DATE: December 15, 1985
VENUE: Wembley Arena
PA: Clair Brothers
BAND: Elton John

1985 marks the 20th anniversary of Clive Frank's professional association with Elton John, although in those days EJ was yet to be born, and Reg White was an ex-keyboard player from Long John Baldry's band, Bluesology.

Reg came to Dick James Music in the mid Sixties in search of a publishing contract, and Dick, who didn't get where he is today by failing to see potential Eltons in Reg's, signed the man upon a weekly retainer of £10 — (nostalgic chuckle). At that time Clive was DJM's 16 year old runner earning £7 a week (ironic, nostalgic chuckle), but he soon graduated to engineer for the in-house 4-track demo studio, and so he and Reg first collided.

Then One Day...

Over the next few years Reg was to become the Elton we all know and sing along with while Clive, via a spate at Island Studios, became a rather disenchanted engineer and studio manager at DJM's 8-track. Then one day the phone rang... and it was Elton who, unhappy with the live sound on his European tour, wanted Clive to fly out and cover the last date. Although he'd never stood behind a PA console in his life, Clive hopped on a plane, mixed the sound and, in his own words, made a complete mess of it. Summoned to see Big E after the show, Clive awaited his fate like a doomed man. Elton, however, was strangely impressed and immediately asked him to do the imminent US tour (1972). Clive thought he was insane, but accepted, and since then he's engineered and co-produced three of Elton's albums and stood FOH for the vast majority of his tours. Amazing, eh?

Though the gig was a little early to be overtly Yulish out front, supreme efforts had been made to make the back stage area cheery and generally inhabitable with carpets, mirrored wall coverings and decorations not to mention copious amounts of food and drink. There was an unusually sane, civil and yet jovial atmosphere about it all.

Mike Wolf from Clair Brothers, who has in the past stepped in for Clive as FOH engineer, had set the rig up and assisted in its equalisation. Normally he would have simply arranged the speakers in a simple left and right formation, but owing to the weight restrictions on flying in the arena, he was forced to spread the load out a little. Thus the rig had left, right and centre components arranged in three groups of eight full-range cabinets forming an arc. Flying from the bottom of each side stack was an extra cabinet feeding those patrons positioned to the sides of the stage. In addition, three cabinets were positioned either side on the stage to cover the front stalls. Clair Brothers are now making these cabinets in short, medium and long throw configurations with increasingly tight dispersion characteristics.

The size of Wembley Arena only warranted the use of short and medium throw versions, the long throw efforts being reserved for the massive stadium venues. All three models share an identical exterior appearance, so what's inside these units, and what are the differences? Mr Wolf was somewhat reticent to divulge such information on the grounds that I might tell somebody. I told him that I'd only let you alone in on it because I knew I could trust you, but he wouldn't buy that, and so we only have a fairly skimpy outline of what's going on.

Each cab contains JBL18", JBL10", JBL 41 compression driver with a radial horn designed by Mike called the 'Wolf' horn, and a form of hybrid tweeter using various JBL components, in some amount and configuration. Each box is tri-amped via a Clair designed crossover with a passive crossover for the super-highs, and it is provided with a potential of 3kw from a rack of Carver power amps, although it will probably use only about one-third of that.

The FOH mix was accomplished with two of the standard Clair 'suitcase' 32:12:2 consoles which fold up neatly into their own integral flightcases. The centre speaker cluster was being run as a separate system to the stereo side clusters, and so there were two sets of equalisers (DN27s), crossovers and dbx160 limiters which were inserted at the outputs of the crossovers. A DN60 was used to assist in alignment, and throughout the gig adjustments were made as the overall FOH sound changed noticeably, probably as requests were made on stage for foldback alterations. A classically difficult situation — bring on the moulded ear pieces.

The Piano Sound

There were no surprises with the mikes — mostly Sennheiser 421 son the kit, brass and instrument amps, and mostly SM87s for vocals. The standard set-up for Elton's piano is to have a Helpenstein pick up to give the bulk of the sound, a couple of C-ducer strips to give some harder dynamics and a pair of AKG C460 condensers with swivel heads to add some HF tinkle. The lid is shut tightly against a 1½" strip of foam rubber to keep leakage down, and another wider strip is laid across the tuning pegs area to reduce resonance. These five channels are sent up to the FOH board, from which the sound is pieced together. The effect is a strong, hard, bright tone with a harpsichord-like edge to it, providing a very 'classical' mood to Elton's rapid arpeggios.

The piano has also been adapted with a MIDI retrofit. When playing on his own he was MIDI'd to a JX8P for sustained bass notes. With the careful manipulation of the Roland's attack time it was only triggered by long sustained notes. This way Elton could hold down big notes at the bottom end with the added synth part and tinkle away at the top end on solo piano. Neat idea, but to be honest it didn't sound too hot.

Auntie had a couple of OB (outside broadcast) units parked out the back recording the show for their 'In Concert' Series. Though they too are now suffering from severe financial cut backs, the BBC did manage to re-equip most of their suites with SSL, and in this case they were using just such a console along with a Soundcraft 200B as a sub-mixer to provide the necessary extra channels. They were recording to a couple of Studer A800 24-track machines used as a pair to overlap each other allowing programme continuity. It's also standard procedure to record a stereo monitor mix in real time as a fallback in case of accidents with the multitracks.

The requirements of a FOH mix and those of a multitrack recording are so different that there can be no possibility of combining the two in any way. Hence, each individual source that is sent to the FOH desk is split on stage and sent via a series of multicores to the OB truck: over 60 channels in all.

Monitor Revolution — Shocking Disclosures

Or should I say shocking enclosures? Either way there was an unusual lack of drum fill cabinets around drummer Charlie Morgan as he thrashed away at his two kits. Closer examination of the Morgan mazzard would have revealed a moulded full-range hearing aid sitting snuggly in his earhole, designed by a Californian company with the initials AID (Mike couldn't remember the whole name). Around his neck he wore a long piece of wire acting as an induction loop which was connected by a long lead to a power amp being fed with the foldback programme. The minute receiver in the ear piece picked up the signal by induction and fed him with a tolerably high quality monitor signal. If he had required more mobility, the system could have been powered by a wireless FM system, in which case he would have worn a receiver in his pocket to power the induction loop. Though not up to hi-fi headphone standards yet, the spec is apparently very good and is reliant on the fact that the ear piece is fashioned from a wax impression of the individual's ear and thus forms a well sealed enclosure. If this catches on, every session musician in the world will be queuing up to have hot wax poured in his ear, and no-one will be seen at a gig or session without his personalised monitor. What a boon for live sound that would be, if wedges and fills were banned from stage.

As it was, Charles was the sole possessor of this device, and the onstage sound was incredibly loud — as per Elton's usual requirements. This high foldback level is a major influence on Clive's choice of vocal mike for Elton. He is currently using a Shure SM87 because of its tight directionality, and although it does the job sonically, he would much prefer the smoother sound of a condenser.

For instance, a recent tour where Elton went on the road with just himself and percussionist, Ray Cooper, he had used an AKG 451 with pop shield, and had been delighted with the results. Alas, it couldn't be for this tour which included a band of 13 musicians and singers including three drum kits and percussion, bass, guitar, keyboards (DX-7 and JP8), three backing vox, four brass plus EJ, all of whom seemed fairly keen on keeping on-stage levels up. Not an easy job. A dbx 165 Over Easy compressor was used with a 5:1 ratio to keep Elton on the level.

The sound was generally good and clear around the stalls area, although I met a sound engineer friend afterwards who claimed that from where he was sitting at the side, there was no HF projection. This I can well believe, although Wembley security arrangements prevented me from hearing for myself on this occasion. It's a very difficult venue. The show was exactly as you might have expected, with the older songs getting the best reaction dating back to a time when I couldn't decide whether I wanted to be Elton John or David Bowie and made relatively little progress in either direction. One of the final encores was Elton his own singing the excellent Taupin ballad, Candle In The Wind: "The candle burned out long before the legend ever did", etc. The EJ legend goes on as ever; wick and all.