Inside Out (37 page)

As we compiled the team to work on the tour, we encountered more strains on people’s sense of fair play and loyalty. To design
the staging, we initially approached Fisher Park, but they turned down the opportunity since they were already committed to
working on Roger’s
Radio KAOS
show. It was unlikely that either side would have taken kindly to sharing their talents. Considering they were also to be
involved in Roger’s version of
The Wall
in Berlin two years later they were probably right to stick with his team.

I have no idea if it was the case, but I sensed that Jonathan Park in particular was loyal to Roger rather than us, whereas
Mark Fisher would happily have done both projects. I mention this because it became an issue seven years later, when, mean-spirited
as we are, we asked Mark alone to work for us. We may forget to give credit when it is due, but we always have no problem
remembering real or imagined slights.

Steve then carried out some research into set designers and came up with Paul Staples. As soon as we had talked to him and
seen some of his work we thought Paul could do the job. He
brought a large dose of fresh thinking to our staging: he had extensive experience of working in the theatre as well as on
innumerable exhibitions and presentations. Paul came up with a raft of ideas – as usual, some had to be scrapped, while others
survived. The show was initially designed for indoor arenas but still required a roof structure to hang the screen. We wanted
a large stage, and although we never seem to achieve it, we always aim for as clean a stage floor as possible.

We also required the maximum amount of darkness for projection purposes, which led to the creation of what was essentially
a large black box. We have one very specific advantage over the majority of touring bands. The total inability of any of us
to moonwalk, duckwalk, set fire to our hair or play guitars with our teeth means that the audience do not need a constant
video monitor to show what we are doing on stage. People sometimes ask me why don’t we just get computers to perform instead.
I usually reply, ‘No, we can’t, they move around too much…’

Film is more unwieldy than video in many ways but it has such good quality and luminescence in comparison that it is still
more suitable for stadium environments. The future probably holds laser, full-colour hologram projection into an artificial
cloud hanging over the auditorium, but it certainly wasn’t available in 1987.

Marc Brickman, who Steve had called at short notice in Los Angeles to work on
The Wall
shows, now took another call from Steve, asking him to fly over from LA. Marc remembers talking to David, and picking up
the feeling that David was ‘incensed’ that Roger thought he had the right to shut Pink Floyd down. Marc was taken on as lighting
designer, and started work with Robbie Williams and Paul Staples. Marc and Robbie went to Brussels to meet Paul, who was working
with a ballet company. They had a coffee in a nearby café, and a tram trundled past. Marc and Paul looked at each other, as
their cerebral light bulbs went on. In the
tour, lights running on tracking were used, stopping directly over Rick’s head as he played the intro to ‘Wish You Were Here’.
Another effect was something of an accident. Testing the Very lights and the round screen, there was a computer glitch. As
Marc reset the system all the lights flipped over. He realised they could ‘dance’ and the technique became a major element
of the show. Other new toys included the periactoids, which were the spinning sections built into the front face of the stage
base. They could be set to turn at different speeds, or to flicker in pre-set patterns.

One of the fattest files in the touring department is ‘The Ones That Got Away’. Much time is expended on effects that promise
a great deal but always seem to end up being bloody dangerous, fabulously expensive and only work once in fifty attempts.
Sometimes (viz the inflatable pyramid), despite fulfilling all these characteristics, they still slip through the net. This
time we decided mid-tour to ditch Icarus, an apparently airborn figure who sprang forth in ‘Learning To Fly’ and flittered
across the stage. He never quite worked, ending up looking like oversized washing on a line.

One idea – the flying saucer – sounded perfect. A large helium-filled device, it could be radio-controlled to hover over the
auditorium, dripping with lights and effects. No wires or rigging were required. The problem was that it was a fantasy. To
carry sufficient power for the proposed lighting rig it would have been about the same size, cost and approximately as safe
as the
Graf Zeppelin…

A decent model of the staging was built to show how the whole thing could be assembled, folded and trucked. One of the most
important aspects of these rehearsals was working out the most efficient way to pack up and down the trucks, since saving
one truck for one year of touring could save something in the region of $100,000. This was all well and good. But we also
had to construct a band – and however many models we constructed, the
musicians had to be at least partly human. We had used additional musicians before. Ever since
Dark Side,
additional singers had been part of the show. Snowy White had added a second guitar to
The Wall –
and for that brief period in early 1968 Syd and David had presented a two-guitar line-up. We had also used an additional
drummer on
The Wall.
We obviously now needed a bass player. Perhaps the most significant change was the arrival of a second keyboard player. This
was a response not only to the possibilities offered by digital technology – we needed someone who was familiar with sequencers
and samplers – but also to help represent the fuller, more complex sounds we had been able to produce on the houseboat.

Our additional keyboard player, Jon Carin, had originally met David at the Live Aid show at Wembley Stadium. Jon was playing
with Bryan Ferry, and since David was playing guitar in the same band he had an opportunity to view Jon’s skills at first
hand. Jon was also up to date on sampling techniques, which was particularly useful when we found we needed to re-create the
sounds produced by long defunct keyboards now languishing in the Science Museum.

Guy Pratt arrived at the
Astoria
for an audition when I was present since David wanted a second opinion. Guy’s rather less than respectful attitude to the
Dinosaur Kings of Rock when asked to run through the bass parts alerted us to the fact that apart from being able to play
them all with one hand behind his back – or indeed with a monumental hangover, and sometimes both – he would be an easier
touring companion than someone who started in awe of us and then became bitterly depressed on getting to know us better. By
coincidence, Guy’s songwriter father Mike had co-written ‘Rock With The Caveman’ with Lionel Bart and Tommy Steele, which
was a pleasing connection with my youthful visit to see Tommy in the late Fifties.

Gary Wallis was spotted playing percussion with Nick Kershaw at a charity show where David was also appearing. Neither of
us had ever seen anything like it. Instead of sitting down to play Gary was working in a kind of cage stuffed full of percussion,
some pieces of which were mounted so high that a three-foot leap was needed to strike the required object. With his obvious
musical skills this additional showmanship seemed an ideal bonus for a stage that looked initially as though it might be occupied
by the living dead.

The saxophonist Scott Page was another stage show in his own right. Our only problem here was holding him down, possibly strapping
him down. With relatively few saxophone parts in the show, Scott became a
Phantom Of The Opera
figure. At the slightest excuse he’d be back up on stage, a guitar strapped around his neck, in the hope of finding himself
another part to play, or doing a Status Quo along to David’s guitar solos. He didn’t have a radio mike, and used a standard
guitar lead, so the road crew – possibly inspired by our tour manager Morris Lyda’s rodeo background – would chop a few inches
off the lead each night to restrict his movement and rope him in. He was lucky they didn’t hog-tie him down.

On guitar, Tim Renwick had the best credentials of all. A native of Cambridge, he had been to the same school as Roger, Syd,
David and Bob Klose, although some years behind. His earlier bands had been produced by David and he had also played on Roger’s
solo work. On the occasions David was absent from rehearsals, Tim made an excellent deputy as musical director.

The backing singers on the tour were assembled from various sources. We met Rachel Fury through James Guthrie, and Margaret
Taylor was an LA-based singer who had worked on the album sessions. Durga McBroom, a former member of Blue Pearl, completed
the initial trio – her sister Lorelei later replaced Margaret for the latter part of the tour.

We arrived in Toronto for rehearsals at the beginning of August 1987. This was mainly due to Michael Cohl’s Canadian connections;
the tour was also opening there. David was coming on later after completing the mixing of the record, while we moved into
a very hot rehearsal room along with a mountain of new equipment to start work. We both wanted the feeling of a homogeneous
band rather than a split between principals and sidemen. The nature of the new music was much more in this style anyway, and
would not easily lend itself to being played live by a four-piece. After two weeks it was sounding roughly right, although
this was at the expense of a lot of late nights from Jon and Gary as they struggled with endless disks of samples (‘Everything’s
crashed, man, another two days without sleep should see it right’).

The band then relocated to the airport to join the crew, who had been working on the set-up. This choice of locale turned
out to be a bright idea and gave us a penchant for airfields as rehearsal bases: they provide excellent engineering facilities
on site, as well as easy shipping for delivery of a constant stream of high-tech heavyweight items of equipment that were
inevitably arriving late.

Security was easy to maintain; we lost far more tools and personal effects in the very smart hotels we stayed in than we ever
did in the hangars. And insecurities were easier to avoid. We didn’t have to perform for the endless stream of people who
manage to find some reason to hang about at any sort of rehearsal. The fact that we also got to have a go on the 747 simulator
and fly it round the CNN tower, to sit in a USAF F14 that was visiting for an air show, and generally hang around an airfield
added to the general pleasure of the experience. Both David and I were doing quite a lot of flying in the period leading up
to this record, and apart from ‘Learning To Fly’ the aviation theme was carried on throughout the tour. MTV gave away an aeroplane
and flying lessons as a
promotion prize, while the tour party sported aviator jackets rather than the normal embroidered satin baseball-style ones.

By now, the album was ready to be launched. David and I increased our workload by spending most of each morning doing an endless
round of phone interviews. This was a better alternative than a whistle-stop tour of America visiting radio and TV stations,
and we certainly couldn’t do anything in Europe, so we settled into answering the same questions that we have dealt with for
thirty-odd years – ‘How did the band get their name?’, ‘Where’s Syd?’, ‘Why has the band lasted so long?’ – along with some
new ones about the fight with Roger, and tried to sound surprised at the novelty of it all.

Meanwhile, out at the airport Paul, Robbie and Marc, along with Morris Lyda, were trying to assemble one hundred tons of steel
into a stage and then work out how to pack it into a truck. Morris was a new personality to us, although already a legend
in rock-show circles. An ex-rodeo rider, he had moved on to something more challenging as a rock tour manager. Having worked
on the previous Genesis tour, along with 50 per cent of the rest of our crew, he had the necessary experience. As usual, the
initial impression of a group of professional and responsible technicians began to dissolve as one French telescan operator
was reprimanded for eating the contents of the ashtrays in a club for a bet…

By the time we arrived at the hangar we were the last thing the crew wanted to see. Not only would we mess up their beautifully
arranged stage and demand changes, but anything they wanted to do had to be done with 50,000 watts of PA killing all conversation.
Eventually we managed to come to an arrangement, with quiet periods as required, but it all felt much slower than we needed.
The size of the crew was vast compared to anything we had done before. Even
The Wall
had only required some sixty people; now we had over 100. Not only was it very difficult to learn all their
names, a year later it was still a struggle, particularly as some came or went or were on one show in three if they were part
of the leapfrogging crew.

Among the difficulties were some special moments. Marc would often spend all night programming the lights and my first sight
of his efforts was unforgettable, because it was so spectacular. On stage you have no concept of what the external view is
like. For example, the circular screen with the lights attached appeared – from my drum stool – like just another lighting
truss. Looking at the stage from out front I could see the full impact of its swirling patterns of light.

Apart from the quantity of crew we also had telephones in triplicate, radio systems, faxes and a drawing office. The last
tour hadn’t even had a production office. Morris favoured briefing sessions that had more affinity with D-Day than a rock
show. After the jobs had been evaluated, allocated and criticised, a short homily on aggression in the field would have fitted
in perfectly. When Morris said ‘marine’ he wasn’t talking dolphin, he was talking Iwo Jima. We needed this sort of character.

One of the first duties assigned upon the arrival of the band was the packaging for the road of David’s rowing machine. David
seemed to think that the fight with Roger might be resolved in the ring rather than the courts and was training every day,
using this wonder device that measured your progress electronically and could pit your rowing against any competitor you cared
to dream up. The downside was that it weighed four hundred pounds and was ten foot long. The final road box looked like a
coffin for the Incredible Hulk, and weighed as much. Nor had anyone allowed for it when packing the trucks. Eventually it
was used as a punishment for the last truck out, which had to take it. Loading productivity increased by 30 per cent.