Britannia Row - Oasis at Slane Castle 2009
Desert classics
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configuration - we had to cover the entire Mall and St James’s Park so that no matter where anyone was, they’d hear the sound clearly.” It might seem as if Brit Row had by now experienced everything imaginable, but there was still another surprise in store on 14 July Jim Baggott 2012, when Paul McCartney joined Bruce Springsteen onstage in London’s Hyde Park for his final encores. For the crowd, it was an unbelievably historic moment, but the police could see only that the show had over-run its curfew.
Josh Lloyd
“The police view was that crowd control would become impossible if it went on any longer. They threatened to arrest the promoter for over-running, so the plug was pulled,” recalls Grant. “Thank goodness it was a Springsteen crowd. An Oasis crowd would have probably lynched us.” James Gordon, MD of digital console manufacturers DiGiCo, has worked alongside Brit
James Gordon
Charlotte Pearman
Row since 2002, when they started using his ground-breaking D5 Live console. He feels that the chemistry between Grant and Lowe has played a large part in the company’s success. “No matter how big or complicated it gets, Bryan laughs his way through the whole thing. He’s very laid-back, very confident. He and Mike are very different characters, but together they compliment each other very well. Not only do they have the ability to handle the big projects, but they have the balls to take them on.” Asked to elaborate further on that chemistry, Mike Lowe says, “Bryan very much enjoys engaging with people, doing the deals, and being more the public face of the organisation than me. Fortunately, I enjoy some of the nuts and bolts stuff, and the internal organisation. Having said that, we both do everything to some extent, so we really can understand what each other is doing.” They say life begins at 40 and it certainly looks as if, after four decades at the pinnacle of the business, Britannia Row is a long way from de-rigging. “We’re in the audio business and everyone needs audio now,” says Grant. “Opera singers used to refuse to use amplification, but that’s changed, while politicians need audio, the Pope needs audio. In fact, we did The Pope in Ruanda, 100,000 people I think that was…” audience • Issue 187 • August 2015
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Jim Baggott, long-time production director for UK promoter Harvey Goldsmith, worked with Brit Row on Live 8 and the FIFA World Cup, but his favourite recollection is the Pavarotti tribute, at the ancient stone city of Petra in Jordan, which took place in October 2008. “We had a 40-piece orchestra, and live performances by Carreras, Domingo, Sting and more on a stage in the middle of the desert to a tiny audience. It was an amazing event, and Brit Row’s guys pulled it off faultlessly. “The funniest thing was that we ended doing the live mix in a 400-year-old bedouin stone hut next to the stage which, amazingly, turned out to be a superbly soundproof recording environment.” By 2012, Brit Row had outgrown its second home and moved again, with the Herculean feat achieved without any pause in their relentless schedule. “It was [the Queen’s] Diamond Jubilee weekend,” remembers warehouse manager Charlotte Pearman. “We loaded out the Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace and a few other tours from Wandsworth, moved the remaining warehouse gear while the concert was being set up, and then everything came back to us in our new Twickenham home.” Brit Row’s special projects guru Josh Lloyd remembers, “The Diamond Jubilee was extraordinary. I spent three months coming up with the technical design, because there were loads of artistes plus a house band and an orchestra. “We couldn’t shut down The Mall [leading to the Palace] in advance, so we did two weeks of rehearsals at the L2 rehearsal space in west London. We also had a very strange audience
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