Continuity Delivers Amazing Stadium Sound
This is a story about artist and production continuity.
Some 62 years since their formation, the Rolling Stones continue to rely on what has always worked exceptionally well for them; the audio personnel, mixing methods and touring gear that have consistently delivered the best possible concert audio production to their audiences for more than six decades.
This band defies conventions. The surviving founders are now in their early 80’s, yet they continue to record memorable new material with their trademark hooks, perform with proficiency and energy in the world’s largest venues, and deliver productions on the grandest scale. Yet in a world where many audio engineers strive to use the newest, latest and greatest equipment, the Rolling Stones are confident continuing to use what has always delivered for them. For example: Keith Richards still plays a ‘50s Telecaster through ‘50s Tweed Fender Twin Reverb amps. Philosophically, the Stones are all about the music, and the continuity of their concert sound production is paramount.
A Great Crew Means Everything
In the touring world, Dale “Opie” Skjerseth needs no introduction. Longtime Rolling Stones production manager and Parnelli Award winner, I asked him the importance of sound to this band along the sound-to-spectacle continuum. “In this time and genre of rock music, sound is the most important thing,” Skjerseth explains. “In every perspective, that’s what the Stones are — more so than anything — is sound. It’s probably their highest priority — to be dead on the money of what they are supposed to sound like.”
This writer was provided unusual access to observe all aspects of this tour’s audio preparation and deployment. I am confident I was the only technical journalist allowed inside the band’s music rehearsals held on a soundstage in Los Angeles in April, and I have been fortunate to hear a number of live shows across the country once the trucks left the dock.
After 50 years in the concert sound community, I am hearing some of the very finest-sounding rock ‘n’ roll shows I have ever experienced, with this band, this summer. Making these results even more impressive is the team’s reliance on 35-year-old consoles, a 30-year-old speaker system, and a nearly all-analog signal path.
FOH engineer Dave Natale has mixed nearly every Stones show since 2005. He has accumulated an enviable repeat client list over his 40-year career that includes Tina Turner, Guns N’ Roses, Jeff Beck, Fleetwood Mac, Lionel Richie, Van Halen, Joe Cocker, The Super Bowl and many other high-profile performers and events. Natale is well-known for his preference for analog mixing over digital, and for using very little outboard compression, gates or reverbs. He is confident this approach provides his clients with the cleanest, most dynamic and highest fidelity results, combined with the greatest possible reliability. What tens of thousands of fans heard on Stones shows this summer is living, breathing, joyous audio proof of Dave’s means and methods.
The FOH Secret? Confidence.
I asked Opie about what it is about Dave, and his methods, that makes his results so special. “Confidence,” he stated. “Confidence in his work and his abilities. The ability to speak with the artist, freely, when he needs to. And talk to them about where he thinks it needs improvement. He just has confidence, full confidence in what he does.”
Regarding gear selection, Mr. Skjerseth continues, “What’s right for these guys is what Dave brings to them. He started with this P.A. in 2005, and he has always felt he’s gotten what he needed out of it, plus more. To me, if we went smaller, great… that means two less trucks. But at the end of the day, what (would) we sound like? That’s the importance of it. It’s a big package, but what (the Stones) had before Dave arrived was processed, and it sounded awful.”
Dave prepared for the Hackney Diamonds tour by building his mixes during a month of music rehearsals. Stationed in a separate room adjacent to — but acoustically isolated from — the rehearsal soundstage, Dave monitored using two Clair S4 enclosures augmented by the bass sections of two additional enclosures. First introduced in 1974, S4’s might seem like overkill for monitors, but Dave and system engineer Jo Ravitch know them exceptionally well. S4’s allow them to confidently prepare mixes working at a representative level that will translate effectively, offering sonic continuity when they move into actual venues running stadium line array systems.
“I’m an analog guy. We live in an analog world. It simply sounds better to me. Many engineers might question my methods, and some manufacturers might not like it. I am not mixing for them. My instincts are to rely on proven hardware that I know, and concentrate on mixing the show. It’s a philosophy that has worked incredibly well for me.” For the record, Dave does have a dbx 900 frame loaded with model 903 modules, and four channels of Aphex noise gates wired as inserts, but he rarely, if ever, uses them. He also has two Lexicon PCM-91 processors and a Bricasti Design M7 Reverb unit in his racks, but he uses them primarily to enhance mixes and recordings during rehearsal to simulate the ambience of the live venues.
Clair Global of Lititz, PA is the Stones’ long-serving sound reinforcement system provider. Mr. Natale noted that “Equipment is important, but none of this would be possible without a great, incredibly talented, hard-working crew. In our shows this summer, as always, everything works. We’re getting great reviews, and no one complains. The audiences are happy, and the band is happy. Why would we change anything? Honestly, I do not think anyone thinks like this anymore. Everyone wants to use the latest and greatest just because it is new. I am not against trying something that you may have a specific need for, but just changing hardware because you can does not seem like a good idea to me. These songs were originally recorded analog, so why wouldn’t we use it? It has always worked. The only digital equipment in our signal chain are Clair Lake crossovers which we trust. They were designed by the great Bruce Jackson who started at Clair mixing Elvis, Springsteen and Streisand, designed Clair’s analog consoles, and then founded Apogee Electronics.
“Before the tour, Clair recapped the console power supplies, and we added a Manley ELOP compressor I use on Mick’s vocals. That’s all,” he says. “I’m using Yamaha PM4000’s built in 1989, so recapping the supplies seemed sensible. Why do I use a 35-year-old desk that Clair has amortized 20 times over, when the artist would fund anything I wanted? One reason: The PM4000 is reliable. It does not matter how good a console sounds or how convenient it is, if it does not work. It is also inherently simple. So simple that it won’t do anything I don’t tell it to do. It allows me to concentrate on mixing the show.
“For me, reliability is everything,” Dave continues. “Our audiences make real investments in coming to our shows, and we owe it to them to make sure they get to hear a great one. For that to happen, all the gear has to be working. But just in case, I always have a completely redundant console and outboard rack, at front of house ready to go in the event of a problem.
“In fairness, we do make the occasional equipment change, but typically only if a piece of gear becomes difficult to source or maintain,” he adds. “In the last eight years, the only on-stage changes I can remember are some of the drum mics. We had been using [Sennheiser] 409’s on the toms but they are getting harder to maintain, so we switched to Sennheiser 421’s. We changed overheads from AKG 414’s to Austrian Audio OC18’s. The Austrian Audio mics are designed by the same team that engineered the AKG products. They sound great and offer us tighter mic-to-mic consistency, in a more rugged package, at lower cost.”
Jo Ravitch
Arguably the most experienced touring system engineer on the planet — full stop — is Jo Ravitch. Many industry aficionados know Jo as the system engineer for U2, including U2’s recent inaugural shows at the Sphere, but his client list and accomplishments are endless. Jo has served as system engineer on Rolling Stones shows since 2014.
Jo is also responsible for the overall house system design, aiming, and tuning. He shares Dave’s preference for analog solutions. “Sometimes older is better, and I fully support Dave’s minimalist approach. Just because you can put five plug-ins on a channel doesn’t mean you should.”
Jo is responsible for the overall up-time reliability of the system, and here again he appreciates the value of continuity. “From my experience, an analog console breaks one little piece at a time. There is no software to crash. But a digital console failure can be much more impactful and can stop a show.”
Jim Ragus
Jim Ragus serves as the tour’s audio system crew chief (or “head of sound” in English crew parlance). Notably, Jim is literally the last remaining Showco employee from Clair’s acquisition of that Texas-based sound reinforcement institution in the 1990’s. “I’ve always believed that the brotherhood of ‘check-one-two’ is stronger than company politics, so having a legacy Showco guy running a Clair crew seems very natural to me. I saw a Stones show in 1972 and that experience is what drew me to work in this industry. This is old-school, big P.A., rock ‘n’ roll sledgehammer audio. It suits the music and the band really well.”
Jim manages a crew of 13 traveling audio staff that includes FOH mixer Natale. Supported by 22 local IATSE stagehands, the crew is responsible for show-to-show deployment of a large Clair i-5/ i-5B house system, stage monitors, in-ears, RF and recording packages.
Main left and right hangs are comprised of 18 deep i-5’s with i-5B’s, mounted 42 feet off centerline. Side left and right hangs utilize 14 i-5 and i-5B cabinets per side mounted 96 feet off center. Finally, four delay towers consisting of eight deep i-5 boxes each serve guests seated farthest from the stage.
One interesting aspect of the touring audio team is the group of five techs dedicated to setting up the eight loudspeaker arrays. These are employees of the Clair Global Argentina office run by Fabian Giordano. A considerable quantity of i-5 inventory resides in this office, and therefore they are extremely familiar with this system. This staffing solution illustrates the capabilities of Clair Global’s growing delivery infrastructure; a North American tour with employees that are best-suited to the work, that happen to hail from a Clair office on a different continent.
Mr. Ragus continues, “We work as a team and everyone helps everyone else out. Everybody is super-happy to be here. The Stones are playing on fire — they are playing really well. This is a great tour to be working on.”
In Monitorworld
Stephen Carter, the Stones’ monitor mixer, grew up playing guitar and began his audio career doing parties and corporate events for British event company Starlight Design, including (ironically) a Christmas party at Mr. Jagger’s house in 2005, and Elton John’s wedding reception. He noted to me that the idea that he would end up touring with these artists was “just crazy.”
After completing a program at Full Sail, Stephen joined Clair Global in 2007. While at Clair, Stephen has toured extensively including with Rage Against the Machine, Beyoncé, McCartney, Elton, Mötley Crüe, Guns N’ Roses, Stevie Nicks, Sting and many others. He notes that he has benefitted immensely from working alongside a number of skilled mentors, including the Stones’ previous monitor lead Robert Bull, Showco veteran and Sting FOH mixer Howard Page, and Sting production manager Charlie Hernandez, in perfecting his skills.
“On the Stones, I’m applying what Robert and others taught me. Be organized but don’t overthink it, and get your housekeeping and gain structure right.” Carter is managing a rig that includes a humbling 96 Clair 12AM wedges, 12AM and i-5B drum fills and Jerry Harvey Audio Roxanne in-ears for Mick Jagger, bassist Daryl Jones, keyboardist Matt Clifford, and singers Bernard Fowler and Chanel Haynes. “Unsurprisingly, it’s an all-analog system based on a 48-channel Midas H4000 frame with four stereo inputs, and a 16-channel H3000 sidecar loaded with six stereo channels, for a total of 74 channels. I’ve gone out on other tours, and you see compression everywhere. Not here. We use no conventional gates, no compressors. We do, however, use a Neve Portico 5045 Primary Source Enhancer on Mick’s vocal. It’s basically a very sophisticated analog noise gate that helps me with gain before feedback. There are simply so many wedges and so many microphones out there that that it really helps me a lot. When Mick is in front of the P.A., it gives us a ton of rejection. The Portico is really a magic little box, it’s an incredible piece of gear, and I always have one on any tour I’m mixing now. And I have Yamaha SPX990s for delay and some slap for Mick — it’s really old school.
“Philosophically, I’m a guy who prefers not to reach for EQ,” Carter adds. “I’d much rather try something physical first, maybe move the wedge or the microphone before resigning to using EQ to solve a problem…At Jazzfest, we had our R4 sidefills stacked on the stage. Mick cups the mic, he’s done it all his life and you’re not going to get him out of it. When I got close to the sidefills, things would start to take off. So I just took a little piece of gaff tape and put it on the grilles right in the middle of the tweets. It blew my tech’s mind — he couldn’t believe it, but it worked. A nice little old-school trick.
“Like Dave, we rarely make changes, and when we do, we are careful about doing it,” Carter notes. “Other than the Neve Portico, we found an actual Midas H3000 sidecar in London at Britannia Row (a Clair Global sister company) to replace the Midas Venice we had been using for extra channels, which was a great addition. And we changed the IEM RF from Shure PSM1000’s to Wisycom. Other than that, most everything is the same. In-ears have changed models a few times, but the band have always preferred JH Audio, and we are back to using Roxannes.”
RF gear and frequency coordination is ably handled by Adan Romero. “For our wireless transmitters, we’re using Shure AD2-SM58 handhelds and Shure AD2 bodypacks, with Shure AD4Q Digital Wireless Receivers supported by UA874 antennas and an UA845UWB Antenna Distribution System,” Romero says. One change made for this tour (as noted above by Stephen Carter) was the switch to Wisycom for in-ear systems from the Shure PSM’s the Stones previously relied on. “This tour we’re running Wisycom MTK952 Wideband Dual Transmitters transmitting through Sennheiser A 5000-CP Passive Domed and Professional Wireless S8091 Domed Helical antennas,” Adan says. “In-ear receivers are Wisycom MPR50-IEM. The Wisycom system has proven to be particularly helpful in rejecting interference from the massive amount of video wall that the tour is carrying, even though they are well-shielded. I’ve been using Shure’s Wireless Workbench, a Shure AD600 Axient Digital Spectrum Manager, and an OWON HSA015-TG handheld spectrum analyzer for frequency coordination.”
Russ Matterson, who hails from Cornwall and started out doing sound for local festivals, manages a sophisticated, redundant “belts-and-suspenders” Pro Tools archival recording system. Centered on an Avid S6L console, Matterson records (using parallel AVB and MADI interfaces) to redundant solid-state drives. “My job is primarily archival multi-track, but I also record a Left-Right feed from Dave at front of house, which can be used to support online content the band posts,” Matterson says. “I’ve got five ways of routing things through a matrix, so if something fails, we’ve always got a backup.”
A Formula for Old School Success
In closing, it is obvious to this observer that continuity of equipment, people, and methods is valued by this artist and their production management, and that continuity is in many ways responsible for the awesome sound reinforcement delivery they are producing. The careful deployment of decades-old equipment, combined with considerable restraint by the audio professionals on this team when considering changing out or adding a piece of gear or system, has resulted in maintaining a sound reinforcement result that simply sounds amazing, and is honorable to the Rolling Stones remarkable musical legacy.
Author Danny Abelson was a partner in Turbosound, helped introduce the ATI Paragon console and still has his IATSE card.
The Rolling Stones Hackney Diamonds Tour ‘24
AUDIO CREW
- Sound Company: Clair Global
- FOH Engineer: Dave Natale
- Monitor Engineer: Stephen Carter
- System Engineer: Jo Ravitch
- Crew Chief: Jim Ragus
- Monitor Tech: Trystan Forbes
- RF Coordinator: Adan Romero
- Recordist: Russ Matterson
- Stage: Jonny Brook
- P.A. Techs: Chivo Irigoin; Nico “Harry” Montenegro; Nico Regidor; Roberto Rodriguez; Victor Saaverda
FOH GEAR
- P.A. System: Clair i-5, i-5B
- FOH Console: Yamaha PM4000
- Outboard Gear: TC Electronic 1128 System EQ’s; Clair IO Crossovers; Lab Gruppen LM 44 FOH System Drive; Manley ELOP
- Amps: Crown MacroTech
MON GEAR
- Monitor Consoles: Midas H4000, Midas H3000 Sidecar
- Outboard: Rupert Neve Portico 5045 Primary Source Enhancer
- Monitors: Clair 12AM
- Drum Monitors: Clair 12AM, i-5B
- In-Ears: Jerry Harvey Audio Roxanne
- Wireless Mics: Shure AD2 Handheld, AD1 Bodypack, AD4Q Receiver
- IEM Hardware: Wisycom MTK952, MPR50
