Mark Cunningham
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Dedicated to MARK FISHER, OBE, MVO, RDI 1947 – 2013 & IAN NEWTON 1961 - 2014 RIP
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Publication Text & design copyright Š 2015 Mark Cunningham / Liveculture Music Limited
www.liveculture.co.uk
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That Warm Thrill
Of Confusion
For many years, I considered Pink Floyd’s 1980-81 live concert presentation of The Wall to be the most profound artistic statement ever staged. It completely re-wrote the book on what a band could achieve in front of a live audience. I witnessed this production both as a fan in the crowd and from backstage as a fleeting, wide-eyed member of the local crew. In the years that followed, I was privileged to gain a close-up view of several contenders for the crown, but it took Roger Waters’ redesigned version of that same show – 30 years on – to knock it off its pedestal. During the 2011 European tour of The Wall Live, I observed the ultimate marriage of all production genres in which sound, lighting, video, set design and automation worked together and excelled beyond all imagination to deliver the most astounding spectacle I had ever seen. This was not merely a re-run of the original Floyd show; it was the original concept, of course, but filtered through the advanced capabilities of modern technology which, it seemed, had been waiting for this opportunity to truly demonstrate its full potential. One of an ongoing series of unique e-book studies covering historically significant live productions, this story features interviews with Roger himself, and the creatives and technicians behind the tour, conducted over several days in Milan and London during 2011. Although referred to, it should be taken into condiseration that this account does not seek to analyse the larger scale stadium tour that followed the European leg.
Mark Cunningham
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An Audience With The Creator IT’S 30 YEARS SINCE YOU TOOK PINK FLOYD’S ORIGINAL LIVE PRODUCTION OF THE WALL ON THE ROAD, AND 20 YEARS SINCE THE WALL IN BERLIN... WHY REVISIT IT AGAIN? AND WHY NOW? RW: “Well, I did a tour that finished a couple of years ago where I did the whole of The Dark Side Of The Moon in one half of the show and it went very well. “I had been somewhat reluctant to take that whole kind of classical piece and to re-do it, but it really worked well and I enjoyed the tour very much, so having finished that one, when I’d recovered a bit, I thought maybe I had one more in me. “Laurie, my fiancée, said that maybe I should do The Wall. I said I couldn’t, but it wouldn’t go away and I wondered whether we could. It was incredibly difficult to do back in 1980 and we lost a lot of money doing it, but I thought maybe it was possible.
“So I started to talk to Mark Fisher, who did the original one, and he said it would be much easier to do now than it was then, that technology had come a long way and that people spend a lot more money on tickets than they used to. “He thought I’d be able to make the figures work and break even, maybe even come out with some gravy without it costing an arm and a leg, so I thought, OK, we’ll do it. I started working on the show January 2010. “I think musically it holds up very well and I sensed that the story could be broadened, because the story is basically about this fearful young man who cuts himself off from other human beings because he’s afraid and ashamed. “The original story of 1979 could be seen as an allegory for a broader political situation that is very relevant and pertains now. “We are controlled by the powers that be, who tell us that we need to 9
guard against the evil ones who are over there and different from us and who we must be frightened of. So I thought it would be a good thing to work that into the meaning of the show and that’s what I’ve done.” LIVE PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY HAS OBVIOUSLY TAKEN HUGE LEAPS SINCE 1980. HOW HAS IT IMPACTED ON THE WAY YOU HAVE BEEN ABLE TO RE-PRESENT THE SHOW? RW: “The technology has changed so the projection of images, which are a big part of the show, is way easier now than it was. “Back then, we were using rickety old 35mm projectors and now we’re using video projections — 15 high definition projectors for the front of the wall in five stacks, hung on trusses. “In 1980, we could only project in the second half of the show when the wall was built and with it being a huge screen we could only project across 80’ in the middle of it. Now we can project across 240’, so it’s like showing a movie on a football field. It’s pretty amazing that one could do that. “The technique for building the wall is very similar, but the machinery that we use is similar to what we used in 1980, but they’re just much better at building it now. “Engineering has advanced a lot in the last 30 years and the preparation of the visual material has changed, it’s beyond anything.” 10
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YOU EDITED THE VISUAL MATERIAL ON A DIGITAL AVID SYSTEM IN NEW YORK. NOTHING LIKE THAT EXISTED IN 1980... RW: “No, back then I couldn’t possibly have produced the visual imagery that I’m producing now. When Gerald Scarfe was doing the animation, eight people were drawing each cell, then you shot it and if you wanted it dissolved, it went away to a lab, whereas here you do it and it takes a while to render, but only five minutes or something, and it comes back and there it is.” DO YOU RETAIN ANY ORIGINAL ELEMENTS IN THIS SHOW? RW: “A few, yes. We’re using revamped versions of the puppets that we used then — the teacher, the mother and the wife — rebuilt, redesigned and used in a different way. “I’m working again with Gerry Scarfe and we’re using some of the work that he did, both for the show back then and for the movie. However, the way we’re doing it is different and with the 15 projectors we’re able to project very accurately across that whole distance.
“There’s one new character that comes from a drawing of Gerry’s, but it’s from a drawing I think he did back in the day. Mainly what we have done is taken the original animation and reformatted it to fit the new scale of our production, which has meant doing a lot of work extending backgrounds to the sides and changing shots all through ‘The Trial’ and ‘Waiting For The Worms’. “One of the guys I’ve been working with in New York has worked out how to take the graphic nature of Gerry’s hammers and put them into 4D, so we can recreate it. Instead of it being three separate academy frames in the middle 80’ of the wall, it’s now a continuous 10,000 pixel wide image and it looks amazing! “Also, I’m editing Gerry’s images in with other images in ways we weren’t able to do before, but most of the visual material is new. I’ve tried to make it more political, more universal and more about the experience of every man and woman, and less about my personal narrative. “ The Wall is so narrative-driven. You can’t get rid of Pink. The lyrics are open to interpretation in different ways, but we still have a mother. My interpretation of the mother song now is that maybe mother is the
“The way we’re doing it is different and with the 15 projectors we’re able to project very accurately across that whole distance...” 13
government. So when I’m saying, ‘Mother, should I trust the government?’, I’m actually using the mother in the story as a symbol of government. “Fundamentally, the music is the same and the lyrics are the same so the thread of the narrative remains the same... it’s how it’s interpretive that’s different.” HOW HAS LIVE PERFORMANCE CHANGED FOR YOU? RW: “In the last 30 years, I’ve come round to completely embracing the possibilities of that connection with the audience and like to think that when I’m on the road now, I milk it mercilessly, just because it’s fun and feels good. “I make a lot of eye contact with the audience and enjoy the fact that they really like the songs and it feels like a community, whereas back then I was so fearful that I when I was on stage I was sort of the same as I was a party — standing in a corner, and more or less saying ‘don’t come anywhere near me’. “It has gradually become much, much easier for me over my last few tours. Thank goodness I’ve grown up a bit. Yeah, I’m way more relaxed now.” 14
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The Show Must Go On
Was it a rock concert, performance art or a theatre show? The truth is, The Wall Live straddled all of these genres but the end result was in a field of its own. Whereas the original Pink Floyd shows of 1980 preceded moving lights, line arrays, high-definition video and sophisticated automation, the reimagined live production of Roger Waters’ magnum opus, The Wall, harnessed all of the modern world’s advanced technologies to 16
deliver an uncompromised assault on the senses. One might even have been forgiven for thinking it was the show that all of this weaponry was waiting for. And after first witnessed three performances at the Mediolanum Forum in Assago, Milan in early April 2011, I was convinced that this was not only the greatest show I had ever seen, but one that I doubted would be surpassed any time soon – an opinion that remains four years later.
As explained by Waters in his introductory interview, the feelings of loss and alienation that were at the core of his original narrative are still there, only the meaning has now been expanded as a wider statement on the effects of war, religion, politics and commerce on 21st century life. Inspired by the writer’s concern for the human condition, the result is as much an emotional experience as it is cerebral. Of course, it helps if you’re familiar
with the 1979 Pink Floyd album or perhaps the Alan Parker-directed movie, but even the uninitiated cannot fail to be moved by the sheer dynamic energy and unprecedented creative content in this new presentation. Introduced by a soundtrack clip from Spartacus, signifying the judgement of a man who stood up to the Establishment, The Wall Live is separated into two Acts, each approximately 55 minutes long, with images of victims of conflict projected 17
Clockwise from top: Production manager Chris Kansy; tour director Andrew Zweck; Stufish’s Jeremy Lloyd; scenic designer Mark Fisher. Following page: Creative director Sean Evans & video systems designer Richard Turner.
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on to the bricks during the 20 minute intermission. Musically, The Wall is recreated with pinpoint accuracy by Waters (bass, acoustic guitar & trumpet) and his highly skilled and drilled 11-piece ‘Giant Big Man Band’, comprising drummer Graham Broad, guitarists Dave Kilminster, Snowy White and G.E. Smith, keyboard players Jon Carin and Harry Waters (who has toured with his father since 2002 and whose voice appeared on the Wall album), vocalist Robbie Wyckoff (handling David Gilmour’s vocal parts), and backing singers, a.k.a. the Pumpkin Launchers, Jon Joyce and the Lennons (Kipp, Mark and Pat). The design project was headed by Mark Fisher, working alongside Stufish
colleague Jeremy Lloyd, creative director Sean Evans, and Tyler Kisera of Tait Towers whose youthful energy and vision proved to be an inspiration for all. Sensible Events’ Andrew Zweck leads as tour director and Chris Kansy (Van Morrison, Janet Jackson, Mary J. Blige) is in the production management hot seat. “There are plenty of artists touring with 25 trucks of equipment and doing their ‘froth and bubble’ shows, but nobody’s doing a production with such intensity, depth and integrity,” said Zweck, whose son Michael was tour accountant. “No other artist who has the brains to pull this off, but you need the budget, and that came as the result of a 10-year climb. Roger revitalised
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Waters leads the kids’ choir on ‘Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)’ — the last UK No.1 single of the 1970s.
his solo career in 1999 and has toured regularly since then, delivering a fantastic show every time. “Punters now realise he is the creative heart and soul of Pink Floyd, but it’s taken until now to re-build the brand name and be pretty confident of selling out every venue, and therefore mount a production of this scale.” Fisher valued the production investment at around $10 million. “Much more,” argued Zweck who, like Fisher, has worked with Waters since the mid-’70s. “I was the Floyd’s Pig flyer on the Animals tour,” he added. The package of the fabled inflatable puppets cost $2 million alone — twice the budget of the 1980 Wall. 20
REHEARSING The first European leg opened in Lisbon on March 21 2011 and followed one of the most successful North American tours in recent history. Before its début show on September 15 2010 in Toronto, the crew undertook many long weeks of rehearsal, firstly in the Mohegan Sun Arena in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (strategically close to Tait Towers and Clair) and then at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, New Jersey where final production rehearsals were conducted, ending with a private performance to friends and family. Tait’s contributions to the show design cannot possibly be overstated. Along with the ingenious projection content, the company played the
A Tait set drawing. Below: Tait stabiliser racks and the FTSI Navigator workstation.
most crucial role of all. Mark Fisher explained: “Winky [CEO James Fairorth] says it’s the most complicated show that Tait has ever built. And so it’s amusing to think we did the same show 30 years ago without all of this complex
automation. But these days, nobody would countenance a show at this level being manually operated. We’ve all moved on. “Everything is completely new... except the artist! Whilst the concept and machinery are replicated, the
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Tait’s stablisers and man lifts load into the arena; Brilliant Stages’ circular screen truss is moved into position; the fore stage is rolled in to connect with the main stage; the ‘Hammer’ drum kit in the underworld cage, waiting to rise; the wall ramparts are built in the side seating; a view from behind the wall with everything in place.
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control is the big difference. Tait went back to Genie Industries and bought the same telescoping masts to build the man lifts and wall stabilisers that we bought in 1980.” BUILDING THE WALL In its largest configuration, the wall was 35’ high and 240’ wide as governed by the full width of the projection. Depending on the slope of the arena being played, it could range from 210’ wide to 240’. Chris Kansy: “The wall itself was the biggest focus and required the longest amount of rehearsal. It was a long process with Mark Fisher and I going to Tait Towers every few weeks to see how they were progressing with the structure building and how they were knocking the wall down. That was pretty comical at the start! “Later on, Roger, who was routining the music with the band in a makeshift studio near his house on Long Island, would occasionally jump in a chopper to see how we were doing. He’d stay a hour or two and then fly back to rehearsals. As you do! “But just like any tour, all the way through there was an opening night written large on our calendar and everybody was aiming for it.” As Kansy attested, a 35’ high cardboard wall cannot stabilise itself. “From out front, it’s really deceiving how technical this show is,” he said, “and it’s only when you go behind the wall that you appreciate what’s going on.” The 10 telescoping stabliisers that kept the wall intact, the man lifts that
enabled the building of the wall, and hoisted Robbie Wyckoff and Dave Kilminster above it in ‘Comfortably Numb’, and the process of tipping the wall at the show’s climax all came under the control of the Navigator automation system from Fisher Technical Services (FTSI), which shared resources with Tait and sent technicians out from its Las Vegas base to assist with the operation. Capable of elevating crew 25’ high, the man lifts were formed of five separate hydraulic elevators that made one 100’ wide moving platform. Mark Fisher, no relation of the above firm, recalled the key difference between old and new methods of wall destruction: “When we tore down the wall in 1980, I’d sit behind the stage with a bank of switches, running the electric motors to make the stabilisers go up and down. I’d control the speed at which the bricks fell and I was the only person who practiced that operation. “It’s the same result this time, only it’s Alex Blais sitting in front of the Navigator computer that automates the flicking of switches.” These switches activated a dualacting pneumatic knocker system that was integrated into the top stage. With head carpenter Denny Rich ensuring that the side ramparts were the first elements to go up, the sequence of the live build was the same as it was in 1980 but getting it right was even more important this time because as each brick was laid, video was projected upon it and the overall projected image was masked 23
in sequence. Jeremy Lloyd established the brick-build pattern and that took much repetition to perfect it over the course of a month in Wilkes-Barre with assistant stage manager Josh Gelfond guiding the order via radio. “Setting up the wall, knocking it down... I lost track of how many times we did it,” commented Kansy. “It also took a lot of cardboard bricks. They’re semi-resilient — some of them last three shows, some only one. Each measures 5’ wide x 2.5’ high; they come flat-packed and it takes nearly 400 to do each show, so we slowly replace the ones that are looking worn. They’re sprayed with a flameresistant substance. They’ll smoulder but they won’t burst into flames. Some of those bricks are flats that are there from the start, but it’s hard to tell out front.” For Europe, the flat-packed bricks were made in the UK by Smurfit Kappa of Peterborough. REVEALING MAGIC There were two sets of backline: one set was for the main, 8’ high, 3,350ft 2 stage; the other emerged on the fore stage via subterranean elevators after ‘Comfortably Numb’ in Act Two, and then disappeared after ‘Waiting For The Worms’. “A lot of thinking went into this,” said Kansy. “Tyler Kicera, Tait’s genius lead designer on this, came up with an idea rather like that of a slatted,
rolltop desk which he adopted for the backline lifts, and the amps and drums seem to appear as if by magic. When the elevators are down, slip stages cover the voids. “Tyler’s vision is quite amazing in the way he can articulate his ideas and it seems that he never fails to deliver an elegant solution to any problem. He is the guy who worked most closely with Mark Fisher and I on bringing the physical wall back to life.” Another Tait Towers creation was the drawbridge of the forced perspective hotel room that opened for ‘Nobody Home’, with a TV, chair, bed and hard-mounted lamp, and a skyline view in the background. Just as drawbridge became level, Waters took his place in the chair under cover of darkness to prepare for one of The Wall’s highlights. But to paraphrase the lyric, you’d have thought that by now there would be more than just “13 channels of shit” on his TV to choose from. AUTOMATED PUPPETRY The Teacher, Wife and Mother puppets, along with the mechanics and automation to operate them, were supplied by Brilliant Stages while their garish inflatable skins were manufactured by Rob Harries at Air Artists. Brilliant Stages devised a system of cradles and winches to facilitate the
“The bricks come flat-packed and it takes nearly 400 to do each show...” Chris Kansy 24
The wall ramparts built into the side seating. Below: Behind the wall with everything in place.
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Above: Andy Joyes lining up the Barco projectors with a remote WiFi tablet; video crew chief Clarke Anderson; Richard Turner in the cockpit.
extensive animation required for the Teacher and Wife, which stood 9m high. The puppets were suspended by fine steel wire ropes attached to individual electric winches mounted into a compact cradle. The winches moved the limbs independently whilst the cradle carrying the winches also slewed to enable the puppets to turn 180°. Customised control systems from Andy Cave of Kinesys were used for 26
the cradles and winches. Although the larger, 10m high Mother was perched above the wall, she moved her head from side to side — a motion created by an electric motor driving a toothed-belt pinion on to a slew ring within the neck. Working alongside Lee Threlfall, Brilliant Stages also incorporated LED light sources to illuminate the eyes of each puppet. RGB LED light engines with custom heat sinks and enclosures
Above: One of many practice runs at knocking down the wall; the pneumatic knocker motion. Below: Assembling the bricks; ‘Goodbye Cruel World’ – the final brick is placed. Bottom: Inside the ‘Nobody Home’ hotel room.
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The Teacher (inset — the Teacher’s LED eye); Mother. Tony Ravenhill ‘wrangles’ the Wife, Waters and Wife in ‘Don’t Leave Me Now’.
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were built into a customised hanging frame suspended inside the head of each puppet and containing power supplies and control modules. In addition, the Teacher had two 600mm diameter custom light boxes incorporating RGB LED strips that represented the whites of the eyes. Power for the eyes was derived from the automation cradle using cable reelers, with data control supplied by wireless DMX. Each of the three puppets travelled in its own dolly, designed for ease of transport and rapid installation. On tour, these three puppets were looked after by Ian Macdonald and Tony Ravenhill. While Ravenhill maintained the puppets and their motors, Macdonald operated them during the show from a Kinesys workstation at front of house.
Macdonald triggered 60 cues in total for the Teacher – over 5:50 minutes of continuous movement – while the Wife had five cues over 73 seconds after being released from their wrapped-up position in a Kabuki sling. Mother required a moderate eight cues during 3:30 minutes. The trademark black Pig, released from backstage at the start of ‘Run Like Hell’, was the product of
Top: The Pig. Left: The puppets’ Kinesys motion operator, Ian Macdonald. 29
“Every nuance has to have meaning with Roger. There’s not a single piece of gratuitous content in the show...” Sean Evans 30
Right: The projectors in their three-way cradle with shutters. Below: The Barco Encore workstation with the projector mapping visible on the monitors.
Canadian specialist Mobile Air Ships’ Blimp division which had been responsible for several of Waters’ porkers since 1999. Flown around the audience for a good 10 minutes by carpenter Sean Jacobs (“a college kid who we turned into a fully-fledged road dog,” said Chris Kansy), the helium-filled Pig was covered in appliquéd political graffiti and propelled by electric fans.
CREATIVE VIDEO Opportunities to create video content as part of a concert production have often been abused for the benefit of some artists’ arena shows. It’s become the default quick fix when pop star talent is somewhat lacking and calls for distraction. At the other extreme are Roger Waters and his creative director muse Sean Evans, a former album sleeve designer for Sony who first worked with the Floyd cofounder on his opera, Ça Ira, in 2005. Adding the technical wisdom of video systems guru Richard Turner to the partnership was a shrewd move, resulting in what was arguably one of the most mesmerising video productions in rock history. 31
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“Roger and I see eye to eye creatively and he appreciates that I’ll always go out of my way to get the best solution to any idea,” said Evans. “I feel that he’s now at a stage in his career where everything has to be iconic and look like a million dollars, and that obviously sets the bar pretty high. “Conceptually, Roger didn’t want this new version to be about the internal struggle of a rock star; he wanted to expand the narrative to reference the social, political and religious divisions that occur in today’s world. “Naturally, there are some aspects of the original show’s more famous images that you can’t mess with, and we debated long and hard about
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how to make ‘The Trial’ work in this environment. The slot machine look was a naff idea and re-animating it in 3D would have taken us a year and been financially impractical. “So the answer was to take Gerald Scarfe’s original animation, which Roger has in his vault, make very high resolution 4K scans of it and hand paint every scene out to 8K. It was a painful, laborious, two month process but it had to be done right. “The same people who did that applied the same skills to the ‘Waiting For The Worms’ animation from the 1982 movie.” The hammers were re-drawn in 3D. Evans: “Even before we had our style guide locked in place, we’d started on the hammers but it all looked very
2010, very lens flarey, and inappropriate when placed in the context of the other imagery. It bent Gerry out of shape when he saw it so we went back to the drawing board.” Other original footage required subtle ‘upgrades’. Yhe dramatic ‘F**king Flowers’ sequence from ‘Empty Spaces’, where the flower stems were extended to fill the sides of the wall, was but one example. In two parts of the show, the content featured a ‘demented Pink’ on a section of the wall which spun around 180° to reveal a 3D ‘Reg Troll’ character, based on a caricature of Waters drawn by Scarfe in 1974. A harrowing sight, it was one of many creative and technical victories for Evans’ team. Evans explained: “I did a lot of the 3D content using Cinema 4D and the Reg Troll piece was done using Maya software with Meats Meier, a video designer who works with Tool. “In fact, I learned a lot about the
capabilities of Maxon’s Cinema 4D throughout this project; it’s been a hell of a learning curve! “At various points it looks as if there are two or more layers of imagery, but it’s all one piece. It was all about f**king with space and people’s minds, bringing really trippy aspects to the content with big sweeps, the spinning of the wall, and especially when Roger is seen to push the wall and make it ‘explode’. “But every nuance has to have meaning with Roger, so there’s not a single piece of gratuitous content in the show. Each of the quotes that we project are carefully chosen by
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Roger and timed for effect, and we’ve added a few from Kafka and ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ for Europe. “We had the wall modelled in 3D so that we could project a brick on a brick. That was a fundamental point when we brought Richard Turner in. The aim was to enable accurate projection on any given part of the wall, and once that structure was in place we could really start to mess around creatively.” Footage was gathered from all areas of the Internet as well as agencies where appropriate. One of the more moving items appeared in ‘Vera’, when a young female student’s face broke out in tears of joyful disbelief at the sight of her father returning from war... in this case, Iraq. “It’s a beautiful scene, isn’t it?” Evans remarked. “It had to be real people, real scenes, and when you find things like this it’s unparalleled. We wanted it to feel global and not identified with one particular country. It happens to be an American soldier returning from Iraq, but then the U.S. does tend to go to war frequently!” Other notable sequences included ‘The Thin Ice’ which began with the famous baby cry and the image of Waters’ father, Eric, who died at Anzio in 1944. The theme of lost loved ones in conflict continued with photos sent in by victims’ families, and also included an image of Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot dead by police at Stockwell tube station in 2005, after wrongly suspecting he was a terrorist. A speeding tube train and the sound of gunfire followed. 38
A close look at the ‘Nobody Home’ sequence revealed that the clip from the movie ‘The Battle Of Britain’ that was projected across the wall was replicated in sync on Waters’ hotel room TV, thanks to an Apple Mac mini – one of many subtleties that were simply mind-blowing. Evans’ biggest challenge was perhaps that, because Waters constantly looked to underline key messages or fine-tune elements of the show on an almost daily basis, he (and the compositors using Adobe After Effects) needed to respond quickly with the visuals. “After each show, Roger watches a DVD to review the performance and he will inevitably find fault,” observed Evans. “He does understand the limitations posed by the lengthy video rendering process, so he won’t expect me to perform technical miracles overnight. “But yes, it has required serious efforts from time to time and anything longer than 30 seconds usually takes a week. That’s why if you need resources and he appreciates why, he’ll tell you to get whatever it is. Apple must love us.” Chris Kansy recalled a moment during the Izod Center rehearsals when a “huge number” of brand new
Mac Pro towers were unpacked. “Right now, at Breathe, the New York editing suite co-owned by Andy Jennison who worked on all of this with Roger and I for months before the tour started, there are 10 machines that are set up on a render farm, working on some pieces I’ve recently created,” continued Evans. “They just sit there rendering frames. I can’t do it from the venue because the Internet connection is often so weak but I can log in at my hotel where it’s much faster and check on progress.” [I wish I could have said the same about my hotel in Milan.] I spoke with Evans on a more relaxed ‘no-show’ day in Milan, but that wasn’t to say his department wasn’t busy. They were using this ‘dark’ day to conduct camera tests for a proposed film shoot of the show, hence the presence of additional crew including lighting chief Rich Gorrod who later work on the concert film. “Just like the original, this is a very difficult show to shoot so it requires a lot of preparation in advance. So here in Milan, where we have access to key crew, we can go to different parts of the show, look at light levels, all that kind of stuff, and make a wellinformed game plan,” said Evans.
XL-SIZE PROJECTION & HARDWARE “We have a dream team video crew made up of crew chiefs!” said Richard Turner, referring to his projectionist colleagues Clarke Anderson (crew chief), Andy Joyes and Gary Beirne, and media server operator Phil Haynes. Turner’s task was to turn all of the XL Video-supplied video kit into a Medialon-driven system that challenged the size and resolution of the world’s largest IMAX cinema screen, winning hands down with a 8560 pixels wide by 1620 high canvas. Game, set and match. This pixel count was the amalgamation of the wall projection surface and the central 9.3m diameter Gerriets Optilux projection screen, supported by the 10.75m diameter truss circle designed and supplied by Brilliant Stages. It was whilst working on a Miley Cyrus tour in November 2009 that Turner was called into a meeting with Waters and Evans. “Roger said that he wanted to tour The Wall and asked for my opinion on a set of technical challenges. I explained that all could be achieved with the required amounts of money, time and talent, and over the next few days I looked at Mark Fisher’s drawings to calculate how many projectors we’d need for a seamless image.” Turner opted for 20 Barco FLM projectors — five groupings of three HD20s for the front projection on the wall and five R22s to rear-project on to the circular screen. 39
Show Group Production Services (SGPS) built custom three-way cradles to accommodate the FLMs to enable the best possible angles. Naturally, keystone correction was necessary for the outer screens in order to achieve accurate brick on brick mapping. The seamless images across all five portions of the projection were enabled by a set of custom shutters — described as “reassuringly expensive gaffer tape” by Turner — made by Tait Technologies of Belgium to “serrate the projector beam edges and enable a smooth blend”. The Barco Folsom Encore processor triggered the ‘video black’ from a Catalyst server to mask the projection, thus avoiding imagery being fired into a void. The timecoded projection was programmed to reveal a new portion of the overall widescreen image as soon as a new brick was laid. This was particularly effective when individual images of conflict victims each occupied a brick. The accuracy over an arena-scale distance was astounding. Having used AutoCAD 3D to identify the best possible positions for the projectors, Andy Joyes’ daily task was to sit in the arena and remotely sharpen their focus via a WiFi tablet. Both the Catalyst and the projection shutters were controlled by a Full Boar console, operated by Phil Haynes. The content was stored on Apple Macs and an AJA HD-SDI I/O card is referenced to the master timing signal 40
that informed the five Apple XServe playback servers that ran five points of projection for the wall. A Mac Pro ran the content for the circular screen and with back-ups for all, the machines on duty totalled 12. The XServes and Mac Pro were running a Gallery program named VVTR (Virtual Video Tape Recorder) which turned a Mac into a time codechasing hard drive. Turner previously used it on the Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach tour. “It’s turned into my weapon of choice,” he said. “Because Roger is changing certain elements of the show on an almost daily basis, we have six Final Cut Pro projects — one per machine — on the go so that we can manually write time code points for drop-ins or cuts.” LIGHTING The original lighting designer of Pink Floyd’s The Wall show, Marc Brickman, completed his work and left the camp in the late stages of rehearsals. And so it fell to lighting director Mark ‘Sparky’ Risk to give me the lowdown on the illumination supplied by PRG, whose crew was led by Ross Colledge. Sparky, who was brought into the Waters camp for his The Dark Side Of The Moon tour, said: “We still had some programming to do when Marc made his exit, but I’ve worked with him for so long [since the late 1980s] that I’ve learned how to implement his designs faithfully. We share the same taste and so it’s a straightforward transition.
Lighting director Mark ‘Sparky’ Risk.
“This show is very much about the blending of departments whose egos are left at the door. In this case, the lighting, video and pyro are joined at the hip under the heading ‘visuals’, which was the same on Dark Side but that used an LED screen. Here, with projection, you have to light with less intensity in order to make the video pop. It’s all about creating that overall look.” Although not the biggest lighting rig by Waters/Floyd standards, every fixture earned its keep. The Brilliant Stages-built circular screen truss was designed to withstand the weight of 24 Vari*Lite VL3000 washes mounted
around its perimeter, and the main key lights were the Sparky-favoured 24 Cyberlights 2.0s spread evenly over eight moving ‘Cyberpods’. Vari*Lite VLX LED wash lights were on the stage floor. “They’re punchy and very reliable — I can’t say enough good things about those,” enthused Sparky. “The big VLX moment is on ‘Goodbye Cruel World’. It’s the light you see penetrating through the ‘window’ before the last brick is laid at the end of Act One.” The Torms (Tormentors) are often a feature of Brickman’s shows. These were the three vertical trusses at each side, fitted with VL3500 washes to 41
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“The technology has changed so the projection of images, which are a big part of the show, is way easier now than it was...� Roger Waters
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Below: One of the two flying spot pods during rehearsals.
side-light the band. “It’s a technique used frequently in Marc’s designs because by playing with intensity levels up, down and mid-stage to give more shape to the body, you end up with more of a three-dimensional look.” Over 30 Martin Atomic 3000 strobes with colour scrollers were distributed across the set to reinforce the drama, while a pair of Syncrolite
XL10s, seated atop the upstage ‘chicken run’, added heavyweight search light brightness to the pyro chaos on the show opening... and then they were gone. “I like it when you have fixtures that have an impact and then go away,” said Sparky. “Of course, it’s a luxury to be able to do that. There’s often the temptation to overuse things because you’ve paid for them, but the effect can get old very quickly.” Sparky also controlled the lights 46
that are built into the inflatables. “We just have LEDs for the eyes of the Teacher, Wife and Mother, and there’s also a three-colour neon used for the Wife’s lips.” (LEDs were also used for the Pig’s eyes but were turned on by Sean Jacobs upon release.) Formerly a long-time Virtuoso user, Sparky controlled eight DMX universes on a grandMA console that was still new to him. “I’d used a grandMA to programme for the Black-Eyed Peas but that was a brief dalliance. It was Cirque du Soleil’s Viva Elvis show two years ago that gave me my first main experience of it and I really liked it.” Called by Jerry ‘Hodgie’ Vierna, the use of spotlights was a major feature of the show, especially in the reprised ‘In The Flesh’ — as indeed were 10 PRG Bad Boys (firing across the fore stage from a downstage truss) — when they followed Waters as his accusatory finger pointed at different sections of the audience. As well as four Gladiator FOH spots, two flown Lycian M2 spot pods manned by Jeremy Sorensen and Will Wilkison made their entrance at the start of ‘The Happiest Days Of Our Lives’, searching for the buzzing helicopter. This key ingredient of the 1980-81 shows was very faithfully reproduced. Vince Gallegos of SGPS controlled both the flying spot motion and the movement of the Cyberpods at FOH using FTSI’s Navigator software via a laptop GUI interface and a standard
Right: Lighting motion operator Vince Gallegos; pyro technician Reid Nofsinger wields Roger Waters’ strobeeffect weapon.
FTSI Showrig console. Ironically, it was a $30 computer joystick that Gallegos used for manual control! Dimming was handled by ETC 2.4kW Sensor+ racks. Technicians Barry Branford, Joe Huq and David Lancini were also on the lighting crew. Around 100 rigging points covered audio, lighting, props, projection, the Stuka and automation, and they were spread out right into the arena, most of which were fitted with half tonne, one and two tonne Lodestar double brake motors. Dave ‘Dash’ Rowe was the head rigger, backed up by Dave Brierly and Joe Anchor. FLESHING OUT PYRO Led by Shane Johnson, the pyrotechnics crew from Illinois-based Strictly FX also consisted of designer Reid Nofsinger and Vince Lopez. Together, as personally briefed by the artist, they unleashed a torrent of explosive chaos in the opening number, as Nofsinger explained. “All of the pyro happens on ‘In The Flesh?’, the opener. It started out with less product than we’re currently using but it was shot in a quicker, 10 second sequence, chasing in from two sides. Roger then decided he wanted it to last 20 seconds but without doubling the products [sourced from NextFX]. “To achieve the same drama, it made a huge difference in the way planned this out. So we started with a
one-wave centre cue that split to two waves, then went out as four waves and came back in as eight to an ‘all fire’, with machine gun fire along the truss to make sense of the Stuka crash.” Ah, the good old Stuka! A replica of The Wall’s original scale model 47
warplane, its brief journey to eventual demise began along a wire. The show clock was watched and nine seconds (average) before impact, the plane was released. As the flight path length differed between venues, the sequence had to be recalculated each time. “That opening sequence consumes 110 comets — red 40 footers, red ultrafast and silver tails fired as a cross for Roger’s entrance — and in America we also used 560 gerbs,” said Nofsinger. “But after Roger watched a video from the American tour, he said he asked if we could start it from two places in Europe. I told him we’d definitely need more product and he was fine about that. “So now we’re firing 640 gerbs. It starts in the centre but breaks away immediately, left and right and produces two semi-circles of frenetic pyro action.” The whole sequence was run to the overall show time code so that it synched with the video and music, beat for beat. Nofsinger controlled everything from a program called Fire One, which provided status and diagnostic information about every pyro product in the rig, in order to avoid misfiring or other problems. “But if we ever lost time code, I could still fire everything manually from that program,” he assured. The Stuka crash at the end of ‘In The Flesh?’ was a fully manual cue From top: The Torms amidst much smoke and fury; Next FX gerbs wait in line; the Stuka before the crash; flashpoint during ‘In The Flesh?. 48
from Vince Lopez who positioned himself behind the wall, watching for the moment of impact. He fired two lycopodium cannons — each containing 1.5lbs of lycopodium powder (mushroom spore) — into the air and lit it from a hot surface igniter, achieving around five feet of flame height that was rapidly extinguished. The effect of a war plane explosion was achieved authentically and safely. Towards the end of the show came the bombastic, ‘Neo Nazi’ re-run of the same number, known to the crew as ‘Flesh 2’, which saw Waters’ powercrazed character randomly blast an old German machine gun into the audience. Rather than have the artist actually commit mass murder, a realistic firing effect was achieved with a small strobe light fitted inside the gun’s barrel. Said Nofsinger: “We thought about getting an AK-47 and firing blanks but that wouldn’t have been very practical or safe. Blanks are actually quite hot if they hit you! It took a while to get a circuit board designed to fit into the gun so that we could adjust the flash rate. So pretty much everything in that gun is handmade.” Strictly FX’s final act was to deploy
60lbs of confetti in ‘The Trial’ and a cryo fog effect from Le Maitre LSGs as the wall tumbled. HEALTH & SAFETY Fifteen or even 10 years ago, few people would have considered involving an engineering company on an arena tour, but the landscape has since changed vastly due to exposure to safety legislation. As skilled and confident as Tait Towers is, it is wise to gain an approval stamp from an organisation like McLaren Engineering, the Northumberland-based specialist in steel structures that gave Chris Kansy the green light for the tour. “Approval from McLaren is a respected endorsement and one you really need when you’re dealing with local authorities and venue management who might question what you’re doing,” said Kansy. “They put all of our machinery, rigging, truss and automation under the microscope and the result is that we all feel much more secure. “It’s been the same with The Event Safety Shop (TESS) who we brought in to oversee the execution of the show and the safety of crew. Things like, how do I know that it’s
“We thought about getting an AK-47 and firing blanks but that wouldn’t have been very practical...” Reid Nofsinger 49
Senior Clair technician Bob Weibel oversees the rigging of the i-5 line array system.
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Bob Weibel and (right) FOH engineer/ tour manager Trip Khalaf.
safe for carps to work at 35’ holding cardboard boxes in the dark with a headset on, or for them to be flag bearers up there as they are for the first song? “TESS’ Mike Herbert was with us all through rehearsals, collecting up all the risk assessments and writing the tour’s safety handbook. It’s an incredibly observant company and I’m sure that when we enter the O2 Arena, the mere mention of TESS’ involvement will inspire much relief! “I’ve never had to concern myself 52
with these H&S issues before, but when you’re doing crazy stuff with big toys, you need to get sensible and I value the input of these people.” AUDIO TRIP The inimitable James ‘Trip’ Khalaf piloted the FOH audio mix and doubled as tour manager – a duality became accustomed to on previous Waters tours as well as with other artists including Queen. He came into The Wall Live project in 2010 at the end of a “seriously fun” summer on
the road with Kiss. Khalaf mixed the show using two Midas XL4 analogue consoles and a Yamaha PM5D digital board. The primary XL4 handled all of the live band inputs on the main stage; the secondary XL4 took care of the band instruments on the fore stage during the ‘Run Like Hell’ set. The PM5D dealt not only with the surround sound FX inputs and the routing that drove the surround system, but also with orchestra playback and the returns from all the analogue FX. These were all summed and delivered back to Khalaf on his primary board. When I made the observation that many engineers would have chosen to mix completely digitally on a show of this magnitude, Khalaf — who remains notoriously loyal to the analogue medium — gave a predictable reply. “I expect every engineer these days to go the digital route and I sit there in utter amazement, wondering why,” he said. “Digital consoles just don’t sound good but there is a place for them. If you’re mixing a ‘hard disk’ show where you’ve got a different kick drum coming at you for each song, it makes sense. But in situations where you’re mixing extraordinarily good musicians playing live, it’s ludicrous.”
From top: Understage sub; a surround sound cluster; Powersoft & Crown amps. 53
Throughout the tour, Khalaf made a number of suggestions for improving the audio, particularly the surround FX. “Sometimes, Roger takes on board what I suggest; at other times, he’s told me to f**k off. It’s Roger’s gig and that’s his right. “Through myself, James Guthrie, Mike McKnight and Roger, these sounds magically appear above the audience’s heads every night.” Guthrie, the co-producer of the Floyd album, went back to the multitrack tapes to restore and digitally transfer all of the original, iconic sound effects – including the helicopter, battle sounds, plane crash, baby cry, TV clips and the Islington Green School Choir heard on the hit ‘Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)’. In each city on the tour, a choir from a local underprivileged youth group was invited to join the show for this number and contribute some basic choreography. “We used to trigger the choir from Jon Carin’s keyboard but it wasn’t sounding right,” said Khalaf, “so James helped us out. He re-did the orchestral parts and generally cleaned up those critical items, and did a great job. Those come to me from Mike McKnight’s playback rig.” Like so many of the crew, Khalaf genuinely felt that touring could not get better. “Having done The Dark Side Of The Moon tour and now this, well, the thought of going out and mixing guitars, bass, drums and some guy drooling into a microphone doesn’t really cut it for me. I mean, this is such a privilege. This is the 54
greatest f**king thing in the world and I look forward to going out there every evening to ply my trade.” One might assume that on this show, a pair of XL4s would have been accompanied by a massive arsenal of outboard, but it was surprisingly modest. Eventide H3000 Ultra Harmonizers, t.c. delays, Lexicon PCM91 reverbs, Summit TLA 100A tube amps (for vocals), Crane Song STC-8 comp/limiters (bass) and Aphex expander/gates for drums were the only notable rack features. “There are two ways to approach this,” advised the renowned engineer. “You could try and make this sound as close to the record as possible, or you take a more loose view on it whilst retaining all the really crucial hooks that people will remember and expect. “Making it sound too much like the record would rob the audience of a lot of the inherent power. Did you notice how I sneak the master fader up throughout ‘Comfortably Numb’? [I did.] It’s the only time in the show when I do that. I just love taking the audience’s faces off when we do that number, and it’s the highlight for me. It’s incredible.” There were few surprises in the microphone spec, with the old standard Shure SM58 on vocals, and for the main and fore stage DW drum kits, further Shures are on kick drum and snare (SM91, Beta 52 and SM57s), Audix D2 were applied to the toms with Milab DC96s paired as overheads. Audio-Technica AT4050s took care of the guitar amps.
THE CLAIR RIG Positioned behind Trip Khalaf at FOH was his regular accomplice, Bob Weibel who presided over the Clair audio system, supplied in Europe by Swiss-based operation, AudioRent Clair. Matthew Scoggins and Gabby Linford were the dedicated techs. The system on the American leg was Clair’s i5-D line array which, being new, was not yet available outside the U.S. — instead, the standard JBLloaded i5 system was deployed for Europe. The Crown-powered rig was 14 speakers high in the front hangs with flown i5-B sub-bass cabinets. As part of a side array there was an eight high stack of i5s without additional subs. Six BT218 subs per side were underneath the front of the stage with
four FF2 front fills per side. Surround sound was treated as a separate entity, with Henry Fury taking responsibility. It wa catered for with two (left/right) clusters of 16 ‘evolved’ R4 cabinets flown midway in the arena (radiating 360°), a third R4 cluster of 16 flown centrally at the back, and Powersoft-amplified BT218 subs mounted on the floor at the rear. At times, the thunderous resonance of the low-end FX (explosions, etc) were extremely profound, startling the audience. It took me back to Earls Court, August 1980, when Stephen Court’s system produced a similar ‘sensurround’ effect. Subtle it wasn’t. Bob Weibel explained that the beauty of the global Clair network is that its clients can pick up identical systems in each territory, removing 55
Monitor engineer Ian Newton with the DiGiCo SD7 console.
the expense of freight. “That whole concept of worldwide service is something we’ve really focused on and made attractive,” he said. “Although we couldn’t replicate the i5-D this time because only the single prototype exists, it will happen in the future. For now, though we have a great system with the conventional i5 model. “I was really satisfied with the way the prototype i5-Ds sounded on the last leg. The i5 concept of having a 2.5° vertical long-throw cabinet, 5° vertical mid-throw and 10° vertical short-throw has been carried through with the i5-D. And the same drivers and elements are there, but they’re 56
arranged a little differently, and the cabinet is designed to accommodate two 18” drivers instead of one. “It ends up being significantly wider and somewhat deeper, and in fact the stage hands responded very well to how easy it was to rig with the same hardware.” Using the Clair AlignArray software, Weibel was able to very accurately predict how the system would perform at each venue. Processing was handled by DLP controllers, the second generation product that came out of Lake Technologies after the Dolby acquisition. “The DLP is a remarkably flexible,” said Weibel. “It has the option of user-
Clair 12AM Series II monitor wedges arc around Waters’ mic position.
selectable I/O cards in a mainframe configuration and has tremendous capabilities when transferring from digital to analogue, analogue to digital, and any number of channels and formats, and it also supports the Dante audio networking technology. So it gets my vote.” MONITORS In rehearsals in Lisbon at the start of the European tour, Ian Newton arrived as the ‘new boy’ monitor engineer and according to Bob Weibel, “he’s doing a fine job and it’s noted by everyone”. Newton inherited his DiGiCo SD7 console from his predecessor, Robin Fox, a 1980 veteran. “I’d never used
the SD7 before but it’s behaving well, and I’ve found my way around it easily enough,” he said. “I just came in and took over using the equipment that Robin had. There wasn’t any point in changing anything. I’m running close to 130 channels and the internal reverbs and delays tend to be quite busy on acoustics and vocals.” The fore stage looked deceptive in that it appeared to be wedge-free, but there were “loads” of Clair 12AM Series IIs positioned underneath, projecting up through grilles. Further generous amounts of 12AM IIs (not hidden) were in evidence behind the line of the wall where the 57
band were positioned for most of the show — with Waters surrounded by four wedges. There was a concession to drummer Graham Broad in the shape of a single sub backing up his 12AM. But generally-speaking, the monitoring was in-ear; this was a given, seeing as everyone followed a time code-driven click (see below) — a far cry from the headphones worn by Waters 30 years ago.
“Most of the musicians are on the new JH Audio wireless ear pieces from Jerry Harvey [ex-Ultimate Ears] and they’re run with Sennheiser G3 hardware. “They obviously all have different needs, mix-wise, but Roger has a stereo mix of everything which, for me, is fantastic to listen to. Some of the guys wear one ear piece and listen to their wedge. “As well as the music, there are pre-recorded count-in cues, so some of the band are listening out for them 58
and it’s just so bang on. Graham has his own personal Samson mixer which allows him to adjust the level of those cues, and the rest of the music which I sub-mix over to him. For similar reasons, Jon Carin has a small Mackie mixer.” Newton was supported by monitor tech Kevin Kapler, also the primary RF co-ordinator — a very significant position on this production, given the amount of frequency ‘negotiation’ required for wireless in-ears, mics and instrument packs. “Kevin arrives early and has a long, busy day,” explained Bob Weibel. “The wireless instrument packs are Samson, as the band have a relationship with the brand, but we provide Sennheiser systems for the in-ears and that was a key choice because we needed the frequency agility to deal with the regular touring environment and give the optimum RF performance.” MAN IN THE MIDDLE We’ve explored the roles of audio, video, lighting and pyro, but the man who knitted these departments together to perform as one was Mike McKnight. At the start of the project, Waters used the Pink Floyd album and also live recordings from the original shows as references to guide the creation of the video content. Tempos and timings varied in some cases, and the final choice informed
Mike McKnight, whose playback and time code system knitted all departments together. Previous page: Graham Broad’s Samson sub-mixer.
McKnight and drummer Graham Broad’s programming of click tracks. “Graham is the band’s engine room and it’s a big responsibility,” said McKnight. “Obviously, the band are playing live but it calls for a lot of discipline when you’re being held down by a click track for the entire evening. Unfortunately there’s no other way to pull off this show and it can’t change because of how the show was built.” McKnight ran MOTU’s Digital Performer 5.13, an integrated digital audio and MIDI sequencing production system that McKnight previously used on tours with Madonna and Mariah Carey. He described it as being “kind of like ProTools but better”. “The system delivers the metronomic click track that enables
the musicians to play in time with all the music we used to to help build the video imagery,” said McKnight. “I send time code to video, lighting, pyro and audio so that everything in the show occurs at precisely the correct time. Their consoles are receiving what my computer send out to them and I worked for a month figuring all this out before we got to rehearsals. James Guthrie worked for much longer.” Drummer Graham Broad programmed most of the click tracks. “Graham has a very responsible role in the band. He’s the engine room when it comes to keeping on top of the rigid timing. “Obviously, the band are playing live but it’s very different when you’re being held down by a click for the entire evening. Unfortunately there’s 59
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no other way to pull off this show.” The quality of Khalaf’s mix might have fooled some into thinking that this wasn’t as live a performance as it actually was. There were, however, some ‘live’ aspects which relied on playback from McKnight’s system: items such Waters neo-Fascist megaphone delivery on ‘Waiting For The Worms’, for example. “We tried to make that work for real but it was too difficult,” said McKnight. “Fortunately, when it comes to the backing vocals, we are blessed with wonderful singers. That’s not always the case with some R&B tours that I do. “I have five lines of music and surround content that I send to FOH and monitors, and along with the click there are a number of voice cues that I pre-recorded myself into the computer to count in impending show events, such as when Roger has to fire the machine gun at the wall — I say, ‘Get ready to shoot... one , two, three, four, shoot...stop!’. Obviously that gun sound is coming from me!” McKnight’s final cue of the night came when the wall tumbles. “I send out a low-end signal to the subs that makes the whole room feel like it’s shaking and rumbling. It’s a manual cue because it can happen at a different time each night. “The start of the show for me is about 25 minutes before the band walk onstage. That’s when I hit ‘play’ on my computer and start the walkin music [classic protest songs from Dylan, Lennon and Sam Cooke], and then the time code doesn’t stop until
just before ‘Mother’, to give Roger the chance to address the audience. “He can ad lib all he likes but there’s a certain line he’ll include at the end that we both know is my cue to run the time code again until the next stop.” ALSO STARRING... The show was stage managed by Mark ‘Kahuna’ Candelario. Other key members of crew included production assistant Kim Van Loon, management assistant Simon Slater, road manager Duncan ‘Pompey’ Wilkinson, head of security Liam Wheatley and the mistress of the wardrobe, Sonja Benavidez. Transam supplied 25 trucks (with its newly-acquired EST trailers in evidence), Beat The Street dispatched six crew buses and Stardes provided a single truck for the lucrative merchandising. The band and management travelled by private jet, organised by Premier Aviation. Rock-It Cargo handled freight on both sides of the Atlantic, and Altour and ProTravel (thanks, Pepe Heath) booked hotels, while Robertson Taylor was the insurance broker. Tour catering was in the hands of Eat Your Hearts Out whose team ensured I was well fed during my time with the tour party in Milan and London! COMMERCIAL REALITY It is a myth that beyond 31 shows over four venues, Pink Floyd’s original Wall production was too complicated to tour in the conventional sense. The 61
Backline crew Eddy Butler, Tim Myer, crew chief Colin Lyon & Colin Barton. Below: Graham Broad’s main and fore stage DW drum kits.
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Top left: Guitarist Dave Kilminster solos; the scene behind the wall.
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simple truth is that is wouldn’t have made any money. Mark Fisher cited the cost of tickets in 1980 as being the root of the problem. He said: “The inflation growth in the U.S. between 1980 and 2010 was 178%. A $12.50 ticket for the Long Island Arena show in 1980 would be a $36 ticket today. On the U.S. leg of the current tour, the cheapest ticket was $100 with premium tickets costing $270. Those figures follow through in the UK. “That offers a very good perspective on how box office prices have risen over the last 30 years and, of course, it gives an indication of why sophisticated shows can tour profitably. We can hire a lot more crew and we have over 100 [119] personnel dealing with the various technical aspects of this production. “In 1980, we had a permanent crew of around 15 which is amazing when you think about what was achieved.” 64
STAGGERING DIMENSIONS The Wall Live was re-designed by Fisher’s team in order to be upscaled and weatherproofed for outdoor presentation in stadiums during 2012 and 2013. By the final date – at the Stade de France in Paris on September 21 2013 – a total of 219 shows had played to over four million fans and grossed a staggering US $458,673,798, making it the third highest grossing tour of alltime, behind U2’s 360° and the Rolling Stones’ A Bigger Bang. For the stadium production, Stageco created multiple structures including the main stage which spanned the stadium width using its SuperRoof system that stretched 36m high by 22m wide, was enlarged with covered wings that extended a further 16m x 16m from the central structure. An upstage centre covered roof, measuring 12m x 6m, was also integrated into the system along with two towers that facilitated the building of the Wall on to the seating grandstands within the stadium venues. Three low profile spot towers at a height of 18m, three scaffolding projection towers measuring 6m x 12m and front of house structures were provided for all of the stadium tour dates. The sheer scale of this production posed logistical challenges for Stageco. Two systems were shipped from Belgium to South America in containers for the beginning of the tour and then one sent back while the other was transported north for six dates in the U.S. and Canada.
“This is the greatest f**king thing in the world...� Trip Khalaf 65
With 23 trucks needed to transport all materials, the installation required a crew of 28 working to a 24-hour rotating schedule in order to complete the build in extremely tight time constraints of just three days. Stageco’s XXL Roof came into play when the tour arrived in Europe for its final leg of the stadium run. Designed with the aid of Mark Fisher, originally for a Madonna tour, the XXL offered the desired deeper performance area, courtesy of a 12m cantilever in front of the downstage towers. The projection on to the Wall across the width of the stadium was a central element of the show, so Stageco implemented an extended roof hang of 25m in height to raise the PA out of the projection lines. The XXL Roof’s new hydraulic build technology not only enabled efficient build and dismantling, but also improved the safety for the crews handling the large steel. In accomodating the show at the different sized venues, a range of stages were brought into action. Three of the new XXL systems (with an additional base system to maintain the scheduling) were best suited, with one stadium-sized Wall support stage for closed roof stadia and an additional three indoor arena systems. 66
AND FINALLY, THE FILM On September 6 2014, Roger Waters spent his 71st birthday at the Toronto International Film Festival, attending the world premiere of his longawaited tour documentary ‘Roger Waters: The Wall’, which he described as “a lovely piece of work that could easily double as an anti-war, protest film”. Shot in three countries on two continents, the 133-minute documentary was co-directed by Waters and Sean Evans. Reviewing the tour, Waters told Rolling Stone magazine, “I can’t top it. First of all, you have to accept the fact that I’m not going to live forever.You just have to accept that when you do something as enormous as that tour. The hardest thing in the world is thinking of something to do, so going and doing it is a reward in itself.” A commercial DVD/ Blu-Ray release is expected by the close of 2015. As The Wall Live neared its end, its scenic genius, Mark Fisher sadly passed away on June 25 2013, aged 66. Eighteen months later, on December 18 2014, 53 year old Ian Newton, the engineer responsible for Waters’ on-stage sound, also died. They are sorely missed.
The stage build and performance at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin on September 19 2013, the penultimate show of the tour.
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The band return after the falling of the Wall to perform the all-acoustic ‘Outside The Wall’.
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At London’s O2 Arena on May 12 2011, David Gilmour kept a promise to guest “one night only” on his co-written song, ‘Comfortably Numb’, and returned again with Pink Floyd colleague and Nick Mason for the ‘Outside The Wall’ finale.
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Tour
Dates
2010-12-2010 - Izod Center - East Rutherford – USA
2010-11-04 - Izod Center - East Rutherford - USA
(dress rehearsal / invited guests only)
2010-11-06 - Madison Square Garden - New York - USA 2010-11-08 - Wachovia Center - Philadelphia - USA
2010-09-15 - Air Canada Centre - Toronto - Canada
2010-11-09 - Wachovia Center - Philadelphia - USA
2010-09-16 - Air Canada Centre - Toronto - Canada
2010-11-11 - Wachovia Center - Philadelphia - USA
2010-09-18 - Air Canada Centre - Toronto - Canada
2010-11-13 - Bank Atlantic Center - Fort Lauderdale - USA
2010-09-20 - United Center - Chicago - USA
2010-11-14 - Bank Atlantic Center - Fort Lauderdale - USA
2010-09-21 - United Center - Chicago - USA
2010-11-16 - St Pete Times Forum- Tampa - USA
2010-09-23 - United Center - Chicago - USA
2010-11-18 - Philips Arena - Atlanta - USA
2010-09-24 - United Center - Chicago - USA
2010-11-20 - Toyota Center - Houston - USA
2010-09-26 - Consol Energy Center - Pittsburgh - USA
2010-11-21 - American Airlines Center - Dallas - USA
2010-09-28 - Quicken Loans Arena - Cleveland - USA
2010-11-23 - Pepsi Center - Denver - USA
2010-09-30 - Boston TD Garden - Boston - USA
2010-11-26 - MGM Grand Garden Arena - Las Vegas - USA
2010-10-01 - Boston TD Garden - Boston - USA
2010-11-27 - US Airways Center - Phoenix - USA
2010-10-03 - Boston TD Garden - Boston - USA
2010-11-29 - Staples Center - Los Angeles - USA
2010-10-05 - Madison Square Garden - New York - USA
2010-11-30 - Staples Center - Los Angeles - USA
2010-10-06 - Madison Square Garden - New York - USA
2010-12-03 - Oracle Arena - Oakland - USA
2010-10-08 - HSBC Arena - Buffalo - USA
2010-12-05 - Staples Center - Los Angeles - USA
2010-10-10 - Verizon Center - Washington DC - USA
2010-12-07 - HP Pavilion - San Jose - USA
2010-10-12 - Nassau Coliseum - Long Island - USA
2010-12-08 - HP Pavilion - San Jose - USA
2010-10-13 - Nassau Coliseum - - USA
2010-12-10 - GM Place, - Vancouver - Canada
2010-10-15 - XL Center - Hartford - USA
2010-12-11 - Tacoma Dome - Tacoma - USA
2010-10-17 - Scotiabank Place - Ontario - Canada
2010-12-13 - Honda Center - Anaheim - USA
2010-10-19 - Bell Centre - Montreal - Canada
2010-12-14 - Honda Center - Anaheim - USA
2010-10-20 - Bell Centre - Montreal - Canada
2010-12-18 - Palacio de los Deportes - Mexico City - Mexico
2010-10-22 - Schottenstein Center - Columbus - USA
2010-12-19 - Palacio de los Deportes - Mexico City - Mexico
2010-10-24 - Palace Of Auburn Hills - Detroit - USA
2010-12-21 - Palacio de los Deportes - Mexico City - Mexico
2010-10-26 - Qwest Center Arena - Omaha - USA 2010-10-27 - Xcel Energy Center - St Paul - USA
2011-03-21 - Atlantico Pavilion - Lisbon - Portugal
2010-10-29 - Scottrade Center - St Louis - USA
2011-03-22 - Atlantico Pavilion - Lisbon - Portugal
2010-10-30 - Sprint Center - Kansas City, - USA
2011-03-25 - Palacio de Deportes - Madrid - Spain
2010-11-03 - Izod Center - East Rutherford - USA
2011-03-26 - Palacio de Deportes - Madrid - Spain
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2011-03-29 - Palau St Jordi - Barcelona - Spain
2011-06-07 - Hallenstadion - Zurich - Switzerland
2011-03-30 - Palau St Jordi - Barcelona - Spain
2011-06-10 - O2 World - Hamburg - Germany
2011-04-01 - Mediolanum Forum - Milan - Italy
2011-06-11 - O2 World - Hamburg - Germany
2011-04-02 - Mediolanum Forum - Milan - Italy
2011-06-13 - Herning Arena - Herning - Denmark
2011-04-04 - Mediolanum Forum - Milan - Italy
2011-06-15 - O2 World - Berlin - Germany
2011-04-05 - Mediolanum Forum - Milan - Italy
2011-06-16 - O2 World - Berlin - Germany
2011-04-08 - Gelredome - Arnhem - Netherlands
2011-06-18 - Esprit Arena - Dusseldorf - Germany
2011-04-09 - Gelredome - Arnhem - Netherlands
2011-06-20 - Olympiahalle - Munich - Germany
2011-04-11 - Gelredome - Arnhem - Netherlands
2011-06-22 - Papp Laszlo - Budapest - Hungary
2011-04-13 - Arena Zagreb - Zagreb - Croatia
2011-06-24 - Hallenstadion - Zurich - Switzerland
2011-04-15 - O2 Arena - Prague - Czech Republic
2011-06-25 - Hallenstadion - Zurich - Switzerland
2011-04-16 - O2 Arena - Prague - Czech Republic
2011-06-27 - NIA - Birmingham - England
2011-04-18 - Atlas Arena - Łódź - Poland
2011-06-28 - MEN Arena - Manchester - England
2011-04-19 - Atlas Arena - Łódź - Poland
2011-06-30 - Palais Omnisport - Paris - France
2011-04-23 - Olimpiski Arena - Moscow - Russia
2011-07-01 - Palais Omnisport - Paris - France
2011-04-25 - SKK Arena - St. Petersburg - Russia
2011-07-03 - Mediolanum Forum - Milan - Italy
2011-04-27 - Hartwall Arena - Helsinki - Finland
2011-07-04 - Mediolanum Forum - Milan - Italy
2011-04-28 - Hartwall Arena - Helsinki - Finland
2011-07-08 - OAKA Arena - Athens - Greece
2011-04-30 - Telenor - Oslo - Norway
2011-07-09 - OAKA Arena - Athens - Greece
2011-05-01 - Telenor - Oslo - Norway
2011-07-12 - OAKA Arena - Athens - Greece
2011-05-04 - Ericsson Globe - Stockholm - Sweden 2011-05-05 - Globe Arena - Stockholm - Sweden
2012-01-27 - Burswood Dome - Perth - Australia
2011-05-07 - Parken - Copenhagen - Denmark
2012-01-28 - Burswood Dome - Perth - Australia
2011-05-11 - O2 Arena - London - England
2012-02-01 - Entertainment Centre - Brisbane - Australia
2011-05-12 - O2 Arena - London - England
2012-02-02 - Entertainment Centre - Brisbane - Australia
2011-05-14 - O2 Arena - London - England
2012-02-04 - Entertainment Centre - Brisbane - Australia
2011-05-15 - O2 Arena - London - England
2012-02-07 - Rod Laver Arena - Melbourne - Australia
2011-05-17 - O2 Arena - London - England
2012-02-08 - Rod Laver Arena - Melbourne - Australia
2011-05-18 - O2 Arena - London - England
2012-02-10 - Rod Laver Arena - Melbourne - Australia
2011-05-20 - MEN Arena - Manchester - England
2012-02-11 - Rod Laver Arena - Melbourne - Australia
2011-05-21 - MEN Arena - Manchester - England
2012-02-14 - Acer Arena - Sydney - Australia
2011-05-23 - O2 - Dublin - Ireland
2012-02-15 - Acer Arena - Sydney - Australia
2011-05-24 - O2 - Dublin - Ireland
2012-02-18 - Vector Arena - Auckland - New Zealand
2011-05-27 - Sportpaleis - Antwerp - Belgium
2012-02-20 - Vector Arena - Auckland - New Zealand
2011-05-28 - Sportpaleis - Antwerp - Belgium
2012-02-22 - Vector Arena - Auckland - New Zealand
2011-05-30 - Palais Omnisport - Paris - France
2012-02-23 - Vector Arena - Auckland - New Zealand
2011-05-31 - Palais Omnisport - Paris - France 2011-06-03 - SAP Arena - Mannheim - Germany
2012-03-02 - Estadio Nacional - Santiago - Chile
2011-06-04 - SAP Arena - Mannheim - Germany
2012-03-03 - Estadio Nacional - Santiago - Chile
2011-06-06 - Hallenstadion - Zurich - Switzerland
2012-03-07 - River Plate Stadium - Buenos Aires - Argentina
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2012-03-09 - River Plate Stadium - Buenos Aires - Argentina
2012-06-25 - Scotiabank Place - Ontario - Canada
2012-03-10 - River Plate Stadium - Buenos Aires - Argentina
2012-06-26 - Bell Centre - Montreal - Canada
2012-03-12 - River Plate Stadium - Buenos Aires - Argentina
2012-06-28 - Times Union Center - Albany - USA
2012-03-14 - River Plate Stadium - Buenos Aires - Argentina
2012-06-29 - XL Center - Hartford - USA
2012-03-15 - River Plate Stadium - Buenos Aires - Argentina
2012-07-01 - Fenway Park - Boston - USA
2012-03-17 - River Plate Stadium - Buenos Aires - Argentina
2012-07-03 - Consol Energy Center - Pittsburgh - USA
2012-03-18 - River Plate Stadium - Buenos Aires - Argentina
2012-07-06 - Yankee Stadium - Bronx - USA
2012-03-20 - River Plate Stadium - Buenos Aires - Argentina
2012-07-07 - Yankee Stadium - Bronx - USA
2012-03-25 - Estádio Beira Rio - Porto Alegre - Brazil
2012-07-09 - RBC Center - Raleigh - USA
2012-03-29 - Estadio Olimpico - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
2012-07-10 - Time Warner Cable Arena - Charlotte - USA
2012-03-31 - Estádio do Morumbi - Sao Paulo - Brazil
2012-07-12 - Verizon Center - Washington DC - USA
2012-04-01 - Estádio do Morumbi - Sao Paulo - Brazil
2012-07-14 - Citizens Bank Park - Philadelphia - USA
2012-04-27 - Foro De Sol - Mexico City - Mexico
2012-07-21 - Les Plaines D’Abraham, Quebec City - Canada
2012-04-28 - Foro De Sol - Mexico City - Mexico 2012-05-01 - Toyota Center - Houston - USA
2013-07-18 - Gelredome - Arnhem – Netherlands
2012-05-03 - Frank Erwin Center - Austin - USA
2013-07-20 - Festivalweide – Werchter – Belgium
2012-05-05 - BOK Center - Tulsa - USA
2013-07-23 - Stadion Poljud - Split – Croatia
2012-05-07 - Pepsi Center - Denver - USA
2013-07-26 - Stadio Euganeo - Padua – Italy
2012-05-11 - AT&T Park - San Francisco - USA
2013-07-28 - Stadio Olimpico - Rome – Italy
2012-05-13 - Valley View Casino Center - San Diego - USA
2013-07-31 - Oaka Olympic Stadium - Athens – Greece
2012-05-15 - US Airways Center - Phoenix - USA
2013-08-04 - ITU Stadium - Istanbul – Turkey
2012-05-19 - Memorial Coliseum - Los Angeles - USA
2013-08-07 - O2 Arena - Prague – Czech Republic
2012-05-22 - Rose Garden Arena - Portland - USA
2013-08-09 - Commerzbank Arena - Frankfurt – Germany
2012-05-24 - Key Arena - Seattle - USA
2013-08-11 - Parken - Copenhagen – Denmark
2012-05-26 - BC Place - Vancouver - Canada
2013-08-14 - Telenor Arena - Oslo – Norway
2012-05-28 - Rexall Place - Edmonton - Canada
2013-08-15 - Telenor Arena - Oslo – Norway
2012-05-29 - Rexall Place - Edmonton - Canada
2013-08-17 - Ullevi Stadium - Gothenburg – Sweden
2012-05-31 - MTS Centre - Winnipeg - Canada
2013-08-20 - Stadion Narodowy - Warsaw – Poland
2012-06-01 - MTS Centre - Winnipeg - Canada
2013-08-23 - Ernst-Happel Stadium - Vienna – Austria
2012-06-03 - Xcel Energy Center - St Paul - USA
2013-08-25 - Puskás Ferenc Stadium - Budapest – Hungary
2012-06-05 - Joe Louis Arena - Detroit - USA
2013-08-28 - Piata Constitutiei - Bucharest – Romania
2012-06-06 - Van Andel Arena - Grand Rapids - USA
2013-08-30 - Vasil Levski Stadium - Sofia – Bulgaria
2012-06-08 - Wrigley Field - Chicago - USA
2013-09-01 - Usce Park - Belgrade – Serbia
2012-06-10 - KFC Yum Center - Louisville - USA
2013-09-04 - Olympiastadion - Berlin – Germany
2012-06-11 - Conseco Fieldhouse - Indianapolis - USA
2013-09-06 - Esprit Arena - Dusseldorf – Germany
2012-06-13 - Philips Arena - Atlanta - USA
2013-09-08 - Amsterdam ArenA - Amsterdam – Netherlands
2012-06-15 - Bank Atlantic Center - Sunrise - USA
2013-09-11 - Letzigrund Stadium - Zurich – Switzerland
2012-06-16 - Amway Center - Orlando - USA
2013-09-14 - Wembley Stadium - London – England
2012-06-19 - Bridgestone Arena - Nashville - USA
2013-09-16 - Phones4U Arena - Manchester – England
2012-06-21 - HSBC Arena - Buffalo - USA
2013-09-18 - Aviva Stadium - Dublin – Ireland
2012-06-23 - Rogers Centre - Toronto - Canada
2013-09-21 - Stade de France - Paris – France
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Mark Cunningham was a professional musician and producer before branching out into music industry journalism, media consultancy, event production and marketing. The founding editor of three magazines – SPL, Total Production International (TPi) and Corporate Event Design – he has also authored several acclaimed books. ‘Good Vibrations: A History of Record Production’ (Sanctuary, 1996) ‘Live And Kicking: The Rock Concert Industry In The Nineties’ (Sanctuary, 1999) ‘Horslips: Tall Tales, The Official Biography’ (O’Brien Press, 2013)
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PHOTOGRAPHY Mark Fisher Mark Cunningham Sean Evans Tait Towers Jimmy Ienner Jr Stageco Staging Group Neptune Pink Floyd Philip Cheung/Getty Images with thanks to Andrew Zweck