kiss 2020 goodbye - lightingandsoundamerica.com

“When the idea was pitched to me, it was,how do we do the largest show ever, onethat is the best ever and biggest ever?’”

says KISS production director/designer Robert Long, ofSRAE. The idea was to do an extravagant version of theband’s End of the Road Tour on New Year’s Eve in Dubai.(The tour began in January 2019 and was prematurelyhalted last spring.) “Dubai was always on the list of thoseplaces the band has never played and wanted to play,”Long adds.

“Doc [McGhee, KISS’ manager] and the band were look-ing at what artists were doing in terms of pay-per-view,”Long continues, “and City Drive Studios, the film company,approached us a long time ago about doing an End of theRoad film, so there was a relationship there, and Doc hadsome relationships in Dubai.” Talks began in July. “It reallydidn’t go full steam ahead until October,” Long notes. “Weliterally pulled it out of a hat in terms of the amount of timeand having to build this monstrosity of a stage on a beach.”The latter is located at Atlantis, The Palm, the resort locat-

KISS 2020 GoodbyeBy: Sharon Stancavage

20 • February 2021 • Lighting&Sound America

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Photo: Ashley Zapar

The band’s current touring show is adapted for a spectacularNew Year’s Eve event in Dubai

Copyright Lighting&Sound America February 2021 issue live link: http://plasa.me/lsafeb21

ed on the manmade island Palm Jumeirah.And, of course, there was COVID-19 to deal with. “In a

hotel with families from all over the world,” Long says,“how do you try to put 400 people [local and touring]working in and around the band in some kind of bubble?That was the largest challenge. So, we built a local COVIDprotocol,” which was developed with Dubai’s AmericanHospital. “We had two local stagehands that tested posi-tive,” he adds. “Then we had a local Aggreko guy and aPRG guy. So, four people out of 400, and they did not

cross-infect anyone else. We spent months putting thistogether, and I think it worked out well.”The protocol was intensive. “We would test on one day

to work the next,” Long says. “We tested backline andband at rehearsal starting on December 15, before theyever flew [to Dubai], and had every-other-day testing forup to ten days before they flew there. We had temperaturechecks, masks 24/7, and what we called the COVIDpolice, the health-and-safety people who made sure every-one was keeping safe and social distancing. You could

work in close quarters with each other for up to 15 min-utes, then you had to space out.” A key element was con-tact tracing, aided by the use of wristbands. “If someonedid come down with COVID, you could trace where theperson had been for 24 hours and which wristbands theyhad been around.”Lighting director Michael Cooper adds, “We wore

masks along with other standard high vis and hard hats onstage. There were not as many handshakes; instead,elbow bumps. Other than taking the time to go to the test-

ing tent, the COVID restrictions were not a large pain point.Masks are generally annoying for most people, I think,especially in the desert sun, but they’re better than gettingor spreading the disease.”In terms of production design, Long says, “I have been

sitting on a base design for the final KISS [End of theRoad] show that was supposed to be in July in New York,but that’s been pushed back. So, I took that design, satdown with our rigger and our LD, and took pieces apart,not to give away our last show.”

www.lightingandsoundamerica.com • February 2021 • 21

Speaking of the ample use of lasers, provided by Lightwave International, Long says, “We had triple what we typically have onstage.”

Photo: Ashley Zapar


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Top photo: Robert Long; Bottom photo: Ross Halfin

“We brought over ten sea containers,” Long says, “and three and a half of them were all pyro. We emptied the ffp warehouses in LAand Berlin.”

The stage was built on the beach at Atlantis, The Palm, the resort located on the manmade island Palm Jumeirah.


The stage, provided by AES, a local vendor, was, Longsays, “approximately 268'; 131' is what the band playedon, and the stage had a 75' opening.” Because it wasstaged on the beach outside the hotel, guests viewed theshow from their balconies. “When you have to build thatclose to a building, you have to be aware of the roofheight, so people on the balconies can see and the roof isnot blocking the band,” Long says. “That’s why we wentwith that big of a stage. We also wanted to go huge,because we knew we were going to use 93 flame heads.”The arena version of the End of the Road Tour included

automated pods that bring the band members onstage, aswell as flying. “I didn’t automate everything because ofweight and because [the stage] was sitting out in thewind,” Long says. “I automated the band pods [for theirentrance], which leaves the final show to do the automa-tion, and do bigger and better lifts.” The automation wasprovided by SGPS. At the Atlantis, Long placed the B stage in the middle of

the children’s pool, which had been drained. The mainpool, which wasn’t drained, provided a staging area for sixtowers holding lighting, audio, and pyro. “They had diversbuilding the scaffolding for the towers,” Long says. “Theyrolled up in wet suits. It’s only 6' deep, but I get it. Theyhad to go underwater to connect the bases together.”The design included 21 LED light pods over the stage,

as well as several screens. The 79'-wide by 45'-high cen-ter screen consisted of 330 sq. m. of ROE Visual CarbonCB5 screen and the two side screens featured 335 sq. m.of Roe Carbon MC-7 LEDs; they were provided by PRG.

LightingLighting for the End of the Road Tour was by Long andSooner Routhier. The design team for the Dubai produc-tion included associate designer Ashley Zapar and theband’s longtime lighting director, Sean “Motley” Hackett.“Motley is based in Australia, so I cover running lights forKISS on one-offs,” Cooper says. “In non-COVID times,Sean would have been at this show, but I believeAustralian travel restrictions prevented him from coming.Sean was gutted, but he did get to work on this show,drawing the rig in Vectorworks and patching and advanc-ing the lighting package with our production and PRG; asa vendor, PRG did a great job on this gig.” This production featured the truss configuration used in

the tour. The overhead rig had five straight trusses, runningupstage/downstage, with 18 Vari-Lite VL3500 Washes andtwo Robe BMFL Blades. Additional BMFL Blades wereplaced upstage [24] and downstage [6]. VL3500 Washesalso provided side light [14 on each side], with six moreunits interspersed with the Blades downstage.The workhorse unit on the floor “was the PRG Icon

Edge; there were 106,” Long notes. “We had [Claypaky]Mythos and Robe BMFL Blades across the back. We’ve

never used the PRG Icon; we had a blast with it.”“The towers [in the pool] were covered in lights; they

were doing double duty,” Long continues. “They weremainly lighting the building; when Paul [Stanley] did hisgag, they lit him up.” Twenty VL3500 Washes were locatedaround the B stage.The production made good use of 86 GLP JDC1

strobes. “The biggest blessing of this one-off was that wewere able to secure our JDC1 units,” Cooper says.“They’re a major part of this show file and cloning theminto other strobes is always painful.” Also featured wereSGM SP6 LED battens..“Design-wise,” Cooper says, “we basically only

changed fixture types based on local inventory, whichworked out nicely. We added Chroma-Q Color Force 72sto the front edge of the stage and some side [Vari-Lite]VL3500 Washes for TV fill light. We added PRGGroundControl [followspot systems] and a large pile ofarchitectural lighting for the Atlantis.” PRG Gearhouse wasthe lighting vendor. The architectural light for the hotel was“primarily Vari-Lites,” Long says. “We put the lighting forthe buildings in PRG’s hands and let them run with that tosave us time. We programmed that based on the colorpalette of each song.” Cooper programmed the show on a grandMA2 console

from MA Lighting. “We used the grandMA2 full-size, agrandMA2 light spare at dimmers, and seven NPUs,” hesays. “There was another grandMA2 full-size at the front ofhouse in case something happened to the main desk. I’veused the grandMA series for my whole career, and, in myopinion, it is far and away the best and most powerfullighting console made. It’s ridiculously stable, scalable,and we all know it inside and out at this point.”As for the programming specifics, Cooper says, “Other

than tidying up some things, I really didn’t have to changemany songs. It cloned over really nicely. I did touch upsome programming in a few songs—‘Calling Dr. Love,’‘Beth,’ and ‘Lick It Up,’ but nothing major.” That beingsaid, he adds, “There are some really nice cues in theshow. The gunshots in ‘Love Gun’ are a pretty fun cuestack to watch run. We did some really nice effects withthe JDC strobes in ‘Detroit Rock City,’ ‘Heaven’s on Fire,’and ‘Cold Gin,’ among others. I think the most complexparts of the show are the layout views for the JDCstrobes.”

Effects“Everything worth doing is worth overdoing,” Long says,referring to special effects. Matt Varley, of ffp, who operat-ed the show in addition to designing it with Başak Öze,says, “Throughout the years we have always thrownaround ideas that turn out to be too big to fit into anarena/touring show, and we’ve always stored them awayfor a special occasion. When the Dubai show came up, we


knew this was the time to go to that folder and pull out asmuch as we could to make it extra big and special.” And big it was. The finale “Rock and Roll All Nite”—

which took place at midnight—was a fireworks displayworthy of any capital city in the world. “We brought overten sea containers,” Long says, “and three and a half ofthem were all pyro. It wasn’t physical product, it was hard-ware—flame heads and all the hardware from pyro. Weemptied the ffp warehouses in LA and Berlin.” “As with the tour,” Varley says, “we wanted to find

moments to really accentuate with pyro instead of justhaving a boom on every single downbeat of every song.While there are moments that those downbeat hits arevital, we wanted to find the moments, like the big drum fillsin the bridges of ‘Psycho Circus’ and ‘Detroit Rock City,’that would really stick out; we worked on adding bigger,more intense, high-altitude cues on top of the onstagecues. Another cue we have always wanted to do but

couldn’t, due to normal safety restrictions, involved sur-rounding Paul’s front-of-house fly platform with pyro forthe end of ‘Love Gun.’ To have 250' comets going offaround him, in sync with the machine gun rhythm duringthe end tag of the song, ended up being one of my per-sonal favorite moments of the night.”Key to the pyro was the Galaxis wireless firing system.

“While wireless might sound risky at first when talkingabout pyro,” Varley says, “the safety measures, fail-safes,and precautions that the team at Galaxis have implement-ed makes it one of—if not the absolute—safest firing sys-tems around. Between those safety measures, the free-dom to place and adjust our rack positions without worry-ing about cable, and the variety of different options ofreceivers/matrixes, I never have to worry about the designcreativity being restricted by the gear.”The use of flames was just as memorable in “Detroit

Rock City,” “Deuce,” “100,000 Years,” “God of Thunder,”

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Photo: Robert Long

The design included 21 LED light pods over the stage, as well as several screens.


“Psycho Circus,” “Love Gun,” “Rock and Roll All Nite,”and “War Machine.” “We ended up setting two GuinnessWorld Records with our flames,” Varley says. “The firstrecord was for ffp’s brand-new proprietary LFT flame units,which our incredible R&D department built in Berlin just intime for them to make their world premiere; they reach aflame height of 38.53m—a bit over 126'—which is wellover the 35m required to set the record for use in a livemusic concert. We had 93 active heads, 73 of which quali-fied for the Guinness World Record for most heads firedsimultaneously at a concert. Over 50 of these flames areour proprietary LFG heads, which achieve a flame heightthat, depending on wind, will reach 20m tall.” The LFGheads lined the stage roof and downstage edge of thedeck, also surrounding the towers in the pool; another fourwere turned sideways onstage behind the band. Varleysays, “An easy way to put it in perspective is: While a nor-mal KISS show will use 100 liters of our liquid fuel, thisshow, when all units were filled and show-ready, was at1,900 liters.”Due to the production’s location and environmental

restrictions, confetti wasn’t employed. “In place,” Varleysays, “we went full force with biodegradable 65'-longstreamers, which we had packed in Artistry in Motion BigShots, lining the downstage edge, along with 16 MagicFXStadium Shots filled to the brim at the front of house. Atthe end of the show, when Paul broke his guitar, they allwent off, creating an almost overwhelming number ofstreamers flying everywhere.”For atmosphere, Valery says, “We had the stage covered

in Look Solutions Cryo-Fogs, which were paired with CO2tanks, and our specially built dry ice units, which put out anenormous flood of rolling fog. We wanted to add some niceatmosphere to the pool and the area surrounding Paul’s flyplatform, so we put two additional dry ice units on thefront-of-house side of the pool. We pumped the dry ice fogdirectly into under the pool water, which created a brilliantcloud effect to the top of the pool during ‘I Was Made forLoving You’.” MagicFX PSYCO2 Jets were also used underthe drum riser, the lifts, and three pods.The production also made ample use of lasers, provid-

ed by Lightwave International. “We had triple what we typ-ically have onstage,” Long says. The laser package includ-ed 30 Lightwave Phenoms, which are 30W full-color audi-ence-scanning units, and Lightwave Lixel laser arrays. Lightwave provided atmosphere for the lasers. “George

Dodworth, at Lightwave, has been screaming to me foryears about these jet engine foggers,” Long says. “Youhave to use them in a stadium setting or somewhere out-doors; you can also use them in a shed on a roof. Theyaren’t very big, but they are loud. They are jet engine fog-gers, and they are absolutely incredible. You can run themfor 30 seconds and they will literally fill up an entire stadi-um.” This project featured the Lightwave DMXjet 007, the

most powerful fogger in the series, which produces 1.2million cu. ft. of fog per minute. “I am definitely using themagain,” Long says.

Audio“The PA design was very unconventional,” says front-of-house engineer Adam Stuart. “It was interesting because

The production, taken from the End of the Road Tour, includedflying platforms for the band members.

Photos: Ross Halfin

“We ended up setting two Guinness World Records with ourflames,” Varley says.

of where it could be hung and where there was going tobe an audience. The whole middle section was a pool.Where you would normally hang a PA to point at people,there were no people there. Another concern was to nothit the hotel too directly, as to not cause extreme reflec-tions and snapback.”The PA design was handled by Matthew Oliver, of

PRGdeltasound. “They did a good job with the PA, espe-cially with the limited knowledge of where people weregoing to be seated,” Stuart says. “L-Acoustics was chosenfor its wide range of inventory and familiarity, and it waspreferred by the vendor. It’s important to me they are com-fortable and knowledgeable with their product. When theyhanded it over to me, I had almost no requests and madevery little tweaks.” The L-Acoustics PA was placed across three areas.

“There were two hangs [of two K1SBs, four K1s, and eightK2s each] left and right on the actual structure,” Stuartsays, “but they were pretty far out, behind scrims; theywere where a side hang typically would be. There werefour towers [of eight K2 each] in the pool area for delays.Back against the property were multiple Kara towers point-ed straight up at the balconies. We also had front fills [18Kara total] and subs [24 SB28s total].” The audio for the livestream was also a concern, Stuart

says. “We were very conscious of not blowing too muchinto the building. The biggest part of this event was thelivestream, so we didn’t want horrible reflections for therecord, which was a little bit of a challenge. Greg Collins isKISS’ studio engineer; he did their last couple of albumsand mixed the stream. It was a collaboration in terms ofgetting him all the pieces he needed; he took a MADI feedfrom our stage rack inputs. It was very typical of other livebroadcast productions we’ve done.”At the front of house—and at the monitors, mixed by

Scott Diamond—were DiGiCo consoles. “We usedQuantum 7s,” Stuart says. “The sonic quality is obviouslygreat, and I love the interface. It’s very user-friendly, andyou can place anything anywhere, so the workflow is cus-tomized. I’ve had great support from DiGiCo and I feelcomfortable using it.”The Quantum 7 also includes Mustard, DiGiCo’s new

algorithm for channel strip processing. “You have the clas-sic EQ that you’re used to,” Stuart says, “and then there’sa new set called Mustard processing, with different har-monic characteristics and a different sonic property thantraditional EQ and dynamics. I use it on my bass, guitars,and vocals.“I also use a lot of [Waves] SSL channel strips, specifi-

cally the G and the E channels. I use a 660-compressorplug-in that I really love on the vocals. C6 is a classic. I’musing the Abbey Road Chamber and I use some H-Verbquite a bit.””

As for outboard gear, he says, “I have Empirical LabDistressors on bass. I have two Bricasti M7s for drumsand also vocals; they switch, depending on what song Iuse them for. I also have an API 2500 that I use for a drumbuss compressor.” Stuart’s varied microphone package included

Telefunken M82s and Shure Beta 91As for the kick, cus-tom chromed Sennheiser e 906s on toms—it’s very impor-tant to match the flashy KISS aesthetics—and aTelefunken M80 and Neumann TLM 102 combo on snare.There are Audio-Technica 4050s for the guitars, as well asShure SM58s for most of the vocals. “Eric [Singer, drum-mer] used to love the SM57, which is similar to the 58, butwith the SM57 you can get right up on the capsule,” Stuartsays. Because of issues with cymbal noise from the SM57,Singer went with a Telefunken M80 at the beginning of theEnd of the Road Tour. “The Telefunken gives more directsound. It’s a better-sounding vocal microphone, with betterrejection, than the 57, because [Singer] has it right next tohis cymbals. The external stuff the mic picks up soundsbetter from the Telefunken than the 57 and also makes thevoice clearer—not just more rejection, but a better tone tohis voice. It also picks up his cymbals cleaner and clearer.And he loves it.”When a performer flies over the audience, it’s always a

challenge for the front-of-house mixer. “Paul did fly out tothe center of the pool area to the B stage,” Stuart says,“which was pretty cool, because he flew over water, when


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Above: The stage, provided by AES, a local vendor, was, Longsays, “approximately 268'; 131' is what the band played on, andthe stage had a 75' opening.” Opposite: Long placed the Bstage in the middle of the children’s pool, which had beendrained. The main pool, which wasn’t drained, provided a stag-ing area for six towers holding lighting, audio, and pyro.


normally he’s flying over people. Normally Paul hears a lotof the PA, and we do have wedges out there to help himkeep better time, along with in-ears. Due to the lack ofaudience around him there was dramatically less out of thePA coverage than there normally is.”This time, Stuart says, “My biggest challenge was that I

was not mixing in direct coverage of the PA. I actuallymixed more from near-field monitors than the actual PA. Iwas not on-axis of the PA and, because of all the pyro, Iwas on headphones a lot of the time. I relied a lot on mysystem engineer [Don Baker] as well as the local audiocrew to help me out. By showtime, we pretty much had itdialed in.” KISS is currently scheduled to resume its End ofthe Road Tour In October; check industry resources forupdates.

Photos: Courtesy of AES


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