Creative Duo Behind Dead & Company and U2's Sphere Residencies on Why Vegas Venue Demands a 'Brave Performer'

With its 30 performances Dead forever Residency at Las Vegas' Sphere, Dead & Company has written another entry in the Grateful Dead's 60-year legacy of reinventing live music. Beginning in late May, the band – comprised of Grateful Dead founding members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, along with John Mayer, Oteil Burbridge, Jeff Chimenti and Jay Lane – has delivered a three-night run, each with no repeats songs and a rotating carousel of visuals ranging from diagrammatic photo collages to abstract technicolor animations.

For Dead foreverwhich concludes this weekend with three shows on August 8-10, the band turned to Treatment Studio, the agency that has handled creative for Dead & Company and Mayer's solo tours. Treatment, co-founded by Willie Williams and Sam Pattinson in 2009, had another crucial quality: it was also spearheading U2:UV Achtung Baby Livethe 40-year-old residence that opened the space last fall.

“It's very sweet that so many of the beginnings of the U2 show have become a kind of baking for all the shows there, because that's what works,” says Williams, who as U2's creative director was responsible for the tours of the complex dating from the past. of the 80s, including his groundbreaking show “Zoo TV” in the early 90s. (In fact, Treatment's connection to the Sphere even predates U2's residency: When the venue was still just an idea, the agency created a promotional video to circulate among tour pros, and Treatment consulted on how tour shows they could be adapted to the Sphere.)

But even given his familiarity with the cutting-edge venue and his relationship with the third artist to appear there (the treatment didn't include Phish in four April shows between U2 and Dead & Company), Dead forever it still turned out to be scary. “They play different versions of songs, different lengths, the setlist is always different, and they wanted to vary the visual aspect of the show,” says Pattinson, who served as Dead forever creative director along with Mayer. Deadheads, he adds, will see a lot of shows, so the band “wanted to see variety between the three, so there was a new offering every night.”

Therapy began to generate ideas Dead forever with Dead & Company last November and according to Pattinson, Mayer took over the creative reins. “The whole idea came from John,” he explains of the show, which begins and ends at the Dead's late '60s home at 710 Ashbury Street in San Francisco and, in between, transports the audience to distant psychedelic realms as and in historical places. from the band's past. “The show you're seeing today is the show he described in November. it was a very powerful idea.”

Such a powerful concept, it turns out, that Dead Forever kept adding to its strong stable of visuals—which already included staples like the takeoff and touchdown in San Francisco, created by famed Bay Area agency Industrial Light & Magic; and a pastoral, paint-by-numbers world designed by London firm Art & Graft – both late in the residency and the penultimate weekend.

The Cure isn't involved in Sphere's two upcoming music bookings, Eagles (starting September 20) and Anyma (starting December 27), and the label has its hands full with other projects away from Sin City. never Advertising sign linked to Williams and Pattinson, the latter was in Munich putting the finishing touches on Adele in Munich just hours before the singer's German residency began. But, says Pattinson, Treatment would “absolutely” like to return to the space in the future. “You really want to work with a band that, like U2 or Dead & Co., is really starting to understand the space or is open to understanding and learning about the space and what that means for them and their performance,” he said. . says. “Someone who has a lot of time to spend on it.”

What was your reaction when you were first approached by U2 about their Sphere residency?

Willie Williams: A lot of things about it, initially, I was either suspicious or not too excited. Bono was notably leading the charge. we talk a lot and part of his point was, “Look, what else are we going to do? Are we going to go out and reinvent the rock stage? again?” When you have not only a new space, but a completely new one kind of space, certainly, if you're going to try to put music there, the people who should be doing it are the people who blazed that trail 30 years ago. The journey was extremely uphill. Because, of course, the building didn't exist when we were shooting the show. So not only did we have to capture the show, we also had to capture the building – I had to imagine what the building would look like. It was a long journey, but we had time. We will be the only people who have had the luxury of several months in the building before the first show. But we were really making it up as we went along.

Based on your experience with U2, what are the guiding principles for a successful Sphere show?

Williams: The big takeaway, for me, was understanding that the Sphere is a 3D audiovisual space, and what works there is the kind of visual stuff you'd do for VR, not cinema. It sounds so silly, but the fact that there are no corners was really a revelation. And for me, when I started playing with really simple graphical stuff, I realized that your brain has no sense of where the visual plane is. And not only are there no corners, but we could introduce our own virtual angles and shapes and your brain absolutely buys into it – I was really shocked at how much your brain buys into the environment you're in.

Sam, in a nutshell, how would you describe the concept that Mayer brought you?

Sam Pattinson: John's overall concept was a perfect frame for the band's culture and history. And it was this idea of ​​“We're starting in a sort of historically relevant place, and then we could start this journey. And we use a series of portals that transport to different worlds and environments and scenes and animations and bits and bobs.” It is a very flexible structure that we could change. Because every show, we get the setlist from the night before and we have to rebuild the show to the new setlist. So obviously it has to be flexible – which it is.

What challenges did the change from an evening show to an evening show present? And you saw it as an opportunity?

Pattinson: Absolutely – it was great. I mean, it added work and stress at times. The initial brief from the band was that they wanted us to produce 30% to 40% more content than we needed for a show. apparently, the shows are three hours. To date, we've created nearly six hours of content. We had a lot of options and very strong tracks in it. So it wasn't really hard to recreate the show every night – it was a lot of fun.

The show begins and ends in San Francisco, but in between goes both around the world and to important venues from Dead history, such as Radio City Music Hall and Cornell University's Barton Hall. Was it difficult to balance these elements?

Pattinson: We had to show a nod to the big moments of their careers, the locations and so on, their characters and their visuals, and all those things that fans are familiar with. But [the band has] they were always open-minded and always trying new things. This happened in a big way in Vegas. They were open to content that we thought was probably not suitable for them [and] it was more for a modern band, maybe, or a newer band. So actually combining some of their historical content with the more abstract and more modern stuff was a pretty easy balance.

What advice would you give to an artist thinking about playing Sphere?

Williams: To have a lot more time and a lot more money than you could imagine you'll need. My idea is to imagine you're building VR hardware but without a headset. That's how you get the real magic out of the place, instead of just big, big movies. I've asked artists, “How many nights would I have to do on the Sphere to get it to rest?” and “What kind of budget should I have?” These questions simply cannot be truly answered because there are many other factors involved. [But] it should be residential and you should look at the whole thing in a very comprehensive sense.

Even beyond the Sphere, stadium and arena shows become more complex and immersive. Do you think this becomes more important to fans as they choose which artists to see in concert?

Williams: I think the only thing the audience cares about is making an emotional connection with the performer. And if technology can help that, then great. And if not, I don't think they care at all. The intrusiveness of large graphics is a really, really fine balance. I've always admired U2 for having the confidence to understand that it's okay to leave the limelight for a moment – ​​something really big and visual is going to happen and everyone's going to look at it. And it cost a fortune, so they better look at it! And at that moment, they're not going to look at you, but that's okay, because they're going to contact you. He is a brave performer who is so confident.