HelloAngel
ONE love, blood, life
[SIMG]http://bonovox.interference.com/reviews/crankcover-thmb.jpg[/SIMG]
By Roland Schulte
2004.04
Bono in mono; in the recently released ?Crank It Up: Live Sound Secrets of the Top Tour Engineers?, author Clive Young explains how U2 decided on this groundbreaking audio approach for the PopMart tour. ?Crank It Up? is bursting with similar stories from tour engineers working with Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, Lenny Kravitz, Garbage, Bruce Springsteen, and many more. U2 fans will be especially interested in the book?s chapter on the band that includes behind-the-scene information straight from Joe O?Herlihy, U2?s long-time house engineer.
Clive Young recently spoke to Interference.com about the book, providing his insight on what it takes to make the good sound great.
Your book offers a unique angle of touring and proves that a live performance is definitely a team effort. How often do tour engineers also get involved in other areas of an artist's work?
It depends on the relationship between the artist and the engineer. For example, a lot of artists like Neil Young, Shania Twain and Bela Fleck take their studio engineers out on the road to handle the Front-of-House (FOH) mix; the mix for the audience that comes through the PA. One story I tell in "Crank It Up" is how Clive Franks, Elton John's FOH engineer since 1972, first met Elton in the late '60s when he recorded Elton's demos. A few years later, Elton brought him out on the road and he's been there ever since. On the other hand, Madonna has been known to bring one of her studio engineers along solely to do her monitor mix; the mix that the artist hears on stage.
Sometimes concert engineers take the other route, they understand what an artist is trying to do so well that the artist brings them into the studio. That happened to Kirk Kelsey, a nice guy who mixes FOH for Creed. He wound up engineering their second album, which sold 10 million copies, and then engineered/co-produced their third disc, which sold 6 million discs. That's a nice way to break into the record biz. Also, I know Joe O'Herlihy, U2's FOH engineer, works with those guys in the studio but I don't know to what extent.
In your experience, do tour schedules wait for the availability of preferred sound engineers?
No. These days, touring is the only part of the music business that is making money, largely because ticket prices have skyrocketed over the last six years. As a result, there's too much money at stake for a tour to be held up by any one person; and that includes the artists sometimes. Occasionally, it means a band has to go out without their favorite engineer but nowadays there's less loyalty between artists and engineers than there used to be anyway. Lifelong relationships like the one Joe O'Herlihy and U2 have are actually quite rare.
"Crank It Up" explains that concerts are often recorded from the soundboard. Do you know of any artist's plans to make these concerts available for sale and/or download?
At one time, "Crank It Up" actually had a huge chapter on how Pearl Jam releases its shows via the Internet and CDs that are mailed to fans within days of a show. Unfortunately, the chapter couldn't be included in the book for various reasons, which was a shame as it was pretty insightful. In any case, other bands that do this include Phish, Barenaked Ladies and Duran Duran, and Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones are rumored to be considering it for their next big tours.
Some acts like the Pixies and moe are pioneering the instant live CD-R format where you can buy a CD-R of the evening's concert as you leave the venue. This is a potentially huge new product for the music business and Clear Channel, the biggest concert promoter in the U.S., really wants it to happen, so you'll be seeing instant live CDs a lot more in the near future.
Your book includes a great chapter on Joe O'Herlihy's work with U2. Can you share any additional insight from Joe?
Joe has an overwhelming enthusiasm for what he does, he loves working with the band, he takes great pride in making them sound as good as he can, and he has a ton of respect for the audience. He makes it his mission not to merely present the group but to help open those lines of communication between U2 and the fans.
That sounds kind of lofty but if they didn't have a PA and you were sitting in the back row, you wouldn't be able to hear them and you'd think the show sucked, no matter how well they were playing. Well, the PA is like a phone line and Joe's the operator. When Bono makes a show in an arena feel very intimate and personal, most of that is because he's such a magnetic performer, but a fair amount of it is because Joe works hard to make sure that that sense of intimacy reaches all the way to the back row. It's a difficult skill to master and he does it well; he's The Edge of FOH engineers, no question.
The U2 chapter discusses how PopMart brought the world "Bono in mono," with a single large cluster of speakers placed high above center stage. The fans likely did not notice any difference in sound quality, but was this a compromise in your opinion?
I don't think it was a compromise, I think it was a hell of an experiment. It takes a lot of guts to say, "We're going to go out and play for 18 months for millions of people around the world, trying out an audio idea that no one's ever tried before." If the fans didn't notice a difference then I think they proved that it was doable. Whether it was worth doing in the future is another story. No one has tried it since on that scale, so maybe that says it all.
U2's island-like b-stage had it own speakers in PopMart. How could these speakers fill a stadium? Is some sound also routed to the front of the stage?
Yes, sound was definitely routed to the main PA at the stage. Having speakers around a b-stage is done largely to give you a focus point. If you were looking left to watch the b-stage but the sound was coming from your right, it would seem really weird, so b-stage speakers are there to give just enough oomph, so that what you see makes sense with what you hear.
On the third leg of the Elevation tour, U2 supplied a live Internet feed of one performance. Do you see this option being further exploited by U2 and other bands?
I think, for now, it's a cute novelty [but] until bandwidth increases, I don't think you'll see it that much. Also, there's a limited appeal to sitting at your desk watching a concert on a tiny computer window. I'll take having a drunk guy yelling in the seat next to me at a real concert over a sterile computer screen any day. All that said, there's a few sites that (legally) offer a lot of concerts over the net, the best known of which is Digital Club Network at dcn.com.
On the Elevation world tour, the sound engineers aimed speakers both above the stage and under the stage directly into the heart. Was the sound quality inside the heart noticeably different to the average ticket holder?
I didn't go into the heart during the shows so I couldn't tell you (I did get to walk on the heart when the arena was empty, though, which was a cool experience). With most any concert, the great irony is that people closest to the stage usually have the worst sound, they're not in the path of the main PA so they're covered by small speakers appropriately called "front fills" because they fill in the sound for the front rows. Next time your buddy shoves his scalped third-row tickets that he paid $600 for in your face, take heart in the fact that you'll hear a better show than he will.
Many artists, including U2, have a heavy video element involved in their show. In these instances, does the video crew work independently of the sound crew?
Yes. Concert sound, lighting and video all require specialists these days because the individual technologies are so complicated.
How do tour engineers adjust when fans are brought on stage to be guest musicians? Can these guest musicians hear themselves play?
If a band brings fans on to perform, it's typically part of the show so the audio crew is ready with the appropriate mics and such. Same thing for guest artists, who usually run through a song with the main act at soundcheck anyway. Even if bringing a guest on is a spur of the moment thing, it's very common for engineers to have extra mics, guitar lines, etc. set up at every show, regardless of whether there's a guest or not.
For instance, an engineer always wants to have a second microphone at the side of the stage in case the singer's mic goes dead. If the singer doesn't have a mic problem, that second mic will probably be handed to whatever guest sits in with the act.
Can guests hear themselves? Sure. No one wants to go on stage and look like an idiot, so they get their own monitor mix, which, again, is usually a permanent part of the monitor engineer's set up. Can fans hear themselves if they're onstage? Sometimes. They can't if a group uses "personal monitors" which are walkman-like headphones that they hear themselves on. Bono uses them, for instance. On the other hand, fans usually look so blown away to be on stage that it probably doesn't matter if they can't hear themselves.
Your book mentions US-based sound companies exclusively [Clair Brothers, Thunder, Showco]. Does the US have a technological edge in sound production?
No, not really. Sound companies around the world provide crews and specialized pro audio gear that they've bought from manufacturers (although some build their own proprietary gear). As a result, no one country has an advantage. For what it's worth, many of the best known pro audio manufacturers, the people who build mixing consoles, PAs and so on, are based in Europe, particularly England and Germany.
In your book, Jeff Powell talks about having fans critique his mix rather than gear experts. Do other sound engineers use this technique? Are sound checks sometimes opened to the public for this reason?
Jeff mixes for the jam band O.A.R. and they allow their fans to patch into the FOH mixing console to record shows. The band really made its mark and built up its fan base due to fans trading shows to each other so the musicians value what their fans think about the mix. Having fans critique is very uncommon, but it's certainly valid to an extent. No one likes having someone watching over their shoulder at work, no matter what job they do for a living, so I suspect Jeff would prefer to not be critiqued by people who perhaps don't have a complete understanding of what he does and what hurdles he faces. That said, as he points out in the book, the fans are ultimately buying the ticket, so he and the band should make them happy. If letting fans critique the mix will help make the shows better, then that's a tool he's willing to use.
As for the last question, soundchecks are usually opened to the public for promotional purposes, like radio contests and stuff like that. Any venue, from a club to a stadium, sounds very different once it is filled with soft, sound-absorbing bodies in the seats so it wouldn't be an accurate way to do a focus group on the sound.
The impressive group of tour engineers interviewed in your book is entirely male. Are women also becoming involved in the tour engineering industry?
Remember that unreleased Pearl Jam chapter? Their monitor engineer is a very nice, extremely smart woman and I was frustrated that I couldn't include her in the book. There are more women on the road than there used to be but they're still something of a rarity. Overall, I think women engineers face a different set of issues than the men. I have never been able to discuss those issues with female engineers because they don't want to be interviewed based on their gender, they want to be interviewed because they kick ass at their job, and I totally understand that.
However, I don't think the gender-specific issues they face are that different from women in any other job. I'm sure there are still cases of discrimination and sexism in the industry, much as there are in every industry, unfortunately. There's also issues about balancing a career against biological clocks, etc., which is pretty common for all working women. I once read somewhere that overall, women have better hearing than men, so who knows? We'd probably have better concerts if there were more female engineers so we can only hope that we see more of them behind the mixing desk.
What technology is being developed that will impact how tour engineers mix sound in the future?
Digital mixing is just starting to creep into the concert world, even though recording studios have had it for years. Without going into the technical side of things, digital desks give engineers greater control over the sound of a show than ever before. The chapter on Sade's tour in "Crank It Up" explains this with a lot of detail for those who are interested.
Alan Richardson, Elton John's "stage sound sage," offers some great advice in you book on fixing sound problems. Is digital technology helping fix these problems, or complicating the issue further?
It depends on the engineer, because digital technology is a tool and a tool is only useful if you think about how you use it. For instance, a hammer is great for putting a nail in a wall, it can also be used to open a glass jar but that's a stupid way to open a jar.
In your writing career, which includes working as senior editor of Pro Sound News, you have witnessed the ins and outs of the touring industry. Have you also worked as a tour engineer along the way? If so, what was your first mixing gig?
I haven't worked as a tour engineer. Suffice it to say, I'm much better at writing than I am at mixing.
What is the craziest tour story you can share?
There's a few good ones in "Crank It Up," like when the band Tool registered on the Richter scale in New Zealand, or the (pre-Internet) time in Scotland that Gene Simmons demanded that his engineer find him 100 different siren samples by the next morning. Probably my favorite story in the book, however, is how the Red Hot Chili Peppers' engineer got into the business because he bought an Indian hookah from a homeless guy when he was 16.
Here's a story that's not in the book about the night I covered the Sex Pistols for their chapter in "Crank It Up." It was a really chaotic show at Roseland in New York City, the Pistols never played NYC back in the '70s so this was their first time playing there and the crowd was just out of control. Mosh pits everywhere, fights breaking out, no room to move because the place was way over-sold, and it was disgustingly hot and muggy in there.
In the middle of all that, you had the Pistols just blowing the roof off the place; Lydon was raging away and Steve Jones was just a complete force of nature that night, with 20 years of anger at being ignored coming out in his playing. It was an amazing performance and that just made the entire crowd even more turbulent.
I was sitting in the FOH mixing area with the engineer, Alan Perman, and we were surrounded by police barricades and about five of the biggest, meanest bouncers you ever saw. They were so ugly, I don't even want to imagine what their mothers looked like. In New York, Roseland is known for having the most heartless security guys in town, so what happened next was really surprising.
We were surrounded on all four sides by mosh pits that were really mixing it up, and at one point, this guy sort of fell over on to one of the police barricades, and he looked like death. He was cut up, his brand-new concert t-shirt was in shreds, he had the beginnings of a black eye, his forehead looked like a skinned knee, and to top it off, he was very drunk or stoned or both. Dude had problems.
One of the security monsters stomped over to shove the guy off the barricade, but once he got close, he saw that the guy was in bad shape, "30 seconds from falling into a coma"-type shape. The music was so loud, I couldn't hear them talk, but the bouncer basically said, "Are you OK?" The guy weakly mimed that he needed water, so the bouncer held up one finger as if to say, "Give me one minute," and did the unthinkable; he helped the poor guy out. He ran off to the mixing desk, where the crew had a cooler of water and beers, grabbed a bottled water, and ran back to pre-coma boy. The guard screwed off the top and handed it to the guy, who chugged down about half the bottle in one gulp. Clearly, the security guy just saved a life.
Then, to show his gratitude to the bouncer who had acted very humanely and not very bouncerly at all, the guy spit an entire mouthful of water in his face. Then he cocked his arm back and chucked the bottle as hard as he could towards the stage, creating this giant arc of water spilling out onto the crowd, before it landed, hitting some girl in the head near the stage.
The security guy, dripping in spit and water, and totally humiliated in front of his fellow bouncers, put out his big paw, grabbed the guy by the face and gave him one giant shove back into the crowd. The punk flew back, arms flailing everywhere, until he landed flat on his back, right at the center of the mosh pit. We never saw him again.
?Crank It Up? is available at www.cliveco.com, and bookstores and musical instrument stores everywhere.
By Roland Schulte
2004.04
Bono in mono; in the recently released ?Crank It Up: Live Sound Secrets of the Top Tour Engineers?, author Clive Young explains how U2 decided on this groundbreaking audio approach for the PopMart tour. ?Crank It Up? is bursting with similar stories from tour engineers working with Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, Lenny Kravitz, Garbage, Bruce Springsteen, and many more. U2 fans will be especially interested in the book?s chapter on the band that includes behind-the-scene information straight from Joe O?Herlihy, U2?s long-time house engineer.
Clive Young recently spoke to Interference.com about the book, providing his insight on what it takes to make the good sound great.
Your book offers a unique angle of touring and proves that a live performance is definitely a team effort. How often do tour engineers also get involved in other areas of an artist's work?
It depends on the relationship between the artist and the engineer. For example, a lot of artists like Neil Young, Shania Twain and Bela Fleck take their studio engineers out on the road to handle the Front-of-House (FOH) mix; the mix for the audience that comes through the PA. One story I tell in "Crank It Up" is how Clive Franks, Elton John's FOH engineer since 1972, first met Elton in the late '60s when he recorded Elton's demos. A few years later, Elton brought him out on the road and he's been there ever since. On the other hand, Madonna has been known to bring one of her studio engineers along solely to do her monitor mix; the mix that the artist hears on stage.
Sometimes concert engineers take the other route, they understand what an artist is trying to do so well that the artist brings them into the studio. That happened to Kirk Kelsey, a nice guy who mixes FOH for Creed. He wound up engineering their second album, which sold 10 million copies, and then engineered/co-produced their third disc, which sold 6 million discs. That's a nice way to break into the record biz. Also, I know Joe O'Herlihy, U2's FOH engineer, works with those guys in the studio but I don't know to what extent.
In your experience, do tour schedules wait for the availability of preferred sound engineers?
No. These days, touring is the only part of the music business that is making money, largely because ticket prices have skyrocketed over the last six years. As a result, there's too much money at stake for a tour to be held up by any one person; and that includes the artists sometimes. Occasionally, it means a band has to go out without their favorite engineer but nowadays there's less loyalty between artists and engineers than there used to be anyway. Lifelong relationships like the one Joe O'Herlihy and U2 have are actually quite rare.
"Crank It Up" explains that concerts are often recorded from the soundboard. Do you know of any artist's plans to make these concerts available for sale and/or download?
At one time, "Crank It Up" actually had a huge chapter on how Pearl Jam releases its shows via the Internet and CDs that are mailed to fans within days of a show. Unfortunately, the chapter couldn't be included in the book for various reasons, which was a shame as it was pretty insightful. In any case, other bands that do this include Phish, Barenaked Ladies and Duran Duran, and Paul McCartney and the Rolling Stones are rumored to be considering it for their next big tours.
Some acts like the Pixies and moe are pioneering the instant live CD-R format where you can buy a CD-R of the evening's concert as you leave the venue. This is a potentially huge new product for the music business and Clear Channel, the biggest concert promoter in the U.S., really wants it to happen, so you'll be seeing instant live CDs a lot more in the near future.
Your book includes a great chapter on Joe O'Herlihy's work with U2. Can you share any additional insight from Joe?
Joe has an overwhelming enthusiasm for what he does, he loves working with the band, he takes great pride in making them sound as good as he can, and he has a ton of respect for the audience. He makes it his mission not to merely present the group but to help open those lines of communication between U2 and the fans.
That sounds kind of lofty but if they didn't have a PA and you were sitting in the back row, you wouldn't be able to hear them and you'd think the show sucked, no matter how well they were playing. Well, the PA is like a phone line and Joe's the operator. When Bono makes a show in an arena feel very intimate and personal, most of that is because he's such a magnetic performer, but a fair amount of it is because Joe works hard to make sure that that sense of intimacy reaches all the way to the back row. It's a difficult skill to master and he does it well; he's The Edge of FOH engineers, no question.
The U2 chapter discusses how PopMart brought the world "Bono in mono," with a single large cluster of speakers placed high above center stage. The fans likely did not notice any difference in sound quality, but was this a compromise in your opinion?
I don't think it was a compromise, I think it was a hell of an experiment. It takes a lot of guts to say, "We're going to go out and play for 18 months for millions of people around the world, trying out an audio idea that no one's ever tried before." If the fans didn't notice a difference then I think they proved that it was doable. Whether it was worth doing in the future is another story. No one has tried it since on that scale, so maybe that says it all.
U2's island-like b-stage had it own speakers in PopMart. How could these speakers fill a stadium? Is some sound also routed to the front of the stage?
Yes, sound was definitely routed to the main PA at the stage. Having speakers around a b-stage is done largely to give you a focus point. If you were looking left to watch the b-stage but the sound was coming from your right, it would seem really weird, so b-stage speakers are there to give just enough oomph, so that what you see makes sense with what you hear.
On the third leg of the Elevation tour, U2 supplied a live Internet feed of one performance. Do you see this option being further exploited by U2 and other bands?
I think, for now, it's a cute novelty [but] until bandwidth increases, I don't think you'll see it that much. Also, there's a limited appeal to sitting at your desk watching a concert on a tiny computer window. I'll take having a drunk guy yelling in the seat next to me at a real concert over a sterile computer screen any day. All that said, there's a few sites that (legally) offer a lot of concerts over the net, the best known of which is Digital Club Network at dcn.com.
On the Elevation world tour, the sound engineers aimed speakers both above the stage and under the stage directly into the heart. Was the sound quality inside the heart noticeably different to the average ticket holder?
I didn't go into the heart during the shows so I couldn't tell you (I did get to walk on the heart when the arena was empty, though, which was a cool experience). With most any concert, the great irony is that people closest to the stage usually have the worst sound, they're not in the path of the main PA so they're covered by small speakers appropriately called "front fills" because they fill in the sound for the front rows. Next time your buddy shoves his scalped third-row tickets that he paid $600 for in your face, take heart in the fact that you'll hear a better show than he will.
Many artists, including U2, have a heavy video element involved in their show. In these instances, does the video crew work independently of the sound crew?
Yes. Concert sound, lighting and video all require specialists these days because the individual technologies are so complicated.
How do tour engineers adjust when fans are brought on stage to be guest musicians? Can these guest musicians hear themselves play?
If a band brings fans on to perform, it's typically part of the show so the audio crew is ready with the appropriate mics and such. Same thing for guest artists, who usually run through a song with the main act at soundcheck anyway. Even if bringing a guest on is a spur of the moment thing, it's very common for engineers to have extra mics, guitar lines, etc. set up at every show, regardless of whether there's a guest or not.
For instance, an engineer always wants to have a second microphone at the side of the stage in case the singer's mic goes dead. If the singer doesn't have a mic problem, that second mic will probably be handed to whatever guest sits in with the act.
Can guests hear themselves? Sure. No one wants to go on stage and look like an idiot, so they get their own monitor mix, which, again, is usually a permanent part of the monitor engineer's set up. Can fans hear themselves if they're onstage? Sometimes. They can't if a group uses "personal monitors" which are walkman-like headphones that they hear themselves on. Bono uses them, for instance. On the other hand, fans usually look so blown away to be on stage that it probably doesn't matter if they can't hear themselves.
Your book mentions US-based sound companies exclusively [Clair Brothers, Thunder, Showco]. Does the US have a technological edge in sound production?
No, not really. Sound companies around the world provide crews and specialized pro audio gear that they've bought from manufacturers (although some build their own proprietary gear). As a result, no one country has an advantage. For what it's worth, many of the best known pro audio manufacturers, the people who build mixing consoles, PAs and so on, are based in Europe, particularly England and Germany.
In your book, Jeff Powell talks about having fans critique his mix rather than gear experts. Do other sound engineers use this technique? Are sound checks sometimes opened to the public for this reason?
Jeff mixes for the jam band O.A.R. and they allow their fans to patch into the FOH mixing console to record shows. The band really made its mark and built up its fan base due to fans trading shows to each other so the musicians value what their fans think about the mix. Having fans critique is very uncommon, but it's certainly valid to an extent. No one likes having someone watching over their shoulder at work, no matter what job they do for a living, so I suspect Jeff would prefer to not be critiqued by people who perhaps don't have a complete understanding of what he does and what hurdles he faces. That said, as he points out in the book, the fans are ultimately buying the ticket, so he and the band should make them happy. If letting fans critique the mix will help make the shows better, then that's a tool he's willing to use.
As for the last question, soundchecks are usually opened to the public for promotional purposes, like radio contests and stuff like that. Any venue, from a club to a stadium, sounds very different once it is filled with soft, sound-absorbing bodies in the seats so it wouldn't be an accurate way to do a focus group on the sound.
The impressive group of tour engineers interviewed in your book is entirely male. Are women also becoming involved in the tour engineering industry?
Remember that unreleased Pearl Jam chapter? Their monitor engineer is a very nice, extremely smart woman and I was frustrated that I couldn't include her in the book. There are more women on the road than there used to be but they're still something of a rarity. Overall, I think women engineers face a different set of issues than the men. I have never been able to discuss those issues with female engineers because they don't want to be interviewed based on their gender, they want to be interviewed because they kick ass at their job, and I totally understand that.
However, I don't think the gender-specific issues they face are that different from women in any other job. I'm sure there are still cases of discrimination and sexism in the industry, much as there are in every industry, unfortunately. There's also issues about balancing a career against biological clocks, etc., which is pretty common for all working women. I once read somewhere that overall, women have better hearing than men, so who knows? We'd probably have better concerts if there were more female engineers so we can only hope that we see more of them behind the mixing desk.
What technology is being developed that will impact how tour engineers mix sound in the future?
Digital mixing is just starting to creep into the concert world, even though recording studios have had it for years. Without going into the technical side of things, digital desks give engineers greater control over the sound of a show than ever before. The chapter on Sade's tour in "Crank It Up" explains this with a lot of detail for those who are interested.
Alan Richardson, Elton John's "stage sound sage," offers some great advice in you book on fixing sound problems. Is digital technology helping fix these problems, or complicating the issue further?
It depends on the engineer, because digital technology is a tool and a tool is only useful if you think about how you use it. For instance, a hammer is great for putting a nail in a wall, it can also be used to open a glass jar but that's a stupid way to open a jar.
In your writing career, which includes working as senior editor of Pro Sound News, you have witnessed the ins and outs of the touring industry. Have you also worked as a tour engineer along the way? If so, what was your first mixing gig?
I haven't worked as a tour engineer. Suffice it to say, I'm much better at writing than I am at mixing.
What is the craziest tour story you can share?
There's a few good ones in "Crank It Up," like when the band Tool registered on the Richter scale in New Zealand, or the (pre-Internet) time in Scotland that Gene Simmons demanded that his engineer find him 100 different siren samples by the next morning. Probably my favorite story in the book, however, is how the Red Hot Chili Peppers' engineer got into the business because he bought an Indian hookah from a homeless guy when he was 16.
Here's a story that's not in the book about the night I covered the Sex Pistols for their chapter in "Crank It Up." It was a really chaotic show at Roseland in New York City, the Pistols never played NYC back in the '70s so this was their first time playing there and the crowd was just out of control. Mosh pits everywhere, fights breaking out, no room to move because the place was way over-sold, and it was disgustingly hot and muggy in there.
In the middle of all that, you had the Pistols just blowing the roof off the place; Lydon was raging away and Steve Jones was just a complete force of nature that night, with 20 years of anger at being ignored coming out in his playing. It was an amazing performance and that just made the entire crowd even more turbulent.
I was sitting in the FOH mixing area with the engineer, Alan Perman, and we were surrounded by police barricades and about five of the biggest, meanest bouncers you ever saw. They were so ugly, I don't even want to imagine what their mothers looked like. In New York, Roseland is known for having the most heartless security guys in town, so what happened next was really surprising.
We were surrounded on all four sides by mosh pits that were really mixing it up, and at one point, this guy sort of fell over on to one of the police barricades, and he looked like death. He was cut up, his brand-new concert t-shirt was in shreds, he had the beginnings of a black eye, his forehead looked like a skinned knee, and to top it off, he was very drunk or stoned or both. Dude had problems.
One of the security monsters stomped over to shove the guy off the barricade, but once he got close, he saw that the guy was in bad shape, "30 seconds from falling into a coma"-type shape. The music was so loud, I couldn't hear them talk, but the bouncer basically said, "Are you OK?" The guy weakly mimed that he needed water, so the bouncer held up one finger as if to say, "Give me one minute," and did the unthinkable; he helped the poor guy out. He ran off to the mixing desk, where the crew had a cooler of water and beers, grabbed a bottled water, and ran back to pre-coma boy. The guard screwed off the top and handed it to the guy, who chugged down about half the bottle in one gulp. Clearly, the security guy just saved a life.
Then, to show his gratitude to the bouncer who had acted very humanely and not very bouncerly at all, the guy spit an entire mouthful of water in his face. Then he cocked his arm back and chucked the bottle as hard as he could towards the stage, creating this giant arc of water spilling out onto the crowd, before it landed, hitting some girl in the head near the stage.
The security guy, dripping in spit and water, and totally humiliated in front of his fellow bouncers, put out his big paw, grabbed the guy by the face and gave him one giant shove back into the crowd. The punk flew back, arms flailing everywhere, until he landed flat on his back, right at the center of the mosh pit. We never saw him again.
?Crank It Up? is available at www.cliveco.com, and bookstores and musical instrument stores everywhere.
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