Last month, AC/DC played a show in Chicago that had local residents listening to the music from their apartments…, a mile away. Amidst a shower of pyrotechnics, the band hit the stage running for a non stop two hour show starting off with their new song (and name of the tour) “Rock or Bust.” Taking a second to cool off before launching into a parade of hits, singer Brian Johnson announced, “Tonight, together, we’re gonna make some rock ‘n’ roll….., and the party starts now.” He wasn’t kidding, as a non-stop two-hour energetic rock ‘n’ roll show followed.
Prior to the show, I sat down to chat with LD Cosmo Wilson. “Attack and Decay – Attack and Decay. That’s the heart of rock ‘n’ roll lighting. That three-tenths of a second it takes for the PARs to come to full is part of the beauty of rock lighting.” So says Cosmo, who’s been behind the console directing the lighting for AC/DC for 25 years now. He is referring to the response time and decay of blacking out that is a part of using tungsten lighting fixtures. While Wilson is a world renowned lighting designer for several other large rock acts (Aerosmith, Foreigner, Scorpions etc.), he chose to spend this year directing a light show designed by his friends at Woodroffe Bassett Design for “the best damn live rock ‘n’ roll band in the world.” The 40,000+ attendees at Chicago’s Wrigley Field feel the same way as evidenced by the sing along to 75 percent of the set list. Cosmo is fondling a par 64 while I chat with him at front of house. “I’ve never done a single tour that did not have some PAR cans on it. I made the lighting guys bring one out since there are none on stage with this particular design.” Crew chief Ron Schilling is quick to point out that he still hasn’t turned it on this tour, he just feels comfortable knowing it’s here with him.
The Scenery
“First of all we have an outdoor stage from Stageco (stage builder from Belgium with offices in nine locations globally), that fits in perfectly with Patrick’s truss configuration.” Wilson says. “We have three of these structures that leapfrog between stadiums.” Patrick and Ray Winkler from Stufish designed the industrial-looking front arch, which frames the whole stage. The corrugated set pieces line a proscenium of sorts, making for a dirty industrial blue-collar look to frame the band. The band’s legendary logo is lit up top center while a set of devil horns flank either side. In a word, it’s badass. Built by Tait, the sign and horns are hung by using an actual crane, the same one utilized to construct the arched Stageco roof. The scenic panels jockey into place using a motorized system that is simple, yet ingenious. The offstage I-Mag video walls are three-quarters of the way surrounded with a unique frame made of the same material. They are internally lined with LED rope light of sorts allowing the director to illuminate them in a 3D-type fashion. There are holes cut out of the corrugated material for 2-lite moles and Sharpy wash fixtures to attach. “We specifically lit the front scenic sporadically instead of fully illuminating it because we were going with the dirty look,” adds the director.
The band is playing on a stage that I estimate to be 60 feet wide or so, and eight feet off the ground, not counting the ego ramps either side of the stage to get the artists closer to the sides. There is a long thrust that leads out into the house, but it spends most of the show time out of view and lowered to a few feet off the ground. For the final song before the encore, the band launches into “Let There Be Rock,” an old standard of theirs. The thrust lifts up the eight feet to the stage and the players can now work it. During this song, guitarist Angus Young walks out to the furthest edge while playing, only to stand on a lift that raises him high in the air. At this point he’s pretty much dead center in Wrigley Field, and the fans lose their mind.
Upstage of the five-piece band is an eight-foot-high wall of Marshall Amps, stacked three high. These are cleverly lit through the use of a dozen Chauvet COLORado Batten 144 strip lights hidden in a trough under the stage deck. Behind them is a platform for Angus to play a solo on. But its real purpose is to act as a lift for the infamous cannons they carry and blow off during the encore “For Those About to Rock (We Salute You). AC/DC has a long tradition of bringing certain set pieces back every tour, and the fans probably wouldn’t forgive them if they didn’t. Besides the line of cannons located either side of the stage as well as perched up top, no AC/DC show would be complete without Rosie, the inflatable girl who appears during “Whole Lotta Rosie.”
Of course the enormous bell comes out of its hole for “Hell’s Bells.” When the audience enters the stadium, they can kind of see the bell perched high between the trusses downstage center. There’s a flimsy piece of duvetyn hanging in front of it, but as production managed Dale “Opie” Skjerseth says, “Every last person in this stadium knows it’s coming, and we don’t try and hide it. We just don’t want to draw attention to it before its time.” Of course, the crowd goes ballistic when the stage goes dark blue and the only bright lights on are a couple of white beams illuminating the descending (and rocking) bell.
The show opened and ended with spectacular pyro effects provided by longtime vendor Stage & Effects Engineering. The band hit the stage amidst a giant explosion and a ton of smoke to kick off the show. Likewise, the gigantic wall of fireworks emitted above the stadium roof to end the ban’s performance accented the pyro bursting from the cannons.
The Lighting
AC/DC has long been known for their gigantic lighting rigs — from using a thousand pars in the 1980s to the current point of using over 400 fixtures for tonight’s DVD shoot. Upstaging and a crew of 11 look after the gear. Crew chief Ron Schilling says it takes seven hours to load the production in (minus the Stageco roof/stage), but only 2.5 hours to get the 26 Upstaging trucks loaded.
Upstage there is a large arch made out of HUD truss segments that house a bunch of Robe BMFL’s interweaved with Sharpy beam fixtures. Running up and down stage are 10 30-foot trusses that are all wash fixtures. Woodroffe Bassett chose to utilize mostly Vari*Lites on these trusses, alternating between VL4000 BeamWash and VL3500 wash fixtures. When tightly zoomed, these fixtures reminded one of the PAR can rigs used early on in the band’s career. The design team purposely chose the VL3500s because they preferred the beam’s aperture over the other VL wash lights when it came time to washing the entire stage.
On top of the Marshall amp line, 20 Clay Paky Sharpy Wash fixtures were mounted for a clean stage look. Behind the Marshall stacks was another row of 12 VL3500 wash fixtures that provided a wall of light from the upstage floor. Across the front of the stage were a myriad of Sharpy fixtures to provide fanned-out beam looks.
Audience lights are a huge part of the show. The band demands to see the entire stadium lit brightly. As Schilling explains, “we had a ton of mole fixtures out here in Europe. But we were playing some places that held 100,000 people. We simply needed more of these from the front as well as the FOH spot towers. So I figured out precisely how many amperes were left over in the gennies (generators on site to power up all the lighting) and how many more lights we could fit in this electrical service. All I can say is, we have a total of 864 individual DWE bulbs involved in this show.”
Scaffolding is prominent everywhere in the stadium. Off to the sides of the main stage are two towers full of Mole fixtures and Robe BMLS. The ultra bright BMFL’s were used to illuminate the people in front of the stage that could not be hit with the light from the moles. These Robe fixtures had no problems shooting beams 100 feet from their perch. SGM Q7 LED strobes were in abundance and especially noticeable in the devil horns perched up high over the stage.
Upstaging has to be commended on the lengths they go through to protect their light fixtures from the elements at these outdoor shows. I saw round parabolic clear covers on some, windscreen type devices attached to the yokes of others. Even the downstage 10-foot length of each of the truss “fingers” had a tent-type device over the top, protecting the fixtures. Says Schilling, “I’ve been battling elements and watching power supplies blow up my whole career. It’s quite comforting knowing we don’t lose many fixtures now when it pours.”
The light show was truly reminiscent of the glory days of rock ‘n’ roll. Many bright beams composed of primary colors was the rule for this show. I never saw more than two colors being applied to the stage at once, and that was perfect. The bold color combinations struck a chord with the audience as power washes dominated the stage looks. It was great to see several songs done using primary green as a color. Cosmo mixed green with magenta, he mixed it with amber, and he mixed it with lav. It all looked phenomenal. Solid Magenta and pink tones ruled the stage for “Whole Lotta Rosie,” but I didn’t notice another pastel color during the rest of the show.
Screenworks out of California supplied all the video gear. Upstage behind the amp line was a half-moon-shaped 12mm video wall that tucked nicely into the space under the arch. Off to the side of the stage were enormous portrait-style LED walls that played I-Mag predominantly. Two smaller side screens were used for the folks in obstructed view seats. The upstage center screen often played content or displayed band logos etc., acting as a backdrop more than a video wall. In certain songs, the rear wall was simply colored red or blue like an old cyclorama.
Cosmo Wilson Himself
Cosmo resides in Orlando, where he has spent a good part of his life. Growing up, he bounced between there, New York and Chicago. “My dad was an architect, so we moved around. I attended 12 different schools,” he says. He wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll star, of course, but he settled down to become a backline tech for a few years, starting out as a drum tech for a local New York band called Falcon Eddy back in 1979. He went on to do guitars and work for other bands, but by 1983, he found himself back in Orlando working as a stagehand in the Lakeland Civic Center. I asked him how he became a lighting guy.
“I knew back then that I didn’t just want to be a pusher, the guy that gets the road cases from the truck to the stage. So I would wait for the key moment when a lighting guy would yell out that he needed four guys to bolt trusses or run cable, and I volunteered.” Cosmo states, “I tried sending out resumes’ and calling people. Tim Murch over at LSD never returned my calls. Finally, one day in 1986, I heard from Richard Hartman over at TTR, the company that did all the trussing for touring Vari-Lite shows in the 1980s. I had just moved to a new rental place, and my phone had literally been turned on for one hour when I got the call. It was all about the timing. They had a Cure tour starting, and their guys had a visa problem getting into the states, so I flew out to Chicago the next day. I ended up doing Genesis tours for them as a tech from 86-88 as well. I got my experience running opening acts while out with INXS. Bands like Steel Pulse and Ziggy Marley.”
But how did Wilson hook up with Patrick Woodroffe all those years ago to become an LD? “I was out working on a Rolling Stones tour as a crew chief back around 1989 when they had two lighting systems out. Steve Nolan ran one and I looked after the other. Patrick had been with the band for years, and Dave Hill had programmed the tour. A guy named Shawn Richardson was running it. Back then the Stones would play three hours. Sean would jump off the console sometimes to take a pee break and I would jump in and run a song. I didn’t realize at the time that these guys were grooming me to take over. We get to Japan in 1990 and Shawn’s not there. I did not know he had left us to run a Tina Turner tour. I said to Patrick ‘Who’s gonna run it?’ and he said he would. But before the show he mentions that he can’t remember all the songs and asks if I could I run a few of them. So that night he ran half the show, I ran the other half. The next evening it was all on me. The day after was my 29th birthday, and Patrick asked me if I wanted to take over as LD for the tour.” Helluva present.
It was later during that tour that Woodroffe obtained the AC/DC lighting account. He mentioned something to Cosmo about running the show for the Razor’s Edge tour. He jumped at the chance and has never looked back, having been in the drivers seat for every tour since. “This is the first tour that we have started in stadiums. We always started in arenas and expanded into stadiums for the tour, but you can always tell when bands do that. You see their arena look with a few fixtures added to the wings etc. and some painted scrim, it’s frustrating. Building the looks from the start with the big picture was so much better.”
“The band play about three new songs every tour. There’s not enough time in the day to play all their hits, but they squeeze most of them in each night. Every seat at every stadium is filled with a very happy person at the end of this show. The band delivers exactly what they came for — the best damn rock show on the road.” The band is just wrapping up the US leg and heading back home to Australia. The tour is scheduled now to go up until Christmas, but rumor has them coming back to the states next year.
AC/DC 2015 “Rock or Bust” Tour
Crew
Production Designer: Patrick Woodroffe
Lighting Director: Cosmo Wilson
Production Manager: Dale “Opie” Skjerseth
Lighting Project Manager: Terry Cook
Programmers: Dave Hill, Pryderi Baskerville
Lighting Co: Upstaging (North America), Neg Earth (Europe)
Lighting Crew: Ron Schilling (crew chief), Jason Arhelger, Daniel Benavides, Rob Corman-Savage, Phil DeBoissiere, Benji Meserole, Nick Pishghadamian, Morgan Prine, Brian Reed, Matt Tucker, Mark Weil
Video Co: Screenworks
Video Content: Sam Pattinson/Third Company
Video Director: Mike Duque
Video Engineer: Kevin Tokunaga
Video Techs: Angelo Bartolome, Mo Dinsmore, William Duncan IV, Gabriel Lopez, Jeremy Miget, Tine Skjerseth, Marty Vidinha, Juan Zaragoza
Pyro: Stage & Effects Engineering
Pyro Techs: Casey Lake (crew chief), Chris Davis, Anthony Greene, Jack Kingry
Set Designer: Ray Winkler/Stufish Design
Staging Co: Stageco
Stage Manager: Chris “Super” Deters
Riggers: Chad Koehler (head rigger), Lyle Harris, Mike Ryder
Carpenters: Denny Rich (head carpenter), Alex Blais, Brandon Bogaert, Hayden “Goaty” Corps, Guy Habosha, Bryan Humphries, Mike “Otis” Kinard, Jan Lehouck, Scott Seaton
Gear
2 grandMA2 full size consoles
4 grandMA2 NPUs
2 grandMA2 NSPs
62 Vari*Lite VL4000 BeamWash fixtures
52 Vari*Lite VL3500 Wash fixtures
26 Robe BMFLs
48 Clay Paky Sharpys
92 Clay Paky Sharpy Wash 330s
12 Chauvet COLORado Batten 144 Tours
60 SGM Q-7 LED strobes
72 Custom red aircraft beacons
6 Robert Juliat Lancelot 4K spotlights
4 Lycian M2 spotlights
74 8-lite moles
40 4-lite moles
15 4-lite moles (linear)
37 2-lite moles
4 Le Maitre Hazemasters
4 Reel EFX DF-50 hazers
45 CM motors
30 10’ HUD truss sections
For more AC/DC tour photos by Steve Jennings, go to www.plsn.me/PLSN-ACDC
