TPI MAGAZINEYusuf
January 2010 Issue 125
Mark Cunningham visited Elstree Studios to catch a glimpse of the first full production touring show in 33 years by the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens...
In the 61 years since he was born as Steven Georgiou, the singer-songwriter known to audiences in the ’60s and ’70s as Cat Stevens has experienced a fascinating musical and spiritual journey.
After recording such inspirational albums as Tea For The Tillerman, Teaser And The Firecat, Catch Bull At Four and Numbers, Stevens converted to the Muslim faith and adopted the name Yusuf Islam. In 1979, he auctioned his guitars for charity and remained musically inactive at a public level for many years.
Since the 2006 release of An Other Cup, however, Yusuf (he has dropped his surname professionally) has been slowly returning to the fore, and this year’s follow-up, Roadsinger, appears to have completed that process. Both are deeply spiritual but thoroughly accessible collections that bring the artist’s distinctive acoustic style into the 21st century.
And now, 33 years after he last toured, Yusuf has been “dipping his toe in the water” with a series of just four dates — the aptly-named Guess I’ll Take My Time tour — that feature enchanting, multi-layered visual projections using illustrations by the artist’s Turkish friend, Dogan Ur.
Yusuf was even taking his own custom-painted VW camper on the road as his personal transport!
Visiting Dublin, Birmingham, Liverpool and London over a three-week period, the tour was promoted by Rob Hallet for AEG Live and managed at Yusuf’s request by Harvey Goldsmith CBE who promoted many of the original Cat Stevens tours, including Majikat, his last in 1976.
Said Goldsmith: “Since then I have been in contact with Yusuf and persuaded him to appear at the Live Earth concert in Hamburg where his performance went down a storm. We reconnected earlier this year and I am thrilled to be working with Yusuf on the first of our re-collaborations.”
While Marc Brickman advanced his show design in Los Angeles, Jim Baggott of Goldsmith’s production company AMP was given the role of production manager and pulled together many of the main crew and suppliers.
“Britannia Row and PRG were natural choices for sound and lighting,” said Baggott, who was assisted by co-ordinator Rachel Haughey. “Chaos Visual Productions came through Marc and they helped with a test build of the projection layering at PRG in Los Angeles, arranged by Mickey Curbishley, as well as sourcing video kit in the UK.”
After five days of music rehearsals at Music Bank in south London, Yusuf and his entourage arrived at Elstree Studios’ George Lucas Stage 2 on November 9 for another five days with the full production. TPi was privileged to be invited by Jim Baggott to catch a preview of the show at Elstree, talk to many of the crew and be granted a short interview with the star himself.
THREE ACTS
The show was divided into three sections: the first was an intimate acoustic set and the last is designed as a ‘greatest hits’ package with Yusuf fronting his full band which includes Alun Davies, the guitarist who has featured on almost every album by the artist since 1970.
Fitting snugly in between these two sets was a 35-minute mini-showcase of songs and scenes from Yusuf’s forthcoming stage musical, Moonshadow. The plot revolves around a young boy who leaves home on a journey of self-discovery, only to find himself arriving back home again.
Although Moonshadow will feature many Cat Stevens-era classics, such as ‘Father And Son’, ‘Morning Has Broken’, ‘Peace Train’ and ‘Oh Very Young’, it will also include a significant amount of newer material, with Christopher Nightingale (Lord Of The Rings & Bombay Dreams) applying his theatrical experience as musical director, while choreography is by Nichola Treherne.
Moonshadow is to be directed by Anders Albien, who has been working on the musical with Yusuf since they were introduced to each other around six years ago.
Albien said: “The great thing about the musical is that it’s not been a case of seeing how Yusuf’s past songs could be shoe-horned into a story, like a lot of other catalogue-based musicials. He wanted to write new songs that would work in the context and many of the songs that appear on his latest albums, An Other Cup and Roadsinger, will be featured. The newer songs account for about 30% of those in Moonshadow.
“We’ve been working on Moonshadow virtually from the moment we met. It had a more conventional storyline at first but, piece by piece, it’s moved into more challenging areas and kind of mirrors Yusuf’s own journey.
“We don’t yet know when the musical will appear in the West End but we are hoping it will come in 2010. These current shows will serve as a trailer, a glimpse of what’s to come with Moonshadow. The feedback will be useful.”
A VISUAL FEAST
The tour’s set & lighting designer, Marc Brickman joined our conversation. A legend in his own right, Brickman, like many in the crew, was thrilled to be asked aboard. “I’ve always loved this man’s music so it’s been a delight,” he said.
“Dogan Ur’s illustrations are really the basis of the design. They’re so stunning and magical that we had to go down this road. We were originally going to have three layers and have everybody standing inside them so that they were in the picture, but for a lot of reasons we rearranged that idea. There are several things we’re doing that we were told couldn’t be done, so immediately we were set a challenge.”
Brickman’s colleagues, video content designer Dietrich Juengling and lighting & media programmer Michael ‘Oz’ Owen, were jointly responsible for creating the 3D projection landscape from the provided artwork.
Juengling explained: “We started with Dogan’s illustrations, made digital files of them and broke each one up into three separate layers, at all times thinking of what would look best either upstage or downstage. We then had to paint in the missing areas of the imagery because the original artwork was more square in shape than the 2:1 ratio projection surface.
“The individual layers are then re-blended by Oz to form a single image with a 3D effect. In some songs we add an extra layer of animation with leaves, rain or snow falling to create even more of a magical feel. All of this imagery is loaded on to three PRG Mbox EXtreme media servers with each of them able to produce two outputs that feed six Barco 20kW projectors positioned at a very steep angle.”
PROJECTION SURFACES
Elisha Griego, Brickman’s assistant, did the technical drawings and research on what would be the ideal projection surface materials. Said Juengling: “The scrims were supplied through the US theatrical drapery company, Sew What? Inc. We auditioned several types of material and they sewed them up then shipped them over here.
“The downstage layer is almost like a sharkstooth scrim but with more of a metallic feel. What we wanted was a highly reflective aluminium mesh but it was very difficult to procure. The very shiny upstage layer is a silver material from Germany that has extremely reflective qualities and can also become quite translucent and is amazing to work with.”
Each layer was loaded on to a high speed motorised roll-up system from Belgian company ShowTex (administered by Rudy Wagemans) that is truss-mounted and enables incredibly fast drops of up to 1.5m per second.
‘Oz’ Owen was at his Virtuoso console, which controlled the ShowTex roll-up system as well as the Mbox graphics, live camera inputs and (of course) the lights.
PRG supplied 22 Vari*Lite VL3500 spots, six VL3000 spots, 19 VL3500 washes, four MDG high output hazers and two fog machines, five Martin Atomic strobes with scrollers, two ETC Source Four PARs, three Lycian M2 long-throw spots... and a lamp post!
“Instead of working to time code, I’m having to count bars in order to hit my cues, so it’s a very human process,” said Owen. “There are still a few of us who continue to use the Virtuoso. You might not see them as often these days but they’re still the first choice for a lot of awards shows in the States because they can handle so many universes.
“The adjustments required to make the resulting 3D images look right on screen have gone way outside the normal technology with the keystoning capabilities of the projectors. We’ve gone way too far here!
“The Mbox is a 3D environment and so, virtually speaking, we were able place the images on a 3D plane and then take the camera position, rotate it, and dolly it up and down. In the Mbox, the camera is precisely at the opposite angle to the projector in reality. That creates all the adjustments for keystoning and vertical distortion perfectly.”
Gordon Torrington headed a PRG crew that also included Andy Horne, Mark Pritchard and Cameron Bannister.
The Chaos team was led by John Wiseman from the L.A. HQ and featured Andy Bramley of Coldplay fame, who directing the i-Mag portions, projectionist Patrick Dolan, video tech Chris Stigger, Barco Encore operators John Fuller and Ian Jacobs, and camera ops Mark Wilkinson and Richard Doran.
AUDIO
“This has been a genuine joy to work on,” said FOH engineer Ben Findlay, who could well have been speaking for all of the Britannia Row crew, and certainly stage manager ‘Deptford’ John Armstrong who nodded his approval as he passed by. “The songs are so wonderful and familiar that it’s like they’ve always been in the air.”
Findlay was using a Yamaha PM1D console when we last met on a Peter Gabriel tour. As a consequence of Gabriel’s preference for Sony Oxford plug-ins, Findlay ended up mixing on a Digidesign Venue D-Show console, and later moved to the more compact Profile desk that he used again for Yusuf.
“It’s the perfect choice for me in that it’s a 96-input console that occupies a tiny amount of space, but it’s very functional and sounds great,” said Findlay. “My background is as a studio engineer and I’ve used Pro Tools for what seems like forever, so the way the Profile is put together, being related, is very familiar.”
The Yusuf show generated 64 inputs at FOH and Findlay recorded everything on Pro Tools. “It’s become very useful because the Moonshadow portion of the set is very reliant on snapshot cues and it’s helped me learn that part of the show. Of course, the Pro Tools recordings will also enable a ‘virtual soundcheck’ so that we can approximate settings before anyone plays a note.”
Until production rehearsals began, Yusuf had been using his own KMS 105 vocal microphone, but Findlay persuaded him that it was time to make a change. “It’s a lovely mic, and it’s perfect for a simple vocal and acoustic guitar situation, but Yusuf has a very delicate vocal delivery and as soon as the drums and other things get going, they also go down the mic.
“I played him back a Pro Tools recording of a rehearsal to demonstrate this problem, and he agreed to change to my suggestion of a Shure Beta 58. It’s all about matching tools with applications.”
The Moonshadow cast of 11 were all on head-worn DPA 4066 omnidirectional lavalier mics with wireless belt packs.
“There’s lots of fader riding involved with that section because as soon as you push them up you get a lot of band ambience going into the DPAs.
“I’ve had to be very meticulous with programming so that only the mics being used at any time are left open. That’s another advantage of having Pro Tools because I can review what I’ve done and make informed improvements.”
Although Findlay was keen to use L-Acoustics’ new K1 line array, Brit Row’s stock was otherwise deployed and so he chose “the next best option” of a Lab.gruppen-powered V-DOSC rig that would vary from 12 to 16 elements per L/R hang depending on the venue. Additionally, there were ARCS infills and dV-DOSC cabinets for front fill and L/R array underhangs.
“We did an A-B listen between K1 and V-DOSC, and it was like night and day,” commented Findlay. “The K1 is such an improvement and I look forward to using it at the earliest opportunity.”
STAGE SOUND
Monitor engineer Graham Blake came straight from a year on the road with Simply Red to work on the Yusuf shows. “I jumped at the chance,” he said. “I’ve been a fan for as long as I can remember and he’s a real gentleman to work for.”
Despite the wide choice of digital consoles now available, Blake remained loyal to the Yamaha PM1D. “I was thinking about using either a Midas Pro 6 or XL8 for Yusuf, but after using it with the Reds it was more practical to stay with a desk that I know like the back of my hand,” he explained.
“I knew this was going to be a big monitoring job — I’m currently running 37 mixes — so the more familiar the desk, the better, so I’m happy to stick with the tried and tested PM1D. The only significant outboard I have is an Avalon vacuum tube on Yusuf’s vocal — it’s something he particularly likes and insisted on.”
Yusuf had tried in-ear monitors at the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Concert but he hasn’t been keen to continue with them, preferring conventional wedges... not that his set-up was entirely conventional.
Fitted inside wooden packing crates were four AER cabinets that Yusuf owns himself. Said Blake: “The AERs sound really good actually, especially with the acoustics, and he’s very comfortable with them at home.
“In one of his monitors, he has his acoustic guitar which he controls independently; in another he has the delay signal of the acoustic guitar; the third is for his vocal and the fourth is a spare. He also has a Turbosound 450 that provides a full band mix.”
There were additional 450s for keyboards and bass. Sennheiser G2 IEMs were used by the two guitarists, and the drummer wore headphones with an Aviom personal mixer that Blake fed from stage left. The on-stage sound was rounded off with two sets of Turbosound Aspect sidefills for the Moonshadow cast.
Others in the sound crew included Dan Rowe, Amanda Thomson, Rod Clarkson and Sergiy Zhytnikov, while the backline crew were led by Steve Prior.
Richard Wythes and Omar Faranchi handled rigging, Phil Perry was stage carpenter and Sonja Benavidez was in charge of wardrobe.
Trucking was provided by Fly By Nite and Mick Thornton at The Food Factory supplied catering.
Managed by Juliette Slater with assistance from Tommy Tyekiff, the four-city Guess I’ll Take My Time tour ended in London at the Royal Albert Hall on December 8.
TPi