While still a partner at Apogee, Jackson began touring with Barbra Streisand, mixing concert sound and serving as sound designer from 1993 to 2007. With two other audio engineers he received an Emmy Award for sound design and sound mixing on Streisand's TV special Barbra: The Concert.[1] Jackson worked on sound design for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney[2] and served as audio director for the opening and closing ceremonies.[3][4] He performed the same role in Doha, Qatar, at the 2006 Asian Games and in Vancouver, Canada, at the 2010 Winter Olympics.
(3 June 1948 – 29 January 2011) |
JANDS
Jackson first expressed an interest in electronics at age 13 when he set up a basement workbench and small lab under his parents' mansion in Point Piper, a seacoast suburb east of Sydney in the district of Vaucluse, New South Wales.[5] (The mansion, "Altona", is one of Australia's most expensive homes.[5][6]) While at Vaucluse Boys' High School, Jackson was discovered by investigators of the Postmaster-General's Department, along with a group of his electronics-minded schoolmates, operating a too-powerful AM transmitter—a pirate radio station which the boys powered up after school, tuned to the highest end of the commercial AM band.[5] The boys did not know that their tube transmitter and very long, very efficient antenna were so well crafted that their unlicensed signal was broadcasting all over Sydney.[7]At age 17 or 18, Jackson and one of the boys, Phil Storey, became partners in business. They used their surname initials to form the company name: J&S Research Electronics.[4][7] The partnership's largest customer, Roger Foley, doing business as Ellis D Fogg,[8] a producer of psychedelic lighting effects, refused to write out the full company name and instead wrote JandS on his checks. The company changed its name to JANDS in response.[7] After moving the company from Point Piper to Rose Bay, JANDS made "whatever the hell they felt like", according to Jackson: lighting equipment, guitar amplifiers and public address system components such as column loudspeakers.[5] He described how, with so many American servicemen stationed in Vietnam spending their recreation time in Sydney, Australian bands and clubs were doing well: "the live music scene was jumping, and we were busy".[8] JANDS' successful rental business paid for the design of new gear.[5] After two years, Jackson quarreled with Storey and left the company.[2] Later, JANDS grew "to become Australia's largest sound and lighting company."[4]
Clair Brothers
Jackson first met Roy Clair at a Sydney stop in a world tour by the band Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1969 or 1970, the concert held at Randwick Racecourse.[5] Clair had brought his unusually large American concert sound system to Australia and Jackson was curious to hear it, and to see how the big black 'W' bins were designed. He and a friend sneaked into the concert and spoke with Clair, asking "a whole stack of questions".[5] Clair decided to leave his sound system in Jackson's hands for a series of Johnny Cash tour dates coming up in some six months, rather than shipping all the gear home to the USA and back in between.[3] Jackson stored the system and then mixed the Cash tour across Australia. Afterward, Clair invited Jackson to visit him in Lititz, Pennsylvania.[3] Following a trip to London, Jackson stopped in at Clair Brothers and stayed to live in Pennsylvania.[3]Jackson assisted Clair Brothers by teaming with Ron Borthwick to design a mixing console that folded up into its own road case, a proprietary model used by Clair for some 12 years of top tours.[9] The console used novel plasma bargraph meters which displayed both average and peak sound level, combining the characteristics of fast peak meters and slower VU meters.[10] Clair built 10 of the consoles, the first live sound console to incorporate parametric equalization.[4]
Elvis Presley
The earliest of these Clair-supported dates did not have a dedicated monitor engineer—monitors were mixed from FOH by Porter, assisted by Jackson. Jackson noticed that Presley's performance was very much dependent on how easily he was able to hear himself from the monitor speakers. Jackson said, "some nights would work well and others would be a total train wreck."[5] He advocated for a separate monitor mixing position at the side of the stage and after overcoming resistance to the concept was given this dedicated position.[5] Asked whether he thus invented the role of concert monitor engineer, Jackson replied, "no ...its time had come."[5]
Jackson had to deal with Presley's absence from rehearsals at Graceland and concert soundchecks. The singer would usually show up at the concert venue at the last minute, walk out on stage and start to sing, having never heard the sound system. Presley sometimes turned to the side of the stage to ask Jackson to make changes, and a few times he stopped the show to have Jackson come out and stand center stage and listen carefully to the monitors while Presley sang to 20,000 people.[5] One night in Fort Worth, Texas, Presley led the audience in singing "Happy Birthday to You" in honor of the engineer's birthday—an "amazing, and very embarrassing" occasion for Jackson.[5] Jackson can be seen at his side-stage mix position in Presley's 1977 "CBS Special" TV show. At Presley's final performance on 26 June 1977, he said "I would like to thank my sound engineer: Bruce Jackson from Australia."[3]
Touring with Presley was like no other assignment. Presley and his entourage traveled in four or five jets to the next tour stop: one for Elvis and his closest colleagues, one for the band, one for Colonel Tom Parker (Presley's manager), one for concessions and crew, and a Learjet used by RCA Records management who would fly ahead of everyone else.[5] For two weeks during June and July 1973, Elvis flew on an all-black DC-9 airliner with a Playboy logo on the tail; the aircraft was named Big Bunny. Jackson said he and the other Elvis-chosen passengers were served food and drinks by elite Playboy Bunnies called "Jet Bunnies".[3]
Parker managed the concert tours for Presley, and exerted a strong influence. Jackson quit his job while on tour after he was "pushed too far" by Parker, according to Roy Clair.[12] Presley apologized to Jackson, and he rejoined the tour as an independent engineer, answering only to Presley.[12] Jackson mixed hundreds of concerts for the singer, who called him "Bruce the Goose"[13]—a working life filled with strange hours, hard physical labor and constant traveling.[5] In August 1977 he was in Portland, Maine setting up at the next Presley engagement when he heard he had died.[9]
Independent engineer
Bruce Springsteen
Right away, Jackson noticed that Springsteen was a very particular critic of his own concert sound. At every new venue, Springsteen would take "BJ" around to various seats in the concert venue, sitting in every section, even the last row of seats, and listen to the E-Street Band play.[14][15][16] He asked Jackson why the sound was not so good far away as it was up close, and if the audio crew could do anything about it. Jackson said, "we can do a lot about it", and worked with Clair to design a ring of delay loudspeakers positioned closer to the farthest seats to augment the high frequencies lost over distance by sound waves traveling through air.[17] This made the hi-hat sound more "crisp and clean", with higher quality sound in the back row than previously experienced in such large venues.[17] Throughout Jackson's years with him, Springsteen maintained his interest in delivering high quality sound to every seat, and the solutions grew in size and complexity until by 1984 there were eight rings of delays set up for the largest venues.[17]
Jackson worked closely with individual musicians in Springsteen's band to help them achieve the sound they wanted. Keyboard player Danny Federici received attention from John Stilwell and Jackson who collaborated in modifying his cut-down Hammond B-3 organ. Clarence Clemons came to Jackson with his ideas about microphones; subsequently, the sound of his saxophones was picked up by a device invented jointly by Clemons and Jackson. Bassist Garry Tallent described the elements of his bass rig to a reporter then summed up its overall effect by saying, "the rest is up to God and Bruce Jackson."[20]
Jackson was close to Presley, but the two men were not near in age. Springsteen was closer to Jackson's age and the two got along as friends, the singer giving a Jeep off-road vehicle as a gift in thanks for his contribution to successful concerts. Jackson said of the Jeep that he sold it after tiring of "bouncing around the place in it."[21] In 1988, Jackson quit touring at the birth of his son Lindsey.[17] He settled in Santa Monica, California, to concentrate on audio electronics ideas.
Barbra Streisand
Jackson was working as an entrepreneur in digital audio electronics in 1993 when Barbra Streisand's producer asked him to mix her first concert tour in decades.[2] Jackson signed on partly because he was assured he could do anything to make her concert sound as good as possible. Jackson determined that huge concert venues such as Wembley Stadium and Madison Square Garden would be carpeted for Streisand, and that expensive heavy drapes would be hung at the walls to damp sound reflections. After discovering that Streisand did not like to listen to any stage monitors made after the 1960s, he designed a stage wedge which used soft dome drivers for midrange and for high frequencies rather than the more powerful compression drivers in common use after the 1970s.[17] As well, the main sound system Jackson specified was a new design by Clair Brothers, a proprietary line array system called the I4.[17] Streisand was not willing to wear in-ear monitors but the band was fitted with them, to reduce stage wash and make the band's instruments stand out better individually in the mix.[17] The stage monitors, line array and extravagant acoustic treatments were a hit with Streisand, who said of Jackson that he was "the best sound engineer in the world."[2]Streisand employed Jackson's mixing talents on her 1995 TV special called Barbra: The Concert. Along with Ed Greene and Bob La Masney who worked on post-production mixing, he received an Emmy Award for sound design and the mixing of the live show.[1] Jackson designed the sound for Streisand's 1999–2000 Timeless: Live in Concert Tour, and he mixed the New Year's Eve concert 31 December 1999 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. He mixed Streisand's appearances in Sydney and Melbourne in March 2000,[17] connecting the large backing choir's sound mix by optical fibre from a nearby polo field where the choir was stationed. The fibre connection was Jackson's real-world test of a similar setup planned to be used for the Summer Olympics six months later.[22]
Jackson mixed Streisand's U.S. and world tours in 2006 and 2007, using a Digidesign Venue digital mixing console at FOH for its smaller footprint (allowing more audience seats) and its plug-in audio effects. As well, the Venue mixing system was chosen for its integration with Pro Tools, to make 128-channel hard disk recordings of the concerts directly from the three Digidesign consoles: one to mix strings, one to mix brass, reeds and percussion, and one under Jackson's control out in the audience, with Streisand's microphone inputs and stems from the other consoles.[23] The recordings made in New York City and Washington, D.C. were remixed into the album Live In Concert 2006—Jackson was listed as sound designer.[24] Sharing sound designer and FOH mixing duties with Chris Carlton, Jackson made certain that the custom soft dome monitor wedges were positioned correctly aiming up from under the stage to cover everywhere Streisand might walk.[25] Clair Brothers supplied 18 Dolby Lake Processors for the tour, the majority used by Jackson to tune the main sound system, and the rest for control of monitor wedges used by Streisand and by the supporting artist, Il Divo.[26] For Streisand's voice, Jackson auditioned several wireless microphones and ended up using a Sennheiser SKM 5200 transmitter equipped with a Neumann KK 105 S supercardioid capsule. He used the vocal microphone to test the sound system from different locations around the arena.[27] When the tour hit the UK and continental Europe, Jackson changed from a Neumann to a Røde Microphones capsule, custom made to his requirements; one that Røde called the "Jackson Special".[28] Jackson used Millennia microphone preamps for any microphone that was required to be sent to multiple mixing consoles, such as at Madison Square Garden where cable runs to the recording trucks were 800 feet (240 m) long, so that the microphone would not be loaded down and changed in its tone quality.[29]
Other artists
In addition to Presley, Springsteen and Streisand, Jackson mixed concert sound for Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart and the Faces, Barry White, Jefferson Airplane, Ozzy Osbourne, Carly Simon, Three Dog Night, The Jackson 5, Cat Stevens, Glenn Campbell, Art Garfunkel, Procol Harum and Lou Reed.[3][21][30] During 1983 when Springsteen was not touring, Jackson mixed sound for Stevie Nicks on The Wild Heart Tour, June to November 1983. Fourteen years later he mixed for Fleetwood Mac during their live performances recorded in Burbank for MTV, released as the album The Dance.[31]World events
In December 2006, Jackson served as audio director at the 15th Asian Games, held in Doha, Qatar.[9][32] The main loudspeakers for the opening and closing ceremonies were the KUDO model from L-ACOUSTICS.[32] Jackson found that extreme heat and occasional downpours did not adversely affect the Optocore fibre audio connections around the largest venues. Digital audio was passed to a combination of Lake Contour and Dolby Lake Processors.[33]
Following his success in Sydney, Jackson was tapped to direct the audio design and production at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where he directed the opening ceremony and the closing ceremony.[34] His sound design for BC Place Stadium did not have loudspeakers at ground level aimed up at the seating areas—Jackson determined that this approach would produce too much uncontrolled reverberation from sound waves bouncing off the ceiling. Instead, he configured two rings of loudspeakers hung from the ceiling 100 ft (30 m) above the ground, aimed downward. The inner ring held 8 arrays each composed of 12 Clair i3 line array speakers and the outer ring held 12 arrays of 7 Clair i3 line array speakers, augmented by 16 subwoofers. The lot was powered by 160 Lab.gruppen amplifiers which were also hung from the ceiling, and were networked via Dante in a triple-redundant configuration. Two DiGiCo D5 digital mixing consoles served as main and backup for the main audience sound, and two Yamaha PM1Ds handled main and backup duties for monitor mixing. Other equipment included dual-redundant Optocore fibre connections, two Dolby Lake Processors, and time code generated by two pairs of Fairlights which also handled audio cues timed to the action on the field.[35]
Jackson directed sound for the 2010 Shanghai Expo opening ceremony, held on 30 April 2010.[21] He used four Fairlight digital audio systems to replay music cues, connected to Studer routing and distribution gear which supplied signal to Soundcraft digital mixers and an analogue mixer. Some 64 kilometres (40 mi) of fibre optic cable in a dual-redundant star topology connected 72 amplifier racks along both sides of the Huangpu River. Each amp rack held a BSS Audio loudspeaker controller and multiple Crown International amplifiers, pushing audio signal to more than 400 JBL loudspeakers.[36]
Digital audio
None of Jackson's prospects bought one in the first year. He had better luck with Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, and Geordie Hormel who bought two for $27,500 each.[5] Wonder, who had recently recorded Stevie Wonder's Journey Through "The Secret Life of Plants" using a Computer Music Melodian sampler, paid for his Fairlight by signing a personal check with his thumbprint. He then convinced Jackson to mix sound for a tour he was undertaking in support of Secret Life of Plants.[5] Jackson's close association with Fairlight made him intimately aware of the limitations of early digital audio, "weaknesses" such as noise and inharmonic distortion.[5]
During an April 1985 Springsteen tour leg in Japan, Jackson first listened to Compact Discs played on a CD player connected to his concert sound system, and he did not like what he heard.[5] He felt that there were problems with the implementation of both recording and playback at 16 bits and 44.1 kHz, problems that could be fixed if they could be identified.
Apogee Electronics
After finishing Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. tour, Jackson expressed his ideas about possible improvements to digital audio in a conversation with Christof Heidelberger, a designer of digital audio electronics, and Betty Bennett, the president of Soundcraft's U.S. division. Jackson, Bennett and Heidelberger formed Apogee Electronics in December 1985 (announced in the 23 November issue of Billboard[37]) and started investigating 44 kHz digital audio circuits for audible problems. They found that "textbook filters" which were unnecessarily steep were protecting the CD player output from high levels of 20 kHz signals, an exceedingly unlikely occurrence in music.[5] Jackson determined that Apogee could improve the sound of CDs if the low-pass filters used in the recording process were made less steep, for less phase shift throughout the hearing range.[5] The small company produced better anti-aliasing filters for recording equipment.[38] Initially operating out of his garage, Jackson served as the company's owner and president, and Bennett headed up sales.[39] They demonstrated their first product at the Audio Engineering Society's 81st convention held in Los Angeles in November 1986: the 944 Series low-dispersion, linear phase, active low-pass filter, intended to replace existing filters on multi-track digital tape recorders such as the Sony PCM-3324.[38] After a slow start, the firm sold 30,000 of the filters: "a great success."[5] The 944 earned a TEC Award in 1988, the first of many such awards for Apogee.[40]Apogee's branding was largely Jackson's doing. Bennett said in 2005 that the company's decision to sell purple-colored products was one of Jackson's ideas: "He has a good eye for design, and we wanted to distinguish ourselves from the all-black rack gear that everybody had at that point."[38] Jackson encouraged a lighting designer from Clair Brothers to sketch a company logo on a cocktail napkin over dinner one evening, and that was immediately made the Apogee logo.[38]
In 1994, Jackson spoke to a Billboard reporter about digital audio. Described as Apogee's president and chief engineer, he said, "digital is finally living up to the warm, natural sound of analog that we know and love."[41] A decade later, he warned against the belief that bigger specification numbers guarantee better sound quality. He noted that 192 kHz sampling rate was often cited as being better than 96 kHz because of it being twice as fast "when in reality there's a whole bunch of other influencing factors responsible for any audible improvements."[5]
Jackson and his wife divorced in the mid-1990s and he sold his share of Apogee to finance the divorce settlement.[9] Company co-founder Bennett stepped up as CEO.[38]
Loudspeaker management system
Pilot
A small aircraft owner, at one time Jackson operated a 1975 Grumman American AA-5B Tiger. In 1979 he sold it to his lighting company friend, Tait Towers founder Michael Tait, to pay for an earlier purchase of a more powerful aircraft, a new Mooney M20J that he registered 7 December 1978.[2][47] Jackson used the M20J to carry Fairlight samplers across the U.S. to demonstrate them to studios and musicians, once flying from New York to Los Angeles in 15 hours after he heard Herbie Hancock was interested.[5] Interviewed in 2005 at his Sydney office, Jackson said he missed his "little plane" terribly, that it was kept in a hangar for his use whenever he visited California,[5] surrounded by dusty boxes of audio gear and stored memorabilia.[21] He said he had considered flying it from California to Australia but his wife was "not too keen on the idea."[5]
Jackson was interested in aviation developments. In mid-2010 he flew himself and a friend to Mojave Air and Space Port to see Virgin Galactic's VSS Enterprise, a sub-orbital spacecraft being glide-tested.[21]
[edit] Death
Jackson landed his Mooney at Furnace Creek Airport (the lowest elevation airstrip in North America) near the visitor center of Death Valley National Park early in the afternoon of 29 January 2011.[48][49] He had no flight plan filed. Following a brief stop he took off in clear, sunny weather bound for Santa Monica, but a few minutes later he crashed and died about 6.5 miles (11 km) south of the airfield in a dry lake bed.[2][49] The wreckage was discovered by park rangers on the morning of 31 January, and was later examined by investigators who did not determine a cause for the accident.[49] Jackson was survived by his third wife, Terri, their daughter Brianna, and Aja, Jackson's stepdaughter. Jackson was also survived by his second wife, Ruth Davis, and their son Lindsey and daughter Alex.[2] He was also survived by his first wife Margaret who he married when they were in their teens. She met him at the University of New South Wales, was with him when he started Jands, and accompanied him to the U.S. when he went to work for Clair.A memorial celebration of Jackson's life was held 25 February at the Sydney Opera House.[46] Some 500 attendees listened to remembrances and anecdotes from family members and from business colleagues such as Roy Clair and David McGrath. Prerecorded videos were played, sent from Springsteen, the band U2,[13] Streisand and her manager Martin Erlichman, and members of Fleetwood Mac.[12]
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