Peter Katsis, a co-founder of the management companies the Firm and Prospect Park who over the course of a 35-year career managed an unusually wide wide variety of artists including Backstreet Boys, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Ice Cube, Jane’s Addiction Morrissey, Ministry and more, died Thursday due to complications from congestive heart failure, a rep confirms to Variety. He was 69.
A native of Chicago, Katsis cut his teeth at the concert board at Northern Illinois University and got his professional start in the early ’80s, managing the alternative band Ministry, who were a synth-pop group at the time but would soon be among the leaders of the genre known as industrial. An active figure on the Chicago dance-music scene of the era, he also worked as an A&R executive at Trax Precision Records booked many of those acts, including Marshal Jefferson and Adonis.
In 1990 he relocated to Los Angeles and worked with such artists as English Beat spinoff General Public, the Cramps and jazz duo Tuck and Patti. In 1997 he became a partner at the powerhouse management company the Firm, where along with partner and Firm CEO Jeff Kwatinetz, he played a pivotal role in the careers of Backstreet Boys, Korn, Enrique Iglesias, 30 Seconds to Mars, Snoop Dogg, OneRepublic, Audioslave, Limp Bizkit and others. His touring background helped guide the Backstreet Boys, at the time one of the biggest groups in the world, from arenas to stadiums. He won a Pollstar Award for Most Creative Stage Design for the group’s “Millennium” tour.
Counterintuitively, at the same time he was a major force in the nu-metal genre of the era, managing such titans as Korn and Limp Bizkit, as well as Jared Leto’s group 30 Seconds to Mars and Audioslave, which featured ex-Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell and members of Rage Against the Machine.
From 2008 to 2014, Katsis, Kwatinetz and Rich Frank founded Prospect Park Entertainment, working with several of the above artists as well as the Smashing Pumpkins, Jane’s Addiction and Ice Cube. However, after a 25-year partnership, he and Kwatinetz had a bitter split in 2015 and parted ways, but reunited and re-partnered several years later.
In the following years, he continued to work with the Pumpkins and Jane’s Addiction, as well as Morrissey, Liz Phair, Bush, 311, Pentatonix, and 5 Seconds of Summer. The acts thrived on tour; it’s safe to say he oversaw the most productive era of Morrissey’s career since the early ‘90s, including two nights at the Hollywood Bowl, a five-night stand in London and a mini-residency on Broadway. He also helped the Pumpkins return to arena status and oversaw Phair’s 2023 tour for behind the 30th Anniversary tour of her classic “Exile in Guyville” album.
Katsis is survived by his sister, Anastasia Katsis, and his son Ian.
