Scenic/Lighting Designer Michael Tait to Receive Parnelli Visionary Award
Tait has worked with Yes on some of their most spectacular tours; other clients include
Barry Manilow, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Britney Spears, among many othersy

LAS VEGAS—The Parnelli Awards Board of Directors announce that Michael Tail will be receiving this year’s Parnelli Lifetime Achievement Award honoring his four decades in the live entertainment industry. Industry professionals and admirers will pay homage to the remarkable man and his remarkable career at a gala award ceremony in Las Vegas on October 24, 2008.

“Of all the metal bending geniuses who squeezed art out of aluminum, Michael Tait and his legacy Tait Towers Company has developed the paradigm of the artist/craftsman earlier and more completely than any other person in our stagecraft,” says Patrick Stansfield, Tour Manager/Producer and Parnelli Awards Executive Director. “What Michael and his atelier have unlocked and realized from mere 6061 aluminum alloy are truly working sculptures!”

Born in Melbourne, Australia, Tait studied electrical and mechanical engineering, but says he got “bored pretty quickly.” In 1967 he went to England for a six week vacation and never came back, getting a job at London’s hottest club at the time, the Speakeasy. There he rubbed elbows with the likes of Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles. He ended up driving a new band called “Yes” to a gig and worked steadily for the band after that. Because of his technical background, he quickly moved from just moving gear around to working on it and fixing it. Then he started doing even more than that …

“In the late 1960s the music industry was alive with legendary talent, but the technical side of the concert industry was still in its infancy,” he says. “Those were primitive days.” In those days, he was looked to for a great deal – he even built one of the first guitar pedal boards for the band’s guitarist, Peter Banks. Eventually as the band grew he became lighting designer putting together some of the most spectacular shows in live music.

Other inventions included putting automotive fog lights into coffee cans to creating rudimentary dimmers. “I began working with single Genie towers and PAR cans,” he explains. “I basically created a self contained unit that you could roll in, put one on in each corner of the stage, push a button, and away you went.” He also devised what would become a staple of the concert industry: the rotating, in the round stage. This allowed the band to be more creative, be closer to the audience, and perhaps most importantly, sell more seats.

Working along with Tait at the time was Jake Berry, a Production Manager who has worked with the Rolling Stones, U2, Tina Turner, among many others. “When we did the Yes stage, Michael was full of ideas,” Berry says. “Because the stage was in the middle of the arena, everybody was stressed about how the building would be able to clear the chairs in time to get the show out. So Michael came up with this fantastic idea of a barricade, which was a barricade with drawers and slots that stored all the drums, keyboards, and guitars so that you could pack from the inside. So you could actually work and pack away your instruments while the crowd was still in the building.” A seemingly small thing, but it is the small things that keep the production moving along efficiently, and no small thing escaped Tait’s eye.

During the course of his career, he developed the swing wing truss, to which he added a distributed dimmer system within it making it a revolutionary breakthrough at the time. Tait also created the pin matrix board.

Initially for tax purposes, the Australian working in the U.S. and U.K. he founded Tait Towers as something that was suppose to be just on paper. But as his acclaim and achievements grew, so did his client roster. Barry Manilow came knocking, and for him he created a round stage that could also incorporate an orchestra and other elements. The Grateful Dead, U2, and Bruce Springsteen also were among his clients through the 1980s and 1990s.

Later his other clients included Reba MacIntryre, AC/DC, Roger Waters, and Brittany Spears. His firm received an EDDY Award in 2000.

“My philosophy has always been that no matter what we did last week, when we do it this week, we’ll improve it.”