Challenge anyone to name a landmark tour from the 1980's and many will say Peter Gabriel's So tour. Lighting fixtures played a starring role on that tour 30 years ago, interacting with Gabriel from a number of strategically placed lighting booms that were integral to the stage set.
This design has been re-created for Gabriel on his 2012 Back To Front tour which is a nostalgic celebration of Gabriel's 1986 'So LP interspersed with works from his illustrious 35-year solo career.
Accompanying Gabriel on this Stateside tour has been UK LD Rob Sinclair.
Sinclair first worked with Peter Gabriel in 2009 and again for his New Blood show in 2010. He was approached to join Gabriel in America this year, for the tour that will hopefully be seen in Europe in a year or so.
Sinclair is modest about how he has risen to the challenge of emulating the iconic image of Gabriel battling booms and lights.
"The original 80s tour (designed by LD Jonathan Smeeton) is remembered, rightly, as a real landmark in concert history and the booms are truly unique and wonderful things," explains Sinclair. "We used them as the basis of the new show design and I hope that what we have created has lived up to expectations and done justice to the legacy of the original show."
As a regular specifier of Clay Paky, Sinclair is impressed with the innovative fixtures the company is currently developing. And so he decided to bring Gabriel's show bang up to date using one of Clay Paky's newest fixtures - the Alpha Spot QWO 800.
"I'd not specified the QWO 800 on anything before. I was immediately impressed when the Ambersphere Solutions team first demonstrated it for me in their offices. Then when we had a shoot-out scenario with the booms, Ambersphere very kindly sent some down for a test day. In this way, we could see the fixtures 'in situ' as we were designing the show. Our key requirements were fixtures that were bright, had good zoom range and were lightweight.
"The booms need to be counterweighted with 4 times the weight of the head so a 10kg increase in lamp weight makes for a 40kg counterweight so every kilo saved was crucial. The QWO 800 hit the sweet spot for us - bright enough for arenas, light enough to go on the booms. An added bonus was that I also love the colour palette and gobo effects offered by the fixture."
In keeping with Gabriel's quirky rule that everything needs to be an odd number, Sinclair shipped 15 Alpha Spot QWO 800s from major UK rental company Neg Earth to join the Stateside tour - three each for the five booms.
"The QWO 800s weren't readily available over in the States when we set off, so I used my UK connections, and the fixtures have been very good. They held their brightness through all the moves and I had confidence that the team at Ambersphere would iron out any minor technical problems should they arise."
