When Elliott Lefko casts his mind back to the thousands of shows he's booked and promoted over the course of his dizzying career, enough highlights pop out to bathe an arena.

There were the early Nirvana shows that Lefko industriously reeled into Toronto, leading to one oft-remembered night in which the young promoter had to softly dissuade Kurt Cobain from hurling beer bottles at the wall (he wanted to see if they would stick).

There were the evenings Lefko spent tip-toeing around his small apartment to avoid disrupting the musicians sleeping below -- rags-to-riches types who nowadays could probably afford to doze on thousand-thread-count Egyptian cotton.

Or the nights that were memorable because they danced on the brink of disaster, like the Pixies' famously packed show at the Apocalypse Club where a burst pipe hovered ominously overhead and a frenzied crowd took a row of chairs -- set up by Lefko to help people in the back see the stage -- and tossed them about the cramped venue.

But almost all of those indelible moments began with a phone call, and Lefko still remembers the first he ever made, when he got the idea in his head that he could translate his passion for music into something else -- a career, or even a life.

"I had the phone in my head, and the sweat started running down my arm, and my heart started pounding," the 53-year-old recalled in a recent telephone interview, referring to a Jim Carroll gig he set up in the mid-80s.

"I think that's when I found what my true love was going to be."

Lefko's instincts were right, of course. He went on to become an influential behind-the-scenes architect of Toronto's buzzing concert scene before becoming a prominent executive at the L.A.-based Goldenvoice, one who more covertly campaigns for the Canadian acts that capture his imagination.

That's part of why he felt pride when last year's Grammys gala ended with the evening's top prize being claimed by Arcade Fire, a band Lefko once booked before they'd even hired a manager (he recalls leaving a voicemail directly on frontman Win Butler's cell phone to confirm the gig).

At this weekend's ceremony, several of the Canucks to hold multiple nominations hail from Toronto -- Drake, Melanie Fiona and Deadmau5, a Niagara Falls, Ont., native who has since relocated to the Ontario capital. While he doesn't know how to play an instrument, Lefko deserves a share of the credit for the musical evolution of his hometown.

"(This is) maybe the best live music scene in the world -- it wouldn't be possible without him," said Dave Bookman, a DJ with local modern-rock radio station 102.1 the Edge and a longtime friend of Lefko's.

"He's absolutely a Mount Rushmore (guy).... We wouldn't be Toronto without him. He's absolutely an essential, huge part of its history."

But Lefko's career in music began rather modestly. After graduating from York University in the early '80s (an education he fondly remembers more for all the time he spent working at the school paper, not studying), Lefko managed to land a few freelance gigs writing about music in Toronto.

After arranging that Carroll gig, though, Lefko caught the bug. He started arranging a weekly indie-music showcase at the RPM each week, and more gigs started to flow from there. Money remained tight -- he recalls waiting until after 6 p.m. to place long-distance phonecalls because of the reduced cost -- but Lefko quickly established a name for himself locally.

At the beginning, he promoted mainly smaller shows in "dive bars." An early turning point for Lefko came when the Kelowna, B.C., outfit Grapes of Wrath wanted to come to town to do a show, but were discouraged by a major local promoter who thought it was too soon after their last Toronto gig. Lefko gladly took the show on.

That was a theme in those days -- Lefko, seeing himself as a David-like figure hucking rocks (or rock 'n' roll, in this case) at the established promoters who simply dismissed him.

"I was able to wage war against the bigger promoters ... I created a business for myself," Lefko recalled.

"That became my world -- I was the little thorn in the side to the bigger promoters, and I got there first for all these bands. I was there first for the (Red Hot) Chili Peppers. I was there first for Nirvana. And then they'd come and try to steal my action later on.

"I was always the first guy there for many of these bands."

He wrangled those buzz-worthy acts by initiating hastily planned pilgrimages to New York and Los Angeles to make contacts and recruit bands to come to Toronto.

He remembers walking into a cramped, hazy office in Manhattan -- "with these smoky doors from a detective novel" -- where a cluster of young, like-minded folks would work the phones booking shows. Sometimes, he'd walk in and see members of Sonic Youth munching Chinese food, and recruiting bands this way (Dream Syndicate, Arizona punks Green on Red) was like "picking flowers."

He could rarely offer much money -- Lefko remembers the first time he promoted Nirvana, "it was $100 and they didn't even show up at the gig" -- but most bands were genuinely thankful to have a contact in that mysterious hinterland to the north.

He was both fortunate and prescient enough to pick up on the dynamite Seattle grunge scene before it exploded, booking bands like Soundgarden, Mudhoney and Tad.

"In the late '70s and early '80s, the independent rock (scene) -- whatever constituted newer artists -- it was dead in Toronto," said Blue Rodeo co-frontman Jim Cuddy in a telephone interview. "What was different about Elliott was that he was willing to take a chance on newer bands, he was willing to try different venues, and he stood by his artists win or lose. And that's a very difficult prospect for promoters to take it on the chin when they lose money and not blame the band and try to have them come back....

"I think what Elliott did was help to expand the horizons of the scene, so it didn't have to be just roots music -- it could be rock from New York, it could be arty music from L.A.... So I think he helped define the breadth of the scene."

And it certainly wasn't lucrative, not in the early going.

"Sometimes I'd make money, and I'd go to the corner of College and Spadina and shove it in the bank machine at night, and then other times I'd have to go and try to borrow money from one of the stagehands that I paid that night and ask for the money back so I can go and eat the next day."

His parents -- mom was a housewife, dad was in the furniture business -- were supportive, even volunteering to take money at the door when Lefko was promoting shows, despite the fact that they were "a little scared of the clientele."

"I think they were just happy I was getting out of bed," Lefko laughed.

Lefko was enjoying himself too. Given how lean the times were, his small Toronto apartment became a resting spot for many a poor musician to crash after shows, either in his bed or on his floor.

"Henry Rollins -- once he had money -- I said, 'There's another bed in my apartment, there's a second bed, you can sleep on that,"' Lefko recalled.

"He said, 'No no, I'll sleep on the floor.' Just because he was so used to sleeping on the floor."

Lefko began getting more and more shows in bigger and bigger venues.

Friends recall that the amount of work Lefko took on would have overwhelmed most people.

"I think there was a time when Elliott was promoting a show every night of the week, and he used to kind of get shows confused," recalled former Rheostatics frontman Dave Bidini.

"I do remember he was introducing some band I was playing in, when he had to turn around and look at the marquee because he couldn't remember (who we were) -- just because he was so busy, right?

"But that was almost kind of a charming quality in a way."

From many musicians' perspective, Lefko was different. His honesty, enthusiasm and passion set him apart from other promoters, some of whom could simply not be trusted.

"There's a lot of slime at the top man, when it comes to people who have made their fortune by ripping off bands," Bidini said. "(Lefko) was never a guy to get in his car with a bag full of money and drive away. He was always kind of around.... I think he suffered when other people suffered."

Added Lowest of the Low's Stephen Stanley: "A lot of people in the business seem to have agendas, and he never seemed to have one. He just wanted to make shows that made sense that were fun with people he liked to work with."

And those relationships have endured.

Bands he once worked with when they were storming the club scene -- the Red Hot Chili Peppers, for instance -- he now promotes in arenas.

He's also exercised his clout to reunite long-splintered bands for shows and tours, including the Doughboys and Lowest of the Low. In fact, Stanley says he and the latter band's co-frontman Ron Hawkins hadn't spoken to each other in six years when Lefko managed to rally them to take the stage together again.

"I think just because of the relationship we all had with him," Stanley said in describing why the group decided to get back together. "With Elliott, you had a guy who was coming with a real plan."

Though Lefko had savoured his role as the city's upstart underdog, things gradually began to change. He joined MCA Concerts, and stayed with the company as it eventually transformed into Universal Concerts then House of Blues Concerts, while working on promoting the initial Lollapalooza Festivals across Canada and helping to develop the local institution Edgefest. And he continued working with bands whose profiles were blooming -- Dave Matthews, Phish, Nirvana, Pearl Jam.

Eventually, Lefko decided to leave. He went to Los Angeles to become vice-president of Goldenvoice, the AEG Live-owned company that books, among other things, the annual festival behemoth Coachella.

In his new position, Lefko says he still looks out for acts from his native country.

Every year, he's given the chance to add at least one Canadian band to the bill at Coachella (his choices have included Gord Downie, Billy Talent, Death from Above 1979 and the Sheepdogs), and he has otherwise helped Canadian acts including Matthew Good and Blue Rodeo with shows they've booked in L.A.

"He's kind of like the little mayor of Los Angeles for Canadian bands," Bookman said.

"If he's not doing the show or whatever, he really makes sure he tries to go visit the bands and go see them and help them out in any way, just like any friend of a scene would."

With Goldenvoice, Lefko has also ventured into Hawaii and Alaska to promote shows, areas that were otherwise considered an insurmountable hassle by many bands given their remote locations and lack of musical infrastructure.

If he didn't know much about either place before beginning to chart the musical landscape, well, that was all part of the adventure.

"I don't need very much besides a phone and a map and I can find my way, I can make it work," Lefko said. "It's a long way from York University to Alaska, but again, that's my thing -- figuring things out."

Added Bookman: "I think what he did when he went to L.A. is he brought that frontier spirit with him from Canada, as if going to find new territories."

Lefko concedes that his job now is different than it was when he was hustling in Toronto -- searching for undiscovered talent, furiously making calls amid the perpetual fear that his phone line would be shut down -- but some things haven't changed.

When it comes to the values he learned then, he says the song remains the same.

"I tried to treat people a little differently than the way I was treated -- where the established promoters would make me wait in the waiting room of life forever," he said.

"These days, in the league I'm in where you are going for bigger bands, everybody has a big chequebook so in order to be more successful than the next guy, you have to have something else -- and I think that's the passion, that's the thing that drives me."