Over three decades, Jeremy Lloyd has worked on large-scale projects from the Rolling Stones and U2 to multiple Olympic Games ceremonies. A veteran problem solver, Lloyd has become the ‘go-to’ production and technical designer for many of the world's biggest entertainment events. Since 2014, he has been co-director and co-founder, along with Piers Shepperd, of Wonder Works.
This year, Foo Fighters embarked on an ambitious global tour designed by Dan Hadley and Paul "Arlo" Guthrie. At 197 feet wide and 65 feet high, the Take Cover stage features nine curved aluminum lighting ribs. Production manager Eric "Ski" Piontkowski tapped Wonder Works to lead the technical design and coordination, translating the designers' creative vision into a fully engineered, repeatable touring system.
Lloyd talked to Live Design about his career in live entertainment and some of the unique elements of the Take Cover project.
Live Design: How did you end up in the industry?
Jeremy Lloyd: It started when I was eight, helping my dad light a small band he managed. From there I did lights and tech for school shows. At college I ended up running the lighting in a brand-new theatre, because no one else was interested in the technical side!
I joined Theatre Projects/Concert Productions in 1990. I started in the warehouse, moved to the rental desk as an account handler, and then went into production, planning and running shows on site. I spent years on the road, first as a lighting tech, then on racks, then crew chiefing shows and tours. That covered everything from Genesis’ 47-date European tour in 1998 to the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Celebrations in 2002.
The company became part of Vari-Lite, which also included Brilliant Stages (now TAIT). I started working on Brilliant projects too: first wiring cabinets for automation, then project managing, then CAD design. That’s where I met Mark Fisher. I went on to manage the technical design for many of his projects, including the Rolling Stones, Robbie Williams, U2, AC/DC and Roger Waters. Alongside that came the Olympic Ceremonies, from Athens 2004 through to London 2012. After London, I set up Wonder Works with Piers Shepperd in 2014.
LD: Where did you learn your craft? School? Work? On the road?
JL: A bit of everything. It started at school and college, but most of it I learned hands-on, doing lighting and rigging on site and on tour. Working with Brilliant Stages and Mark Fisher is where I really learned design. My touring experience shaped that, because I knew how gear needs to be packaged and how it has to work day to day. Running a lighting crew teaches you how a show actually goes up, comes down and fits in a truck, and that’s the foundation of everything I do now.
My advice to young people is to get on a crew and learn how every department works, not just your own. Technical design is really about integration. Knowing how lighting, video, audio, automation and structures affect each other is what makes you useful.
LD: You have worked on groundbreaking projects from the ABBA Voyage concert experience to U2’s 360 Tour which featured the claw. Do you play around with new tech and hope a show comes along you can use it on? Or are you given an idea first and then you problem-solve it into a workable element?
JL: The idea almost always comes first. The Claw, the 360-degree canvas for ABBA and the first touring cable net for Ed Sheeran’s Mathematics Tour didn’t start with a piece of kit. They started with a creative vision and the question of how to make it real, repeatable and safe, night after night. When we’re working up a design, we look at what existing equipment could do the job, or what could be modified. Budget allowing, we develop new equipment too. I’m a self-confessed geek, so I keep a close eye on new technology. But it earns its place by solving a problem, not the other way round.
LD: What attracted you to the Foo Fighters project?
JL: Ski, mostly! I first met Eric “Ski” Piontkowski on Roger Waters’ The Wall in 2010, when he was a set carpenter, and we’ve worked together on various projects since. He knew the band were about to take on a much bigger show. He felt it would help to have someone focused purely on technical design and coordination, so he could concentrate on the overall production. I was very happy to say yes, because he’s great.
Then there’s the ambition. At 197 feet wide and 65 feet high, it’s the biggest production the band has ever attempted. What I love is that it achieves a genuinely groundbreaking look with relatively modest gear and very little reliance on video. It also meant working with a trusted team: Ski, designers Dan Hadley and Paul “Arlo” Guthrie, and suppliers like Atlanta Rigging Services (ARS), Britannia Row Productions, PRG and WowAxis. These are people who know how to deliver at this scale.
LD: What was the brief?
JL: Ski brought us in to lead the technical design and coordination. In essence, that meant helping to turn Dan’s creative vision into a fully engineered, repeatable touring system. We developed the design in terms of packaging and build, this also involved value engineering to align design with budget. We also coordinated between every department and fitted the design into the multiple roof systems used across the tour. Creatively, the aim was stadium scale that still feels raw and unmistakably the band’s own.
LD: What was your initial thought about making the ribs work? Or was the idea very different at first and evolved into the ribs because of structural requirements?
JL: The ribs today are pretty much what was first proposed. I had an idea of how to make them, loosely based on something we’d done for another stadium tour. The final design was a collaboration between Dan, Ski, ARS and Wonder Works. As is always the case, it started a little larger and more ambitious, and was pared back to make it tourable.
LD: The ribs are in front of the LED screens. What technical challenges did you overcome to keep both sets of gear safe – from each other and from weather and wind?
JL: Putting the ribs in front of the LED was always a defining feature of Dan’s design. It breaks up the video surface and gives the stage real physical depth. It also means two systems sharing the same airspace in an outdoor stadium. We knew from the start that some form of bracing would be needed to stop everything swaying in the wind and crashing together. Once the show design was finalized, we developed a wind bracing system for the ribs, LED screens and PA, with WowAxis designing and supplying the custom bracing. It keeps everything secure during the build and at trim, so the whole structure performs safely and consistently every night.
LD: As each venue changes, how do you adapt the ribs to fit? Are they modular, like Meccano, or do you have custom pieces for each venue?
JL: The tour runs on shared roofs: Stageco in Europe and G2 Structures in North America. We knew about those two from the start, so the ribs were designed to be modular and work with both. Each roof has different dimensions, which changes the length of the ribs and the position of the PA wings. Straightforward trusses and screens don’t care which roof they’re on, but big scenic pieces that integrate with the roof very much do. As the tour progressed, more roof systems came into play. So part of our coordination brief was to work out how to fit the ribs, and the whole show, into each one.
LD: What was the most challenging part of getting them on tour?
JL: The shared roofs, without question. They’re a key reason we were brought in. Promoter-owned roofs have become the norm over the last few years. They cut build time dramatically and save each tour leg a lot of steel crew, trucks, cranes and forklifts. The trade-off for designers is that you’re designing for several roofs rather than one. Our job was making sure the show’s identity stayed intact on every one. Trucking was easier, because the ribs use slim batten construction and pack very efficiently.
LD: Is there a stricter weight limit on the ribs versus overhead or tower-supported truss?
JL: No. The ribs are relatively light and don’t have a large surface area, so they’re less susceptible to wind. They don’t have a big impact on rigging loads.
LD: Above the roof, there are a series of "broken" windows. They evoke warehouse gigs of the type up and coming bands do. Do they serve a function or are they just part of the design?
JL: It’s entirely part of the creative. The roof header carries a band of factory windows with distressed metalwork and rusted, smashed-glass detailing, and it stays visible all through the show. It’s what makes a standard roof look less like a standard roof and more like a bespoke design. At key moments, matching scenic window pieces come in at stage level and PAR Can trusses are lowered. That strips everything back to a harder, more vintage rock look. It’s a deliberate contrast: stadium-scale production that can still feel raw.
LD: How are you moving those lighting pods/trusses?
JL: The pods and PAR Can trusses are rigged below a mother grid on Moveket hoists, provided by PRG. There are nine custom pods above the stage, each carrying moving lights, LED strobes and fascia panels finished to match the set. They move numerous times during the show to create different looks, completely changing the shape of the performance space. We deliberately kept the automation lean, partly to avoid extra trucks and crew buses. The look carries into the audience with matching pods on the delay towers.
LD: There’s a slightly retro, almost steampunk quality to the stage elements. Was that just how they were fabricated or a deliberate choice?
JL: That’s exactly the look. It’s old-school industrial and analogue: distressed metal, rust and factory glass, with the pod fascias finished to match. Even the lighting leans into it, with real PAR Can trusses for the stripped-back section. It didn’t affect the technical design, it was all about the scenic finishes, and ARS did a great job on those.
LD: What is your favorite element of the show and why?
JL: The ribs. We’ve never done anything quite like them: nine curved beams wrapping the stage and sitting right in front of the video. They create a huge look with minimal equipment. Pair them with the pods, which can completely change the shape of the design, and you get a show with its own identity that doesn’t lean on a wall of LED. That’s rare at stadium scale.
LD: In your work, have you found that despite AI everything, there are old-school ways of doing things that still work really well?
JL: All the time. I really embrace new technology, but I like to keep it to the physical side - so maybe software for automation. When it comes to the design process, I prefer to work manually, the old-school way. I think that delivers a more unique design, because I have to draw on my own experience. I’m happy to share that with humans, just not AI! I will use AI to speed up things like converting images into 3D models.
This show has plenty of old-school thinking. Part of the set is literally PAR Can trusses, because nothing looks quite like them. On the engineering side, simple often wins. The delay tower pods hinge together in pairs to protect themselves in transit, and the lights stay in them, so there’s no de-rigging.
LD: Was sustainability factored into any aspect of this production? Is sustainability part of your thinking whenever you take on a project?
JL: Sustainability is always a consideration, I just make sure it doesn’t become a limitation that stifles creativity. It comes into material selection, and into decisions about reusing existing rental equipment rather than manufacturing from scratch. Bespoke items can sometimes be reconfigured and reused on future projects without looking the same. Some things I’ve designed for past tours have since been turned into rental items by vendors. We also think hard about packaging efficiency, with the goal of minimizing trucks.
On this tour, a lot of the efficiency decisions cut its footprint too. Shared roofs save each leg multiple trucks of steel, plus the cranes and crew that go with them. Leaner automation and tight packing for the ribs and delay pods also helped. For Australia we built a downsized “B show”: the central rib section only, with screens, lights and audio sourced locally rather than shipped.
Photo credits: Andi K Taylor and Marts Augusts
Don't miss the Foo Fighters session at XLIVE: The Concert Touring Sessions on Saturday, December 5 at LDI 2026 in Las Vegas: Learn To Fly: Designing Foo Fighters’ Take Cover Tour For The World Stage: Taking a large-scale production around the world means designing for both creative impact and the realities of the road. For Foo Fighters’ Take Cover Tour, lighting designers Dan Hadley and Paul “Arlo” Guthrie worked with PRG project manager Sean “Sharky” Harper and a network of production partners to develop an interconnected lighting, video and camera system built for scale, flexibility and the energy of one of rock’s most enduring live bands. Kerstin Hovland served as screens producer.
The design team will also be honored with an XLIVE Award during the Dining With Dinosaurs event that same evening.