I N T E R N AT I O N A L N E W S
TOWERS OF STRENGTH
In The Vegas Desert With The Electric Daisy Carnival
Loud & Large: The Metal Festivals One Direction • The Rolling Stones Open-Air With Live Nation BBC Live At Edinburgh Castle Rock Werchter Turns 40 • Sensation Die Böhse Onkelz • World Cup Fanzone AUTUMN 2014
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There Goes Summer...! Hello and welcome to the first edition of our revamped and restyled newsletter, which is now fully digital and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it. We’ve expanded it from four to 12 pages, and added a little more detail – I think that might indicate the range of our recent work. As ever, I’m very proud of my colleagues in the Stageco team, whom I regard as an extended family. I believe our achievements continue to inspire each other, driving us on to greater things. This summer passed at an alarming speed. As soon as June arrived, it seemed that August was nearing its end. This is always symptomatic of a busy schedule and it is true that our teams throughout Europe and the US were fully occupied with one project after another, every single week. The Rolling Stones, Beyonce & Jay-Z, Kings Of Leon, Justin Timberlake, Kasabian and One Direction were among the artists performing on tour under Stageco roofs, while our festival work has included Wireless, Calling, Rock Werchter (in its 40th year), V, Pinkpop, Wacken Open Air (happy 25th anniversary!), Graspop, Hellfest, Isle Of Wight, Dour, Electric Daisy Carnival, Tomorrowland and TomorrowWorld. We were also kept active with TV and sports-related events, such as the FIFA World Cup ‘Fanzone’ in Berlin and a major ceremony in Scotland. A big thanks to all our offices for keeping us updated with news and images. This will be our last newsletter before we raid our archives and launch our 30th anniversary celebrations. Can it really be 30 years? It still feels like yesterday! Hedwig De Meyer, Stageco President
Around & About In The Great Outdoors
FERRY ’CROSS THE SOLENT
STONES ROLL WITH SUPER ROOF
NO CHANGE FOR ‘V’ STAGE
What do the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kings Of Leon, Biffy Clyro, Calvin Harris, Rudimental, The Specials, Suede, Tom Odell, The 1975 and reunited ‘60s heroes The Move all have in common? They all played at the Isle Of Wight Festival 2014 on the main stage – a Boogdak XL structure supplied by Stageco. We thank John Giddings, Solo and everyone else who contributed to a memorable weekend at Seaclose Park.
Soon to play a string of dates in Australia and New Zealand, The Rolling Stones’ 14 On Fire tour has been using Stageco’s standard Super Roof structure with a custom-made header and wings to accommodate a complex design. The living legends have also been playing festivals with specially configured stages provided by Stageco, while the company supplied decking for a number of the tour’s arena shows.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it… and that was very much the case with the staging at this August’s V Festival, whose bill ranged from Justin Timberlake, Ed Sheeran and Kaiser Chiefs to The Killers, Paolo Nutini and Chic featuring Nile Rodgers. The main Virgin Media stage at both Hylands Park in Chelmsford and Weston Park in Telford featured the same reliable Stageco 4-Tower Roof that has been deployed for the last few years.
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One Direction Tour The World
your show. It’s not always about price and Stageco are not the cheapest in the world but when they take on a job, it’s a done deal.” The main roof is 23m wide by 20m deep and the video/ PA wing each side is 14m, giving an overall span of 51m. Then there is the B-stage runway, the bulk of which consists of Stageco elements. Despite specifying a festival roof, Winkler, Lipson and creative director Lee Lodge wanted to make the show look as unlike a festival scenario as possible, using large fascias for the video screens that visually bring the stage forward into the audience from underneath the roof. By doing this, however, the weight loading into the cantilever was increased to the extent that Stageco’s standard 4-Tower roof became a 5-Tower! Stageco project manager Dirk De Decker explained: “Due to the weight issue and the way the video had to be rigged, I proposed that we reduce the width of the roof. So we have an extra portal at the front that deals with the extra stress. “Steel is what it is but it’s the people behind it that make it work and a lot of what Stageco does is about problem solving – from the designers in the office to the guy on the road.” Crew chiefed separately by Patrik Vonckx, Stefaan Angillis and Stefaan Vandenbosch, three stage systems have been leapfrogging venues around the UK and Europe since the tour began, and will continue to do so when it reaches North America in August. Each system is packed into 12 trucks, accompanied by nine crew including working drivers. With a build schedule of two and a half days, and a de-rig lasting just under a day, a system can theoretically service a show every seven days. Wob Roberts added: “You can sleep at night knowing that Stageco will move heaven and earth to make it work for you. I’ve worked with all of their crew bosses and, without exception, you know you are in the best hands.” 1D’s follow-up tour. On The Road Again 2015 kicks off in February.
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Show photography © Calvin Aurand / Crew © Mark Cunningham
Founded just four years ago after auditioning as solo acts for TV’s The X Factor, Brit boy band One Direction have now achieved that elusive goal of cracking the US. Having first toured as headliners in 2011 with Up All Night, a theatre and arena tour of the UK, Australasia and North America, 1D grossed over $50 million on their follow up Take Me Home tour. With this scale of trajectory, it is no surprise that 2014 has seen 1D achieve stadium status with their current Where We Are world tour. Production manager Wob Roberts has worked with Stageco more than any other staging company, on tours with Robbie Williams and Genesis as well as numerous festivals across Europe. His reasons for returning to Stageco for Where We Are speak volumes about the depth of skill and experience offered by the Belgian company. He said: “Ray Winkler and Ric Lipson at Stufish designed this production to fit any festival and so I was asked to use a festival stage roof, but a different supplier was going to be chosen at first. When we started planning this tour, it became clear that San Siro Stadium in Milan had to be treated carefully due to the logistics involved with playing two nights there [June 28-29] in between shows by Pearl Jam and Vasco Rossi, who follows us very soon after. “The only way for us to achieve the required turnaround was for 1D and Vasco to both share the same stage structure from an Italian supplier. Once we realised that this structure could accommodate our show, and at a very attractive price, I was forced to look at the possibility of using it for the entire tour. “However, with no disrespect [to the Italian firm], the schedule for this tour is extremely tight and the only company I could trust to meet the challenge whilst providing three versions of exactly the right stage was Stageco. “When you are working at this level of touring with what is currently the biggest band in the world, it’s very hard to trust an unknown solution to what is essentially the foundation of
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Photography © Mark Cunningham
Twinned Metal At Hellfest
One of Europe’s largest metal gatherings, Hellfest got even bigger this year when its ninth edition attracted nearly 150,000 fans in June. Held in the French town of Clisson, near Nantes, the festival was graced by the likes of Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Status Quo, Soundgarden and Trivium, all of whom performed on Stageco’s twinned main stages. Positioned side by side, the two 18m x 14m Boogdak stages in the main arena upheld the ‘twin’ trend that is becoming popular in the metal world as it speeds up changeovers between bands, accommodates more acts and keeps the core audience focused in one place. Production manager Pascal ‘Wally’ Magaud (below right) has been involved in Hellfest since its origins as Fury Fest. “It grew quickly to the point where, in 2008, we decided to hire Stageco to provide their Micro Arch stage which has been so successful on many small festivals and events.” said Magaud. This year, Hellfest’s Main Stage 1 was reinforced with a tower for extra rigging and the Micro Arch with ramps at the rear. “The fact that we now use the Micro Arch as a loading dock speaks volumes about our growth,” Magaud observed. “The way things are progressing, we may be using the main stage as the loading dock!” He added: “More and more bands are bringing their own production, and that increases the challenge for Stageco, who need to reconfigure the stage each day.” This called for some late night shifts on the part of Stageco’s crew chief Kevin De AUTUMN 2014
Meyer, Jean-Pierre ‘JP’ Van Loo and their four colleagues, Rik Van Elzen, Tom-Erik Roysnes, Wouter Ott and Dieudonné Denys-Doyi, a.k.a. ‘Dédé’. De Meyer explained: “Each of the headline acts had specific requirements that meant we had to work overnight from 1.00am for about eight hours in order to reconfigure the stage. Aerosmith wanted a catwalk out into the audience with a B stage at the end that accommodated extra lighting and pyrotechnics, and so we had to build additional scaffolding. In a similar vein, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath both requested major structural changes that we catered for.” Stageco also supplied two delay towers and built the front of house control platform which included an extra rear tower with a ‘birdcage’. At the end of Hellfest, a portion of Stageco’s steel headed east to the Stade de France in Paris where veteran French rockers Indochine played two sell-out nights on their Black City Tour. More metal action overleaf...
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Hard Rockin’ Graspop Wacken At 25
on-site. Another issue at Wacken is the bumpy terrain. Building the 110m wide main stages, the crew had to negotiate a slope of 2.5m over a 100m width. Fortunately, Stageco crew chief Markus Olma was able rely on an experienced team of 16 crew members, 20 climbers and 26 steelhands. Wacken Open Air was project managed for Stageco by Werner Herbst and Sebastian Kraas, with R&D support from technical manager Kai Eppinger.
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Wacken photography © Patrick Schneiderwind / ICS Festival Service GmbH
Another of Stageco’s key annual projects is the Wacken Open Air festival in Germany which celebrated its 25th anniversary this year with 180 bands and over 80,000 metal fans. For the ninth year, Stageco provided a major part of the temporary structures across the 2.4km2 ‘Holy Wacken Ground’ site. Besides the twinned 4-Tower main stages with extended wings and the central cowhead portal, there were meanwhile over 50 structures to build on-site. Stageco’s logistics managers did a fine job of co-ordinating 57 trucks from different warehouses and other jobs, and to cope with the correct distribution of a vast amount of equipment between stages, Stageco set up several loading areas
The weekend that followed Hellfest saw the Stageco Belgium team hard at work on creating key elements of the annual Graspop Metal Meeting in Dessel, near Antwerp. Like Hellfest, Graspop is a threeday metal festival with twin main stages, several headlining acts in common – including Black Sabbath and Avenged Sevenfold – and comparable audience figures. Previously, Graspop’s main stage featured a single festival 4-Tower roof from Stageco, however, a second 4-Tower was added this year, increasing the total footprint to 87m x 37m. The two stages were connected with a black steel portal in the middle on which a giant skull was positioned – a feat that relied on the sharp instincts of our Belgian crew. Not only did the hanging the skull from the portal pose a complex engineering challenge, solving the build issues with a combination of standard material and custom-made items was also a test of know-how. Stageco Belgium also built indoor stages and scaffolding structures across the Graspop site and, for the first time, provided a Micro Arch for the Jupiler Stage. A total of 28 Stageco trucks arrived on site at the start of the festival build, with equipment coming direct from the Tildonk HQ, as well as from the load-outs at Rock Am Ring in Germany and Pinkpop in Holland, all of which required careful co-ordination. That same brand of accrate planning was relied upon once again during Graspop’s load-out, when Stageco’s equipment was shipped overnight to Milton Keynes for the UK Electric Daisy Carnival.
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Farewell To The Ring
The longest-running festival in Germany, Rock am Ring made its first appearance at the Nürburgring racetrack in 1985, thanks to the vision of promoter Marek Lieberberg. Twenty-nine star-studded editions later, an audience of around 80,000 came this June to witness the four-day festival’s last stand on this hallowed ground. Stageco has been involved with Rock am Ring since 1995 and this year it required five daytime shifts and three nights to erect the three festival stages. Due to the technical requests of several touring productions, Stageco Germany was asked supply a 5-Tower roof for the main Centerstage as an addition to the regular 3-Tower roof for the Alternastage and 25 x 10 roof (Clubstage). Ten single delay towers
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were also built amongst many other additional event structures. With more than 23 crew, 40 climbers and 40 steelhands on site, the company handled more than 500 tons of steel. Sadly, the new owner of Nürburgring will not be extending the festival’s contract and the festival will be continued under a new name at another location in 2015. “It’s time to say goodbye to the ‘Ring’ as we knew it for more almost 20 years,” said Stageco Germany project manager Michael Herbst, who worked on Rock am Ring with technical manager Christoph Schulz. “We look forward to the next move, but meanwhile we thank Marek Lieberberg and Nürburgring. We are proud to have been a part of your journey.”
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Senses Working Overtime
“A Cirque du Soleil for clubbers” is how event organiser ID&T describes Sensation, the thrilling electronic dance spectacular that in the last 15 years has expanded from its Amsterdam birthplace, to overload the senses of dance fans around the world with spherical lighting rigs, lasers, stunt performers and revolving DJ booths. Back at Amsterdam ArenA this July, with Chuckie, Nicky Romero and Martin Garrix among the DJs playing to more than 40,000 dance fans, Sensation was arguably the highlight of Summer 2014 for Stageco Netherlands, whose director Eddie Slotboom’s head was still spinning from the experience weeks later. “It was definitely our biggest project of the year,” he said. “Sensation is an indoor event but the idea was that the set should have the potential to be built outdoors in countries where the indoor venues aren’t very suitable for this kind of event. While it was important to be big and tall, the set also had to be transportable.” Arriving on-site in seven 40ft containers, Stageco’s set measured 70m wide, 22m high and 12m deep, with a 12m high standard Stageco tower in the centre. Above the tower and dressed with LED was a dazzling, 10 tonne, motor-driven carousel that rotated 360° twice per minute. Crew chief Jorrit van der Kolk headed the team that also built four hydraulical-
ly-powered ‘bows’ in different sizes (max. 22m long) on each side of the stage, loaded with lighting fixtures, LED sources and other decorative elements. “EDM was a very fast-growing market in the Netherlands for about five years and it’s now levelled out, becoming quite stable,” said Eddie Slotboom. “However, the main stages at these festivals are growing bigger and higher, almost as if there’s a competition between events! The height of the main stages and the loading of production results in massive steel structures. “For Stageco, it means there are increased crew and crane calls, while our black steel tower and trussing system is used more frequently. Also, the calculations for these structures have become more and more detailed – not that this is a problem for our in-house engineers who are accustomed to working on some of the industry’s most technically demanding projects.” SFX Entertainment, the majority owner of ID&T, is also involved in two of the world’s other big electronic dance music festivals, TomorrowWorld in Atlanta, USA, and Tomorrowland, held in in Boom, Belgium – both of which used complex staging systems this summer, again provided by Stageco. Turn over for more Stageco’s EDM news...
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Under The Carnival’s Spell JAKE BERRY & STAGECO PULL TOGETHER TO TAKE THE WORLD’S LEADING EDM EVENT TO THE NEXT LEVEL Ever since Donna Summer’s synthesiser fuelled classic ‘I Feel Love’ exploded on to the club scene in 1977, the electronic dance music movement has been gathering pace. Today, EDM is a thriving sub-industry boasting around 40 large-scale international festival events, many of which rival – and in some cases exceed – the audience figures and income of the most successful rock festivals in the world. Its pièce de résistance is the Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC), a brand founded in 1997 by leading EDM promoter, Insomniac Events, and rolled out around the USA, Puerto Rico, Mexico and in the UK. But its jewel in the crown is EDC Las Vegas which attracted no less than 140,000 fun lovers on each of its three days at Las Vegas Motor Speedway this June as Insomniac pushed the venue’s physical boundaries to accommodate its widest range of top DJs and electronic acts, and a host of other cool attractions.. Kinetic Field, EDC’s traditional main arena, saw its stage transformed as Insomniac’s largest to date – and reportedly one of the biggest ever built for a North American festival. Provided by Stageco US and referred to as ‘The Cathedral’, the structure’s chapel-style pillars were accentuated by animated waterfalls, and bookended by two heavily detailed inflatable owls sporting enormous wingspans. For Stageco, the EDC project began in March with a test AUTUMN 2014
build at its Belgian HQ, instigated by production manager Jake Berry (pictured below) who led a successful presentation to Insomniac Events with project manager and engineer Tom Frederickx of Stageco US. “Up until this year, Insomniac’s team had been putting up large scaff-based stages that were very labour intensive, and in the end, no matter how you dress it, you can’t escape the fact that looks like a big, old scaffolding structure,” said Berry, pictured left. “But this year’s set design [by Netherlands company Jora Vision] was going to make a big feature of towers and this led everything. It meant that we would save so much time; we’d use less climbing personnel, generally cut crew requirements by around 50% and, ultimately, reduce outgoings. So it was a huge step forward for the organisers. It went up quicker, it looked neater and came down much faster. “It’s very difficult to explain to someone how a tower system works if they haven’t seen one before, but Tom Frederickx and I planned this presentation down to the finest detail, and they went away satisfied that we had a good plan.” In the weeks leading up to the June 20 kick-off, the steel systems were fabricated in Belgium and shipped in containers across the Atlantic. Seven containers arrived at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway site direct from Belgium, while 27 trailers STAGECO INTERNATIONAL NEWS
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came from Stageco US’s Colorado Springs base ahead of the seven-day stage build. A crew consisting of 14 Stageco supervisors headed by Farley Gross, James Ramacus and David Lanosga, and aided by up to 50 local crew at the busiest point, worked through the evenings and early hours to construct the monstrous stage structure, the front of house mix riser (minus roof) and 11 delay towers including two for another of the seven stages. The main stage measured 120 metres (400’) wide in total with its height rising from 22m (72’) at the sides to 30m (98’) at the centre – notably taller than the 2013 stage. The centre portion featured 10 lines of columns, with six towers on one side and seven on the other. With support from its trademark black steel, Stageco’s only scaffolding on the main stage was a 20m high row on to which the two inflatable owls were attached. Frederickx explained: “It would have been completely impractical to work under the unforgiving heat of the desert sun. You can’t even touch the steel during the day out there so everything was done overnight when the site cooled down to 30°. It was one of the few shows we have done where we didn’t provide a roof, but that’s the Vegas climate for you.”
in and out, and Jake’s leadership and experience with tight scheduling at a high level was crucial. It was the first time I’d worked directly with Jake and it was a huge pleasure.” Berry commented: “The idea of using a lower sub-deck at truck height to help speed up the process of getting things on and off the stage is something I’m accustomed to on the bigger rock tours, so it was just a case of applying that for a few nights instead of a year.” Was Stageco the natural choice of staging vendor for Berry? “Put it this way, there’s Stageco and then there’s everyone else who are at least a lap behind them. I’m a great believer in the company; I’ve loved their work and been a big fan for years. They have some seriously talented people and Hedwig De Meyer is a fabulous guy. Yes, Stageco would have been my choice but most importantly they were the right fit for this show and together we showed the organisers what could be done.” As 33 Stageco trailers headed back to Colorado Springs, Jake Berry claimed that EDC’s Las Vegas triumph was one of the “most profoundly enjoyable” experiences of a career that is now almost 40 years old. He said: “EDC is the jewel in the crown of the electronic dance movement and events like this are the way of the future. I’m a jaded old rocker and I really wasn’t sure what to expect but it was a breath of fresh air. It was such a beautiful vibe and packed with excitement from beginning to end. For me, it’s the heavy metal of the 21st century.” Milton Keynes Bowl hosted the UK edition of EDC on July 12 and, once again, Stageco handled the main stage requirements as Avicci, Bassjackers and Calvin Harris starred amongst the headliners.
“Stageco would have been my choice... they were the right fit for this show and together we showed the organisers what could be done.” JAKE BERRY
FIRST IMPRESSIONS This was Stageco’s début for EDC and, as Frederickx admitted, making the best possible impression on Insomniac was a big priority for the company. “It’s something we felt very passionate about. When you’re building something that’s new like this, you expect to negotiate a few practical issues, but I think we did very well. “We certainly had to develop a faster means of loading
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Die Böhse Onkelz On Track
announcement of two live shows in June 2014 at the Formula 1 racetrack at Hockenheimring went public. Jerry P. Appelt’s show design was extraordinary, featuring a 28m high, 85m wide city skyline, and from the very beginning a close co-operation with Stageco Germany led to a 600-tonne steel construction loaded with specials and able to accommodate all of the necessary LED screens, lights and sound.
A Stageco crew of more than 90 erected the stage over a tough schedule of four days and nights. In the field, the structure installation was completed with five special 20m freestanding PA delay and lighting towers, plus additional scaffold LED supports. The two shows marked another career highlight for the band and also Stageco Germany. And the story will continue next year.
Photography © Foto Wizard Promotion / Saskia Gaulke
When top German band Die Böhse Onkelz decided to break up in 2005, their last live show at the Eurospeedway Lausitzring in front of 120,000 fans was already a benchmark within their country’s rock’n’roll scene. Stageco also played a part, staging the band with an extended Super Roof system. Almost nine years later, Die Böhse Onkelz returned, selling out more than 200,000 tickets within an hour when their
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Fans & Champions In The Zone The team at Stageco Germany found itself in the middle of one of its country’s biggest celebrations for years when it supplied and built special structures at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate for the FIFA World Cup 2014 Fanzone. From June 11, the Fanzone was open to visitors for all of Germany’s games during the preliminary round and then for all games from the last 16 through to the 20th World Cup Final on July 13. Stageco, led by project manager Michael Herbst, was commissioned by K.I.T. Group GmbH and Wohlthat Entertainment GmbH whose brief was for the delivery of a bearing structure for the main video screen and PA hangs (including covering and decoration), and additional double video towers equipped to accommodate two screens and further PA with decoration. The main grid used a combination of Stageco’s proprietary Meilenstein trussing with an integrated bandroof. As the venue was spread wide with distances over 1.2km between several construction sites, potential emergency issues had to be included within the structural planning and
calculations – therefore some elements were engineered to withstand a full wind load. As we all know, Germany emerged as the new champions, and so when the Fanzone’s residency was extended for another two days to welcome the team home to Berlin, parts of the covered area of the stage were rebuilt to house a 44m catwalk. It was an heroic end to a truly exciting month.
Stageco Wins The Election! The company’s success may have come through rock’n’roll but Stageco’s talents are regularly deployed outside of live music. May 25 was a ‘red letter day’ for the people of Belgium as the country held its national, regional and European elections, with broadcaster TV1 hosting a live TV show at the Flemish Parliament in Brussels. With the semi-domed Parliament unequipped for such a broadcast, a Stageco crew of 16 was brought in over two days to provide all of the sub structures for the central stage, as well as camera track and TV platforms for interviews with the political candidates. Following the detailed dimensions provided by the production team, Stageco used a combination of scaffold structures and stage decks to build the sub structures, but with complicated internal logistics at the venue preventing a simple load-in, a number of special dollies and forklifts were put into service to deliver the equipment. Stageco also built similar structures at the European Parliament for another TV show that day, which mainly focused on the EU elections. STAGECO INTERNATIONAL NEWS
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The High Road To Edinburgh STAGECO’S JAMBOREE ROOF PROVIDES IDEAL VISUAL ACCESS TO HISTORIC CASTLE FOR LIVE TV BROADCAST Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilee celebrations, the Shaolin Monks’ Wheel Of Life touring show, Miss World in the Seychelles, Jeff Wayne’s The War Of The Worlds and many others in between.
“This is a joint venture between the BBC and Live Nation,” explained Nolan, on the eve of the show. “I regularly work with Graham Pullen, Live Nation’s head of special projects, who generated this idea with Guy Freeman and Paul Williams at the BBC. Our job was
to facilitate a production that could be broadcast live, but there were some major logistical issues to deal with first that involved collaborations with local promoter Castle Concerts and the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. They both have shows that immediately follow ours and the only way we could coexist was to help each other and share resources.” ‘DISAPPEARING’ ROOF The set was designed by Misty Buckley (Coldplay, Biffy Clyro, BBC Children In Need Rocks) in collaboration with technical designer Malcolm Birkett, and the key to preserving background views of Edinburgh Castle was the use of Stageco’s Jamboree Roof – an attractive, lightweight structure whose transparent skins allow it to ‘disappear’ into its surroundings. Said Nolan: “Stageco’s project manager Dirk De Decker and Malcolm Birkett have been really clever about how they’ve designed this Jamboree Roof around our show. It usually curves
Photography © BBC / Mark Cunningham
On July 19, five days before the Opening Ceremony of the 20th Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, the BBC hosted Live At Edinburgh Castle, starring a diverse bill of top acts from the worlds of pop, comedy and opera, including Motown legend Smokey Robison, Kaiser Chiefs, One Republic, Paloma Faith, Il Divo, Bill Bailey, Katherine Jenkins, Alfie Boe, Rizzle Kicks, the reunited Culture Club and John Miles, whose timeless anthem ‘Music’ brought the event to a majestic close, fireworks and all. Broadcast live from the historic landmark, the concert also witnessed the arrival of the Queen’s Baton as the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards piped their way through ‘500 Miles’ and the TV cameras did their best to cope in the rain and mist. Stageco was awarded the job of providing the stage roof and erecting the front of house control tower by production manager Steve Nolan of Chromatic Productions, a man whose experience with live spectacles has spanned The
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from left to right, whereas it’s up and downstage for this event, and is carrying around five tonnes of sound and lighting. The [22m wide x 18m deep] footprint has been meticulously designed. “We’ve had to limit its size precisely so that we maintain a 4.8m access corridor that we need to accommodate emergency vehicles, as well as liaising with Historic Scotland to ensure free access around the show build for the 10,000 tourists that visit the Castle each day. And then, of course, getting the 65-piece BBC Scotland Symphony Orchestra [conducted by Steve Sidwell], a 12-piece house band [led by Mike Stevens] and 18 acts on and off the stage in a fairly small space was the next hurdle!” JUBILANT CREW Andreas Deubach (opposite, bottom) led a six-man Stageco crew who have worked together regularly for seven years. The sole Australian on the crew had to deal with the post-FIFA World Cup jubilation of his five German workmates. “Naturally, they’ve been in a great mood since Germany won the Final on Sunday [13th],” Nolan commented. “I was very worried that I’d have to deal with a hungover crew the next morning but they are an extremely professional bunch who just get on the the job.” Deubach and his colleagues remained in high spirits and saw
the funny side of the Edinburgh job. “It’s a very tricky location and quite unusual in the sense that all through the build we’ve been in full view of the public. Someone put up a sign that said ‘Don’t feed the monkeys’. A lot of the tourists laughed at that as they passed by!” “Access for our five trucks has been very limited here,” Deubach continued. “In the morning, we can only load in between 7.00 and 9.00am, after which the site is open to the public from 9.30am to 6.00pm. From 6pm we can bring trucks in and drive fork lifts and cranes, but we have a noise curfew at 10.30pm, so our windows of opportunity have been severely restricted.” Steve Nolan (right, centre) added: “I’ve hired Stageco on many occasions based on past experience and their ability to deliver safely on time in awkward and challenging environments, such as the ‘World War Z’ premiere with Muse last year in Horse Guards Parade. “You couldn’t put a standard square box stage on this show – it would look awful. So to have this really beautiful, transparent roof like this, that enables background views of the Castle on TV, is absolutely ideal.” Stageco followed the Edinburgh Castle action with the build of the main stage at the Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremony at Hampden Park, Glasgow.
“Dirk De Decker and Malcolm Birkett have been really clever about how they’ve designed this Jamboree Roof roof around our show.” STEVE NOLAN STAGECO INTERNATIONAL NEWS
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Photography © Mark Cunningham / Showstars / Evan McDonald
Open Air With Live Nation
Summer 2014 saw Stageco working as the exclusive staging systems provider for Live Nation’s series of festivals and openair events around the United Kingdom. Among them was the Wireless festival whose main stages at its twinned locations of London’s Finsbury Park and Perry Park in Birmingham used standard Super Roofs in festival mode. Stageco shipped a Boogdak XL stage, a 4-Tower roof and a Super Roof from Belgium – and an additional Super Roof direct from a Rolling Stones show in Rome – to Kasabian at Victoria Park in Leicester, Kings Of Leon at St. James’s Park Stadium, the home of Newcastle United Football Club, and the Calling Festival on Clapham Common in south London, headlined by Stevie Wonder and Aerosmith. [A system also serviced this year’s Isle of Wight Festival, promoted by Solo.] Another major Live Nation event was Pearl Jam’s concert at Milton Keynes Bowl with a Stageco 25m 4-Tower roof. The
stage was transformed and expanded overnight for the following day’s Electric Daisy Carnival. The Live Nation festivals relied on a strong bond between Stageco and local crew provider Showstars on the stage builds. On the London edition of Wireless, for example, Stageco’s 10-strong team was enhanced by Showstars’ 12 climbing personnel, 12 general stage hands and four fork lift drivers, led by crew chief Peter ‘Mavis’ Ridley. (The build is pictured left.) Craig Becker, Live Nation’s site manager at both Wireless and Calling in London, commented: “The two companies have worked in partnership with Live Nation for many years now and there’s a good relationship between them. “Together, they work very effectively as a single unit. They’re quick, they stick to our tight schedules, follow the rules to the letter and do what’s necessary to get a high quality stage up and running.”
In 2015, Stageco will be 30 years old.
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Our anniversary celebrations begin in the Winter issue of this Newsletter. Stay tuned!
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Werchter’s 40th!
As a young engineering student, Hedwig De Meyer’s fascination for rock music inspired him to organise regular disco parties in an attempt to cover for the absence of local appearances by top bands. Such was their success that they launched a large, two-day annual event in the Belgian village of Werchter. During one of these events, De Meyer first met Herman Schueremans, who had been running a small local festival. In 1975, the pair decided to pool their resources and create one large event – the Rock & Blues Festival Werchter – which, in 1980, became known as Rock Werchter. Says De Meyer: “After five years, the festival had grown out of its original marquee tent and with a larger one proving impossible to find, we were forced to build our own stage. I was more interested in the technical aspects of concerts and festivals, so I took care of that. What we came up with was primitive but we learned a great deal over the next few years and improved the standards.” Expansion led to the creation of Stageco as a trading name in 1985 when it became independent of the festival. “That was the start of the business we have today,” comments De Meyer. “I sometimes look at photos from those early days of Rock Werchter and they raise a smile because what we were doing was so incredibly simplistic compared to our current flagship product, the XXL Roof, which audiences saw on the main stage for the second year running this July, Werchter’s 40th edition. “Werchter will always be an important part of our history and development, and it’s something that none of us at Stageco take for granted.” Available from wpg.be, ‘Rock Werchter Sinds 1975’ is a new book by Jan Delveau that celebrates the festival’s history. Priced €29.99, it’s packed with stories and rare photography.
Flash Back!
Released in October, Pink Floyd’s The Endless River is a mostly ambient instrumental album based on recordings made during the sessions that produced 1994’s The Division Bell. The tour that followed remains one of Stageco’s biggest achievements. “Mark Fisher’s design was so far ahead of its time and we were really proud of the work we did on that 130 foot arch,” said Hedwig De Meyer. “The production was amazing and, 20 years later, if it went out today it would still look modern.” In related news, a visual documentary of Roger Waters’ The Wall Live tour is finally being released. The film, by Roger Waters and Sean Evans, is due to premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. This was another extraordinarily important project for Stageco, and we look forward to reliving this milestone very soon.
STAGECO OFFICES Stageco Belgium N.V. Kapelleweg 6 3150 Tildonk Tel: +32 16 60 84 71 Fax: +32 16 60 10 61 info@stageco.com
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STAGECO INTERNATIONAL NEWS
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AUTUMN 2014
IF YOU CAN IMAGINE IT, WE CAN BUILD IT.
Stageco Staging Group Kapelleweg 6 3150 Tildonk Tel : +32 16 60 84 71 Fax: +32 16 60 10 61 info@stageco.com www.stageco.com
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Concert stages in all sizes. Temporary structures for every event.