Marek Lieberberg
Marek Lieberberg is a German promoter, best known for founding the Rock am Ring and Rock im Park music festival. He is Germany's largest and most influential concert promoter, having brought major international acts to perform in the country throughout his career.
Lieberberg was born in Frankfurt and grew up in the post-war city. After attending an English school, he went on to study at the University of Frankfurt. He then trained as a journalist and became a current affairs editor for the Associated Press in Germany. Choosing a different career path, Lieberberg began as a concert promoter in 1969 and co-founded the Mama Concerts agency in 1970. He co-organised the inaugural British Rock Meeting festival in 1971 and the subsequent 1972 edition. In 1985, Lieberberg founded the Rock am Ring festival and established it at the Nürburgring racetrack. The following year, he concluded his association with Mama Concerts.
Lieberberg founded his concert agency, Marek Lieberberg Konzertagentur, in 1987, which gradually became Germany's leading live music promoter. From the late 1980s onwards, he was Ute Lemper's talent manager. He promoted tours of domestic acts abroad and, in 1992, organised the music festival Heute die! Morgen Du! in response to right-wing extremist violence in Germany. In the 1990s, Lieberberg launched the Rock im Park music festival and sought to establish MLK in Hawaii, where he presented international artists to audiences. He organised the Live 8 concert in Berlin in 2005. Lieberberg first introduced WWE and UFC events in Germany in 2006 and 2009, respectively. He was responsible for the German music festivals Rock im Pott, Rock'n'Heim and Rock im Sektor.
In 2015, Live Nation Entertainment named Lieberberg chief executive officer of Live Nation in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. His involvement in the Rock am Ring and Rock im Park festivals ceased in 2022, after serving as head of the organisers. In 2024, Lieberberg co-promoted Adele in Munich. He also produced and presented musical pieces and Cirque du Soleil shows for audiences in Germany, Austria, and Tel Aviv. A firm stand against racism and xenophobia marked his career; conversely, he consistently defended his protégés, Roger Waters and Xavier Naidoo, amidst discrimination allegations. Lieberberg was a member of various bands. In 2014, the European Festivals Awards gave him the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2017, he received the Plaque of Honour from the City of Frankfurt.
Early life
1946–1968: Early years and journalism debut
Marek Lieberberg, whose parents were Polish Holocaust survivors, was born on 7 May 1946, in the Jewish Zeilsheim displaced persons camp. He resided in this United Nations camp in Zeilsheim, a suburb of Frankfurt, housing refugees evacuated from liberated concentration camps or hidden areas. In his family, only his parents survived World War II. His two sisters had died of starvation during the war, and the Nazis had exterminated the rest of his family.After obtaining the appropriate license from the American occupation authorities, his father produced chocolate and subsequently ran a coffee roastery. His mother, however, squandered away money earned by gambling. Lieberberg, who described his parents as "broken", grew up in post-war Frankfurt.
His parents' ethnic identity was intentionally indistinguishable in their lives; he was therefore enrolled in a boarding school in England to learn more about Jewish history. Lieberberg lived in London at the time of the Rolling Stones' founding. His early musical interests emerged at the age of 16, which led him to form a rock band. He has a brother named David.
Lieberberg studied sociology at the University of Frankfurt for a year, where he became involved in left-wing political circles, a characteristic trait of young Jews in the 1960s and 1970s. It was during the era of the Frankfurt School. The realm of music impressed him as much as literature and theatre, but he did not fully consider himself a "68er". He deemed this period politically "important" and also "stupid and dangerous", citing the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund, whose members rebuked those with differing opinions, which displeased him greatly. Lieberberg disapproved of the way the SDS had suddenly castigated Theodor W. Adorno#Confrontations with students in Frankfurt. He said that the SDS's "most gifted orators" were and Hans-Jürgen Krahl, whom he referred to as "Jacobins" when they were at the University of Frankfurt. Lieberberg further said that Wolff and Krahl "made everyone's life hell" in a context where mass student protests against the state and the police seemed illusory to him. He was frightened by the "zeal" with which Wolff and Krahl forcefully confronted dissenters, even those who expressed scepticism. Lieberberg fled the SDS.
After two semesters of studying sociology, Lieberberg began a traineeship in news journalism at the Associated Press. Lieberberg was AP's current affairs editor in Berlin and Bonn. Around 1968, he occasionally wrote about the music scene as a reporter.
Concert promotion career
1969–1970: Transition to live music event promotion
By the late 1960s, Lieberberg found himself without "one penny" in his pocket. An individual asked him for help promoting musicians such as Eric Clapton and Wilson Pickett, putting up posters for concerts in town, managing tickets and setting up the equipment. Lieberberg transitioned from journalist to concert promoter in the late 1960s, beginning by overseeing the organisation of several major outdoor shows in Germany. In 1969, he organised the "first open-air" event at Frankfurt's velodrome stadium, two years after the Summer of Love, Lieberberg said. Ellie Weinert of Billboard wrote that Lieberberg's experiences as a band member and journalist "proved to be major assets" when he shifted to a concert promoter.1970–1986: Mama Concerts
Lieberberg and his business partner founded their concert agency Mama Concerts in 1970. The name of the company Mama Concerts was formed by combining the first syllable of Lieberberg's and Avram's first names. In 1970, at the age of 24, he was responsible for organising his first concert, that of the Who in Münster. One of his promoter duties was to drive his old Volkswagen car in front of the Who's bus to secure the band's arrival times in each city. In 1970, Lieberberg's responsibilities included organising Deep Purple's first German tour, as well as Pink Floyd's tour of that country.Lieberberg and Avram then organised the first British Rock Meeting festival in September 1971 in Speyer, Germany. It was inspired by the model of the American festival and featured Black Sabbath, Fleetwood Mac and Rod Stewart.
Along with Deep Purple's manager, John Coletta, Lieberberg signed the contract for the band's 1972 German concerts on a paper tablecloth in an outdoor restaurant on Mendelssohnstraße in Frankfurt. In 1972, Lieberberg and Avram organised the second edition of the British Rock Meeting on an island near Germersheim, which attracted an audience of 100,000 people. It featured, among others, the Doors, Faces and Pink Floyd. Anja Perkuhn of Süddeutsche Zeitung called the 1972 British Rock Meeting "the mother of all German rock festivals". Lieberberg's work in the early 1970s was recognised for bringing international bands and leading rock acts to German stages.
Lieberberg's professional life would be a long and arduous undertaking, with its ups and downs. The first difficult hardship he encountered was that of Frank Sinatra in the mid-1970s, during his concert tour in West Germany organised by Mama Concerts. Sinatra began this 1975 tour in Munich and then Frankfurt, where he performed in half-empty halls. His next concert at the Deutschlandhalle in West Berlin was therefore cancelled. His German tour thus ended, with Lieberberg stating in 1975 that Sinatra nevertheless earned about 30,000 Deutsche Marks per concert. German newspapers had predicted the financial ruin of Lieberberg's company, but he denied this claim.
Inception of ''Rock am Ring''
In 1980, Lieberberg attempted to organise a festival on the Schwalbenschwanz portion of the Nordschleife at the Nürburgring#Schwalbenschwanz/Kleines Karussell motorsports complex near Herresbach. However, the project ultimately failed due to protests from nearby residents and a lack of parking spaces.In February 1981, Lieberberg organised Pink Floyd's series of concerts for The Wall Tour at the Westfalenhallen in Dortmund. Süddeutsche Zeitung's Joachim Hentschel said that he "wrote pop history with the band".
A large-scale open-air music festival in Germany had been dormant for about a decade. The few failed amateur festival attempts due to unfulfilled obligations or excesses have led the press and politicians to denigrate this type of event, Lieberberg arguing that the authorities and the church disseminated "propaganda". Years passed, and despite many efforts, no suitable location for an outdoor music festival had been found. Open-air festivals were not widely regarded favourably at the time.
The Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of the Interior sought profitable uses for the state-owned Nürburgring property and had an idea for a music festival, which led Lieberberg to seize the opportunity. A committed CDU state secretary helped to overcome the difficulties encountered. In 1985, Lieberberg wanted to bring to the German region of the Palatinate the atmosphere that reigned in the American town of Bethel during the first Woodstock music festival. He decided to launch a festival, and the 1972 British Rock Meeting would serve as a model. Lieberberg and his collaborators had learned lessons from Woodstock's "chaotic conditions" and the "serious errors" in Monterey, each of which, he said, was due to a precarious "foundation" and "structure" unsuited to large crowds. Rainer Mertel, the first managing director of the newly fashioned Nürburgring complex, placed his trust in him. Thus, Lieberberg founded the Rock am Ring and Rock im Park music festival in 1985.
The inaugural edition of Rock am Ring drew a crowd of nearly 80,000 attendees and featured performances by Foreigner, Gianna Nannini, Joe Cocker, Marius Müller-Westernhagen and U2. Max Sprick of Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote that songs like "Silberblick", "Sternenhimmel" and "99 Luftballons" were not lasting hits in the mid-1980s, just as the "massively commercialised" Neue Deutsche Welle genre was becoming overused and losing its importance. Sprick felt that for this reason, Lieberberg had favoured international "top acts" for his festival project.
For 16 years, Lieberberg headed the Frankfurt office of Mama Concerts. Following an argument, he and Avram ended their partnership in 1986.