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FEATURE
PROJECTION LIGHTS & STAGING NEWS
2008 Parnelli
Visionary Award
Michael Tait and the Art of Innovation
By Kevin M.Mitchell
Michael Tait’s vision has
taken him around the world.
This photo was taken during
a recent trip to India.
“
Michael Tait is the reincarnation of
Leonardo da Vinci — an artist, an
engineer, a sculptor, a true genius,”
says production designer Steve Cohen.
“He single-handedly raised the bar on
production design in my lifetime and stewarded
the growth of our little business into
the gift that keeps on giving.”
That’s just one description of Michael
Tait, the visionary whose indelible imprint
in the live event industry is seen on almost
every concert stage today — from rotating
stages to light towers, down to the guitarist’s
foot pedal box. His remarkable career
has helped forge an industry before there
was one, and his work ethic and creativity
has touched many, from contemporaries to
the superstars of the concert arena.
Begging Him to Stay
PLSN
“I will always remember this moment
in time,” Yes front man Jon Anderson told
PLSN in an exclusive interview. “Mickey Tait
had been Yes’ driver, roadie, and general
dogsbody for a year. He’d had enough, and
was ready to return to Australia. We’d just
returned from a Yes show in a pub in the
north of England, where Mickey had spent
the evening side stage switching lights on
and off, after putting gels on them, and
making the show infinitely better.
“So I said to Mickey, ‘Please don’t go
to Australia!’ and I begged him to stay and
become our lighting engineer. He then
started to tell me of these wonderful ideas
he had for lighting the band, which would
become known as ‘Genie towers.’ He was so
excited that the following day we arranged
some cash for him to get the towers built.
Such was the inventiveness of Michael. He
became an intricate member of the Yes
experience that lasted for so many years. I
cannot tell him enough how grateful I am
to have had him in my life — as in ‘You bet
your sweet bippy.’”
34 PLSN SEPTEMBER 2008
“Smartest and Coolest Solutions”
PLSN
“You always knew Michael would give you the
smartest and coolest solution.”
— Bruce Rodgers, set designer
“From the first time I met Michael 20
years ago I knew he was special,” says Bruce
Rodgers, a Parnelli Award-winning set designer
who worked with Tait on several
Bruce Springsteen tours. “His legendary
mental abilities, his positive attitude and
fearlessness in solving design challenges,
his awareness of the needs of the production
design and the people who move our
shows, and his engineering instincts always
come into play regardless of the size of the
project. You always knew Michael would
give you the smartest and coolest solution.”
“Tait Towers has built a ton of stuff for
me over the years — for tours, MTV video
awards, all sorts of things,” says Parnelli
Award-winning lighting designer Roy Bennett,
who is currently working on Madonna’s
tour. “I’m a detail man, and also totally
into innovation, and the thing about Michael
and his company is they do pay attention
to the details. He thinks about everything,
and everything is important on
every level. And I always feel safe walking
into his shop with any kind of idea knowing
that they will figure out how to make
it work.”
Letting There Be Light
PLSN
Tait was born in Melbourne, Australia,
where he attended the Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology. There he studied
electrical and mechanical engineering but
he “got bored pretty quickly.” His first foray
into the entertainment business was opening
a nightclub in Queenland’s famous seaside
town of Surfers Paradise, which was
very successful right up to the minute the
authorities noticed Tait hadn’t bothered to
get a liquor license and shut him down. The
restless young man then set off for a sixweek
vacation to England, which became a
permanent move.
That was the
year 1967. Upon his
arrival he immediately
found out which was the hottest
nightclub in town, the Speakeasy, and
got a job there. Soon he was in the presence
of the likes of the Beatles, The Who
and Jim Hendrix, among others. “My very
first night working, my first table included
two of the Beatles, who I didn’t recognize at
the time,” he smiles.
Not unlike other Parnelli honorees, his
new career in live events would begin with
those five magic words: “Can you drive the
van?” The band in need was Yes, then a stillobscure
group.
The band was immediately drawn to
Tait’s imagination, work ethic and easygoing
nature. Tait, in turn, was drawn to
the band’s vision and ambition, finding a
unique home for his skills in electrical and
mechanical engineering. “Because I have a
very technical background, I started working
on the gear and improving it,” Tait explains.
“Yes’ music was totally revolutionary.
Jaws dropped when the band played.”
Primitive Days
PLSN
In the late 1960s, the technical side of
the concert industry was still in its infancy.
“Those were primitive days,” Tait says. In
fact, at the time, instruments weren’t miked,
only vocals, and many of the pieces of gear
that are commonplace today weren’t even
invented. “As Yes got bigger, I started building
equipment and redesigning things.”
“The first system I built had auto fog lamps
in coffee cans and homemade wire wound
potentiometers for dimmers,” he says. “When
PAR 64s came out, we made our own square
cans out of sheet metal. Later on I made round
ones out of air conditioning duct.”
On Yes’ first American tour, Tait had only
six Strand Pattern 23 lights and everything
else was “homemade,” including the controller.
“One of the early ones I built,” he
said, “had bump buttons with micro switches
that could be played like a piano. This allowed
me to ‘play’ in time with the music.”
As Yes grew in popularity, their lighting
and stage show grew in complexity. To enhance
the concert experience, Tait began
working with towers and multi-celled PAR
cans.
“I created
self-contained
units that you could roll in, put one
on in each corner of the stage, push a button
to raise the lamps, a quick focus and you are
ready for a show,” Tait explains. The cans on
the towers had four lamps each with a different
color gel, which allowed focusing in
one-fourth the time, which was startlingly
innovative at the time. Eventually, the towers
became known as Tait Towers.
A Revolutionary Concept
PLSN
In the mid 1970s, Tait devised the inthe-round
rotating stage. The idea came
from an unlikely source: A film canister.
Tait was in the studio with the band one
day while they were filming a documentary.
Tait picked up a 35mm film can that
was nearby and realized how easy it would
be to recreate the band’s studio setup on a
round stage. “We were talking about what
we would do for a stage set and all of a sudden,
this idea came to me,” Tait says. “If we
played in the center, everyone would be
closer and everyone could see better.” The
financial advantage was not lost on anyone
— the “front row” was now 85 seats instead
of the usual 42.
“So, I came over to America and built
the round stage in Lancaster County, Penn.
with the help of a local engineering company.”
While building a stage in the heart of
Pennsylvania Dutch country might sound
unusual, it was already home to Clair Brothers
Audio. “Roy Clair was on tour with Yes
most of the time and we became very good
friends. That’s why I decided to move to Lititz.”
The decision would make the modest
town, population less than 10,000, an unusual
but formidable live event production
haven to this day.
But the rotating stage brought new
challenges, like lighting.
“Since the band kept moving, I had to rethink
how light the band,” he says. “And there
were no real production rehearsals, as I was
always building stuff right up to load out!
Consequentially the lighting had a more dynamic
feel and it was different every night.”