ORLANDO — Stageco, Rhino Staging and Beyel Bros Crane and Rigging were among the production companies supporting the Rolling Stones at their 2015 tour stop in Orlando, FL this year. Writer/photographer Julian Leek, who also took these photos, provided an account of the event’s production to PLSN on behalf of client Beyel Brothers. His account follows.
Who Says You “Can’t Get No Satisfaction?”
On a Friday evening in June, the great Mick Jagger of the one and only “Rolling Stones” who, at 71 years ‘young’, pranced onto a massive stage, amid smoke and fireworks to the Stones’ 1968 hit “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” before a sellout crowd of 47,000 well-aged fans at Florida’s Orlando Citrus Bowl in their 4th appearance in their whirlwind tour of 15 cities in 57 days in the United States.
How do you showcase a rock music legend like the venerable rock band “The Rolling Stones”? An EZ-Up tent in a dirt field ain’t gonna cut it for this group which is capable of selling out any size location you can name. With a reputation and following like theirs, it has to be big and spectacular and only the biggest is capable of handling the complex staging, lighting and sound equipment that has become the stuff of which legends are made.
Would the newly renovated Orlando Citrus Bowl cut it? Oh yes! But, converting Florida’s Orlando Citrus Bowl, which has undergone a major multi-million dollar renovation over the last couple of years, from sport venue to concert hall and back again in less than a week, was no mean feat! Yet it was made to look easy with the talented people from Stageco, Rhino Staging, Beyel Bros Crane and Rigging and other staging contractors.
Before any work on the field could start, the Astro-turf had to be covered with hard plastic panels to protect it from the cranes, forklifts, trucks and other equipment. Even the floor seating area was totally covered with other protective material. A seasoned veteran of “heavy-lifting” (i.e. NASA’s Shuttles), Beyel Bros Crane and Rigging was brought in with three of their specially selected cranes from their Florida yards to handle this work: a single Terex 340xl to unload the waiting semi-trailers, a Linkbelt 8670 Hydraulic Truck Crane and a Grove TMS 800E Hydraulic Truck Crane to handle the infield assembly. The choice of equipment was critical and limited by the low height of the Bowl’s tunnel entrance, yet needed to fill the required lifting weight of the stage components. These cranes were the logical choice.
The Orlando Citrus Bowl is the home of the newly franchised Major League Soccer team, the Orlando Lions, until their new stadium is completed. Every sign in the Bowl was required to be covered in black, but the most stringent requirement of all was that the entire stadium had to be returned in pristine condition to the soccer configuration prior to the Sunday night kick-off!
A steady stream of forklifts moved palletized boxes from the parking lot though the tunnel and into the stadium while most of the trucks that had the larger triangular main-stage sections awaited a crane to unload them. Once on the ground, riggers from Stageco joined other sections of the corner lifting towers which were offloaded from the trucks. After the cranes had placed the under-stage I-beams and winches in place, the main stage was ready to be assembled. State-of-the-art measuring equipment and lasers were used to make sure everything was in the correct position before the four corner ‘short stack’ lifting towers were craned into place. Over the four corner lifting towers, the stage roof supporting lifting section were craned into place. Two cranes working right and left of the stage were carefully mirroring each other’s movements in the assembly operation. As the cranes placed the triangular sections onto the stage, the riggers joined them together with large clevis pin bolts. With the fabric roof threaded into place and the traveling side-support beams installed, it was time to raise the roof, which is normally accomplished by four under-stage winches.
Fortunately, when one of these winches malfunctioned, Beyel Crane was able to move one its cranes into a very tight space behind the stage to assist with the roof lift. At this point timing was in the hands of the crane operator to carefully adjust his raising speed to match the other three winches. After securing the roof in place, the crane had to be relocated to lift and place the outer field spotlight and speaker towers after which all equipment was moved off-field in time for the sound and lighting crew to do their set up.
To a more than “satisfied” crowd, Jagger blasted out the final words to ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ as fireworks ended the show and the rigging team began assembling back stage ready to tear it all down, pack it up and move on to the next location. It took 50 stagehands 5 days to set up and 100 stagehands 30 hours to strike the stage, lights and sound equipment. For now, it was time to “send in the cranes…”
For more information from Beyel Brothers Crane and Rigging, go to www.beyel.com.
