Richard Ashcroft, former frontman of British rock band The Verve, ended his latest tour by rocking out in front of a hugely enthusiastic crowd of 26,000 fans at the Old Trafford Cricket Ground in Manchester, UK. Bandit Lites supplied lighting and crew for the tour, which was project managed by Bandit’s Lester Cobrin, with lighting design by Jonny Gaskell. Bandit’s crew included Steve ‘Stona’ Rusling, Steve Kerwick, and Rob Starksfield.
“Bandit did a fantastic job as always,” comments Gaskell after the Old Trafford show. “They looked after me so well on the tour which continued with this show, which was effectively a large and challenging one-off after the end of the tour. As usual, the crew and all other Bandit people involved worked tirelessly to make it happen.”
For the Old Trafford show, working with Tim Flemming, Gaskell created custom video, which was beamed onto an LED backdrop onstage and integrated into the lightshow for Ashcroft’s dynamic set.
The rig was based around three overhead lighting trusses and six vertical truss towers on the floor. The system consisted of 28 Martin MAC 2000 profiles, 34 High End System Studio Beam® wash fixtures, 60 2-lite Molefeys, 16 Atomic strobes and ETC Source Four® profiles for key-lighting. In addition, Gaskell specified a 48”-diameter faceted mirror ball and a single 2K Lycian followspot for the stage. Gaskell operated the stage lighting using a Wholehog 2 and a wing. The playback video was run separately via a laptop.
The lightshow featured bright single color looks and clean, strong single light source looks for the acoustic numbers. The main lighting effect was over 400’ of festoon lighting. The rigging of the festoon was difficult, as it had to be double-hung and secured around each of the four vertical truss towers bordering three video screens, as well as the two free-standing vertical truss towers onstage. The festoon also ran up and down the full height of the supporting stage roof towers and around two further offstage towers beyond the PA and video wings. This gave the stage an element of elegant architectural form.
The Old Trafford show was also an 8-camera DVD shoot with gear supplied by XL Video. Sound was supplied by Britannia row and the entire was production managed by Andy Proudfoot.