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What others say isn't possible, Tenth Street Entertainment founder/President Allen Kovac turns into reality. Forget about conventional wisdom, this veteran music business and record industry entrepreneur rewrites the book. Don't tell him things have always been done a certain way, because he'll go in the opposite direction, sometimes to prove a point, but more likely because that's where the ultimate success lies. From promoting jazz artists like Jeff Lorber to resurrecting and expanding the careers of Richard Marx, Luther Vandross, the Bee Gees, John Mellencamp, Motley Crue, Meat Loaf, Blondie, the New Cars and Hanson, Kovac has made his home on the cutting edge of the business, learning the rules, then breaking them, but always pushing the envelope to create rock musical events with his patented ROI philosophy—Relevance, Originality, Impact—the three steps in introducing any new entertainment project to the public. His mantra? "Create the message, control the content," using the artist's assets to open the doors.

"We must learn to unlearn, so we can continue to learn," he says, a Confuscious jumble, but a true insight into his philosophy of always questioning, never taking the traditional route, continuing to defy accepted industry opinion.

Kovac began his career as a concert promoter in the late '70s in Portland with the formation of TDA Productions, developing and putting on shows by such artists of the era as Tom Petty, Heart, Boston and Talking Heads, among many others.

"Having to compete with Bill Graham, Brian Murphy and John and Ivy Bauer when I was just 20 meant we had to use regional marketing techniques, as opposed to just local techniques," said Kovac, a way of moving the chains promotionally city by city he employs to this day. TDA's marketshare began to increase against its competition, drawing the notice of agents, making the company one of the northwest's most prominent concert promoters.

After selling his first company, Kovac started Intercity Records, working with such artists as Jeff Lorber, Dan Siegel and Tom Grand, signing them to, respectively, Clive Davis' Arista Records, Joe Smith's Elektra and Watler Yetnikoff's CBS, cementing a relationship with the major industry players that he still enjoys. He also had a production deal with a fledgling northwestern sax player by the name of Kenny G. Intercity served as distributor, doing all the marketing and promotion for their releases, yet another forerunner of today's independent label farm system at companies like Sony's R.E.D., Warner Music Group's ADA, EMI's Caroline and Universal's Fontana. Intercity also had its own network of locals that worked radio, retail, publicity and tour marketing, now mirrored by his 10th Street Entertainment and its relationship to ADA. "I remember calling people from the basement of my house," he says.

By 1984, Kovac moved down to L.A. to take Intercity to the next step, thanks to the success of label acts like Jeff Lorber and the Dazz Band. Using some of that cash flow, Kovac began developing new artists like Karen White, who signed to Warner Bros. and had a hit single, "Facts of Love," and a gold album. At this time, showing he was just as adept at spotting R&B talent as he was rock stars, Kovac discovered a couple of unknown producers from Cincinnati who used to be in a group called The Deele, by the name of Antonio "L.A." Reid and Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds, and made an album called Superwoman with them that went triple platinum and sold three million copies. Another newcomer he took under his wing was Richard Marx, a fledgling songwriter who broke into the business singing back-up for Lionel Richie, introducing him to Randy Meisner, Timothy Bruit and Joe Walsh, all of whom sang on Richard's first single, "Don't Mean Nothing," which helps his debut album achieve double-platinum sales. Marx became the first male singer to have four top three hits from his first effort.

Kovac had developed quite a reputation for breaking artists when he was approached by Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf for Bat Out of Hell II, the sequel to one of the best-selling albums of all time. A comprehensive marketing campaign that involved the public evaluating the work-in-progress resulted in a hit single, "I'd Do Anything for Love," and an album that went on to sell 18 million albums, confounding critics who thought Meat Loaf could never duplicate the success of Bat I. Kovac's Left Bank management stable grew to include John Mellencamp, Luther Vandross, Duran Duran, En Vogue, Tony! Toni! Tone!, the Bee Gees and Motley Crue.

By the mid-'90s, Kovac was one of the most successful music managers in the business, but he saw changes on the record industry horizon and continued to stay one step ahead of the competition. He understood early on how technology would revolutionize the selling and marketing of CDs, and recognized the importance of research in locating the appropriate target demographic for his artists. He formed a partnership with Strategic Radio Research and consultant Kurt Hansen to form Strategic Record Research, which used the advertising community's ability to canvass potential consumers to better understand how the music industry could more effectively reach them. Kovac then continued to break new ground by joining with the powerhouse advertising agency DDB Worldwide's Ken Case and Keith Reinhart, forming strategic alliances with early new technology companies like Real Networks (Meat Loaf's "I Would Do Anything for Love" was used to launch the Real player), Apple computers and Hewlett Packard.

Once again, Kovac was ahead of his time, breaking alternative act the Cranberries, selling more than 14 million copies worldwide of Zombie, their second single, and undertaking the first-ever tour for which tickets were sold solely on the Internet. Subsequent media events that utilized the proven ROI approach included the Bee Gees' historic "One Night Only" campaign, which helped build back the group's reputation and ultimate got them elected to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by staging a pay-per-view New Year's Eve Concert sponsored by Clear Channel, MGM Grand and Phillips. The tour resulted in the band's first stateside platinum album in more than a decade, and doubled catalog sales.

Kovac's reputation as a comeback artist continued in the late '90s when he formed Beyond Records to release Motley Crue's Generation Swine, which debuted at #4 on the Billboard Hot 200 and went on to sell more than a million copies, earning platinum status. Blondie's No Exit album was next, and that prompted another return for the New Wave pioneers, with the disc going #1 in 14 countries, thanks to the hit single, "Maria." Kovac's Beyond Records was also the home of Lucy Pearl, a groundbreaking R&B supergroup which brought together Tony Toni Tone's Raphael Saadiq, A Tribe Called Quest's Ali Shaheed Muhammad and En Vogue's Dawn Robinson. It wasn't the first time Kovac would put together an all-star musical ensemble, and it certainly wouldn't be the last, either.

By 2000, Kovac watched his Left Bank management firm and Beyond Records label metamorphose into 10th Street Entertainment, the culmination of his three decades of experience and success in the music business, with offices in both New York's chic Soho and Los Angeles' West Hollywood neighborhoods, where he has headquarters in the historic Pacific Design Building. The company consists of a broad range of industry veterans and specialists in such new areas as research, advertising, technology and new media as well as the traditional departments in radio, retail, merchandising, tour marketing, international and publicity. In 2004-'05, Kovac parlayed the reunion of the original four members of Motley Crue into a popular VH1 documentary, a hugely successful 125-date "Red, White & Crue" reunion tour, that was called by no less than Pollstar the Tour of the Year as the sixth-largest grossing of 2005 and a platinum album. When promoters initially balked at the sheer size of the tour, Kovac took the ultimate gamble, booking the arenas himself before proving to all the skeptics it would sell tickets.

Later that year, he helped put together The New Cars, recruiting Todd Rundgren, Kasim Sulton and Prairie Prince to join original members Eliot Easton and Greg Hawkes for a successful summer tour with Blondie, hot off their own selection to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Kovac's latest response to industry doldrums is the formation of Eleven Seven Music, an in-house label that responds to the artists' desire for more independence and control. The joint partnership with the Warner Music Group, ADA and 10th Street Entertainment launched with the return of Buckcherry, which remains in the Billboard Top 50 nearly three months after its bow, and went to #2 on the Independent sales chart before the act was upstreamed to Lava/Atlantic, where it is now gone gold. The album was launched with a grass-roots campaign involving the viral marketing of an explicit video that helped spread the word for the controversial single, "Crazy Bitch," before radio jumped on board. Just another example of the way Allen Kovac anticipates the trends, rather than following them. Other acts on the new label include veterans like Everclear as well as brand-new artists such as Marion Raven and Jonny Lives!

As we head into the final half of 2006 and beyond, Kovac refuses to sit still, planning the current Aerosmith/Motley Crue tour and the release of Meat Loaf's long-awaited Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, featuring new songs by Jim Steinman, the sequel to two of the best-selling albums of all time, having sold a total of 60 million worldwide.

As Allen Kovac heads into his fourth decade in the music business, one thing's for sure. The man never takes anything for granted, and he will continue to do things his way. After all, it's worked out pretty well so far.