GEORGE MICHAEL

I won an award for this show Lighting Director of the Year. George Michael's Faith Tour. Original Lighting Design by Jonathan Smeeton. I think George came up with the idea for the stage set which was a big white cage that opened up. It did look very impressive and was built by Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park. This was a great show that I took over from Jonathan Smeeton.

These pictures were taken from some stadium shows where I was able to enhance the original design. We basically doubled the size of the lighting rig overnight. Special thanks to some nifty programming by my good Aussie. mate Peter Lothian. We pulled a long all nighter in Texas Stadium in Dallas. Home of the Dallas Cowboys.

I remember talking to some people from Showco Varilite who were based in Dallas at the time and also suppliers of Sound and Moving Lights. They were telling me how they had been driving into work in the morning and were listening to the local Traffic reports and they were all talking about the lighting they could see down in the stadium.

They had helicopters flying over Texas Stadium looking down on what Peter and I were doing with the lights. The whole place was filled with smoke and haze by this time. We had been there all night so I am sure the small roof opening must have looked like a chimney. I am sure it looked quite spectacular from up in the helicopter. I know inside we could see light beams in the haze from one end of the stadium to the other. It gave us both a laugh to think they were talking about it with the morning traffic reports..

I designed some other shows for George after that. A Diet Coke commercial at Madison Square Gardens, TV Special in Spain and some European dates. This was one of my favourite tours.