When Ozzy Osbourne recently hit the road, it was the first time in almost ten years that he was the headliner. His recent forays into reality television have pro-pelled him back into the limelight and the world now knows that Ozzy’s shows can’t have bubble machines. Lighting Designer/Director John Clark grew up in Nashville, so he’s been around the business enough to be familiar with the no-bubbles rock genre. Having worked for Vari-Lite and VLPS and toiled under the tu-telage of Eric Wade, he has lit everything from hip-hop to country to rock shows, the last two of which were tours with Disney’s Cheetah Girls and Ashley Simpson. He has also worked with Available Light in Boston doing corporate shows, trade shows, and “a lot of one-offs.” He’s currently touring with Ozzy and making sure the Osbournes are happy.
Napkins to Curtains
“We went to Ozzfest and got to design everything from scratch. Rich Barr, the production manager, and I worked really close together. We came up with the lighting and all the video elements in the air. Rich did a lot of the work with that too. He came up with a lot of the curtains and moving video screens. He basically took all my napkin drawings and converted it into a whole rig. It’s funny; we’ve gone from a napkin to this. It’s been a lot of fun.”
Getting Input from Sharon and Ozzy
“Sharon and Ozzy both have a lot of input into certain aspects. Everything gets run by Sharon. She liked what we showed her so she let us go with it. We got everything we asked for. It’s been amazing working with them. They are both really smart and they know what they are looking for. They know how to tell you what they want to see without telling you how to do your job. So it’s very rewarding working for them.”
Adjusting to the Venue
“Every show is different because we’ve got so much stuff in the air that it’s very tight. We have very little clearance, so Bob Powers, our rigger, had to make quite a few adjustments for different venues. It’s all been arenas. We did one show in Vegas at The Joint, so we used the house lighting package and their house stuff.”
All Eyes on Ozzy
“With Ozzy, it’s Ozzy; he is the show. I use truss spots on him. We don’t use FOH spots so my downstage truss trim is really critical as far as getting those truss spots in the right position. Venue to venue, as long as it’s been arenas we haven’t really had to change a lot. It really is a tight rig. It’s so compact and we’ve got so much stuff up there that there’s not enough room to move stuff around because there’s not a lot of straight stuff. Everything’s crosses, circles, pyro, so the clear-ances are very small. “
An Open Stage
“We’ve been selling almost 270 degrees of seating area, as many seats as we can sell. So we have a very open stage. We don’t have a lot of stuff hanging upstage of where the drum riser starts and other than downstage of the speaker clusters, it’s pretty open so that venue site lines are maintained throughout the building.
CREW
Production Manager: Rich Barr
Lighting Designer/Director: John Clark
Tour Manager: Steve Varga
Production Coordinator: Mimi Sullivan
Tour Accountant: Blaine Brinton
AEG Promoter Rep: Lonnie McKenzie,
Drew Cantor
Video Director: Mike Duque
Stage Manager: Luke Lowes
Tour Rigger: Bob Powers
Audio FOH Engineer: Greg Price
Audio Monitor Engineer: Raza Sufi
Lighting Supplier: Premier Global
Productions, Nashville, TN
Account Rep: Steven Creech Anderson
Lighting Crew Chief: James Vollhoffer
Lighting Techs/Camera Operators: Cliff Sharpling, Niel Davis
Rigging: Five Points Rigging
Account Rep: Bobby Savage, Danny Hayes
Video Supplier: Screenworks
Account Rep: Danny O’Brien
Pyro: Stage Effects and Engineering Inc (Pyro Pete)
Pyro Techs: Casey Lake, Alex Kingry
Trucking: Upstaging Inc
Tracking System: Tait Towers (Winky
Fairorth)
GEAR
46 1-ton motors
6 2-ton motors
6 Arri 5K Fresnels
1 flaming Ozzy cross (12’x8’)
12 High End Systems Color Commands
15 High End Systems Studio Beams
12 High End Systems Studio Colors
26 Martin Atomic 3000 strobes
24 Martin MAC 2000 Profiles
12 Martin MAC 2000 Wash fixtures
24 Martin MAC 700 Profiles
2 Martin Maxedia media servers
2 Martin Maxxyz consoles
1 Martin Maxxyz Playback Wing
12’x21’ Panasonic video cross
8 PGP 10’ pre-rig truss
10 PGP 8’ pre-rig truss
propane flame cannons
2 side screens (20’x12’)
1 Sony drum riser facade
1 Sony keyboard riser facade
16’x9’ Toshiba video screen
10’x12” truss
15’x20” truss (circle truss)
60’x12” truss (curtain truss)
60’x30” truss (triple track)
3 video cameras
