Roger Lindsay was the principal FOH XL8 pilot as the recent Jesus Christ Superstar tour whipped around the UK’s arenas. He tells Dave Robinson how Midas (and AKG) kept him faithful
ANDREW LLOYD- WEBBER’s and Tim Rice’s much-loved Jesus Christ Superstar hit the arenas of the UK in September. Riding a tidal wave of expectation, newcomer Ben Forster took the title role, with comedian- songwriter Tim Minchin as Judas, former Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm as Mary, and ex-Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles as Herod. The whole production
required 14 trucks to shift it from city to city. SSE Audio Group supplied an L-Acoustics PA for the stadium rock power, with DiGiCo SD7 and Yamaha PM5D consoles deployed for monitoring duties (for Seamus Fenton and Nick Lythgo respectively). Out front, two engineers were kept on their toes manning a flagship Midas XL8 digital mixing system for a cast of 40. While Lloyd-
Webber’s engineer Robin Sellars focused on mixing the 10-piece band, it was down to engineering legend Roger Lindsay to stay on top of the demands of a tricky vocal mix. He told us about his experiences.
If there’s a subtext to the tour, it seems to be ‘Theatre versus Rock ’n’ Roll’… I wouldn’t say it was ‘versus’… Andrew Lloyd-Webber conceived it as a rock show but it ended up as one of the longest running shows in theatre. He did it in America as an arena show when it was first released in 1972, and for the last 40 years that’s always what he’s wanted to do again. This is the first time he’s been able to realise that. So, not ‘versus’; it’s more like an ‘adjustment’ of two different worlds, then – we’ve been finding a common ground to create that crossover from a
theatre production to a large arena. There are people on JCS who have spent their lives in musical theatre, and they are now coming into the rock arena; and for the rock people, they see how a show like this works in theatrical terms.
What challenges has that created for you? Primarily: numbers. If you start with a conventional rock tour, you’ve got a band with three or four members, say. JCS has a 10-piece band and 40 singers – all of whom sing a line at some point. That’s a big difference. Also, most rock performers, other than the lead singers, don’t move around the stage much. We have 40 performers, all moving, all singing and changing roles. It’s never static. So the complexity and the number of those changes make a big difference. There isn’t a moment where you can go on to ‘cruise mode’, which with most bands, you can. In one song, there are 16 singers and 16 individual lines, one after another – you wouldn’t get that in a rock show. I was constantly
programming mutes on the XL8 to start with, too, because unlike a rock show, where the mics are handhelds or on stands, the whole cast are wearing headset mics. Wherever they go they are always miked, so you have to be careful when a performer goes offstage…