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Deeply Vale.com [March 2203]
If ever there was ever a niche left to be explored in the annals of rock and rock and roll, ‘The Development of Large Rock Sound Systems’ – Volume 3’ fills it with plenty to spare.
Author Chris Hewitt draws on both his own experience and copious amounts of research with sundry photos and long forgotten catalogues to fill a coffee table style book comprising 316, A4 size pages with interviews and fondly remembered tales of bands, festivals and of course the gear itself, sometimes complete with receipts!
The fact that this is volume 3 – he’s already moved on to volume 4 – gives you an insight into a vast undertaking, though you can’t help but wonder whether it is by design, or whether he’s just stumbled on more research to write about.
Either way, it’s a labour of love that will potentially resonate with some crew and band members alike, while he cleverly includes enough about high profile bands such as Bowie and Pink Floyd to interest the fans too.
Refreshingly there’s even a small index of sorts which links the extensive research to be found in all three volumes in a final chapter list.
You could argue that what all three volumes lack are a coherent intro, structure and closure. To that end, you will find more on the back cover than in the book itself. And as in the case of the rather perfunctory closing chapter on 10CC’s Strawberry studios, the author leaves things open-ended enough to suggest that he may still have enough further research to populate volume 4.
This is a book that focuses on the rise of touring equipment and its role in the changing face of corporate rock, as seen through the eyes of the people who built and used it, rather than the more usual band perspective.
The result is a unique take on one of the world biggest industries. The book is best on an illuminating 22 pages given over to the inside story of Robin Mayhew and Bowie’s ‘Ziggy Stardust’ rig, with great photos which really do capture a time, an era and period PA gear!
The book is less convincing with the slightly misleading chapter headings such as ‘Thin Lizzy – Tales of the 1970’s’, in which a whole decade takes up little more than 6 pages.
However, this is immediately counter balanced by some evocative photos and a technical breakdown of the legendary California Jam on the 6 April, 1974, which installed the loudest PA system on the fly.
There’s a humorous, but significant quote about how once the organisers realised the crowd was going to exceed the expected 60,000 – in fact it ended up being nearly 250,000 – they incredibly adapted the rig accordingly. As director of engineering Jim Gamble said “ We were lucky. The wind blew just the way it was supposed to all day long. If it didn’t, there would be nothing we could have done to compensate…nothing.”
Inevitably, it’s the unseen photos that make this book such an attractive proposition. Putting aside the somewhat dense (and to non technical people) impenetrable catalogue photos, who could not warm to photos of Genesis, Vinegar Joe, Humble Pie, Roxy Music and Quo at the sodden Bardney Festival, at Tupholme Manor Park on 26 May 1972.
Then there’s the curiosity of the inclusion of the Australian Pink Floyd recreating history on vintage gear, which is justified by the sense of lineage and history that lies at the core of the book.
Inevitably, with a weighty tome of this size which tries to cover the changing face of PA systems over decades, the biggest problem is structure. Author Hewitt sensibly opts to give over most of his chapter heading to the companies that filled the breach.
While previous volumes dealt with the likes of WEM and Marshall, here you will find Turner Electronics, Colac Sound and lighting, Warehouse sound, Midas Mixers, Adlib Audio, Europe Concert Systems, Wigwam, Amek, MEH Tasco and Floyd’s actual ‘Dark Side The Moon’ sound system.
Deep in the book in a chapter called ‘Midas Mixer History’ we find a quote that provides the salient mission statement of the book: “PA equipment rental was a new and fast growing industry at the time of the flowering of Midas and companies like Entec, Britannia RW, Colosseum Acoustics, Concert Sound and ML Executives. They had started up quite often as PA systems owned by a band for their gigs and expanded into a company renting out initially the band’s gear when they weren’t touring and then grew into a full on hire company.”
It’s amazing to remember that Pink Floyd’s Britannia Row system made its debut at the Knebworth Festival.
Perhaps the most significant thing about this book is the way it covers a nascent rock industry built on the sometimes uneasy relationship between innovation, ideals and business.
And it does so by relying on mostly unseen pictorial evidence, contextualized by the PA crew, mixers and rental companies who used the rigs at the time.
And while all 3 volumes will have an intrinsic interest to anyone who has worked with sound systems and bands, there is still plenty to dip into for rock fans in general.
You might argue there’s not quite enough from the musicians themselves, but again this is counter-weighted by several reviews of live shows commenting on the new found clarity of the bigger PA rigs.
In sum, Chris Hewitt’s passion for his subject matter comes across loud and clear (pun intended). ‘The Development of Large Rock Sound Systems – Volume 3’ does a great job serving an music industry niche that no one else up this point thought about covering.
Review by Pete Feenstra
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