Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is CEO of Tate Towers, Winky Winky.
Speaker 1: Good to have you here. A pleasure to be here. Okay,
Speaker 1: Now this is behind the scenes stuff and most people,
Speaker 1: so we gotta start at ground zero. What exactly is
Speaker 1: Tate Towers. Well, if you really want to start at
Speaker 1: ground zero, uh, it actually goes before Tate Towers. It
Speaker 1: would go to Michael Tate. And so Michael Tate his
Speaker 1: Australian and probably seventy three years old ish by now,
Speaker 1: and he'd be pissed at me to tell the world that.
Speaker 1: But is he involved in the business with already know, sir.
Speaker 1: But he loves going there and he loves building ship
Speaker 1: for his bathroom or something like that. And his name
Speaker 1: is still on the sign. And you know it was
Speaker 1: part of my doing was to create this legacy for
Speaker 1: this man who he goes back. So he started in Australia,
Speaker 1: he immigrated to England in the city D's and he
Speaker 1: was working at the speakeasies in London and fell upon
Speaker 1: Yes and became you know, he answered the magical question
Speaker 1: in the industry of can you drive the van which
Speaker 1: was resounding yes, and he became the fifth member of
Speaker 1: the Let's just speak clear the van right, like is
Speaker 1: gonna take us to the next game? Like a raised
Speaker 1: his an and said I'll do it. So he was
Speaker 1: interested in lighting at the time. He was, you know,
Speaker 1: rummaging the streets of London with Richard Hartman, stealing park
Speaker 1: hands off the street and building them in their apartment together.
Speaker 1: And his passion was lighting. And so when he joined
Speaker 1: with Yes, he did all their lights. And it was
Speaker 1: his idea to put the group in the round in eight,
Speaker 1: which changed the game. It totally changed the game, and
Speaker 1: in what way to change the game several ways. So
Speaker 1: number one, you're now selling every ticket in the arena.
Speaker 1: And when you think about what the arenas were like then,
Speaker 1: it ain't what they're like now, right. You weren't hanging
Speaker 1: a million pounds from the ceiling. You're ground stacking. You
Speaker 1: could barely get a lighting rig. And and you know,
Speaker 1: those buildings weren't built for sports back then. Who knows
Speaker 1: what the hell they were built for. So in addition
Speaker 1: to selling the tickets, he had to solve the production requirements.
Speaker 1: So what is different in playing in the round the
Speaker 1: sounds quite different. Well, he just happened to have a
Speaker 1: best friend named Roy Claire who was doing sound for Yes,
Speaker 1: who happened to be the biggest sound company in the
Speaker 1: world at the time, and they figured it out, right,
Speaker 1: how do you light a show in the round? It's
Speaker 1: completely different. You don't have a backdrop to light. You're
Speaker 1: now kind of the rig becomes an iconic kind of
Speaker 1: structure that's almost like a sculpture. And if you go
Speaker 1: back and look at Yes in the round, it was
Speaker 1: a big star that was beautiful to look at. And
Speaker 1: then you got to teach your band to play in
Speaker 1: the round because they don't know how to do that.
Speaker 1: And so Michael overcame all those obstacles and with great success,
Speaker 1: and because of his relationship with Claire Brothers at the time,
Speaker 1: he was getting ready to be boot it out of
Speaker 1: England and he came to Lititz, Pennsylvania, which is where
Speaker 1: Claire Brothers started. They were both Roy and Jean were
Speaker 1: born in in Lititz, Pennsylvania, and we were in or
Speaker 1: maybe geographically challenge were it is in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, five
Speaker 1: miles north of the city and lancas or sixty miles
Speaker 1: outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dutch Country. Total like, we'll have
Speaker 1: Amish buggies strapped to our building at any given moment,
Speaker 1: on any given day, which is a great contrast of
Speaker 1: rock and roll, right, Like, it's a great you know,
Speaker 1: you could be building Ozzy Osbourne at the time and
Speaker 1: you'll have an Amish buggy at your front door. It's
Speaker 1: pretty pretty wild. And so he started a shop there
Speaker 1: and as soon as he came to America, Barry Manilow
Speaker 1: wanted to play in the round, Diana Ross wanted to
Speaker 1: play in the round. Kenny Rogers played in the round.
Speaker 1: So he was that he specialized in the round only
Speaker 1: because that's what he succeeded in and people wanted to
Speaker 1: follow suit. He was a lighting guy, right and so
Speaker 1: if you go back, I started in were and today
Speaker 1: today maybe the day that is the thirty fifth anniversary,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the day was, but it was
Speaker 1: the first two weeks of April, so I have no idea,
Speaker 1: but it's thirty five years to the day that I
Speaker 1: walked in that door. And at the time we were
Speaker 1: a lighting company. But we were a lighting company and
Speaker 1: no fucking idea what we were doing, Like let's let's
Speaker 1: slow down a little bit. So when he got into lighting,
Speaker 1: were was there, like Claire was the big sound company,
Speaker 1: and there was Shoko there. Well, there was Shoko which
Speaker 1: was just getting to They were just starting right like
Speaker 1: the very Lights that went out with Genesis at the time.
Speaker 1: We're just happening right in. The way I tell the
Speaker 1: story is Shoco was probably spending more on research and
Speaker 1: development at that time than we were grossing. Right. We
Speaker 1: knew there was going to be a problem, and it
Speaker 1: was the staging that was consistently bailing us out. Because
Speaker 1: to be a lighting company at that time, you would
Speaker 1: go to the bank, you'd borrow a bunch of money,
Speaker 1: you'd build your system, you'd hire the guys who were
Speaker 1: freelance guy, and you would hope to God that the
Speaker 1: band would pay for the equipment before it became obsolete.
Speaker 1: But it never did. Right, Well, that would that would
Speaker 1: me that you're running it in the red. It was happening,
Speaker 1: but the technology was innovating so fast and being driven
Speaker 1: mostly by very Light. But we had some great clients
Speaker 1: at the time. We had YouTube, we had Kenny Rogers,
Speaker 1: so we had something just because not everybody sophisticated. Go on,
Speaker 1: tell them what a very light is. That was the
Speaker 1: first moving light with a dichroic filter that could change
Speaker 1: color at any moment. And I think it was Genesis.
Speaker 1: I don't remember the exact tour. Yeah, they had four
Speaker 1: hundred of them. He was the most mind blowing thing
Speaker 1: you've ever seen. And from that moment on, it was
Speaker 1: a game change. Okay to the degree you know what
Speaker 1: was going on before before? Yes, in the round, Um, well,
Speaker 1: there was there was a ton of companies doing this.
Speaker 1: You know, there was t TF, there was Bob C.
Speaker 1: There was a bunch of company is that we're doing it,
Speaker 1: but nobody was doing it on the level that Genesis
Speaker 1: and Choko were doing it. Nobody was doing it on
Speaker 1: the level that Claire brothers were doing it. And so
Speaker 1: we had something to aspire to, right, We had something.
Speaker 1: We we fell into a niche that we could specialize in,
Speaker 1: and that was building stages. Nobody, you know, stages weren't
Speaker 1: stages then, they were drum risers. They were risers. And Okay,
Speaker 1: when you say stage, you mean the stage, the lights
Speaker 1: and everything. No, I mean the set. I mean the set.
Speaker 1: It's it's the performance environment. For the artists, it's their
Speaker 1: living room. Lights are a commodity there rented. Video is
Speaker 1: now a commodity, it's rented. Sound is now a commodity.
Speaker 1: It's rented. But when you get to staging, that's very
Speaker 1: customed to the artist and it has to go in
Speaker 1: and out just as fast as everything else does. So
Speaker 1: you have to kind of commoditize it in a very
Speaker 1: custom way so that it works for everybody. And we
Speaker 1: consistently spent time reinvesting in our company. Like so when
Speaker 1: a show arrives in the morning, which most people have
Speaker 1: no idea, right, so just take any show these days,
Speaker 1: that's twenty trucks of equipment. It gets to the gig
Speaker 1: at seven o'clock in the morning, right on the day
Speaker 1: of the show. You've got until sound check to put
Speaker 1: it together. And ideally, for what we do, we put
Speaker 1: it together with no fasteners and no tools because guess
Speaker 1: what you lose at the gig, right, fasteners and tools.
Speaker 1: So what holds it together? If there's intuitive connections which
Speaker 1: are very proprietary and very innovative and something that we
Speaker 1: have collected in our arsenal for thirty forty years, what
Speaker 1: is what would that be it would be a conical
Speaker 1: connector of some type that is very intuitive and very
Speaker 1: safe and might be spring loaded, might have a clip
Speaker 1: on it. You know, there's all kinds of ways that
Speaker 1: you can make clever connections these days with innovation and
Speaker 1: technology and machining. Okay, let's go back to the narrative film. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're doing everybody in the round, and then what's
Speaker 1: the next step. Next step is selling the lighting company
Speaker 1: in nineteen eight seven to Nock Turn Herbie and Journey
Speaker 1: for argument's sake, because they were also very forward thinking
Speaker 1: in the fact that hey, we're a huge band, We're
Speaker 1: going to do this a lot. I don't we in
Speaker 1: our own production company, and they did it right, and
Speaker 1: we were pretty attractive to them. At the time. We
Speaker 1: had a bunch of clients. Bruce Springsteen was just going
Speaker 1: out um with what the hell was the name of
Speaker 1: the tour? No I was born in the USA. I
Speaker 1: believe that was like his big commercial break, and that
Speaker 1: was the Stadium Giant Stadium tour. We had some crazy Okay,
Speaker 1: you're talking about YouTube, you talk about the very lights
Speaker 1: are basically in that break from eight to yourself to Herbie,
Speaker 1: what services is Tap providing lighting and staging and we're
Speaker 1: losing money on the lighting and we're we're breaking even
Speaker 1: on the staging to pay for the lighting. So we're
Speaker 1: thinking we're doing well or not? Okay, just to be clear,
Speaker 1: since you start within the round, how does it evolve
Speaker 1: to staging in general? Uh? I don't understand that question.
Speaker 1: Be more specific. Okay, it sounds you know, Michael Tap,
Speaker 1: that's his first name, Michael. He started off doing Yes
Speaker 1: in the round, Kenny Rodgers in the Round, etcetera. So
Speaker 1: he's the in the round guy. But in the round
Speaker 1: was just another form of staging, let's say. I mean
Speaker 1: there were there were plenty of other shows we were
Speaker 1: doing at the time, but the boutique, you know that
Speaker 1: the expertise came with playing in the round because we
Speaker 1: had solved the problems right, and it's like it's like
Speaker 1: doing a boxing match in a in an arena. Michael
Speaker 1: aspired to getting a seating chart from a Frank Sinatra
Speaker 1: show when he first did Yes, Like, I'll just use
Speaker 1: a boxing seating chart because that must work, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: But the main motivation was to sell the back of
Speaker 1: the house, which you couldn't do absolutely the promoters and
Speaker 1: the managers just loved him to death. Okay. So now
Speaker 1: to sell the lighting to Nocturn Journey and Herbie Herbert, Yes,
Speaker 1: and what does that leave you with? The stage that
Speaker 1: leads you with enough money to go decide that you
Speaker 1: want to build a real company. And so that was
Speaker 1: about we broke ground on the first facility I believe
Speaker 1: in the world that was custom built to build staging
Speaker 1: and scenery for the touring entertainment business. And we designed
Speaker 1: the building so that we had enough space to set
Speaker 1: something up, and we designed the building to be a
Speaker 1: real factory. So like the last place that that all
Speaker 1: the gear ended up was in the paint booth. The
Speaker 1: paint booth was by the loading dock, and off it
Speaker 1: went in the truck. And it was the beginning of
Speaker 1: kind of professionalizing and maturing a carnival industry, right okay.
Speaker 1: And when that happened, when you sold to Nocturn and
Speaker 1: you built your building, how many people how many employees
Speaker 1: were there then? Oh? My, probably twenty okay, And right
Speaker 1: now there are si okay. And that building, my might add,
Speaker 1: was a postage stamp compared to the five hundred thousand
Speaker 1: square feet of production facilities that we now currently operate with.
Speaker 1: Just to jump ahead, you built a rehearsal hall like
Speaker 1: six or eight years ago. Oh no, two years ago?
Speaker 1: Is it that recently? Yeah? Okay, how ten years to
Speaker 1: get it together? Right? Right? Right? So another game changer. Okay,
Speaker 1: tell my audience. It's a game changer because prior to
Speaker 1: having a facility like that, these shows have been getting
Speaker 1: complicated since the nineties, and when you take a show
Speaker 1: to go rehearse it, and and rehearsing sometimes means we
Speaker 1: don't really need the artists. We need to rehearse this. Technically,
Speaker 1: there's no place to do it, right. Where do you
Speaker 1: do it? The a market arenas or books solid with
Speaker 1: basketball hockey concerts, So you'd go to like Sheboygan nowhere
Speaker 1: or Baton Rouge nowhere somewhere that's a sea market building.
Speaker 1: And now all of a sudden, you have to compromise
Speaker 1: the show that you're trying to flush out because the
Speaker 1: building is not big enough, tall enough to support it.
Speaker 1: Something that drove us crazy for a long time to
Speaker 1: be able to have the luxury of having basically, we
Speaker 1: have a staple center in Littitz, Pennsylvania that has no seats.
Speaker 1: We can hang a million pounds from the it's just
Speaker 1: the stage, Agari. It's not something like as big as
Speaker 1: an arena. It is as big as an arena with
Speaker 1: no seats. You take you take that hockey dasher and
Speaker 1: get rid of the seats. It's a hundred feet tall.
Speaker 1: You can hang. We we've we've rehearsed stadium shows inside
Speaker 1: our rehearsal facility. It's that big. Okay. So in a year,
Speaker 1: approximately how many shows do you do? Wow? No freaking clue.
Speaker 1: I mean we probably have twenty five shows on the
Speaker 1: road right now, just touring shows, just touring. Okay, so
Speaker 1: those touring shows. If you have one rehearsal hall, it
Speaker 1: sounds like you needed an additional rehearsing hall. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it took ten years to get this one, and it's
Speaker 1: in Lidditz, Pennsylvania. Like the thought of doing something like
Speaker 1: that out here in California it's crazy. It's it's unaffordable,
Speaker 1: you know, it's almost unaffordable where we live. But it's
Speaker 1: a luxury to us, and it supports an industry that
Speaker 1: we feel very strongly about. So if the thing can
Speaker 1: pay for itself, we're quite ecstatic about it because to
Speaker 1: be able to take the show that you're building next door,
Speaker 1: it's really it's it's helping everybody, Okay, And how many
Speaker 1: acts after you build it literally come rehearse. It's booked.
Speaker 1: It's booked all the time. Ariana Grande just left last week.
Speaker 1: There's something incredibly top secret in there right now and
Speaker 1: it's going. Okay, So let's just assume I'm going to
Speaker 1: rehearse in your room. What how much time do I need?
Speaker 1: Depends on how big your show is, um, and it
Speaker 1: depends on your artists, right. Some some artists rehearse for
Speaker 1: a month. They want to get the choreography, they want
Speaker 1: to get the programming. Some artists rehearse for three days.
Speaker 1: Some artists don't rehearse it all. You know, some well
Speaker 1: and John his show within our rehearsal facility. But that
Speaker 1: man can go sit at the piano and bang it
Speaker 1: out for a show with no problem. Right. The guy
Speaker 1: does not need to rehearse. His environment doesn't matter. Right.
Speaker 1: His environment is his seat at his piano with the
Speaker 1: relationship to his musicians. He doesn't even know where he is. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back. I've seen the show. The show is great.
Speaker 1: But at the end he goes on like a little
Speaker 1: you know, elevator rod. Okay, but there's a change that
Speaker 1: he looks. Okay, Well, of course there is, because he's
Speaker 1: got an insurance agent who's probably stressed out of his brain, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what are we gonna do if he falls? Okay?
Speaker 1: So that was driven by insurance usually those things. I mean, hey,
Speaker 1: if if it would make you feel comfortable, we'd strap
Speaker 1: you in. Like ideally you want to keep everybody safe.
Speaker 1: We have other redundancies of safety, but who knows what
Speaker 1: could happen to somebody you know? Okay, but that was
Speaker 1: driven not by the act, by insurance. Can't speak to
Speaker 1: the directly, Okay. Let me ask you a quiet question,
Speaker 1: do you know? Yeah? Okay? Okay. I don't need to
Speaker 1: push that because you know Elton's hips. He's not moving
Speaker 1: to fight, right, Okay. But let's go back. So you
Speaker 1: sell to doctorne you're in the staging business, and you
Speaker 1: professionalize it by our facilities. Yeah. And and then the
Speaker 1: next thing that happens in this world is our friends
Speaker 1: at Q Prime in Metallica decide to fight with Napster,
Speaker 1: which for us was the best thing that ever happened
Speaker 1: in the world. Okay, you gotta explain it. Well, there
Speaker 1: we are. You know you could say, oh god, you
Speaker 1: guys were genius, what a great strategy. Have nothing to
Speaker 1: do with it, didn't even know what was happening at
Speaker 1: that point in time. The paradigm has shifted, as you
Speaker 1: write about, as you talk about, artists don't make money
Speaker 1: selling records. They don't make money on their recordings. They
Speaker 1: make money in the arenas. And now, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: touring becomes a brand. Touring becomes your revenue stream and
Speaker 1: becomes the way you make your money. And so the
Speaker 1: show I think has changed dynamically immensely, right, Like it's
Speaker 1: it's not even the same as it used to be.
Speaker 1: It's now a spectacle. Right, There's a few artists who
Speaker 1: still have the musicality to go into an arena and
Speaker 1: use an oriental rug and a microphone stand. Very rare, right,
Speaker 1: very rare. Even some of the legends who have gone
Speaker 1: through their careers without having big productions, all of a
Speaker 1: sudden have a nicer living room. Okay, in terms of
Speaker 1: ticket sales, I know this is not literally your area
Speaker 1: of expertise. Do you think that production makes it so
Speaker 1: people come or these if you assuming you can play,
Speaker 1: you can sell the tickets without production. Uh, it's a
Speaker 1: tough question answer based on the fact that I don't
Speaker 1: have the facts, but I can tell you what I
Speaker 1: feel like. I mean, there's so much competition out there,
Speaker 1: and I think that the buyers are incredibly educated and
Speaker 1: they know who's putting on a spectacle and who's not.
Speaker 1: And so it's a choice, right. It's how much of
Speaker 1: a groupie or a music fan are you where you
Speaker 1: don't care about the production. But if you look at
Speaker 1: what social media has done to being at the event
Speaker 1: and having a big splash at the event, game changer.
Speaker 1: It's a total game changer. And every artist that we
Speaker 1: deal with knows what every other artist is doing out there. Okay,
Speaker 1: just to be clear, you seem to say that a
Speaker 1: lot of musicians couldn't play without the staging anywhere. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't say that. I I don't think that they
Speaker 1: could sell as many tickets. They certainly can play musically,
Speaker 1: Come on, they could go play at a club. Well,
Speaker 1: some can and some can't. Okay, But okay, so now
Speaker 1: you professionalize it when you say Cliff Bernstein que prim
Speaker 1: in Napster. You're just talking about the change in the
Speaker 1: scene or something specific that they did. Well. They they
Speaker 1: took Napster down, right. They they single handedly changed the
Speaker 1: the landscape of the industry. I believe it wouldn't have
Speaker 1: gone the way it is had that not happened. I
Speaker 1: don't believe if the artists are still making money like
Speaker 1: they used to make on those records. Maybe touring is
Speaker 1: not as important as it as it is now, but
Speaker 1: it became the source of revenue. Right, So it's your brand.
Speaker 1: What do you want your brand to look like? It
Speaker 1: didn't used to be, right, what did it used to
Speaker 1: be look like? You'd go on tour, you'd lose money
Speaker 1: to promote a record. Now, I don't know why they
Speaker 1: were losing money. So they didn't realize how much money
Speaker 1: was out there, and a lot of times they didn't
Speaker 1: want to charge, worrying about fan alienation. But okay, I
Speaker 1: know from talking to the Metallica guys whatever that generally speaking,
Speaker 1: let me put it this way, does the act own
Speaker 1: the stage? No, sir, you own it all. Well. We
Speaker 1: used to sell it in the eighties and the nineties,
Speaker 1: and I traveled around the world to several depots. There
Speaker 1: was one in upstaging in Chicago. There was one in
Speaker 1: Um explain it's a lighting in and trucking company that
Speaker 1: has a depot in Chicago. There was Mojo Barricades in Holland,
Speaker 1: which had a great storage facility. We had a storage
Speaker 1: facility and it wasn't good for the earth. It just
Speaker 1: wasn't like this. So that the scenario that existed back
Speaker 1: then is somebody would spend a lot of money for
Speaker 1: a stage that they would own it. The lawyers and
Speaker 1: the accountants and the manager of the artist could never
Speaker 1: agree what to do with it when they were finished
Speaker 1: with it, because they thought it was this giant asset
Speaker 1: that was completely reusable. But the fact of the matter
Speaker 1: is it was completely depreciated. Nobody was going to bring
Speaker 1: that thing out, and it was stored in such a
Speaker 1: way where very few humans could go find it and
Speaker 1: know what the hell to do with it to begin with.
Speaker 1: So it was hundreds of trucks. You think about some
Speaker 1: of these shows that you two's, the Rolling Stones, the
Speaker 1: Teena there are shows were big and they toured often,
Speaker 1: so hundreds and hundreds of trucks throughout the world just
Speaker 1: sitting there now there were people like us who were
Speaker 1: collecting rent on storage. But aside from that, it was
Speaker 1: a terrible thing for the environment. Okay, just to be clear,
Speaker 1: I come off the road fifty city tour. It literally
Speaker 1: sits in the truck for years. No, no, well that
Speaker 1: it could sit in the truck. In some places, they
Speaker 1: would literally because trailers are cheap, they'd go stew it
Speaker 1: somewhere in California, Arizona. But we had, you know, climate
Speaker 1: controlled environments where we would put things they would never
Speaker 1: see the light of day ever. And so now it
Speaker 1: bothered me to the point where I tried to change
Speaker 1: the business model, and I thought to myself, it's like
Speaker 1: renting a car. Right. There is a very specific armature
Speaker 1: of every stage set that's like an erector set, the decking,
Speaker 1: the stairs, that elevators, a lot of the mechanics. There's
Speaker 1: a guts to that show that you see every time
Speaker 1: you walk into arena that nobody's actually seeing, right, it
Speaker 1: could be aft of the guts, but you dress that
Speaker 1: guts up with all the stylistic versions of how we
Speaker 1: portray these shows, and now all of a sudden, you've
Speaker 1: got something that's actually sustainable and we're able to give
Speaker 1: more of a show to an artist than we could
Speaker 1: before because we're getting some of it back, and we're
Speaker 1: getting the useful bits back. We're getting all the automation,
Speaker 1: all the computers, we're getting all the power transmissions, and
Speaker 1: they're quite easily recyclable. And what is not recyclable at
Speaker 1: this time scenery? Right, scenery or something that's so stylistic
Speaker 1: for that artist or that show that it would easily
Speaker 1: be identified. Oh that was for so and so or
Speaker 1: this was what do you do with that stuff? Chuck it? Okay?
Speaker 1: So there's this big switch in the internet napster era
Speaker 1: where you know, the tour is supposed to being advertisement
Speaker 1: for the Record of Flips, and the record is the
Speaker 1: advertisement for the tour. In the twenty years that have
Speaker 1: gone by since the advent of Napster, what other changes
Speaker 1: of taking place? So I I would attribute the next
Speaker 1: biggest change in our business and in our industry to
Speaker 1: the Rolling Stone Steel Wheels tour. I think it was.
Speaker 1: And Mark Fisher was a set designer for that show
Speaker 1: who since passed away, but he was one of the
Speaker 1: pre eminent stage designers. To stop your for a second,
Speaker 1: I know from reading your materials. You have a scholarship.
Speaker 1: Und Mark was a dear friend of mine. He passed
Speaker 1: away from a cancer that he should have never passed
Speaker 1: away from. He was English, didn't go to the doctor
Speaker 1: as much as he should have. Um Mark was the
Speaker 1: first guy in this world who could take the discipline
Speaker 1: of architecture and move it over into set design. And
Speaker 1: Mark's history goes back with Roger Waters the inflatables from
Speaker 1: the Wall. Mark Mark built the very first wall by
Speaker 1: himself and operated with his partner Jonathan at the time.
Speaker 1: And our scholarship is to try to show architectural students
Speaker 1: in England that this opportunity exists, because our industry is
Speaker 1: a secret and it's very hard for young talent, whether
Speaker 1: their engineers, designers, architects, it's very hard to bust into
Speaker 1: this industry. I've made it a challenge to myself to
Speaker 1: go around and speak at schools through the scholarship whatever
Speaker 1: it is, to explain those opportunities that exist. But it's
Speaker 1: hard convincing people that that that does a real job, right,
Speaker 1: It's a real job, not like going to an engineering firm. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: what your desiders. But I don't want to lose the threat.
Speaker 1: So what happens with Mark Fisher in the snow Wheel
Speaker 1: sto So it's the first time that outdoor stadium show
Speaker 1: was stylistically architecturally done. Prior to that, every show you
Speaker 1: would have seen outdoors had looked like two cereal boxes
Speaker 1: with a shoebox in the middle, like a diorama. And
Speaker 1: this the two towers on each side held the p
Speaker 1: a and the tower in the middle was a roof,
Speaker 1: which we thought would keep an artist dry in the rain,
Speaker 1: which it never because the roof was so high and
Speaker 1: it always raised sideways. And Mark was the first guy
Speaker 1: to talk Mick Jagger to the fact that hey, you're
Speaker 1: gonna do an outdoor show and you're gonna get wet,
Speaker 1: and if you get wet, I can make you something
Speaker 1: that looks like something. And it happened, and on steel wheels.
Speaker 1: It was a big deal. That was a big deal.
Speaker 1: That thing was like three hundred ft wide in the stadium,
Speaker 1: which you'd never be able to do if you tried
Speaker 1: to keep the artist dry, right, And so I think
Speaker 1: that changed the game. It also led to these massive
Speaker 1: globally produced tours which became much more logistically challenging. So
Speaker 1: the The Steel Wheels Tour was the last tour that
Speaker 1: Michael Ahearne did with the Rolling Stones and the next tour,
Speaker 1: Jake Berry came into play. And Jake really the role
Speaker 1: of those people are, so Jake would be the production
Speaker 1: manager of the tour man, you know, the organizer of
Speaker 1: moving this army of people and equipment around and Jake
Speaker 1: funny enough, right, there's always six degrees of separation. Jake
Speaker 1: was Rick Wakeman's keyboard road you with Yes, and so
Speaker 1: he had known Michael Tad for quite some time and
Speaker 1: he was out with you know, Motley Crue and Metallica.
Speaker 1: He had a huge career leading up to this, so
Speaker 1: he had enough information, but it had never been executed
Speaker 1: the way that he executed on the next Rolling Stones tour,
Speaker 1: which was the Voodoo Lounge and so on that particular tour,
Speaker 1: we changed the way the show moved. What was called
Speaker 1: universal production became a much bigger system. So when you
Speaker 1: do a stadium. When you do a stadium show, you
Speaker 1: will have two or three sets of steel, which is
Speaker 1: your infrastructure to hang everything that kind of moves in
Speaker 1: and out and leap frogs as we call it. So
Speaker 1: if one's being built in one city, one's being performed
Speaker 1: on in another city, and the other ones being torn down,
Speaker 1: and you're playing a shell game of city to city.
Speaker 1: But Jake kind of took the bull by the horns
Speaker 1: to make universal production a much bigger scope. So the
Speaker 1: things that we can take in and out the day
Speaker 1: before a stadium show and the night after the show
Speaker 1: has grown exponentially to the point where it's probably bigger
Speaker 1: than what you're taking on any arena show. Right Taylor Swift,
Speaker 1: the last Taylor Swift, where we had fifty two trucks
Speaker 1: just of our equipment universally going in and out of
Speaker 1: a stadium. It's unheard of. And Jake pioneered that to
Speaker 1: change the game, to make it more efficient to have
Speaker 1: these giant shows touring in a stadium, right, because it's
Speaker 1: all to the bottom line. Now, okay, so that's changed.
Speaker 1: What else is happening in the modern era? Now? If
Speaker 1: you go past that, it's automation, So flying artists, flying cameras,
Speaker 1: uh what we we refer to it as axes of motion.
Speaker 1: So if you go to a Circuit de Sela show
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas Strip, we're automating all of those shows
Speaker 1: that's now spilled into rock and roll. Rock and roll
Speaker 1: has always had automation in a show, but maybe like
Speaker 1: three axes of motion. Now the Red Hot Chili Peppers
Speaker 1: have a thousand axes of motion on the show. How
Speaker 1: do you control that? That's all done with automation, and
Speaker 1: so we we used to have little gray boxes with
Speaker 1: switches on him and you'd pray to God the light
Speaker 1: was green and you press the button and something would happen.
Speaker 1: That's not safe anymore, and that's not the way you
Speaker 1: can control a huge show in the marina. So the
Speaker 1: software now has a ton of flexibility to control the movements.
Speaker 1: It's all time coded, usually to the music with the
Speaker 1: lights in the video, and it provides several safety layers
Speaker 1: of redundancy. So like if I tell the computer to
Speaker 1: do something and it knows that something is happening over
Speaker 1: here that's not where it should be, it won't let
Speaker 1: you do it. That ain't how it used to work.
Speaker 1: You'd press the button and if somebody's foot was in
Speaker 1: the way, you'd hear him scream. Right, that's not what
Speaker 1: we want to be doing anymore. So automation now it's
Speaker 1: another company, almost within our company. Right, we have a
Speaker 1: software platform. It's called Navigator and it runs probably a
Speaker 1: hundred shows every night in the world. Okay, so if
Speaker 1: you use this stuff, how do you sink it with
Speaker 1: a performance? You program it. You program it, just like
Speaker 1: automated lights are being program and in fact, we could
Speaker 1: control the lights, we can control the video we go in.
Speaker 1: We're usually underused in that environment, but we have to
Speaker 1: be robust enough to anticipate anything. And if you look
Speaker 1: at it in a seirarqu show or in a theater show,
Speaker 1: it's it's very robust. So these these types of software
Speaker 1: are now controlling the Metropolitan Opera House, right, Any old
Speaker 1: opera house that had line sets in their in their stage,
Speaker 1: old fashioned counter, they're all being replaced with automation. Now okay,
Speaker 1: I mean with the sand bags and you pull it
Speaker 1: up again. Okay, but let's assume you're a rock band
Speaker 1: and you have all these things. So how do you
Speaker 1: keep everything and think the band as a click track
Speaker 1: or what depends on the band, But usually there is
Speaker 1: a time code that things are being clicked too. I mean,
Speaker 1: let's face it, bands always want a jam bands, right,
Speaker 1: but not everybody's a band. And if if if somebody
Speaker 1: like the Red Out Chili Peppers want a jam, you
Speaker 1: can make it happen. You can put spots in the
Speaker 1: set where you can do it. Some spots might be
Speaker 1: highly programmed, some spots might not be. But then there's
Speaker 1: other artists where every breath and every step is highly
Speaker 1: choreographed and everything has to be in sync, so there's
Speaker 1: click tracks happening all the time. Okay, let's go back
Speaker 1: to you personally. You're from where Philadelphia, Philadelphia, and you
Speaker 1: grow up. What does your father do for a living? Oh,
Speaker 1: he was a professional alcoholic, professional alcoholics. That's kind of
Speaker 1: rare for I could say that. Yeah, No, none of
Speaker 1: this had anything to do with family upbringing. I lived
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia. I went to college in Millersville University, which
Speaker 1: just happened to be four miles away from Lidditz. My
Speaker 1: best friend in college was a man by the name
Speaker 1: of Barry Claire who I met day one and it
Speaker 1: was Roy Claire's son, and we became best friends. And
Speaker 1: at some point in college I needed a job and
Speaker 1: I met Michael Tate, who was like the Willie Wonka
Speaker 1: of entertainment, who my interview was basically, what can you
Speaker 1: do I was like, I don't know. I was nineteen
Speaker 1: years old. Can you operate a router? I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm Jewish, we don't use tools. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: He said, what's the square to forty nine? I said seven?
Speaker 1: He said, can you start today? And it went pretty well.
Speaker 1: And at the time you were employee number I mean,
Speaker 1: how many people were working? Well, okay, eleven sometimes seen
Speaker 1: I mean obviously talking to you, you have the gifted gap,
Speaker 1: You're a very smart guy, whatever. But if someone sees you,
Speaker 1: you're a guy in a T shirt, how did you
Speaker 1: end up as CEO UM because we were I saw
Speaker 1: the vision. I saw this man, and I had the
Speaker 1: vision of what of what could happen with this? I
Speaker 1: mean I was growing up as a kid. I was
Speaker 1: a drummer. I used to go to shows at the
Speaker 1: Spectrum in Philadelphia and sneak a camera in to shoot.
Speaker 1: You know. I would take my my zoom lens and
Speaker 1: I would hollow out an Italian role and wrap it
Speaker 1: up in Suran rap, put letters and tomato on the top.
Speaker 1: I go shoot David Bowie, I go shoot jet I
Speaker 1: just love music and to see that opportunity like me,
Speaker 1: like everybody else would go to all those shows and
Speaker 1: have no idea what it took to make those shows. None,
Speaker 1: you'd say, oh, the Spectrum did a great job tonight. Right,
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the Spectrum. So he was
Speaker 1: a very inspiring man with a great sense of humor.
Speaker 1: He's Australian, he's had a great sense of humor. And
Speaker 1: we were living the dream. It was a hobby, right,
Speaker 1: but it was a business. But I had to professionalize that.
Speaker 1: I was going to split. I was going to go
Speaker 1: to Universal Studios. I had some friends that were going
Speaker 1: to build the theme park in Orlando. Michael had some
Speaker 1: weird business partner. And I was done and I said
Speaker 1: I'm out of here, and he said, no, you're not.
Speaker 1: I'm firing that guy. You're sticking around and we took off. Right,
Speaker 1: that was part of building the building. I said, if
Speaker 1: you want me around, this has to You have to
Speaker 1: be invested in this, just like I'm invested in this.
Speaker 1: I had no idea I was going to be invested
Speaker 1: in something for thirty five years. But fuck, it's been
Speaker 1: a good ride. Right, Okay, So ultimately, even though Tate's
Speaker 1: name was on the building, so to speak, you were
Speaker 1: the man with a vision. Yeah, I mean Michael. Obviously
Speaker 1: he had a vision before I showed up, But I
Speaker 1: don't think he had a vision this far into the
Speaker 1: future that I don't think that's how his brain worked.
Speaker 1: And did you have to put any money in it? Personally? Sweat?
Speaker 1: I didn't have any money, Okay, no money. I mean
Speaker 1: back then, we would be working eight nine hours a week.
Speaker 1: Nobody ever told us that. You know, you had to
Speaker 1: come to work, and nobody left at five o'clock. Right,
Speaker 1: You left when you knew that was all you could
Speaker 1: do for the day. But you knew when the show
Speaker 1: had to leave, and that's all you cared about. And
Speaker 1: it ain't like that anymore. We'll tell us how it's
Speaker 1: like today. It's millennials, you have personal experience. What does
Speaker 1: that look like? No, I, in all fairness, right, we
Speaker 1: have a great organization of people. Like. The thing that's
Speaker 1: very difficult that I experienced younger in my career is
Speaker 1: every show is a fire drill, and after ten buyer drills,
Speaker 1: you don't want to go outside anymore. You're like, I
Speaker 1: don't care if the buildings burning, right, Like, it's it's
Speaker 1: not right for a human to just get up every
Speaker 1: day for a new emergency. And we had to learn
Speaker 1: that in our business, which is why our business is
Speaker 1: so robust right now. Right there was a moment in
Speaker 1: time where I turned around and and the business was
Speaker 1: so robust because the industry was so dysfunctional. Everything was
Speaker 1: an emergency, nothing was planned. Most of the time, we're
Speaker 1: building a show after tickets go on sale. Right It's
Speaker 1: it's crazy phenomenon, and it's not for no reason other
Speaker 1: than we can make up our mind. So I looked
Speaker 1: at that and said to ourselves, ship all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: our business is actually more robust than the industry. It
Speaker 1: can't support us. So we had to go find other
Speaker 1: avenues of work, which we've done very successfully now but
Speaker 1: it's taken a long time, but it was driven by
Speaker 1: the dysfunction of rock and roll. And then tell us
Speaker 1: what the other avenues are. So we have the automation
Speaker 1: company as a very big avenue. You we can be
Speaker 1: doing shows that we're controlling that we've built nothing. We
Speaker 1: have a theme park business that's off the hook. We
Speaker 1: have proprietary software that's in all the theme parks with
Speaker 1: whosever name is on the title, that doesn't involve driving
Speaker 1: a roller coaster, but it involves driving everything else that's
Speaker 1: in a in a theme park that's not a ride,
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of that, Right, how do you
Speaker 1: keep people amused? Why they're waiting in line? There's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff happening. Uh, Kinetic architecture has become a
Speaker 1: huge thing. So if you stand at Times Square these
Speaker 1: days and you look up at the billboards, you say
Speaker 1: to yourself, why aren't these billboards moving? Wouldn't it be
Speaker 1: so much cooler? And next thing you know, there's a
Speaker 1: coke thing that's moving in and out. So we're building
Speaker 1: scoreboards in arena that have kinetic architecture because all these
Speaker 1: people get a buzz from rock and roll, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you go do a corporate event, they want to
Speaker 1: have a rock star there. All of a sudden, a
Speaker 1: corporate event is now a rock show. But there's speakers
Speaker 1: and there's sales people, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: it's a rock show. And so we've always been the
Speaker 1: red headed step children of theater. But theater has always
Speaker 1: stole our ship and put it on Broadway and put
Speaker 1: in the West End. The same thing has happened in
Speaker 1: architecture Now it's not really good enough to go build
Speaker 1: a billion dollar building. You've got to build a billion
Speaker 1: dollar building that has a gag in the lobby or
Speaker 1: has something on the side of it to attract people,
Speaker 1: to get the social media, to have people gathering, and
Speaker 1: it's happening every day. Now, Okay, you got into it
Speaker 1: for the music. Are you still as excited about the music? Absolutely? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's challenging, right, like it's um, it's a different type
Speaker 1: of music the days. But you know, let's just talk
Speaker 1: about the show we went to the other night, right,
Speaker 1: the Michael Bublet Show. It's all about the music, right,
Speaker 1: But there's an awful lot of work there to get
Speaker 1: that performance environment to be about the music, right, you
Speaker 1: still have to have an elegant delivery of that show.
Speaker 1: And you know, Bruce Allen and Randy Berswick, they've been
Speaker 1: doing this for a long time, right, that's the management company.
Speaker 1: They they see the value in it. Um, Randy, it's
Speaker 1: funny that you know both my friends Tony Chatto and
Speaker 1: Randy Burwi, because I've always assimilated those two organizations, which
Speaker 1: are on either side of the country, is very similar.
Speaker 1: The way that they worked with their musicians and the
Speaker 1: way that they worked with production. And that's que Prime
Speaker 1: and Bruce Allen Town and Randy has been doing this.
Speaker 1: I did my first show with Randy Bryan Adams, Waking
Speaker 1: Up the Neighborhood in or something, and we've had a
Speaker 1: great relationship since and he gets it right. Like every
Speaker 1: element that you saw in that show. We have toiled
Speaker 1: over it with designers with costs because at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, a guy like Randy and myself have
Speaker 1: to make the decision between art and commerce, right what
Speaker 1: cost what what kind of bang do you get for
Speaker 1: your buck? And what are we doing here? And it's
Speaker 1: that's a pretty pretty product that we have out there. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about YouTube for a second, just to separate
Speaker 1: things out. YouTube did their arena tour with the screen
Speaker 1: in the middle they walk through, Okay, experience, how much
Speaker 1: of that is you? Is? The screen? Screen is ours?
Speaker 1: But I mean the video product is a commodity. It's rented,
Speaker 1: it comes from somebody else. But everything that that's mounted
Speaker 1: to the way it's deployed, the structure that holds it,
Speaker 1: and the winches that low raise and lower it are
Speaker 1: all ours. Okay, since you're talking about winches. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about safety. You go to the gig and you see
Speaker 1: all this stuff hanging. Are these buildings strong enough to
Speaker 1: hold all that stuff? Sure? There's a ton of advance
Speaker 1: work that goes into these shows, you know, from the
Speaker 1: production manager to the house rigger, to the engineers of
Speaker 1: the building to the end third party engineers that we
Speaker 1: all hire. It is advanced months before you get there.
Speaker 1: And buildings, you know, these production teams will travel. If
Speaker 1: there's a building that they're not sure of, they'll go there.
Speaker 1: They'll go to the building and do a site survey.
Speaker 1: And it's very well thought out. And you've been doing
Speaker 1: this for thirty five years. Have there ever been any accidents? Uh,
Speaker 1: accidents happened? Yeah, there have been accents. There was an
Speaker 1: accident that happened last week in Cotchella on Saturday. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: but they're rare. But that guy wasn't wearing a safety harness, right, true,
Speaker 1: But most people don't. I don't know. I can't speak
Speaker 1: to that. I mean it's you know, years ago, safety
Speaker 1: harnesses didn't exist. Right, people were walk in the beams
Speaker 1: of a rafter. Um, it's called an accident. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: if you look at the amount of shows that happens.
Speaker 1: I would assimilate it to the airline industry. Right. You
Speaker 1: look at the amount of shows that happened versus the
Speaker 1: amount of plans to take off every single day, and
Speaker 1: the times you hear about an accident, it's an accident.
Speaker 1: Just to be clear that we could I don't know
Speaker 1: the details, but we could attribute that accident couchel to
Speaker 1: human error. Does the equipment ever fail? Sure? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like a car, right, does your car ever run out
Speaker 1: of gas? Does your car run out of oil? Does
Speaker 1: a bearing pop? Absolutely? But we spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time trying to mitigate anything that we can expect. We've
Speaker 1: probably had every single thing go wrong that you could
Speaker 1: imagine in testing or in our life. So when we
Speaker 1: go to build something, we kind of know what could fail. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you talking about all these new businesses. They come
Speaker 1: to you, or you pitch them, they come to us.
Speaker 1: But there's a few pitches I mean, are are Our
Speaker 1: shows are our best form of advertising. Right when when
Speaker 1: you go into a building, you'll see our set cards,
Speaker 1: You'll see our product. We are very well branded. People
Speaker 1: know our equipment and the stage hands throughout the country
Speaker 1: welcome our equipment. Right. We we spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time trying to empower local stage hands who put our
Speaker 1: shows together, to make them feel part of the show.
Speaker 1: That was never done before. Right. So what I mean
Speaker 1: by that is if you pull a cart off of
Speaker 1: a truck in a building, that that cart is going
Speaker 1: to tell you everything there is to know about what's
Speaker 1: in that cart, where it goes on the show, what
Speaker 1: it's called. So instead of starting, Hey, where do you
Speaker 1: want me to put this, they now have the vernacular
Speaker 1: to speak that the entire show speaks. They know where
Speaker 1: everything is. They feel empowered, and they feel part of
Speaker 1: the show, and that's made a huge difference and it's
Speaker 1: great for our brands. So let's say you have an
Speaker 1: arena show. How many stage hands are with the tour
Speaker 1: and how many are picked up at the gig? You know,
Speaker 1: that depends on how big the show is. That's that's
Speaker 1: not an easy question answer, but I would say somewhere
Speaker 1: there's usually somewhere between forty and hundred people traveling with
Speaker 1: the show, and that might include all the touring personnel
Speaker 1: as well as the band and the artists and that party.
Speaker 1: And then on the average and arena show, might have
Speaker 1: somewhere between sixty and a hundred stage hands for the
Speaker 1: load in and the load out, So it's a busy day. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's just assume for the sake of argument, I need
Speaker 1: a stage and I don't go with Tate. Who are
Speaker 1: the competitors? You could be a competitor tomorrow. Right. The
Speaker 1: barrier of entry to build one show is very low,
Speaker 1: but the barrier of entry to support that show around
Speaker 1: the world for add and twenty performances is out of
Speaker 1: hand high. So there's other companies that exists that have
Speaker 1: found niches in the business. And look, we don't want
Speaker 1: to do every show, right, that's not what we're that's
Speaker 1: not what we're here for. And some shows we might
Speaker 1: not be able to make a difference some show those
Speaker 1: might be small enough. Is where I can't make a difference.
Speaker 1: On savings during the road, right, operational savings is where
Speaker 1: we really shine. We may be very expensive at the beginning,
Speaker 1: but at the end of that tour we will be
Speaker 1: a lot cheaper than anybody else. That's how we mark.
Speaker 1: Is there any company close in stature or size? I
Speaker 1: don't think so. And is everything's for sale? But is
Speaker 1: your vision at the end of the day to cash
Speaker 1: out and sell it or do you decline offers or what. Um.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting question because we what we go through
Speaker 1: is investors to evolve the company. Right Like, it's gotten
Speaker 1: to the point where it's quite large, and every time
Speaker 1: you want to go do a merger and acquisition, buy
Speaker 1: a new machine, you'll get a little sick of going
Speaker 1: to the bank to borrow money. So we have taken
Speaker 1: on some partners, but the core group of the manager
Speaker 1: timan team is in it, and we're all in it.
Speaker 1: And if you told me tomorrow that I can't do
Speaker 1: this for a living, I don't know what the funk
Speaker 1: I do? I really don't, Okay, speaking of you personally,
Speaker 1: you know the facilities and lit it's how many other
Speaker 1: facilities you have around the world. We have a place
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas, we have a couple of places in London.
Speaker 1: We have some offices in Asia. Um, but that's pretty
Speaker 1: much it. The major fabrication is happening in Pennsylvania. Now
Speaker 1: you used to live there and you recently relatively recently
Speaker 1: moved to l A. What does that look like for
Speaker 1: you with the main enterprise there. It's it's saving my
Speaker 1: life right, because I was never put on this earth
Speaker 1: to be in charge of operations. It was survival and
Speaker 1: at some point it becomes brutal that you know, I
Speaker 1: would have never expected that the business got to be
Speaker 1: as big as it is now, and that's not what
Speaker 1: I was putting on this earth to do. So for
Speaker 1: me to live in l A, we work on ourselves phones,
Speaker 1: that's how we work. We work communicating. I still speak
Speaker 1: on telephone calls to all my clients, and I think
Speaker 1: that's really important. And to live out here in l A,
Speaker 1: there's enough. It's it's actually created more work, right. We're
Speaker 1: in the center of it, all right, It's nuts. I
Speaker 1: was renovating our house over the summer last summer and
Speaker 1: I spent a bit of time at the Beverly wilsh
Speaker 1: I had more. I did more work there, but I
Speaker 1: did being at home. It's a crazy town, it really is.
Speaker 1: And I'm very close to Sony Studios, which is still
Speaker 1: the best room in Los Angeles to rehearse the show.
Speaker 1: Right when the Forum changed going back to being the Forum,
Speaker 1: there are in a lot of places to rehearse out
Speaker 1: here anymore either, So being close to Sony is also
Speaker 1: quite nice. How often do you go as often as
Speaker 1: they want me? Which is what once a month, once
Speaker 1: every four months? There's no I was there two weeks ago,
Speaker 1: there's there's no schedule, okay. And how often are you
Speaker 1: on the road in general? Well, I've come upon a
Speaker 1: time in my life where I'm very fortunate to be
Speaker 1: able to work and work with the people that I
Speaker 1: want to work with, and work with the people who
Speaker 1: are setting you up to succeed. And I know that
Speaker 1: sounds a bit odd, but there are some shows out
Speaker 1: there that are very hard to navigate, and that's a
Speaker 1: great proving ground for our younger employees, which I don't
Speaker 1: have the mental capacity to deal with anymore. Okay, So
Speaker 1: let's say, let's say let's start with a brand new act.
Speaker 1: There are acts now that are go on arena tours
Speaker 1: for their first tour, Sam Smith, this first tour other
Speaker 1: than some private shows? Was it an arena? So someone's
Speaker 1: gonna be working with me with savvy enough to make
Speaker 1: contact with you? Right then, how does the discussion begin? Well,
Speaker 1: the discussion always begins with what's the germ of the
Speaker 1: idea and who is providing it? And it's never the same, right,
Speaker 1: So It could be the artist vision, it could be
Speaker 1: the artist's interior designer. It could be the lighting designer.
Speaker 1: It could be a real set designer that they they
Speaker 1: went to see so and so, and how how do
Speaker 1: I get one of those? But it's never the same.
Speaker 1: It's never the same. Does anybody ever come and say,
Speaker 1: I want something spectacular, but I don't know what it is? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: And then what happens? And then we'll point them towards
Speaker 1: some people that we think might help them and will
Speaker 1: interact with all of them, because at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, no matter who the designer is, there is
Speaker 1: nobody better than us that can interpret art and commerce. Right,
Speaker 1: we're the only people that are going to be able
Speaker 1: to say, hey, this thing right here, it's gonna cost
Speaker 1: a million dollars if you want to do it this way,
Speaker 1: you could do it for four grand, and maybe it's
Speaker 1: not worth doing at all. Right, we have the ability
Speaker 1: to take things off the paper, create a project list
Speaker 1: and items list, and basically handed to management as a
Speaker 1: Chinese menu. Okay, so generally speaking, you're doing no designing, uh,
Speaker 1: none that we will take credit for be paid for it.
Speaker 1: So now, uh, I have an intermediary okay, I'm I.
Speaker 1: I'm the manager. Whenever I have a vision and I
Speaker 1: give you the vision, what's the next step, we'll draw it,
Speaker 1: will create that item list and we'll you know, how
Speaker 1: long are you going on tour? Are you going internationally?
Speaker 1: Are you going in airplanes? Like, we've got to find
Speaker 1: a bit out. How many shows can you amortize this over?
Speaker 1: We've got to do a bit of the work that
Speaker 1: a good manager would do, because sometimes those managers aren't
Speaker 1: clever enough or don't have the experience to understand what
Speaker 1: they're getting into. So for us, everybody's got to be successful.
Speaker 1: If the tour ain't making money and we're we were
Speaker 1: doing great on the tour, it's a it's a disaster, right.
Speaker 1: The vibe has to be perfect for success, and so
Speaker 1: we spend a lot of time trying to make sure
Speaker 1: that everybody is successful at the end of a tour.
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot of them that I could
Speaker 1: speak to that weren't. Okay, So you give your proposals.
Speaker 1: Do you charge for the proposal? Sir? Okay? So let's
Speaker 1: go back and you're talking about the timeline. Everything is
Speaker 1: an emergency. Okay. I just thought I want to go
Speaker 1: on the road, and then I'm talking about what buildings
Speaker 1: I'm gonna play with. Ticket prices are generally speaking, they
Speaker 1: have not contacted you yet, Ish, but we we know
Speaker 1: what's going on in the market, right like we know
Speaker 1: who's going on tour, and we know you know, once
Speaker 1: a building hold happens, the world kind of knows about it.
Speaker 1: So you we can start preparing for something that we
Speaker 1: think we're gonna do before they actually even contact us. Okay,
Speaker 1: So when they do contact you, generally speaking, how many
Speaker 1: months out? Two? Really that's that quick, could be six,
Speaker 1: that'd be a luxury. Usually if you're talking about it
Speaker 1: six months out and you're drawing it, you're not actually
Speaker 1: contracted in beginning fabrication. It's it's rare in the in
Speaker 1: the touring scenario to get more than two months. Just
Speaker 1: to go back, you did Youtubo's Claw. We've done every
Speaker 1: YouTube show since they've been a band, back to the
Speaker 1: first one I did was Joshua Tree and Michael and
Speaker 1: Willie Williams had done too before that, Boy and I
Speaker 1: can't remember what was the other one October something okay,
Speaker 1: so unforgettable fire but so um okay, So I come
Speaker 1: to you, I tell you what I want. How long
Speaker 1: was it going to take you to make to draw
Speaker 1: it up and say, you know, this is what's involved?
Speaker 1: A couple of days back quickly? Absolutely? Is there one
Speaker 1: person who does that or there's an army of people
Speaker 1: that do that? So you drawed up in a couple
Speaker 1: of days, Uh, then what's the next step? The next
Speaker 1: step would be telling somebody how much it costs and
Speaker 1: then expecting somebody to yell and screament that's too much.
Speaker 1: And now you've got to figure out how to reverse
Speaker 1: engineer it. Because if I give you a picture or
Speaker 1: something I want, there's ten ways to build something. We
Speaker 1: have to find the way to build it that's best
Speaker 1: for logistics but also best for art. And sometimes it
Speaker 1: might just be a bad idea and you've got to
Speaker 1: throw it out. Okay. Does anybody ever say, okay, I
Speaker 1: like it, the cost is good. Where everybody's arguing about
Speaker 1: the price, I don't think they're arguing. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's it's not usually an argue. It's it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a commitment, and it's and it's based upon budgets,
Speaker 1: and somebody might make a budget and this is what
Speaker 1: we spent last year, Well, guess what it costs more
Speaker 1: this year, or where does the budget come from? Like,
Speaker 1: we're not privy to that, nor do I want to be,
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, I'm much happier to figure
Speaker 1: out how to get to a common ground. And that
Speaker 1: involves loyalty and trust, which is a word that's not
Speaker 1: usually spoken in our industry. But we've managed to collect
Speaker 1: some of that trust and loyalty through some people that
Speaker 1: are legendary, right like managers in this business. If you
Speaker 1: can get a couple of good ones, your credibility goes
Speaker 1: way up, right. The Roger Davies of the world, the
Speaker 1: Barry Marshall's the World, the que Primes of Bruce Allen's.
Speaker 1: There's a ton of those relationships that we've had and
Speaker 1: those people are the best at what they're doing, right,
Speaker 1: So if you're loyal and and supported by those people,
Speaker 1: it's the best way to work. Okay, so you've created
Speaker 1: the drawing, Now you're discussing budget. But how long is
Speaker 1: that process? Usually too long? It's it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: it's too long. It can go until we have to
Speaker 1: say we're not going to make your date. That that
Speaker 1: can go on for a little while. Okay, that's probably
Speaker 1: the longest lag. It's like, oh ship okay, and then
Speaker 1: once you decide, I know, every show is different, how
Speaker 1: long does it take to build it? It's funny because
Speaker 1: the building part is actually the easiest part, right, it's
Speaker 1: the figuring it out that you have to figure out
Speaker 1: how you're going to build it, to price it, Okay,
Speaker 1: you can't just price it on a whim. You really
Speaker 1: need to engineer it, which is why you have to
Speaker 1: be very careful that you're doing this with people that
Speaker 1: are actually going to do it, because you're going to
Speaker 1: go invest a bunch of time and money into it.
Speaker 1: And the how long does it take? That's that's not
Speaker 1: a fair question because how big is it? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: some of these things are pretty sophisticated, but it's very
Speaker 1: rare that you get more than eight or ten weeks. Okay,
Speaker 1: So just to be clear, if it takes a couple
Speaker 1: of days to draw it, that's not what we're talking
Speaker 1: about figuring out how to build it. No, No, it
Speaker 1: probably takes two weeks of engineering to actually rip it out, right,
Speaker 1: like to to narrow it down to every element, every
Speaker 1: bit of engineering, and you know you can. You have
Speaker 1: to go through a couple of iterations to get there.
Speaker 1: And some tours are so big, like a massive Rolling
Speaker 1: Stones YouTube Madonna Stadium show, they'll take a little longer
Speaker 1: to work out every single item. Okay, so once it's
Speaker 1: worked out, it takes how long to build? Obviously, whatever
Speaker 1: you got, it takes whatever you got to get the
Speaker 1: opening night. Okay. When you have one of these one
Speaker 1: of a kind shows and you put it together, how
Speaker 1: often does it work right the first time? Percent of
Speaker 1: the time? Yeah? Okay, so you're building the stage, Okay,
Speaker 1: what about sound reinforcement? How does that figured it? In
Speaker 1: the lights, etcetera. It figures into the the overall design.
Speaker 1: And you'd be surprised how many bands and designers will
Speaker 1: present you with a design that absolutely doesn't have any
Speaker 1: musicians on the stage. There's no sound in the drawing.
Speaker 1: It's just a pretty picture of an object that they
Speaker 1: call us set design. I think what we do really
Speaker 1: well is we integrate all the other people. We were
Speaker 1: kind of like a general contractor, but we're not hiring
Speaker 1: the other people. We usually have what's called the master
Speaker 1: drawing in our file, and we're able to help all
Speaker 1: those other people succeed, and we're able to lend some
Speaker 1: expertise to if there's integration between sound and video and
Speaker 1: lights like sometimes there's not, sometimes it's just hanging off
Speaker 1: by itself. Sometimes it's incredibly integrated as well. As the
Speaker 1: Steel Stageco in Belgium is one of the premier companies
Speaker 1: that kind of works the way we do, but with
Speaker 1: big pieces of steel to hang the p A and
Speaker 1: the sound I'm sorry, in the lights and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of integration that happens amongst there. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of conversation amongst the vendors talking back and forth, but
Speaker 1: we stand head and shoulders to be able to provide
Speaker 1: master drawings and drop things into these drawings. That helps
Speaker 1: everybody make a real decision. Okay, So I came with you.
Speaker 1: We we agreed on what it's gonna look like. Uh,
Speaker 1: you talked about these you know, the way you don't
Speaker 1: use fasteners, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So on one hand, you
Speaker 1: have a group who's constantly coming up with new ideas.
Speaker 1: Is that you have like an innovation team? Absolutely okay?
Speaker 1: And then so the people you you innovate to survive, right, you.
Speaker 1: You're constantly faced with the challenge. It needs to be
Speaker 1: figured out almost on every show, whether you innovate something
Speaker 1: that you're going to use again for the next twenty
Speaker 1: years where it's it works once, we don't know about that,
Speaker 1: but we absolutely are innovating on every single show. Prototypes.
Speaker 1: Give me an example of I don't think my brain
Speaker 1: could do that right now, but um, stand by and
Speaker 1: I'll see what comes to my mind. I'm not going there, right, okay?
Speaker 1: Then right, it's whatever, right okay? And then uh's part
Speaker 1: of the budget, of course, is how do you break
Speaker 1: it down? And how many trucks it's gonna be, right,
Speaker 1: not my budget, but somebody else's budget for sure, And
Speaker 1: does it fit on airplanes? And does it fit and
Speaker 1: sea containers? And how are you going to deal with
Speaker 1: all that? Right? And you go out an arena, I mean,
Speaker 1: who takes the stuff by plane other than to Europe Asia?
Speaker 1: Madonna rolling stones you to Um, it's just a game
Speaker 1: of numbers, right, like how much does the air freight costs?
Speaker 1: And what kind of revenue are you gonna get to
Speaker 1: be able to get it there quicker? Because the boats
Speaker 1: a month to go oversee you so Some bands don't
Speaker 1: want to hang it up for a month. Why the
Speaker 1: ship sales? Some bands want to go play and make
Speaker 1: the money. It's it's really up to the artists in
Speaker 1: the schedule. You know what you're in the market though,
Speaker 1: like the US, it's not gonna go by plane, that's correct.
Speaker 1: Truck truck truck. Okay. So you've been in this business
Speaker 1: a long time. What shows you proud of stuff? Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask that question quite a bit and um,
Speaker 1: usually I'd say if it's not the show that I'm
Speaker 1: currently working on, there's something wrong. But I think some
Speaker 1: of the standouts for me have been having the privilege
Speaker 1: to work with the Rolling Stones time and time and
Speaker 1: time again are you doing to? They are the epitome
Speaker 1: of rock and roll right like it's it's just amazing,
Speaker 1: and make is like the true CEO of an organization,
Speaker 1: and and the people they surround themselves with, there's there's
Speaker 1: nothing like The Tina Turner seven show was so memorable
Speaker 1: to me. She was such a legend. Mark designed that show,
Speaker 1: Jake was a production manager. It was amazing. Um. Some
Speaker 1: of the Live Nation Global tours where we're fortunate enough
Speaker 1: to work with Arthur and his gang on are on
Speaker 1: YouTube and Madonna have been just mind blowing right, like
Speaker 1: they take technology to the next level on a Madonna show,
Speaker 1: and and and on a Youtubo show. I mean, I
Speaker 1: I feel that you two has single handedly been responsible
Speaker 1: for the evolution of video in stadiums and arenas. Like
Speaker 1: nobody's pushed the envelope. You two has pretty much been
Speaker 1: the prototype for what everybody's doing. That that follows as
Speaker 1: it relates to video, Well, certainly you know the first
Speaker 1: Innocence an Experience tour that was mind blowing, like four
Speaker 1: or five years. Yeah, but go back to like pop Mart,
Speaker 1: I mean, whether you like the music or not, that
Speaker 1: show is insane. Actually, I go back to the one
Speaker 1: before that, Zoo TV Indoors with the trabants and everything.
Speaker 1: I saw it outdoors too, but Indoors just one of
Speaker 1: the three best shows. Heard That show at Hershey Park Stadium.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's kind of convenient. At the time,
Speaker 1: we didn't have a rehearsal facility, but we had a
Speaker 1: football field in Hershey, which is where we rehearse that show.
Speaker 1: And again, like these artists that have this cycle of touring,
Speaker 1: they do it like nobody else, right, Paul McCartney, it's incredible.
Speaker 1: You work with Paul, Yeah, it's just incredible what he does.
Speaker 1: And Roy Bennett is his lighting designer and his set designer.
Speaker 1: And Roy's a legend as well who comes from Prince
Speaker 1: and he is constantly pushing the envelope with lighting and video.
Speaker 1: And you get a guy like Paul McCartney who then
Speaker 1: goes and plays for three hours right right, Like, not
Speaker 1: only does his show look amazing, but you got that
Speaker 1: it's crazy. Well, if that peak, I think we've come
Speaker 1: to the end of the feeling, we know, unless there's
Speaker 1: something you need to add. No, I don't even I
Speaker 1: don't know how I got here, and I don't know
Speaker 1: where we're going. Like that's it's that's what it feels
Speaker 1: like like you walk into these shows these days. It's
Speaker 1: mind blowing, right, Like you know, I read your column
Speaker 1: and it's funny because I can remember the olden days
Speaker 1: of getting your your stuff. And it's always funny when
Speaker 1: I read it because you have such stubborn opinions about
Speaker 1: a lot of things. I would never funk with you
Speaker 1: with any of them. I would never, But like the music, right,
Speaker 1: it's it's got to come from the music. I don't
Speaker 1: care if you like the music or you don't like
Speaker 1: the music, but what we do has to be inspired
Speaker 1: by the music. And so it's very refreshing to me
Speaker 1: when I like when I went to Boobley the other night,
Speaker 1: or I just did Kelly Clarkson in Nashville. Was our
Speaker 1: second to last show and we had rebook come out
Speaker 1: and do a ten minute Facebook live with Kelly, which
Speaker 1: was super meaningful to me because I had done Reba
Speaker 1: shows in the nineties when she had twenty trucks. But
Speaker 1: to see real musician in these arenas now, it's so refreshing, right,
Speaker 1: Like you saw forty horn and string players right. Where
Speaker 1: do you get to see that anymore like I've ever
Speaker 1: seen it other than as the symphony, And to see
Speaker 1: it's so well presented in that in that environment, I
Speaker 1: just love it. I mean, Bruno Mars, you had musicians, right,
Speaker 1: It's so refreshing that I get such a buzz out
Speaker 1: of that that when you see that mixed in with
Speaker 1: our stuff. It's one thing when you're building a show
Speaker 1: and you're you're like, Wow, nobody's really playing here or
Speaker 1: there's too much care, But when you see that it's captivating,
Speaker 1: and I think we embellish it. Well. On that note,
Speaker 1: you've gotten full insight it to take towers by weeky,
Speaker 1: fair oarth and some levels just a tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes I saw hard days night during the
Speaker 1: afternoon and litter, so I think I've told you that.
Speaker 1: But someday I have to go there just see what's
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, I mean you should. I mean just
Speaker 1: to see. I mean this whole bit of how the
Speaker 1: the sets come together without fasteners. I'm fascinated by that,
Speaker 1: and I certainly know all the managers and I heard
Speaker 1: Dan Brown talk about it, Tony, etcetera. But basically just
Speaker 1: telling you were too expensive though, right, I won't go
Speaker 1: into everything they say. I don't want to make sure
Speaker 1: we must be doing something right. We're constantly invited to
Speaker 1: absolutely absolutely and uh okay, until next time. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for