THE CLASSIC-ROCK GOLD RUSH

As the giants of the genre contemplate retirement, companies are dreaming up increasingly innovative ways to bring new value to older sounds

- ANDY GREENE AND KORY GROW

Jeff Jampol has managed the estates of everyone from the Doors and Janis Joplin to Kurt Cobain and Tupac Shakur. “None of my clients tour,” he says. “They’re all dead.”

But that hasn’t stopped him from generating big money on their behalf, whether it’s organizing a touring exhibition of Cobain’s artwork, setting up Oliver Stone’s 1991 Doors biopic (which tripled the band’s catalog sales), or producing the 2015 Joplin documentary Janis: Little Girl Blue.

Jampol compares an artist’s legacy to a dark, cold fireplace with five or six matches on the mantelpiece. Each represents a tool that can spark new interest in the brand — from a book to a docuseries, Broadway musical, or biopic. “If you light the fire incorrectly with one of those matches, it glows for 15 seconds,” he says, “and then you’re left again with a cold, empty, dark fireplace and one burnt match.”

Up till now, living, breathing classic-rock icons like the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, and Bob Dylan haven’t had to worry much about tending to their respective flames. Touring, merch, and clever marketing of their catalogs have sustained them for well over six decades. But the pandemic has kept them off the road for more than a year, and several of them are reaching an age where road work won’t be possible much longer. “Mick Jagger is 77,” Jampol says. “At some point you’ve got to go, ‘I’m going to enjoy my grandkids.’ ”

It’s at that point when a band or artist, and the team around them, faces a crucial question: How can the afterlife of a career in rock maintain, or even surpass, what that act achieved in their prime?