KAISER CHEIFS AT ELLAND ROAD, LEEDS

Everything may be average nowadays, but it was far from the case at Leeds United A.F.C.’s Elland Road Stadium on May 24 when local boys the Kaiser Chiefs played an unforgettable show in the ground that once made legends of Revie, Bremner, Charlton, Hunter and Yorath.

    Lead singer Ricky Wilson, drummer Nick Hodgson, bassist Simon Rix, keyboard player Nick ‘Peanut’ Baines and guitarist Andrew White gave a career-defining performance, leading a United chant in between the hits and previews of new songs including the dynamite ‘You Want History’.

    This one certainly rocked its way into the history books and kick-started a new chapter for the band as their largest headliner and highest profile show to date. The hype and the excitement met their match head-on with energy, enthusiasm and the unique KC style, cementing their place amongst the best live acts of the moment.

    Putting on a rock show for 35,000 people at Elland Road isn’t the most simple of challenges, which probably accounts for why only Queen (1982), U2 (1987) and the Happy Mondays (1991) had graced the stadium until now.

    Site manager Roy Morley explained: “This isn’t a suitable venue for staging rock’n’roll shows from a promoter’s perspective, because of the high costs. But the Kaiser Chiefs specifically wanted to play here and making it happen has involved a long process that started with my first site visit last September.

    “Access is difficult because there’s only one tunnel in so we’ve had to schedule the contractors over a longer period of time. It’s included night shifts which have resulted in issues with local residents.

    “We’ve also had to create extra exits off the pitch in order to meet current regulations, but overall we’ve managed to adapt the venue to suit our purposes.

    “Taking the wider view, we’ve taken a large amount of the donkey work away from anyone else who might want to stage a show here, because we’ve got the hard-earned documentation and it won’t be so difficult next time.”

    With production manager Robin Scott and TPi Award-winning tour manager Mike Darling at the helm of the band’s long-standing crew, lighting/show designer Richard Larkum took a bilateral approach to the Elland Road show design, which demanded that it look like a huge rock’n’roll event. This prompted him to extract the best and most popular visual elements from the last two years of Kaiser shows… and roll them into this one.

    The ‘KC’ trusses from last year’s headlining festival run were there, as were the five over-stage screens that defined the elegant look of the late 2007 arena tour, which were expanded with another five at each stage wing. The 10 onstage lighting pods are their current 2008 festival touring rig of specials, which would see action at June’s Isle of Wight Festival amongst many other high profile dates.

    Onstage were five 60ft trusses plus two 18m scenic trusses. The front truss was fully loaded with lighting fixtures, while the other four trusses all provided hanging points for Larkum’s 10 lighting pods. These pods either contained 12 Martin Pro Atomic strobes or 14 4-lite Moles, and all were edged with 22 Chroma-Q Color Block DB4 LED strip modules.

    The DB4 fuelled Larkum’s first venture into LED lighting back in 2005, and he’s been using them ever since with the band, increasing the numbers as the budget and venues have grown in size.

    Larkum commented: “The DB4 is the most versatile LED unit on the market. The size and shape of the fixture was very important — rectangular, big LED pixels, uniform rows. I didn’t want a fixture with the pixels spread out randomly. The uniformity also helps with the colour mixing — because they were forward facing, I needed the colour mixing to blend evenly on the eye.”

    Manufactured by Tomcat, the pods were designed by Larkum and Prism Lighting, whose project manager Mark Roberts had no hesitation in making the investment in another 100 Color Blocks for the event.

    Said Roberts: “They were bought for the Kaiser Chiefs primarily, but we’ll easily be able to place them with other jobs afterwards. As well as being great for rock’n’roll tours, they also make ideal uplighters for the large amount of corporate work we do.”

    The main Elland Road lighting rig comprised Martin MAC 700 Washes and Spots — 40 of each fixture — spread over the five trusses. There were 36 4-lites and 84 DB4s decorating the stage wings and used for big audience illumination moments. The KCs were made out of trussing and ringed with red rope light, each containing 22 Moles per letter.

    Larkum added in more Moles onstage to provide a general wash for TV and cameras, as the show was recorded by the BBC for both a TV broadcast on BBC2 and a forthcoming DVD. He had two onstage spots for Ricky Wilson, hung from the front truss to make nice neat beams, and a third out in the stands to pick him up as he went for his signature crowd walkabout to FOH.

    The LD controlled all lighting from a Hog iPC console running in Hog III mode, and all lighting kit plus eight crew was supplied by Prism. Star Events Group provided the ‘non-standard’ 20m Vertec stage.

    For lighting, as with all other departments, the biggest logistical challenge was the load-in, which was through a small, low entrance at the far end of the stadium. This dictated that everything was broken down into smaller loads and moved to the relevant areas, which took longer than usual.

VIDEO
Once again, Larkum worked extremely closely with video director Jon Shrimpton in evolving the show. Positioned adjacent to the LD, Shrimpton imbibed the 15-screen live mix with his own magic, and once again cut the I-Mag from FOH instead of the more conventional side-stage position. This was something they started on the arena tour at the end of 2007, finding it hugely enhanced communication and encouraged a creative rapport.

    All video kit was supplied by XL Video. The Elland Road stage was very similar in set up to that of the arena tour, with five portrait format screens ‘crowning’ the action above the front of the stage. At this show, these were constructed from Barco MiTrix — 18 tiles high and five wide — which was chosen for its light weight.

    Both sides of stage, offstage of the PA wings, Shrimpton added another five screens. Constructed of Barco OLite — each two modules wide and five deep — these were arranged in a quirky ‘Electric Legoland’ effect.

    The camera set up included three Sony D50s with 70mm long-throw lenses, all positioned at FOH, at the rear of the mixing tower. Four Sony minicams were rigged onstage in front of the drums, keyboards, guitar and bass, and a small DV-cam was stationed behind the lead vocal position, used for Ricky Wilson’s reverse shot... catching him on the few occasions where he stood still long enough at the centre mic position!

    There were also three Sony robot cams, one behind guitarist Andrew White (who has a penchant for facing his amp when in full flow) operated by Icarus Wilson-Wright, and two on the upstage and downstage lighting trusses.

    The downstage truss pointed at the keyboards much of the time, while the upstage one focused on the drums. Both of these were operated by Rob ‘Wicksy’ Wick.

    Shrimpton configured his Grass Valley Kayak vision mixer so that all the screen cuts were individually controllable via the macros, and a Leitch router was used for additional routing “trickery”.

    According to Shrimpton, it was refreshing not to have any additional playback content to weave into the mix, although this also meant it was entirely left to him to produce fresh, innovative and different I-Mag looks for the full length of the set — a creative challenge to which he rose with zeal. Being a high profile one-off, there was also the additional pressure that he only had one shot at getting it right!

    The I-Mag mix matched the lighting in energy and pace, often with screens flashing and chasing in time to the music and Larkum’s lighting cues.

    Three Catalyst digital media servers were used to handle one bank of five screen inputs each, and to make the line-up easier because they increase the versatility of the signal. These were overseen by Alastair MacDiarmid. Only one Catalyst effect was used on the footage in the entire performance: a posterised red for ‘Ruby’.

    XL’s crew also included Robyn Tearle, Alain Demey and Joe Makein. The show was project managed for XL Video by Phil Mercer and Jo Beirne — the matchmaker who first introduced Larkum to Shrimpton and suggested they would make a good visuals team!

SOUND
Adlib Audio supplied a JBL VerTec line array system, three Yamaha PM5Ds and a Soundcraft Vi6 console along with all sound production equipment and crew, following on from their work with the band on the 2007 arena tour.

    The Kaisers’ FOH engineer Chris Leckie worked with Adlib's systems engineers Tony Szabo and Dave Kay, as well as James Neale and Declan Fyans who completed Adlib’s FOH team.

    Szabo and Kay visited Elland Road in February, taking measurements and creating a 3D model using SoundVision and EASE software. This also highlighted specific issues such as coverage and delay sightlines.

    The main front hangs were 16 JBL VT4889s per side, along with 14 VT4880A subs flown adjacent to them. The house right side hang comprised 14 VT4889s firing into the low seating stand on that side.

    At house left, with the East stand being considerably higher, the side PA hang of 16 VT4889s had to be focused carefully and also augmented with an additional hang of 12 VT4889s upstage of this.

    The delays had to be high to preserve the sightlines, so three Totem Towers were hired in from HSL, enabling the top boxes to be flown at a height of 11m. The left and right delay clusters consisted of six VT4889 elements, with four in the centre.

    Under-stage were six front fill arrays totalling 24 L-Acoustics dv-DOSC speakers, plus 20 ground stacked L-Acoustics SB28 high output subs.

    The VerTec cabinets were all powered by Camco Vortex amps and the VerTec subs by iTech 8000s, with the L-Acoustics cabinets driven by their new LA8 amps. The drive rack contained eight Dolby Lake Processors, handling system EQ, time alignment and matrices. They also used a Meyer SIM3 system for measurement and time alignment.

    At FOH, Adlib supplied Chris Leckie with a Yamaha PM5D console and provided a Soundcraft Vi6 for supporting acts The Enemy, Kate Nash, The Young Knives and Friendly Fires. Leckie utilised a small outboard effects rack in line with the PM5D which included a t.c. electronic D2 delay, a BSS DPR 901 dynamic EQ and dbx 160SL compressors.

    Onstage, Adlib’s crew chief Marc Peers also kept an eye on monitor world which was run by Ritchie Nicholson and Steve ‘Patto’ Pattison, plus Laura Davies and Jay Petch.
    They ran eight pairs of d&b M2 wedges for all bands, complete with three flown L-Acoustics ARCS side fills per side, with SB28 subs below on the deck.

    Two PM5D consoles were supplied — one dedicated exclusively to the Kaisers’ monitor engineer Ilias Andrianatos — and one for all the supports, in both cases, utilising all the onboard processing.

    The band arrived with their own sets of Sennheiser G2 IEMs with one set used by singer Wilson during ‘Take My Temptation’, which was partly performed from the back of the FOH mix position and always guaranteed to cause serious crowd mayhem.

    Whilst the Kaisers supplied all their own mics (they have a deal with Sennheiser), Adlib supplied a full and varied selection to deal with all the other bands, who were soundchecked on the morning of the show. Adlib also supplied DJ kit and set up for Mark Ronson who made a special guest appearance just before the Kaisers took to the stage.

    Ricky Wilson explained to TPi that Ronson is currently producing the Kaisers’ third album, and he was ‘hoodwinked’ into his DJ set after asking to guest on tambourine!

    A major challenge for the sound department was physically fitting the PA hangs in between the lighting, scenic trussing and video elements onstage. By the time everything was in place, the main VerTec hangs were just centimeters away and tucked in behind the large shaped trusses spelling out ‘K’ and ‘C’ — it became crucial as to which boxes could be covered by the metalwork and which had to have a clear throw into the auditorium.

    Two weekends later, before heading out on to the festival circuit, the Kaiser Chiefs had another chance to shine in big style as support to Sir Paul McCartney at the Liverpool Sound concert in Anfield Stadium. Perhaps if Leeds United had performed in their play-off against Doncaster Rovers as well as their native rock stars did at Elland Road and Anfield, the team would be looking forward to the 2008-09 season in the Premier League!

TPi
Report & photography by
Louise Stickland & Mark Cunningham