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FOOS CONQUER WEMBLEY
July 2008
It was a career first for Dave Grohl%u2019s Foo Fighters when Stageco put the band in-the-round at Wembley Stadium. Mark Cunningham reports...
“We’ll talk about this for the next 20 years,” hollered an ever-so-slightly over-excited Dave Grohl as he led the mighty Foo Fighters through the biggest shows of their career. In just two hours, 160,000 tickets were sold for the band’s June 6-7 shows at Wembley Stadium, which featured a surprise second night guest appearance from Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones.In the wake of their latest and greatest album, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, the Foos have entered the mainstream and are considered gods by a generation of fans too young to have even seen Grohl perform as Nirvana’s drummer.
As proficient on guitar as he is behind a kit (his dual abilities were showcased a few days earlier at Macca’s Liverpool mega-show), Grohl is also one of rock’s more prolific ‘potty mouths’, and I’m convinced I spotted one of Wembley’s more conservative officials wincing every time the Chief Foo introduced the next f***in’ song.
Gazing around the stadium, Grohl boomed: “I used to think this place was big... it's massive...I love it!” It’s a shame that many of his crew probably don’t feel quite so enamoured. Despite the many lessons learned from last summer’s inaugural live shows, Wembley Stadium is still a pig to work in.
Among those who share this appreciation is Antonio Duarte Da Cruz, the project manager for Stageco, whose crew of 16 built the ‘in-the-round’ staging for the two Wembley shows and the preceding appearances at the City of Manchester Stadium... direct from their work on Bruce Springsteen’s tour.
Stageco deployed its recently-upgraded 26m x 26m Super Roof which is notable for its superior weight-loading capabilities. Featuring four towers, a base and the Super Roof itself, containing over 60 rigging points, the system consisted of 250 tonnes of steel and associated materials, and took three days to build.
The company also provided three delay towers, the FOH mix riser and a B-stage connected by a long catwalk, enabling Dave Grohl to run the length of the pitch and soak up the audience fever.
Asked who designed the magnificent stage and set, Duarte Da Cruz explained that it all came direct from the Stageco R&D team’s own proposals. “We used a similar formula a couple of years ago for Céline Dion, and the Foo Fighters were happy to go with our suggestions,” he said.
“The original idea was that we would set up in the middle of the pitch to enable a 360° performance, because they have a revolve built into the stage. However, due to technical problems with both the City of Manchester Stadium and here at Wembley, permission for the middle pitch position was not granted, although they are still playing to the back seats at Wembley.”
Production manager Rodney Johnson was delighted with Stageco’s contribution to the Foos’ biggest shows to date. He said: “One of the main reasons for using Stageco was the company’s history and the experience of their crews. Throughout the ’90s, I was one of the riggers who often worked with Jake Berry. I did two Rolling Stones tours with Jake, Madonna’s Girlie Show with Chris Lamb, and also Metallica, during which time I became friends with many of Stageco’s touring staff.
“It’s very comforting to know, when you are hanging large amounts of weight from an outdoor roof, that everything on the main structure will be safe and secure, in wind, rain... whatever the conditions.
“The crews are thorough and concerned about their jobs, and actually, they do all treat it as a job and not just a hobby. So I am always happy to have them onboard. Wembley is the biggest show I’ve ever done as a production manager, and Stageco have helped make it painless.”
SOUND
Britannia Row Productions was the audio supplier for the Wembley shows, and combined elements from its EV, Outline and L-Acoustics inventories to form a supremely powerful system.
The PA consisted of 148 Outline Butterfly CDH 483 Hi-Packs, backed up by 72 Outline Subtech 218 subwoofers, powered by Outline T9 amplifiers; and 32 EV X-Line cabinets with the bottom end covered by 16 flown Subtech 218s and 24 flown EV X-Line Subs. The remaining 48 Subtech 218s were ground-based around the stage. Outline DVS 15s and L-Acoustics ARCS covered short-throw, front-fill requirements.
System engineer Davide Lombardi, who supported the Foos’ FOH engineer Bryan Worthen, was particularly impressed with the Outline kit, saying: “Butterfly is considered one of the best line arrays in this sector and is used regularly on the occasion of key events. I’m pleased to use it every time.”
Worthen mixed the shows on a version 4 DiGiCo D5 while monitor engineer Ian Beveridge used a Yamaha PM1D console. Brit Row’s crew also included Roly Oliver, John Gibbon, Richard Trow, Sergiy Zhytnikov, Paul Gardiner, Nico Royan, Chris Morrison, Tom Howat, Adam Smith and Cesar Lopez.
VIDEO & LIGHTING
For the Wembley shows, XL Video supplied over 5,000 Barco MiTrix tiles, arranged in assorted custom configurations including a 16' high, 80' diameter circle that lifted and revealed the in-the-round stage at the start of the show.
Four stage roof legs all had 24' high x 4' wide ‘zipper’ screens attached to them that splayed out at the bottom to meet the stage decking. A 90' x 10' MiTrix border/surround was flown directly from the stage roof.
XL also supplied a four-camera HD PPU with a Kayak mixer for video director Rob McShane, and interfaced with Splinter Films who recorded the show in HD for a Blu-Ray disk.
Screen playback content was controlled by Nathan Wilson, the Foo Fighters’ lighting and production designer, with Dirk Sanders from Control Freak managing all the routing of sources to screens via a Barco Encore system, which was triggered from Wilson’s grandMA lighting console.
XL supplied 20 crew for the Wembley shows, who worked in 24-hour shifts and were co-ordinated on site by Mark Ward and Stef Vanbeisen. The overall video project manager was Jo Beirne.
One of the major technical and logistical challenges was rigging the roof surround, which had to be completed whilst the stage was being built. This and other aspects of the four-day load-in involved working closely with Julian Lavender and the crew from Neg Earth.
Featuring three radiating Thomas truss circles and numerous Supertruss sections, Neg Earth’s Kinesys-motorised lighting rig contained 99 JTE Pixelline 1044 LED battens, 24 Coemar Infinity XL Washes, 86 Martin MAC 2000 Washes, 31 Zap Technologies Little Big Lite 3kWs and 24 Big Lite 4.5kWs.
The spec also included two Catalyst Pro V4.0 media servers, 60 Atomic Strobes, ZR33 smoke machines, DF50 hazers and 14 3kW Strong Gladiator follow spots, sub-rented from Patrick Jordan’s company Spot Rental.
Control was provided by three full-size grandMA consoles and a grandMA NSP rack. Working alongside LD Nathan Wilson were the band’s lighting crew chief Matt Burden, and Neg Earth crew chiefs Paul Kell and Brad Imrie.
Transport specialist Fly By Nite, the Eat Your Hearts Out catering team andpyro/special effects company Le Maitre (providing the firework finale on behalf of Pyrotek) also played key roles.
TPi
Photography by
Mark Cunningham & Lucy Baird
