Fact #113849

Team Macca - The Inside Story of the Out There Tour

by Johnny Black.


When Liverpudlian teenager Paul McCartney first met John Lennon, in Woolton Church Hall on July 6, 1957, he could not have imagined that over fifty year later, he'd be one of the world's most successful live touring acts.

Together, McCartney and Lennon dominated the 1960s as The Beatles, and the 1970s in their solo careers, but not even Lennon's tragic death in 1980 could halt McCartney's momentum for long.

This year's 59 world-spanning shows on the Out There tour have raked in almost $150m and been seen by well over a million paying customers.

It is, of course, McCartney that the tens of thousands flock to see but behind that charismatic and beloved performer, there is a hand-picked and extraordinarily devoted team of professionals who make it possible for Macca to stride on stage, plug in his legendary Hofner bass and rock out with absolute confidence that everything will work tonight, exactly as it does every night.

Put your hands together then, for Team Macca.

"This crew is the very best on the planet," states McCartney proudly. "We really enjoy working together and it is more like a family.  I know them all personally and can say they are all the top people in the business. They know I respect them and I’d like to thank them for everything they do."

Team Macca’s mammoth trek across four continents started on May 4, 2013 with a sold-out show at Mineirao Stadium (51,621) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in response to a petition by local fans who had felt left out when he didn't stop there on either of his previous two South American visits.

"Paul actually invited some of the ladies who had signed the petition up onto the stage and 51,000 people went crazy!" remembers promoter Luiz Niemeyer of Plan Music. "Since 1990, we have played 15 sold out stadiums with him in major cities and in other places where no-one has played before. He is, unquestionably, the biggest artist in Brazil."

That memorable first night, and every show that has followed it, was made possible by a permanent crew of 70 led by Production Manager Mark ‘Springo’ Spring, who has been with McCartney since 2002.

Out There’s massive production jets around the globe in not one but two massive 747s which touch down at the nearest big enough airport to the gig and unload their cargo into a convoy of between 20 and 27 trucks, depending on the size of the venue. By the time they arrive at the gig, Springo’s 70-strong cohort will have been augmented by up to 100 locals.

A typical show day starts with the trucks rolling in around dawn. "The first thing we do is scope out the venue before we get to work," points out Springo. "We need to make sure all the different areas are marked off. Then we bring the rigging in."

Next comes the stage, which is constructed at the opposite end of the venue from its final location. Meanwhile, lighting and sound are being hung off the rigging and, once that’s complete, the stage is rolled underneath.

All of this must be achieved by 1pm when they start on seating and floor plans so that when McCartney arrives for soundcheck at 4pm, "everything works and the seats all fit in so Paul can get straight on and do his job, which is why people are here.”

Belo Horizonte was a huge success but the fun really started on the next show, two days later at Serra Dourada Stadium (42,541) in Goiania.

"I remember looking at our LED screens an hour before the show started and I could see something was wrong," remembers Lighting and Stage Designer Roy Bennett. "It looked like a problem with the pixels. I moved closer but it wasn't til I got right next to it that I realised I was seeing grasshoppers crawling on the screen. By the time it got dark, there were masses of them, a huge swarm."
Drawn by the bright lights, the big green bugs, many two inches long, were potentially hazardous, not only a distraction to every band and crew member but if they got inside the equipment they might cause short circuits and even fires. A crisis meeting was held backstage but McCartney was adamant that the fans would not be disappointed.

"Most artists would have abandoned the show," says Barrie Marshall, his agent of 25 years at Marshall Arts, " but Paul carried on and kept his cool throughout."

McCartney even wryly referenced the grasshoppers during Hey Jude. As he sang the line, "The movement you need is on your shoulder," he inclined his head towards his shoulder, and sang to the bugs perching there.

After a third Brazilian date, at Fortaleza’s Castelao Stadium (48,000), the two 747s headed north to begin the tour’s first North American leg.

At the same time, a private chartered jet with a core team of about 15 people (McCartney, his wife Nancy Shevell, the band, and a select handful of others) was also flying north. Among that handful was John Hammel, perhaps the longest-serving member of Team Macca, described in the lavish tour brochure as Paul’s aide-de-camp. "John has been Paul's right-hand man for 35 years," explains backline crew chief Keith Smith. "He was a Wings roadie. He travels everywhere with Paul, drives him, looks after his guitars, makes his toast."

As well as ten basses and guitars, McCartney travels the world with a ukulele given to him by George Harrison, a cigar box guitar given by Johnny Depp, and the mandolin on which he wrote Dance Tonight. Pride of place, though, is reserved for his legendary 1963 Hofner fiddle bass.

"I keep it on my bed at night," admits Hammel. "It doesn’t leave my sight! On the charter flights it gets its own seat next to me. It is an iconic instrument with a unique sound.  It was Paul’s trademark instrument even in The Beatles days.  It’s the one instrument related to Paul and no one else."

McCartney’s band – Paul 'Wix’ Wickens (keyboards), Rusty Anderson (guitars), Brian Ray (guitars), Abe Laboriel Jr (drums) – has been with him for almost 12 years, longer than either The Beatles or Wings. Wix is also McCartney’s MD, so to him falls not only the task of drilling the band but also occasionally telling McCartney that his bass playing isn’t quite right. With a huge back catalogue of songs, some of which he hasn’t played live since the day they were recorded, it’s understandable that McCartney can’t remember every nuance, and backs up his recollection of lyrics with a discreetly hidden auto cue. Fortunately, either Wix or one of the guitarists - both steeped in Beatlesongs since childhood - can always tell him how his songs go.

Looking after the core group is a 25-year Team Macca veteran, Tour Manager Phil Kazamias. " It was a job when I started, but for me it's now a lifestyle," he says. "My responsibilities include logistics, working out flights, sorting hotels, moving them from city to city, making sure everybody is in time for the gig, getting Paul and band onstage promptly. A lot of it, though, is about dealing with individual characters. You have to be observant."

Overseeing the entire operation is agent Barrie Marshall who attends every date, despite commitments to other artists including Elton John, George Michael and Cher. Marshall and manager Scott Rodger split the major aspects of McCartney’s career between them. Marshall is responsible for live engagements, merchandising and endorsements, while Rodger handles recording, tv and film. At the end of the day, though, Marshall points out, "Paul makes all the decisions. He is the chief executive in everything he does in his career and we both report to him. He comes up with all the tour titles, approves all the artwork, all the sound bits, radio, tv and everything."

McCartney’s work ethic is unparalleled among artists of his vintage. "All my working life I’ve looked after big acts, but there's no-one else at his level who puts in as much work to making shows run perfectly," says Scott Rodger, who also manages Arcade Fire and scooped the Manager Of The Year award at this year's AMAs. "Paul really doesn't need to soundcheck, but he'll go into a stadium the night before a gig and do a two hour rehearsal, come back the next afternoon for an hour of soundcheck, and then play a three-hour show in the evening."

What’s not so often trumpeted is McCartney’s attention to detail. When the fireworks erupt at the end of every show, they shower the audience with confetti. It was McCartney who insisted that the confetti must be in the colours of the flag of whichever country is hosting the gig. He routinely learns enough of every local language to make most of his onstage announcements - including colloquialisms - in the appropriate tongue. En route to a gig he will often detour to a local radio station and drop in unannounced for a live interview, stunning the staff and delighting the local audience.

No detail is overlooked. Marshall tells of how, when a new hydraulic scissor lift was added to the show at the start of Out There, "he was concerned that it had to be very smooth because he would be playing acoustic guitar while it was carrying him. So he got two champagne glasses filled with water and placed on the platform. Once he had seen it raise them without spilling a drop, he was confident that it would do the job for him."

The first North American leg started with two 26,000 capacity nights at Orlando, Florida’s Amway Center, followed by two more at the Frank Erwin Center (25,487) in Austin, Texas. "We set several house records for the Frank Erwin Center, including Highest Two Day Gross," says Austin-based Bob Roux of Live Nation/Concerts West. "We sold out one night, and then put another one on sale at a time when market conditions were not great but we blew that one out too. That moment of smashing demand on the second show was one of the most thrilling moments ever in my years of promoting concerts."

The production trucked on through Memphis, Tulsa and New York, culminating with the biggest audience of the tour, 80,000 devotees at the Bonnaroo Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. "Bonnaroo has several stages," points out Marshall, "so the crowd could have stayed put and watched other acts but, within ten minutes, it felt like the whole audience had come to see him. What a fantastic feeling!"

Marshall is particularly proud of the part played in all of this by Jon States and Steve Cielinski of Marshall Arts’ US office. "They worked tirelessly to set up all the American ticketing and are absolutely brilliant at monitoring tickets and micro-managing every box office in North America."

Another attendee at every show is publicist Stuart Bell of the London-based Dawbell Ltd. While most publicists spend their time chasing media coverage for their acts, Bell’s role is much more about keeping on top of the continuously-breaking global McCartney news stories, and harnessing them to best effect.

"Even if Paul is seen walking down the street, it’s a world-wide news story," he explains. "In Uruguay, (Apr 19, 2004, Estadio Centenario (65,000), Montivideo) just as he landed, four lion cubs were born in Salto Zoo and they got named Paul, John, George and Ringo. That became a national tv news story and that kind of thing happens everywhere he goes. We don't create stories like that, they just happen, and my job is to amplify the excitement around them."

When Out There arrived at Target Field (43,000) in Minneapolis on August 2, 2014, Governor Mark Dayton declared an official Paul McCartney Day throughout the state of Minnesota. To celebrate his first-ever show in Poland (June 22, 2013, Stadion Narodowy (72,900) Warsaw), says promoter Steven Todd of Live Nation, Poland, "the city authorities erected 'Welcome Paul" billboards, it was the lead item on television news for that day, with a helicopter following his car from the airport. Every jaded journalist whose arms we usually have to twist to get them to a show was hassling for tickets."

Yes, when he comes to town it becomes obvious that there are stars, there are superstars and megastars, and then there’s Paul McCartney. Even so, he always takes time to interact with local fans, perhaps most memorably the engaged couple, Andrea Copado and Adam Kowal, among the 14,000 throng at the US Airways Center in Phoenix, Arizona. This pair held up a sign asking Paul to marry them and would have been delighted if he had simply waved to them but instead, he invited them up on stage to recite their wedding vows and seal them with a kiss before advising them to get it done officially as soon as possible.

"What Paul doesn’t see," notes Stuart Bell, "are the moments when he leaves a room after meeting local fans, and they totally lose it. They hold it together when they meet him but the moment he’s out of the door it is a different story. They cry, they laugh, hug each other, call their loved ones - the impact is huge. It’s a major moment in their lives that they’ll always treasure."
Brad Wavra of Live Nation, who promoted that Phoenix show and a string of others on the Out There tour, figures, "I think Paul has a slightly mischievous side to him, where he likes to shake things up a little, but he’s a joy to work with. He arrives at a venue, with a big grin on his face, says "Hi, man" to everybody and immediately does an hour and a half soundcheck, but he doesn't run through that evening's set list. He does a bunch of oldies, cool stuff to get him warmed up."

Another major US promoter, John Meglen of AEG/Concerts West, who handled almost twenty Out There shows, recalls, "Dodger Stadium (Aug 10, 2014, 52,605) in Los Angeles, was amazing, absolutely incredible, but the greatest shows are where he goes to little places nobody else even thinks of. Missoula, Montana, has a population of only 68,000, but we sold out a 30,000 seat stadium. It set records for the biggest concert and highest gross in state history."
Probably the world’s most famous vegetarian, the 72-year-old McCartney generally enjoys rude good health which he helps maintain with hotel gym sessions and by sneaking out for bike rides with Nancy Shevell wherever the tour takes them. But when they arrived in Tokyo in mid-May 2014, he was briefly felled by a virus which necessitated postponing a string of shows.

"He lives his life under a magnifying glass," sighs Bell. "When he got the virus, the story got overblown in the media. Essentially, a man was not very well, which happens to all of us, but because it's Paul McCartney, it becomes a big story, gets increasingly exaggerated and is difficult to manage effectively."
Kazamias adds, "Paul was absolutely mortified when he got the virus in Japan. He felt he was letting down his audience. If he could physically have got on the stage, he would have done."
While Bell toils in the macro-environment of global media, most of Team Macca are immersed in the micro-worlds of nitty gritty tour-making. Long-time front of house sound engineer Pab Boothroyd, for example, ensures that whatever happens on stage is delivered in crystal clarity to the audience. "Apart from my own ears, my most important piece of gear is my Avid Profile Console mixing desk," he says. "It’s only about 3.5 feet wide by 2.5 feet deep, and light enough for two people to carry. It has a huge range of functions which come in handy because Paul throws all kinds of things at me. My next three gigs, for example, start with a 45,000 capacity baseball stadium (Petco Park, San Diego), followed by a private event in a 1200 seater theatre, and finally an arena (Lubbock, United Supermarkets Arena) with 15,000 people. With a small console, I can go from stadiums to small clubs where I can squeeze into a corner without compromising the sound. In fact, I did The Cavern with this console."

Like Kazamias and Boothroyd, Backline Crew Chief Keith Smith is a quarter century veteran. He built McCartney’s sound rig back in 1989 and has maintained and updated it ever since. "Basically, I set everything up onstage for Paul. There used to just be three of us, but now we have a keyboard tech, a piano tech, a drum tech, another guitar tech and a guy who does all the maintenance and autocue. Interestingly, although he knows exactly what he wants, Paul is very non-tekkie. If he's standing by his rig and something's gone wrong, he'll just look at me. He doesn’t want to know how it works. That leaves him free to be creative."

When John Hammel, who travels with McCartney, shows up, "He takes over and does all of Paul's guitar changes on stage, so I think of him as an honorary backline crew member."

With a mere twelve years under his belt, Lighting And Stage Designer Roy Bennett is almost a new boy in the ranks, but the look of the production is almost entirely down to him.

The basic steel skeleton of the stage set has remained intact for some years now, largely because it was created with flexibility in mind, enabling striking new looks to be achieved through the use of graphic elements.

"A lot of the shows I do for music acts run like clockwork, based on time codes and automation," he says. This is immediately apparent to anyone who has seen his spectacular productions for Madonna, Beyonce and others. "Paul, however, has a live band, so everything has to be done manually, to achieve greater flexibility, enabling him to be more interactive with the audience. He is rooted in an analogue world of real music, traditional entertainment, and that's what makes him so special."
For the Out Here tour, Bennett has introduced an impressive video lift and an improved video floor, "but we always remember that a McCartney show is song-dependent. It's about those songs, so when he changes the set list, the video content changes."
Working closely with Bennett is Lighting Director Wally Lees. "Roy and I have known each other for 32 years and we still enjoy working together," he reveals. "We always make sure the audience doesn’t see the same thing twice in one night. For example, we use 64 brilliantly bright Sharpy lights several times in the show but so subtly that the audience isn’t aware of it. And we have 280 LED moving lights behind the huge video screen, and 35 more on top. It’s a great effect, but they're hidden behind the video wall, not visible to the naked eye, so they just shine through."

In April of 2014, Out Here returned to South America for a run of dates in such exotic locales as Uruguay, Chile, Peru and Ecuador. Carlos Geniso of DG Medios has been promoting McCartney gigs in Chile since 1993, but even he was blown away by Roy Bennett’s achievements. "When you see the stage lift rising up and underneath it there are all these video screens, it's unbelievable. He does a couple of songs solo up there, just him and the guitar, and our audiences just loved that."

And it’s not over yet. After a summer break of more than a month, the third and final US leg of Out There resumed at San Diego’s Petco Park (42,302) on September 28.

Louis Messina of AEG-TMG is looking forward to a trio of gigs in Lubbock, Dallas and Nashville. "I first worked with Paul back in 1979 on the Wings tour. Paul is my hero. One of a kind. He has the same status as Elvis or Sinatra, except that he's alive. With Paul’s love of Buddy Holly, we’re expecting great things from the Lubbock night."

On October 11, New Orleans will welcome McCartney to The Smoothie King Centre, about which Don Fox of Beaver Productions says, "This will be my first show with Paul, but I can tell you that it sold out almost 18,000 tickets in twenty minutes, one of our fastest sell-outs ever. Paul has visited here several times on vacation because he loves the city, and I know it's going to be a great show because this is a music city where people love to party."

The trek winds towards closure with a show on October 28 at the Yum! Center (17,500) in Louisville, Kentucky, which should prove a highlight of the year for Director of Marketing Rosemarie Moehring of Live Nation. "This is my first time working with Paul McCartney but I had the pleasure of attending his show two years ago at the Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, which remains one of my top 5 shows of all time. There is something magical when you hear Let It Be live with 40,000 fans singing every word.  It gave me chills."

At the moment, Out There is scheduled to conclude on October 30 at Greensboro Coliseum (23,000) in North Carolina, having been seen by over 1.1m people and grossed almost $150m, but Barrie Marshall isn’t ruling out the possibility of further dates being announced.

If that transpires, there will probably be very few objections from Team Macca. In the words of Roy Bennett, "Of all the projects I’ve ever worked on, this is the only one where everybody really loves everybody else. Usually people go their own ways after a tour, but a lot of us live in Los Angeles, and we have a kind of imaginary club which we call MPL West. We hang out between tours, we have dinner together, the crew, the band, everybody. I've never experienced that on any other tour."

(Source : This feature by Johnny Black first appeared in Audience magazine in 2014)