The list of top lighting designers in the world is a short one. No such list would be complete without Peter Morse, who is a story all in himself. From teenage folk singer to Emmy (as well as Cable ACE and Parnelli) award wins, he’s led a spectacular life. Articles chronicling his lighting career are many, but few know that lighting is just part of the long road Morse has traveled.
Peter was born and bred in Chicago. By the time he started school he was in the Glencoe suburbs just north of the city. He attended New Trier School, which had a big performing arts department (having the lead role in one of the school-produced musicals guaranteed you as much adoration as being on the football team). One day Peter found out that his high school hero, the starting QB, had tried out for a part in a school play. So he auditioned by singing in front of Dr. Peterman, the director of the music dept. He got a role as well as his first voice coach at 14 years of age.
As a kid, Morse had become pretty good at speed skating and imbibed from the ages of seven ‘til seventeen. He skated in packs where the members jostled for positions and worked physically against each other to get the lead (similar to today’s popular Short Track events). At one point, Morse was sent to Squaw Valley to see if he would be good enough to skate for the Olympic team in the 1960 Olympics. Once there, he found it was a different world. “We had to race against a clock; something that we didn’t do where I came from. I failed miserably, but it was a good experience.” When prodded, Peter will admit that he even tried his hand at barrel jumping on skates.
The Folk Years
Peter took folk singing gigs (as a soloist, and also as part of folk duos or trios) around campus. Chicago had a famous folk club on Rush St. in the early 60’s called the Gate of Horn. Once a week they had a Hootenanny Night, similar to today’s open mic night. Peter would try his luck there. One day a guy named Chad (he led the popular Chad Mitchell trio) was in the audience. He got Peter signed to his first record deal at age15.
By the time he was 16, he was sent to New York City to make a record.
“This was around 1959 or 60. Milt Okun, my producer, took me to a hootenanny at the Bitter End Cafe, a famous folk club down in Greenwich Village, in order to meet some songwriters. I remember a young then-unknown comedian by the name of Bill Cosby opened up.” In fact, among the writers Milt had Peter meet was a young unknown writer by the name of Bobby Dylan. Dylan gave him an acetate recording he had done of a few songs, including one called “Blowin in the Wind.” Peter reminisces, “Back then, singers made demo records on these cheap wax records. You could play them three or four times and they were worn out. I ended up recording that song in my session. But I did such a terrible job on it; it never made it to the final album! Milt, the producer, then took the song to another of his acts — Peter, Paul, and Mary. The rest is history! Of course, I may have at least been the first person to actually record “Blowin In The Wind”. That first album of mine was just terrible and of course it flopped.”
Peter toured during school breaks — opening folk club shows for the Smothers Brothers and others before he found himself back in Illinois, at the University of Illinois, taking pre-med classes. “Because that’s what we did and what my father wanted. Fortunately, my dad was a friend of old “Doc” Peterman — my high school mentor. ‘Doc’ persuaded my dad I had musical talent and that he should let me pursue that passion. I ended up back in New York studying music, voice, drama, and doing whatever I could to get by. This included working as an EMT in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood. That was quite an adventure!”
Morse continued to make the rounds around Greenwich Village until one day a friend told him that the well-known pop folk group called the New Christy Minstrels were having an open audition. He wasn’t interested in playing their “commercial” style of music, but he went and tried out anyway. He spent the next three years (from 1965-67) working with this group, cementing lifelong relationships with Kenny Rogers and Kim Carnes along the way. In 1966, after Del Webb’s Sahara casino opened in Lake Tahoe, the band was going to spend the summer opening up for Henry Mancini. They were the first band to ever play this theater in observance of its grand opening.
The Early Road
From 1967 to 1969, Peter resided in the Los Angeles area, working as a songwriter and singing background in sessions around town. He got a call from a friend asking him if he “wanted to make money on the road for a summer.” This amounted to working for a concert booking agency, making sure everyone on the bill was happy. He would pay the bands in cash every night, while collecting the larger check for his boss from the promoters.
Peter did several of these tours for this promoter, and as a bonus, he would serve as the opening act whenever he could. Bands like the Cowsills, the Classics IV, and the Sam and Dave Review were on these tours. At one point, Peter was working with The Friends of Distinction, an all-black band with hits such as “Grazing in the Grass.” (i.e., the “icandigit, hecandigit, shecandigit, wecandigit, theycandigit, youcandigit” song). One night, the band came up to Morse and told him he was the opener that evening. Of course, this was at an all-black college. Undaunted by being the only white person in the venue, he went on. “The boos started before I opened my mouth. Imagine this white guy singing ‘This land is your land’ and getting pelted with everything. The lead singer came out to quiet down the crowd. He explained that I was their ‘brother’— part of their touring ‘family’. The audience cheered and applauded. But as soon as he departed and I started singing, the booing began again!”
It was on one of these tours where Peter met Mac Davis, an established songwriter (for many an Elvis hit) and aspiring entertainer, who was heading places. “Mac took me on the road as his tour manager. Just me and Mac in a station wagon, driving gig-to-gig through the nights. I took the gig because he promised to help cut a record with me. That never quite happened,” the designer admits.
Mac eventually had a band behind him. He instructed Morse to go out and find him a lighting guy. Peter boldly lied, “I can do lights.” Mac asked him why he never told him. “You never asked,” was the reply that started a long journey into the field of lighting. Morse replies, “I started at a time when you could get away with creating simple lighting looks for a country artist. Nobody knew what a good light show was. I depended on a lot of local folks at venues. I’d point up at a light and ask ‘What’s that?’ They’d tell me it was an Altman 6 by 12. Clueless to its intended usage, I would point it somewhere and roll with it.”
As Mac Davis grew, Morse designed a light rig for him. He eventually carried four Genie towers with Pars on them, as was done back then. The turning point came when Mac was signed to headline a huge run of shows in Las Vegas at the old MGM Grand, which is now Ballys. Mac decided he wanted a proper lighting guy who could design a big show with hundreds of conventional fixtures (as automated fixtures were still merely an industry fantasy at this time). He turned to Frank Sinatra’s LD at the time, Bob Kiernan.
Peter explains, “It was a great experience for me. I mean 200 to 300 Par cans and Lekos of all sizes on one stage. It took three days to hang, gel and focus this monster light rig. They had a real lighting desk there; all I had ever seen prior to this was a 24 channel, two-scene console.” There was one glitch. A few days before Mac Davis was to open his show, Sinatra was playing across the street and was unhappy with his own lighting. He demanded that Bob come back and leave Mac Davis to concentrate on his own show. “So there I was, with this finely gelled and focused light rig, without a single cue in the console. I had only one day to put some cues together for the opening. However, by the end of that three-week run, I had a pretty good looking, fully programmed show,” jokes Morse.
From there, he continued working as Mac’s tour manager and LD. His lighting chops became known around Vegas, and he started collecting gigs. “Loretta Lynn was one of my first acts where I designed and produced a whole production. We even had multimedia, as I used side projectors in the show.” Davis’ managers were Jim Morey and Sandy Gallin. As they gathered more clients, Morse would design their productions. A young singer named Dolly Parton started opening for Mac’s shows, and Peter looked after her lighting for several decades.
Peter continued with his songwriting, with a few of his songs getting cut by other artists. One of these was a song called “The Bayou Song,” which Tina Turner cut on one of her albums. “One day she showed up as the guest star on Mac’s TV variety show. She walked into rehearsals and someone introduced us. Upon hearing my name, she asked if I was Peter-John Morse, the fellow on the writing credits behind ‘The Bayou Song.’ I informed her I was, and we had a good laugh.” That led to several years’ work touring with Tina.
Later on, Morse hooked up with Lionel Richie as he started his meteoric rise to fame in 1984 with All Night Long. Tina was the opening act on that tour, and Morse lit both artists for the year.
The Fire
One of the more horrific experiences one could ever be caught up in almost killed Morse. In 1980, Mac Davis was playing a residency at the old MGM in Vegas. Morse had done a show the night before and was scheduled to fly to Arizona in the early morning for a video shoot with singer Eddie Rabbitt. He was extremely proud of Mac’s light rig, as they had utilized ACL bulbs for many of the Par cans. (At the time, these were the new “IT” fixture).
Instead of catching a plane, he woke up to banging on his hotel walls and lots of shouting. He smelled the smoke and realized the hotel was on fire. Morse tried several ways to escape but there was just no way, as the smoke concentration in the halls was overwhelming. In addition, he was tripping over bodies in the smoky darkness. He made it back to his room where he filled the tub with water then preceded to soak the entire room as best he could. Finally the smoke was about to get the best of him, as it was even coming in through the electrical outlets. So, in order to breathe, he broke the room window (something they tell you not to do in event of fire). Unfortunately the window imploded, due to overhead currents from hovering helicopters. The glass slashed him in several places. He tore the sheets and wrapped them as bandages, then laid down on the floor expecting the worst. Finally some fire fighters kicked open the door and shouted, “We got a live one here.” Peter was saved.
After ten days in the hospital and barely saving his right hand from amputation, Morse was back at work. “Mac had rented Engelbert Humperdinck’s house for the MGM engagement, so we regrouped and recouped there. The casino was a mess from the fire, but all the new ACL pars were just sitting in a wet, smoky mass on the stage, designated as trash. One of the MGM lighting crew and I went in and removed all the lights. We cleaned them up and rented them for a couple years and made a “few bucks as mini-vendors.”
Technology
“I was always a big fan of Pars and other conventional fixtures. Even when I started using the first Panaspot moving lights from Morpheus, they were just the icing on the cake,” Peter flatly states. “In 1992, I was lighting Michael Jackson’s Dangerous tour and still had a lot of conventional fixtures. Something like 360 ACL pars and 60 Data Flash strobes made up a rear wall of lights that Michael just loved. One day Michael walked in and said, ‘Can I have those on the side too?’ I responded: ‘Of course you can.’ The manager went ballistic at the extra cost and said to me: ‘tell him he can’t do that.’ I instructed him that I just try to do what the artist asks for. It was the manager’s job to tell Michael otherwise… We ended up with “walls” of lights on the sides too!”
Peter did have his uses for moving lights, but he did it in his own manner. Michael Keller was often his programmer, and with his console, he would set the focus and color for the lights. But Peter (who preferred running the old 90 channel Celco Gold conventional desks or a comparable AVO console) insisted on controlling the shutters, iris and occasional tilt fly outs via his own desk. He was a master of flash with all his ACLs and shutter chases. His reputation for impeccable timing was noticed everywhere. He used Morpheus for years, because they offered him control of the entire light rig.
Years later, the lack of Par cans cost him a gig. “After I had been working with Tina Turner for a while, she got a starring role in the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome movie. Her management told me they wanted to see stage lighting that looked like the large fixtures in the movie. I had been using Obie Lighting at that point, and they had this new arc light pan/tilt large aperture Fresnel-type fixture that looked great. So I designed a show using about 50 of them. Tina came in and said something along the lines of “Honey, where are all my pars? You know I love the heat.” Peter explained that management had requested the effect, but, in fact, it was too late in rehearsals to make any changes. Peter went ahead and programmed the show with his new lights. It didn’t take long for the Thunderdome lights to start breaking down. Within a week’s time, it seemed that every moving light had broken, and they could not keep up with the repairs. In the end, she didn’t want Thunderdome. She wanted her Pars.”
By 1987, Lionel Richie was “Dancing on the Ceiling” with an over-the-top production. Peter had 100 moving lights to match his Pars as his career pushed forward. By the time he had finished that tour, Madonna had released her second album. Manager Freddy DeMann and agent Howard Rose had gotten Peter involved with Madonna briefly on another occasion, but this (“Who’s That Girl?”) was the first of her four world tours he would design. “To this day the most exciting production I ever worked on would be Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour. The set that John McGraw and Chris Lamb came up with was phenomenal, and the whole theatrical vibe was pretty amazing.”
Divas
“The Blond Ambition tour was my first foray into a fully automated lighting show. For rear followspots, I had Morpheus lights marry two of their Panaspots onto one big yoke that a truss spot operator could maneuver. They had laser sights on them, and I controlled their color, fades, iris, etc., from my console. It took four lighting consoles and four operators to run that show. The last of the four tours I did for her was the Drowned World tour in 2001.” (The Drowned World tour has since been lauded as one of the best lit concert tours by a group of lighting pros —ed.)
Morse talks about other fun tours, “Michael Jackson’s Dangerous tour was a fun project as well. One of my favorite elements: a wall of periaktoid columns (three-sided staging structures) upstage. One surface was covered with lights; the second was mirrored panels; and the third was a scenic set element. Each of the three sides would spin around to face the crowd, depending on the song. I worked with some quality programmers back then. I had Warren Flynn on Vari-Lites, Arnold Serame on Telescans, and Merle McLaine assisting on conventionals. Eric Wade was the Vari-Lite tech on that tour, and he was kept busy! Though the entire rig was still about 80 percent conventional, the existing VL gear was early generation.” He adds, “On Michael’s HIStory Tour, a few years later, I was blessed with equally great programmers — led by Benny Kirkham — and far more automated fixtures.”
Peter has had his share of working with Divas over the years. He has looked after Bette Midler since the late 1980s, including the most recent touring design done in 2015. “Bette’s a hoot. She had been semi-retired from the concert stage when we met, but we got along great. She has since produced several touring and in-house extravaganzas that I have been fortunate to light.”
Morse owns the rights to say that he illuminates the world’s biggest diva, Barbra Streisand. How did he land that one, I inquire? “Barbra had agreed to come back from a long break from live performance in order to perform at the big opening of the new Las Vegas MGM Grand Arena on New Years around 1994. John Rook was her television LD, with whom she had worked a great deal in the past. I worshipped that guy, and had the great fortune of having worked with him on several projects prior to this. I got a call and went down to meet the artist. Eventually, she asked if I knew John Rook. I blushed and told her the guy was like an idol to me, and I always considered it an honor to work with him. I have been fortunate to have lit her live tours and televised concerts ever since.”
Peter relocated his residence to South Lake Tahoe in the early 1980’s and has resided there since. In 1995, he was contacted to do the concert lighting scenes for the movie Showgirls. The filming took place in the casino that had taken over the Sahara; in the same showroom he had opened himself as a member of the New Christy Minstrels 30 years prior. “For the film shoot, the lighting crew loved me! Five days of semi-nude dance scenes, and the weekends for skiing!” Morse had them strip out all of the old lights from the venue so he could bring in state-of-the-art equipment for the scenes and multiple scene changes. After the filming completed, the showroom was closed forever and never restored to its original configuration. In a twist of fate, over a period of 30 years, Peter had been directly involved in the opening and the closing of this legendary theater.
Peter is far from retired, despite his seasoned career. Still taking on work, he gathered together a design team last year to take on heavy metal rockers X Japan, one of that country’s largest exports, whose dream was to play Madison Square Garden (fulfilled with their Oct. 14, 2014 show there). Among other ongoing projects, he is also currently involved in the design of a new production going into the largest state-owned theater in Berlin. He resides in his lake house in South Lake Tahoe, CA with his wife Young S Keum-Morse.
