Concert king worked with Dylan, Oasis and more. Now he's partnered with Providence author

Peter Shapiro's career in the music industry has lasted for nearly three decades, starting when he shot footage for the 1993 documentary "And Miles To Go: On Tour with The Grateful Dead." He bought the legendary New York City venue Wetlands Preserve in 1996, which hosted the likes of Oasis, Pearl Jam, Rage Against The Machine, The Roots, Jeff Buckley, Cypress Hill and many others before its closure in 2001.

In 2009 he opened the popular music venue Brooklyn Bowl, which now has locations in Las Vegas, Nashville and Philadelphia, and he reopened another legendary venue, The Capitol Theatre, in Port Chester, New York, with a performance by Bob Dylan in 2012. A year later, he helped launch the successful Lockn’ Festival in Arrington, Virginia.

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His success in promoting and organizing live music is chronicled in the new book "The Music Never Stops: What Putting on 10,000 Shows Has Taught Me About Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Magic" (Hachette Books, 352 pages, $29), written with Providence native Dean Budnick, the co-editor of Relix Magazine.

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Budnick said he's known and worked with Shapiro since the late 1990s. After co-writing a 2016 memoir by Blues Traveler lead singer and harmonica player John Popper, Budnick was casting around for a new project and pitched Shapiro on an autobiography.

At first, he said, Shapiro was reluctant, as he's relatively young. (He turns 50 in September.)

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“Ultimately, he decided that if it wasn’t so much a memoir and it was more of a look back at shows, the business decisions and the magical moments that have made him who he is today, that he could wrap his head around it," Budnick said. "He wanted to get it out there to see what other people could do with it, and maybe it would help other entrepreneurs, along with giving a little insight for music fans.”

Shapiro and Budnick spent more than a year kicking around ideas in weekly phone calls. Ideas grew into stories, and eventually chapters.

About five of those chapters focus on how Shapiro shepherded his businesses through the COVID-19 shutdown.

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"I think it's illustrative not only of him and how he conducts himself, but how the industry as a whole responded to the issue,” Budnick said.

The book's highlights include what it’s like to work with artists such as U2, Robert Plant, Leonard Cohen and countless others; exclusive anecdotes and photographs; how a concert goes from concept to reality; how a fan can be part of the music industry without having to learn an instrument; what it takes to put on a show; and the sense of accomplishment that comes with a performance.

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Budnick's favorite highlight involves a reunion tour that Shapiro is widely known for organizing: the 2015 "Fare Thee Well: 50th Anniversary Tour," featuring the last performances as the Grateful Dead by the band's surviving members in a series of shows in Santa Clara, California, and Chicago.

Budnick shares two things that happened on the first day of the tour at Santa Clara's Levi's Stadium.

"Number one, towards the end of the first set there was an extraordinary rainbow that people talk about to this day, and it’s actually on the cover of the book," Budnick said. "Somehow, through miscommunication with his friend Shirley Halperin, who at the time was writing for Billboard, ... he led her to believe that they had manufactured the rainbow, and that it didn’t occur naturally.

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“Tone doesn’t always come through in a text, and he was just joking, but she didn’t realize it, and she had actually reported that he created a rainbow over Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, which was not true at all.”

That amazing sight made up for a bungled attempt before the concert to have a skywriter draw a peace sign over the stadium.

“The peace sign just was wrong," Budnick said. "The skywriter missed, and it was mangled. People forget that because of the rainbow, so I like the juxtaposition of those two, because the book is about some of the success that he’s had, but some of the failure that’s come with that as well. I think people get a sense of how he landed at certain decisions and how things came about the way they did, because it’s always a struggle, it’s never a straight line. ... That initial story reflects the larger account that follows over the course of the book.”

Budnick has two hopes for "The Music Never Stops": That it will either give fans a different perspective the next time they head out to a show, or it will make them want to take up being a music promoter themselves.

“There’s 50 chapters, each of which is centered around a particular live show,” he said.  “... I hope that people can just see a lot of the nuance, they can see the glory of the gig, they can see the challenges that he goes through, and I hope it inspires people to go out there and give it a go."

Peter Shapiro and Dean Budnick will discuss "The Music Never Stops" on Sept. 16 at 6 p.m. at the United Theatre, 5 Canal St., in Westerly. For tickets, $10 ($38 with book purchase), go to unitedtheatre.org.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Providence author, Peter Shapiro to discuss memoir at United Theatre