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‘The Old Man’s Musings’ Excerpt: ‘I Don’t Wanna Turn On Your Red Light’

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Illustration by John Rios

In an earlier time when tours were less corporate, there was more clowning around. Back then we didn’t have social media to occupy us so we turned to harmless pranks of various sorts to make touring more enjoyable. This was one of my better ones.

Sometimes I wish I had a cell phone camera back in the good old days, but with a lot of the debauchery that went along with rock ‘n’ roll, it was probably a good thing there isn’t much evidence.

There was a time in my career when I spent a couple years straight working with a wonderful English gentleman named Nick Sholem. Nick had carved himself quite a career as a designer and constantly incorporated the latest technology into his designs. He was using projection for visuals as long as I knew him and wasn’t afraid of much, except the color green perhaps. He wasn’t as partial to that color as I was—and this was the inspiration for one of the best practical jokes I ever pulled in my time on the road.

I programmed a couple of Sting tours for Sholem along the way. Once done, I’d go on to my next venture, leaving him to look after his artist for the rest of the year. Nick was a decent programmer himself, but we were taking the Wholehog II out on its first tour ever, so some bugs were to be expected in the software. He had asked me to do all the programming in rehearsals and get him set up to run the tour.

For this particular tour, we were rehearsing in a Go Kart track that management had found, somewhere in the sticks outside London. The track itself was next door to some cold ass room with just enough height to hang a light rig. Each day the band would rehearse, then leave the audio tapes with us to program lights. We were not far from Flying Pig’s office in London, so as I found a new bug or had a programming question, I would call them. Each day or so they would replicate the issue, then stop by and update the console’s software. There was no wireless internet at the console nor memory stick usage back then to update it myself.

These were the first consoles to use touch screen technology that I had ever encountered. So some of my problems were no doubt operator error, but some were legit bugs. But we worked around them. The problem I had was that there were only ten faders on that desk, and I had so many cues running in the background per song that I ran out of faders. So, the Pig guys showed me a way to have macros that activated cue lists directly from the directory on a closed page. It was just a great, fun, new desk to play with.

After two weeks we have programmed most of the songs, and the show has come together nicely, with lots of blues, reds, ambers, pastel colors of every kind. But I notice we have no green songs. It wasn’t planned, it just worked out that way. (Sholem will tell you he has no problems with this color.) Nick, it seems, needed a night off from programming for a prior commitment, but there is one song we still hadn’t programmed yet—“Synchronicity.” So, I tell Nick I’ll be glad to stay and write that one while he heads out. “It’s all quite simple, Nook. I just need three cues that I can repeat over and over. But the hard part will be putting them all together in one long ass cue list.”

Perfect. My LD has not given me any color instruction. The rig contained some rows of these new VL5 B fixtures that I had never played with. I found that the 5B can color mix a battleship gray color. To this day I have never found another light that could mix that specific color, so I employed it, along with several shades of green.

I started playing the song over and over so I could script it out. The three cues Nick mentions would not get me through the opening stanza if I had my way, but I did what the LD requested (my job), and in the end, Nick had 42 consecutive Go button pushes for his arrangement. Then I wrote my own version of how I would light the song. Big huge sweeps, accents, stop cues, strobe hits, and sharp dimmer/iris chases were all employed. My version required 172 cues, all the faders on the console, and a bunch of cuelist macros. It was some of the best work of my life, and I worked until 6 a.m. to get it all done.

The following afternoon is our first run through, and I show Nick what he asked for, then I show him my idea. He opts for his own, which is all well and good. I’ve had better work of mine end up on the cutting room floor. Sting wants to sit out by us to look at some of the visuals. He and Nick spend most of the time looking at projection art. “Oh, that’s the tree in winter, from my backyard. How amazing.”

Then out of the blue the artist says, “I’d like to have a look at how you are lighting Synchronicity.” Now Sting is color blind, so I’m not sure what it is he wants to see, mind you. The audio guys cue the song on the P.A. and Nick runs his cues. Afterward, Sting says, “It just seems a bit like how we always run this song. I’d like to see something different.” Nick contemplates for a few seconds then chimes in, “Well we have this other version we worked on last night, but it’s a lot busier.” We give it a run through, and Sting is a happy lad. “Don’t touch it.” And with that, the song went from its usual three look amber-ish tones to a distinct green/gray with 172 cues.

We load out of the Go Kart track and head up to the Ahoy in Rotterdam for a few more days of rehearsals. Nick has been lighting Sting since he was in the Police in the 70’s. And with that, he’s had to listen to the artist sing ‘Roxanne” every single show, in many different fashions. He’s lit it many ways, but there’s this one cue that always stays the same. For 20-plus years, whenever Sting cried out, “You don’t wanna turn on your red light,” the stage and audience were bathed in red light.

I won’t deny that I’ve been known to play a prank on my friends on tour. I had an idea for this opening night of the tour that was going to prank the LD in magnificent fashion—so much that I had to ask Tam Fairgrieve, the production manager, for permission. Once I explained my plan, he gave me the go ahead with a big smile. I’ve been told that when the time in the show came for it to happen, Tam, Billy the tour manager, and all of the office management from the UK were standing behind front of house, just to watch Sholem lose his mind. The man was well adept at drama and lived up to it in true fashion that opening night.

My job was done that afternoon after the last band run through, and I was headed back home to Lake Tahoe due to another gig; I would never see the prank I had programmed. But before I walked out of the gig to the airport, I grabbed Tony the lighting crew chief and showed him what was going to happen.

“When Nick presses this first cue for the chorus, ‘You don’t wanna turn on your red light’, the entire arena and stage are going to turn green. Nick will lose his sh*t, think the show is ruined, and panic. He will stand up, throw his arms out and look all around, he won’t know what to do because I am not there.” I explained to Tony that he would simply need to reach over and press the Go button on the console once to return the colors to their proper red scheme himself, then tell Nick it was okay, I had just had a go at him. I also showed the tech how to fix the cue for the next evening.

It was a long flight home, and I did not have a cell phone in those days. I walked into my house some 12 hours later and go to check the phone messages. I bring up the most recent one and, sure enough, it’s Nick. “You f’n a**hole. I have never in my whole life, been punked like this. I ran after Sting before he got in the limo to explain that we had a technical issue. He told me not to sweat it, he knew you were having a go at me. Then Tam reminded me Sting was color blind. Geez, Apparently everyone was in on the prank but me. I can’t believe you pulled this off. If I didn’t love you man, I’d hate you.”

To order a copy of The Old Man’s Musings—45 years of Gigs, go to www.plsn.me/Nook-Book. All proceeds go to charity.