The Life of Brian

Right in the front line of many early technology-pioneering tours was Brian Croft whose classical upbringing in mainstream theatre was traded for rock’n’roll at the end of the 1960s when the Rolling Stones gave him his big break.

    His career began in 1959 as the assistant stage manager at Perth Repertory Theatre, and in 1968, whilst working for the National Youth Theatre, he had been contacted by Michael Kustow, artistic director at the ICA, for whom the move from Dover Street in Mayfair to The Mall would set in train a change to more experimental artistic direction.

    As the ICA’s new technical director, Croft enjoyed an amazing three years pursuing all forms of art — including a memorable night with avant garde artist and liquid light specialist Mark Boyle, when Soft Machine supported Hendrix.

    At the same time he started to do liquid light shows of his own, with partner John Brown, with whom he went on to form ESP.

    The Nice and Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band played at the opening party of the new ICA in 1968, followed by Julie Driscoll & Brian Auger (with The Trinity), who brought in their own sound. All manner of acts would pass through, including The Doors and Country Joe & The Fish, and one day E.H.B. Monck — a.k.a Chipmonck — arrived with the Chambers Brothers.

    Monck went on, shortly after, to put together all technical operations at Woodstock and then to be the Rolling Stones’ right hand production man.

    Having established a good relationship with Monck, Croft received a fateful call from the Stones office in December 1969, a few days after the much-publicised tragedy at Altamont, to say the band were planning to play some pre-Christmas London dates at very short notice and asked Croft if he could do some groundwork.

    “They did one show at the Saville Theatre and one at the Lyceum — so my first ever rock’n’roll gigs were for the Stones. Chip brought some of the lighting with him, which we hung on the theatre flying bars,” remembers Croft. “We used Century tungsten 2kW fresnels, as PAR cans didn’t exist then.” Century was a Broadway theatrical lighting company that was eventually taken over by Strand.

    A few days later, in January 1970, Crosby Stills Nash & Young played the Royal Albert Hall using Bob Stern’s own PA system. Once again, Chipmonck asked Croft (moonlighting from the ICA) to take care of the lighting, using the same rig as the Stones’ shows.

    He enlisted the help of Roy Lamb “who at least knew a little bit about electricity” for the London date. Production manager on that three-date European tour was Leo McCoter.

    Monck was eager for Croft to source a lighting desk and dimmer system and so he approached the newly-set up Electrosonic, run by Bob Simpson. They already made thyristor dimmers for house lights and Croft’s team asked if they could also make a lighting console... which led to the birth of the Rockboard.

    “So we ended up touring a standard 19” rack, wrapped in a blanket, with thyristor dimmers and wired the snake in on a terminal block each day with a screwdriver, working from Roy’s crib sheet,” says Croft. “The control was a very simple two-scene preset board, comprising two rows of 24 faders.”

    Croft also put an eight-man lighting crew together to do the Stones’ 1970 European tour, taking four months leave from the ICA. “The architect-designed structure was made by Access Equipment and it was the first tour with proper ground support,” Croft explains.

    “But we only put up 48 Century 2kWs and a bunch of velour drapes, lit by striplights, while outfront there were seven carbon arc followspots, five Super Troupers and two Gladiators from Strong, hired via Altman.”

    The PA was supplied by Charlie Watkins’ WEM, with Ian Stewart in charge of the backline, and Croft says it was a largely ground-breaking tour because it was being made up as they went along.

    “That’s where I cut my teeth. We had 70,000 in Helsinki — and just added a few more 100W WEM columns! We carried with us our own gas-powered forklift truck. Three artics took the lighting, set and ground support system but Johnny Thompson, who worked for WEM, insisted on driving the PA in a two-tonne van. and Ian Stewart drove the backline in his own little VW van — they didn’t trust those big bendy lorries or the lighting crew, I guess.”

    Croft left the ICA in 1971 and rejoined the National Youth Theatre to open the Shaw Theatre, after doing a short UK Stones tour with the aid of a 16-tonne 22’ straight truck that hauled all the gear — lights, sound and backline.

    The ’71 tour was promoted by the father/son partnership of John & Tony Smith. “Tickets were a princely £1, hence just the one 16-tonner,” says Croft, whose next few years were largely taken up producing liquid light shows around the then obligatory Aldis projectors. He remembers (with some embarrassment) lighting The Who at an Oxford Poly ball using only six of the 1kW Tutors!

    With John Brown, who had left the ICA shortly after Croft, he had formed the fondly-remembered Extra Sensory Projections (ESP), opening a shop in the Wandsworth Road, south London. Brown fronted the operation with the third partner, Alastair Robertson taking care of the creative side until there was sufficient capital build-up for Croft to bid farewell to the theatre once and for all.

    “Whatever we needed we rented from Theatre Projects — fresnels, followspots plus the Electrosonic Portapak dimmers and Rockboard. It was a big wrench to leave theatre but there just wasn’t sufficient money to be made,” he confesses.

    Aside from early rock’n’roll, disco was proving big business at the time and Brown started doing gigs with Cerebrum’s John Lethbridge, which brought them into contact with desk specialist Graeme Fleming, who subsequently went on to start Britannia Row Lighting.

    In 1973, the newly-formed ESP Lighting Ltd landed tours with The Who, Elton John and the Stones — which was the first time they used PAR cans as we know them today, produced by Charlie & Ronnie Altman in Yonkers. Touring clients who followed would include David Bowie, Deep Purple, The Moody Blues and Joni Mitchell.

    “Previously short-nosed PAR cans had been used only in the film industry, in open white, but they needed snoots to make them longer so as not to burn the colour filter — so Altman started making ‘real’ PAR cans. The Centurys were cast, but the Altmans were made out of sheet metal and were lighter.”

    Newly relocated to Blackfriars, ESP was doing good business importing PARs from Altman and selling them on.

    “For six months or so everyone thought we were the authorised distributors because we were importing them by the hundred,” recalls Croft. “We must have stuffed thousands of PAR cans into the industry.”

    One of his main customers was Eric Pearce, an electrician on the West End production of Oh! Calcutta, who set up Key Lights as a rental company, and later Showlight. Pearce eventually moved to Dallas and took on the sub-contracted lighting from Showco after it became a dedicated PA outfit.
   
MONSTER TOUR
While Tychobrae was the chosen sound contractor for the Stones’ 1973 tour — for which it used the blue carpeted Cerwin-Vega! speakers — the contract for the band’s ’75 tour moved to Clair Bros, and later again to Showco.

    Brian Croft was stage manager, Patrick Stansfield was production manager and Peter Rudge, tour director. The set design was by Robin Wagner and the lighting design by Broadway theatre specialist, Jules Fisher.

    “It was a monster 30-truck tour — the first really grown-up tour, I think,” says Croft. “But the costs were enormous and it didn’t make much money. For the next European tour in 1976, Peter Rudge was much more cost-conscious and asked me to be production manager, and for my company, ESP Lighting, to be the overall production controller.

    “We reverted to Chip’s famous mirror out front/Supers on-stage format, except for the Earls Court gig where we used the mechanised ‘lotus’ stage from the ’75 USA tour.

    “I think we brought in the whole 10-week tour production — stage roof, sound and light, trucking, crew transportation and hotels — for about £300,000. That wouldn’t go far these days.

    “The lighting control desk and dimmers were built by an ESP staffer, Paul Ollett. They were the prototypes for the hugely successful Avolites range. John and I decided to let Paul take the designs — at no cost — to Ian Whalley at Avo because we weren’t into manufacture, man!

    “The audio was subbed out to Joe Browne’s Tasco [crew chiefed by Keith Bradley] who at that time were using the big old Roger Harvey-designed Harwell system.”

    The outdoor gigs interspersed amongst the indoor dates made use of a highly innovative canopy — the famous Orange roof, used at the 1976 Knebworth Fair and later acquired by the Roskilde Festival — operated by Bill Harkin’s company.

    A key member of Harkin’s team was an ex-ESP staffer, Jeremy Thom, who went on to design Live Aid (Wembley) and U2’s Joshua Tree tour. Whilst the Stones tour progressed, John Brown handled the rest of ESP’s roster of acts from HQ, including Elton John.

ARRIVAL
After the culmination of the ’76 Stones tour at Knebworth, Croft moved on to ABBA’s Arrival tour, using many of the Stones team.

    Jimmy Barnett, who had been the Stones’ board operator, became lighting designer and when he moved on to become ABBA’s production manager, he handed the LD mantle to crew member Patrick Woodroffe, who had already cut his teeth doing the lights for The Heavy Metal Kids, managed by Rikki Farr.

    Patrick was younger brother of Simon (of the Yo! Sushi restaurant chain fame), who had left ESP to set up the lighting department of Electrosound.

    But in January 1977, several things happened at once. John Brown was fast losing interest, having found the nightmare of day-to-day live production too great to bear. Then Croft received a call from Farr who wanted to buy the company.

    This was a pivotal point in the development of concert production as Farr — the promoter, manager and impresario behind the Isle Of Wight Festival — was the junction that many people passed through on their way from A to B. He now had Electrosound, which was based near Borough Market, south London. The name ESP was abandoned and Croft took over as MD of the UK operation.

    In the summer of ‘77 Croft supplied Gerry Stickells with lighting for Queen’s shows at Earls Court. It was the start of a long-lasting relationship.

    Farr had already moved to the States and bought the Boston-based lighting company, Tom Fields Associates (TFA), who had provided all the lighting equipment for that 1976 Stones tour, and custom-built all the truss.

    TFA’s healthy artist roster had also included The Beach Boys and Chicago, and when Tom Fields disappeared into the film industry, the logical move was to merge TFA and Electrosound, with Croft installed as the London-based MD and Farr running the show in California.

    Farr first established the audio side of TFA Electrosound in Los Angeles and very soon shut down the Boston-based lighting operation and relocated to LA (turning Ivy League staffers into instant California beach-bums overnight).

     Farr also set up a management company in Beverly Hills called AIM (Artistes International Management), enjoying success with The Tubes. He had secured serious financial backing from city brokers Norton Warburg, run by Andrew Warburg, who in turn were reinvesting some of the profits back into the music industry.

    In 1982, Norton Warburg went bankrupt, almost taking Pink Floyd (one of its premier customers) with it, as co-founder & bassist Roger Waters explains: “We lost a couple of million quid — nearly everything we’d made from The Dark Side Of The Moon.”   

ACQUISITIONS
TFA Electrosound (London) had expanded its client roster by 1982 to include Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, Rod Stewart, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury, The Pretenders and Madness, at which point the company was absorbed by Theatre Projects, with Croft becoming administration director of the newly-formed Theatre Projects Services.

    Two years later, the publicly-traded Samuelson Group had taken over Zenith Lighting, Rainbow Lighting and Theatre Projects/TFA. Samuelson Concert Productions (known as Sammy’s) was created, headed by Croft, and some of the greatest names in concert touring were all under one roof.

    Bruce Springsteen and Tina Turner joined the client roster, and in 1985, Croft was one of four stage managers working on the historic Live Aid event at Wembley Stadium. Croft would return to Wembley the following summer as the pre-production co-ordinator for what would be Queen’s final tour with Freddie Mercury.

    Croft describes the period between 1989 and 2003 as his “golden years”. At the dawn of the Nineties, Samuelsons’ lighting entities were combined in Greenford with Croft overseeing operations as general manager. He then became MD of Vari-Lite Europe (later Vari-Lite Production Services, VLPS) after Vari-Lite Inc acquired the lighting divisions of the company in 1994.

    The man who, as far as the great Chip Monck is concerned, will always be known as ‘Crafty’ Croft, successfully survived a couple of “serious but quite short” illnesses in the late ’90s to take the chairman’s role at VLPS.

    “That was an amazing and very profound time for me,” he recalls. “The company was flying, mainly due to the fabulous Vari*Lite products.

    “We also had major world tours by Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Simply Red, Robbie Williams and, of course, the blessed and saintly Rolling Stones.” 

    In 2003, Croft officially retired but his passion for the world of entertainment production shows no sign of diminishing.

    He remains active on the board of the National Youth Theatre and regularly attends major industry events including the ABTT and PLASA shows, and the annual TPi Awards. Mr. Croft, we salute you!
TPi