Total Production - November 2003

David Bowie: A Reality Tour



Mark Cunningham reports from the Palais Omnisports de Bercy in Paris where rock's ultimate chameleon played two impressive sell-out dates during the European leg of his 'A Reality Tour'. Photography by Diana Scrimgeour.

Rarely since his Serious Moonlight tour, 20 years ago, have I seen David Bowie in such fine form and good humour.

TPi arrived in Paris on a wet afternoon in October to witness the second of his two shows at Bercy and the mood backstage was noticeably buoyant. The boss was mightily pleased with the previous night's show and as they say, the vibe is generally dictated from the top.

After the 1995 Outside World Tour, Bowie concentrated on more intimate, one-off special live events, which have led to some legendary shows such as 2000's two sold-out shows at New York's Roseland Ballroom, last year's Carling Hammersmith Apollo show in London and his return to Berlin at the Max Schmelling Hall. In between have been handpicked, sold-out festival dates including appearances at last year's Area2 shows in the U.S. as well as his spectacular 1999 performances at Glastonbury and NetAid.

The critical success of his last two albums, Heathen and Reality, have certainly boosted morale and encouraged a full-blown arena tour on which Bowie fans, old and new, are being treated to a comprehensive serving from a huge menu. There's a pool of 50 rehearsed songs from which the set is chosen every night - from new or recent material ('New Killer Star' and 'Pablo Picasso'), to evergreen gems including 'Ziggy', 'Sound And Vision', 'Heroes', 'Hang On To Yourself', 'Breaking Glass' ... you name it, it's probably in there. Well, OK, not 'The Laughing Gnome' but you get the idea.

Bowie's band is as tight as a duck's derriere, and special mention must be made of bassist Gail Ann Dorsey, whose rendering of Freddie Mercury's vocal portion in 'Under Pressure' left me breathless.

In charge of the crew for the A Reality Tour is Production Manager Steve Martin, who has made his name over recent times by way of KylieFever2002 and Peter Gabriel's Growing Up Live tour. Assisted by the omnipresent and delightful Helen 'Hels Bells' Smith, Martin was given the job by Bowie's business manager Bill Zysblat following a tip off from ClearChannel. His first meeting with Bowie was in New York, where the star handed him a sketched set design that he'd made overnight, with the simple statement, "this is what I want".

Commented Martin: "David's design ideas were pretty much what you see now, including the hanging trees. He'd been impressed with Coldplay's live video production and we suggested doing something with LED walls. I returned to London with various concepts and got Chris Cronin at Total Fabrications and Charlie Kail involved. We then met Thereze Deprez, a production designer from the movie world, when David was doing a promo video shoot. Being a six foot three punk, she made an instant impression with David and she was added as set designer to form a very strong team. "Thereze tried to turn David's drawing into a proper look but we never had any schematics of CAD renderings from her, just a very arty drawing which I took to Charlie Kail in order to import some practical sense."

The man at the sharp end of the visuals is Tom Kenny, Bowie's lighting designer since NetAid in 1999. As befits his role, Kenny has been instrumental in feeding Bowie with strands of ideas and thoughts, which has helped the star develop major themes for this tour. "I really like how involved David gets in all aspects of design," commented Kenny. "He's sat out front with me many times during programming, sharing ideas and just passing comment. Most other artists only get to hear if their show looks good or bad, but David likes to take some responsibility himself and I think that's very admirable."

One of the ideas discussed was injecting a flavour of 'covert surveillance' into the video production. Said Kenny: "I was working with The Who on the Teenage Cancer Trust shows at the Albert Hall and noticed that some of the younger bands like the Doves and Supergrass were coming in with these tiny dome cameras, so I thought I'd investigate them. Bryan Leitch from Coldplay was doing something similar and he was telling me about a system he was bringing out for their tour. David had wanted to try this in 1975 with security cameras but the technology wasn't there. So I sent him along to see Coldplay in New York and he really liked what he saw."

The next step was to organise video content and rather than use an outsider, Kenny persuaded Laura Frank to set aside her usual work as a lighting programmer, and take on the role of video co-ordinator. "Bowie loved the fact that it would still be one of us and we began a fun ride of watching arthouse videos, and the basic ideas for what we're now doing came out of a five minute conversation."

It was decided to hire Blink TV to produce the video content - a move encouraged by Steve Martin's experience of Marcus Viner's work on the Kylie tour, and Kenny's appreciation of Blink's involvement on the Smash Hits Awards shows. "I knew that Marcus would be able to realise all of David's ideas and source or create the imagery required," said Martin. "Between Marcus, Laura and Richard Turner, the results have been unbelievably good."

Taking direction from Laura Frank, Viner was asked to provide some obscure old footage and also create an animated movie by copying the style of something Bowie liked from the past. "I gave Bill Lord [of Blink TV] total control," said Martin. "XL won the contract in the face of competition from Screenco and Nocturne. Because we have gone for this CCTV, low-res kind of look, it wasn't necessary to go for very high resolution video walls and we had some budgetary restrictions to watch out for. We decided to choose Barco DLite 14 screens which are a bit on the heavy side [22 tonnes], and we had trouble in the Ahoy in Rotterdam, but generally it was a good call."

Head Rigger Pete Rayel of Star Rigging would agree about the weight of the screen, which accounts for a huge chunk of the total 36 tonne weight of the show. He said: "Eight tonnes of that is downstage which is always a problem because it runs into the front PA, but apart from that it's a regular kind of job. It takes me, Gana and eight local crew three to four hours to rig and it's been a smooth run, although we are bound to get some grief at the Olympiahalle in Munich which is always a bureaucratic nightmare!"


ADLIB VICTORIOUS

Liverpool-based Adlib Audio scored a significant victory when it was awarded the contract to supply the PA systems for the A Reality Tour. Although no stranger to arena tours, through its work with Texas, the Scouse firm, headed by Andy Dockerty, would be the first to concede that getting the heads-up was a major stroke of luck, albeit well deserved.

Steve Martin admitted he had his doubts: "I never thought that I'd ever use Adlib at this level. They are great guys, very skilled and committed, but I thought they'd be a little out of their depth on this. I have my own preferences and VerTec wasn't one of them. I do, however, firmly believe in giving the sound engineer what he wants and [FOH Engineer] Pete Keppler was absolutely insistent that he could make the JBL VerTec system sound fantastic, and my God he was right!

"The problem was finding a company who had enough of the equipment to service our needs. Pete wanted flown subs and side hangs because of the way we were selling the show. I discovered that Entec had almost been given the job but they needed to sub-hire from Crystal Sound in Germany to do it, which I wasn't happy about.

"Then Adlib came into the equation although their original price was far too high, because they were having to buy a lot of new kit. They realised that this tour would afford them so much kudos that they became more competitive on their price, and we put our faith in them. They've been excellent to deal with and I'm very impressed. It's wonderful for them and great for me to have given them the job - this could be the start of a whole new chapter for them."

Through Arbiter Pro Audio (at the time JBL's UK distributor), Adlib increased its VerTec stock for the tour by purchasing 32 VT4889 full size enclosures, 32 VT4880 subs, 32 4888 medium-sized VerTec (side hangs) and 12 4887 'Baby' VerTec elements. The touring system is powered by Crown VZ5001 amps.

Keppler had heard VerTec at the Move Festival which was serviced by SSE. So why not SSE for the job? "Hmmm, well it has been a little embarrassing," said Martin. "There had been some miscommunication between us and SSE because we were under the impression that they had sold a large amount of VerTec and no longer had enough kit to do the tour. It was only later discovered that it wasn't the case at all.

"I think that if the truth had been communicated properly, then SSE would have been invited to pitch, but that's life. To be honest I wouldn't change a thing now - everybody's saying how amazing the sound is, and that's all I need to know."

Looking after the Adlib side of things on the road is System Technician Marc Peers who, due to the nature of the show design, has prioritised having a clean-looking system in terms of neat cable trusses.

Peers described the system: "We're using 10 units of the BSS Omnidrive Compact Plus [FDS-366T] across the system EQ, all remotely controlled from a tablet from anywhere in the venue, using the new Soundbench 2 software. Each array is split into three zones, allowing us total processing control of the top, middle and bottom elements. We've put in a centre cluster of three of the 4887 downfill cabinets, just above David's head - that's something that keeps us on the straight and narrow! We have another six of those 4887s along the floor for the frontfill. "Being an all in-ear gig, there's nothing coming off the stage so we need to fill holes in the sound. It's a bit time-consuming having to put up around 100 cabinets every day between three of us, but it's worth every minute for this man."

Peers is a big supporter of Adlib's commitment to VerTec. He said: "I loved it since we bought into it and working here with Tony Szabo, who is quite an expert on the system, has been very helpful to me. He's the guy who's looking after the mechanics of getting the right sound from the system after it's been rigged."


TWO FIRSTS FOR KEPPLER

Pete Keppler's preference for VerTec came after using V-DOSC, EV's X-Array and several other line array systems. He said: "As far as my ears are concerned, VerTec is superior for reinforcement of rock'n'roll. It just seems to kick and throw a bit better than its rivals. It's also been the one I've had more experience with."

Keppler's first gig for Bowie was just over 18 months ago at the Tribeca Film Festival in Lower Manhattan - it was also the first time he'd worked with both a VerTec rig and the Yamaha PM1D digital console which have now become his staple tools.

"I was already very familiar with digital technology because I split my time between live and studio work. Using the PM1D is second nature to me - once you get your head around the architecture it really is a breeze. There's a lot of repetition in the desk and several ways to do the same thing, so engineers can find the route that suits them best. It's a solid piece of equipment and there is a high degree of reliability."

Keppler runs 48 channels and groups the stereo pairs 'vertically', using only one fader for each of the pairs. "There are two 48 channel layers on the desk and so any of my additional stereo channels will be on the bottom layer. The desk also has eight on-board effects engines which I'm making full use of for drum reverbs and vocal doubling, and there's a very interesting effect on the snare drum at some points. It's a simulation of an Eventide 910 harmonizer - an effect pioneered by producer Tony Visconti on the Low and Heroes albums, which dropped the pitch of the signal after the snare was hit."

There are two TC3000s for Bowie's voice, giving Keppler access to long and short reverbs. He runs the voice through the BSS DPR-901 dynamic EQ's de-essing setting, and from there into the Tubetech CL18. All other processing is conducted within the PM1D.

The microphone choice was a situation Keppler inherited, although he has made some changes. "Earl Slick got switched to a KSM32 for his guitar rig and we added a second bass drum mic for this tour. [Monitor Engineer] Mike Prowda wanted to use an SM91 for the IEM mixes and I was insistent on having a Sennheiser 602, which is probably the most inexpensive and coolest bass drum mic you can get. So I'm using a combination of the two of them.

"We've tried a lot of different mics on David's voice and settled on the Shure Beta 58 because it has the best rejection and so much of the stage goes through his mic. We tried the Neumann KM105 which sounded beautiful but it just picked up everything around it. Other vocal mics are Beta 87s and also on drums we have Beta 56s on snare top and bottom, Sennheiser 604s on toms, and KSM32s for overheads. Sterling Campbell plays those drums so well, so hard, and I'm not fixing anything. The acoustic guitars are the only instruments I'm having to work hard on - it's standard piezo electric pick-up problems, nothing too taxing."


PROWDA'S PUNCH

Mike Prowda, previously seen by TPi at Earls Court, mixing monitors for the Eagles, is controlling a wedge-free stage mix for Bowie, with the exception of a drum system consisting of an L-Acoustics dV-DOSC sub and a Firehouse mid-high.

For the in-ear system, he has settled on Sennheiser evolution series transmitters and receivers, with Aphex Dominator II running in between them. Like Keppler, Prowda is mixing on a PM1D and using all eight effects engines. He also has a Focusrite Red pre-amp and Summit TLA-100 inserted for vocal processing.

"I've got 10 IEM systems running and everything is wireless except Sterling and Mike Garson, the keyboard player," said Prowda. "Everyone is using the newest model of Westone's ear moulds. It's a soft silicone mould dual driver, and after hearing everything else available I can safely say that this is the best on the market right now. They are doing a great job."

Prowda is running a total of 42 mixes although some of them are very basic. "Sterling has his own Mackie 14-input mixer that I give him feeds to - 14 different stems that gives him the ability to prepare his own mix. David actually runs his own effects which end up being a vocal send on my desk that goes to a vocal doubling effect pedal and a Moog distortion effect that he uses occasionally. He also has a level control pedal that he operates and I just leave his level set so that he can bring it in and out at will."


LAURA FRANK: THE CREATIVE VIDEO PROCESS

"It all started with David's thoughts on some simple scene elements he wanted to create. We wanted to give Blink TV some very tight songs that could run to time-code, allowing us to do some high precision edits. So it was a collaborative process between some early concepts that David and Tom had talked about, and I stepped in to play more of a liaison role.

"Until this tour I had been part of the lighting community and it's been a fascinating departure. More than anything, my responsibility has been to ensure that whatever was created for the screens was always going to be complementary to David, the band and the music, and not be distracting.

"I started out with the band in rehearsals in New York during July, when David and Tom were discussing screen ideas and configurations. It's been a real collaboration in terms of deciding on different camera angles, visual effects and what happens with the screens when there are no camera shots, video sequences or graphics. I think we've successfully ended that battle between lighting and video.

"I've worked with David since 2000 when there was no video content. Typically, you'd have a situation where a video team comes in with the biggest light source and there's no co-ordination with the lighting department other than discussing colour temperature for the cameras. Consequently, we're treating both camps as one on this tour, and the results speak for themselves.

"As far as the treatment of live camera images goes, 'Pablo Picasso' is my favourite. It really complements the song well. We only use the upstage screens on that number which means there are only four cameras displayed at any time out of the 13 we have. There's a spot frame effect on it and the colours are heavily amplified. 'Hallo Spaceboy' and the opening segment are my favourites of all the pieces created by Blink. I was able to convey important details about the rhythm of the lighting for 'Spaceboy' because we'd been touring with this song for a while, and that was useful knowledge when the video was being made.

"Blink produced inserts for 12 songs, but I also designed some sequences with LSD's M-Box. We have five M-Box devices which also drive the screens. My feeling was that video production is very time-consuming and M-Box is great when you need to make quick decisions and create something spontaneously. I built something in M-Box to go with 'White Light White Heat' which harks back to the show he did back then with the fluorescent tubes - we go for the same look only this time the tubes are on the screens. So we're actually making the video appear as lighting, which is a strange turnaround!"


MAC-POWERED RIG

Despite Steve Martin's usual preference of Neg Earth, LSD Fourth Phase is supplying the lighting for this tour, thanks to the insistence of Tom Kenny. Although LSD standard issue Icon desk control is used to pilot Bowie's show lighting, there isn't a single Icon fixture in the rig. Instead, Kenny chose to major on Martin Professional's MAC 2000 profiles with custom gobos, and MAC 600 washes. "I'd been using MAC 2000s all last year with great results and didn't see any reason to revert to Icons," he said. "The MACs probably had the edge in terms of reliability, although the Icon is still a very powerful tool."

Assisting Kenny in the design work and running of the show is Mark Cunniffe, who mentioned the additional use of conventional lighting to support the more 'classic' rock'n'roll moments in the performance. "We have Lekos for band key lighting, which are useful for local TV crews, and four SuperCycs upstage to light the set dressing," he said. "Although I'm not a great fan of the 8-lite molefay, I do like the cleaner look of 4-lite units. They even look great when they're off and they don't take over a rig.

"The front video screens are so dominant that having a front lighting truss in there as well was never going to work. So we came up with the idea of slinging the lamps underneath the screens, and that's helped us create several different layers to the rig and achieve a lovely tiered effect. I don't think we've gone mad with the lighting - there are a couple of tracks where we do push the boat out, but generally it's quite restrained."

Production rehearsals for the tour spanned at fortnight at the Foret Nationale in Brussels where Bowie had prepared for the Serious Moonlight tour in 1983. Cunniffe described the period as "extremely productive", whilst emphasising that it involved many exhausting days and nights.

Said Cunniffe: "When you're programming as many as 50 tracks, you don't spend the time that you would normally on each one because you're so busy getting a rough look for everything. This is our second night in Paris and it's a completely different show to last night's. So I have a fair amount of tightening up to do on several numbers before the show starts!"


VIDEO SYSTEM

Arguably, the most impressive aspect of the production design is the way the lighting and video combine and feed off each other to produce a constantly stimulating visual feast.

While Blink TV got on with the artistic content, the job for supplying the enabling system fell to XL Video, with the enigmatically-titled 'video scientist' Richard Turner remaining with the entourage well into the tour to ensure that the system behaved appropriately.

Weeks before the Paris show, Turner had commented that we could look forward to "a lot of LED wall", and he wasn't kidding. One and a half trucks' worth of LED screen to be precise. The Barco DLite 14 screens appear as two rows - 'upstairs' there are five 3 x 4 metre displays, gently arced, while at the 'downstairs' level is one long 'letterbox' measuring 14m x 2.6m which is often seen to be broken up into a maximum of four 3.5m x 2.6m screens. In terms of routing and technical design, this is a huge triumph for Turner and XL. The video processors are controlled by Xlite software. This enables each physical input on the processor to have its own concurrent window on the LED which can be any size, aspect or crop. Said Turner. "It's been conceptualised as either one big playback field or four separate camera images or several camera images up top or playback with camera images superimposed. XLite gives the ability to plug four separate inputs to the upstage, and five separate ones to the downstage, and instruct what goes where at any time."

The software then 'reports' to a 16 x 16 SDI matrix. "Our four selected cameras are given a quad split, passed through the two Magic DaVEs for any desired effects, then into the matrix and into any LED wall inputs we choose. We're breaking everything down to a quad split and using XLite to build it as four separate windows next to each other."

In total, there are 12 fixed MiniCams and one manned camera on a long lens, all feeding into the composite matrix so that any of the images can be sent to any of the four screen areas. In addition, of course, there is the edited footage created by Blink which is replayed from DoReMi V1 hard drives, plus imagery from five LSD Icon M-Boxes (as explained in the Laura Frank side feature).

"The low-tech nature of the video images have given us a slight problem because none of the cameras are synchronised, so we have to run everything through the DaVEs to clean up the switches," commented Turner. "If we do a matrix switch on the cameras without certain processing, you get big rolls on the screen and that will not do! It's a low-res CCTV effect but to get there takes a lot of high-tech preparation. What I do know is that Mr. Bowie is looking great up there on those screens!"

Back in the production office after the second impressive Paris show, Tom Kenny had the final word. "Paris means a lot to David and I think he had a lot of fun tonight. He's the type of artist who earns so much respect from his crew because he's so knowledgeable about production, and you really want to make it right for him.

"And I've got to say that it's fabulous having Steve Martin running the production. The first time I met him was when I was lighting Eric Clapton at the Albert Hall and he was a rep for Harvey Goldsmith. It's one of those fun tours and hats off to my lighting crew who have been wonderful."

The A Reality Tour is scheduled to play to over one million people in 17 countries over a seven-month period. The European leg, which featured support from The Dandy Warhols, is due to end in Glasgow on November 28, and following an appearance at an AIDS Awareness concert in Cape Town, the North American leg will commence on December 6 in Atlantic City and conclude in early February, with shows opened by Macy Gray. Dates will follow in Australia and Japan before the trek comes to a close in March.



David Bowie A Reality Tour UK/Europe Leg - Key Personnel and Suppliers:

     International Promoter: ClearChannel Entertainment/Mitch Schneider Organization
     Tour Producer: RZO Theatricals Inc.
     CCE Tour Reps: Ian Jeffrey, Mark Ward
     CCE Assistant: Cynthia Oknaian
     Consultant: David Whitehead/Maine Road Management
     Tour Manager: Frankie Enfield
     Road Manager: Nick Belshaw
     Tour Administrator: Tim Hook
     Personal Security: Erik Hausch
     Make Up & Hair: Teddy Antolin
     Wardrobe: Jimmy King
     Personal Trainer: Marlon Farmer
     PR: Diane Martin/Outside Organisation
     PA to David Bowie: Coco Schwab
     Production Manager: Steve Martin
     Production Assistant: Helen 'Hels Bells' Smith
     Stage Manager: Phil Murphy
     PA: Adlib Audio
     FOH Engineer: Pete Keppler
     Monitor Engineer: Mike Prowda
     Audio Technicians: Dave Davies, Tony Szabo, Marc Peers
     Stage Sound: Tristan Johnson, Dave MacMullan
     Backline Technicians: John Walsh, Peter Danilowicz, Andrew Burns, Tom Calcaterra, Jeff Ousley
     Lighting: LSD Fourth Phase
     Lighting Designer: Tom Kenny
     Assistant LD: Mark Cunniffe
     Lighting Crew Chief: Blaine Dracup
     Lighting Technicians: Marcus Robinson, Nigel 'Skippy' Monk, Roy Hunt
     Video: Blink TV/XL Video
     Video Co-ordinator: Laura Frank
     Video Scientist: Richard Turner
     Video Crew Chief: Andy Joyes
     Video Technicians: Gary Beirne, Oliver Clybouw, Stef van Biesen
     Set Construction: Total Fabrications
     Set Consultant: Charlie Kail
     Set Designer: Therese Deprez
     Soft Goods: Hangman
     Head Rigger: Pete Rayel/Star Rigging
     Rigger: Gianluca 'Gana' Ganapir
     Carpenters: Toby Pitts, Andy 'Hobson' Pearson, Eli Cohl
     Catering: Eat Your Hearts Out
     Head Chef: Robbie Grantham-Wise
     Chef: Neil Smith
     Caterers: Emma Armstrong, Jolene Collins, Jason Bright
     Tour Merchandiser: Pete Bell
     Travel Agent: Travel By Appointment
     Buses: Phoenix
     Bus Drivers: Megan, Turn Around Ted & Robbie Grant
     Freight: Rock-It Cargo



LAURA FRANK: THE CREATIVE VIDEO PROCESS

"It all started with David's thoughts on some simple scene elements he wanted to create. We wanted to give Blink TV some very tight songs that could run to time-code, allowing us to do some high precision edits. So it was a collaborative process between some early concepts that David and Tom had talked about, and I stepped in to play more of a liaison role.

"Until this tour I had been part of the lighting community and it's been a fascinating departure. More than anything, my responsibility has been to ensure that whatever was created for the screens was always going to be complementary to David, the band and the music, and not be distracting.

"I started out with the band in rehearsals in New York during July, when David and Tom were discussing screen ideas and configurations. It's been a real collaboration in terms of deciding on different camera angles, visual effects and what happens with the screens when there are no camera shots, video sequences or graphics. I think we've successfully ended that battle between lighting and video.

"I've worked with David since 2000 when there was no video content. Typically, you'd have a situation where a video team comes in with the biggest light source and there's no co-ordination with the lighting department other than discussing colour temperature for the cameras. Consequently, we're treating both camps as one on this tour, and the results speak for themselves.

"As far as the treatment of live camera images goes, 'Pablo Picasso' is my favourite. It really complements the song well. We only use the upstage screens on that number which means there are only four cameras displayed at any time out of the 13 we have. There's a spot frame effect on it and the colours are heavily amplified. 'Hallo Spaceboy' and the opening segment are my favourites of all the pieces created by Blink. I was able to convey important details about the rhythm of the lighting for 'Spaceboy' because we'd been touring with this song for a while, and that was useful knowledge when the video was being made.

"Blink produced inserts for 12 songs, but I also designed some sequences with LSD's M-Box. We have five M-Box devices which also drive the screens. My feeling was that video production is very time-consuming and M-Box is great when you need to make quick decisions and create something spontaneously. I built something in M-Box to go with 'White Light White Heat' which harks back to the show he did back then with the fluorescent tubes - we go for the same look only this time the tubes are on the screens. So we're actually making the video appear as lighting, which is a strange turnaround!"



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