BOWIE: A REALITY TOUR

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A REALITY TOUR REVISITING THE PRODUCTION

by

MARK CUNNINGHAM

DAVID BOWIE’S

FINAL CONCERT TOUR Rain-sodden Paris; Tuesday 21st October 2003. From the production office to front of house, smiles greeted my photographer colleague Diana Scrimgeour and I as we arrived inside the dry but chilly Palais Omnisports de Bercy. The universally buoyant mood was in no small way a reflection of the boss’s joyful reaction to the previous night’s show. As they say, the vibe on tour is generally dictated from the top, and since his Serious Moonlight tour, 20 years ago, rarely have I seen David Bowie in such fine form and good humour.

After the 1995 Outside World Tour, rock’s ultimate chameleon began to concentrate on more intimate, one-off special live events that have led to some legendary shows such as 2000’s two sold-out shows at

NYC’s Roseland Ballroom, last year’s Carling Hammersmith Apollo show in London and his return to Berlin at the Max Schmelling Hall. In between has

been a string of sold-out festival dates including appearances at last year’s Area2 shows in the U.S. as well as his spectacular 1999 performances at Glastonbury and NetAid.

The critical success of Bowie’s last two albums, Heathen and Reality, have boosted morale and encouraged a fullblown arena tour throughout which fans, old and new, are being treated to a comprehensive serving from a huge menu.

There’s a pool of 50 rehearsed songs from which the set is chosen every night – from new or recent material (‘New Killer Star’ and ‘Pablo Picasso’), to evergreen classics including ‘Ziggy’, ‘Sound And Vision’, ‘Heroes’, ‘Hang On To Yourself’, ‘Breaking Glass’, and a sharp revisitation of ‘Rebel Rebel’. You name it, it’s probably in there.

Well, OK, not ‘The Laughing Gnome’ but you get the idea.

Bowie’s band is as tight as a duck’s derriere, and special mention must be made of bassist Gail Ann Dorsey, whose rendering of Freddie Mercury’s vocal lines in ‘Under Pressure’ was simply stunning.

Managing the production of A Reality Tour is Steve Martin, whose industry profile has been given a boost in recent times by way of Peter Gabriel’s Growing Up Live and KylieFever2002. Assisted by the omnipresent and delightful Helen ‘Hels Bells’ Smith, Martin was given the job by Bowie’s business manager Bill Zysblat following a tip off from ClearChannel. His first meeting with Bowie was in New York, where the star handed him a sketched set design that he’d made overnight, with the simple statement, “this is what I want”.

Commented Martin: “David’s design ideas were pretty much what you see now, including the hanging trees. He’d been impressed with Coldplay’s live video production and we suggested doing something with LED walls. I returned to London with various concepts and got Chris Cronin at Total Fabrications and Charlie Kail involved. We then met Thereze

Deprez, a production designer from the movie world, when David was doing a promotional video shoot. Being a six foot three punk, she naturally made an instant impression with David and she was added as set designer to form a very strong team.

“Thereze tried to turn David’s drawing into a proper look but we never had any schematics of CAD renderings from her, just a very arty drawing which I took to Charlie Kail in order to import some practical sense.”

The man at the sharp end of the visuals is Tom Kenny, Bowie’s lighting designer since NetAid in 1999. As befits his role, Kenny has been instrumental in feeding Bowie with strands of ideas and thoughts, which has helped the star develop major themes for this tour. “I really like how involved David gets in all aspects of design,” commented Kenny.

“He’s sat out front with me many times during programming, sharing ideas and just passing comment. Most other artists only get to hear if their show looks good or bad, but David likes to take some responsibility himself and I think that’s very admirable.”

One of the ideas discussed was injecting a flavour of ‘covert surveillance’ into the video production. Said Kenny: “I was working with The Who on the Teenage Cancer Trust shows at the Albert Hall and noticed that some of the younger bands like the Doves and Supergrass were coming in with these tiny dome cameras, so I thought I’d investigate them.

Bryan Leitch from Coldplay was doing something similar and he was telling me about a system he was bringing out for their tour. David had wanted to try this in 1975 with security cameras but the technology wasn’t there. So I sent him along to see Coldplay in New York and he really liked what he saw.”

The next step was to organise video content and rather than use an outsider, Kenny persuaded Laura Frank to set aside

her usual work as a lighting programmer, and take on the role of video co-ordinator. “Bowie loved the fact that it would still be one of us and we began a fun ride of watching arthouse videos, and the basic ideas for what we’re now doing came out of a five minute conversation.”

It was decided to hire Blink TV to produce the video content - a move encouraged by Steve Martin’s experience of Marcus Viner’s work on the Kylie tour, and Kenny’s appreciation of Blink’s involvement on the Smash Hits Awards shows. “I knew that Marcus would be able to realise all of David’s ideas and source or create the imagery required,” said Martin.

“Between Marcus, Laura and Richard Turner, the results have been unbelievably good.”

Taking direction from Laura Frank, Viner was asked to provide some obscure old footage and also create an animated movie by copying the style of something Bowie liked from the past. “I gave Bill Lord [of Blink TV] total control,” said Martin. “XL won the contract in the face of competition from Screenco and Nocturne. Because we have gone for this CCTV, low-res kind of look, it wasn’t necessary to go for very high resolution video walls and we had some budgetary restrictions to watch out for. We decided to choose Barco DLite 14 screens which are on the heavy side [22 tonnes], and we had trouble in the Ahoy in Rotterdam, but generally it was a good call.”

Head Rigger Pete Rayel of Star Rigging would agree about the weight of the screen, which accounts for a huge chunk of the total 36 tonne weight of the show. He said: “Eight tonnes of that is downstage which is always a problem because it runs into the front PA, but apart from that it’s a regular kind of job. It takes me, Gana and eight local crew three to four hours to rig and it’s been a smooth run, although we are bound to get some grief at the Olympiahalle in Munich which is always a bureaucratic nightmare!”

ADLIB VICTORIOUS Liverpool-based Adlib Audio scored a significant victory when it was awarded the contract to supply the PA systems for A Reality Tour. Steve Martin commented: “They are great guys, very skilled and committed, but have my own preferences and JBL VerTec wasn’t one of them. I do, however, firmly believe in giving the sound engineer what he wants and [FOH Engineer] Pete Keppler was absolutely insistent that he could make the JBL VerTec system sound fantastic. My God he was right!

“Pete wanted flown subs and side hangs because of the way we were selling the show. The problem was finding a rental company who owned enough of the equipment to service our needs without relying on sub-hire. Adlib came into the equation although their original price was far too high, because they were having to buy a lot of new kit. They realised that this tour would afford them so much kudos that they became more competitive on their price, and we put our faith in them.

“Adlib have been excellent to deal with and I’m very impressed. It’s wonderful for them and great for me to have given them the job – this could be the start of a whole new chapter for them.”

Through Arbiter Pro Audio (at the time JBL’s UK distributor), Adlib increased its VerTec stock for the tour by purchasing 32 VT4889 full size enclosures, 32 VT4880 subs, 32 4888 medium-sized VerTec (side hangs) and 12 4887 ‘Baby’ VerTec elements. The touring system is powered by Crown VZ5001 amps.

Keppler first heard VerTec at last year’s Move festival at Manchester’s Old Trafford Cricket Ground. Martin: “I wouldn’t change a thing now. Everybody’s saying how amazing the sound is, and that’s all I need to know.”

Looking after the Adlib side of things on the road is System Technician Marc Peers who, due to the nature of the show design, has prioritised having a cleanlooking system in terms of neat cable trusses.

Peers described the system: “We’re using 10 units of the BSS Omnidrive Compact Plus [FDS-366T] across the system EQ, all remotely controlled from a tablet from anywhere in the venue, using the new Soundbench 2 software. Each array is split into three zones, allowing us total processing control of the top, middle and bottom elements. We’ve put in a centre cluster of three of the 4887 downfill cabinets, just above David’s head - that’s something that keeps us on the straight and narrow! We have another six of those 4887s along the floor for the frontfill.

“Being an all in-ear gig, there’s nothing coming off the stage so we need to fill holes in the sound. It’s a bit timeconsuming having to put up around 100 cabinets every day between three of us, but it’s worth every minute for this man.”

Peers, a firm supporter of Adlib’s commitment to VerTec, said: “I loved it since we bought into it and working here with Tony Szabo, who is quite an expert on the system, has been very helpful to me. He’s the guy who’s looking after the mechanics of getting the right sound from the system after it’s been rigged.”

TWO FIRSTS FOR KEPPLER Pete Keppler’s preference for VerTec came after using V-DOSC, EV’s X-Array and several other line array systems. He said: “As far as my ears are concerned, VerTec is superior for reinforcement of rock’n’roll. It just seems to kick and throw a bit better than its rivals. It’s also been the one I’ve had more experience with.”

Keppler’s first gig for Bowie was just over 18 months ago at the Tribeca Film Festival in Lower Manhattan.

This marked the first time he worked with both a VerTec rig and the Yamaha PM1D digital console which have now become his staple tools.

“I was already very familiar with digital technology because I split my time between live and studio work. Using the PM1D is second nature to me - once you get your head around the architecture it really is a breeze.

There’s a lot of repetition in the desk and several ways to do the same thing, so engineers can find the route that suits them best. It’s a solid piece of equipment and there is a high degree of reliability.”

Keppler runs 48 channels and groups the stereo pairs ‘vertically’, using only one fader for each of the pairs. “There are two 48 channel layers on the desk and so any of my additional stereo channels will be on the bottom layer. The desk also has eight on-board effects engines which I’m making full use of for drum reverbs and vocal doubling, and there’s a very interesting effect on the snare drum at some points. It’s a simulation of an Eventide 910 harmonizer – an effects unit employed by producer Tony Visconti on the Low and Heroes albums to drop the pitch of the snare drum signal after it was hit.”

There are two TC3000s for Bowie’s voice, giving Keppler access to long and short

reverbs. He runs the voice through the BSS DPR-901 dynamic EQ’s de-essing setting, and from there into the Tubetech CL18.

All other processing is conducted within the PM1D. The microphone choice was a situation Keppler inherited, although he has made some changes. “Earl Slick got switched to a KSM32 for his guitar rig and we added a second bass drum mic for this tour. [Monitor Engineer] Mike Prowda wanted to use an SM91 for the IEM mixes and I was insistent on having a Sennheiser 602, which is probably the most inexpensive and coolest bass drum mic you can get. So I’m using a combination of the two of them.

“We’ve tried a lot of different mics on David’s voice and settled on the Shure Beta 58 because it has the best rejection and so much of the stage goes through his mic. We tried the Neumann KM105 which sounded beautiful but it just picked up everything around it. Other vocal mics are Beta 87s and also on drums we have Beta 56s on snare top and bottom, Sennheiser 604s on toms, and KSM32s for overheads. Sterling Campbell plays those drums so well, so hard, and I’m not fixing anything. The acoustic guitars are the only instruments I’m having to work hard on – it’s standard piezo electric pickup problems, nothing too taxing.”

BOWIE’S FIRST DIGITAL FORAY The Yamaha PM1D digital console made its first appearance with Bowie on the 36-date Heathen tour, a year prior to the A Reality Tour.

Also marking Entec Live’s entry into digital audio, the tour kicked off on June 29th 2002 at London’s Royal Festival Hall as part of the Bowie-curated Meltdown festival, and saw the maverick artist perform his groundbreaking 1977 album Low in its entirety for the first time, with the aid of Entec’s specially-purchased PM1D console as deployed by FOH engineer Pablo Wheeler.

Prior to the opening summer leg of the tour, David Bowie’s then production manager Nick Belshaw was looking for a rental company to supply the engineer’s favoured desk, and contacted Entec’s head of sound Dick Hayes who saw this as an opportune moment for Entec to take the digital plunge.

“Nick explained that the show Bowie was taking around Europe was quite complex, with 56 mic lines and a further 24 line inputs,” Dick explained, “so Pablo asked Nick to secure him a PM1D.”

PROWDA’S PUNCH I previously encountered Mike Prowda when he was mixing monitors for the Eagles at Earls Court. On this tour he is controlling a wedge-free stage mix for Bowie, with the exception of a drum system consisting of an L-Acoustics dVDOSC sub and a Firehouse mid-high.

chose to major on Martin Professional’s MAC 2000 profiles with custom gobos, and MAC 600 washes. “I’d been using MAC 2000s all last year with great results and didn’t see any reason to revert to Icons,” he said. “The MACs probably had the edge in terms of reliability, although the Icon is still a very powerful tool.”

For the in-ear system, he has settled on Sennheiser evolution series transmitters and receivers, with Aphex Dominator II running in between them. Like Keppler, Prowda is mixing on a PM1D and using all eight effects engines. He also has a Focusrite Red pre-amp and Summit TLA-100 inserted for vocal processing.

Assisting Kenny in the design work and running of the show is Mark Cunniffe, who mentioned the additional use of conventional lighting to support the more ‘classic’ rock’n’roll moments in the performance. “We have Lekos for band key lighting, which are useful for local TV crews, and four SuperCycs upstage to light the set dressing,” he said.

“Although I’m not a great fan of the 8-lite molefay, I do like the cleaner look of 4-lite units. They even look great when they’re off and they don’t take over a rig.

“I’ve got 10 IEM systems running and everything is wireless except Sterling and Mike Garson, the keyboard player,” said Prowda. “Everyone is using the newest model of Westone’s ear moulds. It’s a soft silicone mould dual driver, and after hearing everything else available I can safely say that this is the best on the market right now. They are doing a great job.”

Prowda is running a total of 42 mixes although some of them are very basic. “Sterling has his own Mackie 14-input mixer to which I give him feeds – 14 different stems that gives him the ability to prepare his own mix. David actually runs his own effects which end up being a vocal send on my desk that goes to a vocal doubling effect pedal and a Moog distortion effect that he uses occasionally. He also has a level control pedal that he operates and I just leave his level set so that he can bring it in and out at will.”

MAC-POWERED RIG Despite Steve Martin’s usual preference of Neg Earth, LSD Fourth Phase is supplying the lighting for this tour, thanks to the insistence of Tom Kenny. Although LSD standard issue Icon desk control is used to pilot Bowie’s show lighting, there isn’t a single Icon fixture in the rig. Instead, Kenny

“The front video screens are so dominant that having a front lighting truss in there as well was never going to work. So we came up with the idea of slinging the lamps underneath the screens, and that’s helped us create several different layers to the rig and achieve a lovely tiered effect. I don’t think we’ve gone mad with the lighting – there are a couple of tracks where we do push the boat out, but generally it’s quite restrained.”

Production rehearsals for the tour spanned at fortnight at the Forest National in Brussels where Bowie had prepared for the Serious Moonlight tour in 1983. Cunniffe described the period as “extremely productive”, whilst emphasising that it involved many exhausting days and nights.

Said Cunniffe: “When you’re programming as many as 50 tracks, you don’t spend the time that you would normally on each one because you’re so busy getting a rough look for everything. This is our second night in Paris and it’s a completely different show to last night’s. So I have a fair

amount of tightening up to do on several numbers before the show starts!”

VIDEO SYSTEM Arguably, the most impressive aspect of the production design is the way the lighting and video combine and feed off each other to produce a constantly stimulating visual feast. While Blink TV got on with the artistic content, the job for supplying the enabling system fell to XL Video, with the enigmatically-titled ‘video scientist’ Richard Turner remaining with the entourage well into the tour to ensure that the system behaved appropriately.

Weeks before the Paris show, Turner had commented that we could look forward to “a lot of LED wall”, and he

wasn’t kidding. One and a half trucks’ worth of LED screen to be precise. The Barco DLite 14 screens appear as two rows - ‘upstairs’ there are five 3 x 4 metre displays, gently arced, while at the ‘downstairs’ level is one long ‘letterbox’ measuring 14m x 2.6m which is often seen to be broken up into a maximum of four 3.5m x 2.6m screens. In terms of routing and technical design, this is a huge triumph for Turner and XL. The video processors are controlled by Xlite software. This enables each physical input on the processor to have its own concurrent window on the LED which can be any size, aspect or crop.

Said Turner. “It’s been conceptualised as either one big playback field or four separate camera images or several camera images up top or playback with camera images

LAURA FRANK: CREATIVE VIDEO “It all started with David’s thoughts on some simple scene elements he wanted to create. We wanted to give Blink TV some very tight songs that could run to time-code, allowing us to do some high precision edits. So it was a collaborative process between some early concepts that David and Tom had talked about, and I stepped in to play more of a liaison role.

“I started out with the band in rehearsals in New York during July, when David and Tom Kenny were discussing screen ideas and configurations. It’s been a real collaboration in terms of deciding on different camera angles, visual effects and what happens with the screens when there are no camera shots, video sequences or graphics. I think we’ve successfully ended that battle between lighting and video.

“Until this tour I had been part of the lighting community and it’s been a fascinating departure.

More than anything, my responsibility has been to ensure that whatever was created for the screens was always going to be complementary to David, the band and the music, and not be distracting.

“I’ve worked with David since 2000 when there was no video content. Typically, you’d have a situation where a video team comes in with the biggest light source and there’s no co-ordination with the lighting department other than discussing colour temperature for the cameras. Consequently, we’re

superimposed. XLite gives the ability to plug four separate inputs to the upstage, and five separate ones to the downstage, and instruct what goes where at any time.”

The software then ‘reports’ to a 16 x 16 SDI matrix. “Our four selected cameras are given a quad split, passed through the two Magic DaVEs for any desired effects, then into the matrix and into any LED wall inputs we choose. We’re breaking everything down to a quad split and using XLite to build it as four separate windows next to each other.”

In total, there are 12 fixed MiniCams and one manned camera on a long lens, all feeding into the composite matrix so that any of the images can be sent to any of the four screen areas. In addition, of course, there is the edited

treating both camps as one on this tour, and the results speak for themselves.

“As far as the treatment of live camera images goes, ‘Pablo Picasso’ is my favourite. It really complements the song well. We only use the upstage screens on that number which means there are only four cameras displayed at any time out of the 13 we have. There’s a spot frame effect on it and the colours are heavily amplified.”

FURTHER ADVENTURES IN SPACE “‘Hallo Spaceboy’ and the opening segment are my favourites of all the pieces created by Blink. I was able to convey important details about the rhythm of the lighting for ‘Spaceboy’ because we’d been touring with this song for a while, and that was useful knowledge when the video was being made.

footage created by Blink which is replayed from DoReMi V1 hard drives, plus imagery from five LSD Icon M-Boxes.

“The low-tech nature of the video images have given us a slight problem because none of the cameras are synchronised, so we have to run everything through the DaVEs to clean up the switches,” commented Turner. “If we do a matrix switch on the cameras without certain processing, you get big rolls on the screen and that will not do! It’s a low-res CCTV effect but to get there takes a lot of high-tech preparation. What I do know is that Mr. Bowie is looking great up there on those screens!”

Back in the production office after the second impressive Paris show, Tom Kenny had the final word. “Paris means a lot

“Blink produced inserts for 12 songs, but I also designed some sequences with LSD’s M-Box. We have five M-Box devices which also drive the screens. My feeling was that video production is very time-consuming and M-Box is great when you need to make quick decisions and create something spontaneously.

“I built something in M-Box to go with David’s cover of The Velvet Underground’s ‘White Light/White Heat’ which harks back to the shows he did [as the Thin White Duke on the ISOLAR tour] in 1976 with the fluorescent tubes – we go for the same look only this time the tubes are on the screens. So we’re actually making the video appear as lighting, which is a strange turnaround!” luminousfx.tv

to David and I think he had a lot of fun tonight. He’s the type of artist who earns so much respect from his crew because he’s so knowledgeable about production, and you really want to make it right for him.

“And I’ve got to say that it’s fabulous having Steve Martin running the production. The first time I met him was when I was lighting Eric Clapton at the Albert Hall and he was a rep for Harvey Goldsmith. It’s one of those fun tours and hats off to my lighting crew who have been wonderful.”

ENCORE Commencing on October 7th 2003 at the Forum Copenhagen, Denmark, and continuing through Europe, North America and Asia, A Reality Tour included Bowie’s first return to New Zealand and Australia since 1987’s Glass

Spider. Totalling 112 shows and grossing US$46 million at the box office, it was the longest tour of the artist’s career, though it did not pass without drama.

In May 2004, a show in Miami was cancelled after lighting technician Walter ‘Wally Gator’ Thomas tragically fell to his death shortly before the performance was about to begin.

Then, around six weeks later, Bowie was struck in the left eye with a lollipop thrown towards the stage by an audience member at Oslo’s Frognerbadet Arena.

The worst moment, however, occurred onstage at the T-Mobile Arena in Prague on June 23rd 2004, when a struggling Bowie received urgent medical attention onstage for what he believed was a pinched nerve. Forced to end the show early, the star later discovered that he had suffered a heart attack. Diagnosed with an acutely blocked artery, Bowie underwent an angioplasty procedure at St Georg Hospital in Hamburg, which involved the insertion of a stent to open up a blood vessel narrowed by plaque. Bowie was in hospital for over a week, during which time it was announced that A Reality Tour had prematurely come to an end.

Bowie officially retired from live performance in 2006.

He never toured again.

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In its original form, this article was published in the November 2003 edition of Total Production International (TPi) magazine and in 2004 at bowiewonderworld.com Photography courtesy of Diane Martin at The Outside Organisation.

Text © 2022 Mark Cunningham. All rights reserved.

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A REALITY TOUR | UK/EUROPE 03 PERSONNEL International Promoter: ClearChannel Entertainment/Mitch Schneider Organization Tour Producer: RZO Theatricals Inc. CCE Tour Reps: Ian Jeffrey, Mark Ward CCE Assistant: Cynthia Oknaian Consultant: David Whitehead/Maine Road Management Tour Manager: Frankie Enfield Road Manager: Nick Belshaw Tour Administrator: Tim Hook Personal Security: Erik Hausch Make Up & Hair: Teddy Antolin Wardrobe: Jimmy King Personal Trainer: Marlon Farmer PR: Diane Martin/Outside Organisation PA to David Bowie: Coco Schwab

Video: Blink TV/XL Video Video Co-ordinator: Laura Frank Video Scientist: Richard Turner Video Crew Chief: Andy Joyes Video Technicians: Gary Beirne, Oliver Clybouw, Stef van Biesen

Production Manager: Steve Martin Production Assistant: Helen ‘Hels Bells’ Smith Stage Manager: Phil Murphy PA: Adlib Audio FOH Engineer: Pete Keppler Monitor Engineer: Mike Prowda Audio Technicians: Dave Davies, Tony Szabo, Marc Peers Stage Sound: Tristan Johnson, Dave MacMullan Backline Technicians: John Walsh, Peter Danilowicz, Andrew Burns, Tom Calcaterra, Jeff Ousley

Catering: Eat Your Hearts Out Head Chef: Robbie Grantham-Wise Chef: Neil Smith Caterers: Emma Armstrong, Jolene Collins, Jason Bright

Lighting: LSD Fourth Phase Lighting Designer: Tom Kenny Assistant LD: Mark Cunniffe Lighting Crew Chief: Blaine Dracup Lighting Technicians: Marcus Robinson, Nigel ‘Skippy’ Monk, Roy Hunt

Set Construction: Total Fabrications Set Consultant: Charlie Kail Set Designer: Therese Deprez Soft Goods: Hangman Head Rigger: Pete Rayel/Star Rigging Rigger: Gianluca ‘Gana’ Ganapini Carpenters: Toby Pitts, Andy ‘Hobson’ Pearson, Eli Cohl

Tour Merchandiser: Pete Bell Travel Agent: Travel By Appointment Buses: Phoenix Bus Drivers: Megan, Turn Around Ted & Robbie Grant Freight: Rock-It Cargo

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