KISS has been touring the country with their End Of The Road tour, which began in January 2019, and it is undoubtedly the biggest and best KISS show ever, receiving incredible reviews from both diehard KISS fans and the media at sell-out shows across the globe.
“The show is a hybrid version of what we were doing before COVID hit so there was no real brief,” explained lighting designer Motley. “It has always been make it look big and spectacular … and keep it simple.”
Motley set out to create a light show that would make people say ‘that’s an awesome KISS light show’.
“I want to overwhelm their senses with lights, pyro and video and ultimately, make them walk away satisfied,” he said. “The original production design was done by Robert Long and I just try to keep its integrity and look going into different markets with different gear and budgets.”
Motley says his biggest challenge on this tour is cloning fixtures as, apart from some JDC-1 strobes, they are all different from what is programmed.
“But light comes out of them, they change colour and do what we want them to do,” he says philosophically. “The promoter gave the gig to Creative and their guys have been great; it goes up and works so I’m happy.”
The rig is mainly Robe fixtures including 18 x BMFL Blade, 8 x BMFL Wash Beam, 36 x Megapointe and 34 x BMFL Spot, along with 12 x LightSky F230 Extreme Beam, 11 x GLP X4 and 34 x JDC-1 strobe.
Motley did a few days pre-vis at Creative’s warehouse on the Gold Coast, only an hour from his house so that was handy, followed by three Melbourne shows that gave him time to fix things up.
A lot of the programming was done back in January 2019 by Sooner Routhier and Michael Cooper who Motley says are much better than him at effects on the MA2. Since then, he has programmed songs that have been added to the show trying to keep the integrity of the original programming.
The set is made up of Christie Lites Dance Pre Rig Truss filled up with Elation Platinum Beam 5R and JDC-1. On either side of the obligatory drum riser, there are two cats which are a throwback to the 1976 show. There are four inflatables of the band that look like they are made of stone which make the whole stage look super wide.
The back video wall displays video content and Imag as does the eleven hexagon custom pods above the band. A lot of time was spent in late 2018 building the video content.
Motley’s favourite lighting moment of the production is one he says is a bit silly.
“It’s in the intro to Black Diamond when the band do an ‘ooh oooh’ and I light them in the colours of the old album halos from 1978,” he said. “Red for Gene, purple for Paul, blue guitar and green drums. The only people who get it are serious KISS fanatics who love it! On the Kruise we do each year, some fans try and get the whole band in a photo and then comment when they see me walking around the boat.”
KISS will play their last show ever in NYC next year although Motley has not heard specific details yet.
“2023 will be 50 years since they played their first show so it’s sort of fitting,” he remarked. “I am going to take a photo outside of Centrelink holding a sign that says HELP. I will email it to most of the people I know in the industry and see what happens.”
Photots: Ashley Marr
http://www.motleylighting.com/
If you’d like to see Motley’s plots please go to
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/z99ko371y6dxv0q/AABYO8kdR7K_UExY_QFRt-Zra?dl=0
