Brothers who built pro audio empire to be honored with Parnelli Audio Visionary Award
Roy and Gene Clair are quick to say they are “outstanding in their field.” Not that they are braggarts — far from it. They mean it literally, as in they are “out standing in their field” of humble Lititz, Pa. Far from the glare of New York or Los Angeles, the brothers built one of the largest and most innovative pro audio empires the live event industry has ever seen.
From their early days of providing sound for the likes of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, through Elvis Presley, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Yes, the Rolling Stones, up to undertakings like the US and Live Aid festivals, Clair Brothers has endured while others came and went.
The innovations were many, and included consoles built for the road, the tilted stage monitor, and the influential S4 speaker, to name just a few.
“When I first met Roy and Gene they were based in an old barn in rural Pennsylvania,” recalls Bruce Jackson. “Clair Bros left the barn behind long ago, but the country values still run strong. The growth from a regional sound company to a worldwide operation is impressive.”
Deals on a Handshake
Jackson, who himself has a Parnelli Audio Innovator Award on his shelf, worked for Clair Bros for years. He’s known them for 39 years in different roles including employee, business partner and client. “We’ve done many deals on a handshake. Equipment changes comes and goes but good service is a constant.”
“From the very dawn of rock history, the Brothers Clair have stood at the head of the Touring Sound Industry,” declares Patrick Stansfield, tour manager/producer and the Parnelli Awards executive director. “Never sacrificing quality for portability, they coupled elegant packaging and quality audio into high art. The incredible roster of talents they’ve fostered and the artists in their client list alone speak their history loudly.”
“We were very lucky,” Roy Clair says of their success. “We grew very slowly. We weren’t in a hurry, and we thought it was best to not be the biggest. And we always had money in hand before a system was built.”
Soc Hops & Easter Egg Hunts
The Clairs were raised in Lititz, where their parents owned a grocery store. As Jackson describes it, it was the “wrong side of the tracks” if there is such a thing in a small town in Pennsylvania. Gene says he was around 15 when he became interested in audio, playing with electronics while his brother looked on. When their father bought them a small P.A. system in 1955, they immediately put it to work.
“We were doing very small things on very small stages,” Gene says. “We’d use an inverter to power it off a car battery, the sort of thing you don’t hear of now, but it took 12 volts and turned it into 120.”
Roy says the P.A. included of a horn, a Stromberg-Carlsson integrated preamp, a 35-watt power amp and a microphone. “Our father intended us to do Easter egg hunts and small sock hops with it, and that’s what we did,” Roy says. For their trouble the boys would get $5 a gig, which rather than ending up in the local malt shop’s register, always went into buying more equipment. “It would take us a while to save for a mic — they were about $45 back then, so we’d have to do eight shows to get one!” , he laughs.
Their first business was actually Clair Reconing, where they reconed speakers. This led to experimenting and building their own products. “We did a pretty good job making the speaker cabinets stiffer than most, and that helped propel the sound forward from the speaker rather than leaking from the side and back of the box,” Roy says. “We learned right away that the speakers were more efficient if they didn’t move or vibrate. It’s simple now, but we were on the forefront of that.”
Gene would get a job as a technician for Franklin & Marshall College, a modest liberal arts college in nearby Lancaster, Pa., where he had no way of knowing that the opportunities there would be the launch pad of Clair Bros Audio. The college would call him in for all kinds of things, and that included helping with concert events. “That started the whole thing because we met groups,” Gene says.
The boys made $95 a gig for their efforts. The gear at this point included four Shure 55s, a Bogen amplifier and two columns with six eight-inch speakers each. The school got comfortable with them providing the sound for local bands, so when Dionne Warwick was to do a performance there, they didn’t hesitate to turn to them. Then came their big break: Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons came to the college. Their people were intrigued by the system the brothers put together, and Roy saw an opening. He boldly asked to go into their dressing room where he explained why the system sounded so good. After the show, the band thanked the boys, who went home with their usual $95 richer and happy.
“The next day, we got a call from a local DJ saying Frankie Valli was trying to get a hold of us,” Roy says. “And it turns out they wanted us to come down to Allentown, Pa. because the system they were suppose to use was terrible. So we borrowed my wife’s uncle’s truck and did the show. After, I asked the tour manager to take us on the road with them — don’t ask me where I got that idea — and the tour manager said, ‘funny you mention that because we were just thinking about that.”
Between the local events and being on the road with the Four Seasons, the brothers continued to make money at their “hobby” and poured their money into more equipment. More mics, more A7s and two Harmon Karden 75-watt power amps made it into their inventory. Meanwhile, Roy would graduate from college with a degree in electronic industrial arts from Millersville State University. Then he taught school.
They built more equipment and started attending AES shows. They were at the show when the Crown amp was displayed — at 300 pounds and 250 watts, and being all tube, the brothers saw that was likely the trend and they were right. After the show, they talked Crown into selling them that very amp, which had the serial number 101 — as in the first one.
Their reputation grew. Elton John was in the beginning of his first U.S. tour and had a terrible experience with the sound preparing for a Glassboro, N.J. gig. “They got in trouble up there, and Elton freaked out,” Gene says. “We got the call and took off in the middle of the day. After that gig, Elton wanted us to work for him.” Even during this period, both Roy and Gene kept their day jobs and worked seven days a week. “They were long weeks,” Gene sighs.
In 1968, they were in Philadelphia running sound for Cream, Iron Butterfly and Jefferson Airplane, among other acts. “Often the bands would ask if we were from New York or LA,” Roy says with noticeable delight. “When we said we were from Lititz, they couldn’t believe it. Like Jefferson Airplane — they couldn’t believe that two hicks like us put together the best, loudest system they had ever heard.”
They would eventually quit their day jobs. “We’re conservative people, and don’t like to take crazy chances,” Gene says quietly.
Don’t Know “No”
The 1970s would see their collective star rise higher. Dick Clark Productions had the Jacksons and the Osmonds touring and used Clair Bros. sound. But it was the acts that were respected for their intricate music that seemed to especially appreciate the sound company: Blood Sweat & Tears used them all the time, including the first American rock band to go behind the Iron Curtain. For the prog rock Moody Blues, once they heard what Clair Bros could do, no other sound company would do. Chicago and Yes would come to rely on them for sound.
“But another significant feature was that we didn’t know what ‘no’ was,” Roy says. “Whatever people wanted, we did it. If they wanted us on some street corner at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night, we did it. Nothing was too much. We were a ‘yes’ company.”
Meanwhile, Franklin & Marshall, the place of the launch of their career, became home to their farm team. They would hire college kids to work for them and one of the first ones to be hired full time was Donald Gehman, who would go on to engineer and produce the likes of R.E.M., Stephen Stills, John Mellencamp, among many others. Otherwise, Jackson laughs and tells as Roy and Gene were wrestlers, they were partial to hiring other wrestlers, some of whom could lift 300-pound speakers by themselves.
Key to their longevity was speed: “We always strived to make the setup faster then what it took at the previous gig,” Gene says. “We specialized in connectors that made it easier and quicker.”
Gene would spend almost all his time on the road as they added other acts, and during the summer, his son Troy would be right along side him in what had to be a young kid’s dream. Roy at this point was focused more on development and the business end.
“The sound company landscape in the early 1970s was very different,” Jackson explains. “It was the exception for a group to take the sound company on tour. This arrangement gave the regionals the chance to be exposed to a string of big acts as they passed through their area. And the companies that gave the best service and delivered the best sound quickly grew to become worldwide touring entities. It was a great opportunity for a small bootstrapped operation to make the transition to the big time,” which is exactly what Clair Bros did.
“Roy and Gene are two quite different personalities,” Jackson continues. “I've been in partnerships and know full well how difficult it can be to see eye to eye on all the different aspects of being in business. The dynamic between Roy and Gene had a lot to do with their success. Roy was very conservative in managing the money and didn't like operating on credit. I recall Clair Bros. always took the ‘prompt pay’ discounts. Gene was far more daring and seemed to thrive on living out on the technological edge.” Jackson says it was Gene who drove the genesis of the ubiquitous S4.
It was 1974, and one of the biggest advances of the pro audio business came out of the Clair Bros barn, and that was the S4. The 4-foot by 2-foot by 2-foot system needed only one connector on the back. It was an influential, great-sounding system that seriously cut the time needed to set up and tear down.
“We first used the S4s with Rod Stewart, and it was the first show we hung speakers from a grid,” Roy says. “We came up with a hanging device that would allow you to point the speaker where you wanted to. The hardware was beautifully machined, done by local Lititz people. We were the talk of the industry at the time.”
Mick Jagger himself wanted to see it, and came to a Stewart show, making Roy walk with him around the arena during a show to really get a sense to what the hanging S4s could do. Suffice to say he was impressed because he had the Clairs do the band’s1975 tour. Peter Frampton would use them too, as would David Bowie, the Beach Boys, and pretty much everybody doing arena tours at the time.
“After a while, everyone else kept coming up with new speakers, but always comparing them to the S4s,” Gene adds. “It was a compliment.”
Other Innovations
While he acknowledges that Bill Hanley was the first one to put monitors on the stage, Roy says they were the first to build a box for them that slanted up. “The first one was for the horn section of Blood Sweat & Tears, and then the rest of band, then other bands wanted them.”
The Clair Bros. built the first audio board with a talkback button it. So, rather than the FOH engineer yelling at the band, a button could be pushed and a conversation could be had through the monitors. “Believe it or not, even that simple feature got us a few shows including Yes.”
In 1984, they built a sophisticated road console that boasted parametric EQ and folded up conveniently in a box. “Nobody had parametric EQ on the road in a console,” Roy says. “They were in the studio, and there were some tours that borrowed studio consoles and used them on the road, but there was nothing like this. We also had a bar graph meter that no one else had. Our engineers, Bruce Jackson and Ron Brothwisk, designed this.”
A commonsense business approach always pervaded, as many festivals sprung up all over the country, the Clair Bros. were careful which ones they did. More big acts and events, would continue, all fueled by their ability to hire and develop good people.
“Back when the company was in a converted chicken house in Brickerville, Pa., the Clairs’ took a kid out of college and gave him a chance,” says Greg Hall of his own beginnings. “And for 30 years, it’s been a great place to work. I’m still proud to be apart of what they built.” Today, Hall is business manager for the company.
In 1995, Gene, who stayed on the road, finally got off and retired. “My last tour was with Elton John,” he says. “I didn’t mix that, but was in charge of setting up the system.” He would sell his part of the business to his son Troy, who today is in charge of the touring division. Barry Clair, Roy’s son, is in charge of the systems division.
Roy is still active in the business, though on his terms. And the company still continues to dazzle and amaze. One of their many great recent gigs was handling the audio for the Papal Mass by Pope Benedict at Yankee Stadium.
“Their love of sound and the entertainment industry took them out of Lititz and around the world, yet they always chose to keep their base within a few miles of their childhood home,” Jackson says.
