Paul Tollett
American concert promoter and entrepreneur

Paul Tollett is an American music promoter. He is the president and CEO of Goldenvoice, a Los Angeles-based concert production company, and the co-founder of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
Early life and education
Tollett was born in Ohio and grew up in Pomona, California. He and his brother, Perry, regularly attended punk and hardcore shows promoted by Goldenvoice. The Tolletts promoted their first show while in high school.
Career
Tollett met Gary Tovar, Goldenvoice's owner, at a Bad Manners concert in Long Beach in 1986. He worked part time for Goldenvoice while a chemistry student at CalPoly Pomona, dropping out in his senior year to become a full time employee.
In 1991, he and Rick Van Santen, a longtime associate of Tovar's, bought Goldenvoice. Their first shows featured artists including Black Flag, Jane’s Addiction, and N.W.A. Tollett said in 2011 that Tovar taught him "everything".
In 1996, Paul and Perry Tollett converted a Thrifty drug store in Pomona into a 600-capacity live music venue, the Glass House.
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This entry incorporates text from “Paul Tollett” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.