Malcolm Weldon: The Gaffer

Harbouring teenage dreams to be a producer, Malcolm Weldon found himself becoming a stage manager and then production manager by default. But the recording industry’s loss has definitely been live music’s gain. Gordon Masson talks to 2023’s winner of The Gaffer award, who will also participate in IPM’s Inside P!nk’s Summer Carnival session on 29 February at this year’s ILMC…

Growing up in South Central Los Angeles, Malcolm Weldon decided very early on that he wanted to pursue a career in music, and his unfailing work ethic saw him working multiple jobs to get a foot in the door. But live music was not on his radar.

“I loved jazz music, and I would study the liner notes on records to find out what all the associated jobs were,” he tells IQ. “I played bass, but by a certain age, I figured out that I wasn’t going to be the kind of musician that I aspired to be – Jaco Pastorius or Stanley Clarke. Instead, I made up my mind that I would become a recording engineer and producer.”

Determined to fulfil his dream, Weldon enrolled on a college course and worked every hour he could to pay for his tuition. “That was back in the early 80s, and it cost close to $10,000 – that was a lot of money for a poor kid from South Central LA. But I worked multiple jobs to put myself through school, and somehow, I managed it.”

That perseverance is something that has been a mainstay of Weldon’s career for the past 40 years and counting. “I mainly got it from my grandmother. My family were from Oklahoma and migrated to Southern California in the late 1940s, and my grandmother just had an amazing work ethic. Those were very hard times for people of colour, back then, but she just told me as a kid, ‘Whatever it is you want to do, you can do it if you put your mind to it and work hard.’ So that’s what I believed.”

Earning himself the credentials to be a recording engineer was one thing, but actually finding a job to match those qualifications proved to be a frustrating exercise.

“I didn’t want to do live. I just figured I’d be at the theatre for a couple of months until I found a gig, but that never came through”

Gran Designs
But luckily, Weldon’s grandmother – the fantastically named Sweetie Magnolia Ruff – intervened, with a little help from the force…

“My grandmother was a housekeeper and nanny for this family in Beverly Hills, the father of whom, Stanley Freberg, was one of the premiere comedy writers in Hollywood. My grandmother helped raise their daughter, Donna Freberg, and they became really close so that even when my grandmother retired, they stayed in touch.

“Once I got out of school, I kept looking everywhere trying to find a job, but I couldn’t get one. Then my grandmother told me she had been speaking to Donna, who said I should call her, because her husband, Todd Fisher, the brother of actress Carrie Fisher – Princess Leia in Star Wars – might be able to help.

“I really didn’t think my grandmother had the slightest clue of what I was doing, so I didn’t really pay her attention. About a week later, she asked me if I had called Donna, and I told her ‘no.’ So she forced me to call Donna, straight away. It turned out her husband had a recording studio complex, and he used to do all these live tapings, so I found myself working with Todd. There was a church congregation that used one of the studios, and when that church started to grow, I moved with them to another studio, and then when they outgrew that, I followed them to the Beverly Theater, and that’s kind of how I got started.”

Even having landed the in-house sound engineer gig at the theatre, Malcolm had not given up on his recording engineer ambitions and continued to work the nightshift at a grocery store as he awaited his big chance.

“I was still trying to get into the recording business. I didn’t want to do live. I’ve just figured I’d be at the theatre for a couple of months until I found a gig, but that never came through,” he says.

“Having worked in the theatre, I was used to rolling up my sleeves and helping out everywhere”

Meantime, his enjoyment of the role in the Beverly Theater grew and before he knew it, he had been the building’s sound chief for seven years.

That position came to an abrupt end when the venue closed. “I was forced to go on the road,” he says. “I had already been out with a little gospel group called the Winans who used to come through the theatre and who had asked me to go out with them for a couple of days or a week and stuff like that. After that, I did another offshoot called BeBe & CeCe Winans, and that led to a jazz artist, who also came through Beverly Theater, called George Howard.”

Starting out as Howard’s front of house engineer, because of budgetary constraints Weldon soon found himself stepping up his role to also mixing monitors, as well as setting up all the backline for the saxophonist.

“Having worked in the theatre, I was used to rolling up my sleeves and helping out everywhere. When I wasn’t doing my sound stuff, I would help with building renovations, so I did all the painting, screwed seats back into the floor, and a bit of carpentry here and there, so that was something else I was able to offer when I went on the road.”

A Foot Out The Door
Keen to learn as much as possible, Weldon pleaded with tour manager Marty Hom to take him on the road. “He would come through the theatre every year with different artists, and we always got on. Eventually, he asked me to help him out at a little event in LA called the Asian Pacific Festival. I think he wanted to see how I was outside the theatre and how I handled myself, so he hired me as a stage manager. It was a good move because sometimes people perform very differently when they are in an unfamiliar environment. But I guess I did a good job because a couple of weeks later, Marty offered me a gig working with Paula Abdul.”

“I’d come from a live jazz world. But I had seen some pop acts performing to backing tracks, so I didn’t quite realise what the situation was”

At the time, Malcolm admits he knew nothing about the artist. “It wasn’t the music that I listened to,” he says. “But at that point, she was growing and quickly became the Taylor Swift or Beyoncé of that time: she was on every magazine cover, and her albums were huge.”

The first work with Abdul was as part of the Club MTV Live tour in 1989, which also starred the likes of Tone Loc, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam, Was (Not Was), Information Society, and Milli Vanilli.

On the back of that tour, Weldon found himself working on the live shows for controversial lip-synching German duo Milli Vanilli. “It was interesting because at that point, I did not know about that kind of thing because I’d come from a live jazz world. But I had seen some pop acts performing to backing tracks, so I didn’t quite realise what the situation was,” he comments.

But having impressed Hom on the Club MTV set up, he was asked to return for Abdul’s Under My Spell world tour, meaning he found himself applying for his first passport as the production visited the likes of Japan, Korea, and the Philippines. “I was pretty young, when I think about it: I was 27 or 28, so it was an amazing experience.”

Indeed, as Malcolm began to get in the routine of life on the road, he began to forget about his recording engineer aspirations.

“I’m not just a production manager: I do whatever needs to be done at the point when I need to do it”

If I Had A Hammer…
Earning an early reputation as a reliable stage manager and carpenter, Weldon’s career began to morph, thanks in no small way to his willingness to get involved across all production disciplines, and he found himself involved on shows in a stage manager, quasi production manager role.

Talking about his desire to learn on-the-job skills, Weldon notes, “I see every opportunity to learn as another stepping stone for myself, and I think that’s true with a lot of production managers. For instance, I remember working with Chris Kansy when he was a guitar tech, and now he’s PM for Coldplay, Roger Waters, all that stuff.”

Weldon’s own promotion to production manager came at the behest of legendary artist manager Roger Davies. “I had been stage managing for a number of years for Roger, who I first met on a Janet Jackson tour in 1994. After that I stage managed Ozzy Osbourne shows, and then I went out on a Tina Turner tour. She was also managed by Roger Davies, so I was stage manager for that and a bunch of his tours.

“Eventually, Roger asked me to be production manager for Janet in 2000/2001, and that’s primarily what I’ve been doing since. But I still put my hat on as a stage manager or a site coordinator from time to time. I’m not just a production manager: I do whatever needs to be done at the point when I need to do it.”

As someone who regards every day as an education process, Weldon namechecks a list of people that he recognises as mentors. “Bobby Thrasher, who is also known as Boomer, was the production manager for Springsteen and for Billy Joel, and I worked under him for a while,” he tells IQ. “I also worked under Jake Berry, who is just a legend, but it’s not just all the different production managers, it’s also tour managers you learn from. I tend to take a little bit from everybody – ‘I dig what that person does; I’m not going to do what that person does, I’m gonna do it this way instead…’ so you take what you see as the best practices and adopt them to create your own persona.”

“The only reason I became a production manager was so that I could hire and fire people”

Higher & Fire
While Weldon remains as humble as ever, he has deservedly earned a reputation as one of the live entertainment industry’s elite production managers. But his motives to become production chief were not because of any personal ambition.

“The only reason I became a production manager was so that I could hire and fire people,” he reveals. “That’s literally true because I’d been a stage manager for so many tours where I’d try to get everybody to listen to me and do what I needed them to do. But it’s difficult, because they may have their own agenda and every department is trying to do their own thing. And because you didn’t hire them, you’re just stuck with them.

“I knew the only way to get around that would be to become the production manager. Now, I can bring in the people that I want to work with, knowing that they’re going to do it my way. If they don’t, there’s the door!”

Detailing some of his work ethic and philosophy, Weldon says, “Working as one, our common goal is making sure, at the end of the day, whoever the artist is, they know that everybody behind them has done their best.

“One of the main tasks of the production manager is to get everybody to work together, as opposed to each department just thinking about themselves. For example, when you start in the morning, if you have a lighting guy running cable across the floor that he may not need for an hour or two, you have to ask, ‘Why did you run that cable across when I gotta get all this other stuff across? If you’re going to run it, put a cable ramp down.’ It’s those little things that can add up throughout a day, so trying to get everybody to work together in concert to have an end goal is my biggest task.”

“Anyone who works with me knows that I’m not going to ask anybody to do anything that I wouldn’t do. But unfortunately for them, I’ll pretty much do anything to get things to work”

With more than 40 years’ experience, Weldon has amassed a contacts book of the industry’s finest crew and has assembled his own core personnel on whom he knows he can rely.

“You learn pretty quickly who the best people are, but I’m a production manager who’s really a stage manager with the power to hire and fire people, so I still think of everything in stage manager terms. I’m thinking how everything gets put into the carts, how the carts go into the trucks, how the trucks get unloaded, what order the trucks should come in, and what order stuff comes onto the floor.

“Unfortunately, for some people, I’m an old-school production manager, like Jake Berry, where I’m involved and engaged with loading. I’m not a production manager who sits in an office all day; I don’t even know what I would do in an office all day. But I know a lot of my guys would prefer me to go to the office,” he says.

“At the same time, I do try not to micromanage because that can also be incredibly irritating. Bottom line, I try to lead by example. Anyone who works with me knows that I’m not going to ask anybody to do anything that I wouldn’t do. But unfortunately for them, I’ll pretty much do anything to get things to work.”

The riggers, however, are safe. “I don’t climb. I’m not going up in the air; I’m sticking down on the ground,” laughs Malcolm.

“It does not matter how good you are, or you think you are, you’re only as good as your team. It’s like casting a movie: you’re trying to find the best possible cast”

That’s The Way Live Goes
Already armed with a dream team of crew he loved working with, Weldon assembled some of the finest talent in the business for his first PM job with Janet Jackson. “I just was lucky enough to get some of those people. And some of them are still working with me,” he reports.

“I had this gentleman that I kind of came up with in LA as a stagehand, called Kurt Wagner, aka Slap. He’s one of the best guys in the business: just a good, hard-working gentleman. Slap helped me from the start and although we kind of split up for a while because he left to work with Opie on the [Rolling] Stones, I was able to sneak him back for a little bit, so he’s my site coordinator for this P!nk tour.

“As a production manager, it does not matter how good you are, or you think you are, you’re only as good as your team. It’s like casting a movie: you’re trying to find the best possible cast.”

But Weldon is always on the lookout for new people to add to his crew and has earned a global reputation for mentoring scores of up-and-coming production talent. “I’d rather have somebody who has a good attitude and a good work ethic over somebody who can be the best at what they do but they’re just an asshole,” he says of his recruitment sensibilities.

“I’ve seen tours where one person with a bad attitude can slowly permeate throughout the crew like a cancer. You could have people that never had a problem with anything, and then, next thing you know, they’re complaining about something goofy. And you’re like, well, where’d that come from? It came from that one bad seed.”

“There’s no reason to be in the venue when you don’t need to be there. Even if it was only two hours or an hour, just to have your own private time is important”

Keeping It Together
Weldon is also renowned as being one of the best organised PMs in the business, taking great pains to make sure his crew members are not left waiting around for hours on end when they could be resting.

“That kind of thing can cause problems,” explains Malcolm. “Having everybody come in all together often means each department doesn’t have the tools they need to do their job yet because each department has a certain order of the day. You do rigging first, you get the power in, the lights come in and stuff starts to float up in the air, and everybody that goes underneath it all starts to build. There’s no reason to be in the venue when you don’t need to be there. Even if it was only two hours or an hour, just to have your own private time is important.”

However, he acknowledges, “The artists and managers only have a certain amount of time within the year where they need to make their money, so the tours are much more compressed these days, meaning that there’s less time for the crew to do everything.

“Between the promoters and managers, they understand that this is how much money needs to be made per week, and therefore, we need to do this amount of shows per week to sustain the tour. Often, the thought that people need sleep and time away from the venue is not necessarily taken into account and that falls upon the production manager to figure out.”

What About P!nk
At press time, Weldon was overseeing elements of P!nk’s Trustfall production equipment undergoing maintenance and servicing before being packed into shipping containers for the journey to Australasia where the tour resumes in February for a 20-date stadium run.

“P!nk, or Alecia as we know her, is the biggest star down there – she just does phenomenal business in Australia: there is no one bigger!”

“P!nk, or Alecia as we know her, is the biggest star down there – she just does phenomenal business in Australia: there is no one bigger!” states Malcolm.

Indeed, P!nk’s spectacular shows have been wowing audiences in Europe and North America over recent months, and when it comes to her aerial routines, her acrophobic PM explains that the aerobatics originated in arenas and have since grown in scale for stadium and festival shows. “It comes from the artist’s desire to get out and be as close as possible to the fans at the far end of the arena or stadium,” says Weldon, noting that the technology involved is very similar to the spider-cam systems used by sports broadcasters to get closer to the action, with P!nk effectively taking the place of the camera equipment.

“It’s all programmed – every move that she’s doing, there’s no way you can do what we do without it being automated,” he says.

The importance of that daring performance to the Trustfall show means that Weldon’s site coordinators and advance teams are key to the tour’s success. “I consider my head rigger, Gabe Wood, to be the best in the business, and we try to go to each building before we get there, just to make sure there’s nothing like pillars or anything in the way of the aerial part of the show. So, in stadiums for instance, we make sure we can get her up high enough to fly over the top of the delay towers. But at the same time, there are other things that are up there – lighting fixtures can often get in the way – so we’re trying to make sure there’s nothing in the way of the flight path.”

Another challenge for Malcolm and his crew are the trampolines that are used during the show by P!nk and her dancers and acrobats. “That set piece is 49 feet wide by 14 feet deep, so it’s a big space that it takes up on stage that you can’t do anything with – it’s just a dead area: once it’s built, it pretty much kills that part of the stage,” he explains.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re working with your best friend, if you see them every single day for 12 or 18 hours a day, they are bound to get on your nerves”

The production chief pays tribute to carpenter Judy LeBeau who has been tasked with the trampolines set-up and maintenance. “It can be split apart into two separate trampoline areas, and when it is split, we can raise the video wall, and that’s how we bring in all the support gear and whatever else has to come on,” he adds.

But the main challenge on the Trustfall tour, according to Malcolm, is quite simply the routing and making sure personnel get adequate rest.

“It’s a tight schedule – we work every single day,” he notes. “It doesn’t matter if you’re working with your best friend, if you see them every single day for 12 or 18 hours a day, they are bound to get on your nerves. So, the challenge is to give crew members time off, away from the venue, away from their co-workers.”

As a result, Weldon has set some procedures in stone. “All load-ins on the stadium runs start at 12 noon. Even if we arrive at the venue at six o’clock or eight o’clock in the morning, I won’t load in until 12 to give people as close to eight hours of sleep as possible.”

While stadiums often require three sets of steel, in Australia, the Trustfall tour will rely on just two sets. “The steel will leapfrog from stadium to stadium, and we’ve been able to plan for just two sets because we’re doing double dates in each city,” adds Malcolm.

“I hate postponements because I don’t want to build it all and then have to tear it down and then have to come back at a later date”

Post Australia, P!nk has already confirmed a return to stadia in Europe next year, while there’s also the matter of some North American dates that need to be rescheduled following recent postponements in Tacoma and Vancouver.

“I hate postponements because I don’t want to build it all and then have to tear it down and then have to come back at a later date,” says Weldon. “It’s a pain for everybody, starting with the patrons that bought a ticket. But it also means you have to figure out a place in the calendar that will allow you to go back to that city to make up that date, which can be especially tricky for stadium shows where the window for availability in a calendar year is very short.”

But he is in no doubt that the artist will do her best to make sure her fans are not disappointed. “Alecia has an amazing work ethic,” states Weldon. “She’s expecting everybody to show up and put their A-game on because she is putting her A-game on, every show. So we’re all doing the most we can to prepare for her so that she can do her best.

“She’s also a very kind and generous person who cares about her crew, and her band, and dancers, and everybody else around her. And she tries to provide as much love and respect for all of us, so that we all feel comfortable.”

Something Beautiful
However, when it comes to the best artist he’s ever worked for, Weldon doesn’t hesitate in his answer. “Tina Turner. She was just an amazing person – one of the most humble, kind, generous human beings I’ve ever met in my life. And you would think she’d be the opposite of that, through all the hardship that she went through in her life, but she was incredible. I don’t know if it was through her Buddhism, or whatever it was, but she just embodied kindness, and when she walked in the building, she would say, ‘Mal, how are you? How’s everybody doing? How’s the crew?’”

“Prince was an enigma. Nobody that I’ve ever worked for, or ever seen, compared to his artistry on stage. I’ve never seen anything like that”

Weldon’s importance to the artist can still be found online, with Turner singing Happy Birthday to Malcolm live on stage in Stockholm in April 2009.

Recalling another artist, who wasn’t quite so humble with his crew, Malcolm tells IQ, “Prince was an enigma. Nobody that I’ve ever worked for, or ever seen, compared to his artistry on stage. I’ve never seen anything like that. We did a bunch of shows in Madison Square Garden, where he literally had the band leave, and it was just him on stage, playing a guitar and a piano at the same time, totally captivating the audience like you could not imagine – especially a New York audience who can be a bit jaded, but he blew them away.

“But then, earlier that day, he had pissed me off, because he would ask for something last minute and it would be something I’d have to try to create out of nowhere. And then he’d be back in my face asking where it was. ‘You just told me; I’m working on it.’ And Prince would come back with, ‘Then why are you sitting here talking to me, when you should be getting it?’

“He was infuriating. But then you’d see what he could do on stage, and it was impossible to be mad at him.”

Outside of his work life, Malcolm admits to enjoying the simple pleasures. “I like gardening, I really do,” he says. “I like hiking and anything that basically allows me to enjoy fresh air because I’m always in a venue or in a hotel or an airport or bus. So, when I relax, I gravitate to anything to do with the outdoors.”

“Coming up in the business, and being a person of colour, I found out how hard and difficult it was for me to be seen and to get a gig”

Otherwise, any downtime he finds is spent with family.

“I have a wife, Laverne, two kids, and four grandkids, who are very important to me. My son, Nicholas, is a camera operator/video director, while my daughter, Camille, pivoted in a whole different direction. She graduated with a degree in clinical psychology and worked with kids with disabilities, autism, and all that kind of stuff. And then she decided to go back to school to get a doctorate and a degree in business so she could open her own non-profit. But she realised that after she would have gotten out of college, she would have probably owed over a quarter of a million dollars. So, she decided to take a little break, and she fell back in love with music, and now she’s a DJ.

“As a father, all you want is your kids to be happy. It may have taken Camille an extended route, but she’s happy, so it’s all good.”

Women Up
With that female influence at home, the historic influence of his grandmother, and the fact that he has worked closely with the likes of Janet Jackson, Cher, Tina Turner, Sade, and latterly, P!nk (all clients of Roger Davies), it’s perhaps not surprising to learn that Weldon is also a big champion of having more women on the road.

“Coming up in the business, and being a person of colour, I found out how hard and difficult it was for me to be seen and to get a gig,”he says. “But because of that, I want to try to take some of the stumbling blocks away for other people trying to find a career.

“There have been many times when I’d walk into a building and people would look around everywhere before they’d come to me to ask me where the production manager was”

“At the same time, I’ve found that women can multitask a lot better than men. You can tell them, ‘This is what I want you to do.’ And they go off and do it. And you tell them how you want it done, and you know you can leave them to it. Whereas, a lot of times, guys think they know everything. You know, it’s like a guy who’s driving to the beach with his wife and kids. And the
wife is asking, ‘Why don’t you look at the map?’ And he’s like, ‘No, I don’t need to,’ even though he’s lost in the forest.”

Elaborating on some of the prejudice and ignorance he has encountered, Malcolm opines, “Just because it’s the entertainment industry, doesn’t mean it’s different to anything else in society – it’s the same people. As a person of colour, I had to work twice as hard. I’d get up early to be the first to report for duty, and I’d make sure I was one of the last ones to leave, just to show the weight of my convictions and what I was capable of.

“There have been many times when I’d walk into a building and people would look around everywhere before they’d come to me to ask me where the production manager was. But I’ve dealt with that ever since I was the sound guy at the Beverly Theater – I would be the last person that they would think of as the house sound guy. That’s just life; I try not to dwell on it.

“It still happens. Fairly recently, I came across a gentleman at a venue who was ignoring my requests to move some equipment. When it eventually dawned on him that the boxes needed to be moved so that we could get on with things, he came to me to ask where the production manager was… He knew he was in the wrong, so there was no need for me to rub his nose in it.”

That calm demeanour has served Malcolm well over the years, and he is quite rightly regarded as one of the safest pair of hands with which to entrust an artist’s touring vision, and a deserving recipient of The Gaffer Award for 2023.

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