Hi there, and I just finished recording episode #298 with
Ethan Weber. I think you're really going to
enjoy this podcast. Ethan is a legend really.
You know, he's he's not only worked with the Stones for the
last 30 years as their lighting director, working with Patrick
Woodruff and team of course, but he's also done U2, both 360 and
the Sphere and a lot of other stuff in between.
But and a lot of lot of other shows and just a really super
nice guy, very interesting guy, smart and very likable.
So I hope you enjoy this podcast as much as I enjoyed recording
it. And as always, please like and
subscribe and share as much as possible.
You're helping us to grow this podcast to be something great.
So thank you very much. Hello and thanks for joining me
today again on Geez of Gear episode #298.
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So bit about AI, have you been paying attention to these price
and sort of technology wars that are happening right now?
You know, basically there's this company out of China called
DeepSeek, who I think have been around for a couple of years.
I think, you know, building their technology, which has
taken some time, but they just launched in a big way in I
believe it's around mid-december last year perhaps.
And they launched at, as I recall, 127th of the price of
competitive services, including ChatGPT and but with much
better, a better model overall and lighter weight too.
So it used a lot less compute, which translated into the lower
costs as well. Caught everyone by surprise, you
know, especially their competitors, I think caught them
with their pants down a little bit because it was that much
cheaper and that much more powerful and really just took
the AI world, you know, by storm.
And so problematic a bit because it is a Chinese company, Chinese
AI company, which means they basically earn their living on
taking your data and building these large language models from
your data. And so there's all kinds of
issues there or concerns. And also there's some question
on how they got the the kit from NVIDIA, because there are laws
against NVIDIA or you know, blocks on them being able to
sell their products into China. And so they were buying it I
think through Singapore or something.
So anyways, great model I have used it.
It's it's fast, it's excellent. It's very, it uses this thing
called reasoning, which the cool thing about it is while like you
can ask it a really deep question and then watch it
figuring that question out, it'll say the user's asking for
this. So I need to go back and look
for some of this and I need to look at more of this.
And like it shows you their entire sort of strategy and
their reasoning on coming up with that answer or those
answers. So it really tells you the
foundation and where those answers are coming from, which
is really, really cool. And it's just a very good model.
It it works very well, it's fast, it's again, very
inexpensive compared to other models.
So probably a week later, Open AI who own ChatGPT launches O3
and O3 Mini, which are their latest versions and O3 Mini
claimed by Open AI to be better than Deep seeks R1 and at
similar pricing. Unfortunately, from what I hear
anyways, it's not similar pricing.
It's still much higher, but a lot lower than where they were
with their four O model. So basically Open AI claimed to
leapfrog over top of DeepSeek. It's certainly dampened a lot of
the noise because basically when DeepSeek launched again, because
they used a lot less of these NVIDIA boards or NVIDIA pieces,
it NVIDIA stock tanked like it caused NVIDIA to lose.
I can't remember, I own NVIDIA stock, but it was like, I don't
remember 20 percent, 15% in one day.
And so, you know, that's again the big reason why their why
their price was so low. So anyways, a week after after
open AI launched their model, which again really rattled the
industry in the market and it really sort of tamed down all
the deep sick noise. Elon launches his new Grok 3
model And prior to Grok 3, I don't think very many people
were paying attention to Grok. I was I was using it for
especially for writing. I just found it to be a little
less boring, it less dry than Chat GPTA little more fun.
And so but people really weren't using it.
Most people were using ChatGPT and then a lot of people were
using DeepSeek and ChatGPT. And all of a sudden Grok 3 comes
out and it's better than DeepSeek and at a very, very
comparable price to DeepSeek. And suddenly Grok 3 is a player
and a major player. Like they're just taking over
all kinds of things. And so a week after that,
suddenly Clod Anthropic, a Clod comes out and claims to jump
over Grok 3, which I don't know and I'm still using Grok 3.
So I don't know if Clod is better.
I haven't tried it yet. And so it's just been this
battle, and I mean, we're talking about companies that are
in investing 10s of billions of dollars in building these
models, not small amounts of money.
And they're just popping them out like popcorn right now.
So it, it's a pretty wild time in, in the AI world right now.
And Speaking of Grok, I, I found a, a pretty cool story about a
guy, a developer, 1 developer who created a video game using
entirely Grok, entire Grok created the entire game in less
than 3 hours. The server code was written
entirely by Grok and and then they basically the guy put this
out to the market and he made $20,000, almost $20,000 in about
a week in revenue on this product that was entirely
created by AI. So to me, what this shows is
sort of this transformative potential in creative industries
for AI and ours being one of those industries.
And so I know our industry hates AI.
We love to talk about how it's going to cause the demise of
everyone's jobs and all of these things.
But I think if we can look at it from another direction, so this
guy was a game developer and he entirely used AI to make $20,000
in a week. So if you look at it where let's
say the show that you were going to program was going to take
you, you know, 4 weeks to program or three weeks to
program or whatever. And now you could do that in a
day or two because AI is doing much of the heavy lifting for
you and you're just pushing AI to do the things that you want
it to do. It's an interesting thought, but
also I like the idea that it really does sort of lower the
barrier that sort of enables this, this wave of innovation.
And I think there's an opportunity that we are going to
see products created by AI. We're going to see tech created
by AI, excuse me, directly in our industry.
And that's exciting to me. So more to come, but that's my
take, my hot take for today on AI.
I'm out of water, so today's guest Ethan Weber is a renowned
lighting designer and director best known for his decades long
work with the Stones and an extensive career spanning U2,
John Mayer, Green Day, Pink and many more.
Pardon me. Starting at C Factory in 1984,
Ethan joined the Stones in 1994 on the Voodoo Lounge tour,
evolving into a key creative force behind those legendary
shows for geez, 30 years now. With a work hard, ego free
approach, Ethan blends technical expertise with artistic vision,
shaping some of the world's biggest tours.
Passionate about giving back, he supports Doctors Without Borders
and other charities. His motto?
Never half ass anything. I like it.
Please welcome Ethan Weber. Ethan Weber, How are you?
I'm. Great.
How are you, Marcel? I'm doing well, thanks.
Good to see you. Thank you too.
You you've had a busy, busy couple of years.
Like who knew that you know 80 year old artists could keep you
busy? Yeah.
I mean, we, we said I think 90. I started with Keith in 92 or
9394. After that tour, we said, oh,
this has got to be the last one. And, you know, 30 years later,
we're still saying, is this it or is this not?
Yeah. That's wild, isn't it?
It's wild like you. You and Cosmo seem to just be
kind of hanging on to the to that, you know?
Yeah, Like, please stay healthy. Please.
You know, Cosmos got ACDC again this year, which is which is
incredible. You know?
I mean, I remember when I unwrapped the Back in Black
album thinking, you know, these guys will be cool for the next 5
or 10 years, right? Like, who knew?
You know, this was this was probably 1980 or something.
But but yeah, the Stones just blow my mind.
We were just talking about it before we started recording, but
mix just his commitment overall to to fitness and I don't know
about health, but probably health and.
Yeah, everything all. Of that, it's just mind blowing,
you know, And you were saying he doesn't even have any arthritis.
No, no arthritis seems to what? Is he now 82, right?
81 or 82? I'm not sure.
I think probably 81. Yeah.
And Keith, Keith as well, you know, they're all amazing.
Just yeah, I think it's safe to say we'll we'll never see
anything like it again, probably.
I can't imagine, although you know, I'm a huge hockey fan and
and football fan and these people just keep getting older
and older because of just advancements in in health and
fitness and and medicine and all of the things that, you know,
create longevity. So, so, you know, I obviously
love to start way early in one's career, especially Someone Like
You who's done so many interesting and incredible
things and you've done it for a while.
And you know, there's usually sort of a, a common thread among
some of the great designers and, and creatives in our industry.
And it either starts as a musician or a DJ or just some
fluky moment. But it generally wasn't, you
know, a more official or conventional type of training or
schooling. So what was your excuse?
I mean, I, I think, I think those of us who started kind of
earlier on, it was more a case of just falling into it.
I was I was AI was a production manager at my my school, my
college, following in the footsteps of Abby Rosenholmes.
And I was playing in in a shitty little punk rock band and we
moved to New York after graduation and and called up I
needed a job. Called up Abby, she said come in
to see Factor and that was it. And then kind of gave up my
musical career because it was a lot more fun to go on tour.
Yeah, well, plus he were probably making a little bit
more money too, which. This was C, This was C factor
which was probably $4.00 an hour and I think 200 two $100 a week.
Yeah, yeah, that's funny. Yeah.
So playing in a punk rock band might have been more lucrative
than working for Bob. Yeah.
But you know what though it it, it still blows my mind how many
amazing people came through C Factor like Bob was.
Bob was a breeding ground for for a lot of really great people
in our industry. Yeah, he, you know, he taught us
to do things hopefully the right way.
And he was a, a merciless taskmaster.
You know, they, they call, we used to call him the Miracle
Minute. It'd be 12:00 at night.
You've been working since 9:10 AM.
And he'd come down and want to rearrange the shop and clean,
clean up the shop. And it was, I don't know, he
made us, he made us all all a bit tougher, I think, because of
this. Yeah, it wasn't easy, but but it
it probably played because I mean the longevity of so many of
the people that came through there and the quality of the
people that came through there. Obviously sometimes, you know,
that sort of militant training is, is helpful, I guess to
creating strong people. So yeah.
So you you how old were you when you started at C Factor?
I must have been. I think I was 24.
Oh, OK. It would have been September
1984, I think. So I was kind of towards the
tail end of the the glory days. Yeah, yeah.
But still significant. And so how long did how long did
you stay there? Was there 9 or 10 years?
Wow, that's a run. Yeah.
So I probably it's kind of like dog ears like 9 or 10 years.
There is probably like 60 years anywhere else I think.
It's kind of true. Yeah, it's kind of true.
You know, though I, I think of all the moving light salespeople
back in the 90s, I was probably one of the few who really,
really liked Bob. Like, I just, Bob and I had a
special relationship where he'd call me on a Sunday night at
8:00 and I'd hang up the phone at 10, you know, And it wasn't
anything about necessarily even buying or selling or, or pricing
on lights or anything like that. It was either industry talks or
just talks on life or, or things, you know, that were
going wrong in his life or in his work or whatever or mine.
It was just a special friendship.
Yeah. You know.
Different. One of the rare, rare few, I
think. But you know, I used to, there
was a period when I left where I'd go back to, I'd run into him
somewhere and he wouldn't even talk to me.
He wouldn't shake my hand anything.
And really, and I, I was talking to Michael Ahern and who was
best friends with him. Michael used to be the Stones
production manager for years. And Michael said, you know, he
said, you guys are like our kids.
He said when you leave the home, we're, we're, we're hurt by it.
And eventually, you know, that eventually I'd go to New York,
I'd call a Bob and we'd always go out and have lunch and we'd
sit there for, you know, 4 hours, same thing, just
chatting. And it was great to see them
and. Yeah.
And interesting about. 12 Diet Cokes later, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah no, I, I definitely, he was one of the guys that I, I was
sad when he left and and I miss him still in some weird way, you
know, just because, you know, I love the characters of our
industry. I don't like, you know, I don't
necessarily love all the business people or the even some
of the private equity guys and all this stuff that are behind
it now, but but I love the characters and there's still a
few left, not as many as there used to be, at least on that
side of things on the vendor side, but you're.
Right. It is dwindling, but I mean,
that's that's the reason half of us not necessarily got in the
business, but stayed in the business because everybody was,
you know, everybody was a bunch of misfits who somehow figured
out ways to make it work and. Right.
And be be successful and yeah, interesting people to hang out
with and chat with. Yeah.
So when you started at C Factor where you just like a shop guy
wrapping cable and and pushing Rd. cases around?
Or did you immediately go out and start touring?
Well, back back then, you would, yeah.
You'd start off in the shop. I think I was in the shop for
maybe a month. Yeah.
And then and then they ship you out and that's it.
Once you're out, you're out there wasn't I think your.
First tour. I went out and replaced somebody
on Rush for a few weeks and then I can't remember what from
there, but I did a bunch of Rush tours, Neil Diamond tours and
yeah. How?
How was how was the indoctrination into touring
working under Mr. Ungerleider it?
Was I love Howard? Me too.
He had his own way. And yeah, hard to describe, but
it was it was great. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Now he's he's to this day, he's
still a, you know, great friend and a really fun dude.
Like just a great guy to, to just sit around and goof around
with and drink Bloody Marys with or Caesars.
Depends if you're in Canada or the US.
But yeah. So that's a good way to start on
Rush. And by then they were pretty big
too. Yeah, I think my my first load
in the somebody had to go home. There was a death in the family
or something. So my first load in they said,
they said I was in the shop. They said go pack your bags and
and and go to Madison Square Garden.
So here I am, some little kid walking in right in the middle
of the of a big rush sold out rush show at Madison Square
Garden. That kind of opened your eyes a
little bit. No kidding.
Yeah. Your friends must have been a
little bit jealous at the time, you know?
Yeah. So, you know, what are some of
the other? Like I said, so many great
people went through C Factor, but I don't know the timing of
it all. Like, you know, to be perfectly
honest, I forgot all about Abby being at C factor.
I completely spaced on that. But who else was around when you
were there that's still like out there today?
Well, how many? Well, Michael Weiss is one of
the, yeah, probably more well known ones.
He was, he's now production managing.
So Abby was there. Jack Funk, who was doing
Dashboard Confessional for years, Eddie Mutiko, Eddie Duda.
Oh my, mine wasn't there yet. Right.
Was that after? He he was there.
He was there towards the end of my stint there.
Right. And probably same with Craig
Caserta. Yeah, Craig was was towards the
end of, not just after. And Looney.
Looney was there briefly. Yeah, so they were all.
Sort of later, yeah. They were all later in the 80s
and stuff. No, just a a great breeding
ground like them and and maybe upstaging and obviously
verilite. A lot of people came through
verilite, But so you connected with the stones pretty early,
right? Oh, 94, I think you.
Said 92. I started with Keith.
So this all, you know, the whole, not only was Bob a great
teacher, but back then he, he had pretty wide range of, of, of
clients or tours. So I met Michael Ahern pretty
early on and we met Dave Russell and Al Santos and Patrick
Woodruff and you know, and so Michael Ahern, we were fairly
close and I saw that Keith Richards tour was coming up and
I knew Michael was probably involved.
So I called him up and and started off as a crew chief and
then they fired the LD and I took over from that and then
that led ended up all the Stones things.
Wow, Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah.
So when was that? What caused you to leave C
factor going with the stones or how did that all go down?
No, it was just, it was time. It just you know.
Make it making $300.00 a week working 100 hours and and the.
Young man's job, Yeah. Yeah, and I, I've never minded
the hours. I love the hours, but at some
point you've, you've kind of started making a little bit, a
little bit of money living, living in New York.
City get it? Yeah, I get it, I get it.
So, you know, I hate to dwell on the stones, but I'm, I'm always
curious, you know, you, you when you started with the stones,
they were obviously still in arenas and stuff, right?
Or or had they already been? Stadiums.
Stadiums, yeah. And I started off as I started
off as a crew chief this patch. One of the consoles he was he
was using Dave Hill was was the director using the, you know,
the bearer light console, whatever it was called?
Yeah, I think it was pre virtual.
Before the virtuoso. Yeah, yeah.
Pre virtual and then he was there was he was using a
Telescan desk and also the Hog 1 and I was an APO guy.
So Patrick said well, you know, I want you on the tour because
of my relationship with Keith and his manager, I think and
said what about doing the crew chief chiefing job?
I said, you know, I don't I'll do anything.
I just want to do the songs. So yes.
Right, right. And then, yeah.
So then after, you know, yeah, then there was a progression of
tours and Dave kind of retired to be Stay home and and Sparky,
Mark Risk and I Sparky was running the Icon console and I
was running an A bow out there. And then eventually after a tour
or two of that, we went down to 1 council and Patrick had
offered it to Peso. So that's, that's an interesting
relationship and very long one too between you and Patrick.
Yeah. What?
What's that dynamic like, you know, as far as designer,
director, you know, do you have a lot of input on the design?
I would assume so. Generally, I mean, Patrick is
more of the the overall show designer now, production
designer, right? Terry, Terry Cook from his
office will work with Patrick and they'll come up with the
concept and the lights and, you know, then they'll send out a
they'll send a plot around. And I mean, because of my
history with the band, I know there's certain things that I
feel are really important and just for my own well-being out
there. Yeah.
The the, you know, the the one comment that has had over the
last few years is he's having trouble.
Can't see, see the audience as well.
So the the mobile lights and audience like that's something I
usually kind of. Yeah.
That's important to fight for, but it's really.
Yeah. And that's the one, the one note
I'll I'll get because, you know, he's got, well, now he's got
four of the new, you know, Roby spotlights in his eyes.
So yeah, of course he's going to have trouble seeing.
But so you know what? We'll talk about the design,
some of it to listen to me, some, you know, but generally,
generally, you know, Terry, really between Terry and
Patrick, they really get it right.
And then once we get out to, to programming, you know, I have, I
have a lot of leeway in that, but Terry and I'll sit, sit and
program. He doesn't necessarily tell me
what to do, but we talk about it.
There's a, there's a lot of creative freedom in there.
And then once we're out on tour, it's all me and Petricho.
Petricho come in and he'll, he'll make some notes and all.
But like I said, he's generally more involved in the overall and
the and the video content now 'cause I think by now he trusts
us to, Yeah. Yeah, I would.
I would guess so. 30 years. Kind of helps.
You some yeah, it buys you some respect that just that kind of
dynamic like when you've got, you know, sort of hands off
designers and then you've got programmer director on the other
side, you know, like Peter Morse's team usually or or
Patrick or some of these designers who don't really get
on the console anymore or maybe never did in in some of their
cases. It's always an interesting
dynamic because I think it would be very easy to sort of overstep
right like to to, you know, step on somebody's ego or whatever
you want to call it. And so I've always been curious
to, you know, the different sort of versions of that dynamic,
that relationship. Yeah, I mean Patrick's, Oh, he's
he's great. He's amazing as is, as is Terry.
You know, they let you, I don't know, they, they definitely let
you have free reign over a lot of, a lot of things.
You know, they'll make certain comments.
My, my running joke with Terry is he'll suggest something.
I'm like, and I'll say, Terry, you know, I'm just going to
change it when you're gone anyway.
So we might as well do it my way.
And it's kind of a running joke. But you know, it's also nice
because most the stuff that I design, I like programming my
own shows because to me it's the whole process and, and I enjoy
the programming part, but it's nice when I do my own stuff.
It's all solitary and it's it's nice to have somebody there to
bounce ideas off of. Right, right.
You know, I always say like. That does Patrick ever come out
to a show like, you know, a little bit down the line on the
tour and and say, Ethan, what the hell did you do?
You know this isn't what we talked.
About no, I think there was no. There was one one song we did
years ago where I had this whatever my idea for for the
chorus and and we ran at the first show and that one of his
notes was like, you know, what was that?
And I said, yeah, you know, This is why I did.
He said, I get it, but you know, I'm not.
Patrick is always very, he's polite and always very positive.
So it's never what did what did what the hell did you just do?
It was yeah, I got it. But, you know, let's take a
season else. He's also quite humble, like I,
you know, one time I was in the UK, this is probably, I don't
know, 20 years ago, maybe more than 20 years ago.
And I went with my now ex-wife who worked for a record company.
And I was going with her 'cause she had done a contest with
Coldplay and they were playing it at their old college or
whatever, Oxford I think it was. And, and they were playing in
the, in the schoolyard basically.
So, you know, they just set up fences and barricades and stuff
around this schoolyard and, and sold a bunch of tickets.
And I don't know, I think it was 40,000 people or something in
this school field for Coldplay. And she flew over with a bunch
of contest winners. And and so I was walking, I
think because I was kind of bored doing her record things,
so she gave me a laminate and I went out and talked with the
production people and stuff at front of house.
And, and I was walking back and I see Patrick sitting on a
blanket with his family, you know, snacking on carrots or
something. And I said, Patrick and he goes,
oh, Marcel, how you doing mate? And I said, I'm good.
You know what? What are you doing here on a
blanket? And he says, I'm just a punter,
you know, I'm, I'm just watching the show.
I love Coldplay. And I said, well, you don't have
credentials. And he said no, no, we bought
tickets. And I said, hang on a second.
So I just went back and talked to somebody and got like 4 silk
passes for him or something, you know?
And just said come on, you know? And so, but he was just so
humble about it. Like, it's incredible.
Yeah, he's great and he'll talk to anybody.
And you know, it's not talking about himself.
He's generally interested and other people and what they have
to say and. Right, Yeah, that's cool.
He's he's definitely a legend. He is a legend, Mr. Woodruff.
So other other acts that are notable that you've worked with,
I'm seeing kind of a list here. Obviously you too.
I'm aware of that one. But tell me a little bit about
that, I guess. Were you involved in the sphere
as well? Yes.
Yeah. Cool.
I was very cool. The sphere was obviously
Willie's genius and and then Alex Murphy.
So I'd done 360 with Willie and Alex and then Alex was calling
spots and running smoke, etcetera.
And and this tour, this tour I did all the OR the sphere.
I did all the key lighting. Yeah.
For with it. Yeah, interesting.
Was that like one of the weirder gig you've ever done?
It was interesting, you know, because we that was the first
show in there. So while we're rehearsing, we
had two months in there while they're still building the place
and and trying to do their movie.
It was it was an amazing experience.
I mean, all the way around work, working with Willie is always,
always great. You know, he's, he's a very,
very clever man and some of the stuff he does is, it's amazing.
Well, watching some of that video content coming together
too had to be had to be fun, you know, just because it's just
like as long as you've been doing this and as many
incredible, huge, massive, wonderful shows you've done,
there's just nothing like the sphere.
It's it's a one off, you know, Yeah.
Yeah, and I, and we knew we went for a, a demo at the, the little
Mini sphere in Burbank, right? I had some of the content and
we're sitting there and they started running the content.
And even though it was whatever the scale was like, wow, this is
going to be amazing. And it was after after 40 shows
and however many rehearsals I never ever got tired of.
Really. Of anything about the show,
yeah, always look, look forward to it and just really enjoyed
it. Yeah, I had Jake, Jake on and we
talked about it for a while. And you know, one of my things
I'm, I'm now granted, I didn't see it, but like when I saw a
video of the U2 shows, one of the problems I was having is
because the video is so insane. I had a hard time finding Bono.
Yeah, like I couldn't find the band.
I'm watching YouTube videos going sounds amazing.
The video's incredible, but where's the band?
Like, I can't find the band. And of course, that's nothing
about the lighting at all. That's just what, Yeah.
Thanks. Just to show me down the river,
yeah. No, but that's what you get with
the sphere that you can't, you can't compete with the video
obviously. You just can't forget it so.
I always, I always said you, you should see a show.
Sorry, you should see a the show twice, once you, you watch the
video and then the second time you look at the true Yeah.
You know, the, the best seats in the house I think are, are like
the, the 300 level back behind us, 'cause you get the whole
view. I went and saw the Eagles there.
OK. I, I think was, was spent during
LDI weekend. Yeah.
And, and we were sitting down lower and it was interesting
'cause it was a, a different perspective from from where I
watched the show for, you know, however many months, 'cause
lower the Pam was more of a presence, 'cause they're right
in front of me, obviously, right.
So maybe, maybe the idea as you see it twice, once from from
midway up and once from from down close.
Right. Yeah, No, that makes sense.
Well, and I think it's also like, again, the Eagles is
another one that I just, you know, I love the Eagles, but I'd
rather see them in a theatre or something than than in the
sphere. Whereas like fish or or that
Grateful Dead thing you'd rather see in the sphere, you know,
because they're very visual. Pink Floyd would be amazing in
the. Sphere, obviously.
Incredible. Hopefully that happens, like
hopefully somebody's throwing bazillions of dollars.
Around to get their Floyd, Yeah. Yeah, that'd be fun.
You know, I mean, one of the one of the brilliant things Willie
did was there was, was the section in the middle where they
would change. That was one part of the setlist
that would change from night to night.
And you know, it turned into here's the band.
It's about the band and about the stage, which, you know, had
the algorithm that color that it picked its own color.
So there was really minimal stuff on the on the screen then.
So at least it was that moment of in the middle where, all
right, here's the band stop looking at the screen.
Yeah, yeah. So obviously you 2 and and and
stones, you know, being massive where you were director
programmer, but what about some of the what what about some of
the design tours that you've done like notable stuff?
Well, I, I did a few tours with designing Green Day, semi
chemical romance stuff. I spent eight years or so with
Lou Reed. I did some Bob Dylan.
I had a, a decent little design thing going.
And then, you know, I always say, well, I'm not sure if the
stones was the best thing that happened to me or the worst
thing 'cause I always made myself available for it.
But I don't, you know, I wouldn't change a thing.
It's been amazing. And of course, I'm not one who
really dwells on titles like I don't, I don't care if you know
I, I know my part in it. I know that whatever it is, a
large part of the visuals, you know, Hopefully I've had some
something to do with it. Huge, huge, yeah.
Hopefully. Well, I mean, who wouldn't want
to be sitting at the desk every night when, you know, stadium
lights go down And, yeah, it's amazing, you know, start me up
or whatever it is that they start with.
You know, it's like, whoa, it's going to be cool every single
time. I always say like my kids, my
kids are 1212 and 14 and they've seen a bunch of stone shows and
I always, they come out, they, I take them out front right before
the show. You know, they always sit on my
rise or, or unless they're running around God knows where
during the show. But but I always tell them I'm
like, this is one of the best things in my about my job when I
walk out and I always walk out from stage, right, Unless it's
impossible. To walk out from backstage into
a stadium full of people who are just, you know, on up up here
waiting for The Rolling Stones. Or you 2 or something, 40 or 50
years, these people you know? Yeah, it's the mostly exciting
thing. Yeah.
And you never take, never take it for granted, you know, make
never, never puts in less than 100%.
I I feel the same way. Yeah, I love that.
Like, I, I obviously you can go out and see some bands who just
kind of sit there and play the songs and, or sometimes they
actually even sit like they've got a chair on stage and stuff.
Like, you know, OK, they still sound great, but I can sit at
home and, and, you know, listen to, yeah, listen to the album or
whatever. I, I don't need to, you know, go
pay $75.00 for parking to watch people play the album.
But you know, to see Mick and, and you know, Steven Tyler, who,
you know, obviously struggles with some things, but he's still
a rock star. When he does go out and gig, he
doesn't mail it in. He, he puts in, he puts on a
rock show. You know, I love those people.
Like I, you know, all of those, you know, guys who are in their
70s and 80s now who are like just still killing it out there.
I love it. It's so good.
So we were talking, we were talking before we started like
some of the, some of the massive things that both you and I, I
think we're similar age have seen in our industry, you know,
being that we're a little older than than some of the people in
it today. You know, I got to be there when
moving lights started. And you know, I, I love that.
Like I, I wasn't out doing shows, I was selling stuff when
moving lights started. And, and so I jumped on that
bandwagon. I said, hey, these things might
stick around. I'm going to learn all about
them and go out and become an account executive selling moving
lights. And, but you know, so many
people now just take it all for granted.
Like, you know, it's like, hey, we all have these massive
digital consoles with a bazillion universes on them and
you know, all these pre programmed effects and all this
stuff like and we all have 1000 moving lights on every show.
You know, like what you obviously did shows when there
weren't moving lights on them, I'm guessing.
Yeah, Parkins spent, you know, and I actually recently did, I
did a short Iggy Pop run and there was a very limited budget
for lighting. And this was one of the best
things I've ever done, by the way, Iggy Pop, just to be able
to watch him for how? For many shows we did.
Yeah. So I mean.
I I was furry left his shirt on at this point in his life.
But but other than that, like as a performer.
Wow, that guy just blows my mind.
Yeah, you get to the end of the show and like that, that was
only, you know, 80 minutes. And then you look at the set
list, you're like, that was 20 songs in 80 minutes.
You know, we Stones do 1920 songs over two 2 1/2 hours, but
so we had a a fairly limited lighting budget.
I I had enough to bring out a few floor lights and then we
used house lights everywhere and there was somewhere where they
didn't have any lights. So we brought a system and I
designed a nice, you know, moving light rig and money came
the the quote came in. It was a bit more than they
wanted to spend. And I talked to the manager.
I'm like, hey, do you mind if I'd like to just do a, a park
hand show, No color bars? No, no color show.
He's like, yeah, so. Old school.
Yeah, so PRG scraped the bowels of their warehouse.
I was in there something while they were prepping it and I was
telling the guy say, can you make sure that all the bottles
are up and down stage and like looked at me like what are you
talking about? Anyway, so I did an old color
show. I did have one, one circuit of
red. Forgive me danger.
And afterwards the manager came up.
He's he just said with a smile on his face.
He said, I just want to thank you.
I said it has been so long since I've seen a par can show and it
was amazing, you know, to see those lights again.
Were you running Park Hands on an MA3 console though or?
MA2 I'm still I'm still MA two. Yeah, but I should have.
That's funny, yeah. I mean, it'd be funny though if
you rented a, an expression two or something and brought that in
to Run Park hands on or a an old Ava or whatever, you know?
Yeah, yeah, that would have been fitting.
Yeah, I mean, again, it's same with sound.
Like by the way, I, you know, I have a, a few guys like I, I
kind of grew up with, do you know Jim Yakoboski, front of
house guy. No.
He's done loads of different stuff.
He now works for Solo Tech, but he's been a front of house guy
for years and years and years. But he, I come from Calgary,
Canada and he was a club club sound guy working for club bands
in, in Canada, rock bands. And like he could take these old
sound systems with JBLW bins and 45 sixties and these like
stacked, really junky sound systems and just make them sound
incredible. And then he could go on to these
new Martin Audio. They called them the phase plug
systems. And he could go on to those and
make them sound incredible. And now I've heard them with
line arrays making them sound incredible.
You know, a great, a great, you know, engineer or a great person
at the console or at the controls should be able to make
anything sound good or look good, right?
And you know, the ability to make it look great.
Like, you know, one example also was when, when Brickman showed
up with Neil Young at I think it was Coachella with 16 follow
spots and that's it. That was the lighting rig and
they went where, where's your lights?
You know, this is it. This is our Lights 16 follow
spots. You know, I love that stuff.
I love that stuff. You know, one one of the yeah, I
mean, so, you know, I hate to get into conversations where it
sounds like, you know, these kids these days 'cause there's
so many talented young up and coming people in our industry
who are just doing incredible things.
But the toolbox is so much more full today than it was, you
know, back in the day, like we tend to say way too often.
Yeah, but I, I mean, I always say it was back then it was a
lot harder design to design your rig.
You know, that's what really took the time because you had to
get placements, right. You had to get fixtures, whether
they're Litcos or Pars or Fernells, it get all that in the
right place. Pick your colors beforehand.
So that was time consuming. Now it's, you know, there's
never enough time on on the other end to program that
because all these lights can do so much.
But you know, you pick your trust, your trust shape and you
load it with whatever the, you know, your favorite movers are.
Yeah, but but you know, it was interesting.
I, I was over at visiting with John Featherstone and Hailey
Featherstone and, and Chris Herman while they were
programming some Hans Zimmer stuff and we were talking about
some lights and, and, and John showed me a video of some light
he's, he's about to use. And the one comment was from
both of us. I think it was what a beautiful
looking light. It looks just like a par can,
you know, but obviously you can change color, but there's
there's still something about that quality of the beam from a
par can. Yeah, Yeah, you're right.
You're totally right. Well, and I like that we're
going back to some of that. Like it.
It seems like more manufacturers now, lighting manufacturers are
starting to say, OK, you know, we've done things that are
incredibly bright and throw for 12 miles and do all these
different things. But let's go back to basics a
little bit. And like one of my favorite is
is the little Martin thing the Mac 1.
I just used that for the first time.
Yeah, yeah, it's a nice thing. It's.
So cool. It's great, you know, and it's,
it's cheap, it costs nothing practically, and it just does a
few things really, really well and, and fits in small spaces
and, and I like that, like I like sort of scaling it back
again. And and, you know, I don't know,
like having every light with the ability to do everything to me
just has become a little bit vanilla, you know?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like this is my light that
does beam wash profile effects, you know, or, or whatever,
right. And how about having like some
layers and some different fixtures and stuff like that?
I don't know, you know, again, I, I think like an old guy,
probably. Although at the same time, you
know, for years we all we had to alternate.
OK, here's my wash light next to my profile next to my wash.
And, and I mean, my favorite light of the last 20 years was
probably the Martin air effects because you could do gobos and
it had a great quality, the light.
And all of a sudden, instead of having all to alternate, all of
a sudden I had, you know, 100 lights that if I wanted a big
strong looking wash or big strong Kobo look, you could do
it with every single light. Not, not every other one.
So, but but at the same time, now the lights that can, you
know, have a built in strobe and could do this and this and this.
Yeah, I I agree it I get it, but it can be a little bit much.
Yeah, yeah. I don't know.
I, I just think that I think, you know, we're seeing some
changes to go back the other direction a little bit where you
do have some sort of specialized fixtures that just do something
really, really well and they don't try to be everything to
everyone. And there may be priced a little
better. We're looking at weight again as
being, you know, a thing like let's get the weight back down
on these things, maybe a few less channels on some of them.
Like not everything has to be controlled by 200 channels or
whatever. That's it.
That's the same thing. I mean, there's there's somebody
was showing me a light the other day that's 300 so much.
And so I'm like everything I run, I just want to run it in
basic mode. I want light to come out of it.
I want it to be able to turn it red if I want to flash it around
a little bit like who has time? And but, you know, then again, I
must because I program my own shows and I'm a little slower,
you know, these Wiz kids, Yeah, who who can deal with all that
stuff. I'm like, I don't have time to
look at every single at all. Yeah, I know.
I I agree with you. I get it.
Well, the other thing is power like, you know, so I remember
not that long ago, less than 10 years ago probably where we were
saying, Oh my God, you know, it's, it's great because we've
reduced power so much on these, on these rigs.
You know, we've cut power because of LEDs by 75%.
Well, no, we haven't because now we're putting like 2000 Watt LE
DS in fixtures and and thousand Watt LE DS and stuff.
For some reason we're trying to, you know, out glare the the
video screens now and everything's got to be 40,000
lumens and stuff. And, and so we've given up on
the on the power benefit that we had.
We've given up on the weight benefit that we had, the size,
they've gotten bigger again. And so, yeah, I mean, I don't
know, I, I guess engineers who are creating new lighting
fixtures know what they're doing, I assume and because they
are coming out with some really cool innovation, but I'm just
not sure I always agree with the strategy, but what do I know?
Well. And I mean, as far as the power
one, one thing I used to say was, well, yeah, you know, a
Park Hand might eat up more than power than this.
But a park hands on for focus, for programming and for the
show, you know, the the moving lights, all the discharge
lights, you'd strike them in the morning and and they were so,
you know, nobody wanted to to douse them because who knew if
they were going to strike again? So now you've got lights that
are on for 14 hours a day instead of whatever.
Now, at least with the LE DS and stuff, when when they're not on,
they're not trying much power. The only problem is, and this is
a problem I find with some of some of the young kids or not
necessarily young kids, but a lot of people, you know, I saw a
show, I won't say what it was. It was stadium show.
It looked great, but every single song had everything
going. I'm like, you know, I get it,
you got all these toys, but you need this to make this work and
this to make this work. Like give the audience a rest
'cause it's exhausting. Yeah, yeah.
Another, another great Brickman quote.
Brickman said to me, you know, I you know, what I hate is those
EDM shows. And I said, what?
And he says, well, you know, the last thing I want if I'm
standing there stoned out of my fucking brains on Molly, is a
bunch of lights flashing in my face constantly, you know it,
with a bazillion lumens and stuff.
And I said, yeah, you kind of got a point there, buddy?
Yeah. And, and you know, it's not to
say they don't look amazing, but God give, they do give us a rest
for a minute, you know? Yeah, yeah.
And it is. Yeah, yeah.
And you know, one of the great things I learned from Mick was
and it, you know, he knows his audience is more than any.
I've actually learned a fair amount of lighting from those
guys. I had a conversation with Keith
and I'd read an article about his, you know, some of his years
on guitar playing and. And he said, you know, you can
play as much you can whatever it's, it's meaningful not to
play as it is to play. I'm like, yeah, you know, it's
you can do as much by leaving it dark as you can by having it
big. You need all the peaks and
valleys and. No, I get, I completely get what
he's saying. Like, I think what he's saying
is is, you know, in in this much time, I could put, you know,
1000 notes or I could put eight really well placed,
strategically played, incredible notes that give people, you
know, a reaction. And he's right.
He's right. Like one of my favorite guitar
solos is David Gilmour Comfortably Numb, which is very
few notes. There's not a lot of notes in
that solo, but it's just so perfect and so beautiful for
that piece of music, you know? Yeah, and.
That translates the lighting. Yeah, but that translates the
lighting too. And I agree a lot of people,
because there's this, you know, massive amount of things you
could do with all these lights. Yeah.
I feel like, you know, I've been doing some stuff with Jackson
Browne lately and it's hard. You know, you want to as a
lighting guy, you want to make these hits and, and have some
movement. And it was an.
Oz. I don't know, 'cause I look at
his audience, I'm like, they don't want to see that.
They want to watch Jackson. They want to make sure he's LED.
You know, they can see him and they want a nice pretty scene
behind him. And it's as a lighting person.
It's really hard. But you know, I think, you know,
are we doing this for us? Are we doing this for the
audience? That's the perfect, perfect
point. That's exactly what I would say
about that is, is, you know, is this about my ego or is this
about making the artist look as good as I possibly can and, and
allowing people to really enjoy the music more, You know, But
yeah, I'm with you on that. And, you know, there are, and I
don't really want to mention names, but there are some very
classic artists, let's call them Beetlesque types of artists who
I've seen some shows where it was just like, you know,
strobing in white, everything on the stage and stuff like that.
And like, I'm just like, that doesn't work for me, you know,
Like I'm not, I'm not a lighting designer.
You're a extremely talented guy and all this.
But you know, when when I'm listening to a classic, classic
song, you know, to me that's much more subtlety.
Like that's, you know, so I don't know, like I, I think
there's a time and a place, you know, there's and if the time
and the place is every bar of music the whole night, you're
gonna wear out your audience. Yeah, yeah.
That's what I think anyways. Yeah, and same thing about
blinding the audience. You know, I, I try to, obviously
we can't avoid it all the time, but I try to make a conscious
effort not to piss off the audience.
Cause I mean, I've, I've been in the audience where there's a
light in my eyes, you know, for half the show and it's just
annoying. Yeah.
Other, although I will say my possibly the one of my favorite
cues ever that I've done, I used to, I did a few tours with
Angels and Airwaves, the guitar player from Blank's solo band.
And I it's just a little club rig.
And I had these see, early days of the LED pars and I had these
pars in red on these towers. And I would start off at like
10% strobing and over the course of, I can't remember 3 minutes,
they would gradually, they were gradually going up to full and
like the pure torture in the in the front row.
But you know, it was that kind of audience.
And then yeah, yeah. And they could have shut and
and, and the band really, I think, kind of appreciated it.
Well, I think. If you would only one small
moment, yeah. Yeah, if you did that all night,
they'd get annoyed after a while 'cause they can't see the band,
they can't see their girlfriend, they can't see anything.
You know, it's like, come on, man.
Yeah. I mean, generally if, if I'm
going to see a performer, I kind of want to see the performer.
And see the performer. Yeah, I've, I've spent half my
career, most of my career looking up at the, at the lights
and stuff. But I don't know now, like, I
guess the bigger problem I have is, is just because automated
lights and LED screens now are so accessible, like everyone has
them in their inventory. It's so easy to design so much
of it into every show. And it really does like when
people put, there's two things that I used to be able to really
see. And so when people would put a
lighting shot on the on the on social media or something, I
would be able to tell what act it was.
Can't anymore. I can't even tell you what genre
of music it is anymore because they all look the same.
Like Andrea Bocelli is going to look the same.
And I'm, I'm just saying that name.
I haven't seen the show, so I don't even know who designs it.
But you know, a, a classical show might look the exact same
as a heavy metal show as a Metallica show or something.
And, and then the other one is I can't tell a light fixture from
another anymore either. Like you used to be able to look
up and go, Oh, that's AVL 5. That's a.
Cyber light, that's whatever. Not anymore.
Like they all basically look the same.
So it's it's different, definitely different you were.
Saying much of it is driven, oh, sorry, but a lot of it is
driven, is driven by the bands, you know, the bands think that
they need the video and. Yeah, yeah, I think it's Wiseman
who told me that. Like he says, you know, Beyoncé,
I'll go out and see Jlo or something and or, or Taylor
Swift and she'll say I want a rig bigger than Taylor Swift.
You know, I want, she's got one of those.
I want two of those, you know, that kind of thing.
Like there is some, some competition with the artists,
which, you know, drives up the budget and and everything else,
which is fine, I guess. But yeah, what do I know?
So you said you're still MA 2. Is that for a reason, or is that
just because you just haven't moved on to the three yet?
Because the shows have been doing like, you know, the stones
has been a progression since, you know, for years.
So that was always on the on the two and I've been doing John
Mayer for a while and that started off programming for two
and, and I actually had an epiphany.
I hate using words like that, sorry, but at, at LDI 'cause I
was really I, I, I got pretty horribly burned by the hog 3.
So I'm a little gun shy to switch to any console before
it's really ready. And the idea of having to learn
a new console was just at my, you know, I'm obviously on the,
I'm not ready to retire yet because I still love what I do,
but I'm definitely on the downswing instead of the
upswing. I thought, how do I really have
to, to learn a new console? But you know, I spent some time
talking to Eric, Eric Marchwinski and, you know, I was
thinking about it. We were talking about the three
and, and I was thinking about, I'm like, well, why?
You know, why not look at it as something fun to do?
Look at it as a challenge. It's like learning a new
language or something. And so, so I'm, I'm home for, I
don't know, a month or so. So I'm going to start the
process of of going to the three.
Oh cool, but. Yeah, so 2 reasons.
The shows I haven't I've been doing we're on to and if it's
working, you know, even if it's a new iteration, you're still
building up the other one. Yeah, well, and a lot of people
are doing it in two steps too. You know, they go to the three
hardware, but the two software, at first, you know, they'll run
it in two mode and then they'll eventually sort of move on to
three mode. And pretty much now I'm sure you
have those conversations way more than I do.
But everyone I talked to now is like, yeah, the three now is
making my life better. You know, for a while I hated
it. I fought it.
I didn't want to do it. When I did it, I went backwards
again, but now it's actually making my life better, you know
it. It really works for me now,
though. That's a good thing.
Just in time for the four to come out.
Yeah, right, right. You know, and I, I mean, when I
think about the number of councils we've all had to learn
over the course of our life and I, I was AVO for years and years
and but it, you know, the now it can do everything.
I think it's an amazing console and I love all the all the guys
at AVO but. Yeah.
It's just I had to switch eventually switch over cause
'cause they kind of. Have you ever looked at the D 9?
I don't know much about it, but I know people who say it's
incredible and all that stuff, but.
Yeah, it and it it is. And I love Brad White.
The console is great and it's and it's easy.
You know, the biggest problem is, is availability.
Like if you're doing a world tour, I know that you know, when
I if I run into a problem in Thailand or something, I know I
can get, I can get. A yeah, locally.
And so, yeah, that's kind of the I've, I've fought years on that
problem when I worked for Martin because, you know, they would
say, people would say, yeah, but I can get, you know, high end
this or that or I can get verilite this or that in the
market. I can't get Martin fixtures if I
need them. So, you know, you need to build
up a sort of a distribution network, a rental network before
you come to me asking me to spec them on my shows.
And so that's what I did. You know, I I just kind of
worked, worked with the designers and worked with the
lighting companies and said, hey, we need to get this built
up because Ethan wants to use it on the stones or whatever, you
know, and, and it worked, you know, overtime.
Martin's now pretty big. But yeah, I mean, the whole
console thing is interesting because, you know, if you think
about it, like, I'm sure you know Bob Gordon, right?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so yeah, me too.
He's I just did this thing at LDI called Dining with Dinosaurs
and Bob was one of the dinosaurs.
It was fun. But you know, Bob being Hog 1,
Hog 2, and unfortunately, I think he was still there for Hog
three or no, that was a high end product probably, but you know,
top of the world with Hog 2 and they pull the line from him
because high end bought it and suddenly he's got no console and
just pulls out the MA out of nowhere, out of the sky, you
know, and just hits gold again. I mean, just unbelievable.
Yeah, I, I, I went to LDI and I needed to switch to a new
console and that's when the grandma won was around and I
went and I got a, you know, whatever this short spiel from,
from whoever was doing it. And he had a long, a long pinky
nail and he's hitting the screen like this, like this.
I'm like, I'm not using that console.
Like that is not a rock'n'roll board if you got to use your
little fingernail to do it, unfortunately.
So I lost a few years on the on the grandma one, but eventually
after the after the hog three, I needed, I knew I needed a new
console and nook nook was trying to convince me to use the Maxis,
but every show I'd go to, everybody was on the grandma
one. I'm like I, you know?
Yeah, that sounds like you made the.
Right choice. Yeah.
Luckily, yeah. Although it's interesting what
happened with the Maxis, you know, that like Elation bought
it and turned it into the Subsidian console range, which
is like just a jump below all the MA stuff for the smaller
shows and installations and that stuff.
And they've done really, really well.
It's nice stuff. Yeah, yeah.
I mean and. That's the thing, there's so
many different markets. You know, as as much as you
don't, you don't see a lot of a balls out on the bigger tours.
There's still, you know, there's a huge market for them and
they're great consoles and yeah, yeah.
Yeah, well, and I think now they've got their manufacturing
shit together a little better too, you know, as far as at
least expanding sort of mass manufacturing or whatever now
that they're part of Roby. So, you know, there's, there's a
place for them. Absolutely.
You know, it's just, I don't know, like when MA has the
market share that they have, I don't know that attacking the
top end of the market is, is the best strategy right now, you
know, 'cause they're going to be hard to knock off that that
perch that they're on up there, you know?
Yeah, so. And they're and they're great
people. You know that that was the thing
when the when the three came out and all the horror stories you
heard about it. But you know, you know all the
people who are responsible for it and, and because you like
them so much like, well, all right, we're going to give it
the benefit or doubt. I know it's going to come
around. Let's just give it some time.
Yeah, yeah, it's true. So do you ever, do you ever
bring young people out on any of your cruise?
Like the are the shops putting, you know, younger crews out and,
and where you get to kind of mentor them a little bit?
Yeah, it's, and I'm, I'm happy to, you know, most of the time
they don't because I, I still do load insurance and load outs
because I still, I enjoy the whole process.
And, you know, you might make some suggestions to somebody
who's kind of new and they look at you like, what do you know?
And you're like, OK, never mind. But yeah, you know, anybody,
anybody who wants to learn, you know, we all like, I always like
to say that I'm, I'm immodest about my modesty.
Like I don't, I like to fly under the radar.
I'm kind of quiet and shy most of the time.
But yeah, but you know, you, you think about the fact, well, you
know, you want to have some kind of legacy after 40 years or
whatever you want. Hopefully in the next 5 years
somebody will still remember your name, whatever.
But I always, I always say, you know, I want, I want my legacy
to be the people that I taught some people stuff and that
people like working with me. And, you know, he was a nice guy
and, you know, maybe did a few kind of cool things on the
console as well. But but it's more about help
helping younger people out. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, one of
the one of my biggest mottos or, or at least attempts in life, I
know I I fail at it quite often. Is is just don't be an asshole.
Like try not to be an asshole. Yeah.
Yeah, it's not hard. Yeah, well, sometimes it's hard.
It depends on the situation. Some people make it hard, you
know, but but don't be an asshole.
You know, Usually works pretty well when you're, especially
when you're collaborating with other people, like, you know,
don't try and make everything about you make it about the, the
outcome, You know, like we're, we're all focused on the
outcome, not, not on what I can sign my name to and say this was
Marcel's version of the outcome. I don't care.
Let's just focus on the outcome, whoever's version it is.
And sometimes that's hard to do. But you know, I don't know, like
I, I think I think it's really important that lighting company,
sound companies, companies doing touring of any kind, because you
know, we need more people obviously coming in.
There's there's always shortages.
People are still struggling to find crew.
Some of the people that. Are getting so big, yeah.
That's part of it, but I mean, plus everybody's on tour all the
time now. Like it's it's, you know, the
fact that there's venue shortages constantly, you know,
tells you that there's just a lot going on, obviously, But I
think we need more blended crews, you know, where they're
like, and I know it's hard to do a show the size of the of the
stones. I think your dog wants in again.
Do you need to let him in her? In No, no, she's she's.
Barking at the UPS guy, but you know, like, I think it, it's
hard when you're the stones or whatever to, to just say, Hey,
you know, we want some, some more green people to come out
with us and blend with our, our more tenured people are older
guys. But that creates, I guess, some
quality issues or safety issues or whatever.
So that's challenging. You probably want the most
experience you can possibly get. Yeah.
I mean, most of the time a tour like that, you can, you know,
you can have a couple pretty fresh people and just make sure
that, you know, you look after what they're done.
I mean, I always say, like, you know, a rig should not go up
until one of us checks all the bolts checks, make sure there's
there's no wrenches sitting on the Truss, whatever.
And you know that some, you know, if if there's a young kid,
as long as somebody's looking, looking after whatever they're
doing. But but yeah, but that's one.
But that's one of the things, you know, one of the great
things about the Bob sees of the world was when you left that
shop, you knew what you were doing because he was such a
taskmaster. And now you know, you can't, you
can't be mean to to kids in the shop.
You can't. Yeah, it's kind of true, isn't
it? Yeah, you can't work them 100
hours a week because whatever. So then they go out on tour and
all of a sudden they got these long hours and you know, if
you're not used to it, that's when you start making mistakes.
But. Yeah.
And now tours have HR departments.
Yeah, yeah. So everybody has somebody to
talk to. Yeah.
But, you know, I mean, obviously there's, there's great young
kids out there. And of course, yeah.
Doing really good work. Yeah, well, I mean, especially
in your role, like in, you know, programmers and, and guys and
girls running the desk and stuff, you know, just because
they've grown up with iPhones in their hands, they've grown up
with laptop computers, they've grown up with coding and all
this kind of stuff. So whereas with old guys like
us, you know, that stuff was all like, whoa, this thing has
buttons that light up, you know, like IT technology came a lot
slower to us. And so, you know, I think that
part's really interesting cause 'cause they can, they can move a
little faster sometimes they are none of it's foreign to them.
It's maybe some of, it's kind of antiquated actually when they
look at it. But have you ever thought or
talked or looked into any of the AI stuff?
Like are you, are you paying any attention 'cause I know it
hasn't impacted our industry yet, but I assume.
Yeah, I was. I was with hanging out with
Brian Hartley and Michael Keller and Brian.
Brian. Because he, he's, yeah, he's all
over that stuff. And he was showing us I'm like,
that's amazing. But I don't have when I'm like I
said, when I'm home, I got three kids, younger kids, and I don't
have the bandwidth right now The so look at all that.
But you know, you know what's coming.
But, you know, going going back to the to your point about these
kids being so great on the castles right away.
But then the the problem is that there's this whole group that
wants to go straight into that, which, you know, is you got to,
you got to know the other end of it too.
You know, you have to grow up setting them up.
You have to know what it does. And yeah, and too many of them
just want to go and sit back. I mean, that's one of the
reasons I, like I said, I still love doing mode insurance and
mode outs. And you see these kids that I'm,
you know, I've, I've never done a not that it's bad.
I think it's a great thing. But a time code show, I mean,
you know, you sit there and you focus and then you watch the
show run itself and then you go to the bus.
I mean, how is that, you know, furthering your career?
OK, I don't know. Yeah, I had that conversation
recently with Mark Brickman. I went to New York to see the
the David Gilmour thing that that he had just done.
And I don't know if you saw it, but he's doing that whole thing
where he's using stylus on the screen.
He calls it Paint with Light. And he just said, you know, like
if I was going to go out and tour with David Gilmour again,
doing all the old Pink Floyd stuff and everything, he said I
was going to run the desk. I wanted to control the lights.
I wanted to, I, I wanted to busk the show.
I didn't want to just sit back and watch it.
And that's what he did, you know, and he created a whole new
sort of way of doing that, a whole new input method with this
stylus thing on the screen. And it was really cool.
You didn't see it I assume? I I saw videos of it and I I
talked to Sparky. Sparky's a good friend of mine
and we chatted a bit about it. Yeah, it was.
It was it was honestly very clever, very unique, very
different. It just like to me, first of
all, you didn't have any, you know, massive, you know,
thousand Watt LED spotlights blasting you in the eyes.
But but just the way that the colour moved through the system
and just it was just unique. It just felt so different to
anything else I had had seen before that.
So I really enjoyed it. He's clever, that mark.
You know, who knew? Who knew, who knew he was so
clever, you know, but he's, he's, yeah, I love Mark.
He's, he's a very creative guy, very smart guy.
You know, he's got some quirks, as we all do.
And, and you know, I found a few of those, but but I love the guy
and I appreciate everything he does.
So you know, what other what other things are you learning
along the way right now? Like as compared to, you know,
20-30, forty years ago doing this?
What are what are some things that are different?
Like is it harder? Is it easier?
Is it better? Is it worse?
Like what's, how would you compare?
Or is it just all an evolution? I think it's an evolution and
you know, you can either you can either fight it or dive straight
into it or you know, I was thinking, I was thinking before
we were doing this, I was kind of thinking about the evolution
of all this. Now, you know, there's there's
like the Alley Metcalf, who's a, you know, brilliant designer who
wants the latest and greatest every time or, or not even the
greatest. He's just wants to try out
whatever the new thing is. I'm always a little a little gun
shy about trying the new stuff. But yeah, I go to, I've been to
LDI the last couple years and even though a lot of it, I'm
like, well, you know, it's all starting to look the same.
You know, all the lights can do this, all the lights can do
that. But you know, you look at some
of them and there's some innovative stuff out there and
you're like, well, that's pretty cool.
I'd love to, I'd love to give that a shot.
And yeah, you need, you need to, it's fun, you know, you got to
embrace it and, and have, have fun with it.
But at the same time, it's great to be able to go back and do a
the three Truss rig of no color pars and play around for yeah,
so. Yeah, I mean, technology
obviously it it plays a role and and but you know, growing for a
reason, not just more flash and trash like growing for a reason
and and improving the show and improving, you know, the whole
results. Not just like I can blast
brighter lights in your face all night or whatever.
So yeah, that's where I kind of get stuck.
Like, you know, to me, it all kind of blends and starts where,
you know, again, like I've been in on the moving lights sales
side of things. I'm not really right now.
I still sell moving lights, but I own a a used equipment
platform. But you know, I've been in the
moving light business forever. And like I said, you used to be
able to tell every single one of them apart 'cause they all had,
you know, nuances, different ways of moving, different ways
of changing color. The colors themselves look
different depending on the manufacturer.
You could always tell and you can't anymore.
Like right now, you could have a Roby rig or an Ayrton rig or a
Martin rig and I wouldn't know the difference for the most
part. And so that sucks.
But I think one of the one of the most game changing things
we've seen in the last few years is, is the remote spotlight.
I mean, I was killer. I was really gun shy about about
follow me when it came out. I thought, and you know, I'd use
the PRG one, We'd use the robo spots.
But I'm like, OK, I, I, I'm happy to use it for back spots.
But front spots, you know, is it's all tied into the computer,
like if you have a house spot, you know, unless you lose power
to that spot, if your console goes down, you can still do a
show. But, you know, since in the
last, I don't know how many years I've had follow me on, you
know, most every show I've done. And knock on wood, it's it's
never and it's amazing. I mean, the stuff we did.
So Willie brings Alan Branton in to, you know, to, to do the key
lighting on U2 and, and the stuff I would want to do.
You could never, ever do that before with the older
technology. And it's it's amazing.
You know, the OK, you want 10% from this side and you want 50%
from that side. Easy.
And you want to control 20 lights on on Bono at once.
Yeah, it's A and. It's it's all been really
reliable for you like. There's been really reliable,
yeah, I mean, much more reliable than having, you know, when you
got 14 spot operators trying to get them first of all, trying to
get them harnessed up and up in the Truss and having to, you
know, your most stressful time before the show is before the
show and having to have spot meetings And this guy's late
because he didn't realize you're in a it's a stadium and there
might be 50,000 other cars coming in or 25,000 cars.
So, I mean, that part was always stressful.
And now, you know, at first you stress, well, what if the
console goes down? But then.
But yeah, and the possibilities and now, you know, Robbie's come
up with. I can never remember the names
of the lights, but they're from Rubble Spot.
Yeah. Are they're the light, the I
Forte, whatever it is. But I mean, it's amazing.
It's so bright and temperatures are nice.
Yeah. That whole stuff is is really
revolutionized. So you're using the automated
spot systems follow me. You're not using like Robospot
the the where they've got the the fake follow spot like in the
bomb or something. We use so John Mayer, we just
use follow me at you to the sphere.
We use the combination. We use follow me for the front
and because we had towers that were moving we we use robospot.
Although now you can use follow me for that because they can
take whatever data from the encoders and and translate but.
Interesting. But so we just, and they're,
they're all great systems, yeah. But.
Yeah, they're all just. It's amazing how much incredible
technology has been dedicated to follow spots, to getting rid of
follow spots. There's, you know, there's 3 or
4 great systems that I can think of that that work really well,
but just entirely different concepts on how to deal with the
problem, how to, you know, different solutions for the same
problem, which I love. Like that's, you know, it's one
of the things that so many people always say about this
industry is that, you know, give us the problem, we'll find,
we'll find a solution for it, you know, regardless of what it
is. Like COVID, I remember, I don't
remember if it was Marty Ham or, or Jake or one of the major
production managers out there. I had a conversation with.
He said, you know, I just think that they should hand us the
problem. We'll figure out how to how to
get people safely in and out of venues and and, you know, fill a
stadium with people and, and try not to get them all sick.
You know, we'll figure that out. And he's probably right.
You know, it's obviously that was a horrible time.
And thank God we're not going back there anytime soon.
But yeah. Although there were some
benefits to it. There were, yeah.
Once we realized, you know, we weren't going to lose our home
and to be be able to be home for a month and a half and hang out
with the kids and everything, but yeah.
We're, we're and. 1/2 I I mean a year and. 1/2 a year and a half,
yeah. I was like, what show did you do
that was a month and a half in? Yeah.
But I mean, yeah, we're, we are a solution based business.
You know, you, I talked to, I'm pretty good friends with
Chipmunk and we've spent times talking about, and that was
before the Internet, you know, how he used to source things and
you needed to live in a city that had a great hardware store
and a great electronic store. And they just, they went and
built it, you know, on U23U2360, Hedwig from Stageco was trying
to figure out how to lift, lift the center portion.
And he talked to his crane drivers and his or crane
operators. And they're like, well, you, you
can't, you can't use 4 cranes. You cannot 3 cranes at the most.
Because if one of them goes, then you got a problem.
So he's searching the Internet and comes up with some kind of
hydraulic, something I think that, you know, big bridge
builders use and came up with that.
I mean, the. Yeah.
Wild. Yeah, No, there's incredibly
innovative people and and also we're stubborn.
We're a stubborn industry. We don't take no for an answer.
We find a way, right? There's always a way.
Yeah. So you, you mentioned something,
you sent us a whole bunch of notes and one of the things you
mentioned was your motto for life, which is not to half ass
anything. So you're basically just saying
full on no matter what you're doing.
Well, put everything you can into it.
You know, there's, like I said, I mean, we're, we're there for,
to give the audience and the band a show.
You know, my job out front is not only to make sure the
audience can see the band have a little bit of stuff going on,
interesting stuff hopefully going on, but also to make sure
that, you know, that the lights are the last thing the band has
to worry about. And it's because you always put
up, always put 100% in. I mean, that's one of the
reasons I think I still, you know, I don't want to dwell on
it, but still like to load in and load out because I feel like
it's my response. The lights are my responsibility
and there's a decision to make, be made.
I'm going to be the one I want to be the one to make it.
So if I'm going to be there, I might as well, you might as well
get your, you know, your hands dirty and help out.
And yeah, yeah, just good for you.
I. Mean, I don't know of a lot of
people who still do that. There's there's a few, yeah.
You know Michael Keller is still out there on the floor.
Yeah, Yeah, that's, that's cool. I love that.
So what about what about charities or anything that you
like to be a part of promote? I don't.
I'm not a part of, but I'll donate money every, you know,
every December. I like a lot of children, kids
charities and and stuff like that.
Yeah. Hospitals taught to get top
borders. My father died of a stroke.
So American Heart Association, but mainly, mainly kids
charities. Yeah.
And he and he's hope is a great one out of Saint Louis.
Yeah. Yeah.
For firm believer, I was brought up that year, You got to, you
got to get back. Pay it forward, of course.
Well, and inside the industry too.
And, and I mean, I know that you, you talk a lot about
mentoring younger people and sharing stories and sharing
information with younger people and stuff.
I think it's super important because I never want to
disconnect, you know, the past to the, to the future in this
industry. I, I really, it's one of the
reasons that I keep doing this is because people are genuinely
interested in hearing how it was done in the 60s and 70s and 80s
and stuff. And I get so many comments from
people, you know, on social media and stuff or, or messages
back to me saying, you know, wow, I had no idea.
This is incredible. Thank you so much for sharing.
That's not me sharing. It's you guys all sharing.
So I appreciate that part of it, of course.
So what do you, what do you got going on this year?
Well, Stone's cancelled, so I got a few things.
I can't really talk about them 'cause they're not not set in
Stone yet and I don't want to change it.
Yeah, well, and then you'll get the stones call again and and.
We hope. We hope so.
You know, every time Opie or Patrick calls, you know, you,
you get the call and you're like, this is good news or bad
news. And this last one, Opie, you
know, usually it's right away. Oh, it's, it's fine.
And there was a hesitant hesitation.
I'm like, OK, it's bad news, but you know, they're all relatively
healthy still. So.
And the beauty of it is the last show of the last tour was in
Branson, MO, which was a great show, but we all said there's no
way the Stones can end their, you know, 60s touring career
with the last show being Branson, MO.
No, that ain't happening. That ain't happening.
They're not finishing in Branson, MO.
I, I, I can't imagine what their last show will be when it,
whenever it happens, but hopefully they go back out soon
'cause I mean, you're doing incredible things out there.
And I, I have a friend down here in South Florida who every
single time the Stones are anywhere, you know, within 1000
miles of here, he's like, Marcel, come on, we're going.
I'm like, dude, I am not going to see the Stones again.
I've seen him like 6 times. You know, I'm good.
I was never a Stones fan growing up.
I was a Led Zeppelin fan. I, I just, the Stones sort of
skipped me somehow and I was a Led Zeppelin guy and, and then
got into heavier stuff, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest and all
that stuff. So the Stones was just not a
thing for me until later in life, which is when I started to
go see him and, and my my ex-wife worked for their record
company and so saw them a few times with her.
We had a classic picture of her and Mick Jagger where they were
standing like just with his arm around her or something.
And I went to take the picture and right before I took the
picture, I think he pinched her butt.
And then and then right after that she pinched his butt back
and, and he's looking at her like in shock.
And I, I snapped the picture right then.
So it's, it's just a really, really cool picture.
I wish my ex-wife wasn't in it 'cause I'd hang it on the wall,
but but. You know, these days with
Photoshop and all, you could put anybody.
Yeah, it's true. Yeah.
Yeah, it's true. It's true.
Well, Ethan, I appreciate you, man.
I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to do this.
Yeah, it's always, it's. Always great to.
Yeah, and you as well. And I look forward to seeing you
back out with the Stones or whoever else you're out with
this year. And I did get to say hi to you.
You probably don't remember because there were 1000 people
there, but at the upstaging party this year we did shake
hands and quickly say hello. But yeah, cool.
Well, thank you very much, my friend.
Take the. Rest of the.
Week. All right man all.
Right. Thanks.
You too. All right, bye.