personalities

Rock Lawbster

Columbus lawyer’s memoir documents brushes with stars, Rock Hall involvement

By Cameron Carr

Alex Wightman (left) with Dion

EARLY IN ALEC Wightman’s memoir, Music in My Life: Notes from a Longtime Fan, he lays out his two guiding principles: great music and nice people. It’s perhaps a little too simple for understanding Wightman, a truly multidimensional person.

A longtime executive partner at BakerHostetler, Wightman has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America since 1995. Yet, simultaneously, he’s lived a double life promoting shows for artists such as Art Garfunkel and members of Buffalo Springfield and Jefferson Airplane. Wightman has also served on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame board for more than 15 years and completed a stint as its chair.

Though he’s never been a musician, music has been much more than just a side interest for Wightman.

“One of the lines I probably say and I hear people say is, ‘Music speaks to me,’” he says. “The honest to goodness truth is, at least for me, music often spoke for me.”

His memoir documents catalysts for a lifelong passion, including early interests in Dion and The Animals; remarkable moments of fandom, such as seeing Neil Young perform his iconic album Tonight’s the Night at Mershon Auditorium two years before its release; and an impressive side career as a promoter for singer-songwriter acts touring through the Columbus area.

The long and winding road

Wightman came to music in the late 1950s at the end of rock ‘n’ roll’s formative years. He followed the genre avidly, even taking to reading the industry in-

Wightman with Sheryl Crow

sider magazine Billboard, through the British invasion, psychedelia and, as the ’70s set in, folk music and singersongwriters such as Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Carole King.

“Great songs that might be very specific to the songwriter often are great because of their universal meaning,” Wightman says. “There’s something being said that others can identify with.”

Wightman stumbled into promoting shows when an email list he subscribed to for songwriter Tom Russell, whose songs have been recorded by Johnny Cash and others, noted an open tour date. After Wightman expressed interest, a call from Russell himself persuaded him to follow through. Thus, Wightman’s Zeppelin Productions was born.

Wightman’s promotion practice is a distinctly personal affair. Particularly in the early years, his family would get involved by taking tickets at the door, managing merch tables or chauffeuring artists. Afterward, Wightman often took the artists out for food and drinks. Those nights, and the bonds formed during them, give life to the musicians featured in his book.

Wightman jokes that he’s been able to balance his law career with promoting concerts by redirecting the time and money that most of his partners put toward golf.

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Wightman with Darlene Love

“When I started promoting concerts, people would tease me a little bit because I was doing it at the peak of my career as both a busy lawyer and a law firm manager,” he says. “Listening to music, going to concerts, there was always time for that.”

While some of Wightman’s bookings, such as Guy Clark and Rodney Crowell, have brushed with mainstream success, most have lived in relative anonymity to those not in the know. But those Zeppelin Productions concerts proved influential for Wightman’s future with music.

“It probably was only because I was promoting the shows that I caught the attention of the folks at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame,” Wightman says.

He joined the board of the Rock Hall in 2004 and commuted to Cleveland from his Columbus home as necessary. From 2013-2016, he served as chair of the board.

With the Rock Hall, Wightman has worked alongside industry moguls such as Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner and Bruce Springsteen manager Jon Landau, occasionally making the acquaintance of artists, Springsteen included.

For Wightman, who had attended the Rock Hall’s opening concert in 1995 – featuring Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Springsteen and many others – the experience of leading the board was a surreal opportunity.

“Chairing the board of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was an absolute highlight of my life,” he says.

Turn the page

Music in My Life aims to chronicle roughly 60 years of Wightman’s fandom, from age 10 up to the present, with asides jumping forward in time to recount related experiences.

Like his concert promotion, the book became a passion project evolving from a vast collection of notecards into something fuller.

As those notes developed into a memoir, Wightman was cautious to prevent the book from becoming about him rather than the music. More than anything, he tried to capture the magic of music and the joy that it can bring to people, the same joy he witnesses at the concerts he continues to book, predominantly at Natalie’s Coal Fired Pizza’s locations in Grandview Heights and Worthington.

“I would, and still do, regularly stand on the side of the room when there’s some wonderful artist on stage and look out in the crowd and see a couple hundred people with enraptured looks on their faces and think, ‘Holy cow, I had something to do with bringing pleasure to all these people,’” Wightman says. “That’s a wonderful feeling and not one that I’ve felt at any other point in my life. Lawyers don’t get those looks.” CS

Cameron Carr is associate editor. Feedback welcome at ccarr@cityscenemediagroup.com.