Newton Tab
October 12, 2005

Michael Striar, the political newcomer who is challenging two-term Mayor David Cohen for the city's top office this November, bills himself as the outsider who has the right combination of real-world experience and outside-the-box thinking to get Newton through its fiscal challenges.

The two candidates couldn't have a more different background. Cohen followed the path of an accomplished politician - Harvard College and Boston University Law School; eight years as a city alderman; nearly two decades as a state representative; and the past eight years as mayor.

Striar, on the other hand, took a less conventional path, taking advantage of his privileged background and tapping into his own ingenuity, persistence and self-confidence to succeed in management, concert promotion and real estate development.

And now Striar wants to run the Garden City.

Striar sat down with the TAB last week to discuss how his campaign is progressing to date, and talk about his past, from managing a country club to bringing Mohammed Ali out of retirement, and from reuniting the original members of Aerosmith to rejoining his family's real estate development company.

It is a past that Striar had previously been reluctant to discuss. More than two years ago, after he first announced his intention to run for mayor, Striar declined a request to be interviewed by the TAB. He now explains that he "didn't want to be typecast as the 'rock-and-roll candidate'."

But after 24 months on the campaign trail, Striar said he believed most of his potential voters had heard of him by now, and knew what he stood for.

Striar's residence on Montvale Road - the same house in Newton Centre he grew up in - is now home to him, his wife, Laurie, and their three children, Jet, Roxanne and Sky. It's a grand colonial, built in 1900, set back from the street with a well-tended front lawn. Its spacious interior is decorated in combination of different styles. The dining room has a classic feel, with an old, antique table, while his study and office room are decorated with classic political and concert posters, including a poster from John F. Kennedy's run for president. A table-tennis table dominates a room that may have once been a living room, but has been converted into his campaign headquarters, with campaign posters and fliers piled in corners of the room.

The 47-year-old political newcomer can be a little eccentric - he wears designer shirts, one earring, sometimes white sneakers with dark suits. He shaved his head on Sept. 12, 2001, he said, so he would always be reminded every time he looked in the mirror of the devastation of 9/11, and has pledged to keep his hair short until terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden is caught or killed.

"I think a lot of people have heard that I'm [unconventional], that I never walk around in a three-piece suit," Striar said. "I'm probably as unconventional a politician as you can get. And I'm proud of that."

Growing up in Newton
Striar grew up in Newton in what he calls "a family of entrepreneurs." A picture of his mother's grandfather, Morris Katz, a Russian immigrant who arrived in this country with only $2 to his name and became a successful cattle rancher in Cape Ann and later owned and ran his own bus company, adorns Striar's office wall.

His paternal grandfather, William Striar, dabbled in real estate and development, but it was his father, Daniel Striar, who had the greatest success in development. When he died in 1998, he was one of the largest private landowners in southeastern Massachusetts, according to a Boston Globe obituary.

Michael speaks reverently about his father, and says the environment that he and his three siblings grew up in fostered creativity and an entrepreneurial spirit, attitudes that he says helped his family succeed in business.

But his father also stressed staying down to earth, not straying away from their blue-collar roots. During summer vacation in high school, Michael said he worked as part of the road crew digging trenches for some of his father's company's subdivision projects - a job that even his grandfather in his 70s would do.

"People who put in physical labor for a living have a different mentality ... My dad was a very wealthy guy, a very successful businessman, but he was still a blue-collar guy. He rarely wore a suit," Striar said. A good leader has to be "willing to put on his boots and jump in the hole and say, 'Let's get the job done.' You have to know what everyone's job is."

Striar attended two schools that have since closed, the Weeks Junior High School and, in 1973, the Murray Road School, an alternative high school affiliated with Newton North that placed an emphasis on student self-determination.

"I was so lucky to have gone to that school," Striar said in an interview last week. "Kids leaned to be self-reliant ... it encouraged kids to pursue the kinds of things they'd be interested in later in life."

Striar said one of his favorite memories from high school was his first day at Murray Road, when all of the school's faculty and students gathered in a large hall to designed what the year's curriculum would be, which he said empowered students to take a hands-on approach toward their own education and got kids "excited about going to school."

"Newton has been pulled to standardized test standards, rather than toward creative opportunities," he said, of the direction Newton schools have headed since the 1970s, a trend he said he'd like to reverse.

After graduating from Murray Road in 1976, Striar enrolled in Hampshire College for a year. During that time, his father had been negotiating with a bank to purchase a country club in Millis, the Glen Ellen Country Club, which had fallen into bankruptcy. Though only a late teenager at the time, Striar said he was intrigued by the business world, and asked his father if he could attend some of the negotiations and business meetings. Soon, he said, he was sitting in on two or three meetings a week for several months, and wanted to take an active role.

Glen Ellen Country Club
By 1978, Striar had left Hampshire College and had lobbied his father into letting him run the country club as a 20-year-old.

"It was a tremendous opportunity for me to craft some management skills, because I had never had the opportunity before," Striar said, who added that he knew back then he wanted a career in business, and saw Glen Ellen as a way to start down that path.

When his father consented, Striar said he was excited, if not a little overwhelmed. He can still recall his first day of work there, April 3, 1978.

" 'Wow, I could really become a manager,' " Striar said he remembered thinking. "But it was my first management position. I really had to learn on the fly."

Looking back on his time there - he ran the country club with its 140 employees in seven departments for the next six years - Striar said he made a few mistakes, particularly in his first year, and learned some valuable lessons on how to run a business.

"When you take over a business, and it's a business that's had trouble ... you can't come in and run it as it had been running. You need to clean house. That's another way of saying you have to clear out a lot of the dead wood," Striar said.

His first, and one of his biggest mistakes, Striar said, was keeping all the management heads in place in his first year. "I kept all the department heads. I should have had them all come in and interview for their job ... and see whether their experience made them the most qualified for the position."

Striar said his original reluctance to do so made making the necessary changes later more difficult. Striar said he befriended the club's head chef, a man named Marty.

"He was a nice guy, a fantastic chef," Striar said. "But I had to let him go. Marty didn't understand cost controls. He was giving away too much."

"I had to fire Marty. It was a painful experience, but it was a growing one," Striar said the experience also taught him to constantly look for new ways to make money. Instead of relying on the club's standard revenue stream - the 18-hole golf course and membership dues - Striar said he began focusing more attention of using the club to host corporate outings, weddings, and other functions, which became the club's primary source of revenue.

"It had tremendous potential," Striar said. "Corporate outings weren't big then. Nowadays, everyone and their mother" has corporate outings, but in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it wasn't as popular, he said.

The club had lost money after his first year, but Striar said that in his second year, and each successive year after that, the club turned a profit. By the time the Striar family sold the club in 1985, it was sold for about six times what they had originally paid for it.

But by 1984, Striar said he was getting restless. The lure of the music industry was strong. "I started to get comfortable at Glen Ellen. So I started networking ... trying to find where my entry point into the music industry would be."

The 'rock 'n' roll' candidate

Perhaps the most notable thing about Striar, the mayoral candidate, is his previous life in the mid- to late-1980s, as Striar, the concert promoter, ushering in some of the biggest names in music to southern New England, including bands such as Aerosmith, Guns N' Roses and AC/DC.

His journey into the world of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll began in college, when he said he booked and promoted local bands that played in area bars and clubs. It wasn't much, but Striar - a rock 'n' roll aficionado whose office and study is decorated with framed paintings of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and other music legends from the 1960s and 1970s - said he knew he wanted to be part of that world, and vowed to find a way to break in.

His first big break came early, in 1979. While some of the details aren't clear, Striar said he had heard from a friend of a friend who knew boxing legend Mohammed Ali that the retired champ was interested in coming out of retirement. [continue] Aiming to be Mayor Mike [continued from previous page] Striar saw an opportunity, and pushed to get an interview with Ali, but was rebuffed several times. He was promised a meeting once in Chicago, and flew out to the Windy City, but was stood up.

Mike with Ali – 1979

But he didn't relent, and several weeks later he said he traveled to New York City, where Ali was doing a television commercial for a Cadillac dealership. He introduced himself to Ali, and said he was interested in promoting a fight if Ali were interested.

"Here's this 21-year-old kid trying to convince the most recognizable face in the world to come out of retirement," Striar said with a smile. "I developed my self-confidence in business quickly."

Billed as "his last ring appearance," Striar brought Ali to the Providence Civic Center on March 12, 1979, a bout that also featured an up-and-coming boxer from Brockton called Marvelous Marvin Hagler, eight months before that legend won the world middleweight title.

After the Ali fight, Striar said he knew he wanted to eventually become a concert promoter, and while he managed the country club during the early 1980s, he kept an eye on the music world, promoting smaller shows in Providence and elsewhere around New England.

Striar's next big break came on New Year's Eve, 1981. One of his favorite bands, Aerosmith, had essentially disbanded when its lead guitarist, Joe Perry, left to start his own band, forming the Joe Perry Project.

Striar called Perry's agent, and invited the stadium rock star, who was now playing in much smaller venues around the country, to come play a New Year's show at Glen Ellen.

After the show, Striar introduced himself to the musician, and he said the two hit it off. Both lived in Newton (Perry lived in Chestnut Hill) and after the show, Striar invited Perry and his wife over to his Montvale Road home on several occasions.

Over the next couple of years, Striar, Perry and Aerosmith agent Tim Collins discussed reuniting the band, and while Striar said he's not the reason why the band got back together, he said he was part of that process. [continue] Home > Newton TAB > Local News Aiming to be Mayor Mike [continued from previous page] "When they got back together, I mean, they were the largest American band, in terms of gate draw," Striar said, adding that he let the band use the country club's function room for their first rehearsal together in 1984, a memory that still excites him.

"When they did rehearse that first time ... the only ones in that room were the band, their sound guy and me. I'll never forget that. It was an amazing experience. It was as if they'd never been apart. It fit like a glove," he said.

But aside from being an awestruck fan, Striar realized his relationship with the band would open doors that had been previously closed to him. He had found his entry point.

In 1985, Striar had left Glen Ellen to start his own company, Striar Entertainment, which consisted of three business entities: concern promotion; a booking agency; and band management. He began promoting Aerosmith's shows around New England after Perry rejoined, including their first public show back together in New Hampshire.

"They were my calling card for other bands. AC/DC wouldn't have had much interest in me" if he had only done smaller shows, Striar said.

"I got very lucky," Striar said. "[Concert promotion] was a very tightly controlled industry." Over the years, certain promoters had established monopolies on local markets, using their long-standing relationships with local venues to lock out new competitors from entering.

Striar said he had to claw and fight his way to be able to promote bands in Boston, which was legendary promoter Don Law's territory; and Providence, which was the domain of Frank J. Russo.

But Striar was able to get some of the biggest bands in the industry to work with him, including bringing Guns N' Roses to Providence after their immensely popular debut album, "Appetite for Destruction," debuted in 1987. [continue] Home > Newton TAB > Local News Aiming to be Mayor Mike [continued from previous page] Veteran Boston Herald music critic Larry Katz said that Striar had a lot of ambition, but never really cracked the ranks of the area's top promoters.

"While Don Law was the king and had always been the king concert promoter in New England, Frank Russo was a rival he took seriously. Striar was far, far beneath him," Katz said. "Michael Striar was a fly speck in Don Law's universe."

But some of Striar's successes may have caught Law's attention. When a longtime reggae concert promoter lost legend Ziggy Marley as a client nearly 20 years ago, a 1987 Boston Globe article quoted the agent as saying, "This really hurts ... Now I know how Don Law felt when he lost AC/DC to Michael Striar last fall."

By the early 1990s, however, Striar said his run in the music industry was coming to a close. Many concert promoters came together to form an industry guild and redefined the relationship between promoters and agents, making it more beneficial to promoters, but particularly helped entrenched promoters like Law and Russo, and making it much more difficult for newcomers to survive.

At the time, Striar had been managing a moderately successful Los Angeles-based band called Broken Homes. He focused his attention on the band, and started commuting between LA and Boston regularly for about a year. But in 1991, the group's lead guitarist, Craig Ross, left to join Lenny Kravitz's band, co-writing Kravitz's breakthrough single, "Are You Gonna Go My Way?" later that year.

Ross' departure marked the end of Broken Homes and of Striar's stint in the music industry.

Real estate developer

In the 1990s, Striar returned to Newton and joined his father and siblings running Striar Development, the family's real estate development company.

Some of the company's projects have stirred controversy, including plans to build a 250-unit 40B housing complex on Rattlesnake Hill in Sharon. But Striar, who has criticized Cohen for not doing enough to block development of the 132-unit affordable housing complex in Chestnut Hill, said there aren't parallels between the two projects. The Sharon project, Striar said, is being built on 337 acres of land, what he calls "responsible development," as opposed to the Covenant Residence, which he said is "too dense" and "threatens the character of the neighborhood." Home > Newton TAB > Local News Aiming to be Mayor Mike [continued from previous page] Striar said he personally developed a gym in Natick, which he sold to the Boston Sports Club several years ago, and is currently working to build a 10,000-seat performing arts center in Avon.

Recently he's taken a back seat in running the company, in which his brothers, Steven and Brian, serve as president and treasurer respectively, while he runs for mayor.

Bernie Smith
Staff Writer, Newton Tab

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