The 40th anniversary of Woodstock seems as good a time as any to return Spacecraft Chronicle to Planet Audio.

    On Max Yasgur’s farm in that crazy, hazy August of 1969, Bill Hanley set up his 12,000W custom-built PA system, and brought a trailer full of eight-track Scully tape machines that would capture the “three days of peace and music” for the eventual live album and Martin Scorcese’s movie.

    The FOH mixing station was built on a platform about 75’ from the stage so they could see the stage and hear the mix through the stage-left lower speaker cluster.

    On-stage, Hanley used custom microphones built from Shure factory parts. “They closely resembled what Shure Brothers would soon sell as the popular SM58,” Hanley says on his website at www.billhanley.org. [N.B. the original SM58 had been issued three years earlier].

    Under the stage were McIntosh amplifiers, both transistorised and tube. And because most of the audience would be perched high on the hill, Hanley decided to build two speaker towers, each with two levels of speaker clusters, one high, (about 70’, to reach the middle and top of the hill), and one much lower for the near audience.

    This geometry sent the music directly to everyone’s ears, without causing any echo backslap because all the grass, soil and the bodies of half a million fans, would absorb the sound, eliminating the unwanted resonances and reflections that they would normally encounter indoors.

    Hanley designed and built his own speaker cabinets of marine plywood. Two bass bins were placed under a pair of HF horns, totalling around 1000lbs and standing  6’ tall, 4’ deep and 7’ wide.

    Each of the four upper level bins was loaded with four 15” JBL D130 drivers with a loudness maximiser compressing the sound to improve reach. Each of the four lower bins was loaded with four 15” JBL D140 drivers for extended bass. The high frequencies were handled by 1003B 5x2 Altec multicell horns and Hanley’s own custom built 2x2 horns, all with Altec 290 compression drivers.

EMERGING SOUNDS
Around the same period, speaker systems in the States had been boasting apocalyptic-sounding names like Earthquake (Cerwin Vega!) and Stanley Screamer from Stan Miller’s Stanal Sound in the mid-west.

    Woodstock promoter Michael Lang himself noted that “in those days, you couldn’t rent systems — they needed to be built from scratch.” And, of course, the overworked roadies were expected to drive the trucks, tip the gear, set up the backline and then mix the FOH sound.

    By the start of the 1970s there was already a growing army of companies ready to take on these responsibilities — notably Clair Brothers Audio, which Roy & Gene founded in 1966, and its rival, Showco, in 1970. The latter soon started to offer full production services and developed its own fleet of 40’ semis.

    Other early US sound companies included names like the aforementioned Hanley Sound in the east and McCune (Harry McCune) and North West Sound (Bob Stern) on the west coast, who favoured either Altec-Lansing or JBL.

    There is no doubt it was the festivals as much as the touring bands of the late ’60s and early ’70s that drove the development of great systems — though I couldn’t honestly tell you whose PA I was playing through when I stood crashing a tambourine alongside Al Stewart on Michael Eavis’ very first Glastonbury Fayre stage at Worthy Farm back in 1970!

    It has already been well documented in TPi how, in 1975, Pink Floyd launched its own Britannia Row facility in Islington, although less has been written about Bryan Grant, the man with whom the Brit Row name has become synonymous in more recent times. So let’s prime the engine...

THE GRANT-HARTSTONE AXIS
Dave Hartstone was clearly a major influence in the early days of touring, as Bryan Grant, who continues to run Brit Row with Mike Lowe (a refugee from TFA Electrosound), remembers. Both Dave Martin and Bill Kelsey had also served time with the New Zealander.

    After working in the States, Grant arrived at Hartstone’s IES in Chalk Farm in the early 1970s as a sound engineer. “Dave was the first to use big JBL 4550, 4560 and 2482s and 2420s, actively crossed over,” remembers Grant. “They were powered by Crown amps and made more racket than anything else around at the time. We also had active wedges — what a concept back in 1972!”

    His first tenure was short-lived, however, and after being fired by Hartstone he went on to work with Led Zeppelin (Grant’s only time as a backline tech), who owned their own Bob Heil PA (funded by Robert Plant), and Genesis, who rented a Kelsey rig from Bill Hoad at Sound City Hire.

    Heil had been responsible for building The Who’s Quadrophenia quad system and Bill, who had split from IES in 1971, was now building his own systems, based on the IES model.

    Grant subsequently worked for Sound City Hire who specialised in backline and PA, and built a couple of JBL systems.

    “Then Hartstone asked me to go back and run IES, which I did from early 1973 until midway through 1975,” he remembers. They serviced The Doors, Wings, Johnny Cash, The New York Dolls and ELP — which was where Grant and Lowe first met — as well as Dr. John and Captain Beefheart. IES also formed a link with Clair Bros around then and operated similar systems in Clair’s pre-S4 days.

    Among other IES notable events were the first Knebworth Festival in 1974, headed by the Allman Brothers and the classic Warner Bros package tour of Europe, with the Doobies, Little Feat, Graham Central Station and Tower Of Power.

    Another contributor to the story of British live sound was Graham Langley, a gifted organist who built the early Electrosound-branded consoles whilst at Audio Developments in Walsall in the early ’70s. AD’s owner, Anthony Leversley discontinued PA desks by 1974 to concentrate on broadcast products, resulting in Langley’s return to his native Manchester where he launched Amek with Nick Franks.

    By ’74, IES was also manufacturing some pretty serious consoles including the 32-in/32-out MAVIS (Musical Augmentation Voicing Instrumentation System) mixer designed by Bill Hoff — IES’ inspired technical head — built for ELP. Every channel on the transistorised desk had a quad pot and Yes sound guru Eddie Offord was sufficiently impressed to purchase one.

    Bryan Grant quit IES and toured with Pink Floyd in 1975 — the same year that Graeme Fleming and the late Mick Kluczynski set up Brit Row, and used the bass reflex system built for them by Kelsey. Four years later, Grant joined the company.

    Later, Floyd used the Altec-based Stanley Screamer on their tour of The Wall in 1980. “Every tour they did, they bought something for, and that became the rental stock for Brit Row,” says Grant.

    IES continued for a while but eventually petered out in 1976 when Hartstone lost interest, bought a huge yacht and held a massive ‘closing down’ sale. Joe Browne acquired all IES’ American assets (the sale over the Atlantic allegedly raising $250,000, although the UK stock went for substantially less).

    Like Showco, Brit Row initially ran the full production service — lighting, staging, sound and studio — with Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park heavily involved in the staging.

    It was Robbie Williams, one of the directors, who got Grant involved in selling packages for Britannia Row Productions in 1979, by which time Kluczynski had left; Williams was running the audio department and Fleming managed lighting before leaving in ’81.

    A management buyout followed in 1984 and in 1987, Williams went on tour with Floyd. Mike Lowe and Grant eventually bought out his interest in the company in 1991.

‘COSMIC’ TONY ANDREWS
Another pioneer of PA systems into this new idiom was, of course, Tony Andrews, who went on to co-found Turbosound — a name indelibly linked with the fortunes of Brit Row over the years — and later, Funktion One with John Newsham.

    Whilst studying geology at Chelsea College of Science & Technology, Andrews first came into contact with ‘underground’ bands like Mick Farren’s Deviants, Pink Fairies and Hawkwind and the whole Ladbroke Grove Free Festival scene, chaperoned by Doug Smith, Peter Jenner and Andrew King.

    His first system, built under his company name of Peace Sounds, comprised four Goodmans 15” woofers in vertical columns, with four Goodmans Midax horns on top built for the Pink Fairies.

    A chance observation of extra bass emanating from a loudspeaker facing a corner of a room put Tony Andrews on the path to horn-loaded bass — resulting in his first patent in 1977 — and the mastery of horn-loaded bass remains a given.

    A seminal moment was when he developed a system for The Graham Bond Organisation’s bass player, consisting of two Goodman 18” drivers in an IB-sealed enclosure, with a portable folding W horn set up around the basic cabinet. The bass player tried it and plaster fell out of the ceiling!

    Later he formed Cosmic Boxes and then Sonic Trucking with Simon Renshaw but early conversations revolved around how flawed compression drivers were.

    Andrews was originally known under the soubriquet ‘Cosmic Tone’. He clearly remembers meeting Bill Kelsey and Dave Martin in their Covent Garden days when they were comparing a massive horn-loaded 4 x 15” system for ELP with his own 4 x 15’ with Vitavox components.

    “I recall Bill Kelsey being amazed that this tiny Vitavox system actually delivered more bass than the three times larger Martin horn. Soon after that I sold a system to Quintessence,” he says.

    It was also during the early ’70s that Andrews met Spot from Joe Cocker’s Grease Band; they wanted a large PA and provided workshop space close to Manticore (ELP’s record label), by which time Andrews’ bins had evolved as 2 x 15”.

    Around the same time, Andrews joined forces with Tim Isaac. “Tim was a seriously good boffin who could also build amps and in 1974-75 one of our systems was completely self-powered.”

    It was Issac who introduced Andrews to cone loudspeakers for mid-range “as a replacement for dreadful sounding compression drivers”. “He was experimenting with Electro-Voice 8s on a simple waveguide and later he also discovered ATC’s excellently-crafted 12”,” says Andrews. “We pursued this approach with vigour and established the first paper cone mid-range. This was to become the foundation of Turbosound which during the 1980s achieved global dominance with the TMS3... all in one loudspeaker enclosure.”

    By now, Turbosound — the name being coined by Gong synth player Tim Blake — had set up shop at what was to become Ridge Farm Studios in Dorking, Surrey. “We’d previously taken one of our 2 x 15” bass bins and turned it into a single 30” pyramid bin by putting angles on the top and bottom of the internal structure, the same as the sides,” continues Andrews.

    “We realised we could apply this full symmetrical principle to our early cone midrange experiments and so the ‘Turbo’ device was born. It was actually tested in Tim Isaac’s kitchen with a tube-mounted ATC 12” and a rolling pin.” Turbosound produced half a dozen of these at Ridge Farm around 1976.

    It was also the year their first large-scale commercial system was consigned to Isle Of Wight Festival compére and concert producer, Rikki Farr. Andrews: “By this time we had got to the bin design that we continued to use for a long time afterwards.”

    “Rikki had acquired [American production company] Tom Fields Associates (TFA) by this time and it was he who had done a deal with JBL. So I set about replacing the ATC drivers with JBL components. Rikki suggested using cardboard tube, which worked well and so we developed the ‘Brown’ system.”

    This was the first two-box system designed to fit in a truck. But later, he says, the design was “half murdered”, giving Andrews and co. the motivation to produce their own system.

    When Andrews persuaded Eavis to resume the Glastonbury Festivals in 1979, he, in conjunction with SSE’s John Penn, built the first Festival System — providing a PA stack with 24 2 x 18” bass bins and 12 4 x 10” cabinets per side. Penn recalls that the system included JBL2410s mounted on three 2307 horns that summed to one point source.

    “We made all manner of multiple compression driver designs, all going into the same horn, line arrays and staircase arrays. It was all a learning curve — everything we did was an experiment.

    “We were going to build the sound system to end all sound systems for Glastonbury that year, and that was going to be the start of our collaboration. The following year I suggested that Michael Eavis allow us to construct a permanent pyramid to save all the fuss of building the stage every year,” says Andrews.

    After the success of Glastonbury and the establishment of Turbosound as a very successful rental company, Andrews joined with Alan Wick, Pete Brotzman and Mark Hardy of Muscle Music and focused more on manufacturing.

    “By the early ’80s, the contradiction of being a rental company and a manufacturer sadly led to the transferring of Mike Lowe, Pete Brotzman, the sound systems and the client roster to the fledgling Britannia Row.”

JOHN PENN & THE MIDLANDS INFLUENCE
Despite being a Londoner by birth, John Penn and his wife Heather were to become an important part of the UK Midlands axis, along with the indomitable Bob ‘Doyler’ Doyle and, of course, lighting giant LSD (now part of PRG).

    John Penn and Tony Andrews had first met at the Windsor Park Free Festival around 1972, and in 1976 — just before SSE was founded as Sigma Sound Enterprises in Nottingham — Penn was hired by Andrews as part of the sound crew on a tour for The Runaways which his rental company of the time, Sonic Trucking Services, was handling.

    “Although I was just starting SSE I took any opportunity I could to learn more and earn money,” says Penn. “It was a very fortuitous tour as it worked out, because the lighting guy was Terry Lee who was just starting LSD and it marked the start of what became a long-standing relationship between our two companies.

    “On that tour, Tony brought the very first prototype Turbo mid-range devices to try out on certain gigs — the phase bung was made from a solid lump of wood so each single 12” box was extremely heavy!”

    After Andrews had gone off to design the world’s first two-box compact PA for Rikki Farr, the two men next met in 1978. Penn remembers being invited to Ridge Farm, by which time SSE had developed its own woodworking facility, with clients such as Neil Grant’s Eastmill Audio and Ian Jones at HHB, then a PA rental company.

    “I was fascinated by Tony’s design ideas as he was really coming at it from a different angle,” states Penn.

    Then came the call in early 1979 to become involved in the reborn Glastonbury Fayre. “Tony’s idea was that in providing the PA for the event this should be used as a springboard to launch a new company. The project gave us both the impetus to take some decisions and get things moving.

    “The plan had two phases to it. In the first instance, SSE would build all the cabinets and racks for what became known as the Festival System, and for the gig itself we would use the SSE desks and monitors. This would become the touring rental system.

    “The second phase,” Penn continues, “was to also design a smaller version of the cabinets that could be used in installations and for club touring, which would be sold.”

    But, of course, these plans were never realised and the two factions went their separate ways, respectively building highly successful enterprises. There is much that could be written about those inchoate early partnerships, empirical concepts and stories of what might have been.

    It’s probably not a million miles from the truth to say that lack of financial resources became the dominant factor. From the free Ladbroke Grove festivals to the early Glastonburys there was just not much lucre sloshing around to indulge new inventions. As Penn observes: “The banks wouldn’t touch us; the only way to get money was if you were owned by a band.”

    Summing up the period, Penn says: “It was a brilliant learning curve but extremely challenging. We had to achieve such a huge amount in a very short time and all with little money.

    “I was a big JBL fan and when Tony showed me the brilliant speaker devices that Fane were producing for a fraction of the cost it opened my eyes to what could be done in terms of using OEM components to build systems and have enough margin to make a profit.”

    Penn’s overriding memory was when that PA was fired up at the 1979 Glasto it really did tick every box. “It was jaw dropping... you’d never heard anything like it although the gig itself was chaos.” Melody Maker described it as ‘the best sounding PA in the world’.

    Back in Nottingham, the breakthrough for John and Heather Penn as a rental company, after their early manufacturing exploits, came in 1977 when one of their acts, the nine-piece doo-wop revival band, Darts, hit the big time with their first big single, ‘Daddy Cool’/‘The Girl Can’t Help It’.

    The turning point for SSE came in 1984 when the company split in two; the hire side relocated to Birmingham, headed by new arrival Chris Beale, and shared premises with LSD, while the Notts half morphed into TAC (Total Audio Concepts).

ENTER ‘THE DOYLER’
Over in the West Midlands, Bob Doyle’s Texserv PA rental outfit was also beginning life in 1975 alongside the formation of prominent lighting company, Light & Sound Design (LSD) — both companies having secured their first tour with local heroes, the Steve Gibbons Band, whose hit ‘Tulane’ was soon to break.

    Texserv was to run for 15 years. While LSD’s Terry Lee, Nick Jackson and Alan Whittaker were busily building their first ground support lighting rig in their back gardens, Bob Doyle was likewise building his first PA in his backyard!

    Doyle’s was the only outfit to ever operate and tour Cerwin Vega! equipment on a professional basis, employing the mighty L48DD bass bins which had detachable ‘barn doors’, effectively extending the bass horn to 9’ in length and allowing an extra bottom half octave to be effortlessly produced for the first time.

    So how did this all come about? Doyle had joined Roy Wood as tour manager and became bass player with his band Wizzard, touring the States up to 1974... which was when he was introduced to Cerwin Vega!. “Then Don Arden [the band’s manager] pulled the plug and the dough stopped, hence the birth of Texserv.”

    Another claim to fame is that Doyle actually managed Roy Wood for a while in 1984 and negotiated with EMI to re-release ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’. “Roy and I remixed it for a 12” single that reached No.23 in the charts. Soon afterwards, Roy took me for a curry and announced that he wanted to manage himself and, well, the rest is history!”

    In 1988, Texserv formed a strategic alliance with SSE, going on to service many more artists. Two years later, Doyle quit the rental industry, joining Klark Teknik in order to resurrect Midas mixing consoles after the intellectual rights were purchased by the Clarke brothers in 1987.

    The classic Midas XL3 was spawned and Doyle followed this success with a stellar career in manufacturing at the helm of DiGiCo.
TPi