The 1990s

The Early Years

As the 1990’s dawned, Richard plunged head-first into his University’s Student’s Union voluntary Stage Crew organisation; initially focusing on live Sound, but rapidly discovering that his real interest and instinctive abilities were in lighting. This gave him a great insight in to all the roles in Event Production as everyone had to be able to do everything! The first key skill everyone had to learn was coiling cables… which is something you never stop doing, although they are less coated in stale beer nowadays. whilst discovering and learning all about Event Production - and, of course, how to coil cables, something you never stop doing … although they are less likely to be coated in beer on the floor of Buckingham Palace.), but rapidly discovering that his real interest was in lighting,. as an enthusiastic and dedicated amateur learning the basics of events and lighting at his University’s Student Union, which had strong ties to the underground early Rave scene (…with its surprisingly close cross-over with the local crusty folk-rock scene…) in North Wales, Richard without declined the career he was offered as a project manager in the defense industry for the insecurity of being a freelancer in the entertainment industry. He found sleeping on cold stages being paid in bread and beer more interesting, although financially dubious.

This decision proved to be a good one, and the pay increased. Well, it couldn’t really decrease. His first year continued along the same lines, except scaled-up. Early shows were often large-scale all-night raves at legendary venues such as the Sanctuary in Milton Keynes. These shows were awash with the then new-fangled moving-lights with which Richard was at the time deeply obsessed by, seeing their serious and artistic uses beyond the flash’n’trash and unreliability most others did at that point. He established himself as an expert in the use of ground-breaking units such as the Golden Scan 3, VL-5/6, NAT, Cyberlight, and later the Mac-500 & 600. And also using the revolutionary new digital control systems that abstractred the controls from their phyiscial values, chiefly the WholeHog II, ScanCommander (predecessor to the GrandMA) and then later the Compulite Sabre and Vector.

Early Goals

Everyone should have goals when they start-out, apparently. So, as the great adventure into the unknown started, he was put on the spot on his first day:

Q. What will be the biggest Venue and Person you will have lit in 10 years time?

A. Wembley and… Madonna!

(Flippent reply, with no expectation of achieving it, of course)

And then, just 6 months later, on the last day of the year - and still not yet 25…!

Well…

…sort of…

Ok, so it was actually the Wembley Exhibition & Conference Center, not the Wembley Arena next door, and definitely NOT the adjacent world-famous Wembley Stadium …which is what he meant…but didn’t clearly state. Still, it’s made a good story when down the pub ever since…

Three decades on, he’s still not done the Stadium, but he has done the Arena a few times.

Madonna, on the other hand, took a further 11 years. …So, a pretty good estimate all-in-all then…!

OK, we’re not setting goals any more!

Which is just as well, because any further goals that might then have been set would probably have been way off, as direction of travel changed many times in those early years.

But, long-term, many achievements happened instead that he would never have dreamed-of; taking him to places, situations, and meeting people from the very top to the very bottom.

Plus a lot of people talking about football. A LOT of people. Football. Oh, Balls…

Anyway, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Here are some of things that happened that can be talked about.

And aren’t, mostly, football.

At some point in this year, did The Prodigy for the third time. Although, due to an staffing problem, rather bizarrely Richard ended-up doing their FOH sound instead of the lights. P

What else happened in this very early period after going “Pro”?

Quite a bit of time was spent touring round Europe, mostly Germany, including an amazing month in Vienna as the snow melted.

Through a very complicated story involving the early Internet, Richard ended-up working for High End Systems for a while, and travelled from the USA 🇺🇸 to the Ukraine 🇺🇦

• Towards the end of that seminal first decade, the opportuntiy arose - thanks to a very opportune random cup of tea at the fabulous Spot Co - to make the bold leap into Television Production. Starting with LDs Chris Rigby & Oli Richards on The Pepsi Chart Show (C5) & at MTV Studios in Camden, things expanded to include the very delliberatly chaotically only half rehearsed - but a sememeorable - SM:TV/CD:UK (ITV).

There’s many moemnts from that show that have been lovingly recovered from old VHS recordings and put on YouTube. One histoiric moment though was one everyone involved in wish had stayed dumped in the bin of history and forgotten about though : Britney Spear’s UK TV Debut. [^2] -

At this time, promotional music performances were everywhere on broadcast TV. It was quite possible to do the same act 4 times on 4 different networks in the same week. Yes, I’m looking at you Texas.¹

• Still on the musical performances, but sightly more classy, he also programmed & operated the lights in the gone-too-soon Earls Court 1 for the also-now-gone Luciano Pavarotti’s 1998 performance (LD Mike Sutcliffe (Sottyy), for the BBC). Quite an experience. He took his skills with moving-lights and discovered an intense fascination with what could be achieved on screen - and as the new Millenium approached, this became his primary focus, but before that, another unexpected opportuntiy arose!

6 months in Pinewood Studios

Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Lead Programmer on this production that sprawlled across 3 stages at Pinewood, including the famous 007 Stage.

At one point, had pretty much every moving light that was available in London at that time (apart from Vari*Lites), across 3 stages.

For example, there were 80x Mac-600’s just to light the Sphynx’s head (40x each side).

Oh, and about 16x Gladiator follow-spots…for backlights…

Timecoded cues stacked on top of each other ended-up firing so fast that the poor screen on the Wholehog II couldn’t keep up and was just a blur.

Yes it looks crude in places by modern standards, but more than a quarter of a century of lighting technology improvements have passed!

David Mallet directing, DoP Nic Knowland.

Go Go Go Donny Osmond!

Jesus Christ Superstar

After the delightfully over the top campness of Joseph, another Lloyd-Webber musical, except this one is Seriously Arty…

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