Linkin Park’s Jim Digby Talks Concert Tour Safety In Dangerous Times [Larry LeBlanc]

In this latest edition of In The Hot Seat With Larry LeBlanc, he speaks with Jim Digby, the founder and chairman of Event Safety Alliance and Linkin Park production manager. Here he weighs in on touring safety for both artists and others operating in the music industry.

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Guest Post by Larry LeBlanc on Celebrity Access

Jim Digby is optimistic that if his peers embrace a safety-based culture lives will be spared.

In 2011, following the Indiana State Fair outdoor stage roof collapse, the Philadelphia-based production veteran joined with other event industry professionals to launch the Event Safety Alliance (ESA).

ESA’s focus is centered on identifying, and distilling the standards and codes that apply to the live event industry; as well as teaching the best in operational practices, and decision-making criteria–from building scaffolding, setting up large outdoor stages, to establishing evacuation plans, and planning for inclement weather–that would allow those working in the industry to work safely.

Digby’s safety concerns date back to 1983 when, during the grand opening of a nightclub in a suburb of Philadelphia, he witnessed a woman being struck by a falling light fixture that killed her.

Digby was the technician operating the light figure.

In the wake of the 2011 Indiana State Fair disaster with Sugarland, when heavy winds knocked a stage down and killed seven people, Digby decided it was time to push for increased safety awareness in the music event business, and spearheaded the creation of the Event Safety Alliance.

In 2014, ESA published the Event Safety Guide, a treatise to help industry professionals recognize safe workplace practices, heighten their appreciation for life safety, and make reasonable decisions in their daily work.

As well as his ESA role, Digby is the owner of Collaborative Endeavor Group (CEG), which provides international touring strategies, and production solutions for the live entertainment industry. He has served as director of touring and production for Linkin Park since 2002 and has also worked with Bon Jovi, the Backstreet Boys, and Marilyn Manson.

As of this year, Digby is also a director of the Behind the Scenes Foundation, which provides entertainment technology professionals, who are seriously ill or injured, with grants that may be used for basic living and medical expenses.

You worked at the Pulsations Night Club near Philly which opened with a fatal accident in 1983.

Right. I was working at the facility before it opened. The Encore Dinner Theatre portion of the facility opened in advance of the club portion of the facility. I had been hired, more or less, right out of electronics school to be a technician for the dinner theater. Part of that role was that we had the option to book overtime, and help construct the nightclub. So I was involved with both entities which were housed under the same roof. When the nightclub came to open, I had been tapped to be the lighting operator and the special effects operator. There were others too, but I had it for the early days.

[Rolling Stone described Pulsations, as “the monster dance club that brought Studio 54 vibes to West Philadelphia.” The club was actually located in Delaware County—not West Philly. At 15,000 square feet, Pulsations featured 10 levels, 11 bars, and 12 VIP hotel rooms. In the early-morning hours of Nov. 19, 1983, 15 minutes into the club's grand opening, as 2,000 people danced to disco music amid 12-foot speakers on hydraulic lifts, and multicolored lights, a lighting fixture fell killing Margaret Jones, a 37-year-old Media, Penn. woman, and injuring five others. The family of the dead woman sued the club in 1984, and the case was settled out of court In 1987. Despite incident, the club ran to 1995.]

On that opening night, I was the one pushing the button of the special-effect lighting fixture that came off the ceiling right through the skull of Margaret Jones. She was 8 feet from where I was standing, and it killed her dead. The contractors had rushed to finish (for the opening) and had not installed a welded steel end-stop at the end of the track. They had not installed the micro switches to turn off the engine that drove the lighting fixture. Instead, they had installed a C-clamp at the end of the track. The device knocked the C-clamp off, came off the track, and went through her head.

Was this a chandelier?

No, it wasn’t a chandelier. This was in 1983 with the mindset of (New York discos) Studio 54 and The Limelight. This was a very high-tech, high-energy special effect-driven nightclub; meaning that there was a 22-foot diameter spaceship that tracked from the back of the house. Alongside that spaceship, there were designed-themed shuttle crafts that escorted the spaceship out into the house if you will. Each of those shuttle crafts was made of two aerodynamic police lights mounted to a 4-inch I-beam. On the back of the I-beam, there was a couple hundred pound factory trolley motor that drove the thing back-and-forth. So the total weight was something like 500 or 700 pounds.

Very traumatic to everybody, especially to you if you were standing by her.

I wasn’t just standing there. I was the operating the fixture. My finger was on the button.

How old were you?

I had just turned 20.

Then there was the inquest and the lawsuit.

It changed who I am as a human being, period. Somebody died at my fingertips. Not to mention what it did to her, and her family.

After the incident, the club reopened the same night.

They had to keep operating. It happened off in the corner where the DJ booth was. The club was full with 2,500 people. It was the grand opening night. A press night.

A gigantic club with the latest in hi-tech. What could go wrong?

We were all working hours that were ridiculous in an effort to keep our jobs and get the club to open. It was the '80s so we were all just into it. That was the seed that lay dormant inside Jim Digby until the Sugarland event.

[Seven people died, and 58 were injured in 2011 when the stage collapsed at a Sugarland concert in Indianapolis at the Indiana State Fair. At least four lawsuits were instigated as a result of the collapse.]

Following the Indiana State Fair outdoor stage roof collapse, you joined with other event industry professionals to form the Event Safety Alliance.

The conversations began in the months after Sugarland in late summer or early Fall of 2011. By 2012, the conversations that we were having as a group of individuals around the industry, representing different elements of the industry, started to become routine. There was a real momentum to get something done. It became apparent that an organization needed to exist in order to propel the (safety) mission, and the ESA was born out of that need.

When the Sugarland tragedy occurred, and it hit the news, the seed of Pulsations from 1983 was still embedded in me. It made me react in such a way. Also part of the story is that my first born son came in 2009 two months early, and was near death. We had about 6 weeks of touch-and-go with him. And that raised an appreciation of mortality in me to a different level.

When Sugarland happened and I heard the news, I was at home in my home office. My then 2 ½-year-old son was playing and I could hear him playing. A minute later, it went quiet. I thought, “I better check this out.” I looked everywhere and I couldn’t find him. I eventually found him in the pantry having climbed the pantry shelves going after Halloween candy or something. I asked, “What are you doing?” He said, “Nothing. I’m okay dad.” Then I waited for it. “Dad, can you get me down?” Insignificant in itself, but that night lying in bed I connected my son saying, “Dad, can you get me down?” to the 7 people who died at the Sugarland show who had an expectation of safety, just like my son, when they came to that show, and found themselves going home in body bags. It was totally unacceptable.

At the time I sat on the board of the Tour Link Conference and one of my duties was to develop content for discussion at the touring conference. (In 2012) I had written a proposal on safety in our industry and sent it down the line. It didn’t get the reaction that I had hoped it would which only served to energize me more. Then one phone call led to two and then to four and 8 people on the phone. The next thing we were having conference calls.

How many people are involved today?

If you combine all of our social media numbers and our mailing list, 5,000 people are routinely hearing from us.

You personally must have faced a sizable learning curve early on.

What happened for Jim Digby following Sugarland, and the visceral reaction that it brought, was that I needed to know more (about safety). I had been out there producing events and didn’t really know what I was doing. I thought, “If this could happen to my friends over at Sugarland, it can happen to me.” I then looked for any opportunity to educate myself that was related to what I did for a living.

There probably wasn’t much out there in terms of event safety education for music touring units.

There is an organization, the International Association of Venue Managers, that runs a week-long study opportunity called The Academy For Venue Safety and Security. So I attended that. I was the first production person to attend. It is typically attended by venue operations managers and venue security directors. There was a lot going on there that directly worked hand-in-hand with what I was doing. It made me question, “Why the hell don’t we have this learning opportunity?”

One of the people I met there was Steve Adelman (of Adelman Law Group in Scottsdale, Arizona) who is an attorney (and now also VP of ESA). He spoke so eloquently about duty of care, and reasonable foreseeability (the facility to perceive, know in advance, or reasonably anticipate damage or injury) that it made me realize that I had been operating as the adult in charge all these years without the knowledge that I am legally bound under the duty to care clause (under tort law) to do X, Y, and Z. It scared the living daylights out of me. After having learned about it, my reaction was, “All my peers need to know about this. How am I going to get all my peers to know about this? Which was one of the stimuli to bring about ESA.

[In tort law, a duty of care is a legal obligation imposed on an individual requiring adherence to a standard of reasonable care while performing any acts that could foreseeably harm others. It is the first element that must be established to proceed with an action in negligence. Breaching a duty may subject an individual to liability. With each of the 50 U.S. states being a separate sovereign free to develop its own tort law under the Tenth Amendment, there are several tests for finding a duty of care in United States’ tort law.]

You could be legally held responsible personally in case of a mishap or injury? You wouldn’t be indemnified through a work contract with someone you are working for?

Yes, there are insurances that protect me, but I also have the legal duty of care for all of those things that are under my direct sphere of influence at a show site. That doesn’t include an audience use case. In that case, the promoter of the venue has the duty of care for the audience. In my use case, I have the duty of care for the touring package. What shows up on the buses, and the trucks.

Negligence, if proved, would still factor in a legal action.

It’s actually worse than that. In Europe, corporate manslaughter is the charge now (in an action leading to a death due to negligence of duty of care) and that’s coming to the States. The oversimplification of that is that if I’m the production or tour manager or the band agent or the band manager, and I accept a routing from a booking agent that has an illegal drive in it, and I “grease” my drivers to make that illegal drive, and my driver goes through the (driving time) limit and crosses (highway) lanes, hits a van, and takes out a family of four, everybody in the chain of causation goes to jail.

Driving beyond legal limits is routinely done on many North American tours.

You better believe it. Absolutely. So when I run into these things my reaction is to bring it back to my peers in the industry. The vehicle in which we are able to do that is the ESA. We have managed to get some pretty capable characters around us who are helping us broaden our knowledge base. We have experts from around the world that speak at our conferences on things that the U.S. isn’t even considering at this point. We have instructors from the UK who come in and teach us about crowd dynamics and crowd psychology. Things that are no
t currently being offered to those in the trenches who actually operate events (in the U.S.)

Are tour transportation personnel involved with the ESA?

Yeah, there are already a few who are involved. Anyone can be involved. In Europe, you don’t get away with it (driving over set time limits). In Europe, your driver’s license is attached to an electronic card—a tachograph (a tachometer providing a record of engine speed over a period)—that is a tattletale card. You do four hours, you have to do a 15-minute break. And there are always two drivers in the cab of the bus in Europe. I sleep in my European buses. I don’t sleep in U.S. buses. If a driver is hammering down or worse trying to get to the next city to get that bonus check, I’m not interested in that anymore. I now have kids to come home to.

The live music industry has continually faced ongoing paradigm shifts brought about by individual tragedies. With each tragedy there’s concern, and then industry seems to let safety issues slip again.

Yeah. Unfortunately few of these standards and codes in any industry space come about without some sort of problem catalyzing them, right? Otherwise, we would just run off and do our own thing. It’s, “Who cares about standards and regulations?” You go back to the garment factory fire in New York in 1911, it wasn’t until then that somebody started thinking about, “Jeez, there ought to be emergency exits, and there ought to be fire codes.”

[The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City in 1911 was one of the deadliest industrial disasters in American history. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers. It led to the founding of the American Society of Safety Engineers the same year; to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards, and it spurred the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers.]

The roots of the music touring in North American is the circus business in which performers and crews also move from city to city.

It was the carney mentality. It still is the carney mentality. For us in the entertainment industry, we are built of this moxie of, “The show must go on.” It’s fantastic because it enables us to pull off some of the most incredible feats of entertainment you can imagine.

There’s traditionally been that touring belief that if someone is sick or hurt, “Leave them, we’ll pick them up later.” Artists and crews go into that little bubble while on tour.

Yeah. I think that is more or less true to this day. It’s not that the workforce out there is attempting to cause injury or looking past safety. It’s just that our focus traditionally has been on getting the show onstage. And it has not traditionally been about safety oversight. That’s been alright until now. How many more lives, and how much more bloodshed do we need to make the message stick to change the culture?

Decades ago, arena or outdoors music shows likely included a few speakers above the audience or bands playing through house systems. Today, touring acts are traveling with multiple truckloads of equipment, and crews are working high up in the air installing complex technology equipment.

Yeah, the complexity of the shows has obviously increased over the years if you benchmark back to the Beatles at Shea Stadium on a small stage. Here we are in this day and age where almost anything is possible with robotics and any number of special effects now. Still, the working environment is the guy, who is flying X artists over the stage, may also be the same guy who got up at 7 A.M. and rigged, loaded in, then worked all afternoon, grabbed a 15 minute lunch break, and then went back to work. The next thing that you know is that, without a nap or any sleep, he’s controlling the artists while they are flying over the stage.

At the same time the live music sector is in competition with other forms of entertainment—games, film, film, and theater—to provide eye candy.

That’s a philosophical argument. Another side to that is the more stuff that shows up for a show, the less likely the talent onstage might be.

In the ‘80s live music shows tried to match an artist’s video. Over time, productions got more elaborate paced by the likes of Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, Madonna, U2, Lady Gaga, and others. The stage act is entertainment. It always has been. It’s not the entertainment of one artist, one microphone anymore.

No question. And we have to keep it different, keep it changing and evolving or nobody is going to buy tickets. If the show was the same for every artist who cares? At the same time, I think that one of the things that we find is some of these mega-shows have nothing to do with the artist and has everything to do with the designer they’ve hired. One could argue whether the designer is designing for what is in the best interest of the artist or are they designing for what is in the best interest of their portfolio?

Some are arguing, “This is going to be bigger than the Rolling Stones or U2 or Madonna.”

There’s no question that there is an ego thing driving it as well. That’s okay. That’s what keeps it interesting. That kind of ego competition is healthy. It drives innovation. It drives variety. The industry needs that. We are blending all manner of entertainment. You just cannot narrow it down to live music entertainment. You go to any festival worth its salt and there’s going to be a food event. There’s going to be a ride event. There’s going to be some “dry” (non-musical) entertainment. Some talking heads. We have all become one amalgam of escapism for those who need it.

At the same time as the technology evolved those involved in live events have needed to be more skilled.

Well, I would argue that the innovation that is driving the new frontier in our business is being done by some of the best in the business. I am confident that when it (effect equipment) is manufactured, when it’s daydreamed, and when it’s brought from paper to realization, those who are manufacturing it have the desire for it to never fail. And I am also confident that when it gets handed off to whoever is going to execute X effect, they won’t have a desire for it to fail.

We have survived and thrived for decades without a safety first mindset. Our mindset is “the show must go on” and the attitude, “It worked last night 100%, awesome.”

What the ESA is a proponent of and for is to embed the safety element as well. It’s okay to say, “no.” It’s okay to say “That bulb doesn’t look right. That weld doesn’t look right. Hold on a second.” There have been artists or artist managers on the road that have insisted that every effect works every night 100% or “I’m not paying for it. What’s the point of having it out here?”
That mentality causes those who operate these things, or who assemble these things, to maybe look past safety for fear of their jobs.

We are saying, “Let’s back up for a second. Let’s incorporate the safety planning, the risk assessment, the message statement from the word go. Let’s just have it be part of the day. It doesn’t cost any more money. It doesn’t take any more time. It is simply smart business.” We are one of the last industries, we are one of the last frontiers, if you will, to not really to have embraced safety as part of our culture.

We see the danger of, perhaps, not embracing safety fully with the recent spate of amusement park incidents. Unless you really pay attention to all the moving parts of equipment, you could have problems.

No question. In the case of amusement parks, that is largely itinerant labor. If they have a seasonal territory then they are operational for three or four months of the year. Manufacturers continue to try to make the equipment fail safe so the level of competency of the person operating it can be less and less because it’s hard to find competent people who know how to look at mechanical issues, who are able to do a morning mechanical inspection.

At any musical event or on any music tour, there’s a wear and tear on equipment. It has to be continually checked.

I agree with you that when we push the envelope of special effects that we also have to push the envelope of the competency of the people who are operating it. And we do that. Still, I don’t think that the problems that we see are really central to special effects, or to the application of special effect, and the use of special effects. The number of incidents that make the news relating to special effects is insignificant in my opinion.

Has increased technological innovation forced you as a production manager to further educate yourself on the dangers involved with productions?

That’s really where the ESA comes into this story. In that the (live music) industry has not set any kind of prior entry. Y