When Roger Daltrey first participated in David Fishof’s Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy Camp, the experience helped him realize one of his own fantasies as well.

Fishof had difficulty explaining the concept to the British rock star when he was trying to enlist his participation for the third Camp in 2003. Fishof recalls, “Then I said to him, ‘If you had an opportunity to meet any rock artist and jam with them, then who would it be?’ Roger turned to me and said, ‘If you introduce me to Levon Helm, I’ll do your camp.’ I said, ‘You got it!’ So that’s how he initially came to join us.”

Fishof’s own camp experience began in the Catskills. The son of a cantor father, who was also a Holocaust survivor, Fishof spent many of his summers at the hotels and bungalow colonies that catered to Jewish families at the time. Fishof launched his career out of the Catskills, initially serving as an agent, but subsequently taking on the roles of manager, producer and promoter, while mounting a global tour with Dirty Dancing, selling out stadiums with The Monkees and returning Ringo to the road.

In 1997, he created the Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy Camp, with a roster of participants that has included: Jeff Beck, Brian Wilson, Joe Perry, Buddy Guy, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Nancy Wilson, Dave Mustaine, Alice Cooper, Sammy Hagar, Kim Thayil and many others. Fishof produced a special Relix Rock Camp in New York from October 27- 30, featuring Phil Lesh, John Scofield and Robert Randolph.

Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy Camp is the subject of a recent documentary, Rock Camp: The Movie, which Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times called “inspiring.” Another reviewer wrote, “At the root of it all is the very real emotion and power that music has over its most ardent fans, and how it can form lifelong friendships and unforgettable memories.”

“Most every day, I get an email from someone who attended a Camp, thanking me for the opportunity and sharing a story,” Fishof says. “For the artists that come to Camp, it’s not a meet and greet. They’re there with fellow musicians who are just at an earlier stage in their education. Roger Daltrey has told me, ‘It reminds me of what it was like when I first started.’”

Can you talk about the beginning of your career in the Catskills?

I started as a waiter working in the hotels. At night, I would go to the shows. I loved the comics. One summer, when I was 19 years old, I started working for a booking agency. My brother was a drummer. He had a band up there, and I wanted to be in it. I played a couple gigs and I was terrible. They got $350 a gig and they would give me $50. I said it was unfair and my dad said, “Why don’t you become a booker? You can book six bands a night.”

I worked for a guy named Charlie Rapp, booking various comedians and singers. I started booking the bungalow colonies and, eventually, graduated to the hotels. Charlie was the original guy in the Catskills. I sold the comics, and it was hard back then. The way you sold the artist is that you’d go in there and tell them all about the act. I’d say, “He’s really funny. He does Yiddish.” I would even learn some of the lines by people like Freddie Roman and Henny Youngman.

In my opinion, the comics who worked in the Catskills were the best ones out there because it was a challenge. It was not like a comedy club where someone bought a ticket. You basically got to see the show for free. People would get three meals a day, fill themselves up and around 10:30 p.m., the singer came on for thirty minutes. Then, the comedian had to come out and get laughs from an audience that was stuffed with food and would say, “OK, entertain me. I dare you to make me laugh.” These guys had to work extra hard because it was a free audience. It’s why these huge rock stars don’t love working the corporate shows, although they pay really well.

From there you gravitated toward becoming a sports agent. How did you make that transition?

One of my heroes was Earl Wilson, who wrote an entertainment column in the paper. So I decided that I was going try to do something like that but for the Jewish press. I started interviewing all these comedians and singers, like Herschel Bernardi. When I met him, he basically said, “Get out of the Catskills, kid. Get out of that comfort zone and get into real show business.” So he took me on as a manager at a young age because he wanted to get back into working live gigs. I started booking him all around the country—he was doing Fiddler on the Roof and Broadway and other shows.

I continued writing, and through that, I interviewed the Yankees’ Ron Blomberg, who was the first designated hitter. I was still spending my summers in the Catskills, and I convinced him to do an appearance. But he couldn’t do it, so at the last minute, he introduced me to Elliott Maddox, a Yankees centerfielder who was injured.

While I was driving with Maddox up to the appearance, I approached him about being his agent. That was the first year of free agency in baseball, and he said, “Let’s do it.”

From there, I met Lou Piniella and my life started changing. I was still doing the comedians and singers— booking artists all around the country and for different Jewish organizations—but I also started representing athletes. Once I got Lou Piniella, I started getting him endorsements and that led me to negotiate his contract with George Steinbrenner. From there, I started picking up more ball players. I got a call from Freddie Dreyer, who was with the Rams and wanted someone with an entertainment background—not that I had done much in television. Then, he introduced me to Vince Ferragamo, who introduced me to four other players on the Rams. After that, I picked up Phil Simms and he introduced me to eight of the New York Giants. Back then, there weren’t a lot of legitimate sports agents in the business, so if you did well for somebody, they would recommend you. Eventually, I ended up with about 30 ballplayers.

What was it like negotiating with George Steinbrenner and how would you compare that to negotiating with Bill Graham?

They were two different types of people to negotiate with. George would do anything to win, and he also used fear, which Bill Graham did too.

Lou Piniella’s contract was my first big negotiation. Prior to that time, Lou had dealt with George directly, and Lou had no comprehension of his market value. Steinbrenner would say, “I’ll offer you $250,000.” Lou would say, “I want $300,000” and they’d settle at $275,000, at which point George would tell him, “You should be happy getting that.”

Now, Lou was going to be a free agent, and I went out to all the teams and said, “Would you be interested in Lou Piniella?” They all said, “David, of course, we love Lou Piniella”—from the Red Sox on down. But they also told me, “It’s not going to work because George got up at the owner’s meeting and said ‘Don’t touch any of my players. If you offer them 400, I’ll offer them 500.’”

So Lou wasn’t really a free agent because no one would offer me what he was worth. That really wasn’t in the spirit of free agency.

Walking into George’s big office—where he was seated behind his desk—was intimating. Lou had said I could represent him but that he’d need to go in with me because he thought George would be upset with him since he’d hired me. That wasn’t ideal, but I had to do it to make Lou comfortable.

We went in and George made an offer that was similar to what he had offered Lou in the past. Then he said, “Take it or leave it. Lou’s a free agent.” So I said, “That’s not true because every team is scared of what you told them, unless you’re willing to go out publicly and rescind that comment.” Now I had his attention, and I also had all these statistics I had put together. I was able to negotiate and get Lou an amazing contract—more than he ever thought he’d ever get [3 years for $1.5 million.]

Bill Graham was very interesting to negotiate against. I did a lot of shows with Bill, who had the San Francisco market tied up. I was the one who was negotiating the contract with Bill—whether it was Ringo, Dirty Dancing, the Happy Together tour or The Monkees.

Every Friday you would get a call from Bill Graham. I know I did, and if I did then everybody else did. He would say, “I’m losing a lot of money, I can’t pay you that kind of money. It’s not fair—you’ve got to give me a break.” He would intimidate you, asking for a break. I was of the belief that you couldn’t let a promoter lose money, so if need be, you’ve got to give them back something. My thought was: “I needed to keep these guys alive so that they can buy my show.” This was another time when there were still all these independent promoters around the country.

So he would intimidate me and say, “I need something back,” and I would inevitably give it to him. Then, when my tour accountant was on the road, he’d say, “We sold it out.” [Laughs.]

I had such a love for him because I used to see him in the Catskills during my tour rehearsals. I would rehearse my shows up at the Concord Hotel. It was a great place where you had a stage, you had food, you had hotel rooms and the artists couldn’t go anywhere. They couldn’t find drug dealers up in the Catskills. So it was a perfect place to put a band for two or three weeks. The hotel would make a deal with me and say, “OK, give us a show and we’ll let you rehearse up here.”

So we went there in 1986, preparing to do The Monkees. All of a sudden, there’s Bill Graham. He used to spend two weeks there every summer because he had been a waiter there. He’d go back to see his old waiter friends and eat the pickled herring. He’d be in the dining room for hours.

I built a great friendship with him, and he taught me the biggest lesson that I’ve learned in this business. One night, he invited me to have a drink with him at the bar, and while we’re talking, he describes his job as The Rolling Stones’ tour manager. I couldn’t believe it. This was Bill Graham—a Holocaust survivor like my dad and one of my idols. So I asked him why he viewed himself that way and he said, “Who else is gonna tell Mick Jagger to get the F on the bus?” That’s when I realized that I would have to be on tour. I never thought I’d be on the road with my artists. So I always kept that in the back of my mind— whether it was Ringo or my British Rock Symphony tour with Roger Daltrey.

Your first big tour was Happy Together. How did that come about?

I got a call in ‘83 asking if I was interested in representing The Association. People had read about me in the sports papers, and I was still representing Herschel Bernardi.

At that time, through an accountant who was a Yankees fan, I was sharing office space with all these music managers like Shep Gordon and Gary Kurfirst. I’m seeing people like Alice Cooper, Joey Ramone, Madonna and Luther Vandross walk in. It was exciting.

When I was asked if I was interested in representing The Association, I said, “The association of what?” But I wanted to be in the entertainment business and I realized that I knew some of their songs, like “Cherish,” “Never My Love” and “Windy.”

So I began working with them, and it was slow at first—until a promoter offered me 20 shows, which he then canceled three weeks before the tour. This was a real financial hardship for the band members, so I eventually figured out that I could package them with The Turtles—who soon became another client—as well as Gary Puckett and Spanky & Our Gang.

We called it the Happy Together Tour, and unbeknownst to me, the movie The Big Chill had come out. So, in 1984, everybody was into nostalgia. I told the bands to focus on their hits, and at the end, everybody would come out and do “Happy Together.” They all sounded great, we did really well and it kept going.

Did that lead to The Monkees tour?

Two years later in 1986, I couldn’t sleep one night and turned on the TV at 2 a.m. The Monkees came on—I remembered the show from growing up because it was one of the few shows my parents let me watch after I came home from yeshiva [religious school] each afternoon. I did the research, and I found out that the name was owned by Columbia Pictures. No one had been using it for like 20 years, so I paid them $3,500 and bought the rights for a year.

At the time, Peter Tork was a piano teacher in Manhattan. He would post signs on the street letting people know that they could take piano lessons with him. So I tore off his telephone number, called him and invited him to my show coming up at the Pier. At one point, I thought that I’d bring The Monkees back and put them on one of my Happy Together tours because, by then, I’d switch the bands every year and keep The Turtles.

Peter came to the show, and I saw him clapping his hands on the side of the stage because he was so into it. So I said, “I’d love to meet the other guys.” We went over to England and he introduced me to Micky [Dolenz] and Davy [Jones]. The three of them hadn’t spent time together in a while, but I had the name The Monkees and I convinced them to go on tour.

What happened next was that my friend Jim Bessman, who was a writer at Billboard magazine, came running into my office to tell me that MTV was going to air The Monkees TV show. So I ran upstairs to [MTV CEO] Bob Pittman’s office because we were in the same building, and we’d see other in the elevator. I explained that I was going to do a Monkees tour, and the two of us made a deal where I’d put his fledgling network in our ads, and he’d promote the tour on MTV.

I had been selling 3,000- 5,000 seats for the Happy Together Tour, but when tickets went on sale for The Monkees after MTV put on The Monkees TV show, we began selling out shows left and right. We immediately sold out a 15,000-ticket show in Detroit, then we added another and sold that out. We sold 28,000 in Chicago, and eventually, we moved into stadiums and sold out Foxboro Stadium, San Diego Stadium and Texas Stadium. It was Monkees mania.

What are the origins of Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band?

After The Monkees tour, I went to see the movie Dirty Dancing because it was a story about the Catskills. As I was watching it, I said to myself, “I could put together a show with the dancers and the music.” So I went to the film company and licensed the name to do a Dirty Dancing live tour.

I signed Bill Medley and then Eric Carmen, who was represented by Dennis Arfa. Dennis is Billy Joel’s agent, and he just did the Stadium Tour with Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard, Poison and Joan Jett. Rather than just having him be the agent, I asked him to be my partner. I remember early on, while we were still figuring this out, Dennis came to me and said, “Radio City wants to buy one show, but let’s tell them three shows and that we want a full-page ad in the Sunday New York Times.”

We still only had an idea, not an actual show, but our press agent said, “Maybe we stage a rehearsal at Radio City with the dancers and get Bill Medley by a piano singing with Eric Carmen.” So we did this, ended up with great press for a show that didn’t yet exist and sold out eight shows at Radio City Music Hall within 24 hours. Dennis was able to use that to sell it everywhere around the world.

The key to my business was corporate sponsorships. I would go to companies and say, “Tie your brand to my tour. You can be the presenting sponsor and you can do meet and greets.” I sold Dirty Dancing to Pepsi and then the president came to me and said, “We did so well with your Dirty Dancing tour, what do you want to do next? It’s the 25th anniversary of the Pepsi Generation, do you have any big ideas?”

So I pitched him on the idea of Ringo with an all-star band, which is something that had occurred to me because my brother was a drummer and all I had heard at my house growing up was “Ringo, Ringo, Ringo.” Pepsi offered a million dollars to back me, so I wrote a letter to Ringo’s lawyer and explained the idea. Six weeks later, I received a response to come over and meet Ringo.

I ended up staying in a hotel for a week, reading every Beatles book so that I could be prepared for any question. But when they finally called me over, I walked in and Ringo said to me, “I was thinking the same idea.”

I had a few suggestions for musicians, but he basically gave me the names of the people that he wanted to work with, like Joe Walsh, Levon Helm and Jim Keltner. I went out and got them for him and that’s how we started the first All-Starr Band.

You’ve said that this tour is what gave you the idea for Rock ‘N’ Rock Fantasy Camp.

The first Ringo tour was in 1989 and for a couple of years afterward, I was on the road with these tours. People who knew me would call me up and ask what the various guys were like and how they were getting along. I thought that fans would love to have that intimate, personal perspective. Plus, when we were touring, these guys would pull out their guitars and get creative. That’s when I really understood this might be a great thing for a fan.

So in 1997, I started the first Rock Camp in Florida. I found an investor and he said, “Let’s go to Eden Roc.” I pulled together everybody that I knew, whether it was Leslie West, Clarence Clemons, Mike Love, Mark Farmer, Felix Cavaliere or Lou Gramm. It was great except I had 50 media people and only 14 campers. [Laughs.]

One afternoon in the middle of this, I walked into the lobby and all of these music journalists who were sitting there called me over. They said, “We were going to kill you, but this is actually a great idea.” They talked about Nils Lofgren giving guitar lessons and all these other artists sharing information. So we had great articles in People, Time, Newsweek and many others, but we lost money and I said, “I’m never gonna do this again.”

One thing I want to point out is that over the years, I’ve had plenty of ideas, and while I’ve had some winners, I’ve also had losers, too. I put on a Mortal Kombat live tour [in 1995-96], and that was a bomb for me. So, I understand that sometimes you have to move on.

What happened with the Fantasy Camp was that people kept asking me about it. All these musicians would show up at Ringo shows and ask me when the next one was taking place. So I finally did another one, four or five years later, and I broke even. So I kept it going.

By then, I was remarried. I had two young kids. I also had three beautiful children from my first marriage, and I didn’t want to go on the road anymore. So I decided to turn this into my full-time business and it evolved from there.

In 2002, your camp was featured in a Simpsons episode with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Tom Petty and plenty of others. Did you have a hand in making that happen?

 No, I wasn’t aware at all. That happened because Leslie West was talking about his experience at Rock Camp on Howard Stern. The producers of The Simpsons heard it while they were working on the season, which is what set it in motion.

Apparently, while they were writing it, they got a call from The Rolling Stones’ publicist saying, “The Stones are gonna go out on tour. If you have any ideas for them, let us know.” So they told them about the Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy Camp idea. Mick and Keith agreed, and they later said how great that episode was.

The second episode of Billions earlier this year also was about Fantasy Camp. In it, Wags doesn’t want to take down a company because he went to Fantasy Camp with the owner, and they had jammed together.

But, no, I don’t find out these things in advance.

What has surprised you the most about Camp after all these years?

I suspected from the start that these experiences would be life-changing for the campers and it seems to be true. The confidence that these people get in their home lives, their business lives and their musical lives is really extraordinary.

But the thing that I didn’t anticipate is how important it has been for the rock stars. Joe Perry has said that he doesn’t have to do this. He does this because he wants to be part of it. When Nancy Wilson was interviewed for the film, she pointed out that when you first start out, you work really hard to try to make it. But once you do, so much of it becomes about agents, managers and lawyers that it gets away from the music.

This is pure music, and the aftereffect for everyone is just beautiful.