Pollstar: U2 is Number 2 - FOH Online

Christian Seger
Pete Robertson
Consider it the equivalent of
hazing before getting into the
fraternity of Front of House
engineers—you’re working with an opening
band, and as you step up to mix a show, the
main act’s muckety-muck reaches over and
turns down the entire P.A.
Welcome to the big time. Everything
you’d hoped for, huh?
That situation has played itself out over
decades of FOH history and new engineers
accepted it both as a right of passage and
brutal reality. The good news, according to
Seether FOH mixer Howard Worthen, is that
those days may be passing. “I’ve gotten the
shaft pretty hard as far as them cutting me
on volume and stuff. You don’t see that a
lot any more, and I think that comes from
guys like me who started in the ‘80s going
through that
whole scenario,”
he says. “I know
my point of
view is that I’ve
been through
that and I
would never
do that to another
person.
“I don’t
want to
be one of
those guys,
because
I hated
those
guys,” he
continues,
“and I
don’t want to be
a dude that’s hated. As of the last few
years, you don’t see a lot of that. You might
get stuck with a console or some outboard
that’s not as good as the headliner, but for
the most part, if you know what you’re doing,
you can make it work if they are giving you
the P.A.”
According to Big Mick Hughes, who has
been on both sides of this topic while working
with Metallica, there is a bevy of reasons
for headlining engineers to keep an eye
on an opener’s mixer. One of the first, and
perhaps most important, is the damage that
a new-to-arenas mixer could do to the P.A
while attempting to create the same sound
pressure that can be found in clubs. “If you
look at the ratio of P.A. to environment in a
club, normally, you have such a massive ratio
of sound system to the size of the venue,” Big
Mick reports. “Where as when you go into
much larger venues, you haven’t got that
22 January 2006 www.fohonline.com
Opening Ba
By DavidJohnFarinella
amount
of P.A. to where you can
saturate the arena to the same amount of
pressure that you would do in a club.
“It’s more of a concern of the system
than anything, from my point of view. I’m
concerned that somebody’s going to come
along and try to get something out of the
P.A. that’s not possible. Then it breaks, which
I have to obviously deal with after they’ve
broken it,” he continues with a laugh. “I’ve
had situations where bands that have been
on prior to Metallica have actually gone and
destroyed a large portion of the sub bass.
I’m not going to say who it was and what
band it was, but it was a drastic loss and I
was gobsmacked when I got up there. When
I checked the kick drum, it wasn’t there. We
went and had a quick look and the cabinet
was ripped to bits. So, that’s the danger you
run.”
At the same time, Big Mick says that most
of the time, he gives any opening FOH mixer
the option of using the system full-on, with
an important caveat. “I ask them not to be as
loud as Metallica,” he admits. “If people have
been in an arena for X amount of hours listening
to opening acts, when Metallica goes
on, I want there to be a discernable change.
“I think there are a lot of people who will
just turn the system down straight off the
bat, to be honest with you,” he adds. “There
is that side of it. They’re either nervous of
their own position with their act, or that’s
just something that they’ve done for years.
It’s not very fair really, because all it basically
means is that the guy runs his gains higher
and his gain structure drives harder into
drive rack. I don’t do that because you might
as well let them have at it at first and see
how they are going to do. If they go at it like
demons, then of course you’re just not going
to allow it. You can’t allow it; it’s threatening
the system and it’s taking away from the
impact of the main band as well. There has to
be some common sense about.”
From Worthen’s seat, it doesn’t matter
how loud the supporting bands get during a
tour. “We just came off a headlining tour with
Crossfade and Dark New Day opening. I was
like, ‘Okay, I mix here. If you guys want to be
louder, I don’t care. Just don’t blow anything
up,’” he says.
That said, he has seen situations where
an opening band is trying to blow the
headliner off the stage by volume alone. “You
walk in, and all you see are red lights all over
the place. It’s like, ‘You don’t have to do that.
Think about how that sounds. Back it off a
little bit and everything is going to spread
out.’ There are a lot of younger guys out
there and they know how to mix a little bit,
but all they are thinking is volume, volume,
volume instead of separation and a nice mix.
The volume has to be there because it’s rock.
You have to have some punch and some
crunchy guitars, but it doesn’t have to be
parting your hair.”
Worthen, who won’t name names,
reported a situation during the early ‘90s
where he was cut 10dB a night by the main
act’s mixer, but he found a way around it.
“As soon as you hear that kick drum, you
know that that’s as loud as that kick drum
is going to go, so you’ve got to mix everything
around that and bring it down even
a little bit more so the vocals will ride right
on top of it,” he explains. “As much as I love
instrumentals and doing a heavy rock mix,
the vocals are the most important thing. If
the audience can’t hear the vocals, that’s the
first thing they complain about. So, that’s