Working Backstage, PART 1

The essential primer, all you want to know A CX SERIES

Let’s peel this onion. Showbiz is an exciting animal, nothing is quite like the feeling as the curtain closes or the house lights go up after an AWESOME show! For us who work it, we really feel the endorphins – neurotransmitters released by the pituitary gland and hypothalamus in the brain.

No kidding, it’s a buzz! I got that nine times out of 10 even if the music or the performance was boring. I’d pack up and feel warm, even when the air was cold. It helps us along, especially late at night. Then there is the approval of our friend circle because this is perceived to be a glamorous vocation and the approbation (translation: disapproval) of our wider family elders. Of that I hear a lot, although these enlightened days there is hope!

It’s a modern-day circus, but lacking the animals of the past. They remain festooned with lights and signs, large motorhomes for the performers, and out back crappy caravans for the ‘warbs’. Those warbs are us, the tent-hands of the past, existing in the present.

Yes Please: Me!

I really felt like I had joined ‘a circus’ when starting in 1974 and working at the evolving band scene that included AC/DC, Little River Band, Sherbet, Skyhooks and a gazillion others. Quickly I evolved my lighting business ‘Zapco Lightshow’ to fit the need. At that time, we lit the venue AND the band, with colour wheels, projections, ultraviolet tubes, a mirror ball, and a couple of coloured stage floodlights. The ‘need’ became concert lighting. We lit the talent.

Working through the ‘YES ME’ list I sure did enjoy the band interactions and less so the audiences. They were and remain at fever pitch for ‘their’ band or performer. Try to not get in the way. It is sometimes cringeworthy.

Your ‘friend appreciation’ of what you are doing whilst working is wonderful, but it comes with a stack of requests: tickets (usually a few); introductions to the ‘stars’ – which is a very bad, career ending thing; then just gossip. All that is either difficult or wrong. Understand this: you have to reset your brain. If Prince was your legend, you’d be fired for even looking at him backstage! (An actual contract condition). Always remember, you’re only as good as your LAST gig!

Travel The World

At an ENTECH Brisbane 2024 EnTalk, we were absorbed in the session by Sean ‘Motley’ Hackett. A Brisbane lad, he found employment in Jands Concert Productions in the 1980s and ended up seconding for the Lighting Designer for KISS. Soon he was the guy, promoted to LD. So began 800 shows over 20 years.

It wasn’t glamourous. Kiss were a notoriously tightly run money machine. Gene and Paul did pre-show meets worth ginormous dollars. They sold autographed guitars at every opportunity. They made insane money. But they made Mot fly Premium Economy. Cunning plan, here’s why; he always had more than enough FF miles to upgrade to Biz, but: consider. What if your tour isn’t planned a year out, and you are slumming it back there?

No kidding, sitting upright 14 hours and arriving in seven time zones will render you a dribbling, gibbering wreck. Forget the gig tomorrow. You are officially munted. You’re out of service for a couple of days at least. Don’t think you can blunder through, you cannot do that AND be safe and useful. Mot had enough time to get upgraded. You probably will not.

Speaking from vast experience, travelling biz with a real flat bed and proper personal management will get you there fit for your purpose.

This is where you need to say the best and most accurate word in your language: NO.

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Main Photo Credit: Adi Goldstein. unsplash