There’s no shortage of live music in New York City—on any given night, you can find an artist (household name, up-and-coming or totally fringe) performing. The same can be said for NYC and gala dinners — in the financial capital of America, there’s no paucity of fundraiser galas any night of the week. That’s no knock on organizations or their events—many of them are for important if not downright essential causes—but that fundraising abundance can sometimes create fatigue.
With that in mind, a New York real estate broker (Greg Williamson), a corporate event planner (Nicole Rechter) and a fashion legend (John Varvatos) joined forces one decade ago to try something a little bit different. Instead of a luxe dinner augmented by an endless parade of speeches, what about just putting on a kick-ass rock show with A-list talent? It’s not reinventing the fundraising wheel—just switching it into a higher gear.
In 2017, the first annual Love Rock NYC concert—a benefit for God’s Love We Deliver, a nonprofit that delivers medically tailored meals (10,000 a day!) to New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other serious illnesses—took over Beacon Theatre, with Joe Walsh, Jackson Browne, Mavis Staples and more performing. Since then, Williamson, Rechter and Varvatos (the event’s co-founders and executive producers) have welcomed a staggering list of talent to the Beacon stage—Robert Plant, Alicia Keys, Norah Jones, Cyndi Lauper, Dave Matthews, Keith Richards, John Mayer, Jon Bon Jovi, Cher—and raised $65 million for the organization.
For anyone who has attended a Love Rocks concert, it’s easy to understand why. Rock, soul, blues, pop and R&B legends don’t just perform at the gala—they bring something special, whether it’s Cher wearing Elvis Presley drag to sing Marc Cohn’s “Walking in Memphis,” Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart reuniting onstage or Jackson Browne, Michael McDonald and the Blind Boys of Alabama teaming up to cover “I Shall Be Released.” With comedy legends (Conan O’Brien, Martin Short, Bill Murray) entertaining the audience in between acts, it’s one of the most reliably thrilling annual concerts in NYC of any stripe, charitable or otherwise. (A lot of that credit goes to the house band led by Will Lee.)
This year, Hozier, Mary J. Blige and Paul Simon headline a sold-out Love Rocks NYC at the Beacon on March 5. For those who want to watch and support from the comfort of home, the concert for God’s Love We Deliver will be livestreamed one time only on Veeps.com at 8 p.m. ET on March 5; buying a $24.99 ticket here will support the organization.
Ahead of the 10th annual Love Rocks NYC, Billboard sat down for coffee with Williamson, Rechter and Varvatos—who at this point have become close friends, ribbing one another and finishing each other’s sentences—to talk about how a pie-in-the-sky idea from music business outsiders turned into an ongoing feast that helps feed thousands of New Yorkers each day.
Love Rocks NYCThis interview has been edited for brevity.
How did you get involved with God’s Love We Deliver initially, Greg?
Williamson: I got involved with my wife shortly after we married. We both lost parents to cancer and remember that feeding people who were sick was integral to their situation. The mission has always resonated with me but the people there are so wonderful it makes you want to keep coming back. You want to be involved in that place because it’s a special community.
Greg, you and Nicole were aligned first around 2015, 2016, talking about a charity concert for God’s Love We Deliver. I gather that you didn’t know John before he got involved—why did you reach out to him?
Greg Williamson: I reached out to John because I thought he was a legend.
Nicole Rechter: And he dressed head to toe in Varvatos (for the meeting).
Williamson: I loved the fact that he was so music but not in the music business per se. If I approached somebody who was in the music business, they would have been too jaded. And I loved his sensibility. Eleven years later, we’re all such close friends.
Rechter: Greg walked into his office, pitched this idea and he said yes. John probably thought he’d never see him again. Ten years really makes you stop and look back. We’ve raised $65 million for this organization and funded 6.5 million meals for people.
Williamson: I knew I wanted to align with him but I didn’t know him, at all. I just said, “This is my vision: I want to start the biggest, coolest benefit concert in New York City.” He had been familiar with God’s Love We Deliver. This was 11 years ago, he looked at me and he said, “I’m in.” And he gave me a pound. I walked out and I called Nicole, and I said, “He’s in, that’s it.”
John, why did you say yes? Are you always that open?
John Varvatos: It was because of God’s Love. I’d been to the fundraising dinners they’d (previously) done. It was aligned with my thoughts philanthropically and from a music standpoint. It wasn’t a hard decision. The hard part came after that.
Love Rocks has been at the Beacon Theatre since the inaugural 2017 show. How did you decide on the Beacon?
Rechter: We only looked at one other venue. Greg was down the street from the Beacon; he’s a lifelong New Yorker. We looked at the Apollo, too.
Williamson: First we looked at the Apollo but we realized we wanted to go a little bigger. And we went to the Beacon and thought that location might be better for the donor base of God’s Love. About 10 months of planning and about two months before the show it really started to come together. I remember John calling me and telling me he got Joe Walsh around the time that Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi and Jackson Browne were locked in — one of the guys in our band was in Jackson Browne’s band. It all started to click at the end.
Rechter: They get the talent and I use my event planning skills: scale the room, build sponsorship packages. I remember the day we broke even (the first year), when we had enough ticket sales to cover what we’d spent.
Varvatos: But the tickets are a small part of the fundraising. They are the energy and the people there and some of them become sponsors after coming or associated with God’s Love in a bigger way. But without the sponsorship…. It’s not like you do an event and you sell tables for $50,000, $100,000, whatever. You’re selling tickets that don’t add up.
Rechter: That was year one. But now we’re sold out of sponsorships before we even announce the lineup.
Williamson: You maybe get $40,000 from ticket sales but we’re raising six million this year. Back then we were raising one, two, three million dollars a year. To John’s point, it comes down to sponsorships. It’s unlike any other fundraiser for an organization because they’re showing up for the artist and the music and then they’re hearing about God’s Love. So there are stories where someone shows up for Keith Richards but afterwards they get involved with God’s Love and donate a building to God’s Love.
Rechter: That’s a true story.
Varvatos: Yes, and it’s a very expensive piece of real estate. There’s the volunteer part of it, too: when we started there was around 12,000 volunteers a year and now it’s about 20,000. That number is staggering. And some do it every day; it’s a big part of their lives. They’re donating their time to working the kitchen for free. It’s pretty crazy.
How many days a week are you guys working on the Love Rocks show?
Williamson: This is something we have worked on 365 days a year for the last decade. Literally, the day after the concert, we start planning the next one. During the concert, I lean over to John and say, “Should we go after this one next year?” And we start fundraising the day after. If you didn’t have such an intense passion for building community around music—and the cause, plus the great friendship the three of us have—it wouldn’t be possible.
Varvatos: Music is healing like food is healing. Music is a very important thing to a lot of people—to most people. That’s part of the reason (Love Rocks is) music centric.
Rechter: And for people who don’t want to do another gala dinner, they can come by and table here and their table is 10 seats in the first row of the theater and they see this incredible show. The idea picked up steam.
Williamson: A lot of the sponsors are taking massive sponsorships and they get a lot of seats with that. But we always wanted to keep it intimate. We could be doing this show at MSG but we wanted it to be in a holy place like the Beacon. Selling out is not the issue.
Rechter: We want the show to be a mix of sponsorships and the God’s Love community. We want people from the organization there and seats open to the public.
Varvatos: It’s become a huge part of the DNA of God’s Love. They all talk about how it’s changed the organization.
Rechter: We bring artists through the kitchen; Cher went there last year.
Williamson: It’s almost like an international concert happening for a local New York charity. One year John got Robert Plant. He flew here from the U.K. Hozier is coming this year, another one of John’s friends. He’s flying from Ireland.
Varvatos: This is his third or fourth time. It’s special when someone says, “I’ll take a week out of my life to do this.” And the other thing is, they don’t want anything. Not that we’re paying anybody, but they don’t want any of their expenses covered, anything. That’s kind of crazy, right?
Williamson: We might cover expenses for some artists, but some don’t want it.
Rechter: Everyone coming is a mensch. But there are people, rightly so, who need some expenses.
Williamson: It’s become big in the artist community, and that’s a huge credit to Nicole. They are often being treated better than they are on the road.
I’m always amazed at how seamlessly this show segues from one act to the next. I’ve seen plenty of comparable shows, and even when they have a house band, it’s usually a bit clunky.
Rechter: A lot of these multiact shows are a mess, and artists don’t want to sign on for that because they’re not well organized and the production is a mess. Our production team is so tight; these guys are so good. There are people who watch our stage moves more than our show: they’re interested in how seamlessly we go from one act to another.
Williamson: A lot of that is our house band. Most of the time it’s backed by our 21-piece house band led by Will Lee, and each one of these artists can just plug in. They get into the Beacon on Monday to rehearse and play on Thursday. So by the time Mavis Staples shows up, a comfy bed is made for her.
Rechter: But from the production side, everyone has their own amps and they need to plug in—it’s incredible.
Varvatos: It’s a very fast three-and-a-half to four-hour show.
Rechter: We’ll look at each other sometimes, John especially, and say, “Well, 25 songs left to go.”
It’s not a bad problem to have. “Oh no, we have too many amazing artists.”
Varvatos: Listen, the enthusiasm we have sometimes gets out in front of us. And the artists want to do more. That’s the other thing.
Rechter: And what do you say when they want to come?
Williamson: Some people invite themselves. We have artists all the time and we sometimes have to politely say, “The boat is full, we’d like to consider you another year, we’re so appreciative of how generous you are with your time and talent.” And we mean it all. We all feel so blessed and privileged to be behind this show.
Varvatos: Every year, we ask so many people. And every year, we have to ask again. You’re working around tour schedules, spring breaks with families, recording sessions, writing sessions. It’s not an easy thing and so many artists we do talk to want to do it but it’s not working with the schedule.
Williamson: And the expectations go up. Once you have Cher and Alicia Keys and John Mayer and Jon Bon Jovi and Dave Matthews it just… part of that is self-imposed pressure, but some of it is real pressure.
Rechter: Almost every name on our lineup this year is a household name.
Varvatos: Greg is a concert producer in his own right. His tentacles are out there — also his testicles.
Rechter: (Laughs) He does mean it; it takes huge balls to go out there.
Varvatos: He’s been working it and getting to know everybody. It’s not an easy thing to do with this amount of talent and to keep it fresh.
How do you determine the run of show? Balancing who goes first, who closes, fitting in videos about God’s Love….
Williamson: Some of that is set from years prior. We know where we have the God’s Love video, where we have the CEO speak. In terms of the artists, sometimes the music director will take a stab at it and me and John will look at it and make tweaks. A lot of times the headliner—and when I say the headliner, it’s tricky because there’s often multiple headliners—but someone like Cher you might say, “of course she has to close the show.” But in a three-and-a-half-hour show, you might want to put her 70% into the show because that’s when all your top donors are there and some of them might leave a little early. It’s a balance.
Varvatos: Some people who could be closing the show don’t want to. Like, Alicia Keys opened.
Rechter: It’s all very thought through.
Williamson: And then there’s a guy called Bill Murray who always shows up and makes the show even longer. But he’s so great that it’s okay.
Rechter: And some (stage) moves need longer—if a piano is coming on, we might have the host talk longer.
Varvatos: And a lot of these artists want to watch the show; they don’t want to sit up in their rooms. A lot want to watch from the side and sing along. Or the hosts want to watch from the side. There’s always craziness on the side stage. There’s no room for anyone to walk.
How much do you weigh in on what songs the artists play?
Williamson: If it’s a no-brainer like “Empire State of Mind” [for Keys], we’ll want her to do that. A lot of times we’ll ask for a cover and an original or John and I will make a suggestion or the music director will make a suggestion, but it’s a balance.
Varvatos: A lot of the artists are very open to hearing what we have to say. Robert Plant for example is a guy who is always changing. His whole career, he doesn’t want to look back in time, he wants to look forward. So even though he asks, he very seldom listens to me. (Laughs) But he listens about coming.
Williamson: But they get it, that it’s for a benefit and they don’t want to be too hip for the room.
I saw Conan O’Brien open the 2024 Love Rocks benefit by singing Elvis’ “Suspicious Minds.” It was shockingly good.
Rechter: That was such a great opener.
How does that come about? Who suggests something like that?
Williamson: Some of these guys who are comedians, one of the ways to get them to come is to allow them to play. “Will you introduce a couple of artists? And feel free to do a song.” He exceeded expectations. I heard Bill Murray wants to do a song this year, he’s been doing “Werewolves of London.”
Yes, I saw him do “Love the One You’re With” at the 2025 benefit. So for a Thursday show, you start rehearsing around Monday, right?
Rechter: By the time the artist walks on stage for their rehearsal, the band knows the songs so well. Everyone wants to take our band on tour with them.
Varvatos: Some people after the first rehearsal are like, “We’re done.” For us, there’s a lot of magic in the rehearsals, watching it come together and the camaraderie.
Williamson: They are the heartbeat of the thing, the house band. Everyone in that house band is a music director in their own right. They all leave egos at the door and they all come to play together. They’re all like surgeons in how they execute and deliver.
How did you connect with Will Lee for this?
Williamson: A year before Love Rocks started, I got sober. And Will had been sober at that point well over 20 years. I had reached out to him to get some advice in early sobriety and we became friends. And when the idea for the concert came up, I asked him to be music director and we picked a lot of the band together. He picked all the horn players from SNL, the singers, but we both picked Larry Campbell. I had suggested Eric Krasno, he suggested Steve Gadd, everyone knows Shawn Pelton in New York.
Varvatos: Other than a couple of times when someone had to go on tour, the house band is the same every year. Including our sound man, who is the same every year. He’s given up a tour. They block it out of their schedules.
Earlier you mentioned that you could be doing Love Rocks at Madison Square Garden. Have you talked about moving to a bigger venue?
Rechter: We’ve been through that.
Williamson: We want to stay at the Beacon.
Rechter: We had a discussion about moving to Radio City this year. It’s the 10-year anniversary (of Love Rocks) and the 40th anniversary of God’s Love.
Williamson: But we got a generous $10 million gift. Aside from more people wanting to go to the show, the argument of going to a larger venue is to raise more money—and that was a tough argument to push against even though we wanted to stay at the Beacon. Someone gave us that $10 million gift and now we can have the best of both worlds.
Rechter: They let us keep the soul of our show. Anyone at the Beacon totally understands why we’re not in a bigger space and why the show just makes sense there.
So 10 years from now, you’ll still be at the Beacon?
Williamson: That $10 million gift is allowing us to go to year 15. [The amount will be donated over the course of five years.] I don’t know if we’ll go another 10 years, we might kill ourselves, but we know we’re doing another five.
Rechter: We’ve always had the date of the next (year’s) show at the show.
Williamson: It’s very stressful. You’re raising a lot of money and you want to deliver something of the highest caliber.
Rechter: It’s not getting easier.
Varvatos: Last year was such a monstrous show. The expectations for this year… there’s a point with anything; you can only go so high.
Williamson: We don’t need to top it, we just need to put out really high-quality shows.
I think that’s a fair way of looking at it. People have come to expect a certain level from this benefit show, and you deliver it reliably. How do you decide which artists are the right fit for the Love Rocks benefit?
Varvatos: Some names that come across our desk, they might be a big name but not right for it.
Williamson: And sometimes we have different opinions of who we want on the show.
Varvatos: You build a DNA of being eclectic but still at a certain level. There’s certain genres that are right and you have to think about demos—and our demo is pretty broad—but you have to think about sponsors, too. Somebody may have billions of streams, but does anybody in this house know them?
Rechter: Almost anything fits, but some things don’t.
Williamson: And some things fit more than others.
How do you balance working on this and your day jobs?
Williamson: I’m always working two day jobs.
Rechter: We have for 10 years.
Williamson: We all have multiple things going.
Varvatos: Some days it’s crazy, some days it’s just another call. We talk about it all the time. We gotta beg, borrow and steal with the artists and then you gotta beg, borrow and steal with the sponsors. It’s not like they automatically say yes. Some great sponsors we have over time have fallen out because the corporation is changing their whole thing. It’s not about Love Rocks: “We have X amount of money, and this year we’re pulling back because business is bad,” that sort of thing.
Williamson: If you told me 12 years ago we would have one of the most iconic benefit concerts in the country, Mike Bloomberg would be the presenting sponsor, the three of us would be working together and have had the experiences we’ve had with these rock stars, I never would have believed it.
So… what made you think you could do it?
Williamson: Total ignorance. And total passion. I could give you a list—although I’m not going to give you any names—of industry people who told me the entire first year, “This is a really great idea but I suggest you just write a check to a charity you like.” Even though John is in his DNA so music and fashion, I think what attracted me to him in the beginning is he isn’t in the music business per se. If I had approached another executive, they would have been jaded.
Rechter: A lot of music executives don’t look at it the same way. It’s their business. John isn’t in the music business. He’s able to look at it the way we do.
Varvatos: A big part that drives it is the passion. I got into the things I did because of passion, not because of the bottom line. Not everything you do is always perfect or successful, but we went into this thinking, “We can make this happen.”
Rechter: And we did. I remember being at the first one and thinking, “holy sh-t.”
Varvatos: We’re proud of it. We’re proud of everybody that works on it. It isn’t us alone.
Williamson: Building community around music is what it’s about. To be able to bring people together through music feels more and more relevant with each year.
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