Paul McCartney’s Longtime Lighting Director is Someone You Should Know
Wally Lees has been on the live concert scene for his entire adult life. For the last 13 years, he could be found behind a console directing the lighting for every show Paul McCartney has performed, with good reason. But it didn’t start out at the top for a Scottish lad who moved from Glasgow down to the Midlands of the U.K. with his family when he was nine. At 20, Wally got an offer from his best friend’s brother to work as an electrician at a cabaret in Watford under his supervision.
A Two-Week Gig
“What was supposed to be a two-week gig turned into six months of sleeping on my friend’s floor in a sleeping bag, while I learned” says Wally. The club had a three-truss system of conventional fixtures and a Zero 88 console of some sorts. Bands such as Ben E. King and Martha Reeves & the Vandellas would play his venue. If the acts did not have anyone to run the lights, Wally and his friend would fill the role. One day, an artist named Elkie Brooks was in town, and Wally got to talking to her LD, Phil Freeman. The LD explained that, after the show he was off to Bucharest and then Germany, etc. Wally thought to himself, “I could do with a bit of that,” and a seed was planted.
Soon after, Wally found himself employed by Zenith Lighting down in Cricklewood, in northwest London. Zenith was a major lighting vendor in the 1980s. Wally admits to sweeping floors and building cables for years. Samuelson Lighting ended up buying Zenith as well as becoming the Vari-Lite dealer over in the U.K. soon after. One day in 1984 Jim Barnett from Vari-Lite came into the warehouse. He needed someone to learn how to tech and run Vari-Lite fixtures. He sent Lees to Dallas to get trained in these robotic lights, and the LD has never looked back.
“Back in the 80’s, a Vari-Lite employee had to know how to operate and fix the lights,” Lees explains. “I had toured with Zenith doing the Telescans (an antique French-made scanner light fixture) for [British singer/songwriter] Chris Rea. But my first VL tour they sent me out on was [Austrian rocker/rapper] Falco. I was the one VL guy on that tour.”
I asked him how he networked into being an LD and away from being a tech and who some of his earlier friends were in this business. “I had met Jonathan Smeeton on a Thompson Twins tour in the 80’s. Ethan Weber was my crew chief and Abbey Rosen was the Director. Then somewhere along that time, I met Roy Bennett while working on a Duran Duran Notorious tour. A second Duran tour followed, which both Roy Bennett and John Featherstone designed. These guys were quite instrumental to my career. I ended up working on a big Depeche Mode Tour in 1988 that Jane Spears had designed. By the last show we did (at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena), I had decided that I wanted to come live in America.”
Across the Pond
Wally did just that, going freelance and settling in Chicago in 1989. There would be no more shop work after that. His English friend Featherstone had moved there, and Wally figured it would make sense to move to a town where he knew at least one person. He continued on as a freelance Vari-Lite operator, and had no problems staying busy. Even though he resided in Chicago for six years, he never worked for anyone in that town. His skills at directing other designer’s tours kept him steadily employed. He directed Fleetwood Mac tours for Curry Grant in the 1990’s. In 1992, he worked on another Bennett design for a Bryan Adams tour. Featherstone would run the conventionals while Lees ran the Vari-Lites.
Wally’s friendship with Bennett has been well-cemented over the years, leading up to his current gig, which appears to be life-long. I say that because this artist (McCartney) still fills stadiums all over the world. He never seems to slow down for any extended period before resurfacing at another show somewhere on the globe.
“As of this February, I will have been at this position for 14 years. I am by no means a full-time employee. But this production is quite a different animal from all the other tours I have done, and I say that in a good way.” To explain how this camp runs, I asked Wally to elaborate on this. “We tend to go to one country for two to three weeks, then home for a few, then gone again. We don’t actually know where we are going until a month before we leave. You would think a lot of touring folks would walk away from this schedule, but in reality, the same crew continues to come back every leg. Paul puts on an incredible show. It’s full ‘balls-on’ for two hours and 50 minutes every night. It’s fun to work for him.”
A Huge Number of Hits
I then inquired why he has been the sole lighting director for such an extended period of time, when the artist does take breaks. Lees answers, “We have over 90 songs in the console, any of which Paul can recall at any time. Then, every time we gear up for a few more shows, he might send out a memo saying ‘I’m thinking of doing these 10 numbers or so.’ I need to program those songs in as well, in case he pulls one out of the hat. Not sure who else could come in and take this over.” I indeed asked Roy this question when I ran into him last year. His response was, “Who could I teach to run this show? Who could commit to looking after one artist all these years? Wally has been indispensible to me.”
The tour runs in a different fashion these days. There were times when Wally and his crew carried the entire production around the world. Paul would dedicate months at a time to touring. With McCartney now heading out for shorter jaunts on different continents, I asked Wally how he manages to get his show correct everywhere he goes.
“The thing about working with Paul is that everyone watching the show is expecting an amazing visual experience. Roy Bennett gave the attendees these incredible production designs they have viewed for years, and we have to live up to that reputation no matter where we go. People are going to critique the lighting and have an opinion. I work hard to make sure there are no mistakes and that each show we do is as good as the next one.”
How does that work out with the way the shows are currently run? “Roy has streamlined the rig now that we don’t do dedicated three month long tours. Gone are a lot of the custom bits we would fly in and out during the show. Gone are structures that cannot easily be duplicated in another country. We still carry a bunch of lighting kit with us, that cannot be found in other countries, but we really depend on local gear a lot more these days.”
But with a show that has upwards of 300 moving lights, is there enough time in the day to clone a show and get it perfect? Well, that answer is no. “I will be in Brazil with one rig, then the next gig is in Lima, Peru with 300 different light fixtures.” But Wally and the production team have a way around it — good advance work, and a portable ESP studio.
“Upstaging has been looking after the lighting for Paul since, I think 2006-ish LSD before that. I started using grandMA1 consoles back in 2006. I sat in a loft at the old Upstaging warehouse while Demfis [Fyssicopulos] taught us how to run the things. I had been used to VL, Icon-style consoles and had a learning curve. But Upstaging always had visualizers for us to mimic the stage looks so I could see if I was programming correctly. In the old days, we would have weeks of production rehearsals to get a new production together. We no longer do those sort of things, but Roy does redesign the show, of course. We switch the lighting fixtures around, change some truss elements and add in new media. All of this means programming time is necessary to rework the show.”
Previz and ESP Files
Upstaging, of course has a beautiful previsualization suite at their facility, but Wally would prefer to work at home when not on the road. So they built him a portable ESP rack that they are happy to ship along with a grandMA2 console to his house whenever he needs it. Wally explains further, “When Roy revamps the system for a new run of dates, we chat about what fixtures will replace what other fixtures were doing in the last show design. Our basic cue structure for all the songs will stay the same, but the looks will change, sometimes completely 180° from what we had done previously.” But does he carry this portable studio with him? In a word, no.
“Tony Thompson has been a godsend to me. He runs the previz stuff at Upstaging and builds me individual ESP files for every country/location where we are headed. We amass the plot changes, fixture substitutions and patch info weeks before we get on site. It then takes me about a few days per show — more, if there are new songs added — to clone all the new fixtures and go through all 90 songs, cue-by-cue, to look for lighting issues that pop up.”
This helps Wally keep gainfully employed in between shows and actually is much more affordable for the production than renting space for production rehearsals. Right now, McCartney is booked through October. Does that leave Wally unemployed after that? It certainly does, but he doesn’t appear to be worried about it. I asked him why he’s always directing other people’s designs and never hung his own shingle out as a freelance designer.
Plenty of Busking
“I’ve had a fortunate career. My phone rings at the right time, and I’m never out of work long. The last few years, I found myself gainfully employed during McCartney’s downtime.” Running lights for a Tim McGraw and Faith Hill tour as well as doing a bit of Josh Groban touring kept him busy enough. With Paul’s love for performing live, I have a steady gig that I enjoy.”
I asked Wally if he ever gets tired of running the same show, or if he gets to punt much on his console. “It would get boring if we did the same stuff daily and timecoded this show. But even the band mixes it up. That’s the beauty of a live act like this. They are going to make mistakes at times. I am going to make mistakes at times. But isn’t that what the live rock show experience and feel is all about? I have a console with all these extra faders and executor buttons on them. They are loaded with instant changes that I can grab at any time. I may feel the need to brighten up a cue or hit some new accent punches at any time, and I love having that option. I may find a set of cues I like to execute differently and choose not to write them into the show ‘cause it’s so much fun to busk.”
Lastly, I ask him, if the designer Roy Bennett ever comes around anymore to check on things. “Absolutely. Not as much as he used to, but everyone really likes when he shows up. I think Paul and Barry Marshall (management) feel comfortable seeing his face. We actually set him up behind his own console with his own user profile in the console. He runs the audience lighting as well as the key light levels on the band members.”
After concluding the current batch of shows that ends this month, Paul McCartney will most likely take a break past the winter holidays. His usual modus operandi is to start up again around March/April of each year, but that’s never a guarantee.
Wally will return home to Los Angeles and his lovely wife of the last eight years, Molly Kaye. And wait for the phone to ring announcing the next round of dates, or a new challenge to come along.
