1
THE BIRTH OF ROCK AND
THE RISE OF THE CONCERT
LIGHTING FIELD

It is difficult to pinpoint the actual beginning of concert lighting as we think of it today. Certainly the Grand Tour could be seen as having been the byproduct of opera in the mid-nineteenth century. The term was often given to a star's travels through Europe, presenting solo programs in the European cultural capitals. Later, the Grand Tour came to the Americas. Through the years it also came to include the popular figures of show business, encompassing not only opera but also the stars of dance halls, vaudeville, and the circus. In the late nineteenth century, despite their isolated locations, even small Nevada gold rush towns had opera houses to show the world how “cultured” they had become.

The swing bands of the 1920s and 1930s brought a big change to popular music and, some believe, sounded the first notes that would ultimately be recognized as rock & roll. Led by such greats as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Paul Whiteman, these bands emphasized instrumental solos'riffing, or playing a short phrase over and over, now considered a key ingredient of rock & roll.

Another milestone was the entrance of the pop idol. Although Benny Goodman is widely credited for igniting the fir st “teen hysteria” in 1938 at a Carnegie Hall concert, it would later be a teenager from Hoboken, New Jersey, Francis Albert Sinatra, who would endure a legion of young teenage girls screaming during his performances.

Enter the baby boom of the 1940s. Postwar American prosperity saw many cultural changes. An avalanche of consumer products became available to the average family, and the money to buy these products was also available in the boom of the postwar years. There was also a change in who had purchasing power. Before World War II, the head of the household made the purchase decisions for the family, but by the early 1950s manufacturers were witnessing the growing financial power of the teen market. Teenagers now had allowances, and it was estimated in a 1951 survey that they had $4.5 billion dollars to spend annually. It was estimated that $45 million of that was spent on 45 rpm single records. In the early 1960s, a large number of these war babies, who were 16 to 19 years of age, married, and their buying power increased even more. Producers and manufacturers were eager to figure out what this emerging class wanted to purchase.

Teens' listening tastes were having a decided impact on the music business. Disc jockeys could play a tremendous part in record sales, but it still was unclear what teens wanted. Stations relegated blues and country music to times when few adults listened. These listeners became known as the “late people.” To be a disc jockey, you simply needed a sponsor, no experience required. One of these original late-night programs was called King Biscuit Time and aired on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas, and a disc jockey calling himself Howlin' Wolf had a show on KWEM in West Memphis, Arkansas. Both played blues and some country artists. Because this kind of music was not mainstream, the shows aired between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m.¹

It may have been more than luck that these programs aired on what were called 50,000-watt “clear-channel” stations. With that kind of power and the phenomenon of AM signal skip due to the ozone, on a clear night, when the conditions in the ionosphere were right, you could hear stations that had “skipped” thousands of miles. Teens in Arizona might hear their first Mississippi Delta Blues from a station in Tennessee, or a group of teens in Wisconsin could tune in to hear young country singers like Carl Perkins or Buddy Holly.

Blacks owned no radio stations, white disc jockeys opened the doors to what was almost a secret society of black music and culture. Admittedly, it was a forced secret because of racism and segregation, but it was a distinct musical style that appealed to the white teens with money to spend.

In Los Angeles, one of the most popular programs was called Huntin' with Hunter on KGFJ featuring Hunter Hancock. His style was to mix blues, jazz, and spirituals with rhythm and blues. He was good friends with Johnny Otis, who owned a club called the Barrel House in a black section of Los Angeles called Watts. Teens began to flock to the club, white as well as black. Hancock's machine-gun delivery, growling, use of hip slang, and general carrying on like a madman caught on with white teens. Before long Hancock's program was transcribed to stations across the country. Hancock emphasized that he was bringing listeners the latest and greatest Negro performers. Although everyone assumed he was black, Hancock kept out of public view because he was white.

Wolfman Jack later adopted Hancock's style and for many years broadcast from a 50,000-watt station in Mexico without being seen in public. He had a tremendous influence on teens' taste in music in the 1960s. In his early days, many people also thought Wolfman Jack was black. He created a mystique that was widely held until he portrayed himself in the classic George Lucas film, American Graffiti.

The melding of country music and such regional sounds as rhythm and blues had been building until in 1951 a disc jockey named Alan Freed started the Moondog Show on WJW radio in Cleveland, Ohio. The name came from a tune by Todd Rhodes called “Blues for Moondog” that contained a wailing saxophone solo that Freed adopted as his theme song.

He'd leave the microphone open and howl like a coyote. It was demented and near anarchy, but it was what teens had been waiting to hear. In 1954, the name was changed to The Rock and Roll Show. Rolling Stone magazine wrote that the term was perfect because: “It was a way of distinguishing the new rhythm and blues from just plain blues and the old corny Mills Brothers style. After all, rock & roll didn't fit into any of the old categories.”²

The benchmark of modern concert touring was set in the mid-1950s by the independent record companies in an effort to exploit the fledgling rock & roll recording artists. The tours were not a very radical departure from what swing bands and orchestras had been doing in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s'that is, playing dances in every town that had a community hall or theatre. After all, this was the way most musicians made their living'playing live dances. But now the pop singer was not just a member of the band; the singer, rather than the bandleader, came to front the band. Another change was that, rather than getting work through a booking agent separate from their manager, pop singers were promoted by an independent record producer, who also controlled the record, or sometimes an independent entrepreneur like Alan Freed. That way the record company made money not only from ticket sales but also, more important, by stimulating record sales. Many artists signed away their publishing rights for a small, one-time fee or were lied to by the record companies concerning a record's earnings.

CONCERT LIGHTING BEGINS IN THE UNITED STATES

Lighting did not attain a prominent position until after sound reinforcement made its first inroads in about 1960. The inadequate sound system in most buildings could not handle the demands of the recording artists, who had come to expect studio-quality sound (not to mention the new electronic effects necessary to make their performances sound like the record). After the artists got used to absorbing the expense of carrying sound equipment from city to city, lighting soon followed.

One of the first artists to carry their own lighting equipment was Harry Belafonte in the mid-1960s. He had emerged on the record scene in 1957 from his native Jamaica and was truly ahead of his time. Chip Monck got his start with Harry. Generally, the middle-of-the-road (MOR) and country/western artists were the last to see the value of building a production around their music; however, folk acts such as the Chad Mitchell Trio, the Kingston Trio, and Peter, Paul, and Mary took notice of the added value that special lighting gave to the show and started hiring companies like McManus Enterprises in Philadelphia to provide lighting for their college dates.

THE SAN FRANCISCO LIGHT SHOW

What became known as 1960s acid rock was spearheaded by such bands as Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, Warlock, Grace Slick and the Great Society, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. All were based in San Francisco. Actually it was a nonmusical group, The Family Dog, at the close of 1965, who unwittingly created the first light show. Bill Graham, who was their manager, said that people would show up and ask if they could hang sheets on the walls, and he'd ask, “What are you talking about?” They would reply, “My screens; I'm a liquid projectionist.” Light shows were not planned, and they were not even paid for. They were just part of what came together spontaneously. “Happenings” could include films, dance, music, mime, painting, and just about anything else people wanted to do, all going on at once.

Bill Graham was brought in to produce the now famous Trips Festival at the Longshoremen's Hall in January of 1966. Later that year, he rented the Fillmore Theatre at Fillmore and Geary from Charles Sullivan, who was black, to put on the second Mime Troupe benefit, but this production was billed as a “dance concert.” After that, Graham could see live rock & roll music as being the main attraction. He split from the Mime Troupe and started promoting musical groups on his own. Graham arranged concerts that featured individual bands as the main attraction without ancillary features. Films, however, were shown during the set changes to keep audiences occupied.

When he started formally promoting concerts, Bill Graham continued to welcome the light shows and eventually started paying for in-house light shows that he could control. They were a visual explosion of color and design. The shows were based on liquid light projections, strobe lights, blacklights, and effect lighting to create a visual mood into which the band as well as audience was immersed. The liquid light projector was nothing fancier than the opaque projector your grade school teacher used to show photos and charts from books. For these light shows, though, the book was replaced by a pan holding oil or water into which paints were pushed, splashed, and injected. The pan was vibrated or tilted to add even more movement to the ever-changing patterns that this mixture created. These images could be projected onto dancers, walls, screens, the audience, even the performers.

Graham was not interested specifically in advancing lighting or fi lm or anything in particular, but he was a bulldog when it came to his beliefs about how the audience should be treated. His background and training in New York theatre gave Graham a belief that with music alone he could create an art form. He wanted the audience to have a great experience, and he felt as though he was the only person looking out for the audience. The bands often didn't care if there even was an audience. If a good experience for the audience meant better lighting and sound, he encouraged and supported it. Graham provided the opportunity for many early lighting designers to push their limits and experiment. He was known for treating the people around him as family. That included yelling at them when he felt it was necessary. Graham would conduct regular meetings before a show for everyone involved, including the ushers.

Lighting was not important in those early concerts because people came more to “make the scene” than to listen to any one band. But, as individual band recognition grew and people came to see specific bands play, Graham encouraged expansion of production values as part of providing a better experience for the audience. Lighting had moved beyond the mask of the liquid light show.

OTHER CITIES AND VENUES

This is not to say that concert lighting did not exist outside of San Francisco. There were other venues at about the same time that received national attention. The Electric Factory in Philadelphia, circa 1967, was one. A very young Bill McManus fell into the role of local lighting guru by accident. A receptionist mistakenly sent a call meant for McManus's boss, MacAvoy, who was often called Mac, to a 19-year-old working in the shop of a theatrical lighting rental company. Bill “Mac” McManus saw an opportunity and met with a man who said he wanted to open “one of them psychedelic things.” He had an old factory on 22nd and Arch and asked if Mac could look at it.

Before the Electric Factory opened, the largest live concert venue in town was the Latin Casino, which held about 3500 persons. The Electric Factory was to hold 5000, an unheard of size for its day. Field houses at universities held 5000 to 6000, and only a handful of artists dared perform in them. The Electric Factory was so successful that it was turning over the house (audience) two and three times a night.

Because of its experiences at the Fillmore, the Grateful Dead was one of the early bands to encourage light shows and film projection at its other gigs. A “family” quickly developed around the band. “People just started doing things, we just played and things happened. If it felt good we'd say do it next time,” said Jerry Garcia in Graham's autobiography, Bill Graham Presents. Josh White noted, “Kip Cohen always said that the reason the light show worked so well was that musicians didn't realize that people had eyes as well as ears “ Jefferson Airplane would do twenty minute songs in the darkness in their street clothes with their backs to the audience.”³

FILLMORE EAST

Bob See recalls that while he was a student at New York University in the School of the Arts theatre program, he just happened to walk through an open door with a group of friends into an abandoned movie house near campus. There were Chip Monck and some of the people with Joshua Light Shoe on the stage trying to put things together:

We just kind of got involved. Because this was a real event, a real happening. From the standpoint that they were trying things that no one had ever tried before. It was the era of the '60s. So we started working there, Chris Langheart, Bob Gaddard, and John Chester. And as the place evolved we sort of took on jobs. I became the technical director and did lighting stuff with Chip Monck (Bob See, personal interview, 1996).

The Fillmore East opened in 1968 in the old Commodore Theatre. It was at the last minute that the venue took that name. It was to have been called the Village Theatre, but because of a legal threat the name was changed to the Fillmore East after the handbills had been printed. The first show was on March 8, 1968, featuring Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, Tim Buckley, and Albert King, recalls Josh White. Across the street at the Anderson Theatre, Gladys Knight performed using Pablo's Lights.⁴

FLEDGLING LIGHTING IN ENGLAND

While all this was happening in the United States, England was experiencing a blues explosion. Bands devoured any record they could get of Muddy Waters, Lightning Hopkins, B.B. King, and many others. There was only a club scene, no large venues like those starting to appear in the United States. The Marque Club in London and the Red Car Jazz Club, which was really a rock & roll club, were the places to play. The Round House, another club, catered to visiting American bands like The Doors during the early 1960s. Ian Peacock said, “I remember it was more of a place to hang out than to hear the bands” (personal interview, 1996). Because these clubs were more sophisticated in their equipment, would-be designers came to see and hear what they were doing.

Most often the British bands found themselves playing in community halls and school assembly rooms where there was no stage lighting. Follow spots were even rarer. The British bands were hearing and sometimes seeing what the Americans were doing in a few spots like the Fillmores, but the British lighting industry did not have the equipment available to meet the needs of this new media. Consequently, many early systems were designed around American lights. It was up to people like Michael Tait to invent what they needed.

Tait was one of the early people to build lighting systems around the specifi c needs of a band. He started with YES in 1968. Tait had worked at a nightclub and somehow ended up driving the band somewhere. Tait says he just fell into the job. He started by doing anything the band needed. At first that included setting up their small public address sound system. In those days bands used only vocal microphones. No one thought of using microphones on the drums or guitars. Each band had its own sound system, so the crew completely changed that as well as the band gear after each set.

Tait remembers that the second show he worked was on a bill with The Who, Small Faces, Arthur Brown and the Mind Benders, and YES at the bottom of the bill. The show was in Newcastle, England, in the town hall. There might have been some white light above the stage, but that was all. Tim Murch, who was with Light and Sound Design for many years, remembers seeing Black Sabbath in a South Hampton Guild Hall with house lights around 1970.

Things developed slowly in England because the rather small audiences for most bands did not bring in enough money to support the band, let alone buy lighting. A few bands, such as The Who and Pink Floyd, were interested in production, but there still wasn't a lot of money to spend on such things, nor had the equipment been built to spend it on.

Other early British innovators were Jonathan Smeeton and Graham Flemming. Michael Tait remembered, and was echoed by Ian Peacock, that people just showed up and someone said, “OK, who's doing sound, who's doing lights tonight?” But soon, as in America, people gravitated to what they did best. No formal training, just desire and drive. “We were taking light bulbs and putting them in coffee cans,” said Tait. He mentioned getting 12 automobile fog lamps, attaching them to a piece of pipe, and connecting them to wire-wound potentiometers to make mini-dimmers. “They worked for a few months, but they kept melting. But they had the desired effect, you got a narrow beam of light across the front of the stage,” he said. “In the beginning, I didn't realize you need backlight and sidelight. I had them out front, and it looked flat and horrible. Then one day I couldn't find a place to attach my lights out front and hung them on the side. That's when I realized that side and backlight was what it was all about.”

Tait's first go at lighting was at the Marque Club, which had a red light and a blue light above the stage with switches on the wall. YES's music had a staccato effect that lent itself to the flashing of these lights in time with the music. People went wild. But Tait still didn't consider lighting to be his skill: “YES first toured America as the opening act for Jethro Tull. I forgot where the first gig was but somebody said, well who's going to call the follow spots? Well, we never had any, so I was the one messing with lights, so it had to be me.” He went on to say, “But I found I could do it. I found that I could cue four lights and that I knew what I wanted to do. It was just something that I just naturally could do.” (All quotes are from a personal interview with Michael Tait in 1996.)

MOVING TO LARGER VENUES

Although these early converted night clubs, auditoriums, and factories got concert lighting off the ground, their success was short lived. The Fillmore was open from December 10, 1965, to the end of June 1968. The Fillmore East in the old Carousel Ballroom lasted from July 1968 until September 1971. Winterland in San Francisco became a Bill Graham venue before the Fillmore was closed so he could promote bands that demanded more money. It held 5400 people and had been built as a skating arena. It continued on for 7 more years.

Don Law, a promoter in Boston, was using the old Boston Garden to put on concerts at about the same time as the Electric Factory opened in Philadelphia. Both had about 5000 seats. When the Spectrum (a basketball arena) opened in Philadelphia in 1969, it drew the big acts away from the Electric Factory. All across the country, more sports arenas were being used to attract the artists that demanded 5000 to 7000 seats. All this was significant to concert lighting because these new buildings were not full-time clubs or venues designed for music. Most of them were sports arenas. They were hostile environments with bad acoustics, no permanent stages, no theatrical lighting, no intercoms, and no music sound systems (only public address). Portable lighting and sound companies became necessary. Local and regional lighting and sound companies started to appear, and the large fees they could charge meant they could invest further in their equipment. Banks were not generally willing to approve loans for these ventures so most capital to buy equipment came directly from cash received from the previous gig. Some of the early companies included McManus Enterprises in Philadelphia, Sundance Lighting in Los Angeles, TFA in Boston, and See-Factor in New York. Today, only one of these companies is still on the national scene, See-Factor. TFA was sold and eventually was merged into PRG, and Sundance sold their lighting equipment and became a design and consulting firm which today is known as Visual Terrain, Inc.

THE END OF BILL GRAHAM'S FILLMORES

Bob See recalls Bill Graham calling all the staff together'it was very much a family organization. Graham announced he was closing the Fillmore East even though every show was selling out. He said he just had too many irons in the fire. That was in 1971. The Fillmore East held only 2700 people. Acts were playing Madison Square Garden and making four times what they could at the Fillmore; greed had set in. It all came down to dollars. Actually, all this didn't just happen by accident. The Monterey Festival took place in 1967 and Woodstock in 1969, and promoters realized that as many as 50,000 people would come to hear rock & roll music. Bill Graham closed the Fillmore East and went back to San Francisco to close the Fillmore. That last week in New York, Bob See remembers doing 28 shows in 27 days. The era of the concert hall as an ongoing venue was dying.

Bill Graham went on to promote and/or act as production manager for several national tours with the Rolling Stones, George Harrison, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, as well as Bob Dylan and the Band. To all these productions he brought his sense of theatricality, production values, and total dedication to making the event an experience for the public. Graham is quoted as follows in his autobiography:

The greatest compliment I was ever given was at the Fillmore. …“Two guys looked straight ahead and one said, “Oh, shit, man, I forgot. Who's playing here tonight?” Without batting an eyelash, the other guy said, “I don't know man. What's the difference? It's the Fillmore.”⁵

Bill died in a helicopter crash on October 25, 1991, returning from a Huey Lewis and the News show at Concord Pavilion. His efforts to promote great shows and his undaunted belief that the public deserved the best show possible gave encouragement to many who worked directly with him or for his shows. Graham wanted bands to give their audience a total experience. He encouraged people to try new things and opened the door for many of those who started this special form of lighting. Bands wanted bigger and more, more, more. To attract a paying audience to large venues meant you had to give them a show, and the shows had to now go on the road.

MELDING FORMS

Concerts moved from light shows to embracing more traditional music hall lighting simply because certain performers began to emerge from these groups and gain star status. With this came audience recognition. I believe that the artist's ego was responsible for a move toward the more conventional musical comedy lighting techniques. Artists wanted to be in the spotlight, the traditional symbol of being a star.

As with any melding of the old with the new, and especially in light of the youth revolt of the 1960s, record artists started altering the rules. There was no comedian or animal act to separate the musical presentations as had been common in music halls or vaudeville. This was to be a show of solid music, lasting several hours. Lighting began to take on a more important role.

The greatest differences in concert lighting from traditional theatrical lighting are the use of vivid colors, heavy use of backlight, and absolute use of follow spots instead of balcony rail, torms, or front-of-house washes. The greatest advances have been in portable lighting structures, the PAR-64, the moving luminaire, and computerized lighting consoles.

LIGHTING BECOMES BIG BUSINESS

In the past 20 odd years, touring has turned into the business of touring. In 1995, Jere Harris formed the Production Resource Group (PRG) from an expanded Broadway scenic construction company called Scenic Technology. PRG rapidly began acquiring touring and rental sound, lighting, and video companies around the country through a global strategy to provide total production services for not only touring but also theatre tours, trade shows, themed entertainment, corporate presentations, and television and system installation. The strategy also included leaving the acquired companies largely intact under their former names. The facilities of these firms were then used to warehouse the growing services of PRG while retaining the good will of their clientele. The company has more than 20 offices and facilities in the United States, Japan, and England as of this writing.⁶ PRG was also the first company in the industry to venture into the sale of stock in a private offering.

MERGERS AND BUYOUTS

Since the creation of PRG, several companies have tried to duplicate its success. The Obie Company in Torrance, California, merged with Westsun from Winnipeg, Canada, in 1999.⁷ In 2008, Ed & Ted's Excellent Lighting joined forces with Q1 Production Technologies. Ed & Ted's is a Los Angeles-based company, while Q1 operates out of Vancouver and Winnipeg.⁸ Ed & Ted's merge with Canadian IQ is now called Epic Productions.

Mergers between like entities are not the only form of growth witnessed over the past 20 years. Many of the existing lighting and sound companies added offices either overseas or in optimum rental points in the country such as Orlando and Los Angeles.

Another change in business for the touring concert industry was promoters buying or establishing their own lighting and sound companies. Also, promoters have bought out other promoters; for example, Bill Graham Presents was sold to Clear Channel Communications of Beverly Hills, California, in 2000. Clear Channel owned radio stations but had begun to operate as a promoter and provided complete equipment packages as part of their tour, promotion, and production services. The promotion and production departments were eventually spun off in 2005 into a separate company named Live Nation. It was stated that the company wanted to concentrate on their core business of outdoor billboards and radio station ownership. The split seems to have worked out for both entities. In 2005, Live Nation promoted or produced 28,500 events, including music concerts and theatrical shows, with total attendance exceeding 61,000,000. By September of 2005 they owned or operated 117 venues (75 in the United States and 42 overseas) and held the rights to book in 33 more venues. These figures were the total of all their enterprises, not just for concerts. Premier Global in Atlanta, Georgia, is another corporation adopting an all-inclusive approach. These companies differ in business style from the promotions in the 1980s of Bill Graham and Concerts West, neither f which insisted on providing production services.

What this new twist means to lighting designers and independent rental companies in particular is that control has been taken away from them. A lighting designer or band may have a long history with a particular supplier and their crews, but this relationship is being challenged. Generally, it is part of contracts today that the promoter, not the artist or their designers, will contract for the lighting, sound, and video services. Although many companies can provide excellent equipment and crews, the loyalty factor is lost. The next tour by a band may have a different supplier and crew, and each tour has to start over with a new learning curve.

To the artist's management, such a deal seems like a win/win situation because the artist is paid a fee and bonus for a block of time, and the management is relieved of all responsibility of contracting for personnel or services. It is up to the promoter to book the dates, promote the show, provide the lights and sound, and basically ensure that everything is in place so the artist can simply walk in and perform. The tour promotion company can make block deals with larger suppliers for multiple tours and can negotiate reduced rates for the larger number of services. These deals may prove to be detrimental to the smaller suppliers. Some have already indicated that they have shifted their focus to corporate, themed, and special events and more local and regional accounts because they are losing the national tours.

One other area of mergers should be discussed. Manufacturers of lighting equipment have also seen a large number of mergers and acquisitions over the past 10 years. The largest to date was Philips Electronics buying ColorKinetics for a reported $791 million dollars.⁹ ColorKinetics was an early leader in light-emitting diode (LED) lighting for entertainment. Philips apparently decided it was less expensive to buy the company than to spend the initial R&D money to ramp up. What the acquisition meant for ColorKinetics was the backing of a large company ($346 billion dollars in sales in 2006 ¹⁰) with the deep financial resources to allow them to continue to grow. Philips also acquired Genlyte, a company that had purchased the manufacturing and sales divisions of Vari*Lite, Inc., in 2002.¹¹ Philips subsequently acquired Strand Lighting in 2006 as part of the Genlyte acquisition. The Strand name goes back to 1914 when it was opened to assist London theatrical productions. Years later Strand purchased the American company Century and became known as Century-Strand, Inc. Later the name was shortened to Strand Lighting, Inc. Vari*Lite was the first company to market computerized moving luminaires in the touring field (see Chapter 11). The interesting part about the acquisition of Genlyte is that Vari*Lite and Strand Lighting are minor components of Genlyte. Mike Wood has worked for several lighting firms including a 9-year stint as VP of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer for High End Systems, Inc. He also holds several lighting industry patents. Wood said their part of the sale probably flew below the radar but that Vari*Lite will look great at the Philips' stockholdersmeeting! Also significant was Barco's purchase of High End Systems, Inc., also a moving light manufacturer, for a reported $55 million dollars. In a statement released by the company: “The acquisition provides Barco “ with an additional patent portfolio in the digital lighting market, along with increased distribution channels and products offerings worldwide.”

General Electric (GE) apparently also believes in the future of LED technology, having recently purchased the remaining 49% interest in GELcore, LLC (Cleveland, Ohio) for $100 million dollars. In a press release, GE said their support for GELcore was their best way of penetrating the $12 billion dollar global lighting market.¹² This area of lighting is moving so quickly (see Chapter 16) that by the time this book is published there will no doubt be even greater innovations available due to these large investments in R&D.

Continued consolidation in the lighting rental and touring market is inevitable due to the economics of mergers and acquisitiovs. To survive, smaller companies will need to continue to diversify into nontraditional entertainment applications; however, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Such expansion will provide more work for young designers who will have the opportunity to be tested on smaller projects. Consolidation often means that the smaller fish are forced to leave the waters of a shrinking lake to find refuge in a pond. That pond was once the concert touring business. Now is the time to find a new, hidden pond and grow in more protected waters.

CASINOS

Casinos have emerged as a lucrative and plentiful venue option for rock & roll, pop acts, and country bands to perform, particularly within the burgeoning American Indian casino community. These casinos are a relatively new venue for concert tours but have experienced extraordinary growth since 1988, when the rules for operation and regulation of Indian gaming were approved by the tribes and the U.S. government.

The first Indian casino had its problems. The Seminole tribe opened a high-stakes casino outside of Hollywood, Florida, in 1979. Soon after it opened, the state demanded that it be shut down. In their filing, the state of Florida challenged the right of the tribe to operate a gambling establishment contrary to state law. After the case spent 3 years in court, the casino was allowed to open again. It was ruled that the tribes are outside state jurisdiction and considered sovereign entities by the United States, and the gaming operation must not be directly prohibited in that state. This case is what really opened the floodgates for Indian casinos in the United States, and tribes in Canada followed suit. Today, two Hard Rock Hotels and Casinos in Florida are licensed with the Seminole tribe; these facilities include state-of-the-art arenas and theatres and host some of the world's biggest recording artists and performers.

Following the Las Vegas business model for attracting gamblers, Indian casino operations bolster attendance at their casinos and hotels with world-class entertainment. There are over 400 casinos, but only about 60 of those have expanded into resorts large enough to be viable venues for staging and promoting touring entertainment. Nonetheless, the sovereign Indian tribes expanded what was once unique to Nevada and Atlantic City into a 28-state gambling empire.

The casinos are paying handsomely for the bands to play, more than a concert promoter would guarantee. The band's management will, on that promise, add the date to the tour. Not all of the operations have new entertainment complexes. Along with the less desirable venues are some definitely worth a look. Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, for example, has built a 10,000-seat arena and a theatre to accommodate world-class talent which is attached to a luxurious shopping mall. Mohegan Sun in Pocono Downs was Pennsylvania's first casino, and it recently completed a $208 million dollar renovation project to become the area's leading entertainment complex.

The Hard Rock Cafe chain equips their theatres with the latest lighting and sound systems, similar to the House of Blues chain. In contrast to Hard Rock and Harrah's, which are tied in with Indian gaming license agreements, only 2 of the House of Blues' 24 venues comprised of traditional clubs, arenas, and amphitheatres are hotels and casinos (in Las Vegas and Atlantic City).

You can expect that the growth of Indian gaming hotels and casinos and entertainment complexes will continue. The National Indian Gaming Commission reported growth from $200 million in 1988 to $26 billion in 2007. For the most part, the casino venues are getting it right and improving as entertainment operators, but there are some that should post “enterwithc aution” signs.

PURPOSE BUILT CONCERT AMPHITHEATRES

Amphitheatres are considered seasonal venues, with seasons beginning in May and continuing through September, possibly October. Just over 100 amphitheatres are listed in the world, primarily in the United States. The oldest amphitheatre in America is probably the Hearst Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California, which officially opened on September 24, 1903. It is an 8500-seat outdoor theatre that still hosts rock concerts. The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles was built in 1929. The majority of the amphitheatres that are considered mainstream concert venues on the summer concert touring circuit were constructed from the mid-1980 to the 1990s, with only a handful being built after 2000.

At this writing the lion's share of all amphitheatres is either owned or operated by Live Nation, with 39 amphitheatres. The advantage for this company is that it also produces many of the artist and package tours that travel exclusively under the Live Nation banner and play at all of their venues. Live Nation is the largest producer of live concerts in the world, annually producing over 16,000 concerts for 1500 artists in 57 countries. The company sells over 45 million concert tickets a year. These figures are exclusive of their other enterprises such as theatrical plays and musical tours.

Audiences enjoy seeing performances outdoors, and promoters and venue owners enjoy certain financial advantages due to not incurring the year-round expenses of utilities and high overheads. for these reasons the outdoor amphitheatre will continue to grow and be a venue of choice.

LED REVOLUTION

The light-emitting diode is a semiconductor diode that emits light when an electrical current is applied. The first practical visual-spectrum LED was developed by a scientist, Nick Holonyak, at General Electric in 1962.¹³ His discovery was limited to utilizing the color red.

A former graduate student of Holonyak produced brighter red, orange, and yellow LEDs in 1972, and a blue LED was developed by Shuji Hakamura at a company called Nichia Corporation in Japan. As of this writing, no other color has emerged from this technology. The so-called “white” LED is the result of a coating mix of yellow and blue phosphors.¹⁴

While the early LED products were used for indicator lights because they did not have a high output of light, they had a very long life of 35,000 to 50,000 hours and were very consistent in output over that life. As their brightness improved, more and more commercial uses could be imagined. It did not take long for the commercial lighting industry to see the potential of LEDs. In 1995 LED luminaires began to be shown at LDI, an annual trade show for concert lighting and sound equipment and designers, in the form of stage lighting. A literal explosion of concert lighting products is available'from moving lights to walls of LEDs that produce graphic material'and there is the expectation for many more uses to arise in the years to come. It is interesting that for each edition of this book the author has asked industry experts what the next big advance might be, and it has always been suggested that a new light source will be what propels the industry. Currently, LEDs are the newest advance, but at least two other potential sources are being investigated. The point is that lighting designers can't look only at what tools are in hand but must constantly keep up with the advances that might be on the drawing board.

EXPANSION BEYOND THE CONCERT FORMAT

The author observed back in the first edition of this book in 1989 that ways in which these new tools could be used to solve and expand lighting applications in other entertainment fields were only a dream at the time. Yet, it did not take long before many people saw the potential for adding fast, efficient, dramatic lighting to all sorts of productions: corporate presentations, theme parks, television, and film, as well as legitimate theatre. In this edition, we are pleased to showcase a recent Broadway show that has truly embraced the concert philosophy of bold color, high intensity, sophisticated computer lighting control, luminaires, programming tools, and dimminginnovations .

THE CONCERT LIGHTING DESIGNER/DIRECTOR

The position of a concert lighting designer or director differs from that of his or her theatrical or television counterpart. One of the main differences lies with their responsibilities. The concert lighting designer is often the only design artist associated with the production; only larger concerts can afford to have a separate scenic artist or video director, so the lighting designer is usually consulted for all such visual concepts. Another difference is that only rarely is there an extended rehearsal schedule. Often a lighting designer has one day to rig the lighting, with no thought of a stop-and-go technical rehearsal. New visualization software (see Chapter 21) has emerged to help designers get a handle on managing the growing amount of moving lights and digital media, even without rehearsal time.

Concert lighting designers must have a highly developed musical sense. Although many are not skilled musicians, they have a natural aptitude for musical interpretation. Because of the ever-changing venues and artist needs, most lighting designers go on the road with the shows they design. A few do leave the show in the hands of an assistant or the lighting board operator, but most designers stay with the tour to personally run the console and call their own cues.

This style of lighting design is an art of immediacy. Lighting designers are not artists who have the luxury of putting paint on a canvas or chipping away at a piece of stone and then standing back to think about their next move for an hour, a day, or a week. They must react instantly, often with no time to document what they did, so they must try to remember and write it down later.

Concert lighting design is an intuitive art. Although very intricate cues can be programmed into highly specialized lighting consoles, there is still a sense that what you are doing is of the moment. There is no script and no cue sheets to make notations on. Ways of noting lighting cues have been developed but in a much different form than the standard theatrical method. Chapter 6 will detail several methods. Preparation and organizing clear drawings and charts are key. Every day brings new locations and a new set of problems to solve. Adaptability is a must. One of the most important lessons to learn is:

There is no such thing as a bad decision; the only wrong decision is to make no decision.

If you are prepared for all conceivable problems, then you can deal logically and calmly with the everyday stresses. Although many innovations have been tried over the last 50 years of concert lighting, techniques are still evolving. Just when we think that the size of lighting rigs has been pushed to the limit, a new idea is tried that pushes the physical resources of the media and particularly the physical structure of the buildings, as well as our imaginations, further. Just when it looked like no more moving luminaires could be brought to market, digital moving luminaires appeared. Just as the light sources seemed to max out, LEDs invaded the entertainment market. This is a business that never stands still, and you as a designer can never be complacent. The need to stay on top of what is new is a must. Artists always want the newest or the biggest or anything different, good or bad.

I do not believe in an analytical approach'this business is one quarter art, one quarter science, one quarter intuition, and one quarter adaptability. Teaching by doing, experimenting, and learning what others have tried can be of the greatest value. That is why this book is presented in four main parts. Section I is a discussion about what you need to understand about the work: the business and physical sides as well as the creativity it takes to succeed. The authors have a very strong conviction that designers need to be well versed in business to get ahead in the real world. Section II investigates some of the tools currently being used. Section III takes a look at some interesting designs done by great lighting designers working today. They reflect what was done to solve both the creative and business needs of their specific touring projects. These needs are, in our view, inseparable. Also, for the first time we will look at how artists perceive their role. Finally, Section IV, the Postscript, is the author's assessment of where we are going in the future.

1 Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes, and Ken Tucker, Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll (New York: Rolling Stone Press,1986),pp.68–70.

2 Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes, and Ken Tucker, Rock of Ages, the Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll (New York: Rolling Stone Press, 1986), pp. 96`-97.

3 Bill Graham and Robert Greenfield, Bill Graham Presents (New York: Doubleday, 1992), p. 259.

4 Bill Graham and Robert Greenfield, Bill Graham Presents (New York: Doubleday, 1992), p. 232.

5 Bill Graham and Robert Greenfield, Bill Graham Presents (New York: Doubleday, 1992), p. 181.

6 PRGwe bsite, http://www.prg.com.

7 “Westsun Merges with the Obie Company,” Live Design, April1,1999, http://livedesignonline.com/mag/lighting.

8 “Q1 and Ed & Ted's Announce Merger,” Projection Lights & Staging News, October 2008, pp. 1 and 8.

9 Philipswe bsite, http://www.Philips/Colorkinetics.com.

10 Philipswe bsite, http://www.philips.com.

11 “Philips Completes Acquisition of Genlyte,” press release, Philips, Eindhoven, the Netherlands, March 2008.

12 “GE Invests $100M in LED Lighting,” Projection Lights & Staging News, October 2008, pp. 1 and 18.

13 Nick Holonyak, Jr., 2004 Lemelson-MIT Prize Winner. News Release from the ECE Department, University of Illinois, Urbana ' Champaigne, March 20, 2002.

14 2006 Finland's Millennium Technology Prize awarded to UCSB'sShuji Nakamura.