Reflecting on his Parnelli award, Tom Marzullo, production designer for Justin Bieber’s Believe tour, tells PLSN, “To get that recognition, especially with the caliber of people on the list with me, people I have worked for and looked up to was surprising and very rewarding.” The caliber of people Marzullo works with is a key ingredient to his success in this business, as he often points out in this recent interview. PLSN revisited aspects of his 40-plus year career, which covers the spectrum of concert, corporate, sports and movie productions. Along the way, he just happened to create the largest site on Facebook for the live entertainment industry.
“Production Friends was a total accident. I had all these folks on Facebook I did business with and decided to move them into a sub file I named Production Friends. I had no idea I was creating a Facebook page in doing so. This popup appeared saying ‘Do you want to make this group secret?’ I clicked ‘Yes,’ still thinking it is my personal file. The next thing I know, Michael Ahern wrote back and said, ‘I love secret groups, I’m in!’” Marzullo did not realize, as he moved each name into the file, Facebook was sending a notice out asking “Do you want to be a Production Friend of Tom Marzullo?”
A trickle of ten people clicking “accept” that first day turned into 13,000 by the weekend. The only criterion for entrée is involvement in the business of live production, which includes a huge cross sector of corporate events, houses of worship, schools, and concert production.
While far from a private blog space, Marzullo still monitors the postings. “I ask that people not be abusive. When I delete posts, my rule of thumb is ‘Is this something I would want my mother to read?’ It is an informational source. What I would like to see is someone in the 11th hour of crisis post their need and get an immediate response,” Marzullo says, adding that he also uses Production Friends as a “forum for just causes,” such as the recent posts promoting autism awareness.
The Early Years
Marzullo likens his evolution to production designer as a process of osmosis. “The shape my career took just kind of morphed,” he says. Like many others in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he set out for California to see the world. Much to his parents chagrin, just before his high school graduation, “I quit, and hitch-hiked from Pittsburgh to San Francisco.”
A friend got him a day job with Tommy James and the Shondells pushing boxes, driving trucks, whatever it took, and he never looked back. This led to a series of gigs working with various bands, when the touring business was still at its infant stage. His work as a drum tech for the J. Geils Band brought him into the orbit of Kiss manager Bill Aucoin. Marzullo eventually landed the position of production manager on the band’s 1982 Creatures of the Night tour. “Management asked me to come to a meeting, mainly, I think, because as production manager, I had to figure out how to move all the stuff. I made some suggestions to John McGraw’s design.”
McGraw & John Miles, under the banner of their company, M2 Research-Planview would, a short time later, again work with Marzullo on Purple Rain, which also included Ian Knight and Roy Bennett
“John McGraw is an amazing mechanical engineer; way before CAD became a key tool in the design process. His partner, John Miles, would build these monstrous models, and then call to tell me what would or would not fit in carts or trucks,” says Marzullo.
“The key is to make one truckload of gear look like a three truck show. That has always been my mantra. It’s all about scale.”
A hard lesson learned, and unforgettable highlight, occurred hand-in-hand with Kiss’ first venture into Brazil. South America was a new frontier. Making it up as they went along was the rule of the day that challenged touring productions. Marzullo called Gerry Stickells, Queen’s tour manager, who had been to Brazil, to ask him what to expect.
“He gave me one sentence of advice that was only two words,” Marzullo says. “‘Bring Everything!’”
Despite a wildly successful show, the promoters somehow managed to lose money and tried to renegotiate. Management succinctly turned down the request, whereupon the promoters locked down the gear. “What I learned from this,” says Marzullo, “is never let the promoter hold the bond.”
The real highlight, he recalls, was that in the process of replacing gear for the following shows in England, he met Jim Marshall. “I tell you, it was pretty neat meeting the guy that invented the greatest guitar amp in the world.”
Along with his PM duties on Kiss, he handled Prince’s Controversy and 1999 tours. Tom recalls being on a plane headed to Los Angeles from San Francisco and seeing two full-page ads next to each other in the San Francisco Chronicle. Bill Graham Productions was advertising two upcoming shows, with Kiss on one page and Prince on the other.
“I looked at that, thinking to myself, ‘I’m doing okay.’”
The time came when Prince required Marzullo’s services “24/7,” as he puts it. He left the Kiss camp to begin pre-production for the Purple Rain tour.
Karen Krattinger recalls that she “first met Tommy in the early ‘80s, when he handled the European production needs of Cameo, a band I was tour-managing. Shortly after that tour ended, he called to say he needed me on a red-eye from Atlanta to L.A. that night.”
Thus began her production position and a yearlong commitment with the Purple Rain tour.
“Through the decades, I’ve been impressed with Tommy’s vision, creativity, insight, and drive in putting together talented, dynamic teams,” says Krattinger. “His insight, knowledge, honesty and integrity have forged many a life-long relationship.”
Marzullo’s working relationship with promoter Cedric Walker began in the mid 80’s through a recommendation by Robert Roth and still exists today. Walker, producer of the Fresh Fest hip-hop tours, is perhaps best known as founder and CEO of the UniverSoul Circus.
“I met R.A. when he, like every lighting vendor at the time, was bidding on Prince tours. Robert is a smart guy, a valued friend, and was a key player in the design team on Bieber’s Believe tour.”
Roth, who notes that he and Marzullo have worked on everything “from concert tours to feature films as well as corporate events” over a 40-year span, calls Marzullo “one of those rare visionaries who combine an artistic outlook while keeping his eye on the budgets. All that said, I value his friendship above everything else.”
These Days
Marzullo, says his newest venture, Out of Our Minds Creative Services, is a collaboration of seasoned industry veterans — “old school, like me,” he jokes, along with “talented young guns.”
Marzullo’s wife, Re, a published author and teacher, is also, according to Tom, “a great A&R asset who loves pop music. Her eighth grade class is a built-in focus group she can access every day. I always check for her ‘thumbs up’ before I commit to the two-year process it takes building an artist.”
Such was the case with Justin Bieber. Marzullo approached several of his longtime vendors — All Access Staging, Christie Lites, Clair Global, SGPS, Strictly FX and PRG Nocturne — to create Bieber’s elaborate production, which toured from Sept. 2012 to Dec. 2013 and included more than 150 shows.
The production team included Robert Achlimbari, Robert Roth, Todd Johnson, Eric Pearce, Katy Marx, Brian White, Ted Maccabee and Nick Jackson, among others.
“Thanks to that team of people and vendors, we produced a great show for Justin’s debut at a modest budget,” says Marzullo.
With Bieber’s turn to superstar status, the team grew. Daily Pre-production meetings on the Believe tour involved “30 people sitting around the table,” he says. “I get credit as the production designer, but the credit goes to all of those people.”
Documentation now is more important than ever. Productions are very complex on the operational side, and of such a scale that awareness of safety is paramount.
“It is important to hire people as good at saying ‘No’ as they are at saying ‘Yes.’ Tom Cusimano and Billy Daves are my go-to people on rigging. These guys will say “No, I don’t think we should but, if we do this or change that, it’s a yes. Most of the people in my circle, like Brian Spett and Vicki Huxel, can do that.”
The Future
Marzullo handles his roster of tour designs just like the other top production designers schedule their work. He collaborates with a creative team that will carry the project to reality, and then turns it over while he develops the next project. For example, the creative team on the latest Chris Brown world tour includes “Bryan Hartley, Brian Spett, Rich + Tone, Robert Achlimbari, Brian White, Ted Maccabee and Mitch Cohn.
“With ‘Out of our Minds,’ I’m looking to move more into the vein of pushing the envelope again of what can be new and possible. Combining new, young talent with experienced professionals is essential to that discovery,” he says.
In this executive producer role, he plans to “take a project that is not necessarily a cookie-cutter theater or arena tour, something like the Cirque Du Soleil/Cavalia equestrian show, with moving structures, adding circus applications, and applying our technology. The projects in the works are combining future forward technology with old ideas and music that has many hooks we baby boomers will remember.”
Looking at the success of this formula with his teams of collaborators, and diverse nature of ventures, one realizes these projects, too, stand a good chance of becoming hallmarks in the live entertainment industry.
