September Issue - PLSN.com

By RichardCadena
Strains of ABACAB still reverberating in the industry
“I knew that this was going to change
everything.”
Lighting designer Lee Rose saw the future
of the entertainment lighting industry
and he knew it when he saw a Genesis
show at the L.A. Forum in the early 1980s.
It was soon after the band kicked off their
Abacab tour on September 27, 1981with
55 moving lights, the first of their kind,
called Vari*Lites.
The development of automated lighting
has roots going back a century or
more, but none of the predecessors to the
Vari*Lite came close to having the impact
that the VL1 did. Within days, news of the
tour spread through the industry, and before
long several production companies
followed suit with their own version of automated
lighting. The die had been cast.
Twenty-five years later, automated
lights, and that Genesis tour in particular,
still hold special memories for generations
of lighting designers. We polled a few to
inquire about their earliest memories of
automated lighting.
“One day in the early spring of 1983, I
went to my first big rock concert Journey. I
had no idea who Hawkeye, Tom Littrell, Benny,
(or) John Lobel were, and I had never heard
the word Vari*Lite. With that first sweep of
the VL1 through the air with the infamous
breakup pattern, I was sold. Not pyro, not
Steve Perry, not even those funny-looking
cigarettes people kept passing could take my
eyes off of these incredible machines. Several
Genesis videos later, I had dug deep into the
world of Vari*Lite. Ten years later, I was working
for the company, and walking into that
office on Regal Row was like walking into
Mecca.” - Seth Jackson, Visionering, Inc
“I remember a time when I truly saw the
potential of the lights. It was Bruce Springsteen
at the L.A. Forum under the lighting design of
Jeff Ravitz. Vari-Lite had invited a lot of the L.A.
lighting designers and put on a big, splashy
pre-show party. At show time we all headed
out to the lighting console area to watch the
show. On came Bruce, and song after song no
light moved. I assumed the system was down
but at the end when Bruce walked off every
light came alive! I challenge you to find anyone
who stayed in their seat. Yes, Bruce is great,
but Jeff’s way of using the lights to re-position,
change color and pattern between Bruce’s
Bruce’s songs matched perfectly style; not distracting
from him but accenting the music as
needed, and allowing Jeff one final trick to get
the audience on their feet for more...more...
more!” - James Moody, author of “Concert Light:
Technique, Art, and Business” (Focal Press)
“When I was the LD for Dire Straits, one of
the backline crew, Mark Knoplfer’s guitar tech
at the time, was moonlighting during one
summer hiatus doing some festival gigs with
Genesis in Europe for Turbosound, I believe.
Upon our return to the road with the Straits
said tech regaled us with stories of these
strange lights that could not only change
color but could also move, and on top of that
they could change patterns automatically, including
a ‘cone’ shape that was the trademark
of laser effects of the day. Me and the rest of
the lighting crew ridiculed him and wrote the
stories off as those of delusion. Some months
later, I found myself at Madison Square Garden
witnessing first-hand these incredible
lights in action at a Genesis show and my
life was changed it really was that huge of an
impact. Needless to say, the guitar tech took
great delight in serving me up a very large
helping of humble pie.” - Chas Herington, Zenith
Lighting
“Unfortunately, I was not able to see that
first (Abacab) tour in person. Luckily, I did get
my hands on all the ‘bootleg’ videos and I was
instantly hooked! To this day, I believe that my
entire background in the visual world comes
from watching those live Genesis videos, especially
the old tours in the ‘70s (without automated
lighting) and later on with the Mama
and Invisible Touch tours in the ‘80s.” - Benoit
Richard, Millennium Lighting Design LLC
“I remember when Genesis played at the
Forum in L.A. in the very early 1980s. Someone
I knew was involved in the tour and got
me some tickets. I was sitting about halfway
back from the stage to the mix position. The
house lights went down and these lights on
stage came up. I remember thinking what
“Then...the lights started moving. I was
completely blown away.” – Lee Rose
a nice quality of light and color the fixtures
had. They didn’t move the lights or change
the color live for the first number in the
show. I think the second number had the
lights changing color and I thought, ‘Now this
is really cool.’ The vibrancy of the colors was
amazing. Then of course the lights started
moving. I was completely blown away. In awe
is the best description of how I felt. I had never
seen anything like it. I remember scraping
my jaw up off the floor at the end of the show
and wandering in a daze out of the Forum. I
knew that this was going to change everything.”
- Lee Rose, Design Partners, Inc.
“Twenty-five years ago I was a 17 year-old
kid with a small garage lighting company. A
friend of mine got a really grainy copy of a
demo tape Vari-Lite produced. It was the most
amazing thing I had ever seen.
We sat for hours trying to figure out what the
heck was going on with these lights and how
they worked. I’m still confused.” - John Featherstone,
Lightswitch
“Recently I was clearing out the old tour
information stored in my office. As I sifted
“I BELIEVE THAT MY ENTIRE
BACKGROUND IN THE VISUALWORLD
COMES FROM WATCHING THOSE LIVE
GENESIS VIDEOS...”– Benoit Richard
though the brochures, old passes and itineraries
a lone video tape stood out against
the background of junk that had amassed
through the years. It was the original VL/Genesis
demo video on VHS (at the time I had to
borrow a VHS machine to watch it). My memories
of this local bar band lighting guy seeing
this amazing light show moving light show
awestruck, inspired, and for the first time witnessing
the future of my chosen industry.
Suddenly my swatch books, PARs, ACL bars
and pin matrix desk took on the shape of an
old nag whose last few miles had been pretty
hard on her. To think a bunch of sound guys
did this for us.” - Butch Allen, lighting designer
“I think the first time I saw automated
lights in person was at LDI 1988 in Dallas. I
had heard about them, read about them
through the industry trades and seen promotional
material. But this was one of my
first opportunities to see them up close.
There was a seminar where some moving
lights were demonstrated. We were all very
impressed. Jim Moody served as moderator,
talking about the equipment and then inviting
some new, uninitiated lighting designers
to step up to the console and work with a programmer
to create some new visual ideas with
these moving lights. I remember some of the
guinea pig lighting designers being dumbfounded
or awestruck by the possibilities;
how do you design with these new, move-allover-place,
multi-parameter things? How do
you even convey an idea to a programmer?
How did you do all those things? A few years
later, I was designing legit shows with bunches
of these terrific moving lights. Very cool,
very fun.” - Dawn Chiang, Theatre Projects, Inc.
“I was working for Theatre Projects in
1982 and took Richard Pilbow to see what I
think must have been the first UK show (with
Vari*Lites) in Birmingham. We had been invited
by Rusty (Brutsche) and had discussions
about the possibility of Theatre Projects becoming
European distributors. (The decision
was overtaken by events because Samuelson’s
acquired Theatre Projects soon thereafter
and subsequently became distributors.)
Richard and I were both, of course, like
everybody else, blown away by the overwhelming
impact of the dynamic effect of
movement. It was certainly a major, major
‘effects’ light but there were serious doubts
as to its suitability for legit theatre. Although
the VL1 seemed to be accurate enough, Richard
had concerns about the fact that it was
essentially a hard edged light and that the
colors were a bit unsubtle for classic theatre
very rock ‘n’ roll.
“We recognized the long-term creative
impact and importance of having an accurately
repositionable and recolorable range
of luminaires. Although they were expensive,
the long term economies were obvious. We
realized that it was only a question of time
before this would be accomplished by Vari-
Lite just how long, nobody knew.
“My wife reminds me that on my return
from Birmingham all I said was, ‘They’re
bloody noisy, that’s for sure.’ ” - Brian Croft
“(In addition to the Birmingham trip),
my other early VL experience was in Los
Angeles where I went to see Wally Russell’s
‘great experiment’: the first opera (Tristan &
Isolde) for the L.A. Opera) to be fully lit with
Vari*Lites — a Wally/David Hockney design.
Here again, noise was a huge problem, but
the visuals were so great that after many
nervous nail-biting moments it was decided
to live with the problem! Maybe the orchestra
played louder!” - Richard Pilbrow, Theatre
Projects
“The first time I saw moving lights was
at a Steve Miller Band concert at The Greek
Theatre in L.A. Although the lightshow, compared
with today’s standards, was somewhat
awkward, I was fascinated with the color and
movement and that the lighting operator
managed to make the lights move in time
with the music. After the concert I met the
lighting operator and discovered the lights
were manufactured by Morpheus Inc. and
were run off a crude prototype desk.
“After that I went on to use Vari*Lite model
1s in Australia on several major events. In
those days we had a couple of spare lights
given the number of breakdowns. Moving
lights revolutionized live productions in the
early eighties and have been fascinating audiences
ever since.” - Colin Baldwin, lighting
designer
“In the mid 80’s, I was a young lighting
tech working at a local lighting company.
We had just landed a tour and the
crew chief they hired was currently on
the road with Whitesnake. The tour was
coming to a close and was playing an
arena a few hours away. I got the job of
dropping off paperwork, plus the bonus
of having a pass for the show and getting
to watch it from FOH. The show was
great. One of the parts that stuck in my
mind was John Sykes’ guitar solo. As his
solo started he was surrounded by a ring
of open white V*L 2Cs (and) a single red
color started to chase through the VLs
in a circular path. As the guitar solo got
faster the red started to chase faster, climaxing
in a solid red ring of 2Cs at the
end. This I thought was the coolest thing
I’d ever seen.” - Alex Skowron, lighting director,
the Black Eyed Peas
40 PLSN SEPTEMBER 2006
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