At least London is a 'home' venue - before Earl's Court there was North America and Europe to whizz around. The sheer volume of the staging, lighting equipment and other peripheral paraphernalia needed to sustain a Floyd audience¼s awe quota at warp factor 10 is vast. To transport the lot on daily jaunts between the planet's stadiums is enough to give even the most experienced tour manager a full bore anxiety attack.
At the epicentre of this potential maelstrom is one Phil Taylor, David Gilmour's right hand man and overseer of the Floyd's backline. "I've been to every Floyd gig for the last 20 years and not actually seen any of them!' says the permanently backstage bound Mr Taylor. He somehow manages to bring calm to the confusion of touring, nursemaiding 118 flightcases of Floydian backline on and off planes and trucks to help ignite the world's stages , 20 years' experience of all things Pink brought into sharp focus.
"I first started working for the band in 1974," he continues. "They were getting ready for a British tour with 'Dark Side Of The Moon' and the first things we did were a few rehershals where they wrote some new material, which was strange for me, being a bit of a fan in those days. We were in this very small, dirty, dingy rehershal room in King's Cross , just me and the four members of the band for two or three weeks while they came up with some tracks called You Got To Be Crazy and Raving And Drooling which were re-written and turned into Shine On You Crazy Diamond and some of the stuff off the 'Animals' album. So on that tour, these new tracks became the first half of the show while 'Dark Side...' was the second and Echoes was the encore."
Obviously the crew in those days was not quite so vast...
"It's hard to remember exactly, but I think there were around a dozen or 15
people in the crew in those days. Today the nucleus totals around 80, but of
course it involves several hudred people overall with all the drivers, the steel
assembly guys [ei - the stage construction crew] and various other things. When
I first worked for them with that small crew, I looked after Roger, Rick and
Dave [Waters, Wright and Gilmour, but you knew that! - Ed] and the person who
looked after the drums also doubled as one of the quad PA crew. So during the
show there was only ever me on stage dealing with all of it."
What was Mr Gilmour using in those days, gear-wise?
It was very similar to what he uses now. One of the first jobs I did in the
band was to go out and buy him some new Hi-Watt amplifiers. I went down to
Hi-Watt in Kingston and saw Dave Reeves and bought two 100 watt heads which are
still in Dave's rack today. He had WEM 4x12 cabinets with Fane Crescendo
spearkers in, identical to the ones he uses now, and he had a couple of Leslie
cabinets for a couple of things on 'Dark Side...'. He also had some Binson echo
units, a couple of EMS Synthis which he used for the sequense on On The Run
live on stage every night, and a small pedalboard with a Fuzz-Face, a treble and
bass boost, a volume pedal and switching system for the delays.
"He had a black Strat that he always used , I think we would have carried a
spare, too ‚ but one of the other first jobs I had to do was to go out and buy
two lap steel guitars for the different tunings needed on Great Gig In The Sky
and One Of These Days, which was an alternative encore but in the end they opted
for Echoes. I went off to Sound City, which was the in place to go in the west
of London, and they had two Jedsons, a cream one and a red one ‚ they were about
60 quid each and that's what we bought and that's what he still uses, although
we've since changed the pickups. In fact, on this tour we found a Fender lap
steel and he's been using that."
Needless to say, things have become a great deal more sophisticated over the
last 20 years...
"Well, Dave's main Strat is basically a USA 57 vintage reissue which we got hold
of in 1984. It's fairly stock other than it's been fitted with EMG-SAs,
plus an EMG-EXG expander and the SPC midrange presence control. Other than that,
apart from the fact that he's had his trem arm shortened, it's pretty much
stock. For a spare he's got a virtually identical Strat which we managed to buy.
When we were on David's solo tour in 1984, he went into Manny's in New York with
Mick Ralphs, who was his second guitarist on the tour, and Mick picked up this
red Strat and said it was really nice and that he was going to buy it ‚ but Dave
wished he'd found it first! Then last year I saw this secondhand red Strat in
Chandlers which was just like Dave's, and so I picked it up and said, Whose is
this? and they said it was Mick's. So I said, Right, we'll have this! It needed
a fair bit of work done on it and it's been fitted with the EMGs, too.
"I also carry one more spare which is a cream coloured 57 reissue; Dave's not
very fond of the colour, but it's very nice to play. Other guitars he used on
the tour were two Telecasters which are both 52 reissues; the only difference
between them is that one of them has the bass string tuned to D, which he uses
for Run Like Hell. The other one, which is in regular tuning, he uses for
Astronomy Domine."
David's acoustic guitars are Gibson J-200 Celebritys.
"They made a run of only 90 of these particular guitars in 1984/85 and we've
now obtained three. Dave just really likes them; they sound great and they're
really lovely to play. I've had them modified, they've got EMG acoustic pickups
in, but they've also got small Crown microphones in them too. So there are
basicaly two outputs from each guitar, two separate radio transmitters on them
with two different signals. Then there's a Gibson Chet Atkins electro-classical
which he uses on High Hopes and the two steel guitars which we talked about
earlier."
So much for the guitars, but from then on in, things become a lot more
complex. To look at, Gilmour's rig is pretty intimidating...
"The design concept was to achieve a user-friendly system with the cleanest
possible audio signal, using the highest quality components between guitar and
amp to eliminate hums, buzzes, RF interference, etc. So the electric guitars go
into a Pete Cornish routing system, which is basically 24 sends and returns,
controlled via a Custom Auido footboard, modified by Pete, with individual
on/off switches for all send and return loops plus a microprocessor which calls
up preset combinations of effects with MIDI channel change information being
sent at the same time. Then a song title display is built in, which works via
MIDI, with a duplicate display in the rack."
Phew! So, judging from some of the pedals on top of the rig, one could say
that it's a strange marriage of hi and lo tech?
I guess we've taken advantage of technology in asmuch as Dave has enough to
think about up on stage, being the focus of attention and so his switching
system and equipment have to be as simple as possible. At the end of the send
and return routing, it then goes into a master unit which, because I have his
amp racks backstage with me, his master volume controls on it for Dave to
control his 4x12s, Doppolas and voice box from on stage.
From a gig to gig point of view, it's pretty easy to put in situ and fire up
night after night with maybe just a few slight tinkerings.
"It is, yeah. There are a few minor tweaks; I always set his gear up so that
it sounds good to me and the levels seem right, however the reason why he likes
to have his rack on stage with him every night and the reason why his pedals are
mounted on the top is so that he can wander over and give them a tweak as he
feels necessary. Pete Cornish has modified most of the 'off the shelf' effects
units for both correct matching , level, impedance and so on , and has incluede
several 'artistic' mods for improved usability."
Keeping his boss briefed on the latest equipment isn't the foreboding task it
might at first seem...
"Between projects there are often quite long periods where Dave doesn't play
pretty much guitar, but when there is something , a tour or album , about to
happend then I keep my eyes open as to what's around and take him stuff to try."
Next in line is the preamp stage.
"We use an Alembic F2B, mid 70s bass guitar preamp based, I believe, around a
Fender Showman circuit, which is very clean and with minimal controls:
brightness, volume, middle, treble and bass. It has been modified to reduce the
bottom end and fitted with an extra valve. The way in which Dave uses his system
is that he always gets a good, nice powerful clean sound ‚ a lot of his sounds
are basically clean with a bit of delay ‚ and when he does his overdriven stuff,
he introduces various pedals. I guess a lot of people these days would look on
that as an old fashioned way of doing things, but he is from the 'old school'
where you would have a couple of effects pedals on the floor going into your amp
or combo. We continue to try the modern multi-effects units but, although they
appear to be improving, there are sounds which Dave has got on record over the
years by using pedals which cannot be duplicated by those units. A lot of them
tend to be good or reasonably good, but they're never brilliant."
So much for the multi-effects, but whither the Gilmour generated electrons
next?
"The signals then comes from the preamp and goes into his volume pedal and
from there it goes off, splits and goes into his delays. Then it comes out
through the master routing unit and goes into his HIWATT power amps. I've got
three normal HIWATT heads, AP100s, which have a preamp in, but Pete Cornish has
modified them so that we're just using the power amp stage, just going in using
the master volume and the presence control. Then there's another rack with the
other three which are slave amps. They're all run with Mullard EL34s. One HIWATT
powers a WEM 4x12 with the Fane Crescendos in it and a Marshall with Celestions;
the second does the same thing but it has a chorused version of the first signal
, in effect, this means that one pair has a wet signal and the other remains
dry. Then we have a spare HIWATT in the rack. In the second rack, the top HIWATT
powers his voice box [a Jim Dunlop Heil ], but what I did there was to get Pete
Cornish to make me a dummy load, because what a lot of people have found with
heavy voice box usage is, because of the nature of the driver in them, which is
a mid range horn driver, generally they don't work below 800 cycles and
therefore, if you're using it fairly loud then there's a lot of power coming out
of the amp with nowhere satisfactory for the bottom end to go and so we've got a
dummy load there to deal with it."
One unique aspect of Gilmour's backline are the Doppolas ‚ custom built,
revolving speakers.
"I designed them in conjunction with a guy called Paul Leader and had them
built. What we were trying to do was make a full range, reasonably high powered
rotating speaker unit. We didn't want to use a Leslie, although Dave has a
Leslie simulator in his rack, we wanted a slightly different sound. It has two
six inch 100 watt drivers in it, stacked on each other which is a lot of weight
to move around, but they seem to work quite well. We have three of them on stage
which are used continually in conjunction with the 4x12s. We were influenced by
David getting hold of a thing called a Maestro Rover, which is a revolving full
range speaker he uses in the studio. They're quite nice, but fairly low powered
and so for live work we needed something with more power."
Phil's showtime position backstage is just behind Gilmour's row of 4x12s.
Conditions are farily cramped, but workmanlike , here, he has to be able to deal
with all the problems that might crop up during a performence. Anything from a
simple tune up to major MASH like effects surgery has to be possible. Essential,
therefore, is Phil's workstation , quite literally mission control.
"In my workstation I have drawers of strings, spares and all sort of exiting
things. The tuner unit I had custom made for the 94 tour which includes a
Peterson 19" strobe tuner and a BOSS TU-12, with some lights and a dimmer so I
can see what I'm doing and a switching system so I can send the signal to either
a Fender Super Champ or to a headphone amplifier. So if I'm tuning an acoustic
guitar and I can't really hear it, I can just put on a set of headphones, turn
the volume up and get on with it. I also have the ability to monitor David's
instrument and radio system through the workstation while he's performing which
is my first checkpoint for troubleshooting any problems which crop up. I have
headphone monitoring available at key points throughout his system in order to
locate any problem quickly."
There is a constant turnaround of guitars during a Floyd performance and
everything has to be pre-tuned and generally spot on.
"Absolutely. Before the show I pull things into tune that are going to be
used during the first half of the show, but I spend most of the number before a
guitar is needed tuning it. There are always temperature changes which will
affect tuning, especially in the outdoor stadiums as you approach nightfall."
The position of Phil's workstation mus mean that things can get fairly
loud...
"Pretty loud, yeah, but not horrendously so; you can stand by each other and
talk. Basically I'm here listening to Dave's system and tuning. I get called up
on stage for different reasons, but generally I'm just listening for any of the
equipment going wrong. I'm always on red alert!"
What sort of things do go wrong?
"On this tour we've had to deal with a lot of temperature changes and we've
had to set up in the rain a lot because of the number outdoor venues we've been
doing. You set up in the morning and it may be cold and raining and then by
afternoon, the sun's come out and it's got really hot so you have to put space
blankets on the equipment to keep the sun off. The pyro on stage contributes a
lot of dust and filth every night which gets into everything. I've had a few
failures; nothing went wrong on the first part of the tour but gradually some of
the pedals started not working properly and I had two or three of those go down.
Apart from that, the only other thing was one of the radio transmitters
failed."
What happens to all the gear during Floyd downtime?
"We have a warehouse where I have Dave's gear set up so that I can play with
it, but generally it doesn't get used very much often. Elements of it get used,
but as an entire system it doesn't because there's nowehere to use it, it's too
big. Dave's studio is on a boat and not very large and so there's just no room
to set it up anywhere."
Wish You Were Here
On the American leg of Pink Floyd's 1994 tour alone, the band played 59 sold-out
dates in 48 cities in front of a total of three million people ‚ and came away
with loose change to the value of $100,000,000 jangling in their pockets as a
result. Then they went on to play a further 48 dates in Europe...
Needless to say, the whole shebang was a record breaker and a marching army
of Pink personell was needed to make the whole thing happen.
Guitarist managed to wrestle some tour-related facts and figures out of
Floyd's mission control:
Delicate Sound Of Thunder , Floyd's PA
A special Turbosound system from Britannia Row comprising:
# 64 stacks of Turbosound Flashlight speaker cabinets
# Three Quad positions comprising 12 stacks of Turbosound Flash and Floodlight
# Three delay systems comprising 16 stacks of Turbosound Flashlight
# Twenty-three Turbosound monitor wedges
# Eight personal radio systems
# BSS/Turbosound EPC-760 & EPC-780 amplifiers
# 232,000 watt speaker capacity
# Midas XL-3 Quad mixing console
# Two Yamaha PM 4000 mixers
# One Yamaha PM 3000 Quad effects mixer
# 168 input channels
Any Colour You Like , Lighting And Lasers
The design of the stages's rear canopy was inspired by Floyd playing Hollywood
Bowl and discovering the potentional for some amazing lighting effects which
could be generated using the Bowl's general shape. So they decided to build a
portable version!
Illumination was provided by: # 270 Vari*lites # 36 telescans # 12 Obie Xescans # Four Wynne Wilson 'Dalek' lights # Four Gladiator followspots # Four 'Lighting Strikes' # Two Oxford ACL45 laser systems # A trademark of Pink Floyd's live show since the 70s has been the famous circular screen. On the 1994 tour, it was the largest ever at 40ft. It also appear to explode on a nightly basis on the last beat of Run Like Hell, courtesy of the Pyro crew # Rear projection: 70mm 10kw projector # Front projection: four Cameleon Teleprojectors
Welcome To The Machine , The Stage
# Pink Floyd had three identical stages built to play a game of leapfrog across
the USA and Europe. Why? Well, each stage took three days to build, 18 hours to
set up, seven hours to break down and two days to fully dismantle, that's why!
Each stage measured 60m wide, 22m deep and 23m high. It was designed by Marc
Brickman and Mark Fisher at a staggering cost of more than $3 million # 200
crew personnel were needed on tour plus over 500 people employed locally at each
venue for steel, catering, security, etc # The band's equipment filled 49
trucks ‚ 33 for the stage assembly alone # 250 tons of steel were used in each
stage assembly # The crew travelled in eight busses with a private plane on
call for the band
Rack Facts
# The actual layout of effects in Gilmour's rack had to be thought out primarily
for ease of use, but also so that they don't interfere with each other
electronically and cause unwanted hums and buzzes. Even the AC and DC supplies
had to be specially designed to ensure that the digital equipment is not
corrupted by clicks, main spikes, etc. Each pedal has its own separate DC supply
to guard against errant DC flow down audio signal cables # Although many
effects seem to be duplicated , three different compressors, several overdrive
units, etc , one will work better in a particular combination than another #
The Pete Cornish Big Muff is a custom version of the Electro Harmonix version,
but with a better signal to noice ratio # All the BOSS GE-7s have been modified
to give a flatter response at '0' position and a better overall signal-to-noice
ratio # Due to lack of space on top of the unit, four effects have been built
into rack units: the Electro Harmonix Electric Mistress, a Tremulator, two BOSS
CE-2 chorus units and an Univibe have all been modified and racked up, the
Univibe featuring a selectable speed switch with two presets # Gilmour's Earnie
Ball volume pedal has been modified with a 10k pot,to reduce high end signal
losses
The Division Bill
An army marches on its stomach and the first battalion of Floyd footsoliders is
no exception. The tour had eight caterers and a dietican and had to carry all
the equipment necessary to feed both band and crew. One refrigerated lorry was
on hand to carry the scoffular requirements for three square meals for 220
people daily. Each munchfest included a choice of two meats, one fish, one
vegetarian and four puddings, plus bread, fruit, biscuits etc.
An excerpt from Pink Floyd's daily shopping list reads thus:
# 20 loaves of bread
# 50 gallons of milk
# 10 gallons of whipping cream (!)
# 1,000 eggs
# 1,200 tea bags
# Two boxes of lettuce
# 1,000 cans of soft drink
# 25 boxes of breakfast cereal
# Two boxes of bananas
# Unspecified quantities of mineral water and virgin (!?) olive oil
Plus specially requested items like:
# Marmite
# Branston pickle
# English marmalade
# Weetabix
# Earl Grey tea bags
# English mustard
# Hot West Indian Pepper sauce
# English ale
# Cheddar cheese
# Basmati rice
# Italian Expresso
Transcribed by Kevin