Joyce W was a guest at our bi-monthly retiree lunch yesterday. She has recently retired after 40 years at the Symphony. She was telling us about clearing out her computer files and emails. One thing that came up was MTT’s 70th birthday celebration which we were all stunned to realize was over ten years ago. (MTT is continuing to fail and although scheduled to conduct one last time at SFS in about three weeks, the thinking is that he will not be able to actually conduct. Most of those at the table who have known and worked with Michael for many years – basically all of us – said that they would not be attending the last concert, preferring to remember Michael in better times.)
Joyce’s question relative to the celebration was about a photo she had of the rock and roll participants. And therein lies my story.
In those days I was mostly working in the sound department as a part of Hal’s crew. For this show I was the monitor mixer. Who needed monitor? The rock stars, that’s who. The story is that Boz Scaggs, then a member of the Symphony board, wanted to perform a version of the Beatles’ Birthday for the celebration. I suppose he talked to someone upstairs to get it added to the program. We just had to make it happen. It was supposed to be a surprise and there were other, orchestral, things on the program so there was not much room to set it all up.
I think Boz had a relatively simple idea at first. Elvis Costello was in town doing narration for another Symphony program so he was added. Then Phil Lesh heard about it and wanted to be included. Luckily for us, Phil wasn’t going to be playing bass, only singing. Then Lars Ulrich heard about it and wanted in. I can’t imagine Birthday without drums, but when Lars came in, he brought his (large) Metallica drum set with him. Not to mention a drum tech who spent hours – literally! – getting it set up just right. Boz hired a bass player from the Union hall but also brought another guitar player whose name no one remembers.
The guitar players all needed their special processors and amps. Since there wasn’t room on stage, we had to set them up in soundproof boxes offstage with wireless links. So, wireless (radio) from the guitar to the processor and amp, which was mic’d, and wireless back to their in-ear monitors. Elvis was cool and worked off the wedges but in the end there were still about a dozen wireless links. Denise W did her usual outstanding job coordinating frequencies. All the on stage mics were wireless too.
Here’s a look at part of the off stage set up:
The rehearsal was hurried. Even though we only had one song to do, the setup was complicated and we had to wait until the orchestra was finished with their rehearsal.
At one point, Phil came over to me and said the drums were too loud in his monitor and could I turn them down. I told him the drum mics were all turned off. He’s technically savvy so I was able to show him on the mixer. He grumbled a bit but went away. Later, when I told Hal about it, he said, ‘What does he expect? He’s standing ten feet from the loudest drummer on the planet!’ Indeed.
The picture is from the rehearsal and shows the unknown guitar player, Lars on drums, Phil with the Local Union bass player (name also unknown) behind him, Boz and Elvis.
At the concert, everything went fine. I think Michael must have gotten wind of it at some point but a good time was had by all.
There is one other story from that evening, though. After the rehearsal, we cleared off what we could for the start of the program and went to dinner. I was with Hal when we came back in the stage door and we saw Boz Scaggs with his wife arguing with the stage door guard. Evidently, Boz was not on the guest list and Byron (the guard) wasn’t letting him in. Hal and I got through and immediately went down the hall to the artistic people gathered around MTT’s office and told them to get over to the stage door. They got it sorted. We went on with our business.