the outcome would change a week later--Campbell remembers thinking, “I’m going to kick myself for the next 10 goddamn years for letting this opportunity go by.”

Later, when Sanchez was declared the winner, Campbell exhaled. “Off the damn hook,” he says with a smile.

Campbell worried about not doing enough for Sanchez because he knew how pivotal the Raitt/Browne concerts were in Dan Hamburg’s 1992 victory.

“Dan got elected and we thought, ‘God, the system works! You put your quarter in there, you pull the lever, and you get a congressperson!’ ” Campbell says, acting out the scene as though he were at a Vegas slot machine.

(Hamburg was ousted two years later by the Republican he had defeated, Frank Riggs.)

Recording artists who rarely give directly to candidates find victories even sweeter.

“I try to make it a practice not to endorse individual candidates. I get so burned supporting candidates that are less than perfect,” Graham Nash says. “In the last few years, I’ve come around to the point of view of supporting candidates that stand for what I stand for.”

Campbell is now organizing Jackson Browne benefit concerts to be held this fall.

Sanchez says Browne recently offered her a concert to fight Dornan’s election challenge. However, Browne was unavailable for comment, and Campbell hasn’t heard about it yet.

But this is another fight Campbell and these artists are committed to waging. “Anything having to do with Bob Dornan, we’re interested in,” Campbell says. “Let there be no doubt about that.”