Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Marc Brickman

Transcript

Marc Brickman · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left That's Podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: My guest today is writing a production designer extraordinaire, Mark Brickman.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: You know Mark from his work with such acts as
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, Bruce Greenstein. He even lit up
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: the Olympics. Mark. Good to have you on this show. Hi, Bob,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: how are you. It's good to see you. Against be
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: in a few years. So what exactly is it you
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: do explain to my audience, Well, best way to describe
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: as our visual producer slash artists, just like you would
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: have when a band have songs and they get out
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: of the garage and they need a audio producer to
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: take them into the studio to make an album and
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: then they release it. I do the same thing for
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: live shows. So starting back in one, it wasn't really
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: much of an industry back then, and so um I,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: I and a bunch of other guys turned it into one.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: And so I really what we do what you see
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: now in two are extravagance as lots of visual material,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: and it's really putting all of that together to translate
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: and tell the story of the music. It was a
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: lot easier earlier on in my career. These days it's
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: pretty complicated. I hope that made sense absolutely. Now some
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: tours have lighting designers and production designers or separate. Where
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: is the line between the two, if there is one
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: at all? There used to be a really strong line.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I kind of blurted myself back in the eighties, um
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: and and I didn't do it intentionally, but I probably
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: was a bit of egomaniacal and young, and so I
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: was one pink Floyd. I was a lighting designer, but
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: then I would get up set because the set designers
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: would come in and they would use the lighting to
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: light their sets, not to the music, because I'm music
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: is my life. It just always has been since I've
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: been very small, and so I always saw music, heard music,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: colored music in my head. So probably in the mid
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: eighties I started designing. Actually around seventy nine with Ricky
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Lee was when I actually became the lighting designer slash
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: set designer. Then I realized I was the production designer,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: so I started asking for those credits um and I
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: think people copied my and then I became the visional
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: artistic director and the visual producer, and I would always
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: keep changing the title, and then I would see other
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: people using it. So there maybe I had a little hand,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: small hand, Okay, so need let's just say the last
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: two years have been interrupted by COVID, But what is
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: occupying your time now? Well back probably around twenty after
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Roger Waters, we mounted the Wall Show again, which myself
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: and Mark Fisher, UM, we're instrumental in putting that together
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: with Roger. After after I was finished with that project,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: I realized it was I also had a one year
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: old daughter and it was time to actually pay attention
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: to real life. So I started UM transitioning it's good
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: work to to UM to really what I love doing.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: And I could thank my wife for really getting me
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: into painting, probably back in in two thousand and two,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: and UM, I really wanted to become an artist now
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: to talk about labels, it was time to really hit
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: the art world. So UM in the last two years
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and and also my whole team, we started remotely being
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: in control of places like the Empire State Building. So
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: when there I was actually in New York when on
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: my way to Germany when COVID hit, UM came home
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: and UM I realized, UM, we didn't really miss a beat.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: We were really lucky. I feel horrible about what happened
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: to a lot of my friends and and you know,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: and and collaborators, but we were we were actually set
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: up to do everything Remotely, nothing really changed with us.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: We never saw each other anyway, except maybe twice three
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: times a year when we had to be in the
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: same place. So um and I gave me more of
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: an opportunity to start painting, to start working on n
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: f T s, to start doing everything that I really
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: been wanting to do all these years. So that's how
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I've been spending my time. Okay, so things have started
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: back up. Do you want to do tours? Do you
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: want to do stuff? Or you really pretty much transitioned
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: out of that. Well, you know, I'm a bit older.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: So when I was young and coming up, and I
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: started when I was eighteen, you know, they were older
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: lighting designers and set signers, um and they I used
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: to look at them and think to myself, Wow, I
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: don't want to be that old and like still doing this,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: but I hope I'll be doing something else. I didn't
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: know what it was so right now to answer the question,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: it's difficult. I pretty much have a very small roster
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: of clients left, it's Steve Miller, Neil Young. Um, that's
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: if they remember me and David Gilmer. Um. But who knows,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: maybe they hate me by now, I don't know. I
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: do speak to two out of this ree quite regularly.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Which one don't you speak to so regularly? Now? You
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: know Neil's Neil lives about a mile and a half
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: from our house, but I don't think he's been here
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: in Malibu for a while, so I haven't seen him
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: at the local Italian and I, uh, you know, I
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: don't know. I don't think I could. I don't think
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: I'll go out if somebody called me. Sure, I'd love
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: to do something, Um, I always do. I love live,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: I mean live, experience nothing better in life, you know.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: I even I don't watch my shows on after they
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: shoot them and they put them on YouTube. I don't
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: watch them. I can't. It's not the same thing. It's
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: being in that crowd that's so exciting. But I'm probably
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: actually nervous to find out that the crowd maybe isn't
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: as excited anymore. I don't know. I don't know if
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I wanted to find out that answer a little bit slower.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: You think that the crowd might be a little less
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: excited just because of the transitions in life in general
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: or specifically because of COVID. I think because things have
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: changed quite a bit, and I think people, you know,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, the whole world has changed, and
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I think people's excitement. I don't know. I don't have
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: the answer. I just I just have great memories of
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: what I've done in my life, and I don't know
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: if I want to go out there. I've talked to
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: a couple of people very recently that are out there
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: touring with bands, and it doesn't sound like it's a
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: very happy camp, you know. It sounds like it's it's difficult,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: it's really and my heart goes out to them. It's
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: really you're talking about because of COVID restrictions. Yeah, because
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: of the restrictions and the restrictions on the audience and
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: just restrictions on the band, and that's got to take
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: a toll. I can't believe it's not that happy playland
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: that we used to live in, you know. I believe
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: I know some specifics where you know, if you're working
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: for the band, you couldn't even watch the show. It
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: was really crazy. Never mind that third parties come back.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: You know that's funny you said that, because who wasn't Oh,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: the Stones were in town and I remember Chuck Level
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: was playing keyboards and you know, hit him on text,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: invited him out for pizza, and then you know he
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: went back on Man, I'd love to do that, but
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to leave. I happen to know that
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: I'm close to that camp. It's like, you can come
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: to the show, but we can't see you. We can't
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: see you, and I'm not allowed to leave the hotel.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: I was like, And when he hit that was like
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: somebody through a cold water on my face. It really
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: woke me up too, just wow, Like I was speechless.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: I really was. Okay. So let's say, you know, you
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: say you talked to Steve Miller and David Gilmore in
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: a regular basis. What what do you talk about? Hey man?
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: How are you were you doing? We're you know, Steve
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: and I became we have a really long relationship and
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: often on you know, things come in and out. But
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: right before COVID we we reignited our our love for
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: each other um in New York City and and then
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: I mean he went to see David Byrne nine times
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: on Broadway, and he took me six of the nine
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: times to see, you know, the Utopia and and because
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: we were both so blown away by it um and
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: and we just I was going to do his tour
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: in Um and we had a really um different approach
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: to the visual element of it UM. And I understood
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: his he he does have some parameters you have to
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: work inside, especially you know, he's he's a great producer
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: in terms of keeping his camp really tight. So but
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: I came up and that's what challenges me. It isn't
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: so much that I need lots of trucks with lots
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: of equipment. It's actually that back and forth with the
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: artist really trying to figure out, you know, how can
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: we do this and also be relevant and be and
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: be able to really translate what he's who he is
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: and what's what's going on. Okay, let's go back to
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: David Byrne show. What was so mesmerizing and would you
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: have done anything different? Well, it's funny you said that,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: because David had called me um in twenty I think
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: it was, I can't remember. And I went to New
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: York and met him, met him for the first time,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: and and I'd made some dry and he laid it
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: out for me what he wanted to do, but he
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: didn't quite have it in his head, but he had
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: some really great, really the ideas. I immediately just went.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: I was right there with him because it was deconstructing
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: the concert. It was it was deconstructing and reinventing the
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: live experience. So I was there. I did a lot
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: of pre visualizations drawings for him. Um, something happened. It
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: wasn't me for the first time ever, but something happened,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: and he didn't go out, and then I think he
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: had a shake up in management or record I don't
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: remember what happened. And then he went out on the
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: road with this version, and then it ended on Broadway.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: So by that point they had hired somebody else. Um.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: And when I remember was probably the second or third
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: time that I saw it. I remember sitting in the
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: audience next Steve, and then I suddenly went I remembered
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: that I had collaborated with David. I had forgotten the
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: first two times. So, um, it was it was just brilliant.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: It was brilliant. It was Yeah. I can't really describe
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: how I felt the first time I saw it, I
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: just really was really so impressed and everything was just perfect. Okay,
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: let's go back to Steve Miller. Some acts like David
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Gilmore go out and money is not He is not
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: really a constraint. I mean from the inside sometimes even
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: isn't even worried about making money, where Steve Miller traditionally
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: tours every year. So there you talk about parameters. When
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: you talked about working with Steve, how much of it
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: was pleasing Steve, how much was it interfacing with third
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: parties were part of his team, how much of it
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: is the constraints, the money, the stage, etcetera. Well, that's
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: a that's a really great question, um, and you and
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: you were spot on in your description. Absolutely. But Steven said,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: let me just look, Steve's always been an outlier his
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: whole career. You know, he's he is his own man,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: and he's always been in control of his destiny. So
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: he loves going out. He just loves playing. He's actually
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: the times that we change emails everything, he really he
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: misses the connection of the audience. That's his main purpose.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: But he's not going out there and lose money, and
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: he's not gonna let and he's realized what his niches
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: and he's happy in it. He's very very happy. So
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: you gotta fit if you want to work with him,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: You've got to fit inside of the construct that he's
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: made over the years of going out playing the sheds,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: his his crew, he's very loyal to the band, to
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: his tour managers and managers, you know, so all that's
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: in place. So yeah, to fit in and be successful
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: is not an easy task. Um so, and I hope
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: I answered the question. Let's be very specific, so you
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: have the parameters of the type of buildings he plays,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: and he wants to be involved. The tour didn't go,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: but what did you suggest? It was pretty simple. The
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: best way to describe it as Steve Miller Neil like, Neil,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: did you go to Coachella? Ocella? I purposely didn't go,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: But that's a whole another story. When you go to
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: shows now, mostly the lighting is all just flashing lights
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: in people's eyes. That's it. I mean somewhere along this
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: it got very blurred and they took the lights off
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: the acts and he decided they're gonna light the audience
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: the whole night with what they call air graphics. They're
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: gonna build these crazy sets, um spend all kinds of money.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: The audience it's coming to see. I mean, when I
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: was a kid, the anticipation was so great to go
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: see live entertainment that you know, I would accept anything.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: I think that the audience still feels that way. And
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: so the one thing I said to Steve was they're
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: coming to hear the hits. They're coming to hear the music.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: And he agrees with that, you know, And I said,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: so we don't need really a lot of flashing lights,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: and we don't need it distract the audience. They need
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: to really be able to tune into you. So we
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: came up came up with a very modern way of
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: kind of the best way to describe it was gonna
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: look like a bit of a James Terrell art installation.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Well we'll explain that not everyone's gonna know what that
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: it's more of a ambient using L e D s,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: using the L e D screens, but using them as
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: light because that's what they are, they are light and
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: um and configuring them so not so much as you're
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: watching all these images all the time and getting even
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: more distracted with the image because your eye is either
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: going through the flashing lights or your eye is going
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: through the screen, but it's not going to the artist.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: And what I do, and what my practice has always been,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: is to really highlight not only the artists, but musically
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: where it's at in the moment. It's you know, it's
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: it's it's you know, Steve stops playing, the keyboard player
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: takes a solo, you're on that. That's you take the
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: audience's eye to that, so they're feeling the emotion. They're
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: really connecting with the band playing. Um, so I focused.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: I was bringing it back to him that way, but
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: finding a way to do it inside his budget, which
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I did. But let's let's be very specific. You have
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: a historical relationship with Steve Miller, you decide to work together,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: tell me that. I mean, I know the show didn't
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: go out, but most shows do. From the moment you say, hey,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: you'll be interesting to work together to the first show,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: what's the process, It's well, it starts with ideas. It's
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: like whoever it is, it starts with that. So we
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: I do pre visualizations. Um, and I do it in
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: a little bit. Let's slow down for a second. You're
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: gonna work with the act. Do you ask them what
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: they're looking for? Now? What does some acts tell you what?
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Or do you just say, hey, Mark want to work
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: with you come back with ideas. I have a reputation.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I just have an unlisted phone number, and my phone
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: would just ring. And you know, I got hired for
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: The Wall the night before they opened at the Sports Arena.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: The night before I had less than twenty four hours
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: to turn that show around. My phone rang. The day
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: after Ricky Lee Jones played Saturday Night Live, was Bob
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: ri Gear from Warner Brothers saying, You're meeting Mick Ricky tomorrow.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, I can go down the line of Um,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: I met Bruce Springsteen at the Widener College. Um, Mike
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Capelle had his his drill sergeant had on and he
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: would call the lighting cues. And but I knew all
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: the lighting cues without that. I just met them. Um.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Clyde Davis told them at the bottom line, don't let
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: that guy go. I mean, my whole life has been
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: these moments in time where um, I'm honored, but people
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: come to me and they go, Okay, let's work together.
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: I think there's a there's a moment that happens where
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm accepted and respected as an artist. It's a
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: it's a not just as a lighting guy. You know
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: that they understand the drama that I bring and also
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: the I'm trying not to be ego maniacal and describing it,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: but it's because man, it's your window busykommiacles you way,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: that's dangerous, um, but but I it to me. I
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: always designed the shows for the last kid in the
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: last row, UM, because it brings the energy forward if
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: you could, and that was before there were video screens,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: because if you could really bring that music out through
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: the audience, it was important. And I realized early on
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: that lighting was the most powerful tool we had in
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: the toolbox out there in the in the arena. The
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: same thing on Broadway. Some of my you know, some
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: of my famous lighting designer friends aren't Broadway who I
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: looked up to when I was a kid, like Jules Fisher,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Baron Musterer all. You know, they were just geniuses that
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: doing that in the theater. Um and and Jules and
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: I became and Peggy became friends many many years ago. UM.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: But you know he I was in awe of jewels. Um.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: So it's it's the idea of being able to focus
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: the audience. I think that's really what it's about. So
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: the artist, the artist kind of the manager has found me.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: Suddenly I'm delivered in their in their presence. So we
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: start talking. I listened to what like Roger Waters, for instance,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: he has a very definite idea what he's trying to do,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: so I'll hear the story. He doesn't know how to
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: do it, but he does know that he's not happy
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: right now, right and so I have this moment to
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: prove myself. Well, let's be very specific. You know they're
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: doing the wall. You know it's it's not a tourist,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: just limited shows. They've obviously built the set with the world,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: with the bricks, etcetera, etcetera. They call you and what
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: if they're opening the next day? Well, what happened was
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: and once again I'll get back to what I just said.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: A few minutes ago I walked in. I mean it
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: was it was total chaos. It was two d people
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: working last minute to finish this, and we all know
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: I was sitting. They were spending two million bucks in
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: the nine nine of their own money, and I mean,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: like so I watched the rehearsal. What they had was
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: they had these things called cherry Pickers. I mean they
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: were the best known art band ever, you know, like
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: nobody really knew what they looked like. They were anonymous.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: It was about the light show and the and the
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: but that light show was more abstract. He was now
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: doing a rock opera, very exact rock opera in terms
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: of queuing, blocking musicians here there, you know, you know
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: it was it was full on. But all the lights
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: when I walked in and they did the rehearsal, we're everywhere.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: They were on the whole time, flashing and just there
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: was no continuity. So after after the after they did
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: the run through, I went through his caravan and he said, well,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: what do you think? And I said, I told him exactly,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: And I just said and then I said, he says,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: give me example, just like you're saying. I said, okay,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: at the beginning of the show, the cherry Pickers get airborne.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: They go up there hydraulic, they fly around. Said, but
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: in another brick in the wall, it gets really quiet
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: and there's a helicopter sound, and it's dark. You know,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: there should be darkness and you should hear nothing but
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: the helicopter sound. And then suddenly five seconds in a
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: five count in suddenly the cherry pickers with white lights
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: beaming straight down start lifting off up into the air.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: You don't know what they are. They're very ominous, you know.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: And then they come toward you just just as the
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: drums hit, you know, and let that down beat right.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: And he looked at me, and he looked Steve Rourke
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: and he said, get Graham was the manager, just to
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: be clear, Yeah, yeah, Steven Rekers, no matter. And Graham
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: who was Graham Graham Graham Fleming was he? I guess
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: he was part owner. He was a lighting designer for
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Pink Floyd, part owner Britannia row Or he had an
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: interest in it, which was Pink Floyd's sound and light
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: company back in seventy nine. So Roger, after I explain
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: what he just said to Roger, Roger, he says, get um,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: get Graham. You know. Graham comes in and he looks
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: at Graham, he goes, you have cotton in your ears,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: you know, And he goes and then he looks at me.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: He goes, you're hired, and I'm uh, And Graham gave
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: me a look like I'm going to kill you. You know.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know what. I don't know what you said,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: but I'm gonna kill you. And then he says to Graham,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: you're dismissed. And then he turns to me and he goes,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: you have you know, tonight and until we go on
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: tomorrow night to fix it. And I said, okay, you're dismissed,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: and I left. You know, I walked, so I walked
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: out into it was a sports may and I walked
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: out into the vomitorium. I always remember this. It was
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: like one of those commercials. I think it was a
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: Merrow Lynch commercial where wait wait, wait, you called it
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: right here, right, You called it the vomitorium. Yeah, it's
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: a volmatorium. That that's what they're called there. The old
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: theatrical term is vomitorium. It's it's the entrance way into
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: the arena on the floor. I've never heard that, Okay,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: I've always called it that. That's what I've was taught.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Maybe it was a joke. We'll find out from your listeners.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Well that's what I remember, But keep keep going with
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: the narrative. So you walk out through the vomitory anyway,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: I walk I walk out there and I stopped. Suddenly,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: all the work that had been going on that also stopped,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: and everyone looking at me, the whole crew, because Graham
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: had gone out there first, and you know, he was
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: just and he should have been just really at piste off,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: wanting to kill me, and the words spread like wildfire,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: and everybody was just looking at man. I thought to myself,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: oh shit, you know, like now what And then suddenly,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: like almost like a dream, these I see two figures
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: approaching me, and the one guy reaches out his hand
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: goes hi, I'm Robbie Williams, and you know, like, you know,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: nice to meet you. And then the other guy, who
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: looked like a professor with glasses and curly hair, he
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: puts out his hand and goes hi, I'm Mark Fisher,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: and we think you need our help and I would friends,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: you know, and the rest is history. As they say,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: um they became. Mark became one of my really dear friends,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: and I miss him dearly now. He was I don't know,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: for the listeners. Mark Fisher was the greatest rock and
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: roll set designer, architect, visionary and human being on the
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: planet in the business for years now, for the late person.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: We look at the lights, the rigs, the board. You're
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: now dropped in twenty four hours before you know. The
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: person might say, well, do you need different equipment? I mean,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: or you just make do with what's there back then
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: and say mean, Now, there was no automation, so first
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: of all, there were no very lights. The lights that
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: were rigged would be rigged. The best thing I so
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: what you're do in a situation just go again, going
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: back to what I've described earlier, they had all the
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: lights on. The simplest thing to do is get rid
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: of the green gels, changed the jail colors to a
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff, and then they had a lighting console
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: not programmable, but it did have flash buttons on it
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: for run like Hell, and that's where the only place
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: I'd use it would be run like Hell. But I
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: had to actually program it and run it myself the board,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: and so it was all on me. I didn't have
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: any assistance or other people a programmers, and it was
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: all just me. As a matter of fact, that the
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: end to run like Hell. On the first night, I
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: broke some of the handles off the board and made
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: my fingers bloody, and our work came up to me
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: like at the end and gave me some band aids,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: you know, like because I I was, I look, I
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: was what was I? I was twenty seven years old,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: twenty six years old, twenty seven so you know it
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: was it was wild. Okay, let's go back to the
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: the overall paradigm. So if someone wants to work with you,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: you come up with ideas, what do you actually present
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: to the Since the early nineties when Amiga computers were
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: still on, and actually back in the late seventies when
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: I was working with Springsteen on one of the original apples,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: I started doing visual presentations to the clients rather than
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: just the hand drawings. I would do some hand drawings too,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: because the illustrators are amazing, and some of them are
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: you know. Those kind of drawings were great. But then
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: the three D really allowed us to walk and move
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: around inside the space, you know, and and actually help
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: because the pretty pictures are really single, single dimensional. So
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: you can look at the pretty picture, but a lot
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: of people have a hard time really imagining it it's
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: going to look like. So we do it in three D,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: and I still do. We have a very robust um.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Now it's it's standard to do everything in three D.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I'm working on something right
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: now where you know, VRS gotten very big in this
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: area where the act can put VR glasses on and
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: actually walk around the stage and etcetera, etcetera. That's the
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: next step. So you're presented to them. Then does it
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: depend on the artists. Some artists say love it go
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: or do they want to get in the details? What's
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: the next step out? Yeah, for the most part, I don't.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: I usually don't meet much resistance because my ideas are individual.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: I never I try not to copy any you know,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: every artist and individual, every show, every projects individual. So
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: I usually have you know, maybe there's a couple of
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: things they want to change. Great, But the next step
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: is the production manager you know, and the manager you
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: know on both soldiers how much right? And so the
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: next step is the budget and dealing with the lighting
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: companies and the and the construction companies and you know,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: things like that, and starting to really put the budget together. Um.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: And and that's the hardest part. It always is. Money
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: is always the hardest part. But but I have to say,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: with Pink Floyd, with most of the acts, I know
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: what I'm walking into Pink Floyd never ever really brought
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: the money up. A Rourke really protected me. Um Steamer
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: work was just he was an incredible human being, but
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: he really protected me and and it worked well. So
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: I've been pretty lucky. As my friend, I've been extremely
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: lucky in my in my career. Okay, let's talk about
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: the money for a second. Okay, you're talking to the
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: manager and the production manager starts zero down. Hey, is
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: it you personally who comes up with the number or
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: do you have other people who do that? And how
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: do you side what the net should be? And do
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: you negotiate or does someone else negotiate? It's changed over
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: the years, it's changed, and now now these companies are
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: so huge, the big companies, the big guys are so
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: big that uh, the lighting designers being you know, the
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: designers are there, but there's a bit of a it's
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: it's a little cloudy. It's the best way I can
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: describe it. Production managers have a lot of power also,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: so they're pretty much the guy in the middle. Everyone's
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: in the middle, and and that's where a lot of
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: the friction comes with me. Because I'm used to dealing
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: with the artists. I understand what the production manager does
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: does a great job. He's got to be there, he's
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: got to move it everywhere, he's got to make it happen.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: But when it comes to the art, so you know,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: sometimes I've had a couple of bad experiences with um,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: you know, production managers. And what would you consider to
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: be a bad experience. Oh no, I don't know. If
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: I want to go negative, Um, well go negative and
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: not mention the name, just so we can understand the concept.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Here's a good one, so Trent Reser. And this is
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: a small one, but it's a small example. So nine
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: inch nails. Um, they had a guy for years working
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: doing the lighting. For some reason, they made a switch
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: and I got the phone call and I went and
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: did it and we go into rehearsals. It was down
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: at Olympic Downtown l A. When it used to be
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: that wrestling ring, right. And the production manager, I don't know.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: I can't even describe his his presence, but he very
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: involved in everything, including what I do, which well I
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: don't get involved what he does. So don't don't get
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: come into my world. It's like, don't come into my studio.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: I'm painting, you know, Like I don't need to hear
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: about blue. So one night I'm there and late at night,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: because that's when all the magic happens, late at night,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: and I'm programming. We're now, we're in the modern age.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Moving lights. To a matter of fact, that show, I
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: took L E D screens first time ever, and I
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: used them right above their heads, like eight ft above
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: their heads, and used the light from the l E
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: ed as the light to light the band. Really, it
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: was really really attractive and very powerful, just like the band.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: The guy comes up to me and he says to me,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: I don't think those are nine inch nails colors. And
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: I remember looking at him and and I said to him,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: do you have a dictionary? And he goes, what do
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: you want a dictionary for? I need to understand what
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: that means. I don't know. I don't have any idea
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: what you mean. And obviously that that didn't go down
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: too good. It in escalated from there. Um I was
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: being I was soft pedaling it a little bit. I'm
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: not using too many names, but it's those moments where
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: an and and other things I've gotten really out of
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: hand A couple of times. Um, I do I do
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: have a bit of a temper sometimes. Most of the time,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: I don't use it because that's not a way to
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: get ahead in the world. But but I do come
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: from Philadelphia and and uh and I had a fight
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: when I was a kid a lot. So okay, we live,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: especially the younger generation, it's all about getting along. Could
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: you exercise your temper? Because you were just that much
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: in demand for a long time, people put up with me. Yes, absolutely, Yeah, Yeah,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: I had the big label on my back. I didn't
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: work too much in television because I thought most of
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: the TV stuff that I mean, I had my own
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: opinions about it, very opinionated. Um so, yeah, I got
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of trouble, but a lot of but I
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: was so good at what I did that they put
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: up with me. Also, look, it was a different time
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: because everybody was out of their minds, you know. We
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: it's no different than today. You know, what I love
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: about the world is is actually getting to this point
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: in my life looking backwards, knowing that the young generations
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: doing exactly what we did, only with different clothes, fashion, communications,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: you know, technology. But basically it's all still there. It's
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: all still going on, you know, because that's what happens
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: in life. You go through these stages and cycles. So
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. You're from Philadelphia. I'm
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: from Philadelphia. Okay, what did your parents do for a living?
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: My father was a carpet salesman. But he should have
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: he should have been a biochemist, but the depression hit
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: and his father died and he had to take care
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: of his family, so he ended up becoming a salesman.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: My mother was a homemaker. UM. And I was an
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: only child. Only child? Was there a specific reason you
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: were only child? My parents got married late in life. UM,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: And I think that I was enough. My mother always
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: said having you was enough. So so what kind of
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: kid were you grow growing up? Either kind of making trouble,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: bouncing off the walls, good student, bad students. I was
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: bouncing off the walls. But I did go to So
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: in Philadelphia there's a high school, UM and it's the
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: second oldest high school in America. It's called Central High School, UM.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: And it's all it's all academic, like a magnet school
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: and it and it draws from the whole city and
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: my father went there. Was founded in eighteen sixty three,
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: and it graduates of their classes to the Ivy League schools.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: So I went there. I barely got out. But that's
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: when I was introduced to lights because I was a
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: chairman of my sock cop committee and that's when I
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: built my first light show in tenth grade. So you're
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: the chairperson of the cop committee. What kind of talent
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: were you buying in the late sixties named talent the
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: local Bayols? Oh yeah, we bought we well, so we
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: had we lived in Philly. We were buying at Delphonix
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: and we were buying we on our senior problem. We
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: had Arthur Brown really yeah, man, yeah yeah, and he
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: lit his hair off. I gotta ask, I never saw
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Arthur Brown live. How good was he? Well? I was sixty.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: I graduated high school at sixteen. So he had his
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: hair on fire at this really fancy hotel and downtown Philadelphia,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: and so I mean it was fantastic. I mean, like
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: what else can you say? And the girl I was with,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: she just was completely blown away by and like wow.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: But in the tenth grade, I turned the high school
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: gym into this huge UV day glow, the black light
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: you know with Arco, remember the Arco Absolutely right? Okay,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: So all the Arco balls flying around the room and
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: it was complete chaos. Um and eleventh grade I think
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: was Delfon tenth grade. I can't remember the act. We
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: are no, we had good budgets. We were okay, okay,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: did you want to do all that day glow stuff?
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Because it was hip then and let's be outrageous. When
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: was your interest in visual production live lights kindle? It
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: started then? But see I was where I lived to
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: where my school was was an hour and a half
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: by bus, so there were a couple other you know,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: three busses with transfers and the whole thing. So I
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: I used to have to do that. But then there
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: was a couple of guys in my neighborhood that were
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: a year older than I was, and they had cars.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: So one of the guys Uh ended up in his
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: sixty four corvet he Um. He also had this liken.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: He would sell records forty five singles and he got
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: them from from a gamble and huff, you know, from
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: the when it was the record company not Chess, I
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: can't remember. And anyway, so he had a thing with
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: the distributor with all the forty five singles, right, and
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: so we would go to these return any dances every
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: weekend and sell singles inside of that. I had just
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: finished doing the light show and he was asked if
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: he could provide a light show for these dances. So
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: I built a light show. I did it, and we
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: used to trip around every weekend. It wasn't so much
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: I was interested in it. I was fourteen or fifteen
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: years old, so it was it was great fun and
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: I was I was meeting girls. Okay, wait, if we
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: go to the late sixties, what they called the light
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: show then was gels and oils more than light oils.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: I made, Yeah, I made my own polarized slides and
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: I had my own light bars with color origans, you know,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: sound to light, and they would they would flash everything.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: But I had projectors at all that. Okay, So why
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: did you graduate at sixteen? And what do you do
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: after you graduating? I graduated sixteen because I was skipped
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: somewhere in third grade or something. Day I don't I
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: don't have a great memory. And my parents are here
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: anymore too. I can't call them up, and you know,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: essen what what was it all about? But they skipped
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: me a grade or something and I ended up graduating
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: the sixteen. I didn't really think anything of it except
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: I couldn't drive until I got out of high school,
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: so I that was the only thing I cared about.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: I'm still really close friends with one of my high
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: school buddies. He's still in Philly. Um and we we
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: we we see each other all the time. Um um
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: but um yeah. No, after that, I went to college.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: I went to Philadelphia College and Textiles and Science for
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: um a half a year, and I got kicked out
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: for what not going to jim But I did do
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: a real professional light show before I left with the
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: James Gang, which my parents came to just turn from
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Joe Walsh and daur again. Okay, well wait, I was
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: my first real gig to James Gang in the gym
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: of this college, probably November nineteen seventies, somewhere around there. Um.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: Then they kicked me out and my father looked at me,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: and my father is always very pragmatic, the coolest dude
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: in the world, said to me, I guess you gotta
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: get a job, and goes, well, why don't you go
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: down to the lighting company you just rented those lights
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: from and asked them for a job. Okay, So I
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: went downtown. Um, I got the job. And then about
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: oh a year later, what was your job? My job
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: was was was was working in the warehouse selling This
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: business was a fifty year old theatrical supply house that
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: serviced all of the theaters in Philadelphia, all the colleges,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: all the universities, all the spectrum Larry Maggott Electric Factory,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: the whole thing. So that was my job, just taking
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: stuff everywhere. As a matter of fact, my job was
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: also doing light shows at the r Low Ballroom in Camden,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: New Jersey on Saturday nights the b y o B
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Bring your own bottle kind of you know gigs where
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: bands would play like war and I can't remember all
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: the but every Saturday night I go to Camden and
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: do light shows until like six in the morning. Um.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: That that kind of was my job. And and also
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: working in the union. So after a year or what happened.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: So the business was owned by this guy called the
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: original guy. William McAvoy had passed away. So this guy,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Adam Cutler bought it. But he was a really well
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: known sign He had a big sign company in Philadelphia, Jersey. Whatever.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: He bought the business for his son Adam, and Adam
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: was in his twenties, and what they did was uh
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: Cutler's best friend with this guy Luke Kellman. Luke Kellman
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: was sixty two sixty three years old, and he was
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: going to be the adult inside of McAvoy because Adam
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: was in his mid twenties. What happened a year later
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: was Adam didn't want a part of the business. He
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: was a free spirit nine seventy one, so he took
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: off to New Jersey to go at the apple farms,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: the theatrical like hippie kind of commune, and he just
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: didn't want the business anymore. So the old man decided, um,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: he wanted to sell the business. So Lou, and I'll
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: tell you his history because this will blow your mind.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: So Lou caton to me and goes, what your dad do?
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Does he want to come in with me? You know?
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: And I went, I don't know. So I went to
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: my dad and I said, do you want to go
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: into the business with this guy? My dad, like I
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: think he thought he calculated that. Well, he didn't send
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: me to college, he didn't have to pay for that,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: so why not. So we got in business with Lou.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: Now Lou Kellman. He had the first animated series, it
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: uh animated cartoon series called Diver Dan. This was actually probably,
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: I think on the East Coast. I can't say it
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: was before Disney, but he had, but in Philadelphia it was.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: It was very popular in the East Coast. He also
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: produced a film with Dick Gregory and Verna lesi Um
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: in the early sixties, which was unheard of. They wanted
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: him to come out to Hollywood and he refused. And
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: his nephew was Maurice Kessler. Now Maurice Kessler was on
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: Thirteenth Street and he owned a company called NFL Films,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: and so Lou used to work at night in the warehouse,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: you know, cutting NFL films. He actually started Nflms NFL
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Films with Mars and I knew all those guys and
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: they were around. And then inside of that there was
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: another guy hanging around called Garrett Brown, and Garrett Brown
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: used to come get loose stage advice because Lou was
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: actually just boy genius and really well respected. Garrett Brown
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: event at the Steadicamp, which a lot of it was
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: assembled in the warehouse where I was in business with
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: this guy. So my education, it was my college. It
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: really was my college and and that's how I really learned.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Between that working union stages, doing all that stuff. That
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: that's really where I got my my own Yeah, all
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: my education. So how do you transition to big rock acts? Well,
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: I loved music. So my uncle, um he played uh
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: big in big bands, played in Dorset's band, and played
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: a bunch of other bands. Um, he was the black
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: sheep of the family. My mother hated him. He smoked hope.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: He was a photographer. He but he loved me and
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: he gave me my first camera and enlarging machine, my
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: first clarinet. I mean, he was you know, he he
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: was a cool dude. Um. And so I was always
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: and my dad was really in the Broadway shows. So
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: music was always in the house, Um, jazz, Broadway shows.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: It was always in my psyche. And so I when
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: I moved out and I was living, you know, downtown Philly,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: I loved music. I was listening to w MMR ed
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: Shocky all the time. It became one of my good friends.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: And uh, I met Bruce Springsteen through it. In no
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: other ways I met I met the music, I met
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: the man through it. Because Philly was Bruce's probably biggest Town,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: you know, in the beginning, that's what started started. But
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: before that, because I went around all of Pennsylvania doing
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: light shows, there was a Steve Miller gig I got
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: and it was at Penn State University, and I did
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: my design in my head and I drove whatever it
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: was four hours after Penn State did the show. I
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: thought I'd meet Steve at the end of it, and
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: that didn't happen. That didn't happen anyway, Steve came back. Well,
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: I was doing Pink Floyd and UH, New York. I
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: guess it was eighty seven Masson Square Garden eight nine on.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: And remember at UH at the end of the show,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: I always remember, I looked at my left and there's
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Steve Miller right off the riser looking at me, and
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: and I went, whoa, because I never really got over,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: not not getting anywhere with it any any uh. He goes, hey, Matt,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: this was just unbelievable, goes, I want to I want
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: to work with you. I'm like, okay, you know, I
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: want to work with you. He goes, okay, So I'm
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: going out like two months. I want everything you have
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: up there, and I wanted in two trucks which was like,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: you know, impossible, impossible. Well, you're in Philly and you
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: meet Bruce, how do you end up working with Bruce? Well,
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: it was that first show. I said it earlier. It
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: was Widener College, and I talked my way in to
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: to be see. I mean, back then the colleges had
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: a budget and they would so the bands would just
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: show up and they'd have to hire local sounds and
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: lights and so the guy that was doing Bruce's sound
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: around the Tri State area was a guy called Dave
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Hughes Sound Specialties. Even though Claire Brothers and Lydditz was
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: just down the road and I was I knew Roy
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: and Gene and Michael. He showed up later, um and
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: and so I showed up a Widener. I knew every
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: every musical queue. I knew every time Clarence was going
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: to hit it. Stephen wasn't in the band. This was
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: back when it was Boom Boom, Carter, Davy, Sanchez and
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: Clarence with um um, you know Gary. And so at
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: the end of it, a pel was just blown away,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: throws me back. It takes me backstage to meet Bruce,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: and Bruce goes, yeah, man, he goes, I really noticed
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: the difference. Yeah, if you can, if you can somehow
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: figure out a way to show up at all the gigs, man,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: I'd love to have you around, right Like, they didn't
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: hire me. They had no money. They were they were
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: driving around station wagons. I was driving around in a van. Okay,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: so did you show up? I did. I would call
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: up all the promoters and tell them that, Well, Barry
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: Bell from William Morris told me to call you to
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: tell you that I'm the sanctioned lighting designer for Bruce Springsteen.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: I would lie through my teeth all the time, and
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: and my price was right, which was what zero fifty
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: bucks or less? Yeah, okay, so Bruce starts to accelerate.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Were are you in that equation? I'm very much in
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: there because Bruce plays the bottom line. I think for
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: two nights, I forget what your was. It must have
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: been like seventy two, seventy three, seventy three, big, big,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: big thing at the bottom line. I hitched hype to
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: New York. I didn't even have a car. I hitchhike
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: to New York. I figured I'd hitch hike back or
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: or oh no, I was gonna sleep at the roadies
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: house two nights. So I was gonna sleep at the
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: Roadies house, Mike Batlan's house overnight, and then somehow maybe
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: I was going to get a room that second night
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: and then take a train back or something. I don't know,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: but I don't remember exactly what happened. I hitch hiked
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: up the bottom Line. I walked in the bottom Line,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: and obviously there was so much hype going on, and
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: I was met with that wall of technicians. You know,
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: it was a big that was the big time right
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: bottom line, New York City, early seventies. And they all
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: looked at me, like, what do you want and I'm like, well,
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: on Bruce's light guy, Oh yeah, New York. It's like,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: you know, walking into Madison Square Garden the first time,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: you know. And anyway, I did did my job. I
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: did everything I needed to do, and at the end
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: of it, I was getting ready to leave and Mike
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Capelle shows up and he said to me, do you
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: know do you know who was do you know who
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: was just backstage with Bruce Clide Davis, And do you
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: know what Clive Davis said? Clide Davis says, I can't
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: let you go. I have to hire you right now
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: in the spot. You can't just go around picking up
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: gigs like that and showing up. You have to become
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: part of our organization. And I hope he gives you
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: the money for it anyway. That that's that was the
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: moment that I then started touring with Bruce exclusively. And
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: how long did that? Laugh sadly, I mean triumphantly. It
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: lasted until one was born in the USA that was
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: it was before that was like eighty three. I think
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: maybe Babe was eighty three efore. Yeah, yeah, Nebraska, Yeah,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: well whatever, those years. I mean, it was great. When
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: Mike left, it wasn't so great. Stevie shows up, that's great.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: Landau was there, he wasn't a fan. It gets a little,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: it gets it gets, it gets a little weird, and
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: and Bruce is getting really big. At the same time,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: I had moved to California. I was managing South Side
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: Johnny with Stephen Tour managing them. I was on the
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: road with them and I was part of it. But
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: then some weird stuff started going on. So I decided
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: to move to California. And my parents had just moved
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: out here year earlier, so I figured I'd come out
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: here I could still work with Bruce. Wait, wait just
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: for one second. What happened to the lighting company when
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: they said they were gonna hire me? I kind of
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: went back and realized this was what I wanted to do,
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: and that we were gonna have to sell our interests.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: And we did, and and it was bought by this
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: guy who I'm still friends with, this guy Don Earle
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: out of He lives in Lanta City. Now he's got
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: a lighting come in Atlantic City called Earls Girls. It's
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: a great guy. You know, right before the pandemic. I
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: met him in New York, had lunch, you know, so um, yeah,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: he bought He bought my share and kept lou employed.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: Louis state employed. Okay, so you're did you make anybody
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: when we sold it? No? Okay, So I moved to California.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: You're managing South Side with Stephen. Well, that kind of
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: went south because something went on. Something went on where,
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: and I don't still don't know to this day. I
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: don't know. Anyway, it was time to go because I
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: was living a mom a's beach. I had moved up
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: to Jersey. I was living a momma's beach across the
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: street from Clarence and UM and I took off. I
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: came out here and we did UM. So I got
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: married out here and Bruce played at my wedding, UM
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: at the Whiskey Elmer closed it and you know I
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: had I had Bruce, Boss Gags, Rickey, Lee Jones all
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: at my playing there, my house band, and I brought
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: out Jerry blabbittt, the DJ from Philly, the heater with
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: the Heater, who everybody loved. He came out and everything
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: was okay. Bruce then wrote The River and there were
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: some songs on the River that my wedding inspired him,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: because if you look at the cover, there's the the
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: wedding dress and a little girl want to marry you,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: and that he told me there were a few songs
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: on there that I inspire. That history kind of has
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: changed though through the years I've been kind of not
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: persona non grata um by you know, not not to
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: get into that, but things change. Well, let's just go
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: a little bit. When it ends with Bruce, does it
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: end ugly? Yeah? Okay, And at this late date, any
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: contact with that camp where there's no reason I've seen
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: I've seen Bruce a number of times and it's been
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: very friendly, which is fine. It's like having a divorced wife.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: It's it's like, you know, because back then I was
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: there when none of us had any money. He didn't
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: have any money. When he split with a pell, the
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: crew took basically you know, I don't know all the details,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: but we used to like work for very little, and
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: we just kept going on the road while he was
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: going through a lawsuit. And then when there was a
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: change of you know, management, you know, Stevie departed, then
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: I departed. There was a pattern going on anyway, as
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, God bless everybody at Tiny Tim So I
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: I don't hold any any things and it's at this
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: point in my life it doesn't really matter. Um. The
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: last time was so Bruce and John Um was when
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: The Rascals opened on Broadway, which Stevie and I did. Um.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: They were at the they were at the at the
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: opening and the after part and it was all really
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: very pleasant. The weird part about I have a very
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: distinctive voice because I'm from Philly, But over the years,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: every time I would run into some of them, like
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: Roy Bitton lives in my neighborhood. He lives on Point doom.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: I run into him at the market, fantastic. Um. But
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: every time I'd run into Bruster John or Barry Bell,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: they would never know who I was. They would always
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: go do it, and I go no. It was actually comical.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: It's like something out of Larry David. Um. Um, it's
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: a shame. Look. I grew up with Springsteen's music one
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: hands down on four hours music with no set list,
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: where everybody was trained as a unit. That's what made
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: me who I was because there were no set lists.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: It was like he would he would get on that
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: stage and it was like a force of nature back then,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: you know, and he continued doing that throughout his years. Um.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: I saw the show on Broadway to um, which was
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: a different thing. Obviously he's there by himself. Um it
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: it really what he did with it. It toughened me
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: up for the rest of my experiences in the business
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: on a certain level because I was really naive, really naive.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Um and um. It was painful, but you know what
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: they say, one thing begets another. When I got hired
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: for Pink Floyd the night before, I find out many
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: years later that Alan Parker and Roger waters Uh together
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: went to a Springsteen show and they were blown away
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: by the lighting and that when that moment came that
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: Roger knew that, Um, he had to change the lighting
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: guy out. He said, find the guy. Nobody knew who
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: I was. Find the guy that did Springsteen. And that's
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: how I got that phone call. Okay. So if it
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: ends with Springsteen, just to be clear, it ends with
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: Springsteen around Born in the USA or after the River,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: when does it end for you? It ended because of
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: myself and Roger Waters and Bruce and some people maybe
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: miscommunicating some things. And so it was right before Bruce
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: started Born in the USA rehearsals, and and it should
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: it didn't need to have ended, but it did. It was.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: So what's that three? Probably something like that. Okay. But
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: while you were working for Bruce starting in the early seventies,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: were you also working for other racks? Not until um,
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: I got out of here with Bruce at the Roxy.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: So we're just like the bottom line, We go and
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: play the Roxy for two nights whenever. That was seventy five,
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: I think he was born and born to run. I
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: think it was seventy five, and I was really a
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: handful I loaded. I brought all my own. By that point,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: I would bring lights into everywhere I went. I wouldn't
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: use just what was in the house. Bringing lights into
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: the Roxy was unheard of. It raised all kinds of alarms.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: And I walked in there and this guy shows I
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: mean it was late at night, it was after a show.
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: It was like one and two in the morning. I'm
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: loading in all these lights and this guy shows up
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: with a kind of a cowboy hat, swede, long hair
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: down to here. Really yeah, And I'm I'm being a dick,
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm really, I'm being a fucking asshole. And
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: and he walks up to me and very quietly says,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: can I help you? I'm Elmer Valentine. And while I
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: owned this place and the rocks the Rainbow next door,
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: is there anything I can do for you? And I
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: looked at alway, Yeah, I need some pizza. And the
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: next thing I know from the Rainbow is like eight
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: pieces delivered to the stage, and he goes, is there
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: anything else I can do for you? You know? Yeah,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: when you have those moments, I mean, Elma and I
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: became and and and Mario and Lou and I'd see
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: Lou Everyone's While he doesn't remember me, Elmer was was
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: the man, you know. Um. But we did to show
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: it the next night and that that little booth and uh,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: they did thunder Rode. Bruce started with thunder Roade and
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: just as and I would have these two blue lights
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: just that's all, no spotlight or anything. And Roy's playing
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: the piano. He and Bruce had the harmonica, but I
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: would do the thing where you wouldn't see his face.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: That whole idea of making him more cinematic was part
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: of my my my repertoire, you know, my my practice. Um.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: And at the end of it, when the two blue
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: lights are fading, fading, fading, suddenly this woman just jumped
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: up into the window. Her face is right in the
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: window and she goes, I love you just like that, right,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: and she sits back down and I'm like, yeah, because
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: we're getting ready to get into I don't know what
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: he was doing. Next, Almer looks at me. He's standing
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: right next to me, and Alma was like, you could
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: hear him kind of just just breathing a little heavier
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: than normal because it was very dramatic, you know, and
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: the place was you could hear a pin drop and
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: it wasn't just because of a lighting because it was
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: it was giving Bruce that envelope of really putting forth
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: what he was trying to communicate. He was faceless at
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: that time, you know. I mean it was very dramatic,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: very theatrical, and and and then Elma goes that was
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: Carol King and I'm like what. Well, within about a month,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: six weeks, I was working with Carol King and she
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: threw me into her tour which they had already hired
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: this lighting guy, and he got pushed aside for letting
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: me come in. This was kind of a pattern for
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: me in the seventies where they would push aside the
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: guy that was there, and I would get placed inside
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: these unknown, you know, unknown people unknown. The only person
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: I would have a friend with would be the artist
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: that would that would be it. So this is before automation,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: So you have to go you have to go to
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: every show absolutely and run the board and talked to
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: all these crazy spotlight guys. But I kept innovating the
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: whole time. I kept innovating and innovating and innovating, and
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: you know, I kept upping the anti because I could,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, wherever I could innovate I would, and I
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: kept pushing the envelope even without the automation. When the
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: automation showed up, which was eighty six, you know, very light.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: I'm still friends with the guy. He called me up,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: wanted me to go see Genesis. And oh, by the way,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: just just from the time with Carol and I left Bruce.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: Then I really started working a lot of people. My
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: next one up was Joni Mitchell, which I had to
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: probably one of the best experiences ever. And I have
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: a I have a painting she made for me which
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: I cherished to this day. And and that's when I
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: became friends with Elliott, you know. And and there were
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: some managers that could deal with my insanity, Steve Elliott,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean there were some managers that could
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: understand what was going on in my brain. So you
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: just were just so, I know, you were just yourself seven.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: You didn't care how you came across or anything. No. Well,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: now now I would probably be I probably now in
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: this day and age, in this enlightened time that we
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: live in, you know, and I mean that I really
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: do that that I probably would have been diagnosed with
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: like Tourette's a d H D all of it, you know,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: I told you, you know, just I'm just one of
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: the bipolar. I don't know, I'm one of those guys.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: I'm on all the time. I've learned how to. I've
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: had to learn how to somewhat tamp it down. But
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: the other part of it is if I tamp it
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: down too much, I'm not creative anymore. My brain shuts down.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: I don't think well. Usually people were that abbed up.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: If they're literally bipolar, they also crashed and get depressed.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: On the other side, do you have that outside too, well,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: when I'm not working, when I feel like nobody likes
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: me and then I beat the ship out of myself,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: or when I'm dealing with look the golden age that
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: we lived and we grew up. Your columns are the
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: are the lifeblood of my of my of the times
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: when I do get depressed, because I read that and
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: you bring me back to such great times and memories
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: and it makes it balances me out to a place
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: where I'm like kind of going, why I did some
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: really great things. It's it's okay, you know, And yeah,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: you're older now, and that's just normal. It's a normal
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: cycle of life, right, And you have to do this yourself.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: You have to find your own audience. Mark and I
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: had these discussions, and my wife is amazing. She's Katherine.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: She's been with me for twenty years. And I have
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: a producer named Alicia Griego who has to deal with
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: me on a day to day basis. And you know,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: it ain't easy for either one of them doing the math.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: That is not the woman who got married too with
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: the whiskey. What happened there? No, um, we we we
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: You know I was too young to get married. She
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: was my childhood sweetheart, you know. We she's but she's
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: out here living in l A. I haven't seen her
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: since we got married. Um, she's out here. Became a
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: really well known makeup artist. She started doing that when
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: I started going the road a lot. And she actually
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: does lots of TV and films. She has two kids.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: They're probably grown up now I have That's what I
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: understand she's doing. She was a lovely, you know, lovely woman,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: and you know it happened. As a matter of fact,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: I got married a few times. But I've been with
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: Katherine now twenty years, so I'm I'm I'm there. How
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: many times you've been married four times. So the first
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: one is your childhood sweetheart. What breaks up the relationship
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: with the childhood sweetheart? The girl I met on the
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: road on on the on the River tour, and we
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: did meet her where in Detroit? Okay, play that out.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: She was just backstage and I just she's sitting on
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: a curb. She didn't have any tickets. It was her
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: and thinking, her sister and a couple of other people,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: a couple of other girls. So we just, you know,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: just gave me passes they came in. I don't know.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: That was a mistake. Not a mistake, that's the wrong
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: thing to say. Eight Yeah, I was. I was out
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: of control. I'll be the first one to admit it
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: it probably, but I was still very child like I
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: I you know, it's probably the best way to probably anyway.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: Then I started really working a lot, so that was
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: probably early eighties. I got divorced and and then I
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: was working NonStop. I I started doing films out here
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: and did some TV. I worked on About I did
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: Streets of Fire with Joel Silver, who just you know,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: he gave me. I was like I was a god
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: or something, you know, because of all the scenes and
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: I mean it was crazy some of the things I've done. Um.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: And so I got on a film called The Running
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: Man and and I ended up on The Running Man
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: for the whole shoot. Um, and we were shooting in
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: Fontana on location. When I came back after the shoot,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: my wife at the time was pregnant and I know
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: it wasn't mine. So um yeah. So that ended number two.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: So that was number two. So I tell a story
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: of number three, Number three. That's a little bit more complicated.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: But um, by the way, I still talked to number two.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: Talked to number three number one that I went. I
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: tried to stay friendly with her. Number two number two.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: Did she keep the baby? Oh yeah, oh yeah, I've met.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: I met the baby. She's like thirty five years old now,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: and she said, you know, she's a woman, she's you know,
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: I met her once, she was living out here. I
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: met her once. But number three, number three was was
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: a woman of you know, she very independent. I feel
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: like I'm at a therapist. She was like she was.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: She was. She was in the fashion world, very high end.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: She was partners with a really famous designer called Katherine Hamnett.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: And I met her when I was starting the Pink
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: Floyd UM seven tour um when Roger had left, and
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I had I'm probably not really good,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: probably not really good at being alone, even though I'm
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: only I'm an only child. But there was a connection
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: that I've never really dug weight deep down. And I
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: was so busy. I was just everywhere all the time,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: and you know, I was flying at the top of
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: the of the world. I mean, you couldn't have a
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: better job for someone who is probably really mentally afflicted, right,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: I mean I recognized that, and so I felt very lucky.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: So how did you meet three had? How did it
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: in with three? Well, she she was David Gilmore. Wanted
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: to go get some clothes at the Woman's you know
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: that's really famous fashion design before we went on tour.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: So we went up there. I started chatting her up
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: and then she came to a couple of shows and
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it just happened. It just happened. And
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: then I was living in London. Now I'm living in London,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: and because she had a house in London, and it's
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: just I know I more at that time, I had
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: more friends in England than I did over here. L
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: a has always been problematic for me. I never really
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: felt at home. But while and while I was in London,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: I am, I was, I continued working, had an office.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: It was great. London was really very good for me
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: the years that I lived there. Um and then and
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: then UM I did all kinds of things when I
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: was there. UM I had, I had, I had a
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: good network there. And and Gabby her name was Gabby,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: Gabby Schnyder. She had a daughter who was six years old.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: So I became like an instant father. So how did
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: it end? And how did you end up back in America? Unfortunately,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: Gabby was diagnosed with a brain tumor and had to
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: be operated on. It was ninety four when when Pink
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: Floyd's going down that really huge store and the operation
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: and until she lost her eyesight in one eye, and
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: and it just took a toll on all of us
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: and somewhere around, you know, just relationships. And then the
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: best way I could describe it was we probably all
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: didn't behave but there was. It was really difficult. It
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: was just really difficult. So um I left um and
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: and I came back here. Then how did you me?
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: Number four? You've been with for twenty years and oil, well,
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: I stayed single for a while and figuring I better
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: get my act together, and I kind of fell down
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: but then picked myself back up, um, because I was
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: definitely spinning out of control a little bit or a lot.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: And then, um, this guy Patrick Stansfield. I don't know
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: if you know who he is. So Patrick cost me
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: up one day it says, I want to put you
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: on this board of directors, you know, for for the
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: psl N that magazine. We're having a meeting, which and
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: I was not in the best place, so I said sure.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: I figured this wasn't maybe a good way to get back.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: So anyway, so I go to the meeting and there
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: was this really beautiful woman sitting across me and she's
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: really smart. You can tell her, she's really really smart,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: and I'm like wow. Anyway, so we do a couple
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: more meetings and then one day Patrick calls me up
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: and says, hey, you know, Catherine thinks you're cute. And
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: I'm like forty nine years old, and I went, I
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: don't feel cute, Patrick, but if that's you know, if
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: that's what she's saying, then um, okay, tell her I
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: think she's cute also, So then the next meeting we
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: kind of looked at each other, like you know, and
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: then she's fixed me a cup of coffee, and I
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: asked her out to lunch, and we've been together ever since.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: Truth be told, she never said that and always just
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: pa to who was the matchmaker? Wow, wow, great story.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: Let's go back something you said earlier though, you said
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: California is challenging for you. You didn't feel like you
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: ever really fit in friends or a problem. So why
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: are you living here? Well, my parents were here, My
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: parents are here. And then, um, like I said, I
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: lived in London. I had had a house when I
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: first moved out here, sold it. Then I was renting places,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: and then when Gabby got ill, I bought this place
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: here in Malibu, and I'm out in a really really special,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: very lucky, really special place in Malibu. Been here thirty
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: years now, and I just stayed. You're on the beach
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: just above it. Talk about the money. If you have
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: a house like that, needless to say, that's not cheap
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: real estate even back then. How did you charge and
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: did you negotiate or did somebody else negotiat How did
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: it work? That's a really good that's some managers, most
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: importantly probably Michael Littman managed me for quite a while,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: and another guy called Michael Brokaw. And UM, I've had
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: some lawyers. Um, I've had I tried all that. UM.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: I think back then it was just a different world,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: and I think that people viewed what I did my peers.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of guys out there that Steve Cohen
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: and Roy Bennett and and you know, uh, um, Jonathan Smeaton, um,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: all all of us. UM. I think we kind of
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: started this industry that then some of these companies have
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: kind of taken took the blueprint, and so the money
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: was different. It's like kind of pioneers in the beginning,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: like no different than bitcoin or something like that. You
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: kind of got in in the beginning, right, and that
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: that was my bitcoin. That's probably the best way to describe.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: So it was lucrative. It was lucrative bit of what
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: But I can never get royalties. I was never see
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: I Like I said in the very beginning of the show,
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: I said that I'm a visual producer just like an
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: audio producer. Well, you know, I would see the audio
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: producers getting royalties because there was a mechanism. I would
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: see the Broadway lighting designers, set designers get royalties because
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: it was part of the mechanism. So I would go
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: to the bands and then that Sometimes it would be
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: me negotiating that that, you know, I'd say, look, I'm
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: the I'm the executive vice president of UM. You know,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: I hope my audio has worked. I'm seeing it. Just
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: splash stuff on to the timeline. I just hope it's
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: going to come out all right, because I'm having too
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: much fun anyway. So I always thought, you know, especially
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: now because of all the streaming stuff, I thought there
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: should be in mechanism, because well, we're providing the visual
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: portion of the program, there should be you know. I mean,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: look at Spotify. Even if you even on the streaming stuff.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: All my stuff is streaming the hundreds of millions of people,
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: all the Pink Floyd stuff to go on more stuff,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: just his stuff. I do the Empire State Building. Uh,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: you know, I stuck M and M up there. I had.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know how many millions of people. I there's
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: no mechanism for for what we do my industry, not
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: for the old guys like me and the guys I
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: just mentioned or for the young guys, we there's no
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: not a dime comes to us income wise, because well
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: that would they some people don't feel like we're worthy
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: that we don't contribue. I mean, I'll probably fight that
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: fight until I take my last breath, because to me,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: there's no difference. There should be some mechanism. You know,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: it's important. Okay, let's talk about technical innovation, especially in
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: the eighties, you know, automation things start to explode. Tell
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: us about some of the innovations, and tell us about
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: some of the innovations you brought to the market. Well
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: back in seventy seven when I was doing Bruce was
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: seventy seven. You know, I built my own console, so
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: I kept and I would cobble together from a few
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: different companies parts, and then I was recognized by this
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: company called tom Field Associates. And then they went on
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: to become well ultimately they went on to become PRG
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: if you track it all the way back and and
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: and they they were that board, the flash buttons, the
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: matrix buttons that they built for me. You know, they
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: saw how I worked, and so we actually started the
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: consoles that now everybody uses. I know, when they were
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: building the Very like console. They saw my tiny little
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: database I had that I was using on my macs SI,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: you know, to to to run the show, and you know,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: they tried to integrate that. We we you know, I
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: worked closely. That was the beginning of some innovation. I
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: used to get called on to to you know, to
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: consult on some of the new moving lights. But I
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: think the biggest innovation I did was probably in eighty
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: seven when I decided to use very lights for for
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: Pink Floyd. But I didn't The Genesis show was unbelievable
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: first time you see it with those lights doing I mean,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: it was just But I couldn't do Pink Floyd like that.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: So my idea was that, well, they're moving, they're going
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: X Y, so I'm gonna add Z. So I'm gonna
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: make these pods. I'm gonna track them seven And really
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of automation back then. It that
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: I had to get some guy out of New York
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: to write the program and we built these you know,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: to to actually right and they had to figure out
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: how to get the pods. But what I had was
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: when Gilmour is doing a solo, I could start to
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: pod on stage left, and it it could be aimed
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: a certain angle like that and it could track all
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: the way across the stage and come down right on
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: top of his head and then fly out again. And
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: so I had four of those with all kinds of lights,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: and and then I had the screen, you know, um
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: mr screen as they called it. But the screen and
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: the screen had always had just park hands around it.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: So I put very lights around it, and it started
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: suddenly became its own object, you know. And there's lots
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: of funny stories about all you know about all of that,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: um so I you know, okay, anyway, it's just something
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: about the audio doesn't look right, but okay, um so so.
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, but inside of that, when they were trying
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: to teach me about the very lights, um I went
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: to Dallas and they were teaching me how to program.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: And I remember looking at the guy and suddenly had
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: this thought, and I said, what are you doing for
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: the next six months? He goes, I don't know. I've
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: I said, good, You're coming on the road. And then
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: what I did was I went around the six other companies.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: I got lasers and an operator I got I realized
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: I could make my own band out at the mix,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: and I could conduct. I didn't need to push the
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: buttons anymore. I had these guys, and I had automation,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: and suddenly I had this huge world. So I really
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: so now when you go to shows or anything, you
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: see have these huge production areas. Not saying that Broadway
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: didn't have automation, they didn't have very much of it.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: But it was the idea of bringing all of these disciplines,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: all of these really talented operators and designers, because a
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: lot of the guys ended up becoming directors and designers
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: in their own right. And it was the ability to
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: mold many different technologies together to create the picture. Um.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: I could you know the first time we brought a
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: Jumbo tron onto a stage and it traveled on railroad
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: tracks because to move it was genesis. Um you know,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: we can't dance store. Um Genesis bought those jumbo tron's
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: from Sony, you know, with a lot of money, and
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: then they went off after that, and then the whole
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: industry exploded to to what it is today. Um. So
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: I introduced a lot of things, never never really stuck
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: with it. To me, it was I just had to
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: keep I just had to keep it innovating. That was
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: my head. I just what could I do next? Like
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: when I got to Pink Floyd. Um, I remember Clinton
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: was talking about the Star Wars lasers. So I called
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: up huge aircraft and somehow I got to there research
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: and engineering department down on La Joya. They sent a
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: helicopter and they flew me down there, and I walked
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: into this room full of all these engineers because I
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: want at the Star Wars lasers. That's what I wanted,
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: you know, And I wanted him to take them out
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: on Pink Floyd. And so the first thing we talked
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: about was ionizing the air of the stadium, which would
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: just create this enormous bang, right, And I remember saying
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: that the guys, now, I don't think that's a good
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: idea because they've done They've flown an airplane over the
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: crowd at like five feet and gotten that bank. So
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: I what about the lasers And they go, well, there's
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: these fifty watt lasers that are gold copper vapor and
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: they're very dangerous. They split isotopes. You know in England,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: you know, that's what they do for a living. And
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: I went, great, where do I go. So I flew
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: over to England and I took those on tour complete
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: with the f A, a tracking me um every every
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: tour stop, especially outdoors. But if they were that dangerous,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: how did you make sure you didn't have any bad circumstance? Well, look,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, all joking aside, that's safety's number number one priority.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: It was. I mean, as the industry became more and
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: more complicated, and more technology came in and more equipment
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: came in, we were all aware of what was going on,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: and safety was always the top of the you know,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: it really was. I mean there were some things we
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: did that we probably shouldn't have done, you know, but
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: it didn't We never really endangered anybody's life, you know.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: I remember the Yes Tour and nine O two on
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: five whatever. It was maybe the first time I saw
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: it where the lighting rig the trust actually lowered. Who
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: came up with that? And you know, it was a
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: phase for a while. I don't know what year was that.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: That was. That was Michael Take Love, Michael take the
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: legend himself alive and well lit. Its So let's also
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: go back to Pink Floyd. You worked on the come
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: back of the Wall I did, so you're like the
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: only person who worked with both camps. Yeah, well, when
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: Roger decided to do it in two oh eight to nine,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: beginning to or nine, I was thinking was too eight
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: We started talking to oh eight because I hooked back
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: up with Roger again in two oh six or two
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: oh seven because I had I had gone to the
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: Gilmork camp, right, so you know usually your person on
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: grotto with Roger after that, Well, yeah, the whole thing
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: was like that. But then, well, you know, life has
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: a funny way of presenting opportunities to one when they
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: have to, and I always got along with Roger. You
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: remember back in seventy nine the night before in his
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: brain I was, you know, I could be completely out
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: of my mind, but I got the job done with
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: all this automation, etcetera. Did you ever get to the
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: point where you could send the show on the road
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: You didn't have to go? I did. But what would happen?
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about that for a second, because what
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: would happened is the only time, the only time I
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: was able to when I did stuff like that, the
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: only time I was able to um like, let's say
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: that wouldn't be a royalty. But it would be another
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: bump in the design was when when they'd be on
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: tour and do exactly that I sent it on. I
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: I used, I used to have five shows out at
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: the time, all the time, and what would happen. I'll
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: leave somebody out there and then the manager, production manager, record,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: whoever it was, would come up to the guy left
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: out there, and the look, we don't want to bring
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: Mark back. We don't want to pay him, so we're
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: gonna give you ten grant here, take the ten grand,
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: shut up and just do the show. We'll deal with Mark.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: He'll still love you. And they would take the money
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: and then I'd never get the phone call again. That
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: happens a lot, and it did, you know, Okay, but
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: once that tour is done, they needed a whole new
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: production for the next show. Yeah, but by then the
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: bridge has been burned. I won't go back because it's
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: just not right. Did they call you to go back? Sometimes? Sometimes? Um,
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: I usually moved on to other things, and I have
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: some you know, there's a thing called respect, and you
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: know that's just not respectful. Sorry, like it just isn't okay.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: So the phone is ringing enough all these years that
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: you weren't worried about this show. I said, the phone's
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: gonna continue to ring. Who cares about it? Did it? Did? Okay?
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: You know they have all these guild and all this
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: ship in the movie business and TV business. How did
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: you get into that and how did you interface with
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: the established players? Same same routine. Because when I started
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: doing films with Joel, Joel found me. The film was
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: called Streets of Fire. Obviously he's been to a Springsteen show.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: He found me. He wanted Bruce to do. He wanted
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: to use Streets of Fire. They weren't Bruce wasn't given
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: any music to to Hollywood. This was Joel's first big picture.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: I get up on the set, you know, I take
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: a bunch of meetings. I can't remember the DP, but
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: it was. It was Walter Hill, who actually lives down
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: the street from where I live. Um, and I mean,
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: God bless him. He was great the director and Joel
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: was amazing. Joel that was my first shot in Hollywood
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: with It was great, but it kind of worked that way.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: I was an anomaly, like you know, where no one
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: had ever come in with moving lights, and so they
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: didn't know how to categorize me. I was very respectful
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: of the unions and the guilds, and they gave me
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: a pass. Just like most of the arenas in the
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: very beginning of the seventies, I always they do well
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: one or two things, and pretty much the working thing
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: was they saw these rock concerts as a source of income.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: So what they would do is they'd have their crews there,
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: we'd have our cruise and we'd work together. And it
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: became this to this day. You'll work in walking walking
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: to Madison Square Garden. You'll have a full IATSI crew,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: and then you'll have you know, the road crew that
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: is non union and we all worked together. So it
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: they were pretty welcoming. They wanted to learn about all
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: this new stuff. Tell me about the two tours or
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: shows that you're most I'm really proud of the Empire
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: State Building Um because because just because personally so, I
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: wanted to describe to people what was involved, say the
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: same kind of deal. I get this phone call from
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: Ron Delson Er Brickman Brickman. Ron Delson, the biggest promoter
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: in New York, the godfather of the East Coast UM
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: and this guy, the owner, the owner of the building.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: He's gonna call you and you're gonna owe me millions.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: You gonna owe me millions, you know, and then he
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: hangs up right and sure enough, but I don't know.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: A week later, just guy calls me, you know, Anthony Malkin,
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: and we have this great conversation and and he had
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: decided to make the building all led and what he
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: was looking for, well he describes it now, he was
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: looking for a race car driver. And what was being
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: given to him were just a lot of, you know,
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: really smart engineers, but there wasn't a race car driver.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: There are engineers a totally different discipline he wanted. And
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: he's a rock and roll guy. He loves Grateful day
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: lest prank Floyd, loves Neil Young, you know, I mean,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: just yeah, he wanted he wanted that energy. That's what
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: he wanted. So I got hired in twelve still worked,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: they're still working with him remotely. And so what exactly
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: did you do for those who haven't seen it, Well,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: we we we We were involved in lighting the building
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: every evening and creating all the looks we do. We
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: used to do before COVID some really special shows. Um like,
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: but I put eminem on top of the Empire State
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: Building for Jimmy Kimmel Show. But it should have been
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: live live. It wasn't because the way TV works, it
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: had to be taped a week before it was shown,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: and it kind of looked everyone knew what has happening.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: We had two helicopters circling the building for four hours.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: So Jesus Christ, I mean, on social media was like,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: oh my god, they're invading you know, who's going on?
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean that night in New York was crazy,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: but they should have played that more out, you know. Anyway,
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: But the whole idea Empire State Building for me is
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: was is really great because it's ongoing and we've done
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: some really great things there and we get a lot
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: of we've we've done some really cool collaborations, a lot
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: of really great artists, people, institutions, and you know, I
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: was involved in and um when they when they when
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: CNN used it to put the election on the building.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: You know, those moments, you can't you know that those
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: are really historical moments. Um in terms of my their
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: music shows, God, that that's hard, that's that's really hard. Obviously,
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: Pink Floyd, you know, and and the David Gilmore and
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: the Roger Waters shows equally. I mean, you know, Dave,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: I I stopped working with Roger Anden, but I continued
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: working with David in and the Pompei show for me
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: was probably you know, and all the Albert Hall shows
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: just fantastic, um, you know, really small, intimate, but we
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: knew what the audience was coming for. And David is
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: just the master. You know, he's the Buddha of all time.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: The name another show you didn't do that you respect
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: the work of David byrne Utopia? Like whoever? I don't.
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: I don't remember off the top of my head who
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: did it. David had a big hand in it. I
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: know that. Just absolutely stunned. Can you name another one.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: I don't go to too many shows, even before the COVID,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: I don't. I didn't go to too many shows because
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't want to be influenced. I just
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: there's something in just for me that I you know. Um,
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to think, uh god, I'm not being disrespectful
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: to anybody. UM. I mean some of the nine inch
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: now shows earlier on like let's say I'll go back
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: a little bit, so some of those shows I saw
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: which were great. Steve Cohen with Billy Joel was always great.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: Love Steve Cohen. We've been buddies since the seventies, you know. Um.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Smeaton, Peter Gabriel shows back in the early eighties. Fantastic, brilliant, brilliant,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: brilliant mind Jonathan Smeaton, Um, Um, I mean I can
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: if I really start putting my thinking cap on things
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: will my brain doesn't work as quickly as it used to. Okay,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: let's just go to a couple of other things. How
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: did you get involved with the Olympics? Hello, Mark Brickman. Hello,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: my name is Peppo Soul and I am the executive
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: producer of the Barcelona Olympics, you know. I mean, it
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: was just that phone call and he says, I have
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: a piece of paper here, and it says and through
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: all my competitors, really famous TV lighting directors like Bob Dickinson.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: And I think Bob Dickinson is brilliant. Loved the man himself,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: and I love his work, you know, for what he does.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: And they had they were all on this list, and
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: he said, and he reads the names down and he says,
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: next to each name, it says safe. And then I
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: come to your name and it says Mark Brickman Risk
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: and he says, will you come to Barcelona? And I went, yeah,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: I'm in and I went and spent fourteen months there
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: and it was just marvelous. I turned out the stadium lights.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: Usually I find the easiest thing to do is turn
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: everything off. Whatever was whenever I'm called into these things,
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: you turn everything. If you start over again in darkness,
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: it's kind of like painting. So my campus is dark.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: It's not white, it's you and added in. But his
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: program what he was going to do with to really
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: bring that whole Spanish culture too to the world because really,
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: you know, Franco had left what early eighties, right, it
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: was like you know, I mean, it wasn't that far
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: ten years earlier. This was the big moment for Spain
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: to come into the world and for people to appreciate it.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: And he was so successful and and it was really
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: I had so much support doing that because we turned
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: off the stadium lights and we just used theatrical lights
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: and are the big lighting manufacturer made special lights and
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: the whole thing was really a great, great um um production.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: And my partner at the time was a guy named
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: Maurice Lida who was also the production manager for some
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: of the Pink Floyd stuff and he lives in Australia.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: Now with my hero Okay, see you just clicked on it.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: My all time lighting here on rock and roll, Chipmunk,
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: nobody else, there's enough said. The man is the ultimate genius.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: He started it all, He started my brain going right.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: And he's still alive and well in Australia and Mars
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: is down in Australia. They brought me down there to
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: consult in the two thousand Olympics just for a little bit.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: But you have Chipmunk, Rolling Stone Show seventy two, which
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: one the open Pedal Flower, No, that was that was
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: Robin Wagner. Another two with the with the lights going
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: with the all the super Troopers on the back, shooting
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: into a mirror and coming back down and then the
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: Trust came down. That's it. It was seventy two on
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: those Genie lifts. The Trust came down, you know, and
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: and then went back up because they ripped all the
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: gaels off at the end for the encore. It was
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: like I saw God, right, I mean it was like
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: seeing God and Chipmunk, my hero, thank you for triggering me. Okay,
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: and Paul McCartney. You worked with Paul McCartney. Yeah, wow. Again,
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: I went into a very cold room. There are a
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: lot of people in that room did not want me
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: to be there. Um. I won't mention any names. I
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: had an inside track and and it worked. It worked,
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: And I think that there were two things with Paul
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: and Linda. I got really I got to be, you know,
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: part of the family for a while. And Stella and James.
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: James us to sitting next to me every night, so
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: did Stella and Mary. It was. It was fantastic. I
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: love I missed Paul, I really do. And unfortunately that
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: was one of the casualties of when I didn't go
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: back to London, was not working for Paul again. And
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: then Linda passed away, and you know, other things happened.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: But there's a happy ending to this story, very very
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: happy ending, which was and it just which I wish
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: would happen with Springsteen, but I don't think it ever will.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: And that's I'm a Coachella with Neil. Neil's opening the pall, wow,
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, and Rogers the next night, you know, which
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: I had nothing to do with. And then there was
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: who else was there was? Yes, it was Neil, was
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: Paul and it was Roger. So out of the six acts,
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: three of them were my pretty much my clients, right.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: And so it was the day of the show and
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: I'm there early because that tour with Neil was really simple.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: All white light all the time, just follow spots so
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: everybody can see, you know, you know, Micah and Lucas
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: and you know the other guys promise of the real
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: you know. I loved the first time Elliot showed me
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: the video of Neil and the boys plane in a rehearsal.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: I was like, you could see it was like Lucas
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: is ready to kick Neil's ass on guitar, but Neil
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: wasn't having any part of it. Yeah, I mean it
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: was just that tension on the stage and and the
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: spontaneity was it was just it blew me away. So
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: I went into the meeting with Neil and I remember
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: saying to him, this will take two minutes, and he
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: he said, You've done everything. There isn't anything that I can,
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: you know, even think of presenting to you that's gonna
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: make a difference. Right now, in your life. So I say,
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: let's put I think it was twelve follow spots, that's all,
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: and every guy has to follow spots, right, and they
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: and there. That's it. That's the show. That's ale show.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: And everyone's gonna be focused on on the music on
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: the span and what you're doing, like you know with
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: the with the young guys and and and and you
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: the master, right, and he went for it. So when
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: we got to Coachella, they had that two seventy ft screen,
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: which you know, we knew was because Roger was doing
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: whatever he was doing, right. Neil didn't want it, and
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: I agree with him. I said, yeah, we're gonna turn that.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: We're gonna turn that thing off. Anyway, he said, well,
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: let's put bur lap up. It's fantastic. So we put
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: two of burlap. We had two screens at either end
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: um but in the middle it said organic seeds and
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: he was doing his g M O thing at the time,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: white lights. The production crew hated me because we were
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: putting burlap in front of their highest tech, most expensive,
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: tweaked out screen in the world. That everybody hated us.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: And so I was there early in the morning overseeing
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: our our analog portion of Coachella, and suddenly there's this
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: commotion and I didn't realize Paul's coming for his sound check,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: and there's this whole scrum at people walking by me.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: I was standing stage left and I remember watching it
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: and I see Paul and he catches my eye and
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: I kind of just like just like hey man, you know,
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: like that, and he could see he didn't recognize me.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: It had been twenty five years since I'd saw him.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: And suddenly the scrum stops. Michael spring Oh, the production managers,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: a friend he had am I think he whispered in
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: Paul's ear, that's brickman. Suddenly it stops. Paul turns around,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: he looks at me and he just puts out his
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: arms like this like you know, and you know, we
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: hug and he gives me this kiss and he whispers
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: in my ear. Man, we did some really great things.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: So good to see You's it? What more could anybody
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: ever want? Right? I mean, just it was fantastic and
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: it made my you know, it's just you know, it's
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: just such a simple gesture. It was really cool. So
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: I'm a groupie. He's the Beatles, as we all are. Okay,
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: for the aspiring lighting designer. What are a couple of
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: tips you would give them in terms of doing a show?
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: Writing a show. Don't look at anything else right now,
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: you know. Just follow your heart, follow your mind, do
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: what you want to do. Um. Don't don't think you
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: have to use image and lights together. Don't think you
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: have to listen to the lyrics. Try to find where
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: the communication is. You're the one, You're the one responsible
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: for communicating the energy and the definition to the crowd
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: in the moment. So don't blind them seven you don't
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: need to. Don't distract them. Let them get into the artist.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: The artists are the artists there. There's a there's a
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: reason they're up there on the stage, you know. And
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: the music. I mean, look, I love the way technology
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: is these days. I've learned so much about new music.
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: There's I love blockchain. I love to where the world's
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: going technically, technology wise, because it allows the distribution of
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: artists work directly to the audiences. And if you can
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: define that, you can figure out that where your audiences
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: and your connotation, you're gonna you're gonna make an okay living.
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: You'll do fine. You will do fine. You might not
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: be the billionaire with the Lamborghini and stuff like that.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: But you'll do very well. I think that what's happening
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: right now with decentralization of of the you know, of
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: the and the and the economy and the way things
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: are going, I don't think it's a scam. I actually
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: believe it in it a lot. And I think for
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: young lighting designers now that they have so many different
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: avenues that they could probably create revenue streams from with
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: their art. Patient look at it really seriously a little differently,
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: you know, learn how to think. Anybody you haven't worked with,
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: who you would like to work with. I'd love to
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: work with Paul McCarty again, UM, I know that, you know,
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: but any body I haven't worked with. UM. I think
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: I always wanted to work for Madonna, but I think
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: I've gotten past that. UM and I and I and
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: I love really theatrical people. You know, I love, I
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: love you know. I've worked with Blue Man. I loved
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: all their shows. Those were just genius, genius, genius show.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: I worked with Searchis Soley and they were you know,
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: got what you know, what what else can you say?
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: It's a little different now, But they they had the
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: pulse at the time. UM, probably somebody that I don't
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: know that you know, that's out there that would appreciate
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: at least my view of the world, you know, and
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: of creativity, that everything is possible, you know. Um, and
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: that and that they would allow me to be myself.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: David Gilmore, that was what he He always protected me
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: with two words or three words, let him let him
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: be himself, that you know, and that would that would
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: stop everything, you know. I can't really think of anybody
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: off and I probably, like I worked with Hans Zimmer,
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: which was just one of the great thrills because working
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: with an orchestra and working what's such a genius like himself,
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: I thought that was always great. Um. I'd like to
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: do more of that, you know. But it's I've been
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: really lucky, I can't, you know. And I've talked a
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: lot today, so I hope I didn't aggravate anybody or
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: you know, Hello, You're totally you and that's what we're
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: looking for. So Mark, thanks so much for taking the talk. Thanks, Bob, appreciated.
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: Until next time. This is Bob left Sex