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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left That's Podcast.

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Speaker 1: My guest today is writing a production designer extraordinaire, Mark Brickman.

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Speaker 1: You know Mark from his work with such acts as

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Speaker 1: Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, Bruce Greenstein. He even lit up

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Speaker 1: the Olympics. Mark. Good to have you on this show. Hi, Bob,

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Speaker 1: how are you. It's good to see you. Against be

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Speaker 1: in a few years. So what exactly is it you

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Speaker 1: do explain to my audience, Well, best way to describe

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Speaker 1: as our visual producer slash artists, just like you would

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Speaker 1: have when a band have songs and they get out

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Speaker 1: of the garage and they need a audio producer to

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Speaker 1: take them into the studio to make an album and

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Speaker 1: then they release it. I do the same thing for

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Speaker 1: live shows. So starting back in one, it wasn't really

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Speaker 1: much of an industry back then, and so um I,

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Speaker 1: I and a bunch of other guys turned it into one.

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Speaker 1: And so I really what we do what you see

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Speaker 1: now in two are extravagance as lots of visual material,

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Speaker 1: and it's really putting all of that together to translate

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Speaker 1: and tell the story of the music. It was a

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Speaker 1: lot easier earlier on in my career. These days it's

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Speaker 1: pretty complicated. I hope that made sense absolutely. Now some

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Speaker 1: tours have lighting designers and production designers or separate. Where

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Speaker 1: is the line between the two, if there is one

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Speaker 1: at all? There used to be a really strong line.

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Speaker 1: I kind of blurted myself back in the eighties, um

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Speaker 1: and and I didn't do it intentionally, but I probably

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Speaker 1: was a bit of egomaniacal and young, and so I

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Speaker 1: was one pink Floyd. I was a lighting designer, but

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Speaker 1: then I would get up set because the set designers

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Speaker 1: would come in and they would use the lighting to

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Speaker 1: light their sets, not to the music, because I'm music

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Speaker 1: is my life. It just always has been since I've

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Speaker 1: been very small, and so I always saw music, heard music,

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Speaker 1: colored music in my head. So probably in the mid

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Speaker 1: eighties I started designing. Actually around seventy nine with Ricky

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Speaker 1: Lee was when I actually became the lighting designer slash

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Speaker 1: set designer. Then I realized I was the production designer,

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Speaker 1: so I started asking for those credits um and I

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Speaker 1: think people copied my and then I became the visional

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Speaker 1: artistic director and the visual producer, and I would always

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Speaker 1: keep changing the title, and then I would see other

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Speaker 1: people using it. So there maybe I had a little hand,

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Speaker 1: small hand, Okay, so need let's just say the last

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Speaker 1: two years have been interrupted by COVID, But what is

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Speaker 1: occupying your time now? Well back probably around twenty after

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Speaker 1: Roger Waters, we mounted the Wall Show again, which myself

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Speaker 1: and Mark Fisher, UM, we're instrumental in putting that together

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Speaker 1: with Roger. After after I was finished with that project,

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Speaker 1: I realized it was I also had a one year

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Speaker 1: old daughter and it was time to actually pay attention

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Speaker 1: to real life. So I started UM transitioning it's good

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Speaker 1: work to to UM to really what I love doing.

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Speaker 1: And I could thank my wife for really getting me

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Speaker 1: into painting, probably back in in two thousand and two,

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Speaker 1: and UM, I really wanted to become an artist now

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Speaker 1: to talk about labels, it was time to really hit

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Speaker 1: the art world. So UM in the last two years

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Speaker 1: and and also my whole team, we started remotely being

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Speaker 1: in control of places like the Empire State Building. So

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Speaker 1: when there I was actually in New York when on

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Speaker 1: my way to Germany when COVID hit, UM came home

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Speaker 1: and UM I realized, UM, we didn't really miss a beat.

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Speaker 1: We were really lucky. I feel horrible about what happened

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Speaker 1: to a lot of my friends and and you know,

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Speaker 1: and and collaborators, but we were we were actually set

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Speaker 1: up to do everything Remotely, nothing really changed with us.

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Speaker 1: We never saw each other anyway, except maybe twice three

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Speaker 1: times a year when we had to be in the

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Speaker 1: same place. So um and I gave me more of

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Speaker 1: an opportunity to start painting, to start working on n

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Speaker 1: f T s, to start doing everything that I really

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Speaker 1: been wanting to do all these years. So that's how

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Speaker 1: I've been spending my time. Okay, so things have started

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Speaker 1: back up. Do you want to do tours? Do you

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Speaker 1: want to do stuff? Or you really pretty much transitioned

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Speaker 1: out of that. Well, you know, I'm a bit older.

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Speaker 1: So when I was young and coming up, and I

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Speaker 1: started when I was eighteen, you know, they were older

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Speaker 1: lighting designers and set signers, um and they I used

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Speaker 1: to look at them and think to myself, Wow, I

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Speaker 1: don't want to be that old and like still doing this,

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Speaker 1: but I hope I'll be doing something else. I didn't

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Speaker 1: know what it was so right now to answer the question,

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Speaker 1: it's difficult. I pretty much have a very small roster

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Speaker 1: of clients left, it's Steve Miller, Neil Young. Um, that's

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Speaker 1: if they remember me and David Gilmer. Um. But who knows,

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Speaker 1: maybe they hate me by now, I don't know. I

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Speaker 1: do speak to two out of this ree quite regularly.

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Speaker 1: Which one don't you speak to so regularly? Now? You

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Speaker 1: know Neil's Neil lives about a mile and a half

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Speaker 1: from our house, but I don't think he's been here

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Speaker 1: in Malibu for a while, so I haven't seen him

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Speaker 1: at the local Italian and I, uh, you know, I

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Speaker 1: don't know. I don't think I could. I don't think

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Speaker 1: I'll go out if somebody called me. Sure, I'd love

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Speaker 1: to do something, Um, I always do. I love live,

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Speaker 1: I mean live, experience nothing better in life, you know.

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Speaker 1: I even I don't watch my shows on after they

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Speaker 1: shoot them and they put them on YouTube. I don't

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Speaker 1: watch them. I can't. It's not the same thing. It's

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Speaker 1: being in that crowd that's so exciting. But I'm probably

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Speaker 1: actually nervous to find out that the crowd maybe isn't

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Speaker 1: as excited anymore. I don't know. I don't know if

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Speaker 1: I wanted to find out that answer a little bit slower.

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Speaker 1: You think that the crowd might be a little less

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Speaker 1: excited just because of the transitions in life in general

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Speaker 1: or specifically because of COVID. I think because things have

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Speaker 1: changed quite a bit, and I think people, you know,

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Speaker 1: I think, you know, the whole world has changed, and

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Speaker 1: I think people's excitement. I don't know. I don't have

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Speaker 1: the answer. I just I just have great memories of

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Speaker 1: what I've done in my life, and I don't know

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Speaker 1: if I want to go out there. I've talked to

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Speaker 1: a couple of people very recently that are out there

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Speaker 1: touring with bands, and it doesn't sound like it's a

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Speaker 1: very happy camp, you know. It sounds like it's it's difficult,

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Speaker 1: it's really and my heart goes out to them. It's

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Speaker 1: really you're talking about because of COVID restrictions. Yeah, because

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Speaker 1: of the restrictions and the restrictions on the audience and

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Speaker 1: just restrictions on the band, and that's got to take

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Speaker 1: a toll. I can't believe it's not that happy playland

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Speaker 1: that we used to live in, you know. I believe

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Speaker 1: I know some specifics where you know, if you're working

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Speaker 1: for the band, you couldn't even watch the show. It

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Speaker 1: was really crazy. Never mind that third parties come back.

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Speaker 1: You know that's funny you said that, because who wasn't Oh,

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Speaker 1: the Stones were in town and I remember Chuck Level

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Speaker 1: was playing keyboards and you know, hit him on text,

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Speaker 1: invited him out for pizza, and then you know he

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Speaker 1: went back on Man, I'd love to do that, but

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Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to leave. I happen to know that

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Speaker 1: I'm close to that camp. It's like, you can come

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Speaker 1: to the show, but we can't see you. We can't

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Speaker 1: see you, and I'm not allowed to leave the hotel.

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Speaker 1: I was like, And when he hit that was like

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Speaker 1: somebody through a cold water on my face. It really

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Speaker 1: woke me up too, just wow, Like I was speechless.

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Speaker 1: I really was. Okay. So let's say, you know, you

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Speaker 1: say you talked to Steve Miller and David Gilmore in

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Speaker 1: a regular basis. What what do you talk about? Hey man?

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Speaker 1: How are you were you doing? We're you know, Steve

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Speaker 1: and I became we have a really long relationship and

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Speaker 1: often on you know, things come in and out. But

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Speaker 1: right before COVID we we reignited our our love for

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Speaker 1: each other um in New York City and and then

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Speaker 1: I mean he went to see David Byrne nine times

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Speaker 1: on Broadway, and he took me six of the nine

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Speaker 1: times to see, you know, the Utopia and and because

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Speaker 1: we were both so blown away by it um and

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Speaker 1: and we just I was going to do his tour

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Speaker 1: in Um and we had a really um different approach

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Speaker 1: to the visual element of it UM. And I understood

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Speaker 1: his he he does have some parameters you have to

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Speaker 1: work inside, especially you know, he's he's a great producer

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Speaker 1: in terms of keeping his camp really tight. So but

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Speaker 1: I came up and that's what challenges me. It isn't

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Speaker 1: so much that I need lots of trucks with lots

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Speaker 1: of equipment. It's actually that back and forth with the

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Speaker 1: artist really trying to figure out, you know, how can

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Speaker 1: we do this and also be relevant and be and

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Speaker 1: be able to really translate what he's who he is

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Speaker 1: and what's what's going on. Okay, let's go back to

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Speaker 1: David Byrne show. What was so mesmerizing and would you

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Speaker 1: have done anything different? Well, it's funny you said that,

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Speaker 1: because David had called me um in twenty I think

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Speaker 1: it was, I can't remember. And I went to New

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Speaker 1: York and met him, met him for the first time,

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Speaker 1: and and I'd made some dry and he laid it

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Speaker 1: out for me what he wanted to do, but he

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Speaker 1: didn't quite have it in his head, but he had

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Speaker 1: some really great, really the ideas. I immediately just went.

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Speaker 1: I was right there with him because it was deconstructing

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Speaker 1: the concert. It was it was deconstructing and reinventing the

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Speaker 1: live experience. So I was there. I did a lot

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Speaker 1: of pre visualizations drawings for him. Um, something happened. It

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Speaker 1: wasn't me for the first time ever, but something happened,

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Speaker 1: and he didn't go out, and then I think he

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Speaker 1: had a shake up in management or record I don't

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Speaker 1: remember what happened. And then he went out on the

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Speaker 1: road with this version, and then it ended on Broadway.

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Speaker 1: So by that point they had hired somebody else. Um.

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Speaker 1: And when I remember was probably the second or third

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Speaker 1: time that I saw it. I remember sitting in the

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Speaker 1: audience next Steve, and then I suddenly went I remembered

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Speaker 1: that I had collaborated with David. I had forgotten the

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Speaker 1: first two times. So, um, it was it was just brilliant.

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Speaker 1: It was brilliant. It was Yeah. I can't really describe

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Speaker 1: how I felt the first time I saw it, I

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Speaker 1: just really was really so impressed and everything was just perfect. Okay,

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Speaker 1: let's go back to Steve Miller. Some acts like David

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Speaker 1: Gilmore go out and money is not He is not

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Speaker 1: really a constraint. I mean from the inside sometimes even

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Speaker 1: isn't even worried about making money, where Steve Miller traditionally

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Speaker 1: tours every year. So there you talk about parameters. When

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Speaker 1: you talked about working with Steve, how much of it

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Speaker 1: was pleasing Steve, how much was it interfacing with third

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Speaker 1: parties were part of his team, how much of it

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Speaker 1: is the constraints, the money, the stage, etcetera. Well, that's

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Speaker 1: a that's a really great question, um, and you and

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Speaker 1: you were spot on in your description. Absolutely. But Steven said,

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Speaker 1: let me just look, Steve's always been an outlier his

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Speaker 1: whole career. You know, he's he is his own man,

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Speaker 1: and he's always been in control of his destiny. So

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Speaker 1: he loves going out. He just loves playing. He's actually

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Speaker 1: the times that we change emails everything, he really he

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Speaker 1: misses the connection of the audience. That's his main purpose.

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Speaker 1: But he's not going out there and lose money, and

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Speaker 1: he's not gonna let and he's realized what his niches

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Speaker 1: and he's happy in it. He's very very happy. So

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Speaker 1: you gotta fit if you want to work with him,

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Speaker 1: You've got to fit inside of the construct that he's

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Speaker 1: made over the years of going out playing the sheds,

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Speaker 1: his his crew, he's very loyal to the band, to

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Speaker 1: his tour managers and managers, you know, so all that's

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Speaker 1: in place. So yeah, to fit in and be successful

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Speaker 1: is not an easy task. Um so, and I hope

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Speaker 1: I answered the question. Let's be very specific, so you

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Speaker 1: have the parameters of the type of buildings he plays,

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Speaker 1: and he wants to be involved. The tour didn't go,

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Speaker 1: but what did you suggest? It was pretty simple. The

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Speaker 1: best way to describe it as Steve Miller Neil like, Neil,

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Speaker 1: did you go to Coachella? Ocella? I purposely didn't go,

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Speaker 1: But that's a whole another story. When you go to

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Speaker 1: shows now, mostly the lighting is all just flashing lights

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Speaker 1: in people's eyes. That's it. I mean somewhere along this

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Speaker 1: it got very blurred and they took the lights off

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Speaker 1: the acts and he decided they're gonna light the audience

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Speaker 1: the whole night with what they call air graphics. They're

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Speaker 1: gonna build these crazy sets, um spend all kinds of money.

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Speaker 1: The audience it's coming to see. I mean, when I

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Speaker 1: was a kid, the anticipation was so great to go

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Speaker 1: see live entertainment that you know, I would accept anything.

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Speaker 1: I think that the audience still feels that way. And

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Speaker 1: so the one thing I said to Steve was they're

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Speaker 1: coming to hear the hits. They're coming to hear the music.

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Speaker 1: And he agrees with that, you know, And I said,

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Speaker 1: so we don't need really a lot of flashing lights,

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Speaker 1: and we don't need it distract the audience. They need

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Speaker 1: to really be able to tune into you. So we

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Speaker 1: came up came up with a very modern way of

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Speaker 1: kind of the best way to describe it was gonna

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Speaker 1: look like a bit of a James Terrell art installation.

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Speaker 1: Well we'll explain that not everyone's gonna know what that

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Speaker 1: it's more of a ambient using L e D s,

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Speaker 1: using the L e D screens, but using them as

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Speaker 1: light because that's what they are, they are light and

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Speaker 1: um and configuring them so not so much as you're

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Speaker 1: watching all these images all the time and getting even

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Speaker 1: more distracted with the image because your eye is either

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Speaker 1: going through the flashing lights or your eye is going

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Speaker 1: through the screen, but it's not going to the artist.

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Speaker 1: And what I do, and what my practice has always been,

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Speaker 1: is to really highlight not only the artists, but musically

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Speaker 1: where it's at in the moment. It's you know, it's

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Speaker 1: it's it's you know, Steve stops playing, the keyboard player

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Speaker 1: takes a solo, you're on that. That's you take the

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Speaker 1: audience's eye to that, so they're feeling the emotion. They're

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Speaker 1: really connecting with the band playing. Um, so I focused.

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Speaker 1: I was bringing it back to him that way, but

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Speaker 1: finding a way to do it inside his budget, which

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Speaker 1: I did. But let's let's be very specific. You have

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Speaker 1: a historical relationship with Steve Miller, you decide to work together,

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Speaker 1: tell me that. I mean, I know the show didn't

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Speaker 1: go out, but most shows do. From the moment you say, hey,

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Speaker 1: you'll be interesting to work together to the first show,

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Speaker 1: what's the process, It's well, it starts with ideas. It's

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Speaker 1: like whoever it is, it starts with that. So we

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Speaker 1: I do pre visualizations. Um, and I do it in

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Speaker 1: a little bit. Let's slow down for a second. You're

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Speaker 1: gonna work with the act. Do you ask them what

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Speaker 1: they're looking for? Now? What does some acts tell you what?

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Speaker 1: Or do you just say, hey, Mark want to work

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Speaker 1: with you come back with ideas. I have a reputation.

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Speaker 1: I just have an unlisted phone number, and my phone

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Speaker 1: would just ring. And you know, I got hired for

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Speaker 1: The Wall the night before they opened at the Sports Arena.

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Speaker 1: The night before I had less than twenty four hours

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Speaker 1: to turn that show around. My phone rang. The day

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Speaker 1: after Ricky Lee Jones played Saturday Night Live, was Bob

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Speaker 1: ri Gear from Warner Brothers saying, You're meeting Mick Ricky tomorrow.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I can go down the line of Um,

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Speaker 1: I met Bruce Springsteen at the Widener College. Um, Mike

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Speaker 1: Capelle had his his drill sergeant had on and he

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Speaker 1: would call the lighting cues. And but I knew all

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Speaker 1: the lighting cues without that. I just met them. Um.

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Speaker 1: Clyde Davis told them at the bottom line, don't let

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Speaker 1: that guy go. I mean, my whole life has been

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Speaker 1: these moments in time where um, I'm honored, but people

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Speaker 1: come to me and they go, Okay, let's work together.

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Speaker 1: I think there's a there's a moment that happens where

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Speaker 1: I'm I'm accepted and respected as an artist. It's a

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Speaker 1: it's a not just as a lighting guy. You know

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Speaker 1: that they understand the drama that I bring and also

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Speaker 1: the I'm trying not to be ego maniacal and describing it,

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Speaker 1: but it's because man, it's your window busykommiacles you way,

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Speaker 1: that's dangerous, um, but but I it to me. I

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Speaker 1: always designed the shows for the last kid in the

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Speaker 1: last row, UM, because it brings the energy forward if

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Speaker 1: you could, and that was before there were video screens,

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Speaker 1: because if you could really bring that music out through

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Speaker 1: the audience, it was important. And I realized early on

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Speaker 1: that lighting was the most powerful tool we had in

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Speaker 1: the toolbox out there in the in the arena. The

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Speaker 1: same thing on Broadway. Some of my you know, some

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Speaker 1: of my famous lighting designer friends aren't Broadway who I

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Speaker 1: looked up to when I was a kid, like Jules Fisher,

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Speaker 1: Baron Musterer all. You know, they were just geniuses that

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Speaker 1: doing that in the theater. Um and and Jules and

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Speaker 1: I became and Peggy became friends many many years ago. UM.

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Speaker 1: But you know he I was in awe of jewels. Um.

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Speaker 1: So it's it's the idea of being able to focus

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Speaker 1: the audience. I think that's really what it's about. So

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Speaker 1: the artist, the artist kind of the manager has found me.

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Speaker 1: Suddenly I'm delivered in their in their presence. So we

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Speaker 1: start talking. I listened to what like Roger Waters, for instance,

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Speaker 1: he has a very definite idea what he's trying to do,

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Speaker 1: so I'll hear the story. He doesn't know how to

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Speaker 1: do it, but he does know that he's not happy

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Speaker 1: right now, right and so I have this moment to

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Speaker 1: prove myself. Well, let's be very specific. You know they're

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Speaker 1: doing the wall. You know it's it's not a tourist,

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Speaker 1: just limited shows. They've obviously built the set with the world,

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Speaker 1: with the bricks, etcetera, etcetera. They call you and what

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Speaker 1: if they're opening the next day? Well, what happened was

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Speaker 1: and once again I'll get back to what I just said.

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Speaker 1: A few minutes ago I walked in. I mean it

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Speaker 1: was it was total chaos. It was two d people

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Speaker 1: working last minute to finish this, and we all know

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Speaker 1: I was sitting. They were spending two million bucks in

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Speaker 1: the nine nine of their own money, and I mean,

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Speaker 1: like so I watched the rehearsal. What they had was

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Speaker 1: they had these things called cherry Pickers. I mean they

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Speaker 1: were the best known art band ever, you know, like

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Speaker 1: nobody really knew what they looked like. They were anonymous.

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Speaker 1: It was about the light show and the and the

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Speaker 1: but that light show was more abstract. He was now

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Speaker 1: doing a rock opera, very exact rock opera in terms

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Speaker 1: of queuing, blocking musicians here there, you know, you know

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Speaker 1: it was it was full on. But all the lights

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Speaker 1: when I walked in and they did the rehearsal, we're everywhere.

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Speaker 1: They were on the whole time, flashing and just there

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Speaker 1: was no continuity. So after after the after they did

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Speaker 1: the run through, I went through his caravan and he said, well,

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Speaker 1: what do you think? And I said, I told him exactly,

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Speaker 1: And I just said and then I said, he says,

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Speaker 1: give me example, just like you're saying. I said, okay,

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Speaker 1: at the beginning of the show, the cherry Pickers get airborne.

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Speaker 1: They go up there hydraulic, they fly around. Said, but

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Speaker 1: in another brick in the wall, it gets really quiet

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Speaker 1: and there's a helicopter sound, and it's dark. You know,

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Speaker 1: there should be darkness and you should hear nothing but

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Speaker 1: the helicopter sound. And then suddenly five seconds in a

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Speaker 1: five count in suddenly the cherry pickers with white lights

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Speaker 1: beaming straight down start lifting off up into the air.

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Speaker 1: You don't know what they are. They're very ominous, you know.

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Speaker 1: And then they come toward you just just as the

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Speaker 1: drums hit, you know, and let that down beat right.

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Speaker 1: And he looked at me, and he looked Steve Rourke

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Speaker 1: and he said, get Graham was the manager, just to

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Speaker 1: be clear, Yeah, yeah, Steven Rekers, no matter. And Graham

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Speaker 1: who was Graham Graham Graham Fleming was he? I guess

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Speaker 1: he was part owner. He was a lighting designer for

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Speaker 1: Pink Floyd, part owner Britannia row Or he had an

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Speaker 1: interest in it, which was Pink Floyd's sound and light

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Speaker 1: company back in seventy nine. So Roger, after I explain

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Speaker 1: what he just said to Roger, Roger, he says, get um,

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Speaker 1: get Graham. You know. Graham comes in and he looks

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Speaker 1: at Graham, he goes, you have cotton in your ears,

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Speaker 1: you know, And he goes and then he looks at me.

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Speaker 1: He goes, you're hired, and I'm uh, And Graham gave

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Speaker 1: me a look like I'm going to kill you. You know.

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Speaker 1: I don't know what. I don't know what you said,

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Speaker 1: but I'm gonna kill you. And then he says to Graham,

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Speaker 1: you're dismissed. And then he turns to me and he goes,

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Speaker 1: you have you know, tonight and until we go on

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Speaker 1: tomorrow night to fix it. And I said, okay, you're dismissed,

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Speaker 1: and I left. You know, I walked, so I walked

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Speaker 1: out into it was a sports may and I walked

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Speaker 1: out into the vomitorium. I always remember this. It was

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Speaker 1: like one of those commercials. I think it was a

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Speaker 1: Merrow Lynch commercial where wait wait, wait, you called it

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Speaker 1: right here, right, You called it the vomitorium. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: a volmatorium. That that's what they're called there. The old

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Speaker 1: theatrical term is vomitorium. It's it's the entrance way into

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Speaker 1: the arena on the floor. I've never heard that, Okay,

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Speaker 1: I've always called it that. That's what I've was taught.

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Speaker 1: Maybe it was a joke. We'll find out from your listeners.

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Speaker 1: Well that's what I remember, But keep keep going with

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Speaker 1: the narrative. So you walk out through the vomitory anyway,

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Speaker 1: I walk I walk out there and I stopped. Suddenly,

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Speaker 1: all the work that had been going on that also stopped,

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Speaker 1: and everyone looking at me, the whole crew, because Graham

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Speaker 1: had gone out there first, and you know, he was

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Speaker 1: just and he should have been just really at piste off,

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Speaker 1: wanting to kill me, and the words spread like wildfire,

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Speaker 1: and everybody was just looking at man. I thought to myself,

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Speaker 1: oh shit, you know, like now what And then suddenly,

399
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Speaker 1: like almost like a dream, these I see two figures

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Speaker 1: approaching me, and the one guy reaches out his hand

401
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Speaker 1: goes hi, I'm Robbie Williams, and you know, like, you know,

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Speaker 1: nice to meet you. And then the other guy, who

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Speaker 1: looked like a professor with glasses and curly hair, he

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Speaker 1: puts out his hand and goes hi, I'm Mark Fisher,

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Speaker 1: and we think you need our help and I would friends,

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Speaker 1: you know, and the rest is history. As they say,

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Speaker 1: um they became. Mark became one of my really dear friends,

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Speaker 1: and I miss him dearly now. He was I don't know,

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Speaker 1: for the listeners. Mark Fisher was the greatest rock and

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Speaker 1: roll set designer, architect, visionary and human being on the

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Speaker 1: planet in the business for years now, for the late person.

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Speaker 1: We look at the lights, the rigs, the board. You're

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Speaker 1: now dropped in twenty four hours before you know. The

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Speaker 1: person might say, well, do you need different equipment? I mean,

415
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Speaker 1: or you just make do with what's there back then

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Speaker 1: and say mean, Now, there was no automation, so first

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Speaker 1: of all, there were no very lights. The lights that

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Speaker 1: were rigged would be rigged. The best thing I so

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Speaker 1: what you're do in a situation just go again, going

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Speaker 1: back to what I've described earlier, they had all the

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Speaker 1: lights on. The simplest thing to do is get rid

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Speaker 1: of the green gels, changed the jail colors to a

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Speaker 1: lot of stuff, and then they had a lighting console

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Speaker 1: not programmable, but it did have flash buttons on it

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Speaker 1: for run like Hell, and that's where the only place

426
00:24:30,520 --> 00:24:33,240
Speaker 1: I'd use it would be run like Hell. But I

427
00:24:33,400 --> 00:24:36,600
Speaker 1: had to actually program it and run it myself the board,

428
00:24:36,880 --> 00:24:38,960
Speaker 1: and so it was all on me. I didn't have

429
00:24:39,040 --> 00:24:43,359
Speaker 1: any assistance or other people a programmers, and it was

430
00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:45,240
Speaker 1: all just me. As a matter of fact, that the

431
00:24:45,359 --> 00:24:47,600
Speaker 1: end to run like Hell. On the first night, I

432
00:24:48,200 --> 00:24:51,560
Speaker 1: broke some of the handles off the board and made

433
00:24:51,640 --> 00:24:54,680
Speaker 1: my fingers bloody, and our work came up to me

434
00:24:55,160 --> 00:24:57,240
Speaker 1: like at the end and gave me some band aids,

435
00:24:58,040 --> 00:25:01,159
Speaker 1: you know, like because I I was, I look, I

436
00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:05,200
Speaker 1: was what was I? I was twenty seven years old,

437
00:25:05,240 --> 00:25:08,040
Speaker 1: twenty six years old, twenty seven so you know it

438
00:25:08,240 --> 00:25:10,720
Speaker 1: was it was wild. Okay, let's go back to the

439
00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:14,200
Speaker 1: the overall paradigm. So if someone wants to work with you,

440
00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:17,719
Speaker 1: you come up with ideas, what do you actually present

441
00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:22,359
Speaker 1: to the Since the early nineties when Amiga computers were

442
00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:24,720
Speaker 1: still on, and actually back in the late seventies when

443
00:25:24,760 --> 00:25:28,440
Speaker 1: I was working with Springsteen on one of the original apples,

444
00:25:28,760 --> 00:25:34,600
Speaker 1: I started doing visual presentations to the clients rather than

445
00:25:34,760 --> 00:25:37,480
Speaker 1: just the hand drawings. I would do some hand drawings too,

446
00:25:37,560 --> 00:25:40,280
Speaker 1: because the illustrators are amazing, and some of them are

447
00:25:40,560 --> 00:25:43,080
Speaker 1: you know. Those kind of drawings were great. But then

448
00:25:43,119 --> 00:25:46,040
Speaker 1: the three D really allowed us to walk and move

449
00:25:46,119 --> 00:25:51,080
Speaker 1: around inside the space, you know, and and actually help

450
00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:54,760
Speaker 1: because the pretty pictures are really single, single dimensional. So

451
00:25:55,119 --> 00:25:57,119
Speaker 1: you can look at the pretty picture, but a lot

452
00:25:57,160 --> 00:26:00,240
Speaker 1: of people have a hard time really imagining it it's

453
00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 1: going to look like. So we do it in three D,

454
00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:06,080
Speaker 1: and I still do. We have a very robust um.

455
00:26:08,000 --> 00:26:10,639
Speaker 1: Now it's it's standard to do everything in three D.

456
00:26:10,680 --> 00:26:13,199
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I'm working on something right

457
00:26:13,240 --> 00:26:17,080
Speaker 1: now where you know, VRS gotten very big in this

458
00:26:17,280 --> 00:26:20,000
Speaker 1: area where the act can put VR glasses on and

459
00:26:20,040 --> 00:26:23,399
Speaker 1: actually walk around the stage and etcetera, etcetera. That's the

460
00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:26,680
Speaker 1: next step. So you're presented to them. Then does it

461
00:26:26,760 --> 00:26:29,359
Speaker 1: depend on the artists. Some artists say love it go

462
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:32,240
Speaker 1: or do they want to get in the details? What's

463
00:26:32,280 --> 00:26:34,720
Speaker 1: the next step out? Yeah, for the most part, I don't.

464
00:26:35,440 --> 00:26:39,160
Speaker 1: I usually don't meet much resistance because my ideas are individual.

465
00:26:39,200 --> 00:26:42,720
Speaker 1: I never I try not to copy any you know,

466
00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:47,119
Speaker 1: every artist and individual, every show, every projects individual. So

467
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:50,800
Speaker 1: I usually have you know, maybe there's a couple of

468
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:53,040
Speaker 1: things they want to change. Great, But the next step

469
00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:57,280
Speaker 1: is the production manager you know, and the manager you

470
00:26:57,359 --> 00:27:01,480
Speaker 1: know on both soldiers how much right? And so the

471
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:05,280
Speaker 1: next step is the budget and dealing with the lighting

472
00:27:05,320 --> 00:27:09,480
Speaker 1: companies and the and the construction companies and you know,

473
00:27:09,640 --> 00:27:13,200
Speaker 1: things like that, and starting to really put the budget together. Um.

474
00:27:13,400 --> 00:27:16,320
Speaker 1: And and that's the hardest part. It always is. Money

475
00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:19,920
Speaker 1: is always the hardest part. But but I have to say,

476
00:27:20,000 --> 00:27:25,119
Speaker 1: with Pink Floyd, with most of the acts, I know

477
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 1: what I'm walking into Pink Floyd never ever really brought

478
00:27:32,080 --> 00:27:36,480
Speaker 1: the money up. A Rourke really protected me. Um Steamer

479
00:27:36,560 --> 00:27:39,399
Speaker 1: work was just he was an incredible human being, but

480
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:43,080
Speaker 1: he really protected me and and it worked well. So

481
00:27:43,160 --> 00:27:45,879
Speaker 1: I've been pretty lucky. As my friend, I've been extremely

482
00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:48,560
Speaker 1: lucky in my in my career. Okay, let's talk about

483
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:50,639
Speaker 1: the money for a second. Okay, you're talking to the

484
00:27:50,680 --> 00:27:54,399
Speaker 1: manager and the production manager starts zero down. Hey, is

485
00:27:54,480 --> 00:27:57,040
Speaker 1: it you personally who comes up with the number or

486
00:27:57,080 --> 00:27:59,280
Speaker 1: do you have other people who do that? And how

487
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:01,920
Speaker 1: do you side what the net should be? And do

488
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:05,520
Speaker 1: you negotiate or does someone else negotiate? It's changed over

489
00:28:05,600 --> 00:28:10,320
Speaker 1: the years, it's changed, and now now these companies are

490
00:28:10,400 --> 00:28:13,639
Speaker 1: so huge, the big companies, the big guys are so

491
00:28:13,840 --> 00:28:19,200
Speaker 1: big that uh, the lighting designers being you know, the

492
00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:23,720
Speaker 1: designers are there, but there's a bit of a it's

493
00:28:23,840 --> 00:28:26,159
Speaker 1: it's a little cloudy. It's the best way I can

494
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:29,800
Speaker 1: describe it. Production managers have a lot of power also,

495
00:28:30,280 --> 00:28:33,760
Speaker 1: so they're pretty much the guy in the middle. Everyone's

496
00:28:33,760 --> 00:28:36,680
Speaker 1: in the middle, and and that's where a lot of

497
00:28:36,760 --> 00:28:39,160
Speaker 1: the friction comes with me. Because I'm used to dealing

498
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:41,880
Speaker 1: with the artists. I understand what the production manager does

499
00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:44,160
Speaker 1: does a great job. He's got to be there, he's

500
00:28:44,160 --> 00:28:46,680
Speaker 1: got to move it everywhere, he's got to make it happen.

501
00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:49,600
Speaker 1: But when it comes to the art, so you know,

502
00:28:49,720 --> 00:28:53,479
Speaker 1: sometimes I've had a couple of bad experiences with um,

503
00:28:53,840 --> 00:28:58,080
Speaker 1: you know, production managers. And what would you consider to

504
00:28:58,120 --> 00:29:00,160
Speaker 1: be a bad experience. Oh no, I don't know. If

505
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:03,400
Speaker 1: I want to go negative, Um, well go negative and

506
00:29:03,440 --> 00:29:05,800
Speaker 1: not mention the name, just so we can understand the concept.

507
00:29:06,240 --> 00:29:10,440
Speaker 1: Here's a good one, so Trent Reser. And this is

508
00:29:10,480 --> 00:29:12,920
Speaker 1: a small one, but it's a small example. So nine

509
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:15,800
Speaker 1: inch nails. Um, they had a guy for years working

510
00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 1: doing the lighting. For some reason, they made a switch

511
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:20,840
Speaker 1: and I got the phone call and I went and

512
00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:23,120
Speaker 1: did it and we go into rehearsals. It was down

513
00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:26,160
Speaker 1: at Olympic Downtown l A. When it used to be

514
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:33,520
Speaker 1: that wrestling ring, right. And the production manager, I don't know.

515
00:29:33,600 --> 00:29:37,120
Speaker 1: I can't even describe his his presence, but he very

516
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 1: involved in everything, including what I do, which well I

517
00:29:41,040 --> 00:29:43,480
Speaker 1: don't get involved what he does. So don't don't get

518
00:29:43,560 --> 00:29:46,360
Speaker 1: come into my world. It's like, don't come into my studio.

519
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 1: I'm painting, you know, Like I don't need to hear

520
00:29:49,280 --> 00:29:54,479
Speaker 1: about blue. So one night I'm there and late at night,

521
00:29:54,560 --> 00:29:56,800
Speaker 1: because that's when all the magic happens, late at night,

522
00:29:56,920 --> 00:30:01,120
Speaker 1: and I'm programming. We're now, we're in the modern age.

523
00:30:01,520 --> 00:30:03,720
Speaker 1: Moving lights. To a matter of fact, that show, I

524
00:30:03,840 --> 00:30:06,160
Speaker 1: took L E D screens first time ever, and I

525
00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:09,560
Speaker 1: used them right above their heads, like eight ft above

526
00:30:09,600 --> 00:30:11,680
Speaker 1: their heads, and used the light from the l E

527
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:14,760
Speaker 1: ed as the light to light the band. Really, it

528
00:30:14,880 --> 00:30:19,440
Speaker 1: was really really attractive and very powerful, just like the band.

529
00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:22,320
Speaker 1: The guy comes up to me and he says to me,

530
00:30:22,920 --> 00:30:28,000
Speaker 1: I don't think those are nine inch nails colors. And

531
00:30:28,280 --> 00:30:31,600
Speaker 1: I remember looking at him and and I said to him,

532
00:30:32,480 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 1: do you have a dictionary? And he goes, what do

533
00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:43,280
Speaker 1: you want a dictionary for? I need to understand what

534
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:45,640
Speaker 1: that means. I don't know. I don't have any idea

535
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:49,840
Speaker 1: what you mean. And obviously that that didn't go down

536
00:30:49,920 --> 00:30:52,880
Speaker 1: too good. It in escalated from there. Um I was

537
00:30:52,960 --> 00:30:55,360
Speaker 1: being I was soft pedaling it a little bit. I'm

538
00:30:55,400 --> 00:30:59,400
Speaker 1: not using too many names, but it's those moments where

539
00:30:59,760 --> 00:31:02,560
Speaker 1: an and and other things I've gotten really out of

540
00:31:02,600 --> 00:31:05,200
Speaker 1: hand A couple of times. Um, I do I do

541
00:31:05,360 --> 00:31:08,640
Speaker 1: have a bit of a temper sometimes. Most of the time,

542
00:31:08,840 --> 00:31:10,760
Speaker 1: I don't use it because that's not a way to

543
00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:14,880
Speaker 1: get ahead in the world. But but I do come

544
00:31:14,920 --> 00:31:17,800
Speaker 1: from Philadelphia and and uh and I had a fight

545
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:21,200
Speaker 1: when I was a kid a lot. So okay, we live,

546
00:31:21,320 --> 00:31:25,000
Speaker 1: especially the younger generation, it's all about getting along. Could

547
00:31:25,080 --> 00:31:28,200
Speaker 1: you exercise your temper? Because you were just that much

548
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:33,800
Speaker 1: in demand for a long time, people put up with me. Yes, absolutely, Yeah, Yeah,

549
00:31:33,920 --> 00:31:38,320
Speaker 1: I had the big label on my back. I didn't

550
00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:41,240
Speaker 1: work too much in television because I thought most of

551
00:31:41,280 --> 00:31:43,720
Speaker 1: the TV stuff that I mean, I had my own

552
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:47,480
Speaker 1: opinions about it, very opinionated. Um so, yeah, I got

553
00:31:47,560 --> 00:31:49,600
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble, but a lot of but I

554
00:31:49,800 --> 00:31:53,640
Speaker 1: was so good at what I did that they put

555
00:31:53,760 --> 00:31:56,560
Speaker 1: up with me. Also, look, it was a different time

556
00:31:56,720 --> 00:32:00,720
Speaker 1: because everybody was out of their minds, you know. We

557
00:32:01,000 --> 00:32:03,280
Speaker 1: it's no different than today. You know, what I love

558
00:32:03,360 --> 00:32:07,000
Speaker 1: about the world is is actually getting to this point

559
00:32:07,040 --> 00:32:11,960
Speaker 1: in my life looking backwards, knowing that the young generations

560
00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 1: doing exactly what we did, only with different clothes, fashion, communications,

561
00:32:19,240 --> 00:32:22,760
Speaker 1: you know, technology. But basically it's all still there. It's

562
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:25,680
Speaker 1: all still going on, you know, because that's what happens

563
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:29,840
Speaker 1: in life. You go through these stages and cycles. So

564
00:32:30,160 --> 00:32:32,640
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. You're from Philadelphia. I'm

565
00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:36,320
Speaker 1: from Philadelphia. Okay, what did your parents do for a living?

566
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 1: My father was a carpet salesman. But he should have

567
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:43,760
Speaker 1: he should have been a biochemist, but the depression hit

568
00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:47,160
Speaker 1: and his father died and he had to take care

569
00:32:47,200 --> 00:32:50,680
Speaker 1: of his family, so he ended up becoming a salesman.

570
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:54,959
Speaker 1: My mother was a homemaker. UM. And I was an

571
00:32:55,000 --> 00:32:58,040
Speaker 1: only child. Only child? Was there a specific reason you

572
00:32:58,120 --> 00:33:02,040
Speaker 1: were only child? My parents got married late in life. UM,

573
00:33:02,400 --> 00:33:05,760
Speaker 1: And I think that I was enough. My mother always

574
00:33:05,800 --> 00:33:08,720
Speaker 1: said having you was enough. So so what kind of

575
00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:11,360
Speaker 1: kid were you grow growing up? Either kind of making trouble,

576
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:14,360
Speaker 1: bouncing off the walls, good student, bad students. I was

577
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:16,280
Speaker 1: bouncing off the walls. But I did go to So

578
00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:19,120
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia there's a high school, UM and it's the

579
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:23,080
Speaker 1: second oldest high school in America. It's called Central High School, UM.

580
00:33:23,320 --> 00:33:26,320
Speaker 1: And it's all it's all academic, like a magnet school

581
00:33:26,720 --> 00:33:29,160
Speaker 1: and it and it draws from the whole city and

582
00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:32,040
Speaker 1: my father went there. Was founded in eighteen sixty three,

583
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:36,680
Speaker 1: and it graduates of their classes to the Ivy League schools.

584
00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:40,800
Speaker 1: So I went there. I barely got out. But that's

585
00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:43,320
Speaker 1: when I was introduced to lights because I was a

586
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:48,240
Speaker 1: chairman of my sock cop committee and that's when I

587
00:33:48,320 --> 00:33:50,720
Speaker 1: built my first light show in tenth grade. So you're

588
00:33:50,760 --> 00:33:55,560
Speaker 1: the chairperson of the cop committee. What kind of talent

589
00:33:55,720 --> 00:33:58,600
Speaker 1: were you buying in the late sixties named talent the

590
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:01,600
Speaker 1: local Bayols? Oh yeah, we bought we well, so we

591
00:34:01,720 --> 00:34:04,800
Speaker 1: had we lived in Philly. We were buying at Delphonix

592
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:08,200
Speaker 1: and we were buying we on our senior problem. We

593
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:13,719
Speaker 1: had Arthur Brown really yeah, man, yeah yeah, and he

594
00:34:13,840 --> 00:34:17,719
Speaker 1: lit his hair off. I gotta ask, I never saw

595
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:21,080
Speaker 1: Arthur Brown live. How good was he? Well? I was sixty.

596
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:24,640
Speaker 1: I graduated high school at sixteen. So he had his

597
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:29,359
Speaker 1: hair on fire at this really fancy hotel and downtown Philadelphia,

598
00:34:29,960 --> 00:34:33,360
Speaker 1: and so I mean it was fantastic. I mean, like

599
00:34:33,520 --> 00:34:36,239
Speaker 1: what else can you say? And the girl I was with,

600
00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:40,040
Speaker 1: she just was completely blown away by and like wow.

601
00:34:40,520 --> 00:34:43,440
Speaker 1: But in the tenth grade, I turned the high school

602
00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:48,279
Speaker 1: gym into this huge UV day glow, the black light

603
00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:52,520
Speaker 1: you know with Arco, remember the Arco Absolutely right? Okay,

604
00:34:52,560 --> 00:34:55,120
Speaker 1: So all the Arco balls flying around the room and

605
00:34:55,520 --> 00:34:59,239
Speaker 1: it was complete chaos. Um and eleventh grade I think

606
00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:01,920
Speaker 1: was Delfon tenth grade. I can't remember the act. We

607
00:35:02,040 --> 00:35:05,200
Speaker 1: are no, we had good budgets. We were okay, okay,

608
00:35:05,520 --> 00:35:07,520
Speaker 1: did you want to do all that day glow stuff?

609
00:35:07,600 --> 00:35:10,319
Speaker 1: Because it was hip then and let's be outrageous. When

610
00:35:10,560 --> 00:35:14,520
Speaker 1: was your interest in visual production live lights kindle? It

611
00:35:14,680 --> 00:35:18,279
Speaker 1: started then? But see I was where I lived to

612
00:35:18,360 --> 00:35:21,160
Speaker 1: where my school was was an hour and a half

613
00:35:21,239 --> 00:35:23,920
Speaker 1: by bus, so there were a couple other you know,

614
00:35:24,080 --> 00:35:27,080
Speaker 1: three busses with transfers and the whole thing. So I

615
00:35:27,320 --> 00:35:29,279
Speaker 1: I used to have to do that. But then there

616
00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:32,000
Speaker 1: was a couple of guys in my neighborhood that were

617
00:35:32,200 --> 00:35:34,360
Speaker 1: a year older than I was, and they had cars.

618
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:38,480
Speaker 1: So one of the guys Uh ended up in his

619
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:43,080
Speaker 1: sixty four corvet he Um. He also had this liken.

620
00:35:43,239 --> 00:35:46,160
Speaker 1: He would sell records forty five singles and he got

621
00:35:46,239 --> 00:35:48,719
Speaker 1: them from from a gamble and huff, you know, from

622
00:35:48,760 --> 00:35:51,640
Speaker 1: the when it was the record company not Chess, I

623
00:35:51,719 --> 00:35:54,440
Speaker 1: can't remember. And anyway, so he had a thing with

624
00:35:54,560 --> 00:35:58,000
Speaker 1: the distributor with all the forty five singles, right, and

625
00:35:58,160 --> 00:36:00,960
Speaker 1: so we would go to these return any dances every

626
00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:04,480
Speaker 1: weekend and sell singles inside of that. I had just

627
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:08,920
Speaker 1: finished doing the light show and he was asked if

628
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:12,080
Speaker 1: he could provide a light show for these dances. So

629
00:36:12,680 --> 00:36:16,080
Speaker 1: I built a light show. I did it, and we

630
00:36:16,200 --> 00:36:18,759
Speaker 1: used to trip around every weekend. It wasn't so much

631
00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:22,200
Speaker 1: I was interested in it. I was fourteen or fifteen

632
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 1: years old, so it was it was great fun and

633
00:36:25,719 --> 00:36:28,279
Speaker 1: I was I was meeting girls. Okay, wait, if we

634
00:36:28,400 --> 00:36:30,960
Speaker 1: go to the late sixties, what they called the light

635
00:36:31,040 --> 00:36:34,960
Speaker 1: show then was gels and oils more than light oils.

636
00:36:35,320 --> 00:36:39,360
Speaker 1: I made, Yeah, I made my own polarized slides and

637
00:36:39,680 --> 00:36:42,680
Speaker 1: I had my own light bars with color origans, you know,

638
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:46,080
Speaker 1: sound to light, and they would they would flash everything.

639
00:36:46,200 --> 00:36:49,399
Speaker 1: But I had projectors at all that. Okay, So why

640
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:51,400
Speaker 1: did you graduate at sixteen? And what do you do

641
00:36:51,480 --> 00:36:54,600
Speaker 1: after you graduating? I graduated sixteen because I was skipped

642
00:36:55,120 --> 00:36:57,880
Speaker 1: somewhere in third grade or something. Day I don't I

643
00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:00,200
Speaker 1: don't have a great memory. And my parents are here

644
00:37:00,200 --> 00:37:03,080
Speaker 1: anymore too. I can't call them up, and you know,

645
00:37:03,239 --> 00:37:05,640
Speaker 1: essen what what was it all about? But they skipped

646
00:37:05,680 --> 00:37:08,520
Speaker 1: me a grade or something and I ended up graduating

647
00:37:08,560 --> 00:37:12,280
Speaker 1: the sixteen. I didn't really think anything of it except

648
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:15,080
Speaker 1: I couldn't drive until I got out of high school,

649
00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:17,880
Speaker 1: so I that was the only thing I cared about.

650
00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:21,000
Speaker 1: I'm still really close friends with one of my high

651
00:37:21,000 --> 00:37:24,480
Speaker 1: school buddies. He's still in Philly. Um and we we

652
00:37:24,719 --> 00:37:28,080
Speaker 1: we we see each other all the time. Um um

653
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:30,800
Speaker 1: but um yeah. No, after that, I went to college.

654
00:37:31,080 --> 00:37:33,960
Speaker 1: I went to Philadelphia College and Textiles and Science for

655
00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:37,640
Speaker 1: um a half a year, and I got kicked out

656
00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:41,440
Speaker 1: for what not going to jim But I did do

657
00:37:41,719 --> 00:37:45,640
Speaker 1: a real professional light show before I left with the

658
00:37:45,800 --> 00:37:48,680
Speaker 1: James Gang, which my parents came to just turn from

659
00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:51,719
Speaker 1: Joe Walsh and daur again. Okay, well wait, I was

660
00:37:51,840 --> 00:37:55,160
Speaker 1: my first real gig to James Gang in the gym

661
00:37:55,400 --> 00:38:02,879
Speaker 1: of this college, probably November nineteen seventies, somewhere around there. Um.

662
00:38:03,800 --> 00:38:06,680
Speaker 1: Then they kicked me out and my father looked at me,

663
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:10,279
Speaker 1: and my father is always very pragmatic, the coolest dude

664
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:12,160
Speaker 1: in the world, said to me, I guess you gotta

665
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:16,000
Speaker 1: get a job, and goes, well, why don't you go

666
00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:18,120
Speaker 1: down to the lighting company you just rented those lights

667
00:38:18,160 --> 00:38:21,920
Speaker 1: from and asked them for a job. Okay, So I

668
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:26,360
Speaker 1: went downtown. Um, I got the job. And then about

669
00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:33,160
Speaker 1: oh a year later, what was your job? My job

670
00:38:33,320 --> 00:38:38,680
Speaker 1: was was was was working in the warehouse selling This

671
00:38:38,840 --> 00:38:43,040
Speaker 1: business was a fifty year old theatrical supply house that

672
00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:47,160
Speaker 1: serviced all of the theaters in Philadelphia, all the colleges,

673
00:38:47,239 --> 00:38:52,160
Speaker 1: all the universities, all the spectrum Larry Maggott Electric Factory,

674
00:38:52,440 --> 00:38:55,440
Speaker 1: the whole thing. So that was my job, just taking

675
00:38:55,480 --> 00:38:57,719
Speaker 1: stuff everywhere. As a matter of fact, my job was

676
00:38:57,800 --> 00:39:01,200
Speaker 1: also doing light shows at the r Low Ballroom in Camden,

677
00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:04,840
Speaker 1: New Jersey on Saturday nights the b y o B

678
00:39:05,040 --> 00:39:08,120
Speaker 1: Bring your own bottle kind of you know gigs where

679
00:39:08,200 --> 00:39:11,520
Speaker 1: bands would play like war and I can't remember all

680
00:39:11,560 --> 00:39:14,040
Speaker 1: the but every Saturday night I go to Camden and

681
00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:16,600
Speaker 1: do light shows until like six in the morning. Um.

682
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:19,759
Speaker 1: That that kind of was my job. And and also

683
00:39:20,239 --> 00:39:22,720
Speaker 1: working in the union. So after a year or what happened.

684
00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:26,320
Speaker 1: So the business was owned by this guy called the

685
00:39:26,520 --> 00:39:29,879
Speaker 1: original guy. William McAvoy had passed away. So this guy,

686
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:33,279
Speaker 1: Adam Cutler bought it. But he was a really well

687
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:37,920
Speaker 1: known sign He had a big sign company in Philadelphia, Jersey. Whatever.

688
00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:42,040
Speaker 1: He bought the business for his son Adam, and Adam

689
00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:45,880
Speaker 1: was in his twenties, and what they did was uh

690
00:39:46,360 --> 00:39:49,840
Speaker 1: Cutler's best friend with this guy Luke Kellman. Luke Kellman

691
00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:53,640
Speaker 1: was sixty two sixty three years old, and he was

692
00:39:53,680 --> 00:39:57,960
Speaker 1: going to be the adult inside of McAvoy because Adam

693
00:39:58,080 --> 00:40:01,480
Speaker 1: was in his mid twenties. What happened a year later

694
00:40:01,600 --> 00:40:03,800
Speaker 1: was Adam didn't want a part of the business. He

695
00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:07,600
Speaker 1: was a free spirit nine seventy one, so he took

696
00:40:07,640 --> 00:40:10,560
Speaker 1: off to New Jersey to go at the apple farms,

697
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:15,520
Speaker 1: the theatrical like hippie kind of commune, and he just

698
00:40:15,840 --> 00:40:21,000
Speaker 1: didn't want the business anymore. So the old man decided, um,

699
00:40:21,200 --> 00:40:25,239
Speaker 1: he wanted to sell the business. So Lou, and I'll

700
00:40:25,239 --> 00:40:27,200
Speaker 1: tell you his history because this will blow your mind.

701
00:40:27,680 --> 00:40:30,440
Speaker 1: So Lou caton to me and goes, what your dad do?

702
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:33,239
Speaker 1: Does he want to come in with me? You know?

703
00:40:33,560 --> 00:40:35,600
Speaker 1: And I went, I don't know. So I went to

704
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:37,600
Speaker 1: my dad and I said, do you want to go

705
00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:40,759
Speaker 1: into the business with this guy? My dad, like I

706
00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:44,919
Speaker 1: think he thought he calculated that. Well, he didn't send

707
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:47,000
Speaker 1: me to college, he didn't have to pay for that,

708
00:40:47,360 --> 00:40:50,560
Speaker 1: so why not. So we got in business with Lou.

709
00:40:50,920 --> 00:40:56,120
Speaker 1: Now Lou Kellman. He had the first animated series, it

710
00:40:56,600 --> 00:41:01,960
Speaker 1: uh animated cartoon series called Diver Dan. This was actually probably,

711
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:04,279
Speaker 1: I think on the East Coast. I can't say it

712
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:07,640
Speaker 1: was before Disney, but he had, but in Philadelphia it was.

713
00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:10,640
Speaker 1: It was very popular in the East Coast. He also

714
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:14,839
Speaker 1: produced a film with Dick Gregory and Verna lesi Um

715
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:19,680
Speaker 1: in the early sixties, which was unheard of. They wanted

716
00:41:19,760 --> 00:41:22,759
Speaker 1: him to come out to Hollywood and he refused. And

717
00:41:23,000 --> 00:41:27,200
Speaker 1: his nephew was Maurice Kessler. Now Maurice Kessler was on

718
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:31,040
Speaker 1: Thirteenth Street and he owned a company called NFL Films,

719
00:41:32,400 --> 00:41:36,880
Speaker 1: and so Lou used to work at night in the warehouse,

720
00:41:37,440 --> 00:41:42,600
Speaker 1: you know, cutting NFL films. He actually started Nflms NFL

721
00:41:42,680 --> 00:41:45,160
Speaker 1: Films with Mars and I knew all those guys and

722
00:41:45,520 --> 00:41:48,040
Speaker 1: they were around. And then inside of that there was

723
00:41:48,080 --> 00:41:52,839
Speaker 1: another guy hanging around called Garrett Brown, and Garrett Brown

724
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:55,680
Speaker 1: used to come get loose stage advice because Lou was

725
00:41:55,719 --> 00:42:01,319
Speaker 1: actually just boy genius and really well respected. Garrett Brown

726
00:42:01,400 --> 00:42:04,520
Speaker 1: event at the Steadicamp, which a lot of it was

727
00:42:04,600 --> 00:42:09,360
Speaker 1: assembled in the warehouse where I was in business with

728
00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:13,520
Speaker 1: this guy. So my education, it was my college. It

729
00:42:14,120 --> 00:42:18,800
Speaker 1: really was my college and and that's how I really learned.

730
00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:22,960
Speaker 1: Between that working union stages, doing all that stuff. That

731
00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:26,680
Speaker 1: that's really where I got my my own Yeah, all

732
00:42:26,760 --> 00:42:30,480
Speaker 1: my education. So how do you transition to big rock acts? Well,

733
00:42:30,560 --> 00:42:34,719
Speaker 1: I loved music. So my uncle, um he played uh

734
00:42:35,040 --> 00:42:38,320
Speaker 1: big in big bands, played in Dorset's band, and played

735
00:42:38,760 --> 00:42:41,359
Speaker 1: a bunch of other bands. Um, he was the black

736
00:42:41,440 --> 00:42:44,439
Speaker 1: sheep of the family. My mother hated him. He smoked hope.

737
00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:47,960
Speaker 1: He was a photographer. He but he loved me and

738
00:42:48,320 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 1: he gave me my first camera and enlarging machine, my

739
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:54,920
Speaker 1: first clarinet. I mean, he was you know, he he

740
00:42:55,160 --> 00:42:57,960
Speaker 1: was a cool dude. Um. And so I was always

741
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:01,440
Speaker 1: and my dad was really in the Broadway shows. So

742
00:43:01,640 --> 00:43:05,600
Speaker 1: music was always in the house, Um, jazz, Broadway shows.

743
00:43:06,080 --> 00:43:11,719
Speaker 1: It was always in my psyche. And so I when

744
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:14,440
Speaker 1: I moved out and I was living, you know, downtown Philly,

745
00:43:16,520 --> 00:43:19,320
Speaker 1: I loved music. I was listening to w MMR ed

746
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:22,560
Speaker 1: Shocky all the time. It became one of my good friends.

747
00:43:23,160 --> 00:43:26,000
Speaker 1: And uh, I met Bruce Springsteen through it. In no

748
00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:28,960
Speaker 1: other ways I met I met the music, I met

749
00:43:29,080 --> 00:43:33,160
Speaker 1: the man through it. Because Philly was Bruce's probably biggest Town,

750
00:43:33,640 --> 00:43:37,640
Speaker 1: you know, in the beginning, that's what started started. But

751
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:42,759
Speaker 1: before that, because I went around all of Pennsylvania doing

752
00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:45,439
Speaker 1: light shows, there was a Steve Miller gig I got

753
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:49,879
Speaker 1: and it was at Penn State University, and I did

754
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:52,400
Speaker 1: my design in my head and I drove whatever it

755
00:43:52,560 --> 00:43:54,960
Speaker 1: was four hours after Penn State did the show. I

756
00:43:55,040 --> 00:43:57,840
Speaker 1: thought I'd meet Steve at the end of it, and

757
00:43:58,080 --> 00:44:04,600
Speaker 1: that didn't happen. That didn't happen anyway, Steve came back. Well,

758
00:44:04,719 --> 00:44:08,440
Speaker 1: I was doing Pink Floyd and UH, New York. I

759
00:44:08,520 --> 00:44:12,880
Speaker 1: guess it was eighty seven Masson Square Garden eight nine on.

760
00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:15,399
Speaker 1: And remember at UH at the end of the show,

761
00:44:15,440 --> 00:44:19,080
Speaker 1: I always remember, I looked at my left and there's

762
00:44:19,080 --> 00:44:22,840
Speaker 1: Steve Miller right off the riser looking at me, and

763
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:26,319
Speaker 1: and I went, whoa, because I never really got over,

764
00:44:26,600 --> 00:44:32,479
Speaker 1: not not getting anywhere with it any any uh. He goes, hey, Matt,

765
00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:36,359
Speaker 1: this was just unbelievable, goes, I want to I want

766
00:44:36,400 --> 00:44:39,759
Speaker 1: to work with you. I'm like, okay, you know, I

767
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:43,200
Speaker 1: want to work with you. He goes, okay, So I'm

768
00:44:43,239 --> 00:44:46,239
Speaker 1: going out like two months. I want everything you have

769
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:50,560
Speaker 1: up there, and I wanted in two trucks which was like,

770
00:44:50,760 --> 00:44:55,160
Speaker 1: you know, impossible, impossible. Well, you're in Philly and you

771
00:44:55,320 --> 00:44:59,080
Speaker 1: meet Bruce, how do you end up working with Bruce? Well,

772
00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:01,480
Speaker 1: it was that first show. I said it earlier. It

773
00:45:01,560 --> 00:45:06,279
Speaker 1: was Widener College, and I talked my way in to

774
00:45:06,600 --> 00:45:10,279
Speaker 1: to be see. I mean, back then the colleges had

775
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:12,880
Speaker 1: a budget and they would so the bands would just

776
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:15,520
Speaker 1: show up and they'd have to hire local sounds and

777
00:45:15,640 --> 00:45:19,680
Speaker 1: lights and so the guy that was doing Bruce's sound

778
00:45:19,719 --> 00:45:22,440
Speaker 1: around the Tri State area was a guy called Dave

779
00:45:22,520 --> 00:45:26,680
Speaker 1: Hughes Sound Specialties. Even though Claire Brothers and Lydditz was

780
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:30,279
Speaker 1: just down the road and I was I knew Roy

781
00:45:30,360 --> 00:45:35,239
Speaker 1: and Gene and Michael. He showed up later, um and

782
00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:39,439
Speaker 1: and so I showed up a Widener. I knew every

783
00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:42,520
Speaker 1: every musical queue. I knew every time Clarence was going

784
00:45:42,560 --> 00:45:45,279
Speaker 1: to hit it. Stephen wasn't in the band. This was

785
00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:48,640
Speaker 1: back when it was Boom Boom, Carter, Davy, Sanchez and

786
00:45:48,840 --> 00:45:54,759
Speaker 1: Clarence with um um, you know Gary. And so at

787
00:45:54,800 --> 00:45:58,200
Speaker 1: the end of it, a pel was just blown away,

788
00:45:59,160 --> 00:46:02,160
Speaker 1: throws me back. It takes me backstage to meet Bruce,

789
00:46:02,719 --> 00:46:04,960
Speaker 1: and Bruce goes, yeah, man, he goes, I really noticed

790
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:08,640
Speaker 1: the difference. Yeah, if you can, if you can somehow

791
00:46:09,040 --> 00:46:11,440
Speaker 1: figure out a way to show up at all the gigs, man,

792
00:46:11,560 --> 00:46:14,560
Speaker 1: I'd love to have you around, right Like, they didn't

793
00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:16,680
Speaker 1: hire me. They had no money. They were they were

794
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:21,640
Speaker 1: driving around station wagons. I was driving around in a van. Okay,

795
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:23,960
Speaker 1: so did you show up? I did. I would call

796
00:46:24,080 --> 00:46:27,160
Speaker 1: up all the promoters and tell them that, Well, Barry

797
00:46:27,239 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 1: Bell from William Morris told me to call you to

798
00:46:30,560 --> 00:46:34,560
Speaker 1: tell you that I'm the sanctioned lighting designer for Bruce Springsteen.

799
00:46:34,840 --> 00:46:38,080
Speaker 1: I would lie through my teeth all the time, and

800
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:42,560
Speaker 1: and my price was right, which was what zero fifty

801
00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:55,000
Speaker 1: bucks or less? Yeah, okay, so Bruce starts to accelerate.

802
00:46:55,760 --> 00:46:58,400
Speaker 1: Were are you in that equation? I'm very much in

803
00:46:58,480 --> 00:47:01,440
Speaker 1: there because Bruce plays the bottom line. I think for

804
00:47:01,520 --> 00:47:03,759
Speaker 1: two nights, I forget what your was. It must have

805
00:47:03,800 --> 00:47:08,879
Speaker 1: been like seventy two, seventy three, seventy three, big, big,

806
00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:11,200
Speaker 1: big thing at the bottom line. I hitched hype to

807
00:47:11,320 --> 00:47:13,720
Speaker 1: New York. I didn't even have a car. I hitchhike

808
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:16,120
Speaker 1: to New York. I figured I'd hitch hike back or

809
00:47:16,600 --> 00:47:18,400
Speaker 1: or oh no, I was gonna sleep at the roadies

810
00:47:18,440 --> 00:47:20,320
Speaker 1: house two nights. So I was gonna sleep at the

811
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:24,800
Speaker 1: Roadies house, Mike Batlan's house overnight, and then somehow maybe

812
00:47:24,840 --> 00:47:26,839
Speaker 1: I was going to get a room that second night

813
00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:28,920
Speaker 1: and then take a train back or something. I don't know,

814
00:47:29,120 --> 00:47:32,600
Speaker 1: but I don't remember exactly what happened. I hitch hiked

815
00:47:32,680 --> 00:47:35,080
Speaker 1: up the bottom Line. I walked in the bottom Line,

816
00:47:35,160 --> 00:47:38,360
Speaker 1: and obviously there was so much hype going on, and

817
00:47:38,480 --> 00:47:41,960
Speaker 1: I was met with that wall of technicians. You know,

818
00:47:42,000 --> 00:47:43,799
Speaker 1: it was a big that was the big time right

819
00:47:43,920 --> 00:47:47,279
Speaker 1: bottom line, New York City, early seventies. And they all

820
00:47:47,320 --> 00:47:49,839
Speaker 1: looked at me, like, what do you want and I'm like, well,

821
00:47:49,880 --> 00:47:52,800
Speaker 1: on Bruce's light guy, Oh yeah, New York. It's like,

822
00:47:53,080 --> 00:47:55,439
Speaker 1: you know, walking into Madison Square Garden the first time,

823
00:47:55,840 --> 00:48:01,000
Speaker 1: you know. And anyway, I did did my job. I

824
00:48:01,080 --> 00:48:05,279
Speaker 1: did everything I needed to do, and at the end

825
00:48:05,320 --> 00:48:09,839
Speaker 1: of it, I was getting ready to leave and Mike

826
00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:12,040
Speaker 1: Capelle shows up and he said to me, do you

827
00:48:12,160 --> 00:48:13,839
Speaker 1: know do you know who was do you know who

828
00:48:13,960 --> 00:48:16,600
Speaker 1: was just backstage with Bruce Clide Davis, And do you

829
00:48:16,640 --> 00:48:19,200
Speaker 1: know what Clive Davis said? Clide Davis says, I can't

830
00:48:19,280 --> 00:48:21,440
Speaker 1: let you go. I have to hire you right now

831
00:48:21,520 --> 00:48:23,840
Speaker 1: in the spot. You can't just go around picking up

832
00:48:23,920 --> 00:48:26,080
Speaker 1: gigs like that and showing up. You have to become

833
00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:29,520
Speaker 1: part of our organization. And I hope he gives you

834
00:48:29,640 --> 00:48:35,360
Speaker 1: the money for it anyway. That that's that was the

835
00:48:35,440 --> 00:48:39,600
Speaker 1: moment that I then started touring with Bruce exclusively. And

836
00:48:39,840 --> 00:48:44,480
Speaker 1: how long did that? Laugh sadly, I mean triumphantly. It

837
00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:49,520
Speaker 1: lasted until one was born in the USA that was

838
00:48:51,560 --> 00:48:53,319
Speaker 1: it was before that was like eighty three. I think

839
00:48:53,400 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 1: maybe Babe was eighty three efore. Yeah, yeah, Nebraska, Yeah,

840
00:48:56,920 --> 00:49:00,600
Speaker 1: well whatever, those years. I mean, it was great. When

841
00:49:00,640 --> 00:49:04,279
Speaker 1: Mike left, it wasn't so great. Stevie shows up, that's great.

842
00:49:04,760 --> 00:49:08,879
Speaker 1: Landau was there, he wasn't a fan. It gets a little,

843
00:49:08,960 --> 00:49:11,160
Speaker 1: it gets it gets, it gets a little weird, and

844
00:49:11,960 --> 00:49:15,240
Speaker 1: and Bruce is getting really big. At the same time,

845
00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:19,319
Speaker 1: I had moved to California. I was managing South Side

846
00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:22,239
Speaker 1: Johnny with Stephen Tour managing them. I was on the

847
00:49:22,360 --> 00:49:24,400
Speaker 1: road with them and I was part of it. But

848
00:49:24,640 --> 00:49:28,520
Speaker 1: then some weird stuff started going on. So I decided

849
00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:31,359
Speaker 1: to move to California. And my parents had just moved

850
00:49:31,400 --> 00:49:33,799
Speaker 1: out here year earlier, so I figured I'd come out

851
00:49:33,880 --> 00:49:36,360
Speaker 1: here I could still work with Bruce. Wait, wait just

852
00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:39,440
Speaker 1: for one second. What happened to the lighting company when

853
00:49:39,520 --> 00:49:42,560
Speaker 1: they said they were gonna hire me? I kind of

854
00:49:43,400 --> 00:49:46,719
Speaker 1: went back and realized this was what I wanted to do,

855
00:49:47,440 --> 00:49:50,480
Speaker 1: and that we were gonna have to sell our interests.

856
00:49:50,960 --> 00:49:54,279
Speaker 1: And we did, and and it was bought by this

857
00:49:54,400 --> 00:49:56,720
Speaker 1: guy who I'm still friends with, this guy Don Earle

858
00:49:57,200 --> 00:49:59,319
Speaker 1: out of He lives in Lanta City. Now he's got

859
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:02,640
Speaker 1: a lighting come in Atlantic City called Earls Girls. It's

860
00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:06,239
Speaker 1: a great guy. You know, right before the pandemic. I

861
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:09,680
Speaker 1: met him in New York, had lunch, you know, so um, yeah,

862
00:50:09,760 --> 00:50:13,080
Speaker 1: he bought He bought my share and kept lou employed.

863
00:50:13,360 --> 00:50:16,080
Speaker 1: Louis state employed. Okay, so you're did you make anybody

864
00:50:16,480 --> 00:50:20,960
Speaker 1: when we sold it? No? Okay, So I moved to California.

865
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:25,600
Speaker 1: You're managing South Side with Stephen. Well, that kind of

866
00:50:25,640 --> 00:50:30,560
Speaker 1: went south because something went on. Something went on where,

867
00:50:31,120 --> 00:50:33,480
Speaker 1: and I don't still don't know to this day. I

868
00:50:33,560 --> 00:50:36,360
Speaker 1: don't know. Anyway, it was time to go because I

869
00:50:36,480 --> 00:50:38,480
Speaker 1: was living a mom a's beach. I had moved up

870
00:50:38,520 --> 00:50:41,120
Speaker 1: to Jersey. I was living a momma's beach across the

871
00:50:41,200 --> 00:50:45,120
Speaker 1: street from Clarence and UM and I took off. I

872
00:50:45,239 --> 00:50:50,440
Speaker 1: came out here and we did UM. So I got

873
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:53,440
Speaker 1: married out here and Bruce played at my wedding, UM

874
00:50:53,560 --> 00:50:56,759
Speaker 1: at the Whiskey Elmer closed it and you know I

875
00:50:56,840 --> 00:50:59,680
Speaker 1: had I had Bruce, Boss Gags, Rickey, Lee Jones all

876
00:50:59,760 --> 00:51:02,680
Speaker 1: at my playing there, my house band, and I brought

877
00:51:02,719 --> 00:51:05,920
Speaker 1: out Jerry blabbittt, the DJ from Philly, the heater with

878
00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:10,640
Speaker 1: the Heater, who everybody loved. He came out and everything

879
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:13,759
Speaker 1: was okay. Bruce then wrote The River and there were

880
00:51:13,840 --> 00:51:17,480
Speaker 1: some songs on the River that my wedding inspired him,

881
00:51:17,800 --> 00:51:19,920
Speaker 1: because if you look at the cover, there's the the

882
00:51:20,000 --> 00:51:22,759
Speaker 1: wedding dress and a little girl want to marry you,

883
00:51:23,040 --> 00:51:25,839
Speaker 1: and that he told me there were a few songs

884
00:51:25,920 --> 00:51:29,400
Speaker 1: on there that I inspire. That history kind of has

885
00:51:29,560 --> 00:51:35,560
Speaker 1: changed though through the years I've been kind of not

886
00:51:36,280 --> 00:51:40,200
Speaker 1: persona non grata um by you know, not not to

887
00:51:40,280 --> 00:51:42,960
Speaker 1: get into that, but things change. Well, let's just go

888
00:51:43,080 --> 00:51:46,160
Speaker 1: a little bit. When it ends with Bruce, does it

889
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:50,759
Speaker 1: end ugly? Yeah? Okay, And at this late date, any

890
00:51:50,840 --> 00:51:54,959
Speaker 1: contact with that camp where there's no reason I've seen

891
00:51:55,440 --> 00:51:58,759
Speaker 1: I've seen Bruce a number of times and it's been

892
00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:02,440
Speaker 1: very friendly, which is fine. It's like having a divorced wife.

893
00:52:02,800 --> 00:52:06,560
Speaker 1: It's it's like, you know, because back then I was

894
00:52:06,640 --> 00:52:08,879
Speaker 1: there when none of us had any money. He didn't

895
00:52:08,880 --> 00:52:12,040
Speaker 1: have any money. When he split with a pell, the

896
00:52:12,160 --> 00:52:15,600
Speaker 1: crew took basically you know, I don't know all the details,

897
00:52:15,640 --> 00:52:17,920
Speaker 1: but we used to like work for very little, and

898
00:52:18,280 --> 00:52:20,239
Speaker 1: we just kept going on the road while he was

899
00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:23,400
Speaker 1: going through a lawsuit. And then when there was a

900
00:52:23,560 --> 00:52:28,520
Speaker 1: change of you know, management, you know, Stevie departed, then

901
00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:33,600
Speaker 1: I departed. There was a pattern going on anyway, as

902
00:52:33,719 --> 00:52:36,560
Speaker 1: I mean, God bless everybody at Tiny Tim So I

903
00:52:36,760 --> 00:52:41,320
Speaker 1: I don't hold any any things and it's at this

904
00:52:41,440 --> 00:52:44,160
Speaker 1: point in my life it doesn't really matter. Um. The

905
00:52:44,280 --> 00:52:49,719
Speaker 1: last time was so Bruce and John Um was when

906
00:52:49,760 --> 00:52:54,080
Speaker 1: The Rascals opened on Broadway, which Stevie and I did. Um.

907
00:52:54,520 --> 00:52:58,239
Speaker 1: They were at the they were at the at the

908
00:52:58,360 --> 00:53:01,799
Speaker 1: opening and the after part and it was all really

909
00:53:01,960 --> 00:53:05,000
Speaker 1: very pleasant. The weird part about I have a very

910
00:53:05,080 --> 00:53:09,120
Speaker 1: distinctive voice because I'm from Philly, But over the years,

911
00:53:09,160 --> 00:53:11,279
Speaker 1: every time I would run into some of them, like

912
00:53:11,440 --> 00:53:13,839
Speaker 1: Roy Bitton lives in my neighborhood. He lives on Point doom.

913
00:53:13,880 --> 00:53:17,320
Speaker 1: I run into him at the market, fantastic. Um. But

914
00:53:17,480 --> 00:53:20,919
Speaker 1: every time I'd run into Bruster John or Barry Bell,

915
00:53:22,600 --> 00:53:27,240
Speaker 1: they would never know who I was. They would always

916
00:53:27,239 --> 00:53:34,320
Speaker 1: go do it, and I go no. It was actually comical.

917
00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:38,799
Speaker 1: It's like something out of Larry David. Um. Um, it's

918
00:53:38,840 --> 00:53:42,680
Speaker 1: a shame. Look. I grew up with Springsteen's music one

919
00:53:44,080 --> 00:53:49,439
Speaker 1: hands down on four hours music with no set list,

920
00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:52,839
Speaker 1: where everybody was trained as a unit. That's what made

921
00:53:52,880 --> 00:53:56,000
Speaker 1: me who I was because there were no set lists.

922
00:53:56,160 --> 00:53:57,960
Speaker 1: It was like he would he would get on that

923
00:53:58,120 --> 00:54:02,440
Speaker 1: stage and it was like a force of nature back then,

924
00:54:02,719 --> 00:54:07,000
Speaker 1: you know, and he continued doing that throughout his years. Um.

925
00:54:08,000 --> 00:54:10,920
Speaker 1: I saw the show on Broadway to um, which was

926
00:54:11,000 --> 00:54:17,520
Speaker 1: a different thing. Obviously he's there by himself. Um it

927
00:54:18,280 --> 00:54:21,840
Speaker 1: it really what he did with it. It toughened me

928
00:54:22,000 --> 00:54:25,120
Speaker 1: up for the rest of my experiences in the business

929
00:54:25,480 --> 00:54:28,640
Speaker 1: on a certain level because I was really naive, really naive.

930
00:54:29,320 --> 00:54:34,279
Speaker 1: Um and um. It was painful, but you know what

931
00:54:34,440 --> 00:54:38,000
Speaker 1: they say, one thing begets another. When I got hired

932
00:54:38,680 --> 00:54:42,319
Speaker 1: for Pink Floyd the night before, I find out many

933
00:54:42,400 --> 00:54:48,800
Speaker 1: years later that Alan Parker and Roger waters Uh together

934
00:54:48,840 --> 00:54:53,160
Speaker 1: went to a Springsteen show and they were blown away

935
00:54:54,320 --> 00:54:59,239
Speaker 1: by the lighting and that when that moment came that

936
00:54:59,560 --> 00:55:04,360
Speaker 1: Roger knew that, Um, he had to change the lighting

937
00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:08,759
Speaker 1: guy out. He said, find the guy. Nobody knew who

938
00:55:08,760 --> 00:55:11,920
Speaker 1: I was. Find the guy that did Springsteen. And that's

939
00:55:11,960 --> 00:55:13,880
Speaker 1: how I got that phone call. Okay. So if it

940
00:55:14,040 --> 00:55:17,120
Speaker 1: ends with Springsteen, just to be clear, it ends with

941
00:55:17,200 --> 00:55:19,879
Speaker 1: Springsteen around Born in the USA or after the River,

942
00:55:20,000 --> 00:55:22,080
Speaker 1: when does it end for you? It ended because of

943
00:55:22,160 --> 00:55:26,200
Speaker 1: myself and Roger Waters and Bruce and some people maybe

944
00:55:26,560 --> 00:55:30,920
Speaker 1: miscommunicating some things. And so it was right before Bruce

945
00:55:30,960 --> 00:55:37,040
Speaker 1: started Born in the USA rehearsals, and and it should

946
00:55:37,160 --> 00:55:40,360
Speaker 1: it didn't need to have ended, but it did. It was.

947
00:55:40,520 --> 00:55:44,279
Speaker 1: So what's that three? Probably something like that. Okay. But

948
00:55:44,719 --> 00:55:49,080
Speaker 1: while you were working for Bruce starting in the early seventies,

949
00:55:49,800 --> 00:55:53,880
Speaker 1: were you also working for other racks? Not until um,

950
00:55:54,120 --> 00:55:57,360
Speaker 1: I got out of here with Bruce at the Roxy.

951
00:55:57,960 --> 00:56:01,080
Speaker 1: So we're just like the bottom line, We go and

952
00:56:01,160 --> 00:56:04,600
Speaker 1: play the Roxy for two nights whenever. That was seventy five,

953
00:56:04,680 --> 00:56:07,360
Speaker 1: I think he was born and born to run. I

954
00:56:07,400 --> 00:56:12,320
Speaker 1: think it was seventy five, and I was really a

955
00:56:12,440 --> 00:56:16,719
Speaker 1: handful I loaded. I brought all my own. By that point,

956
00:56:16,840 --> 00:56:19,520
Speaker 1: I would bring lights into everywhere I went. I wouldn't

957
00:56:19,600 --> 00:56:22,319
Speaker 1: use just what was in the house. Bringing lights into

958
00:56:22,360 --> 00:56:25,799
Speaker 1: the Roxy was unheard of. It raised all kinds of alarms.

959
00:56:26,160 --> 00:56:28,920
Speaker 1: And I walked in there and this guy shows I

960
00:56:28,960 --> 00:56:30,520
Speaker 1: mean it was late at night, it was after a show.

961
00:56:30,560 --> 00:56:32,239
Speaker 1: It was like one and two in the morning. I'm

962
00:56:32,320 --> 00:56:34,799
Speaker 1: loading in all these lights and this guy shows up

963
00:56:34,840 --> 00:56:38,120
Speaker 1: with a kind of a cowboy hat, swede, long hair

964
00:56:38,280 --> 00:56:42,719
Speaker 1: down to here. Really yeah, And I'm I'm being a dick,

965
00:56:43,000 --> 00:56:45,680
Speaker 1: you know, I'm really, I'm being a fucking asshole. And

966
00:56:46,040 --> 00:56:48,359
Speaker 1: and he walks up to me and very quietly says,

967
00:56:48,680 --> 00:56:52,160
Speaker 1: can I help you? I'm Elmer Valentine. And while I

968
00:56:52,280 --> 00:56:55,600
Speaker 1: owned this place and the rocks the Rainbow next door,

969
00:56:56,000 --> 00:56:58,279
Speaker 1: is there anything I can do for you? And I

970
00:56:58,400 --> 00:57:00,400
Speaker 1: looked at alway, Yeah, I need some pizza. And the

971
00:57:00,520 --> 00:57:02,879
Speaker 1: next thing I know from the Rainbow is like eight

972
00:57:02,960 --> 00:57:05,560
Speaker 1: pieces delivered to the stage, and he goes, is there

973
00:57:05,600 --> 00:57:09,640
Speaker 1: anything else I can do for you? You know? Yeah,

974
00:57:09,840 --> 00:57:11,920
Speaker 1: when you have those moments, I mean, Elma and I

975
00:57:12,040 --> 00:57:17,200
Speaker 1: became and and and Mario and Lou and I'd see

976
00:57:17,240 --> 00:57:21,160
Speaker 1: Lou Everyone's While he doesn't remember me, Elmer was was

977
00:57:21,240 --> 00:57:25,439
Speaker 1: the man, you know. Um. But we did to show

978
00:57:25,480 --> 00:57:29,040
Speaker 1: it the next night and that that little booth and uh,

979
00:57:30,240 --> 00:57:33,400
Speaker 1: they did thunder Rode. Bruce started with thunder Roade and

980
00:57:33,560 --> 00:57:35,800
Speaker 1: just as and I would have these two blue lights

981
00:57:35,920 --> 00:57:38,680
Speaker 1: just that's all, no spotlight or anything. And Roy's playing

982
00:57:38,720 --> 00:57:41,960
Speaker 1: the piano. He and Bruce had the harmonica, but I

983
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:43,760
Speaker 1: would do the thing where you wouldn't see his face.

984
00:57:44,040 --> 00:57:48,000
Speaker 1: That whole idea of making him more cinematic was part

985
00:57:48,080 --> 00:57:52,120
Speaker 1: of my my my repertoire, you know, my my practice. Um.

986
00:57:52,600 --> 00:57:54,840
Speaker 1: And at the end of it, when the two blue

987
00:57:54,880 --> 00:57:58,240
Speaker 1: lights are fading, fading, fading, suddenly this woman just jumped

988
00:57:58,320 --> 00:58:00,240
Speaker 1: up into the window. Her face is right in the

989
00:58:00,280 --> 00:58:03,800
Speaker 1: window and she goes, I love you just like that, right,

990
00:58:04,080 --> 00:58:07,200
Speaker 1: and she sits back down and I'm like, yeah, because

991
00:58:07,200 --> 00:58:09,280
Speaker 1: we're getting ready to get into I don't know what

992
00:58:09,400 --> 00:58:12,240
Speaker 1: he was doing. Next, Almer looks at me. He's standing

993
00:58:12,320 --> 00:58:14,120
Speaker 1: right next to me, and Alma was like, you could

994
00:58:14,120 --> 00:58:17,080
Speaker 1: hear him kind of just just breathing a little heavier

995
00:58:17,160 --> 00:58:19,600
Speaker 1: than normal because it was very dramatic, you know, and

996
00:58:19,680 --> 00:58:22,480
Speaker 1: the place was you could hear a pin drop and

997
00:58:23,600 --> 00:58:25,520
Speaker 1: it wasn't just because of a lighting because it was

998
00:58:26,160 --> 00:58:30,760
Speaker 1: it was giving Bruce that envelope of really putting forth

999
00:58:31,040 --> 00:58:33,960
Speaker 1: what he was trying to communicate. He was faceless at

1000
00:58:34,040 --> 00:58:35,880
Speaker 1: that time, you know. I mean it was very dramatic,

1001
00:58:36,200 --> 00:58:41,200
Speaker 1: very theatrical, and and and then Elma goes that was

1002
00:58:41,280 --> 00:58:46,160
Speaker 1: Carol King and I'm like what. Well, within about a month,

1003
00:58:46,800 --> 00:58:51,000
Speaker 1: six weeks, I was working with Carol King and she

1004
00:58:51,200 --> 00:58:54,080
Speaker 1: threw me into her tour which they had already hired

1005
00:58:54,160 --> 00:58:57,720
Speaker 1: this lighting guy, and he got pushed aside for letting

1006
00:58:57,720 --> 00:59:00,200
Speaker 1: me come in. This was kind of a pattern for

1007
00:59:00,320 --> 00:59:05,520
Speaker 1: me in the seventies where they would push aside the

1008
00:59:05,640 --> 00:59:09,400
Speaker 1: guy that was there, and I would get placed inside

1009
00:59:09,480 --> 00:59:13,840
Speaker 1: these unknown, you know, unknown people unknown. The only person

1010
00:59:13,920 --> 00:59:16,000
Speaker 1: I would have a friend with would be the artist

1011
00:59:16,520 --> 00:59:20,080
Speaker 1: that would that would be it. So this is before automation,

1012
00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:22,440
Speaker 1: So you have to go you have to go to

1013
00:59:22,600 --> 00:59:26,640
Speaker 1: every show absolutely and run the board and talked to

1014
00:59:26,720 --> 00:59:30,840
Speaker 1: all these crazy spotlight guys. But I kept innovating the

1015
00:59:30,920 --> 00:59:34,640
Speaker 1: whole time. I kept innovating and innovating and innovating, and

1016
00:59:35,000 --> 00:59:38,160
Speaker 1: you know, I kept upping the anti because I could,

1017
00:59:38,720 --> 00:59:42,200
Speaker 1: I mean, wherever I could innovate I would, and I

1018
00:59:42,360 --> 00:59:46,920
Speaker 1: kept pushing the envelope even without the automation. When the

1019
00:59:46,960 --> 00:59:51,720
Speaker 1: automation showed up, which was eighty six, you know, very light.

1020
00:59:51,840 --> 00:59:54,080
Speaker 1: I'm still friends with the guy. He called me up,

1021
00:59:54,120 --> 01:00:00,240
Speaker 1: wanted me to go see Genesis. And oh, by the way,

1022
01:00:00,720 --> 01:00:05,040
Speaker 1: just just from the time with Carol and I left Bruce.

1023
01:00:05,240 --> 01:00:07,400
Speaker 1: Then I really started working a lot of people. My

1024
01:00:07,520 --> 01:00:10,040
Speaker 1: next one up was Joni Mitchell, which I had to

1025
01:00:10,240 --> 01:00:13,760
Speaker 1: probably one of the best experiences ever. And I have

1026
01:00:13,840 --> 01:00:16,720
Speaker 1: a I have a painting she made for me which

1027
01:00:16,840 --> 01:00:20,200
Speaker 1: I cherished to this day. And and that's when I

1028
01:00:20,560 --> 01:00:25,160
Speaker 1: became friends with Elliott, you know. And and there were

1029
01:00:25,240 --> 01:00:30,360
Speaker 1: some managers that could deal with my insanity, Steve Elliott,

1030
01:00:30,760 --> 01:00:33,880
Speaker 1: you know, I mean there were some managers that could

1031
01:00:34,080 --> 01:00:37,240
Speaker 1: understand what was going on in my brain. So you

1032
01:00:37,400 --> 01:00:41,040
Speaker 1: just were just so, I know, you were just yourself seven.

1033
01:00:41,120 --> 01:00:44,720
Speaker 1: You didn't care how you came across or anything. No. Well,

1034
01:00:44,840 --> 01:00:48,320
Speaker 1: now now I would probably be I probably now in

1035
01:00:48,400 --> 01:00:50,720
Speaker 1: this day and age, in this enlightened time that we

1036
01:00:50,800 --> 01:00:53,680
Speaker 1: live in, you know, and I mean that I really

1037
01:00:53,760 --> 01:00:56,360
Speaker 1: do that that I probably would have been diagnosed with

1038
01:00:56,640 --> 01:00:59,560
Speaker 1: like Tourette's a d H D all of it, you know,

1039
01:01:00,000 --> 01:01:02,680
Speaker 1: I told you, you know, just I'm just one of

1040
01:01:02,760 --> 01:01:05,600
Speaker 1: the bipolar. I don't know, I'm one of those guys.

1041
01:01:05,800 --> 01:01:10,760
Speaker 1: I'm on all the time. I've learned how to. I've

1042
01:01:10,800 --> 01:01:16,360
Speaker 1: had to learn how to somewhat tamp it down. But

1043
01:01:17,680 --> 01:01:20,320
Speaker 1: the other part of it is if I tamp it

1044
01:01:20,360 --> 01:01:24,000
Speaker 1: down too much, I'm not creative anymore. My brain shuts down.

1045
01:01:24,400 --> 01:01:27,600
Speaker 1: I don't think well. Usually people were that abbed up.

1046
01:01:27,680 --> 01:01:30,680
Speaker 1: If they're literally bipolar, they also crashed and get depressed.

1047
01:01:30,720 --> 01:01:33,560
Speaker 1: On the other side, do you have that outside too, well,

1048
01:01:33,600 --> 01:01:35,720
Speaker 1: when I'm not working, when I feel like nobody likes

1049
01:01:35,800 --> 01:01:38,000
Speaker 1: me and then I beat the ship out of myself,

1050
01:01:38,240 --> 01:01:42,400
Speaker 1: or when I'm dealing with look the golden age that

1051
01:01:42,560 --> 01:01:45,320
Speaker 1: we lived and we grew up. Your columns are the

1052
01:01:45,440 --> 01:01:48,880
Speaker 1: are the lifeblood of my of my of the times

1053
01:01:48,920 --> 01:01:51,120
Speaker 1: when I do get depressed, because I read that and

1054
01:01:51,160 --> 01:01:54,280
Speaker 1: you bring me back to such great times and memories

1055
01:01:54,320 --> 01:01:56,840
Speaker 1: and it makes it balances me out to a place

1056
01:01:56,880 --> 01:01:58,960
Speaker 1: where I'm like kind of going, why I did some

1057
01:01:59,080 --> 01:02:02,400
Speaker 1: really great things. It's it's okay, you know, And yeah,

1058
01:02:02,440 --> 01:02:05,160
Speaker 1: you're older now, and that's just normal. It's a normal

1059
01:02:05,240 --> 01:02:08,960
Speaker 1: cycle of life, right, And you have to do this yourself.

1060
01:02:09,280 --> 01:02:11,440
Speaker 1: You have to find your own audience. Mark and I

1061
01:02:11,520 --> 01:02:16,800
Speaker 1: had these discussions, and my wife is amazing. She's Katherine.

1062
01:02:16,960 --> 01:02:19,760
Speaker 1: She's been with me for twenty years. And I have

1063
01:02:19,920 --> 01:02:23,520
Speaker 1: a producer named Alicia Griego who has to deal with

1064
01:02:23,640 --> 01:02:25,680
Speaker 1: me on a day to day basis. And you know,

1065
01:02:25,960 --> 01:02:29,439
Speaker 1: it ain't easy for either one of them doing the math.

1066
01:02:30,000 --> 01:02:31,960
Speaker 1: That is not the woman who got married too with

1067
01:02:32,040 --> 01:02:35,480
Speaker 1: the whiskey. What happened there? No, um, we we we

1068
01:02:35,720 --> 01:02:38,280
Speaker 1: You know I was too young to get married. She

1069
01:02:38,440 --> 01:02:42,439
Speaker 1: was my childhood sweetheart, you know. We she's but she's

1070
01:02:42,600 --> 01:02:44,800
Speaker 1: out here living in l A. I haven't seen her

1071
01:02:44,880 --> 01:02:48,160
Speaker 1: since we got married. Um, she's out here. Became a

1072
01:02:48,280 --> 01:02:52,160
Speaker 1: really well known makeup artist. She started doing that when

1073
01:02:52,200 --> 01:02:54,480
Speaker 1: I started going the road a lot. And she actually

1074
01:02:54,560 --> 01:02:57,840
Speaker 1: does lots of TV and films. She has two kids.

1075
01:02:57,960 --> 01:03:01,120
Speaker 1: They're probably grown up now I have That's what I

1076
01:03:01,640 --> 01:03:05,040
Speaker 1: understand she's doing. She was a lovely, you know, lovely woman,

1077
01:03:05,520 --> 01:03:09,560
Speaker 1: and you know it happened. As a matter of fact,

1078
01:03:09,600 --> 01:03:12,000
Speaker 1: I got married a few times. But I've been with

1079
01:03:12,200 --> 01:03:15,440
Speaker 1: Katherine now twenty years, so I'm I'm I'm there. How

1080
01:03:15,480 --> 01:03:18,400
Speaker 1: many times you've been married four times. So the first

1081
01:03:18,480 --> 01:03:22,480
Speaker 1: one is your childhood sweetheart. What breaks up the relationship

1082
01:03:22,520 --> 01:03:24,600
Speaker 1: with the childhood sweetheart? The girl I met on the

1083
01:03:24,720 --> 01:03:27,600
Speaker 1: road on on the on the River tour, and we

1084
01:03:27,720 --> 01:03:31,680
Speaker 1: did meet her where in Detroit? Okay, play that out.

1085
01:03:31,920 --> 01:03:34,920
Speaker 1: She was just backstage and I just she's sitting on

1086
01:03:35,000 --> 01:03:37,960
Speaker 1: a curb. She didn't have any tickets. It was her

1087
01:03:38,040 --> 01:03:40,439
Speaker 1: and thinking, her sister and a couple of other people,

1088
01:03:40,560 --> 01:03:42,920
Speaker 1: a couple of other girls. So we just, you know,

1089
01:03:43,320 --> 01:03:47,160
Speaker 1: just gave me passes they came in. I don't know.

1090
01:03:47,320 --> 01:03:50,040
Speaker 1: That was a mistake. Not a mistake, that's the wrong

1091
01:03:50,160 --> 01:03:55,120
Speaker 1: thing to say. Eight Yeah, I was. I was out

1092
01:03:55,160 --> 01:03:57,080
Speaker 1: of control. I'll be the first one to admit it

1093
01:03:57,560 --> 01:04:00,360
Speaker 1: it probably, but I was still very child like I

1094
01:04:00,800 --> 01:04:03,600
Speaker 1: I you know, it's probably the best way to probably anyway.

1095
01:04:05,080 --> 01:04:07,480
Speaker 1: Then I started really working a lot, so that was

1096
01:04:07,520 --> 01:04:11,480
Speaker 1: probably early eighties. I got divorced and and then I

1097
01:04:11,720 --> 01:04:16,640
Speaker 1: was working NonStop. I I started doing films out here

1098
01:04:16,760 --> 01:04:20,080
Speaker 1: and did some TV. I worked on About I did

1099
01:04:20,160 --> 01:04:24,240
Speaker 1: Streets of Fire with Joel Silver, who just you know,

1100
01:04:25,280 --> 01:04:27,320
Speaker 1: he gave me. I was like I was a god

1101
01:04:27,480 --> 01:04:29,720
Speaker 1: or something, you know, because of all the scenes and

1102
01:04:29,920 --> 01:04:33,200
Speaker 1: I mean it was crazy some of the things I've done. Um.

1103
01:04:33,680 --> 01:04:37,960
Speaker 1: And so I got on a film called The Running

1104
01:04:38,040 --> 01:04:42,200
Speaker 1: Man and and I ended up on The Running Man

1105
01:04:42,320 --> 01:04:45,080
Speaker 1: for the whole shoot. Um, and we were shooting in

1106
01:04:45,200 --> 01:04:49,920
Speaker 1: Fontana on location. When I came back after the shoot,

1107
01:04:50,400 --> 01:04:53,600
Speaker 1: my wife at the time was pregnant and I know

1108
01:04:53,920 --> 01:04:59,480
Speaker 1: it wasn't mine. So um yeah. So that ended number two.

1109
01:04:59,600 --> 01:05:01,280
Speaker 1: So that was number two. So I tell a story

1110
01:05:01,320 --> 01:05:04,800
Speaker 1: of number three, Number three. That's a little bit more complicated.

1111
01:05:05,040 --> 01:05:08,840
Speaker 1: But um, by the way, I still talked to number two.

1112
01:05:09,280 --> 01:05:11,840
Speaker 1: Talked to number three number one that I went. I

1113
01:05:11,920 --> 01:05:14,240
Speaker 1: tried to stay friendly with her. Number two number two.

1114
01:05:14,680 --> 01:05:18,000
Speaker 1: Did she keep the baby? Oh yeah, oh yeah, I've met.

1115
01:05:18,320 --> 01:05:20,520
Speaker 1: I met the baby. She's like thirty five years old now,

1116
01:05:20,920 --> 01:05:23,760
Speaker 1: and she said, you know, she's a woman, she's you know,

1117
01:05:24,160 --> 01:05:26,440
Speaker 1: I met her once, she was living out here. I

1118
01:05:26,560 --> 01:05:28,800
Speaker 1: met her once. But number three, number three was was

1119
01:05:29,200 --> 01:05:32,560
Speaker 1: a woman of you know, she very independent. I feel

1120
01:05:32,560 --> 01:05:36,000
Speaker 1: like I'm at a therapist. She was like she was.

1121
01:05:37,360 --> 01:05:40,000
Speaker 1: She was. She was in the fashion world, very high end.

1122
01:05:40,480 --> 01:05:44,840
Speaker 1: She was partners with a really famous designer called Katherine Hamnett.

1123
01:05:45,280 --> 01:05:47,040
Speaker 1: And I met her when I was starting the Pink

1124
01:05:47,120 --> 01:05:53,840
Speaker 1: Floyd UM seven tour um when Roger had left, and

1125
01:05:56,080 --> 01:05:59,040
Speaker 1: I don't know, I had I'm probably not really good,

1126
01:06:00,760 --> 01:06:03,720
Speaker 1: probably not really good at being alone, even though I'm

1127
01:06:03,760 --> 01:06:08,240
Speaker 1: only I'm an only child. But there was a connection

1128
01:06:08,280 --> 01:06:11,640
Speaker 1: that I've never really dug weight deep down. And I

1129
01:06:11,800 --> 01:06:13,919
Speaker 1: was so busy. I was just everywhere all the time,

1130
01:06:14,400 --> 01:06:16,320
Speaker 1: and you know, I was flying at the top of

1131
01:06:16,400 --> 01:06:19,560
Speaker 1: the of the world. I mean, you couldn't have a

1132
01:06:19,640 --> 01:06:24,240
Speaker 1: better job for someone who is probably really mentally afflicted, right,

1133
01:06:24,280 --> 01:06:29,560
Speaker 1: I mean I recognized that, and so I felt very lucky.

1134
01:06:30,240 --> 01:06:31,880
Speaker 1: So how did you meet three had? How did it

1135
01:06:31,960 --> 01:06:35,360
Speaker 1: in with three? Well, she she was David Gilmore. Wanted

1136
01:06:35,760 --> 01:06:39,160
Speaker 1: to go get some clothes at the Woman's you know

1137
01:06:39,240 --> 01:06:42,520
Speaker 1: that's really famous fashion design before we went on tour.

1138
01:06:42,920 --> 01:06:45,400
Speaker 1: So we went up there. I started chatting her up

1139
01:06:45,800 --> 01:06:48,120
Speaker 1: and then she came to a couple of shows and

1140
01:06:48,640 --> 01:06:51,560
Speaker 1: I don't know, it just happened. It just happened. And

1141
01:06:51,640 --> 01:06:54,600
Speaker 1: then I was living in London. Now I'm living in London,

1142
01:06:55,120 --> 01:06:58,520
Speaker 1: and because she had a house in London, and it's

1143
01:06:58,560 --> 01:07:00,880
Speaker 1: just I know I more at that time, I had

1144
01:07:00,960 --> 01:07:04,680
Speaker 1: more friends in England than I did over here. L

1145
01:07:04,760 --> 01:07:08,240
Speaker 1: a has always been problematic for me. I never really

1146
01:07:08,840 --> 01:07:11,760
Speaker 1: felt at home. But while and while I was in London,

1147
01:07:12,680 --> 01:07:18,520
Speaker 1: I am, I was, I continued working, had an office.

1148
01:07:18,840 --> 01:07:22,160
Speaker 1: It was great. London was really very good for me

1149
01:07:22,640 --> 01:07:25,600
Speaker 1: the years that I lived there. Um and then and

1150
01:07:25,680 --> 01:07:28,000
Speaker 1: then UM I did all kinds of things when I

1151
01:07:28,120 --> 01:07:30,480
Speaker 1: was there. UM I had, I had, I had a

1152
01:07:30,520 --> 01:07:34,920
Speaker 1: good network there. And and Gabby her name was Gabby,

1153
01:07:35,040 --> 01:07:37,880
Speaker 1: Gabby Schnyder. She had a daughter who was six years old.

1154
01:07:37,920 --> 01:07:47,600
Speaker 1: So I became like an instant father. So how did

1155
01:07:47,640 --> 01:07:50,520
Speaker 1: it end? And how did you end up back in America? Unfortunately,

1156
01:07:50,600 --> 01:07:54,160
Speaker 1: Gabby was diagnosed with a brain tumor and had to

1157
01:07:54,200 --> 01:07:57,120
Speaker 1: be operated on. It was ninety four when when Pink

1158
01:07:57,160 --> 01:08:02,720
Speaker 1: Floyd's going down that really huge store and the operation

1159
01:08:03,240 --> 01:08:05,840
Speaker 1: and until she lost her eyesight in one eye, and

1160
01:08:06,800 --> 01:08:09,640
Speaker 1: and it just took a toll on all of us

1161
01:08:10,320 --> 01:08:14,920
Speaker 1: and somewhere around, you know, just relationships. And then the

1162
01:08:15,000 --> 01:08:17,280
Speaker 1: best way I could describe it was we probably all

1163
01:08:17,360 --> 01:08:21,000
Speaker 1: didn't behave but there was. It was really difficult. It

1164
01:08:21,120 --> 01:08:26,160
Speaker 1: was just really difficult. So um I left um and

1165
01:08:27,120 --> 01:08:28,960
Speaker 1: and I came back here. Then how did you me?

1166
01:08:29,160 --> 01:08:32,080
Speaker 1: Number four? You've been with for twenty years and oil, well,

1167
01:08:32,240 --> 01:08:37,080
Speaker 1: I stayed single for a while and figuring I better

1168
01:08:37,120 --> 01:08:40,360
Speaker 1: get my act together, and I kind of fell down

1169
01:08:40,640 --> 01:08:44,120
Speaker 1: but then picked myself back up, um, because I was

1170
01:08:44,240 --> 01:08:48,000
Speaker 1: definitely spinning out of control a little bit or a lot.

1171
01:08:49,120 --> 01:08:52,160
Speaker 1: And then, um, this guy Patrick Stansfield. I don't know

1172
01:08:52,160 --> 01:08:54,320
Speaker 1: if you know who he is. So Patrick cost me

1173
01:08:54,400 --> 01:08:56,240
Speaker 1: up one day it says, I want to put you

1174
01:08:56,320 --> 01:08:59,040
Speaker 1: on this board of directors, you know, for for the

1175
01:08:59,160 --> 01:09:03,479
Speaker 1: psl N that magazine. We're having a meeting, which and

1176
01:09:03,600 --> 01:09:06,240
Speaker 1: I was not in the best place, so I said sure.

1177
01:09:06,479 --> 01:09:08,639
Speaker 1: I figured this wasn't maybe a good way to get back.

1178
01:09:08,960 --> 01:09:10,920
Speaker 1: So anyway, so I go to the meeting and there

1179
01:09:11,000 --> 01:09:15,120
Speaker 1: was this really beautiful woman sitting across me and she's

1180
01:09:15,200 --> 01:09:17,639
Speaker 1: really smart. You can tell her, she's really really smart,

1181
01:09:17,920 --> 01:09:20,519
Speaker 1: and I'm like wow. Anyway, so we do a couple

1182
01:09:20,600 --> 01:09:22,640
Speaker 1: more meetings and then one day Patrick calls me up

1183
01:09:22,640 --> 01:09:27,640
Speaker 1: and says, hey, you know, Catherine thinks you're cute. And

1184
01:09:27,720 --> 01:09:30,200
Speaker 1: I'm like forty nine years old, and I went, I

1185
01:09:30,240 --> 01:09:33,760
Speaker 1: don't feel cute, Patrick, but if that's you know, if

1186
01:09:33,840 --> 01:09:39,519
Speaker 1: that's what she's saying, then um, okay, tell her I

1187
01:09:39,640 --> 01:09:43,880
Speaker 1: think she's cute also, So then the next meeting we

1188
01:09:44,000 --> 01:09:46,600
Speaker 1: kind of looked at each other, like you know, and

1189
01:09:46,680 --> 01:09:49,400
Speaker 1: then she's fixed me a cup of coffee, and I

1190
01:09:49,439 --> 01:09:52,559
Speaker 1: asked her out to lunch, and we've been together ever since.

1191
01:09:54,040 --> 01:09:59,600
Speaker 1: Truth be told, she never said that and always just

1192
01:09:59,720 --> 01:10:03,439
Speaker 1: pa to who was the matchmaker? Wow, wow, great story.

1193
01:10:03,720 --> 01:10:06,400
Speaker 1: Let's go back something you said earlier though, you said

1194
01:10:07,400 --> 01:10:10,160
Speaker 1: California is challenging for you. You didn't feel like you

1195
01:10:10,280 --> 01:10:12,920
Speaker 1: ever really fit in friends or a problem. So why

1196
01:10:12,960 --> 01:10:16,320
Speaker 1: are you living here? Well, my parents were here, My

1197
01:10:16,479 --> 01:10:19,439
Speaker 1: parents are here. And then, um, like I said, I

1198
01:10:19,520 --> 01:10:21,920
Speaker 1: lived in London. I had had a house when I

1199
01:10:22,000 --> 01:10:25,280
Speaker 1: first moved out here, sold it. Then I was renting places,

1200
01:10:25,800 --> 01:10:28,920
Speaker 1: and then when Gabby got ill, I bought this place

1201
01:10:29,240 --> 01:10:34,519
Speaker 1: here in Malibu, and I'm out in a really really special,

1202
01:10:34,920 --> 01:10:38,479
Speaker 1: very lucky, really special place in Malibu. Been here thirty

1203
01:10:38,560 --> 01:10:42,840
Speaker 1: years now, and I just stayed. You're on the beach

1204
01:10:43,160 --> 01:10:44,960
Speaker 1: just above it. Talk about the money. If you have

1205
01:10:45,040 --> 01:10:47,240
Speaker 1: a house like that, needless to say, that's not cheap

1206
01:10:47,280 --> 01:10:51,360
Speaker 1: real estate even back then. How did you charge and

1207
01:10:51,920 --> 01:10:55,080
Speaker 1: did you negotiate or did somebody else negotiat How did

1208
01:10:55,120 --> 01:11:02,040
Speaker 1: it work? That's a really good that's some managers, most

1209
01:11:02,120 --> 01:11:05,160
Speaker 1: importantly probably Michael Littman managed me for quite a while,

1210
01:11:06,000 --> 01:11:11,559
Speaker 1: and another guy called Michael Brokaw. And UM, I've had

1211
01:11:11,640 --> 01:11:16,559
Speaker 1: some lawyers. Um, I've had I tried all that. UM.

1212
01:11:19,120 --> 01:11:21,080
Speaker 1: I think back then it was just a different world,

1213
01:11:21,680 --> 01:11:27,040
Speaker 1: and I think that people viewed what I did my peers.

1214
01:11:27,080 --> 01:11:30,439
Speaker 1: There's a lot of guys out there that Steve Cohen

1215
01:11:31,000 --> 01:11:37,840
Speaker 1: and Roy Bennett and and you know, uh, um, Jonathan Smeaton, um,

1216
01:11:38,400 --> 01:11:41,280
Speaker 1: all all of us. UM. I think we kind of

1217
01:11:41,400 --> 01:11:45,200
Speaker 1: started this industry that then some of these companies have

1218
01:11:45,640 --> 01:11:50,559
Speaker 1: kind of taken took the blueprint, and so the money

1219
01:11:50,680 --> 01:11:52,960
Speaker 1: was different. It's like kind of pioneers in the beginning,

1220
01:11:53,240 --> 01:11:55,600
Speaker 1: like no different than bitcoin or something like that. You

1221
01:11:55,680 --> 01:11:58,320
Speaker 1: kind of got in in the beginning, right, and that

1222
01:11:58,479 --> 01:12:02,080
Speaker 1: that was my bitcoin. That's probably the best way to describe.

1223
01:12:02,200 --> 01:12:04,200
Speaker 1: So it was lucrative. It was lucrative bit of what

1224
01:12:04,479 --> 01:12:07,760
Speaker 1: But I can never get royalties. I was never see

1225
01:12:07,760 --> 01:12:09,880
Speaker 1: I Like I said in the very beginning of the show,

1226
01:12:10,400 --> 01:12:13,559
Speaker 1: I said that I'm a visual producer just like an

1227
01:12:13,600 --> 01:12:16,000
Speaker 1: audio producer. Well, you know, I would see the audio

1228
01:12:16,040 --> 01:12:19,479
Speaker 1: producers getting royalties because there was a mechanism. I would

1229
01:12:19,520 --> 01:12:23,519
Speaker 1: see the Broadway lighting designers, set designers get royalties because

1230
01:12:23,720 --> 01:12:26,519
Speaker 1: it was part of the mechanism. So I would go

1231
01:12:26,640 --> 01:12:28,880
Speaker 1: to the bands and then that Sometimes it would be

1232
01:12:29,000 --> 01:12:34,840
Speaker 1: me negotiating that that, you know, I'd say, look, I'm

1233
01:12:34,880 --> 01:12:39,720
Speaker 1: the I'm the executive vice president of UM. You know,

1234
01:12:39,840 --> 01:12:42,000
Speaker 1: I hope my audio has worked. I'm seeing it. Just

1235
01:12:42,080 --> 01:12:45,320
Speaker 1: splash stuff on to the timeline. I just hope it's

1236
01:12:45,520 --> 01:12:47,320
Speaker 1: going to come out all right, because I'm having too

1237
01:12:47,439 --> 01:12:50,839
Speaker 1: much fun anyway. So I always thought, you know, especially

1238
01:12:50,920 --> 01:12:53,439
Speaker 1: now because of all the streaming stuff, I thought there

1239
01:12:53,439 --> 01:12:57,840
Speaker 1: should be in mechanism, because well, we're providing the visual

1240
01:12:57,960 --> 01:13:01,760
Speaker 1: portion of the program, there should be you know. I mean,

1241
01:13:02,000 --> 01:13:04,719
Speaker 1: look at Spotify. Even if you even on the streaming stuff.

1242
01:13:04,760 --> 01:13:07,360
Speaker 1: All my stuff is streaming the hundreds of millions of people,

1243
01:13:07,600 --> 01:13:09,400
Speaker 1: all the Pink Floyd stuff to go on more stuff,

1244
01:13:09,560 --> 01:13:12,120
Speaker 1: just his stuff. I do the Empire State Building. Uh,

1245
01:13:12,200 --> 01:13:13,760
Speaker 1: you know, I stuck M and M up there. I had.

1246
01:13:13,800 --> 01:13:17,679
Speaker 1: I don't know how many millions of people. I there's

1247
01:13:17,760 --> 01:13:22,880
Speaker 1: no mechanism for for what we do my industry, not

1248
01:13:23,160 --> 01:13:25,880
Speaker 1: for the old guys like me and the guys I

1249
01:13:26,400 --> 01:13:30,080
Speaker 1: just mentioned or for the young guys, we there's no

1250
01:13:30,960 --> 01:13:34,960
Speaker 1: not a dime comes to us income wise, because well

1251
01:13:35,640 --> 01:13:38,040
Speaker 1: that would they some people don't feel like we're worthy

1252
01:13:39,120 --> 01:13:43,560
Speaker 1: that we don't contribue. I mean, I'll probably fight that

1253
01:13:43,720 --> 01:13:48,240
Speaker 1: fight until I take my last breath, because to me,

1254
01:13:48,520 --> 01:13:51,960
Speaker 1: there's no difference. There should be some mechanism. You know,

1255
01:13:52,240 --> 01:13:56,200
Speaker 1: it's important. Okay, let's talk about technical innovation, especially in

1256
01:13:56,240 --> 01:13:59,559
Speaker 1: the eighties, you know, automation things start to explode. Tell

1257
01:13:59,640 --> 01:14:01,639
Speaker 1: us about some of the innovations, and tell us about

1258
01:14:01,680 --> 01:14:04,360
Speaker 1: some of the innovations you brought to the market. Well

1259
01:14:04,439 --> 01:14:08,880
Speaker 1: back in seventy seven when I was doing Bruce was

1260
01:14:08,960 --> 01:14:11,479
Speaker 1: seventy seven. You know, I built my own console, so

1261
01:14:11,560 --> 01:14:14,439
Speaker 1: I kept and I would cobble together from a few

1262
01:14:14,520 --> 01:14:17,680
Speaker 1: different companies parts, and then I was recognized by this

1263
01:14:17,760 --> 01:14:21,040
Speaker 1: company called tom Field Associates. And then they went on

1264
01:14:21,160 --> 01:14:23,879
Speaker 1: to become well ultimately they went on to become PRG

1265
01:14:24,120 --> 01:14:26,680
Speaker 1: if you track it all the way back and and

1266
01:14:27,760 --> 01:14:33,040
Speaker 1: and they they were that board, the flash buttons, the

1267
01:14:33,160 --> 01:14:36,360
Speaker 1: matrix buttons that they built for me. You know, they

1268
01:14:36,400 --> 01:14:39,640
Speaker 1: saw how I worked, and so we actually started the

1269
01:14:39,800 --> 01:14:43,400
Speaker 1: consoles that now everybody uses. I know, when they were

1270
01:14:43,479 --> 01:14:46,639
Speaker 1: building the Very like console. They saw my tiny little

1271
01:14:46,760 --> 01:14:49,519
Speaker 1: database I had that I was using on my macs SI,

1272
01:14:50,120 --> 01:14:54,120
Speaker 1: you know, to to to run the show, and you know,

1273
01:14:54,240 --> 01:14:56,320
Speaker 1: they tried to integrate that. We we you know, I

1274
01:14:56,400 --> 01:14:59,360
Speaker 1: worked closely. That was the beginning of some innovation. I

1275
01:14:59,479 --> 01:15:02,439
Speaker 1: used to get called on to to you know, to

1276
01:15:02,680 --> 01:15:05,960
Speaker 1: consult on some of the new moving lights. But I

1277
01:15:06,040 --> 01:15:09,040
Speaker 1: think the biggest innovation I did was probably in eighty

1278
01:15:09,160 --> 01:15:15,840
Speaker 1: seven when I decided to use very lights for for

1279
01:15:16,040 --> 01:15:20,240
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd. But I didn't The Genesis show was unbelievable

1280
01:15:20,320 --> 01:15:22,439
Speaker 1: first time you see it with those lights doing I mean,

1281
01:15:22,479 --> 01:15:27,960
Speaker 1: it was just But I couldn't do Pink Floyd like that.

1282
01:15:28,760 --> 01:15:31,559
Speaker 1: So my idea was that, well, they're moving, they're going

1283
01:15:31,800 --> 01:15:34,760
Speaker 1: X Y, so I'm gonna add Z. So I'm gonna

1284
01:15:34,800 --> 01:15:39,880
Speaker 1: make these pods. I'm gonna track them seven And really

1285
01:15:40,640 --> 01:15:43,920
Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of automation back then. It that

1286
01:15:44,200 --> 01:15:46,000
Speaker 1: I had to get some guy out of New York

1287
01:15:46,240 --> 01:15:49,760
Speaker 1: to write the program and we built these you know,

1288
01:15:49,920 --> 01:15:52,080
Speaker 1: to to actually right and they had to figure out

1289
01:15:52,160 --> 01:15:54,280
Speaker 1: how to get the pods. But what I had was

1290
01:15:54,320 --> 01:15:56,600
Speaker 1: when Gilmour is doing a solo, I could start to

1291
01:15:56,680 --> 01:15:59,599
Speaker 1: pod on stage left, and it it could be aimed

1292
01:15:59,600 --> 01:16:02,120
Speaker 1: a certain angle like that and it could track all

1293
01:16:02,200 --> 01:16:04,360
Speaker 1: the way across the stage and come down right on

1294
01:16:04,479 --> 01:16:07,280
Speaker 1: top of his head and then fly out again. And

1295
01:16:07,400 --> 01:16:09,599
Speaker 1: so I had four of those with all kinds of lights,

1296
01:16:09,960 --> 01:16:14,639
Speaker 1: and and then I had the screen, you know, um

1297
01:16:15,000 --> 01:16:18,439
Speaker 1: mr screen as they called it. But the screen and

1298
01:16:18,920 --> 01:16:22,000
Speaker 1: the screen had always had just park hands around it.

1299
01:16:22,479 --> 01:16:25,880
Speaker 1: So I put very lights around it, and it started

1300
01:16:25,920 --> 01:16:30,040
Speaker 1: suddenly became its own object, you know. And there's lots

1301
01:16:30,080 --> 01:16:32,840
Speaker 1: of funny stories about all you know about all of that,

1302
01:16:34,520 --> 01:16:40,240
Speaker 1: um so I you know, okay, anyway, it's just something

1303
01:16:40,280 --> 01:16:44,120
Speaker 1: about the audio doesn't look right, but okay, um so so.

1304
01:16:44,320 --> 01:16:47,040
Speaker 1: I mean, but inside of that, when they were trying

1305
01:16:47,040 --> 01:16:50,320
Speaker 1: to teach me about the very lights, um I went

1306
01:16:50,360 --> 01:16:52,559
Speaker 1: to Dallas and they were teaching me how to program.

1307
01:16:52,840 --> 01:16:55,200
Speaker 1: And I remember looking at the guy and suddenly had

1308
01:16:55,240 --> 01:16:57,760
Speaker 1: this thought, and I said, what are you doing for

1309
01:16:57,840 --> 01:16:59,920
Speaker 1: the next six months? He goes, I don't know. I've

1310
01:17:00,560 --> 01:17:02,439
Speaker 1: I said, good, You're coming on the road. And then

1311
01:17:02,479 --> 01:17:05,160
Speaker 1: what I did was I went around the six other companies.

1312
01:17:05,320 --> 01:17:08,280
Speaker 1: I got lasers and an operator I got I realized

1313
01:17:08,320 --> 01:17:11,160
Speaker 1: I could make my own band out at the mix,

1314
01:17:11,800 --> 01:17:14,920
Speaker 1: and I could conduct. I didn't need to push the

1315
01:17:14,960 --> 01:17:19,280
Speaker 1: buttons anymore. I had these guys, and I had automation,

1316
01:17:20,080 --> 01:17:24,840
Speaker 1: and suddenly I had this huge world. So I really

1317
01:17:25,040 --> 01:17:27,000
Speaker 1: so now when you go to shows or anything, you

1318
01:17:27,080 --> 01:17:32,040
Speaker 1: see have these huge production areas. Not saying that Broadway

1319
01:17:32,080 --> 01:17:35,360
Speaker 1: didn't have automation, they didn't have very much of it.

1320
01:17:35,760 --> 01:17:38,760
Speaker 1: But it was the idea of bringing all of these disciplines,

1321
01:17:39,000 --> 01:17:42,840
Speaker 1: all of these really talented operators and designers, because a

1322
01:17:42,880 --> 01:17:46,080
Speaker 1: lot of the guys ended up becoming directors and designers

1323
01:17:46,120 --> 01:17:50,280
Speaker 1: in their own right. And it was the ability to

1324
01:17:50,520 --> 01:17:56,200
Speaker 1: mold many different technologies together to create the picture. Um.

1325
01:17:57,400 --> 01:18:01,360
Speaker 1: I could you know the first time we brought a

1326
01:18:01,520 --> 01:18:05,680
Speaker 1: Jumbo tron onto a stage and it traveled on railroad

1327
01:18:05,720 --> 01:18:10,720
Speaker 1: tracks because to move it was genesis. Um you know,

1328
01:18:10,840 --> 01:18:15,479
Speaker 1: we can't dance store. Um Genesis bought those jumbo tron's

1329
01:18:15,520 --> 01:18:18,280
Speaker 1: from Sony, you know, with a lot of money, and

1330
01:18:18,320 --> 01:18:21,360
Speaker 1: then they went off after that, and then the whole

1331
01:18:21,400 --> 01:18:24,680
Speaker 1: industry exploded to to what it is today. Um. So

1332
01:18:24,800 --> 01:18:28,320
Speaker 1: I introduced a lot of things, never never really stuck

1333
01:18:28,360 --> 01:18:30,080
Speaker 1: with it. To me, it was I just had to

1334
01:18:30,200 --> 01:18:33,400
Speaker 1: keep I just had to keep it innovating. That was

1335
01:18:33,560 --> 01:18:36,040
Speaker 1: my head. I just what could I do next? Like

1336
01:18:36,200 --> 01:18:41,040
Speaker 1: when I got to Pink Floyd. Um, I remember Clinton

1337
01:18:41,120 --> 01:18:44,679
Speaker 1: was talking about the Star Wars lasers. So I called

1338
01:18:44,760 --> 01:18:48,960
Speaker 1: up huge aircraft and somehow I got to there research

1339
01:18:49,040 --> 01:18:51,880
Speaker 1: and engineering department down on La Joya. They sent a

1340
01:18:51,960 --> 01:18:55,880
Speaker 1: helicopter and they flew me down there, and I walked

1341
01:18:55,920 --> 01:18:59,680
Speaker 1: into this room full of all these engineers because I

1342
01:18:59,760 --> 01:19:03,040
Speaker 1: want at the Star Wars lasers. That's what I wanted,

1343
01:19:03,600 --> 01:19:05,320
Speaker 1: you know, And I wanted him to take them out

1344
01:19:05,320 --> 01:19:08,080
Speaker 1: on Pink Floyd. And so the first thing we talked

1345
01:19:08,120 --> 01:19:11,360
Speaker 1: about was ionizing the air of the stadium, which would

1346
01:19:11,520 --> 01:19:15,200
Speaker 1: just create this enormous bang, right, And I remember saying

1347
01:19:15,240 --> 01:19:16,840
Speaker 1: that the guys, now, I don't think that's a good

1348
01:19:16,880 --> 01:19:20,240
Speaker 1: idea because they've done They've flown an airplane over the

1349
01:19:20,320 --> 01:19:23,320
Speaker 1: crowd at like five feet and gotten that bank. So

1350
01:19:23,439 --> 01:19:26,719
Speaker 1: I what about the lasers And they go, well, there's

1351
01:19:26,760 --> 01:19:30,800
Speaker 1: these fifty watt lasers that are gold copper vapor and

1352
01:19:31,040 --> 01:19:35,160
Speaker 1: they're very dangerous. They split isotopes. You know in England,

1353
01:19:35,520 --> 01:19:37,519
Speaker 1: you know, that's what they do for a living. And

1354
01:19:37,600 --> 01:19:39,519
Speaker 1: I went, great, where do I go. So I flew

1355
01:19:39,600 --> 01:19:43,360
Speaker 1: over to England and I took those on tour complete

1356
01:19:43,439 --> 01:19:47,679
Speaker 1: with the f A, a tracking me um every every

1357
01:19:47,760 --> 01:19:51,360
Speaker 1: tour stop, especially outdoors. But if they were that dangerous,

1358
01:19:51,400 --> 01:19:55,320
Speaker 1: how did you make sure you didn't have any bad circumstance? Well, look,

1359
01:19:55,400 --> 01:19:59,600
Speaker 1: I mean, all joking aside, that's safety's number number one priority.

1360
01:20:00,040 --> 01:20:03,000
Speaker 1: It was. I mean, as the industry became more and

1361
01:20:03,080 --> 01:20:06,439
Speaker 1: more complicated, and more technology came in and more equipment

1362
01:20:06,560 --> 01:20:08,920
Speaker 1: came in, we were all aware of what was going on,

1363
01:20:09,400 --> 01:20:13,000
Speaker 1: and safety was always the top of the you know,

1364
01:20:13,040 --> 01:20:15,479
Speaker 1: it really was. I mean there were some things we

1365
01:20:15,560 --> 01:20:18,519
Speaker 1: did that we probably shouldn't have done, you know, but

1366
01:20:18,720 --> 01:20:22,880
Speaker 1: it didn't We never really endangered anybody's life, you know.

1367
01:20:23,240 --> 01:20:25,560
Speaker 1: I remember the Yes Tour and nine O two on

1368
01:20:25,800 --> 01:20:28,320
Speaker 1: five whatever. It was maybe the first time I saw

1369
01:20:28,400 --> 01:20:32,880
Speaker 1: it where the lighting rig the trust actually lowered. Who

1370
01:20:33,000 --> 01:20:35,200
Speaker 1: came up with that? And you know, it was a

1371
01:20:35,240 --> 01:20:37,680
Speaker 1: phase for a while. I don't know what year was that.

1372
01:20:37,920 --> 01:20:42,120
Speaker 1: That was. That was Michael Take Love, Michael take the

1373
01:20:42,240 --> 01:20:46,160
Speaker 1: legend himself alive and well lit. Its So let's also

1374
01:20:46,240 --> 01:20:50,000
Speaker 1: go back to Pink Floyd. You worked on the come

1375
01:20:50,040 --> 01:20:52,280
Speaker 1: back of the Wall I did, so you're like the

1376
01:20:52,360 --> 01:20:54,800
Speaker 1: only person who worked with both camps. Yeah, well, when

1377
01:20:54,920 --> 01:21:00,360
Speaker 1: Roger decided to do it in two oh eight to nine,

1378
01:21:00,640 --> 01:21:02,800
Speaker 1: beginning to or nine, I was thinking was too eight

1379
01:21:02,880 --> 01:21:05,519
Speaker 1: We started talking to oh eight because I hooked back

1380
01:21:05,600 --> 01:21:07,840
Speaker 1: up with Roger again in two oh six or two

1381
01:21:07,920 --> 01:21:10,320
Speaker 1: oh seven because I had I had gone to the

1382
01:21:10,360 --> 01:21:12,920
Speaker 1: Gilmork camp, right, so you know usually your person on

1383
01:21:13,280 --> 01:21:15,920
Speaker 1: grotto with Roger after that, Well, yeah, the whole thing

1384
01:21:16,040 --> 01:21:20,120
Speaker 1: was like that. But then, well, you know, life has

1385
01:21:20,160 --> 01:21:23,880
Speaker 1: a funny way of presenting opportunities to one when they

1386
01:21:23,960 --> 01:21:26,479
Speaker 1: have to, and I always got along with Roger. You

1387
01:21:26,600 --> 01:21:30,400
Speaker 1: remember back in seventy nine the night before in his

1388
01:21:30,560 --> 01:21:33,880
Speaker 1: brain I was, you know, I could be completely out

1389
01:21:33,920 --> 01:21:36,120
Speaker 1: of my mind, but I got the job done with

1390
01:21:36,360 --> 01:21:39,160
Speaker 1: all this automation, etcetera. Did you ever get to the

1391
01:21:39,200 --> 01:21:41,320
Speaker 1: point where you could send the show on the road

1392
01:21:41,400 --> 01:21:44,000
Speaker 1: You didn't have to go? I did. But what would happen?

1393
01:21:44,960 --> 01:21:47,400
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that for a second, because what

1394
01:21:47,520 --> 01:21:49,720
Speaker 1: would happened is the only time, the only time I

1395
01:21:49,920 --> 01:21:51,880
Speaker 1: was able to when I did stuff like that, the

1396
01:21:51,960 --> 01:21:55,920
Speaker 1: only time I was able to um like, let's say

1397
01:21:56,160 --> 01:21:58,280
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be a royalty. But it would be another

1398
01:21:58,400 --> 01:22:01,800
Speaker 1: bump in the design was when when they'd be on

1399
01:22:01,920 --> 01:22:04,320
Speaker 1: tour and do exactly that I sent it on. I

1400
01:22:04,560 --> 01:22:06,200
Speaker 1: I used, I used to have five shows out at

1401
01:22:06,200 --> 01:22:09,160
Speaker 1: the time, all the time, and what would happen. I'll

1402
01:22:09,200 --> 01:22:12,679
Speaker 1: leave somebody out there and then the manager, production manager, record,

1403
01:22:12,920 --> 01:22:15,000
Speaker 1: whoever it was, would come up to the guy left

1404
01:22:15,040 --> 01:22:16,720
Speaker 1: out there, and the look, we don't want to bring

1405
01:22:16,840 --> 01:22:18,640
Speaker 1: Mark back. We don't want to pay him, so we're

1406
01:22:18,640 --> 01:22:21,040
Speaker 1: gonna give you ten grant here, take the ten grand,

1407
01:22:21,280 --> 01:22:23,320
Speaker 1: shut up and just do the show. We'll deal with Mark.

1408
01:22:23,479 --> 01:22:27,400
Speaker 1: He'll still love you. And they would take the money

1409
01:22:27,439 --> 01:22:29,640
Speaker 1: and then I'd never get the phone call again. That

1410
01:22:29,760 --> 01:22:33,040
Speaker 1: happens a lot, and it did, you know, Okay, but

1411
01:22:33,120 --> 01:22:35,280
Speaker 1: once that tour is done, they needed a whole new

1412
01:22:35,320 --> 01:22:37,439
Speaker 1: production for the next show. Yeah, but by then the

1413
01:22:37,560 --> 01:22:40,400
Speaker 1: bridge has been burned. I won't go back because it's

1414
01:22:40,439 --> 01:22:44,559
Speaker 1: just not right. Did they call you to go back? Sometimes? Sometimes? Um,

1415
01:22:45,240 --> 01:22:47,800
Speaker 1: I usually moved on to other things, and I have

1416
01:22:47,960 --> 01:22:52,360
Speaker 1: some you know, there's a thing called respect, and you

1417
01:22:52,479 --> 01:22:57,559
Speaker 1: know that's just not respectful. Sorry, like it just isn't okay.

1418
01:22:57,640 --> 01:23:01,760
Speaker 1: So the phone is ringing enough all these years that

1419
01:23:01,960 --> 01:23:04,559
Speaker 1: you weren't worried about this show. I said, the phone's

1420
01:23:04,560 --> 01:23:08,759
Speaker 1: gonna continue to ring. Who cares about it? Did it? Did? Okay?

1421
01:23:09,160 --> 01:23:11,519
Speaker 1: You know they have all these guild and all this

1422
01:23:11,600 --> 01:23:15,200
Speaker 1: ship in the movie business and TV business. How did

1423
01:23:15,280 --> 01:23:17,320
Speaker 1: you get into that and how did you interface with

1424
01:23:17,400 --> 01:23:20,719
Speaker 1: the established players? Same same routine. Because when I started

1425
01:23:20,760 --> 01:23:24,840
Speaker 1: doing films with Joel, Joel found me. The film was

1426
01:23:24,880 --> 01:23:29,000
Speaker 1: called Streets of Fire. Obviously he's been to a Springsteen show.

1427
01:23:29,800 --> 01:23:33,759
Speaker 1: He found me. He wanted Bruce to do. He wanted

1428
01:23:33,760 --> 01:23:37,080
Speaker 1: to use Streets of Fire. They weren't Bruce wasn't given

1429
01:23:37,080 --> 01:23:42,080
Speaker 1: any music to to Hollywood. This was Joel's first big picture.

1430
01:23:42,479 --> 01:23:44,439
Speaker 1: I get up on the set, you know, I take

1431
01:23:44,439 --> 01:23:47,280
Speaker 1: a bunch of meetings. I can't remember the DP, but

1432
01:23:47,400 --> 01:23:50,240
Speaker 1: it was. It was Walter Hill, who actually lives down

1433
01:23:50,280 --> 01:23:52,720
Speaker 1: the street from where I live. Um, and I mean,

1434
01:23:52,880 --> 01:23:55,679
Speaker 1: God bless him. He was great the director and Joel

1435
01:23:55,840 --> 01:23:59,839
Speaker 1: was amazing. Joel that was my first shot in Hollywood

1436
01:23:59,840 --> 01:24:02,840
Speaker 1: with It was great, but it kind of worked that way.

1437
01:24:03,280 --> 01:24:05,840
Speaker 1: I was an anomaly, like you know, where no one

1438
01:24:05,880 --> 01:24:10,760
Speaker 1: had ever come in with moving lights, and so they

1439
01:24:10,800 --> 01:24:13,800
Speaker 1: didn't know how to categorize me. I was very respectful

1440
01:24:14,120 --> 01:24:17,400
Speaker 1: of the unions and the guilds, and they gave me

1441
01:24:17,439 --> 01:24:20,920
Speaker 1: a pass. Just like most of the arenas in the

1442
01:24:21,040 --> 01:24:25,439
Speaker 1: very beginning of the seventies, I always they do well

1443
01:24:25,479 --> 01:24:28,439
Speaker 1: one or two things, and pretty much the working thing

1444
01:24:28,640 --> 01:24:31,920
Speaker 1: was they saw these rock concerts as a source of income.

1445
01:24:32,280 --> 01:24:34,680
Speaker 1: So what they would do is they'd have their crews there,

1446
01:24:34,880 --> 01:24:37,200
Speaker 1: we'd have our cruise and we'd work together. And it

1447
01:24:37,320 --> 01:24:41,000
Speaker 1: became this to this day. You'll work in walking walking

1448
01:24:41,040 --> 01:24:43,719
Speaker 1: to Madison Square Garden. You'll have a full IATSI crew,

1449
01:24:44,080 --> 01:24:47,200
Speaker 1: and then you'll have you know, the road crew that

1450
01:24:47,760 --> 01:24:52,160
Speaker 1: is non union and we all worked together. So it

1451
01:24:53,040 --> 01:24:55,479
Speaker 1: they were pretty welcoming. They wanted to learn about all

1452
01:24:55,520 --> 01:24:58,680
Speaker 1: this new stuff. Tell me about the two tours or

1453
01:24:58,760 --> 01:25:03,719
Speaker 1: shows that you're most I'm really proud of the Empire

1454
01:25:03,800 --> 01:25:08,960
Speaker 1: State Building Um because because just because personally so, I

1455
01:25:09,000 --> 01:25:12,439
Speaker 1: wanted to describe to people what was involved, say the

1456
01:25:12,520 --> 01:25:14,680
Speaker 1: same kind of deal. I get this phone call from

1457
01:25:14,800 --> 01:25:19,799
Speaker 1: Ron Delson Er Brickman Brickman. Ron Delson, the biggest promoter

1458
01:25:19,960 --> 01:25:23,720
Speaker 1: in New York, the godfather of the East Coast UM

1459
01:25:24,000 --> 01:25:27,000
Speaker 1: and this guy, the owner, the owner of the building.

1460
01:25:27,000 --> 01:25:28,759
Speaker 1: He's gonna call you and you're gonna owe me millions.

1461
01:25:28,800 --> 01:25:31,080
Speaker 1: You gonna owe me millions, you know, and then he

1462
01:25:31,160 --> 01:25:34,120
Speaker 1: hangs up right and sure enough, but I don't know.

1463
01:25:34,160 --> 01:25:38,040
Speaker 1: A week later, just guy calls me, you know, Anthony Malkin,

1464
01:25:38,120 --> 01:25:42,840
Speaker 1: and we have this great conversation and and he had

1465
01:25:43,520 --> 01:25:48,600
Speaker 1: decided to make the building all led and what he

1466
01:25:48,760 --> 01:25:51,920
Speaker 1: was looking for, well he describes it now, he was

1467
01:25:51,960 --> 01:25:54,559
Speaker 1: looking for a race car driver. And what was being

1468
01:25:54,640 --> 01:25:58,120
Speaker 1: given to him were just a lot of, you know,

1469
01:25:58,479 --> 01:26:03,679
Speaker 1: really smart engineers, but there wasn't a race car driver.

1470
01:26:03,920 --> 01:26:07,560
Speaker 1: There are engineers a totally different discipline he wanted. And

1471
01:26:07,680 --> 01:26:09,720
Speaker 1: he's a rock and roll guy. He loves Grateful day

1472
01:26:09,800 --> 01:26:12,800
Speaker 1: lest prank Floyd, loves Neil Young, you know, I mean,

1473
01:26:12,920 --> 01:26:16,439
Speaker 1: just yeah, he wanted he wanted that energy. That's what

1474
01:26:16,520 --> 01:26:21,040
Speaker 1: he wanted. So I got hired in twelve still worked,

1475
01:26:21,040 --> 01:26:24,160
Speaker 1: they're still working with him remotely. And so what exactly

1476
01:26:24,240 --> 01:26:26,479
Speaker 1: did you do for those who haven't seen it, Well,

1477
01:26:26,600 --> 01:26:30,519
Speaker 1: we we we We were involved in lighting the building

1478
01:26:30,600 --> 01:26:34,160
Speaker 1: every evening and creating all the looks we do. We

1479
01:26:34,280 --> 01:26:38,040
Speaker 1: used to do before COVID some really special shows. Um like,

1480
01:26:38,280 --> 01:26:41,160
Speaker 1: but I put eminem on top of the Empire State

1481
01:26:41,200 --> 01:26:44,680
Speaker 1: Building for Jimmy Kimmel Show. But it should have been

1482
01:26:44,760 --> 01:26:48,439
Speaker 1: live live. It wasn't because the way TV works, it

1483
01:26:48,520 --> 01:26:51,040
Speaker 1: had to be taped a week before it was shown,

1484
01:26:51,479 --> 01:26:54,040
Speaker 1: and it kind of looked everyone knew what has happening.

1485
01:26:54,200 --> 01:26:57,759
Speaker 1: We had two helicopters circling the building for four hours.

1486
01:26:57,880 --> 01:27:00,960
Speaker 1: So Jesus Christ, I mean, on social media was like,

1487
01:27:01,200 --> 01:27:03,560
Speaker 1: oh my god, they're invading you know, who's going on?

1488
01:27:04,240 --> 01:27:06,479
Speaker 1: You know, I mean that night in New York was crazy,

1489
01:27:06,880 --> 01:27:10,400
Speaker 1: but they should have played that more out, you know. Anyway,

1490
01:27:10,960 --> 01:27:14,200
Speaker 1: But the whole idea Empire State Building for me is

1491
01:27:15,320 --> 01:27:18,479
Speaker 1: was is really great because it's ongoing and we've done

1492
01:27:18,520 --> 01:27:20,840
Speaker 1: some really great things there and we get a lot

1493
01:27:20,920 --> 01:27:24,479
Speaker 1: of we've we've done some really cool collaborations, a lot

1494
01:27:24,560 --> 01:27:29,640
Speaker 1: of really great artists, people, institutions, and you know, I

1495
01:27:29,840 --> 01:27:33,040
Speaker 1: was involved in and um when they when they when

1496
01:27:33,160 --> 01:27:37,400
Speaker 1: CNN used it to put the election on the building.

1497
01:27:39,200 --> 01:27:41,840
Speaker 1: You know, those moments, you can't you know that those

1498
01:27:41,880 --> 01:27:48,040
Speaker 1: are really historical moments. Um in terms of my their

1499
01:27:48,160 --> 01:27:52,920
Speaker 1: music shows, God, that that's hard, that's that's really hard. Obviously,

1500
01:27:55,520 --> 01:27:59,120
Speaker 1: Pink Floyd, you know, and and the David Gilmore and

1501
01:27:59,240 --> 01:28:02,720
Speaker 1: the Roger Waters shows equally. I mean, you know, Dave,

1502
01:28:02,800 --> 01:28:08,559
Speaker 1: I I stopped working with Roger Anden, but I continued

1503
01:28:08,600 --> 01:28:12,760
Speaker 1: working with David in and the Pompei show for me

1504
01:28:12,960 --> 01:28:16,639
Speaker 1: was probably you know, and all the Albert Hall shows

1505
01:28:16,760 --> 01:28:22,200
Speaker 1: just fantastic, um, you know, really small, intimate, but we

1506
01:28:22,320 --> 01:28:24,560
Speaker 1: knew what the audience was coming for. And David is

1507
01:28:24,680 --> 01:28:29,000
Speaker 1: just the master. You know, he's the Buddha of all time.

1508
01:28:29,120 --> 01:28:32,000
Speaker 1: The name another show you didn't do that you respect

1509
01:28:32,080 --> 01:28:36,479
Speaker 1: the work of David byrne Utopia? Like whoever? I don't.

1510
01:28:37,000 --> 01:28:39,040
Speaker 1: I don't remember off the top of my head who

1511
01:28:39,120 --> 01:28:41,080
Speaker 1: did it. David had a big hand in it. I

1512
01:28:41,200 --> 01:28:44,439
Speaker 1: know that. Just absolutely stunned. Can you name another one.

1513
01:28:44,640 --> 01:28:47,519
Speaker 1: I don't go to too many shows, even before the COVID,

1514
01:28:47,640 --> 01:28:50,160
Speaker 1: I don't. I didn't go to too many shows because

1515
01:28:50,400 --> 01:28:53,880
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't want to be influenced. I just

1516
01:28:54,360 --> 01:28:57,960
Speaker 1: there's something in just for me that I you know. Um,

1517
01:28:58,960 --> 01:29:05,720
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think, uh god, I'm not being disrespectful

1518
01:29:05,760 --> 01:29:08,360
Speaker 1: to anybody. UM. I mean some of the nine inch

1519
01:29:08,479 --> 01:29:10,760
Speaker 1: now shows earlier on like let's say I'll go back

1520
01:29:10,760 --> 01:29:13,360
Speaker 1: a little bit, so some of those shows I saw

1521
01:29:13,640 --> 01:29:17,360
Speaker 1: which were great. Steve Cohen with Billy Joel was always great.

1522
01:29:17,640 --> 01:29:21,800
Speaker 1: Love Steve Cohen. We've been buddies since the seventies, you know. Um.

1523
01:29:22,640 --> 01:29:29,799
Speaker 1: Jonathan Smeaton, Peter Gabriel shows back in the early eighties. Fantastic, brilliant, brilliant,

1524
01:29:29,840 --> 01:29:33,880
Speaker 1: brilliant mind Jonathan Smeaton, Um, Um, I mean I can

1525
01:29:34,080 --> 01:29:36,639
Speaker 1: if I really start putting my thinking cap on things

1526
01:29:36,720 --> 01:29:39,840
Speaker 1: will my brain doesn't work as quickly as it used to. Okay,

1527
01:29:39,920 --> 01:29:41,800
Speaker 1: let's just go to a couple of other things. How

1528
01:29:41,840 --> 01:29:46,040
Speaker 1: did you get involved with the Olympics? Hello, Mark Brickman. Hello,

1529
01:29:46,360 --> 01:29:49,680
Speaker 1: my name is Peppo Soul and I am the executive

1530
01:29:49,760 --> 01:29:53,120
Speaker 1: producer of the Barcelona Olympics, you know. I mean, it

1531
01:29:53,280 --> 01:29:56,320
Speaker 1: was just that phone call and he says, I have

1532
01:29:56,439 --> 01:30:02,599
Speaker 1: a piece of paper here, and it says and through

1533
01:30:02,600 --> 01:30:08,919
Speaker 1: all my competitors, really famous TV lighting directors like Bob Dickinson.

1534
01:30:09,240 --> 01:30:12,320
Speaker 1: And I think Bob Dickinson is brilliant. Loved the man himself,

1535
01:30:12,400 --> 01:30:15,360
Speaker 1: and I love his work, you know, for what he does.

1536
01:30:15,520 --> 01:30:18,240
Speaker 1: And they had they were all on this list, and

1537
01:30:18,320 --> 01:30:21,400
Speaker 1: he said, and he reads the names down and he says,

1538
01:30:21,600 --> 01:30:25,280
Speaker 1: next to each name, it says safe. And then I

1539
01:30:25,400 --> 01:30:29,200
Speaker 1: come to your name and it says Mark Brickman Risk

1540
01:30:30,120 --> 01:30:33,760
Speaker 1: and he says, will you come to Barcelona? And I went, yeah,

1541
01:30:34,439 --> 01:30:38,160
Speaker 1: I'm in and I went and spent fourteen months there

1542
01:30:39,040 --> 01:30:43,840
Speaker 1: and it was just marvelous. I turned out the stadium lights.

1543
01:30:45,120 --> 01:30:47,360
Speaker 1: Usually I find the easiest thing to do is turn

1544
01:30:47,439 --> 01:30:50,479
Speaker 1: everything off. Whatever was whenever I'm called into these things,

1545
01:30:50,680 --> 01:30:53,160
Speaker 1: you turn everything. If you start over again in darkness,

1546
01:30:53,520 --> 01:30:56,599
Speaker 1: it's kind of like painting. So my campus is dark.

1547
01:30:56,840 --> 01:31:01,640
Speaker 1: It's not white, it's you and added in. But his

1548
01:31:01,840 --> 01:31:05,599
Speaker 1: program what he was going to do with to really

1549
01:31:05,760 --> 01:31:10,639
Speaker 1: bring that whole Spanish culture too to the world because really,

1550
01:31:10,800 --> 01:31:14,120
Speaker 1: you know, Franco had left what early eighties, right, it

1551
01:31:14,240 --> 01:31:16,320
Speaker 1: was like you know, I mean, it wasn't that far

1552
01:31:16,680 --> 01:31:19,719
Speaker 1: ten years earlier. This was the big moment for Spain

1553
01:31:20,200 --> 01:31:23,439
Speaker 1: to come into the world and for people to appreciate it.

1554
01:31:23,560 --> 01:31:28,719
Speaker 1: And he was so successful and and it was really

1555
01:31:29,439 --> 01:31:32,599
Speaker 1: I had so much support doing that because we turned

1556
01:31:32,640 --> 01:31:35,200
Speaker 1: off the stadium lights and we just used theatrical lights

1557
01:31:35,280 --> 01:31:39,439
Speaker 1: and are the big lighting manufacturer made special lights and

1558
01:31:39,720 --> 01:31:44,919
Speaker 1: the whole thing was really a great, great um um production.

1559
01:31:45,040 --> 01:31:47,479
Speaker 1: And my partner at the time was a guy named

1560
01:31:47,560 --> 01:31:50,680
Speaker 1: Maurice Lida who was also the production manager for some

1561
01:31:50,800 --> 01:31:53,520
Speaker 1: of the Pink Floyd stuff and he lives in Australia.

1562
01:31:53,600 --> 01:31:57,600
Speaker 1: Now with my hero Okay, see you just clicked on it.

1563
01:31:57,960 --> 01:32:00,960
Speaker 1: My all time lighting here on rock and roll, Chipmunk,

1564
01:32:03,439 --> 01:32:08,320
Speaker 1: nobody else, there's enough said. The man is the ultimate genius.

1565
01:32:08,560 --> 01:32:11,880
Speaker 1: He started it all, He started my brain going right.

1566
01:32:11,960 --> 01:32:14,719
Speaker 1: And he's still alive and well in Australia and Mars

1567
01:32:14,920 --> 01:32:17,200
Speaker 1: is down in Australia. They brought me down there to

1568
01:32:17,320 --> 01:32:21,760
Speaker 1: consult in the two thousand Olympics just for a little bit.

1569
01:32:24,080 --> 01:32:29,439
Speaker 1: But you have Chipmunk, Rolling Stone Show seventy two, which

1570
01:32:29,520 --> 01:32:32,400
Speaker 1: one the open Pedal Flower, No, that was that was

1571
01:32:32,560 --> 01:32:37,360
Speaker 1: Robin Wagner. Another two with the with the lights going

1572
01:32:37,760 --> 01:32:40,519
Speaker 1: with the all the super Troopers on the back, shooting

1573
01:32:40,560 --> 01:32:43,760
Speaker 1: into a mirror and coming back down and then the

1574
01:32:43,880 --> 01:32:47,560
Speaker 1: Trust came down. That's it. It was seventy two on

1575
01:32:47,680 --> 01:32:51,000
Speaker 1: those Genie lifts. The Trust came down, you know, and

1576
01:32:51,200 --> 01:32:53,000
Speaker 1: and then went back up because they ripped all the

1577
01:32:53,120 --> 01:32:56,080
Speaker 1: gaels off at the end for the encore. It was

1578
01:32:56,160 --> 01:32:58,880
Speaker 1: like I saw God, right, I mean it was like

1579
01:32:59,000 --> 01:33:04,200
Speaker 1: seeing God and Chipmunk, my hero, thank you for triggering me. Okay,

1580
01:33:04,560 --> 01:33:08,960
Speaker 1: and Paul McCartney. You worked with Paul McCartney. Yeah, wow. Again,

1581
01:33:09,120 --> 01:33:12,519
Speaker 1: I went into a very cold room. There are a

1582
01:33:12,560 --> 01:33:14,280
Speaker 1: lot of people in that room did not want me

1583
01:33:14,360 --> 01:33:17,920
Speaker 1: to be there. Um. I won't mention any names. I

1584
01:33:18,200 --> 01:33:21,679
Speaker 1: had an inside track and and it worked. It worked,

1585
01:33:21,840 --> 01:33:25,000
Speaker 1: And I think that there were two things with Paul

1586
01:33:25,160 --> 01:33:28,920
Speaker 1: and Linda. I got really I got to be, you know,

1587
01:33:30,080 --> 01:33:33,200
Speaker 1: part of the family for a while. And Stella and James.

1588
01:33:33,479 --> 01:33:35,240
Speaker 1: James us to sitting next to me every night, so

1589
01:33:35,360 --> 01:33:38,439
Speaker 1: did Stella and Mary. It was. It was fantastic. I

1590
01:33:38,600 --> 01:33:43,200
Speaker 1: love I missed Paul, I really do. And unfortunately that

1591
01:33:43,280 --> 01:33:46,439
Speaker 1: was one of the casualties of when I didn't go

1592
01:33:46,560 --> 01:33:49,360
Speaker 1: back to London, was not working for Paul again. And

1593
01:33:49,400 --> 01:33:52,880
Speaker 1: then Linda passed away, and you know, other things happened.

1594
01:33:53,080 --> 01:33:56,200
Speaker 1: But there's a happy ending to this story, very very

1595
01:33:56,240 --> 01:34:01,320
Speaker 1: happy ending, which was and it just which I wish

1596
01:34:01,400 --> 01:34:04,080
Speaker 1: would happen with Springsteen, but I don't think it ever will.

1597
01:34:04,520 --> 01:34:08,880
Speaker 1: And that's I'm a Coachella with Neil. Neil's opening the pall, wow,

1598
01:34:09,200 --> 01:34:11,720
Speaker 1: I mean, and Rogers the next night, you know, which

1599
01:34:11,760 --> 01:34:13,519
Speaker 1: I had nothing to do with. And then there was

1600
01:34:13,960 --> 01:34:16,080
Speaker 1: who else was there was? Yes, it was Neil, was

1601
01:34:16,160 --> 01:34:18,719
Speaker 1: Paul and it was Roger. So out of the six acts,

1602
01:34:18,800 --> 01:34:22,200
Speaker 1: three of them were my pretty much my clients, right.

1603
01:34:22,680 --> 01:34:26,000
Speaker 1: And so it was the day of the show and

1604
01:34:26,160 --> 01:34:30,960
Speaker 1: I'm there early because that tour with Neil was really simple.

1605
01:34:31,720 --> 01:34:35,360
Speaker 1: All white light all the time, just follow spots so

1606
01:34:35,560 --> 01:34:40,599
Speaker 1: everybody can see, you know, you know, Micah and Lucas

1607
01:34:40,760 --> 01:34:43,160
Speaker 1: and you know the other guys promise of the real

1608
01:34:43,520 --> 01:34:46,519
Speaker 1: you know. I loved the first time Elliot showed me

1609
01:34:46,880 --> 01:34:50,599
Speaker 1: the video of Neil and the boys plane in a rehearsal.

1610
01:34:50,920 --> 01:34:53,799
Speaker 1: I was like, you could see it was like Lucas

1611
01:34:53,880 --> 01:34:56,479
Speaker 1: is ready to kick Neil's ass on guitar, but Neil

1612
01:34:56,600 --> 01:34:58,560
Speaker 1: wasn't having any part of it. Yeah, I mean it

1613
01:34:58,720 --> 01:35:03,000
Speaker 1: was just that tension on the stage and and the

1614
01:35:03,120 --> 01:35:07,280
Speaker 1: spontaneity was it was just it blew me away. So

1615
01:35:07,400 --> 01:35:10,160
Speaker 1: I went into the meeting with Neil and I remember

1616
01:35:10,240 --> 01:35:12,920
Speaker 1: saying to him, this will take two minutes, and he

1617
01:35:13,280 --> 01:35:16,280
Speaker 1: he said, You've done everything. There isn't anything that I can,

1618
01:35:16,880 --> 01:35:20,320
Speaker 1: you know, even think of presenting to you that's gonna

1619
01:35:20,400 --> 01:35:23,679
Speaker 1: make a difference. Right now, in your life. So I say,

1620
01:35:24,000 --> 01:35:28,160
Speaker 1: let's put I think it was twelve follow spots, that's all,

1621
01:35:28,960 --> 01:35:33,320
Speaker 1: and every guy has to follow spots, right, and they

1622
01:35:33,439 --> 01:35:36,679
Speaker 1: and there. That's it. That's the show. That's ale show.

1623
01:35:36,720 --> 01:35:39,840
Speaker 1: And everyone's gonna be focused on on the music on

1624
01:35:39,920 --> 01:35:42,840
Speaker 1: the span and what you're doing, like you know with

1625
01:35:43,000 --> 01:35:45,320
Speaker 1: the with the young guys and and and and you

1626
01:35:45,640 --> 01:35:48,559
Speaker 1: the master, right, and he went for it. So when

1627
01:35:48,600 --> 01:35:51,960
Speaker 1: we got to Coachella, they had that two seventy ft screen,

1628
01:35:53,560 --> 01:35:57,960
Speaker 1: which you know, we knew was because Roger was doing

1629
01:35:58,360 --> 01:36:01,760
Speaker 1: whatever he was doing, right. Neil didn't want it, and

1630
01:36:01,840 --> 01:36:04,040
Speaker 1: I agree with him. I said, yeah, we're gonna turn that.

1631
01:36:04,160 --> 01:36:06,880
Speaker 1: We're gonna turn that thing off. Anyway, he said, well,

1632
01:36:06,920 --> 01:36:10,720
Speaker 1: let's put bur lap up. It's fantastic. So we put

1633
01:36:10,880 --> 01:36:13,720
Speaker 1: two of burlap. We had two screens at either end

1634
01:36:14,400 --> 01:36:17,479
Speaker 1: um but in the middle it said organic seeds and

1635
01:36:17,800 --> 01:36:19,880
Speaker 1: he was doing his g M O thing at the time,

1636
01:36:20,800 --> 01:36:24,720
Speaker 1: white lights. The production crew hated me because we were

1637
01:36:24,760 --> 01:36:28,400
Speaker 1: putting burlap in front of their highest tech, most expensive,

1638
01:36:28,800 --> 01:36:32,000
Speaker 1: tweaked out screen in the world. That everybody hated us.

1639
01:36:32,800 --> 01:36:36,960
Speaker 1: And so I was there early in the morning overseeing

1640
01:36:37,880 --> 01:36:44,320
Speaker 1: our our analog portion of Coachella, and suddenly there's this

1641
01:36:44,439 --> 01:36:48,599
Speaker 1: commotion and I didn't realize Paul's coming for his sound check,

1642
01:36:49,800 --> 01:36:52,240
Speaker 1: and there's this whole scrum at people walking by me.

1643
01:36:52,479 --> 01:36:55,120
Speaker 1: I was standing stage left and I remember watching it

1644
01:36:55,520 --> 01:36:57,760
Speaker 1: and I see Paul and he catches my eye and

1645
01:36:57,880 --> 01:37:00,360
Speaker 1: I kind of just like just like hey man, you know,

1646
01:37:00,560 --> 01:37:03,640
Speaker 1: like that, and he could see he didn't recognize me.

1647
01:37:03,840 --> 01:37:06,960
Speaker 1: It had been twenty five years since I'd saw him.

1648
01:37:07,960 --> 01:37:14,960
Speaker 1: And suddenly the scrum stops. Michael spring Oh, the production managers,

1649
01:37:14,960 --> 01:37:19,600
Speaker 1: a friend he had am I think he whispered in

1650
01:37:19,680 --> 01:37:24,200
Speaker 1: Paul's ear, that's brickman. Suddenly it stops. Paul turns around,

1651
01:37:24,800 --> 01:37:26,760
Speaker 1: he looks at me and he just puts out his

1652
01:37:26,920 --> 01:37:30,120
Speaker 1: arms like this like you know, and you know, we

1653
01:37:30,320 --> 01:37:32,959
Speaker 1: hug and he gives me this kiss and he whispers

1654
01:37:33,040 --> 01:37:36,679
Speaker 1: in my ear. Man, we did some really great things.

1655
01:37:37,120 --> 01:37:41,879
Speaker 1: So good to see You's it? What more could anybody

1656
01:37:41,960 --> 01:37:46,560
Speaker 1: ever want? Right? I mean, just it was fantastic and

1657
01:37:46,640 --> 01:37:49,639
Speaker 1: it made my you know, it's just you know, it's

1658
01:37:49,680 --> 01:37:52,640
Speaker 1: just such a simple gesture. It was really cool. So

1659
01:37:53,040 --> 01:37:57,200
Speaker 1: I'm a groupie. He's the Beatles, as we all are. Okay,

1660
01:37:57,320 --> 01:38:02,000
Speaker 1: for the aspiring lighting designer. What are a couple of

1661
01:38:02,120 --> 01:38:04,280
Speaker 1: tips you would give them in terms of doing a show?

1662
01:38:04,479 --> 01:38:07,120
Speaker 1: Writing a show. Don't look at anything else right now,

1663
01:38:08,080 --> 01:38:11,040
Speaker 1: you know. Just follow your heart, follow your mind, do

1664
01:38:11,160 --> 01:38:14,920
Speaker 1: what you want to do. Um. Don't don't think you

1665
01:38:15,040 --> 01:38:18,560
Speaker 1: have to use image and lights together. Don't think you

1666
01:38:18,720 --> 01:38:21,439
Speaker 1: have to listen to the lyrics. Try to find where

1667
01:38:21,479 --> 01:38:24,640
Speaker 1: the communication is. You're the one, You're the one responsible

1668
01:38:24,680 --> 01:38:29,439
Speaker 1: for communicating the energy and the definition to the crowd

1669
01:38:29,840 --> 01:38:34,559
Speaker 1: in the moment. So don't blind them seven you don't

1670
01:38:34,640 --> 01:38:38,160
Speaker 1: need to. Don't distract them. Let them get into the artist.

1671
01:38:38,720 --> 01:38:41,320
Speaker 1: The artists are the artists there. There's a there's a

1672
01:38:41,400 --> 01:38:44,200
Speaker 1: reason they're up there on the stage, you know. And

1673
01:38:44,320 --> 01:38:49,560
Speaker 1: the music. I mean, look, I love the way technology

1674
01:38:49,680 --> 01:38:52,160
Speaker 1: is these days. I've learned so much about new music.

1675
01:38:52,439 --> 01:38:56,200
Speaker 1: There's I love blockchain. I love to where the world's

1676
01:38:56,240 --> 01:39:02,479
Speaker 1: going technically, technology wise, because it allows the distribution of

1677
01:39:02,760 --> 01:39:06,200
Speaker 1: artists work directly to the audiences. And if you can

1678
01:39:06,320 --> 01:39:10,880
Speaker 1: define that, you can figure out that where your audiences

1679
01:39:10,960 --> 01:39:14,080
Speaker 1: and your connotation, you're gonna you're gonna make an okay living.

1680
01:39:14,160 --> 01:39:16,680
Speaker 1: You'll do fine. You will do fine. You might not

1681
01:39:16,840 --> 01:39:19,240
Speaker 1: be the billionaire with the Lamborghini and stuff like that.

1682
01:39:19,640 --> 01:39:23,519
Speaker 1: But you'll do very well. I think that what's happening

1683
01:39:23,640 --> 01:39:26,600
Speaker 1: right now with decentralization of of the you know, of

1684
01:39:26,760 --> 01:39:29,160
Speaker 1: the and the and the economy and the way things

1685
01:39:29,200 --> 01:39:31,360
Speaker 1: are going, I don't think it's a scam. I actually

1686
01:39:31,439 --> 01:39:34,120
Speaker 1: believe it in it a lot. And I think for

1687
01:39:34,240 --> 01:39:37,599
Speaker 1: young lighting designers now that they have so many different

1688
01:39:37,720 --> 01:39:42,200
Speaker 1: avenues that they could probably create revenue streams from with

1689
01:39:42,400 --> 01:39:47,920
Speaker 1: their art. Patient look at it really seriously a little differently,

1690
01:39:48,680 --> 01:39:52,240
Speaker 1: you know, learn how to think. Anybody you haven't worked with,

1691
01:39:52,760 --> 01:39:55,040
Speaker 1: who you would like to work with. I'd love to

1692
01:39:55,080 --> 01:39:58,600
Speaker 1: work with Paul McCarty again, UM, I know that, you know,

1693
01:39:59,200 --> 01:40:02,920
Speaker 1: but any body I haven't worked with. UM. I think

1694
01:40:03,000 --> 01:40:05,920
Speaker 1: I always wanted to work for Madonna, but I think

1695
01:40:06,040 --> 01:40:08,840
Speaker 1: I've gotten past that. UM and I and I and

1696
01:40:09,160 --> 01:40:12,840
Speaker 1: I love really theatrical people. You know, I love, I

1697
01:40:12,920 --> 01:40:16,000
Speaker 1: love you know. I've worked with Blue Man. I loved

1698
01:40:16,040 --> 01:40:19,320
Speaker 1: all their shows. Those were just genius, genius, genius show.

1699
01:40:19,520 --> 01:40:22,479
Speaker 1: I worked with Searchis Soley and they were you know,

1700
01:40:22,720 --> 01:40:24,800
Speaker 1: got what you know, what what else can you say?

1701
01:40:25,240 --> 01:40:27,640
Speaker 1: It's a little different now, But they they had the

1702
01:40:28,240 --> 01:40:34,479
Speaker 1: pulse at the time. UM, probably somebody that I don't

1703
01:40:34,560 --> 01:40:38,520
Speaker 1: know that you know, that's out there that would appreciate

1704
01:40:38,920 --> 01:40:41,400
Speaker 1: at least my view of the world, you know, and

1705
01:40:41,800 --> 01:40:46,400
Speaker 1: of creativity, that everything is possible, you know. Um, and

1706
01:40:46,520 --> 01:40:48,679
Speaker 1: that and that they would allow me to be myself.

1707
01:40:49,000 --> 01:40:52,160
Speaker 1: David Gilmore, that was what he He always protected me

1708
01:40:52,560 --> 01:40:55,599
Speaker 1: with two words or three words, let him let him

1709
01:40:55,640 --> 01:40:58,400
Speaker 1: be himself, that you know, and that would that would

1710
01:40:58,439 --> 01:41:04,200
Speaker 1: stop everything, you know. I can't really think of anybody

1711
01:41:04,240 --> 01:41:06,759
Speaker 1: off and I probably, like I worked with Hans Zimmer,

1712
01:41:06,840 --> 01:41:10,040
Speaker 1: which was just one of the great thrills because working

1713
01:41:10,080 --> 01:41:14,439
Speaker 1: with an orchestra and working what's such a genius like himself,

1714
01:41:14,680 --> 01:41:17,200
Speaker 1: I thought that was always great. Um. I'd like to

1715
01:41:17,280 --> 01:41:20,720
Speaker 1: do more of that, you know. But it's I've been

1716
01:41:20,800 --> 01:41:24,000
Speaker 1: really lucky, I can't, you know. And I've talked a

1717
01:41:24,080 --> 01:41:27,640
Speaker 1: lot today, so I hope I didn't aggravate anybody or

1718
01:41:27,920 --> 01:41:32,200
Speaker 1: you know, Hello, You're totally you and that's what we're

1719
01:41:32,240 --> 01:41:37,000
Speaker 1: looking for. So Mark, thanks so much for taking the talk. Thanks, Bob, appreciated.

1720
01:41:37,800 --> 01:41:40,280
Speaker 1: Until next time. This is Bob left Sex