Part two of chengui's excellent review of Coldplay's concert at the Clark County Amphitheater, Portland, OR, and a meet and greet backstage (10th July 2009) is now available to read online at the Coldplay Live forum. In case you missed part one recently you can recap that here. What follows is part two:
So we all walked back out to the main area (now about 8:30) and were told to meet back by the backstage door at 8:50. We could have gone and found our seats and waited there, but the second opening band was wrapping up and we decided to just hang out for twenty minutes.
At 8:50 the Capitol people came back and met us, walked us backstage and onto the side of the main stage. It was funny cause they stopped to let the band manager what were were doing and he said (in his thick british accent) “I know exactly what you’re doing. For once I know what the f*** is going on around here.” – he was hilarious.
Our seats were right next to the guitar tech’s station on the right side of the stage. There was a thin gauzy fabric that probably hid us from the rest of the audience, but we were RIGHT there! We were the only two that got to sit there (one Capitol rep. stayed with us the whole time) – everyone else there was with the band adjusting sound levels and whatnot. I took out my camera and took a picture, but the Capitol rep (who was super nice) told me that that probably wasn’t a good idea, as a lot of times they don’t like pictures taken of the equipment and stuff. Didn’t want to ruffle any feathers, but I am SUPER bummed that I only have the one picture…which was before the band took the stage.
At around 9:00 the lights went out and Coldplay took the stage swinging sparklers around. RIGHT before they came on stage this huge Banner dropped behind the stage, except it got tangled up in itself and the roadies all scrambled to get it unraveled before the lights went on. The head roadie guy ran past me yelling, “Are you f***ing KIDDING me?!”
It was awesome to be so close and see the workings back stage, but I will say it gave me a HUGE appreciation for how the guys can perform like that because the sound is ALL messed up when you are standing on the stage like that. Reason being that all the speakers are obviously pointing out, so the music is bouncing off the venue walls, so there is a slight delay between the music heard on stage, and what they are playing. Everything sounded pretty good, except for the songs with a lot of drums because we were actually hearing the real drums (not the amplified ones) so they sounded ahead of the rest of the music (thanks Will!). Also when Chris spoke between songs there was too much echo for us to really understand. That being, said – I’ve seen them before and I know they sound AMAZING live, so it kinda sucked that we could see everything great, but didn’t really get to see/hear the show as well as if we had been up front. I mean we were right next to them, but let’s face it, they are performing to the crowd. So that being said, I can always pay for great seats next time they are in town, but I’ll never get to be ON STAGE again – so no complaints here.
Early in the show Guy came into the guitar tech’s booth thingie in between a song (literally 2 ft to my right) and took off his coat, which he hung basically on my chair. Also, Chris would be singing, and as he was running around stage he would come up to the Guitar tech and make a motion to adjust some kind of level or something. The guitar tech guy (I wish I knew his name) had like 10 backup guitars that he was prepping and swapping out with all the boys in between songs.
One of the cool things they did during the show is they set up two small stages way towards the back of the venue and the jumped down into the crowd (surrounded by bodyguards of course) and ran to one of these back stages and performed a few songs out there so everybody got to be relatively close. It was really cool of them to do. Well the first time they did it, they played talk and then Chris went solo on piano and played The Hardest Part while the rest of the boys were brought back to the main stage. Well while Chris was playing, Jonny came and hung out with the guitar tech, joking around and talking about something he’d messed up with one of the guitars. He was seriously standing right next to me. Crazy. They obviously had everything scheduled very precisely and it struck me that this is really their job.
They all came back to the stage and played a few more songs and it all went seamlessly – The band manager came out and asked me if everything was going well – also they brought us some water - then the band headed out AGAIN to a smaller stage which was much further away. It was kinda hard for us to see because they were off to the right, past the guitar tech station, which was right near the right end of the stage. The guitar tech was so friggin nice though, he moved some of his gear and invited us around to stand on the stage so we could see better. Like he didn’t have a billion other things to worry about - so nice of him. So we stood on the stage and looked out over the crowd at the band playing. Chris asked everyone to take out their cell phones and do the wave, using the light from the screens (pretty cool). Then they played an acoustic version of Green Eyes (awesome), Death will never conquer, and then they covered Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean! Pretty darn cool. After Billie Jean was over the guitar tech beckoned us back to where we were earlier because we were standing pretty much in Chris’ spot. As we passed by his little set up he took my hand and gave me one of their guitar picks. Super, SUPER nice guy. During their song, Lovers in Japan they released billions and billions of paper butterfly confetti – which I thought was pretty cool, until they released a second wave of black light neon butterfly confetti which was REALLY cool. After their encore they left the stage and we had to wait until they cleared out, before we could leave. We walked out with the Capitol people, and got to say goodbye to the tour manager and band manager, who had both been so nice to us. After that it was trying to find the car, and a good 2 hours sitting in the jammed up parking lot – NIGHTMARE.
All in all a really, REALLY great time!
New pictures of Coldplay at Gorge Amphitheater, George, WA (11th July 2009):
Pictures by John Heil
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