STEVE NAZRO, Vice President of Event Scheduling, TD Garden
Steve Nazro has enjoyed a remarkable career, working the past 50 years at TD Garden and its predecessor, Boston Garden. Nazro, Delaware North Boston’s vice president of event scheduling, started in group sales in 1966. Nine years later, he was promoted to booking the old Garden after Jeremy Jacobs bought the arena and the Boston Bruins. As Nazro, 75, nears retirement, he looks back on an amazing run that has seen him book nearly 8,000 events spanning both arenas, dating to the J. Geils Band in 1975.
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Photo by: STEVE BABINEAU / TD GARDEN
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■ The really old arenas were built for hockey and boxing, not for basketball, and they have adapted now to where concerts are such an important part of everybody’s event mix. Instead of having team dressing rooms, there’s great competition to improve the backstage experience for the artists.
■ I was assistant SID at Dartmouth and then I got drafted, of all things, in 1964. After specialized training, I went to Germany … and got out in 1966. I took some time off and then I heard about a job at the Garden.
■ It was a very small staff at the time, under 10 people in the front office.
■ My first day was the day after Christmas in 1966 … opening day of the Ice Capades at the old Garden. It was pretty hectic. I knew nothing.
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Hoisting the Stanley Cup on the ice in Vancouver after Game 7 in 2011.
Photo: COURTESY OF TD GARDEN
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■ There was one [telephone] line that came in and went through a switchboard. I would take one call, hang up and the phone would immediately ring again. That went on all day for the next few days, but you get used to it after a while.
■ The other people working at the arena were quite old at that time. I was the youngest one and so I would do a little bit of everything.
The Rolling Stones played a memorable show at Boston Garden in 1972, just a few hours after Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were arrested on charges of assault and obstruction of a police officer in Warwick, R.I. Nazro recalls the incident.
■ They were arrested at about 6 p.m. and the show was at 7:30. We knew at about the time they got arrested in Rhode Island that we were in big trouble, because even if they left at that moment, they were going to be an hour and a half late, and they were still in jail.
■ The mayor of Boston [Kevin White] … came on stage and said there was some difficulty. … The mayor called the governor of Rhode Island [and they worked out a deal]. They took them to the Massachusetts border with sirens and blue lights flashing. The state police picked them up and brought them to the Boston city limits and Boston police brought them into the building.
■ They got out of the vehicle, went right on stage at about 10 minutes to midnight and played a full [two-hour] show. It was a marvelous thing, where trouble came and everybody adapted.
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In 2016 with two Bruins legends: Milt Schmidt, who died earlier this year, and Bobby Orr
Photo: COURTESY OF TD GARDEN
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■ I was a Beatles fan, but I thought it was one of the best shows I had seen at that time and I still think that. They’re such great performers.
■ The Jacobs family chose to fly a separate plane [to Vancouver in 2011] with a lot of the management staff and their wives for Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final … which the Bruins won. The NHL and the Bruins got us down to the ice and we celebrated immediately after the win.
■ They passed the Cup around to the staff, and just as it got to me and I held it up, one of our photographers took a picture of me. It’s in my office.
■ Most of the Celtics’ championships [seven of eight] were won on the road. The last one was in the new Garden in 2008. The thing I remember the most about that was the great players the Celtics had at the time, Pierce and Garnett and Ray Allen. They played a long time, and this was their championship.
■ [The Beanpot tournament] is a unique event in that there’s four schools within about a six-mile radius that compete at a high level in college hockey. The one that stands out to me was in 2015 when [Boston University] played Northeastern. BU was ahead, Northeastern tied it late, the game went into overtime and with about 30 seconds gone in OT, the puck came back out to the BU captain, who scored to win the game.
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Presenting the Beanpot MVP award in 1983 and to Matt Grzelcyk, son of a co-worker, in 2015 (right).
Photos: COURTESY OF TD GARDEN
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Grandpa holds 7-month-old Daniel, already in Bruins gear.
Photo: COURTESY OF TD GARDEN
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■ The captain was Matt Grzelcyk, the son of one of our employees, John Grzelcyk [part of the arena’s ice crew]. Matt was the MVP and I presented the trophy to him in my role. It was a really great experience.
■ Back in the day, if there were 24 performances of “Disney on Ice,” there would have to be 24 full sets of tickets at each price, that we would have to have on hand. Now, we have one computer system and you don’t have to print anything until the ticket is bought.
■ I have a new grandson [Daniel] who’s 7 months old and is now crawling. My wife [Grace] helps take care of him in New York while his parents work.
■ We love to travel and will be taking a trip around the world starting in December.
■ I kept backstage passes, so I’m going to try and organize them. It’s quite a collection. They may end up somewhere in a museum.
