John L. Reese
John L. Reese (born 1961) is a Phoenix-born music executive who got started in the music industry by working concert security in his hometown. That led to Guns N' Roses manager Doug Goldstein hiring him to become the band's tour manager for their 1989 Los Angeles Coliseum concerts with the Rolling Stones, then as the tour manager for the massive Use Your Illusion Tours and then as a partner in Big FD Entertainment, representing a number of diverse artists.
Since 1991, Reese has been an artist manager and has worked with many multi-platinum artists. He has personally managed The Used, Candlebox, Danzig, Story of the Year, and Goldfinger, among many others, and has worked with Doug Goldstein on Guns N' Roses and The Stone Roses, as well as a consultant for The Cure. He also assisted in producing the Curiosa Festival. Bands that he has worked with have sold in excess of 80 million albums and have played to over 40 million fans. His artist management roster currently includes: Street Drum Corps (Interscope), Story of the Year (Epitaph) and Head Automatica (Warner Bros.).
John was also the co-founder with Ross Robinson of I AM Recordings, and with Robinson signed Slipknot, Glassjaw, Amen and The Cure among others while with I AM Recordings from 1995-2003.
In 2005, Reese co-founded the Rockstar Taste of Chaos with fellow industry exec/promoter and entrepreneur Kevin Lyman. The tour is the only worldwide lifestyle music festival event and plays more than 80 arena-style venues in 21 countries, including Australia, Japan, Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria and the UK.
In 2007, Reese and Lyman co-founded the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival. In 2008, it stopped at 30 major Live Nation amphitheaters in the U.S. and Canada. John also co-founded the college Rockstar Get a Life Tour playing 27 college venues throughout the U.S. in 2008.
Currently Reeseis the Producer with Jeff Battaglia (Manager of Disturbed of the MUSIC AS A WEAPON Festival. The Festival is performing at over 35 Arenas in the USA in the spring of 2009. The festival is headlined by Disturbed and will combine bands, a tattoo convention, extreme sports demos, a vendor village and a variety of lifestyle activities.
Reese is also the co-founder of the recently launched DiNG LIFE, a device (cell phone, mp3 player, laptop, gaming) personalization company that maintains over 200 MusicAL artist licenses which makes it the largest company of this specialty in this industry.
John is married to Elenie Reese (Founder of Lil' Punk) and has three children Kelsey, Kylie and Nicolette and resides in Southern California.