A few months ago I got an email from Kim Martin, an LD I met when she toured with Ringo, some 20 years ago. I had not seen her since she was the LD for Natalie Merchant in the 1990s. She inquired why I never seem to write about female lighting designers. I honestly don’t know why, as I have met and learned quite a bit from them my whole life. Looking back, I can’t believe how many great women designers share my job in the concert biz. And they all taught me something about lighting. They didn’t make it because they are women; they made it because they have talent.
Visual Visionaries
I grew up enjoying the music of the Grateful Dead in the 1970s. When I started going to their shows I noticed they had a woman running their lights. Candace Brightman illuminated this band through their career, and I was fortunate enough to work with them in the late 1980s. She would design these cool geometrical shapes of truss that jettisoned off at bizarre angles. Crew chief Dan English would custom-weld new corner blocks each month it seemed. She was using MacDraw to send light plots into the Morpheus Lights’ shop each leg — the first CAD drawings I ever saw. And she mixed it up; she would never use the same light rig for two tour legs in a row.
Candace lit a band with no set list. So she had an interesting way of running lights back in the 1980s. She would divide the light rig into two groups of lights and put them on separate consoles. She would tend to the key lights and the illumination of the band. On the other console would be a bunch of other moving lights, and an operator whose job it was to light air and come up with really cool looks with color and fans. She taught and encouraged me to punt with jam bands.
I toured with the Talking Heads in the early 1980s. The first year I went out, they had a woman named Carol Dodds running the light desk. It was an interesting light show, driven by David Byrne, the lead singer. Carol went on to light REO and a few other acts before becoming one of the first accomplished video directors on tour. Fifteen years later, we met up and toured with the Eagles. The next year, the Talking Heads hired Beverly Emmons, a famous Broadway LD, to help light the Stop Making Sense tour. She collaborated with the singer, and it was the first time I saw someone use “storyboards” that illustrated where everyone would stand and what lights would be used for each song. I had seen these in college while working on theater productions, but never for a rock show. Abbey Rosen [Holmes] was working with me at See Factor at the time, and she directed the touring show. Abbey was an accomplished touring electrician before that tour, and she is now a world-renowned designer for all kinds of productions.
The Few, The Proud…
I met Marilyn Lowey back in the 1980s while working for Neil Diamond. She’s designed his lighting for as long as anyone can remember. In fact, Patrick Stansfield used to refer to her lighting guys as Marilyn’s Marines. I worked with her before she used moving lights, but let me tell you, she knew how to move light beams to make mystical looks that were just plain sexy. She taught me the magic one could get when they lit a performer with different colors from opposite sides of the stage. She would write subtle chases with PARs that made it seem like the musicians were on fire, the way they shimmied in the glow. But most of all, I remember (and sometimes curse) the hours I would spend in the truss focusing these RDS machines on the band. These Japanese 2K projectors had a film loop that would circle around in front of a bright hot 2K lamp. It would sometimes take 20 minutes to get four of these focused perfectly for her. But she treated us well, and we had nothing but respect for her craft and dedication. The image projected was a cloud on the band, so basically you had the same thing you would get with an animation wheel on a moving light today. Marilyn was just 20 years ahead of her time. She was the first LD I ever saw who ran two consoles simultaneously.
Kathy Beer and I spent a month this year fighting clone wars on the grandMA2 in Australia. She had inherited an Alicia Keys show that took the majority of a day to clone and focus. The original show programmer had recorded the values of every attribute into every cue — a nightmare show to clean up or clone. I went down there with John Legend to do a co-headline thing. My gig was simple. She was an incredible sport who just kept working until doors, then killed it every night. She and her mad skills are out pushing buttons for Katy Perry now.
Skills and Knowledge
Kille Knobel has probably taught lighting design and basic console operation to more of my friends than I can count. I met her back around 1995 when I used LSD Icons as the moving lights on a tour. Back then, you needed the dedicated Icon console if you wanted to use those fixtures. So if you rented the lights, you got a separate console with an operator who was likely taught by her. That was a lifetime ago. Kille programmed a great many shows and has a great eye. She needs to be commended on her design work more nowadays. She designs Pearl Jam and Soundgarden live shows, often touring with these huge acts for weeks at a time. I have watched her work with Pearl Jam over the years via You Tube. For years, certain bands were more concerned with the message they were giving at their shows and didn’t want to be upstaged by the lighting. I think Pearl Jam may have been one of those acts. But if you watch the transformation to what they are doing nowadays compared to the 1990s lighting, it is quite phenomenal.
While I know plenty of women designers (too many to mention here), I only know one woman who can pull off designing lighting for tours and being a mom to three youngsters. I had to ask Kille recently how she could do this, as it’s unfathomable to me how she fits her schedule into a mere 24 hours each day. The secret is having a partner who totally understands what you do and has your back. By loving and marrying a guy who used to tour, but now works as a promoter rep, seems like a good start. She’s also blessed with a day job (if you consider working the weird hours required for lighting Jimmy Kimmel Live a day job) that allows her freedom to design these tours. Last of all, she happens to work for some artists who don’t like to leave home themselves for months at a time. Bands that like some sort of home life and family stability suit her needs.
This month, I handed the lighting duties for Imagine Dragons off to a women out of New York named Sarah Landau. She is confident in her abilities, and I think she will have a great career in front of her, representing the upcoming lady designers.
UPDATED: PLSN has updated the above text in response to readers concerns and apologizes for any offense caused.
