Billboard, 6, Nov. 1971: The More Successful You Get, The More Equipment You Get, So Teams Are Needed To Get Everything From Place To Place
Billboard magazine article about The Who’s road crew and P.A., published 6 Nov. 1971.
By Ian Dave
They Also Service Who Only Life And Handle . . .
Behind every successful rock group, there is the problem of transportation and with the advent of electronic sophistication—the amps race for bigger and better wattage with no “Strategic Amps Limitations Talks” in view—the job gets harder, the problems more complicated. Transport is no longer a question of putting your instrument in its case, handing it to the bandboy who stacks it in the bus and everybody goes off singing “Tuxedo Junction.”
Transport is now at a stage where the road manager is rightly a member of the group. He may lift amps, but he also cuts airport red tape. He may stack a drum kit but he also works a sound board.
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But if Osibisa were just breaking into the U.S. market, the Who have no problems. As a group they are delighted with the advent of the jumbo jet—it means that ALL the group’s equipment can travel in one plane. Previously, it took two jets to get them off the ground.
The Who, however, prefer to use air travel only to get them from the U.K. to the U.S. Previous ill luck, weather, mix ups, etc., have made them wary of releasing their equipment to the airlines. It goes by road—all 105 pieces and weighing three tons.
Home on the road for the equipment is a specially designed 40-foot-long truck with a long wheelbase.
After the release of their rock-opera “Tommy,” the Who’s demand and audience became so large that bigger concert halls and auditoriums were needed. Pet[e] Rudge, president of the Who’s Track International who is in charge of the group’s touring dates in the U.S., notes: “Before ‘Tommy’ we’d always played conventional halls, around 3,000 capacity, where the sound could, to a certain extent, be controlled. But about a year ago, the Who saw the strength of their audience in America and were persuaded to go for the bigger places, both indoor and outdoor. Outdoor gigs with the Who have always been difficult—they don’t really like to do gigs like this because of the trouble getting the sound down pat.
“But for the U.S. tours especially, Pete Townshend and Bob Pridden, who is our kind of super roadie and the fifth Who, have thought up a set of equipment that takes care of all our troubles—a kind of stereo P.A. system that can be subjected to all the stresses and strains of being carted around the country. It has something like a 75-foot lead so you can put speakers at the back of the hall or whatever and get exactly the same sound coming from the stage.”
The Who’s ideas were developed to reality by Charlie Watkins of the WEM organization in the U.K., which was discovered by one of the roadies four years ago.
The Who travel big: 10 extra people around to make sure they stage and sound perfect. Four come from England including Pridden, who is the only road manager who has his own chauffer (“Superstar?” says Rudge) and doesn’t travel with the equipment. And there is John Wolfe, who like Pridden, has been with the Who for six years. Pridden and Wolfe are Townshend discoveries and they also work with the group when they are in the recording studios.
Two other roadies drive the truck and the equipment around. They literally live in the back of the truck, taking turns driving. It isn’t as bad as it sounds because it is equipped with a bed, stereo system and refrigerator and other homely comforts. The shift system, as any long distance truck driver will tell you, is necessary because of the long hauls, such as an overnight slog from San Francisco to Denver (1,100 miles), right over the Rocky Mountains and then another 1,100 miles from Denver to Dallas immediately following.
It is essential they arrive early. The advance party go into the city the night before the actual concert and get to the auditorium at 8 a.m. This is is when the truck is driven over and the road team—the last tour Rudge hired four extra men because of the equipment volume—start work. Rudge maintains it takes 12 hours to get the Who set up properly because the Who travel with their own lighting system. “We carry around 50 lights and each one has to be put up individually—rather like traveling with a circus,” says Rudge.
One of the major problems in setting up is working with union people in the halls—not because they are unionized but because they are unfamiliar with the special treatment a rock act needs.
During a concert Pridden works the sound mixer board, prompting him to say: “It’s not just a question of twisting a dial, flicking a switch. These people are part of the performance. Townshend is likely to switch things around on stage and you have to be ready for this. That’s why roadies are called members of the group.”