He later tracked down the person and managed to trade a case of brandy for the carpet. Monck confronted a member of the Angels stealing a large custom carpet that was part of the Rolling Stones stage set and lost teeth being hit in the mouth with a pool cue. Members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club were hired to provide security for the concert with terrible results.
#BAND STAGE LIGHTING DESIGN FREE#
But please be advised that there’s a warning on that one, okay? The Rolling Stones įour months after Woodstock, Monck and Lang planned the Altamont Free Concert for the Rolling Stones, which also had to move from the original planned location, but this time with unfortunate consequences. Of course it’s your own trip, so be my guest. It's suggested that you do stay away from that. To get back to the warning that I’ve received, you might take it with however many grains of salt you wish, that the brown acid that is circulating around us is not specifically too good. He can be heard (and seen) in recordings of Woodstock making the stage announcements, including requests to "stay off the towers" and the warning about the " brown acid". Just before the concert started, Monck was drafted as the master of ceremonies when Michael Lang noticed that they had forgotten to hire one. The only light on the stage was from spotlights. The stage roof that was constructed in the shorter time available was not able to support the lighting that had been rented, which wound up sitting unused underneath the stage. Paid $7,000 for ten weeks of work, much of his plan had to be scrapped when the promoters were not allowed to use the original location in Wallkill, New York. Monck was hired to plan and build the staging and lighting for the Woodstock Music & Art Fair's "Aquarian Exposition" music festival. In 1969 he lit the concert that would define his career and make him a public figure. In 1969 he worked with Crosby, Stills and Nash in Europe, and began working with concert impresario Bill Graham, renovating the Fillmore theaters.
The following year, he designed the distinctive half-shell stage at the Miami Pop Festival (December 1968), called the Flying Stage, that was one of the festival's two, simultaneously operating main stages. That year, he also lit The Byrds at the Hollywood Bowl and his first Rolling Stones concert. In 1967, he lit the Monterey Pop Festival, which featured the first major American appearances by Jimi Hendrix and The Who, as well as the first major public performances of Janis Joplin. He began lighting the stage of the Apollo Theater in Harlem. He became friends with Charles Altman of the Altman Lighting Co., repairing equipment and borrowing lighting instruments to improve the stage lighting of the Gate. He began extensive relationships with both the Newport Folk Festival and the Newport Jazz Festival, lasting eight and nine years, respectively, Monck began working at the Greenwich Village nightclub The Village Gate in 1959, lighting comedians and jazz and folk artists, and living in the basement apartment under the club where Bob Dylan eventually wrote " A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" on Monck's IBM Selectric typewriter. He began auditing classes at Harvard while working with the university's theater company. He began volunteering with a summer theater group at Wellesley College, learning the basics of theatrical lighting from Greg Harney. While Monck went to the South Kent School on scholarships for ice hockey and crew, he became more interested in welding and machinery, designing a potato harvester that he sold to McCormick. He acquired the nickname "Chip" at a summer camp on Lake Winnipesaukee, in New Hampshire. Monck was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts to a mother from Nutley, New Jersey and a father from Liverpool, England.