10/12/2025
Jesus Christ Superstar
International Tour, 67 Shows 10-24-96 to 1-20-97
When I was 10 years old, one of my mom's friends gave me a double album.
It would become to be known as the “Brown Album".
Jesus Christ Superstar featuring Ian Gillan on lead vocals.
I was completely blown away by this music.
The opening overture is haunting, captivating, and brilliant.
Very few pieces of music have a crescendo that builds to a finale, then drops back down into a sense of suspense.
It truly is a stunning piece of music.
I consider that to be one of the greatest pieces of music ever written.
I knew all the words to the entire album, and I could play along with most of it on my guitar
The first time I got to see the movie starring Carl Anderson and Ted Neely, I was singing along the entire time.
Now it's the 28th of October 1996 and I'm dragging my luggage through the airport in Las Vegas on my way to meet up with the national tour, of Jesus Christ Superstar.
There's a phrase that gets thrown around a lot to the point where it's lost a lot of meaning.
When dreams come true.
This was 100% my dream coming true, it's difficult to explain how deep it was for me, that I was chosen for this.
My friends who recommended me for the position had no idea that I was completely familiar with all this material.
Somehow in all the time we spent hanging out together at the Agora or backstage at Nautica, the subject of early 70s musicals never came up.
Good old fashioned Vegas corruption started from the moment I left the airport.
After I got into the taxi, gave the driver the destination he asked me the question have you ever been to Vegas before.
Being completely ignorant of my situation I responded with the truth, no.
That's when he took a left instead of a right and my $5 ride from the airport to the Hard Rock was now $20 as I got an unscheduled sightseeing tour on the backside of Vegas.
It taught me a valuable lesson and to this day when no matter what city I show up in if a driver ever asked me if I’ve been there before, my standard answer is that I live here.
I show up at the Hard Rock and find the stage door.
As I'm coming through the back of the loading dock dragging my luggage, I walked right into the quick change for all the dancers getting into their outfits as Harrods s*x slaves.
This was the sign that I was no longer on the Bob Dole tour.
After successfully getting my eyeballs back into my skull, I went and hung out in the production office until the show was over.
Loadout, I put my luggage in the bay under the bus and officially climbed on board the first proper tour bus of my life.
The bus was an older Eagle, dark blue carrying God knows how many stories from all the previous occupants that ever slept in these 12 coffins.
Standard tour bus, front lounge then 12 bunks in the middle and a rear lounge.
After some time hanging out with my buddies and some quality b**g hits, I climbed up into my bunk on the top left side and had one of the best sleeps ever.
After all my time driving all over the continent, almost two years living in a school bus, for me this was much appreciated.
Just the simple comfort, drifting off to sleep without the responsibility of getting me, everybody else and the gear to the next destination.
It was awesome
We were up in the Pacific Northwest doing one nighter, as I was learning the show from the sound designer.
One thing about Broadway shows that's important is consistency.
It was my understanding; Andrew Lloyd Webber gave this company the rights to Jesus Christ Superstar under the conditions that if the show stopped for more than two weeks that the rights would revert to him.
He wanted to do an updated version of it in London and a subsequent tour, but he couldn't launch any of that while this door was still running.
Nobody anticipated that this thing would just go and go.
With Ted Neely and Carl Anderson, the show was dramatically good.
Although Carl only did the A Markets, the guy that was his understudy was fantastic.
The band was great, the cast was rock solid, the show was excellent.
It was a big deal for the principals to have a new mixer come in for the show, I had no misconceptions of the expectations that I was facing.
I mixed my first show in Boise ID, and everything went great.
After that was Rapid City and then Bismarck ND, I was ready.
By the time we had a three night sit down in Minneapolis I was dialed in.
After Minneapolis we went to Charleston WV for a two day sit down.
If you've ever wondered how an actor knows where to stand on stage, it's because there's a marker system like a grid on the downstage and on the sides of the stage.
Downstage it's usually an alphabet or a letter system, in the case of Jesus Christ Superstar we would lay out our own rubber floor that's called “Marley” and painted on that floor was the alphabet.
If a dancer needed to be standing at C16 they knew how to find their spot another aspect of this alphabet system is that it was easy for the lighting people to label the Footlights corresponding with the alphabet on the floor.
Without footlights, light shining up in the faces of the actors, everybody looks like a ghoul.
The lighting technician was explaining to the local stagehands to just set all the lights down in order.
They kept asking what the order was.
The technician kept saying you know A,B,C,D.
Then the guy said what's after that?
The technician said E,F,G.
I had to step in I said “Guys, guys, have you never heard the song?
The ABC song is not just very popular, but it is rather catchy”
I declined to sing the song for them I had my own issues.
Everything in the audio department was labeled professionally and that wasn't working.
This tour had been on the road for so many years and played every market in the country, that now the last six months of its life left with a couple of A Market close outs and a bunch of places that this show normally never would have come to.
Nobody knew what DSL was, that stands for “downstage left”.
I was a one-man sound department, I put up all the speakers, ran all the cables, checked all the wireless, put all the microphones on the band of the pit and mix the show.
To maximize my personal time, I need to minimize my time putting the show together and one of the hinderance, was having professional labels that unprofessional stagehands were incapable of understanding.
That day in Charleston WV I sent the runner out for two animal book stickers
That was the day I labeled absolutely everything in my system with animal stickers.
People laugh about it but believe me when I say that I never once had a stagehand plug a bunny into a horse or a turtle into a giraffe.
My system was 100% successful.
I'm all about results.
The very next night we were doing a one nighter in Reading PA.
The show was over, we were doing the loadout, I was at the front of house mixing console wrapping up some cables.
My buddy Cody who is on the props department, yelled out to me from the stage was it OK to pick up my electrical feeder?
My response, “Sure, as long as it's disconnected.”
I went back to what I was doing.
About two minutes later I look up and I see these four guys pulling on this electrical feeder that is so taught it looks like a jump rope all the way across the stage.
There was a brilliant flash of white light out of the electrical room on the stage right side.
They had pulled it out-of-the-box live.
The electrician was sitting in that room as they did it and if not for the fact that he had his back to the panel and he was reading a newspaper that's the only thing that saved his eyesight.
Couple days in Jersey, back up to Buffalo and then we headed to Boston for a week.
One of the things about our tour is that we were a nonunion tour.
all the legitimate theatrical union houses were giving us a hard time about it
My point was if you don't want me to be non-union, just bring me into your union and that solves the problem, but you can't expect me just to disappear into the vapors.
One of the interesting things every day was that since Brad was the Head Carpenter, He was responsible for the distribution of the crew every day.
Even though we averaged a four-hour minimum for our load in, I had my job down to 90 minutes.
There was no reason for me to come in the venue at 8:00 in the morning, all my gear was in the nose of the second truck.
At 8:00 AM, the entire crew is ready to work including whoever's been assigned to the sound department.
I always had four local guys assigned to me, every morning Brad would give them the same speech, “Mr. Walker does not like coming off the bus until 10:30 in the morning. Mr. Walker does not want your resume, does not want to hear about how the last guy did it, does not want to know how you usually do it and does not want your opinion regarding anything”.
So, by the time I'm cruising in the venue 1030 ish, there's already four guys with their arms folded that had been sitting there since 8:00 in the morning waiting for me.
We get to Boston and the crew there was 100% uncooperative on every little thing that we wanted to do.
At one point I was down in the orchestra pit and the only thing I was trying to accomplish was getting an electronic keyboard out of the case and onto a stand.
The props department who traditionally handles musical instruments refused to touch it because they demanded that since it had a plug on it that falls under the electrics department.
The electrics department came down there and said that it is true that it has an electrical plug on it however it still falls under the classification of a musical instrument therefore it falls under the jurisdiction of the props department.
This went on for 35 minutes as I stood there with my hands in my pockets, staring at the ground trying not to explode.
Eventually we got that freaking keyboard on that stand and we had five nights of shows there.
Another interesting thing about Boston was before the show Carl Anderson told me that during the show, he would cue me when he wanted me to turn off his microphone to the house but wanted me to put headphones on and listen to him and he would give me some cues on how we wanted the stage to sound.
In between mixing 430 cues during the show, paying attention to everything else then pop on the headphones to listen to Carl, was challenging at best, but he was Carl Anderson and I made it happen.
After Boston we had a couple days in Stamford CT, and we had the day off on Thanksgiving before the tour headed up to Portland ME.
Mark Hall and I rolled 20 joints and jumped on a train to New York City to attend the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade
This was the last year, 1997 that they had the floats at the old traditional high altitude, before the windstorm that day.
We were right there at 42nd St. watching Woody Woodpecker wipe out hooked on the side of that building.
Float after float was out of control and people were running and screaming as we were smoking joints two at a time just laughing our ass off.
It was awesome
The only thing better than watching Underdog wipe out into a Calvin Klein billboard was the time we spent in Times Square’s worst strip club, Runway 69 before heading back to Connecticut.
Ted who played Christ was certainly a ladies’ man.
Since Mark Hall was responsible for putting together the set every day, he decided that we should customize it.
There was an elevator built into the upstage of the set and it was used twice during the show.
The first time the elevator was used was when Ted would rise and make his first appearance.
The second time in the show that the elevator was used was when the actor playing Pontius Pilot would appear with his purple cape and make a dramatic spin to face the audience.
He rode up with his back to the audience.
One of our hobbies in every town once the work was done was sending the runner out to get nonsense.
We just loved the sport of sending somebody into a store, making them very uncomfortable to have to ask for very specific publications.
We always asked for the same magazines, no substitutions would be accepted.
The list was “Foreskin Quarterly”, “Latin Inches” and “The Best of Ouch”.
We knew you just couldn't go down to the 711 and pick these up, you had to go into some ghetto with a neon triple X sign out front.
Someplace where your feet are sticking to the floor.
Drop anything on that floor, just consider it a donation.
If the runner came back and truly had a look of horror on their face, we always made sure to throw the magazines away right in front of them.
Of course, with so many gay guys on the tour, the c**k magazines never went to waste.
Occasionally we would have them get the latest issue of “Black Tail”, but that was for me.
We were in Ames IA, and we set the runner out for a bunch of Hustler, Penthouse and Pl***oy magazines.
Also on that list was a dozen children's scissors with the rounded edges.
We spent the afternoon with the stagehands and our new fancy scissors, cutting out pictures of ti***es and vaginas.
After that we pasted them all over the inside of the wall that faced Ted before riding the elevator.
The set was made from many pieces, and now these 8 feet long 6-foot-high piece was forever known as the” T***y Wall”.
Ted loved it.
Because of how the cue landed in the show, He would have time just to hang out there before he went up and he really appreciated having the visual stimulation as inspiration before going on.
After a few shows went by, the guy who played Pontius Pilot had a request.
His position was that since Ted had a T***y Wall, he was gay, and he didn't have anything to look at.
We said no problem, we got you covered.
So, what do you think we did?
We send the runner for the latest “Latin Inches” and “Foreskin Quarterly” and we spent the afternoon cutting out c**ks with the stagehands.
After that, the” C**k Wall” was born.
As far as c**k walls go, it was tremendous.
After that we had a whole new sport every load in, and it was to find the surliest stagehand and make him hold the c**k wall.
There was absolutely no reason to make somebody stand there and hold that wall in place, it was only to make them feel uncomfortable.
Have no doubt, it worked every time.
In many aspects the tour was certainly a rolling S***m and Gomorrah.
With four buses of cast and crew there was a lot of partying going on.
Another funny thing that we did was we had a 6-foot-tall inflatable p***s, that was the last thing that would go into the carpentry truck.
This would be the first truck opened at the next gig.
The p***s was strategically rigged that when the door is opened it would fall straight down, like a tower coming at you.
It was always funny watching the reaction of the guys in the morning when that p***s came out of the truck.
At one of the load ins, when the p***s came off the truck it landed right in the arms of the head teamster that was standing there.
The guy was just standing there stunned and shocked holding the six-foot p***s like carrying the wounded out of combat.
Mark Hall immediately approached him and said, “We gotta know what show you booked. Are we doing the X or the family show? We got to know”.
It was always funny.
Another running joke that we would have with the locals, we would have discussions amongst ourselves in front of the crew if we were going to do the crucifixion scene or the ex*****on with the runaway ox cart.
We were out in the Midwest somewhere and Cody, who was the prop guy and I had one ongoing issue that was happening every day.
The one thing that we requested every day for breakfast catering, was Pop Tarts.
Not toasted strudel surprise, not some weirdo generic off brand, but legitimate Pop Tarts.
Cody and I walked into breakfast catering, walked up to the little table, there was no Pop Tarts, and without saying one word to each other we flipped all the tables and walked out of there.
For me the most special shows that we did was after we came to Cleveland towards the end of the tour.
From early on, Ted Neely liked the way I mixed the show.
Although I never told Ted that I had been listening to the show since I was 10 years old, him and I talked quite a bit about nuances and little things that he thought I was picking up on that previous audio mixers were not.
I had the blessings to do what I wanted with the show straight from Jesus, so I made some changes.
We had an actor that played a high priest named “Caiaphas”.
This was the only baritone vocal part of the entire show and I think it was the 4th number in.
This guy sang it naturally one octave below what it was written for.
It was tremendous hearing this guy do it, sonically amazing.
One of the things I've always hated about shows is when the show starts the audience is already excited to be there.
There's no reason to use all the audio, all the lighting, all the everything the first instant the show starts because where do you go from there?
For Jesus Christ Superstar, I would keep the subwoofers turned off for the first four songs.
The moment his vocal line came in with, “All gentlemen, you know why we are here, we have not much time, but quite a problem here”, I fed his vocal directly into the subwoofers and turned them on for the first time.
There was not one performance that the audience did not gasp.
It was such a dramatic effect, people accused me of using a special effect, using a harmonizer, using a pitch transformer but it was all him.
Combination with the audience not realizing that they haven't heard and felt low frequency for the first 15 minutes of the show, it was a stunning audio effect.
On January 19th, 1997, we did the last show in Philadelphia.
This was hands down the greatest experience of my life.
I was out on this great adventure with all my friends and these people that I loved, mixing one of the greatest scores of music that I think ever was produced in the 20th century.
Just getting to meet Ted Neely and Carl Anderson, let alone hanging out with these guys, laughing with these guys, joking with them and most of all mixing their performance and bringing it to the fans, it was special to me.
At some point in life, I'm going to write a proper book about my time with the Judas company and Jesus Christ Superstar.
There are too many people to list, and I don't want to miss anybody.
The stories of this tour and of this show from before I got there till when we closed it it's certainly a story worth documenting properly.
Believe me when I say that this was the best tour of my life. 😀
Pictured here is the late great Mark Hall, Ted Neeley and myself.
In all my years in the business, this is the only picture of me with an artist.
Its the only one I ever wanted.
From my book...
https://www.amazon.com/Roadies-Rockstars-True-Concert-Stories/dp/B0CDNMVSJW/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1H51VUKLUH3U6&keywords=roadies+and+rockstars+book&qid=1694220187&sprefix=%2Caps%2C177&sr=8-1&asin=B0CDNMVSJW&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1
