Tony Bennett's 85th Birthday was this month. Happy Birthday, Tony.
I had the distinct honor of mixing Tony Bennett during his MTV Unplugged success. He was happy to have young people discover his music, while their parents were rediscovering it. Prior to joining him, tour manager Vance Anderson would do it all – hotels and travel, advance and backline, run sound and call lights and followspots. When I got his call, out of the blue, Anderson said that Tony wanted to go to a two-man crew, and he remembered me from a one-off the year before.
Tony's production was (and usually still is) the old-fashioned method of mixing mains and monitors (or ‘foldback,' as the geezers call it) from the same Front of House console.
Our setup was often a pair of EAW KF850 loudspeakers for side-fills, but Tony liked them positioned upstage, elevated slightly – usually stacked on a cable trunk or an amp rack lid – and firing over his shoulders. They would also inevitably fire into the house as well. To ensure clarity for the Front of House mix, I'd delay the mains back to these stage fills, usually 20 to 30 milliseconds, depending on the stage geometry.
We played different types of venues, but traditional reverberant music halls were common, where the sound coming back to the stage from an empty hall was significant. At sound check, in some of those situations, Tony (he always said "Call me Tony, not Mr. Bennett") would say, "Hey, let's try it without the monitors." and I would mute them, knowing we had a sold-out show, that the "bags of blood" would come in and deaden the room's sound, and having learned that, he'd ask me to turn them back on.
Towards the end of our run together, we played a modern theater that was pretty well damped, with curtains on stage, treated walls and a bowl-shaped orchestra level that would again fill up with fans. We'd just gotten off a long flight and, as is often the case in that situation, sound check was rushed, as the musicians wanted to get in a nap at the hotel. Leaving the soundcheck, Tony said to me, "I want you to get the monitors off the stage," meaning his side-fills. After he left, the stagehands were all staring at me, waiting to see what would happen next.
I looked overhead and saw an empty mid-stage pipe that had no lights or soft goods and asked how much weight it would take. The answer was 500 pounds, just right for a pair of KF850s. We quickly brought it in, rigged the side-fills, tested them and then broke for the afternoon.
Sure enough, a few songs into our sold-out show, Tony asked to have the side-fills turned back on – as I knew he would – and we proceeded to have what I thought was one of our better shows, right down to the last song, where he said his usual "Hey Mark, would you please turn off the mic?" and end with "Fly Me To The Moon" a capella, without reinforcement, always a show-stopper.
After the lights came up, someone appeared at the FOH console to tell me Mr. Bennett needed to see me in his dressing room right away. That had never happened before. When I arrived, he told me emphatically that when he asked me to do something, he expected me to do it, to which I could only reply, "Yes, Boss. Of course, Boss. Absolutely." He dismissed me, and as I was headed out the dressing room door, he said, "By the way, that's the best the show has ever sounded." I understand Tony has usually had his side-fills flown ever since. Anyway, that's how it got started.
It's Tony's 85th birthday this month, and I wanted to wish him and Susan the very best, and to give you just a few of the gifts he gave me long ago. When asked the secret of his success, he would say, "Sing good songs," a deceptively simple sentiment. When pressed, he'd explain that even if a few of his songs seemed a little downbeat, there was an optimistic sentiment in all of them. Where did you leave your heart?
Another "bon mot" of Tony's was to tell the band and crew "We don't get paid for the shows, we get paid for the travel." But my favorite old chestnut of Tony's was his frequent comment that "every day we keep honing it," meaning no matter how good or bad we think each show was, we try just as hard the next day to make it the best one yet. I hope you will keep honing it out there, and I will do the same here at FRONT of HOUSE. Happy Birthday, Tony, you're the best.
