1. PRINCE21 NIGHTS AT THE O2
International live event design & technology

2. “How does the middle bit in ‘Firth Of Fifth’ go again...?”
Mike Rutherford, Phil Collins & Tony Banks get it together
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PRINCE x 21
THE PURPLE ONE MAKES HISTORY
AT LONDON’S O2
AN EXCLUSIVE REPORT BY MARK CUNNINGHAM
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3. A theory exists that if Hendrix had
survived he might have eventually
morphed into Prince... only a little
taller. Both had a penchant for purple
and, like his psychedelic ’60s mentor,
Prince’s legend is steeped in his ability
to pour raw sexual tension into both
his guitar playing and on-stage
presence. All of these attributes and
so much more were showcased over
the summer in a series of shows that
made history.
It was in May that the Artist
announced he would be playing an
unprecedented 21 concerts at
London’s 20,000-capacity O2
between August 1 and September 21.
The media, who can sometimes be a
little unforgiving of Prince‘s somewhat
eccentric behaviour, lapped it up.
Record-breaking! Purple-tastic! But
this was not the only unusual aspect
of the Earth Tour.
Priced at a mere £31.21 in order to “make the concerts affordable to
everybody”, tickets also entitled the bearer to a free copy of Prince’s new CD, Planet
Earth — a ploy he pioneered on the 2004 Musicology tour with the album of the
same name. This time, he went further by allowing the CD to also be given away with
The Mail On Sunday. One imagines that the dumbfounded “computer says no”
reaction of the record industry must have had the Artist in hysterical fits of self-
righteousness.
At the O2, with his oh-so-tight 12-piece funk machine (featuring Maceo Parker of
James Brown fame), the Artist Known At Birth As Prince Rogers Nelson delved deep into
30 years of material to give fans a completely different set every night.
Sometimes, the obvious choices were there — ‘1999’, ‘Purple Rain’, ‘Kiss’, ‘Little
Red Corvette’ and his recent awesome single ‘Guitar’; on other nights, the 2.5 hour
set list would be crawling with surprise covers, featuring even more surprising special
guest spots, such as Sir Elton’s appearance on the Fabs’ ‘The Long And Winding Road’.
Every night, from the moment he hit the stage, he had the audience eating out of his
hand with his consummate showmanship and musical genius — his guitar playing, in
particular, was extraordinary. You got the feeling that he was simply pleasing himself,
but the fun was mightily contagious.
It was in mid-September that TPi was finally granted access to this historic
production, despite an otherwise blanket press ban backstage. We were instructed
that no photographs of Prince or the performance could be taken — the results are
therefore drier than our normal coverage style, but considering that Prince has been
protected from the world’s media with an iron fist, we were grateful for anything we
could get!
Upon arrival at the O2, I was greeted by production manager Chris Reynolds and
his assistant Christina Affholder. Reynolds’ history with the Artist goes back to the ’80s
when he worked for promoter Alec Leslie. Together, they did three Prince tours —
Purple Rain, Parade and Sign O’ The Times. “We finished up Sign O’ The Times at
Wembley Stadium which was cancelled because it was raining and Prince didn’t want
people to get wet,” said Reynolds, resisting a wry smile.
He came close to working with Prince a few times after that but it wasn’t until
earlier this year whilst touring with Rod Stewart that the PM job on the O2 shows
came his way.
Reynolds explained: “It all stemmed from when John ‘Bugzee’ Houghdahl
[previously Prince’s PM for the Musicology tour] came down to look at Rod’s sound
system. He was going to be the PM for these shows and was instrumental in the stage
design and setting up this whole infrastructure, but he was then called away by Bon
Jovi, and I was brought in around April, although he still carries the title of production
director.
“I physically came on board in early June, as soon as I finished with Rod. Through
June and July, we did a bunch of one-off shows in the U.S., London and at the
Montreux Jazz Festival which kept us busy whilst I tried to stay on top of the O2
project and Bugzee looked after Bon Jovi. It really needed the both of us to put it all
together, and Bugzee was here at the very beginning to oversee certain elements,
after which I took over.”
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A week of rehearsals took place at Wembley
Arena before everything transferred to the O2 for a
fortnight before the opening show. However, things
slowed down when the stage arrived late from Tait
Towers in New York due to the appointed airline’s
mechanical problems. “While we waited for the
delivery, we used tape to mark
out the shape of the symbol
stage on the floor, and get the
band rehearsing and lighting
programmed,”
said Reynolds. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way!”
Co-presented by AEG Live, Concerts West and
Marshall Arts, the in-the-round concerts were
punctuated by a number of other incoming events,
such as the Rolling Stones’ A Bigger Bang, Elton’s Red
Piano, numerous sporting events and the MOBO
Awards.
“We were aware in advance that we
would have to load-in and load-
out several times during the two
months, rather than do 21
consecutive shows, and of course,
that presented a few difficulties,”
explained Reynolds. “However,
we’ve been lucky that the O2 has
enough roof height to enable us to
suck a lot of production up there on
long chains and leave it in place.
“We’ve dropped the speaker
hangs quite often and we’ve had to
remove some lighting to make way for
incoming video screens, as we did for
the Stones, but in the main it hasn’t
been too much of a struggle. The trailers
from [locally-based] Edwin Shirley’s
have been here all the time for us to
use as storage, and that’s been very
helpful.
“We did trials for all of this
when we arrived in the venue and in
taking everything up in the roof we
maintained a trim height of 70 feet.
When the Stones came in, they were
playing with an end-on stage, so with
everything up above the in-the-round
position, no one noticed. We’ve also done a deal with
the MOBOs production team whereby they’re using
our sound and lights to a large extent.
“The most helpful factor was that the scoreboard
wasn’t used by any of the incoming events. If it had,
we’d have had to take everything out and that would
have made load-ins impossible within our allocated
time.”
Unless one considers the symbol-shaped stage,
there wasn’t a set design in the obvious sense. The
stage itself grew from Prince’s appearance at this
February’s Super Bowl XLI. Said Reynolds: “When
Prince decided to evolve the idea for the O2, Bugzee
rented a venue and projected the symbol image on to
the floor, so Prince could get an idea for the size the
stage needed to be and the form it would take. The
concept was given to Tait Towers and they built the
stage in 19 days.”
Considering the very personalised nature of the
show and its design, it was surprising to discover that
Prince had invited support acts to open each show. It
wasn’t something that fazed stage manager Mike
Devlin too much. “We don’t have a lot of ground to
work with up there to make everything fit, but as long
as we have our 15-20 minutes to get the main show
ready to go, then all is fine. It’s no big deal.”
Prince had already toured Musicology as an in-the-
round production three years ago, so this format
already felt familiar. Reynolds: “The only real difficulty is
that the shape of the symbol lends itself to playing
down the length of the arrow, like a thrust, and almost
like it’s an end-on configuration. As a performer, to be
able to work the whole stage as 360° degrees is a little
more problematic than when you have a symmetrical
design.
Chris Reynolds Mike Devlin
Mark VanderWall
MILO in the roof
Bill Sheppell
Meyer Galileo systems at FOH
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5. Top: Production office plans of the arena.
Above: Garry ‘Sport’ Waldie, Leif Dixon and Stuart Hale in lighting world.
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“Also, because it’s not that
symmetrical to the floor or the room,
it throws up other issues like getting
the right sound coverage with sub-
bass, where normally you’d have
symmetrical focal points. The hang is
one thing, but when you get to the
floor, you need to be able to cover all
the nooks and crannies. So we’ve had
to zone the coverage and take each of
those zones on its own merit, and
effectively tailor it separately for the
area it covers. It took a while to get
the best results but I think we’ve now
arrived at a very good position.”
SONIC SOLUTIONS
Early on during the run of shows,
there was a shift of responsibilities in
the audio department which resulted
in Concert Sound partnering with Lars
Brogaard’s rental company, Major
Tom.
Reynolds explained: “I felt the
original sound design got a bit
muddled. We did the first three or
four shows with Concert Sound’s
Adamson Y-Axis system, and although
I had some long chats with Brock and
Jesse Adamson to find a better way
forward, we weren’t getting it right in
here, possibly because we might have
approached it in slightly the wrong
way at the beginning.
“We originally had delay points in
the design, and also brought in some
V-DOSC delays from Britannia Row,
as well as patching into the house JBL
VerTec rig, but it all became too
much.”
FOH engineer Bill Sheppell was a
late addition to the crew who arrived
in late July. “At the point I came in,
there wasn’t a sound guy making the
call for what he wanted, and that had
to be fixed,” he said. “I was told it was
an Adamson rig and I was happy with
that, having used it before, but their
people wanted to do a six hang main
PA while the show was designed
around an eight hang, and it wasn’t
going to change because of screen
positions and other factors. We ended
up with a configuration that wasn’t
working.”
Another problem was signal loss
due to damping of the cable length.
“The amps were up in the catwalk and
we had 100m cables. We figured we
were losing about 8-9dB due to
damping through the copper. The
problem evaporates when your amps
are in the loudspeakers themselves,
which is the situation we now have
with the Meyer gear.”
Reynolds continued: “I already
One of PRG’s MAC 2000-loaded Pantographs
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6. knew the Meyer Sound MILO system from Rod
Stewart’s tour and, unlike the Adamson, it was already
tried and tested in-the-round, although I think the Y-
Axis a great system. The solution was to sub-contract
Major Tom as the Meyer provider, while Concert
Sound, as the main contractor, handled the monitor
system, sidefills and all the control.
“I just felt the MILO offered a much simpler
solution; the delays are now gone and we’ve ended
up with a great result from two excellent rental
companies.”
In total, the PA system comprised 104 self-
powered Meyer MILO cabinets, 20 M'elodies, 40 x
700-HPs and seven UPA-1Ps. These were all aligned,
processed, monitored and predicted with Galileo 616,
SIM 3, RMS and MAPP Online Pro systems. The initial
set-up was handled by Michael Maxson.
I joined Bill Sheppell at the FOH position just as
he was finishing off “torturing the crew” with his
regular line-check choice of a Steely Dan CD. His
choice of console was a Digidesign Venue D-Show
whose digital recall facilities, he said, were a great asset
in helping him get immediately into the mix ballpark
when loading back into the O2 after the gaps between
shows.
Sheppell commented: “Prince changes the set list
every night and we don’t know what he’s going to do
until just before each show, but every song has a
snapshot and it’s great to just order that set list on the
console digitally.
“The interesting thing is that there are no
significant fader moves. Prince doesn’t want that — he
prefers the dynamics to come from the band. So I
have my faders set in fader-safe mode and all I’m really
doing is changing some reverbs and delays, which are
all very good-sounding plug-ins.
“There’s no outboard here at all. The only gear
you see are the Meyer Galileo system processors, and
the Lake I/Os for EQ and grouping my matrices. I
never work without my Lakes — I love those Mesa
filters.”
Sheppell described the microphone choice as a
“mix of everything, stuff that I’ve used for years”.
Shure KSM9s were used on all vocals, Beyer TGX45
headsets with Shure wireless packs for the dancing
backing vocalists, Heil PR40 and Shure Beta91 paired
for kick drum, PR20 on bottom snare, Beta98 on top
snare, Heil PR30 and two Shure KSM32s on Prince’s
guitar.
“You don’t see too many Heil mics on the road
but they sound great on guitar,” said Sheppell. “A friend
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Video director Skip Twitchell
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of mine, Toby Francis who mixes Velvet Revolver, knows Bob Heil
who was keen to send some stuff over to me. It’s a small company
but he sure knows how to make a great microphone.”
Monitor engineer Mark VanderWall is also a Digidesign Venue
D-Show user — his desk was split into two for Prince and he
presided over 60 inputs, generating a total of 24 mixes to a mixture
of stage wedges and in-ear systems.
While the IEM side was straightforward, with Sennheiser G2
wireless systems and a hard-wired Shure choice for the keyboard
player, the monitor loudspeakers appeared to be a ‘mix’n’match’
affair with Adamson M15 wedges (yes, Adamson still played a part), a
pair of Meyer UPAs for keyboards, JBL VerTec sidefills and EAW
KF755 downfills.
LIGHTING
PRG Europe provided a full lighting package — Robin Wain, crew chief Andy
Mitchinson and the rest of the PRG team did “a damn fine job”, according to Chris
Reynolds, who was very impressed with the company’s custom-made, concertina-
like Pantographs, which each carried a Martin MAC 2000 profile and moved up and
down during the show on Kinesys Elevation 1+ motors, controlled by Vector
software.
“That idea was around from the start,” said Reynolds. “It’s a big part of the
show and creates a lot of different layers and 3D looks. The main focus is on Prince
himself.”
The hot seat was reserved for lighting designer/director Garry ‘Sport’ Waldie
who has been a Prince associate for the last four years and gained previous in-the-
round experience with both the Purple One and Metallica.
“You always get a lot of direction from Prince,” said Waldie. “I submitted a
design for these shows in the beginning but it got changed around because he had
the theory that he wanted everything to be pushed to the outer sides. That’s why
we have the eight pods that are hidden behind the four PA hangs.
“There’s a large number of Martin MAC 2000 washes and profiles on the
show. They form the lion’s share of the system, and I love the way they perform.
Many of them are on the Pantographs and the pods, of which four also have
Syncrolites on the bottom. At first, we were thinking about having lights on pipes,
staggered at different heights, but then PRG came up with the Pantographs which
are flat — not the usual four-sided types.”
Also in the spec were audience Moles and ACLs “for instant gratification”,
Atomic strobes, High End F-100 and Le Maitre G300 smoke generators, Le Maitre
FreezeFog Pro dry ice machines, and half mirror balls which appeared in four
places around the stage. “The mirror balls provide a look that appeared on the last
tour, and Prince really likes that,” said Waldie. “We don’t have a lot of gimmicks or
specials — it’s really about the man and the music.”
That said, for the majority of the show, Waldie delivered a colossal number of
lighting cues and appeared to squeeze every feature out of each instrument in the
rig. Only occasionally did his pace relax — such as on Prince’s solo piano medley
— and the occasional total blackout served to heighten the drama.
Controlling the lighting was a grandMA console. “I’ve just made the change
after being a Hog II guy for many years,” explained Waldie. “I’m still learning the
desk and it was great to have the support of Demfis Fyssicopulos who came out
from Florida to get me up to speed.
“I’m glad I changed and with so many shows in one place, this was the time to
do it. I’ve never had any problems with the Hogs — we did a stadium tour with
three of them linked together and it was always very stable. I just need more
power and outputs for this job because I’m also running some video [e.g. fire and
ripple effects] to the Nocturne V-9 LED panels that run along the edge of the
stage.”
Lighting integration partner Control Freak Systems — who played a starring
role in the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Stadium Arcadium tour — provided assistance in
a variety of ways.
Said Waldie: “Leif Dixon
of Control Freaks has given me
a lot of extra programming
help and along with Stuart
White, they devised a method
whereby some of the drum
pads trigger a MIDI signal that
cues some strobe effects
automatically, which gives me
one less job to do!”
FRONT ROW EYES
American video rental giant
Nocturne Productions was
hired to provide a no-frills I-
Mag solution for those in the
‘nosebleed’ zone. “The front
row eyes for the top row
seats” is how video director
Skip Twitchell defined his job.
“It’s always that much easier to
sell tickets for the last three
rows if the punters know they
can see the artist up close.”
A Nocturne employee for
the last 23 years, Twitchell’s
recent touring work has included Tim McGraw & Faith Hill, Aerosmith and Paul
McCartney. “We have a fairly typical in-the-round video system for Prince,” he said.
“We have four long-lensed Ikegami 45L cameras at the four compass points of the
stage and a variety of fixed, moveable POV [proprietary] cameras for tight close-ups
of the band. There’s a screen hung in each of the four corners of the room, and we
send everything to them via 10kW Barco projectors.”
Other notables in the video crew included video engineer Dave Lemmink and
projectionist Noel Wyatt. Twitchell, who operated a Pinnacle i9000 switcher, added:
“Other than an introductory piece of VT [an appraisal of Prince’s career by several
high-profile personalities], the video is all live I-Mag. It’s a pretty simple show for
video world — nothing whizz-bang’s going on, but what we do, we aim to do it
right!”
SUSTENANCE
One might be forgiven for assuming that the catering contract went automatically to
Little Red Courgette, however, it was the team from Eat Your Hearts Out, led by
head chef Justin Chambers, who provided the crew and artists (and TPi) with quality
sustenance throughout the O2 residency.
Another company worthy of mention is Summit Steel, which as the resident
rigging supplier at the O2, provided services to Prince’s production team for all of
the load-in/out movement. The crew’s head rigger was Mike Farese.
As if 21 shows weren’t enough, Prince’s residency was also notable for its after-
show parties in the neighbouring IndigO2 club venue, as Chris Reynolds explained:
A beefy Syncrolite B52 stands proud.
Inset: A famous guitar.
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“We’ve duplicated a lot of our band gear and we
use the house sound and lighting rigs. So when
we’ve finished the main gig, we load a truck with a
few key items, take it over to the IndigO2 and do
another show.
“It varies every night, depending on what the
boss wants to do. It could be the band, Prince and
the band, maybe some special guests... any number
of variables could happen. We’ve had some
incredible nights in there. It’s a separately ticketed
event and the punters just have to take their
chances, and wait to see who comes on stage!”
After two months spent mostly ensconced on
the Greenwich peninsula, in the building formerly
known as the Millennium Dome, what was
Reynolds’ verdict on the new venue? “I like it a lot.
There have been a few minor issues with things not
being ready yet but like all new buildings, there are
bound to be some teething problems. But think it’s
been a steep learning curve for them and a very
good experience.
“They’ve established a lot of procedural matters
that weren’t strictly in place before and it’s been a
great opportunity for the staff to adjust quickly to
converting from one event to another. The O2
team are very helpful and considerate people, and
technically astute. The venue is very well equipped
and there are no issues with power, which is
generously distributed all around the building.
“Our audiences appear to enjoy coming here
and I, for one, would be more than happy to
return.”
TPi
Photography by Ian Tomey
Special thanks to Chris Reynolds,
Marshall Arts & Concerts West
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