Howard Ungerleider: Foul Fumes and Other Stories

E463 Over three decades ago, Howard Ungerleider was assigned to be a tour manager to a relatively unknown Canadian band called Rush. He was also their lighting designer and accountant in those early years but transitioned out of the tour management responsibility after 24 years. He’s designed and directed lighting for Rush and many other […]

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
Hey, humans. How's it going? Susan Ruth here.
Thanks for listening to another episode
of Hey, Human podcast.
This is episode 463,
and my guest is Howard Ungerleider.
Over three decades ago, Howard was assigned to
be a tour manager to a relatively unknown
Canadian band called Rush.

(00:28):
He was also their lighting designer and accountant
in those early years, but transitioned out of
the tour management responsibility after twenty four years.
He's designed and directed lighting for Rush and
many other powerhouses, including Queensryche,
Blazer Colt, Van Halen, Supertramp,
Def Leppard, Alicia Keys, obviously, businesses, corporations,

(00:49):
and the like. He founded Production Design International,
which provides lighting all over the world for
all sorts of different things.
And as just announced,
he will be going on tour with Rush
for their new tour. So that's very exciting.
I really enjoyed talking with Howard. He's a
blast. He's hilarious. He's the sweetest guy, and

(01:11):
I'm excited for this
episode. General stuff. Check out heyhumanpodcast.com
for links and to learn more about my
guests and the show.
Check out susanruth.com
to learn more about me and my other
artistic endeavors.
Follow susan ruthism on social media.
Find my music on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon
Music, wherever you get your music. Rate, review,

(01:32):
and subscribe to Hey Human Podcast on iTunes,
Spotify,
iHeart, wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you for listening. Be well,
be kind,
be
love, and rock on. Here we go.
Howard Ungerleider, welcome to Hey Human.
Thank you. I've gotta say,

(01:52):
what my friend Lizzie Daymont, who absolutely
loves Rush, is gonna be so excited that
you're on the show.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Let's go back to the
beginning of you. Tell me where you grew
up. Okay. Well,
I was born in New York City in
a hospital that doesn't exist anymore.
That was right in Manhattan.

(02:12):
Once they had you, they shut it down.
They closed it. They turned it into a
condo.
You know, it
goes by the way of the condo. I
grew up in,
New York City and The Bronx for a
while until it got to the point where
my parents decided to move over to New
Jersey.
And most of my youth,

(02:33):
teenage youth, was spent in Paramus,
New Jersey, a little,
at the time,
celery farm
that turned into this
industrial shopping mecca
of Northern New Jersey. How did you like
growing up there?
It was good. You know? It was a
I got in a lot of trouble.
That was bad. What kind of bad? The

(02:55):
good kind of bad?
Both. The good kind of bad, the bad
kind of bad.
I, you know, I've
I went on a
a mission to,
do whatever I wanted, you know, because I
enjoy freedom. I'm an eclectic person.
I don't like being tied down to any
one thing. Let's say my schooling wasn't very

(03:17):
successful when I started out.
And I grew up in my father was
a drill sergeant. He was a a drill
sergeant in the United States Army.
So it was very strict upbringing in a,
very
sort of,
I guess,
Italian
sort of neighborhood

(03:37):
in in New Jersey, which I think most
of the neighborhoods there are pretty much Italian.
I basically grew up in a Sopranos episode.
So
with with my dad, like,
instilling the
really
positive
loyalty,
honesty, you know, this is all these things
you have to be.

(03:58):
And then on the other side, I grew
up in my Italian friends. I'm the complete
opposite of that.
So it was a pretty good dynamic. Good
way to shape a well rounded human?
Definitely.
And, you know, you get to experience a
lot of things
and a lot of,
fun things.
You know, I worked in an Italian restaurant.

(04:20):
I watched, you know, truckloads of
contraband come and go through the basement of
it, you know, while I was making
pizza and cooking burgers on a grill, and
it was kind of kind of fun.
Did they call you Howie and say, Howie,
just look the other way. It's okay. Or
did they include you in the in the
nefarious activities?

(04:41):
They said nothing. The and the you know,
all my friends called me Howie.
No one calls me Howie anymore except for
Geddy Lee's wife calls me Howie to this
day.
Other than that, no. No. No. People, you
know, they will call me all different things,
names they've heard over the years. As far

(05:01):
as I'm concerned,
you know, I I really
enjoy
what anyone has to say because I enjoy
people. Right?
I'm a musician
as you are.
And
when I grew up,
I had a band, and I always wanted
to, you know, to see what I how
far I can take it, which wasn't very

(05:23):
far
as I found out the hard way.
And one day, I just wandered into an
office of this gentleman named Sean LaRoche,
and the, the secretary would never let me
get by her desk.
And then I just, you know, kept coming
back and coming back, and I needed to
see this man because he worked with The
Who, which was one of my favorite bands

(05:44):
at the time. And I needed to meet
with him and just see if he could
help me out.
And one day when she was on a
lunch break,
I decided to scurry into the office and
just go bypass her desk and find mister
LaRoche,
who I met only once before
at a concert when I was in university
for my brief year before I got tossed.

(06:04):
I knew that he was a powerful man
in the industry, and I needed to speak
with him.
I found his office. There he was behind
his desk. I walked in there, and,
basically,
I learned the hard way about walking into
someone's office without being announced.
And I asked him a question, and I
said to him, you know, mister LaRoche,

(06:27):
I'm trying to get my band a recording
contract, and I know that you're in the
industry. And I just wanted to come here
and see what I can do.
And he basically stood up, and he said,
number one,
you don't walk into my office ever without
being announced. Number two,
you never ask for a recording contract because
you're never gonna get one. You said there's

(06:47):
10,000 bands out there wanting a recording contract.
I can tell you right now, yours is
not one of them.
And he said, you better learn about this
industry before you even come into my office
and make a fool of yourself.
Woah. I yeah. That's not very rock and
roll of him.
No. Not really. And, he he was very

(07:08):
uptight, actually.
Yeah. And, but he was very nice as
well because he said to me, he said,
you better get rid of your equipment, and
you better learn this industry like the back
of your hand before you can walk into
anyone's office.
So I'll tell you what I'll do for
you just to get you out of here
quickly. I'm gonna give you a bunch of
names of people to go have

(07:29):
a chat with,
And you could go there, and you can
work as an office boy.
You could deliver coffees, teas, whatever they want
you to do. You can work in a
mail room
and learn about the business.
You go, so here's a bunch of names.
You can tell them that I sent you,
and now it's time for you to leave.
And basically, escorted me out of the office,

(07:51):
and that was that. I had my list.
And for the next three weeks,
I just pounded the streets of New York
and visiting people. And eventually,
I stumbled across this gentleman named Jeff Franklin
who owned, an agency called American Talent International.
And he had just had another company called
Action Talent,

(08:11):
and, you know, they were talent scouts.
So
I went in there, and I used the
Sean LaRoche card. And
I I asked him if he needed any
help. And he said I was lucky because
he just moved from a very small agency
to, one right across from Carnegie Hall in
New York.
It was big
he took up the whole floor of

(08:32):
the the 20 First Floor of, 888 Seventh
Avenue.
And he was planning on signing 60 different
bands, but I never knew this.
When I arrived, he just said, you know,
I have a job for you.
He said, you can come back here on
Monday because it was Friday. I went to
Meadow.
You could come here

(08:53):
9AM.
Do not be one minute late,
and I'm gonna set you up, and you
could work in our mail room. You could
take care of all the mail.
And I went, oh, really? He goes, yeah.
Pays $50
a week.
He said, you can take it or leave
it. But I'll tell you, if you're late,
don't bother. Even come.

(09:14):
So I said, well, thank you. I I
appreciate that. And that was my start.
What year was this?
1971.
I was trying to think in terms of
$50 a week. Was that a living wage
back then? No. Okay. Probably was not. It
was very, very low money. Right?
And,
you know, I was I was thrown into

(09:35):
it. And, you know, I learned very quickly
about, you know, mail.
I learned very quickly about, you know,
coffee and tea and all those good things
and what the agents, you know, and all
the talent scouts that worked for him,
you know,
who
were drumming up business for all these bands
that he sent.
You know, he took a trip one day,

(09:55):
and he came back, and he had 60
bands on the roster.
He's probably one of the biggest agencies in
the world at the time. And I had
the opportunity
to
be in the mailroom
at this place.
And, you know, the agents were were nuts.
They were lunatics, all of them. They were
booking shows, standing on their desk on speakerphones,
freaking out at people. And They're probably coked

(10:17):
out of their minds.
Absolutely.
There were there were mountains of coping. It's
like
Oh, man. Were you, at that point, deciding
to
then turn in the music side and go
into the business side, or were you still
keeping your aspirations?

(10:38):
A musician is always a musician. I agree.
Not a professional musician, but a musician at
that. I always love music, and, you know,
I started
in this agency,
and I had a lot of perks.
One was called Free Goods. You know what
a free good is? The way back when,
when the record labels

(10:59):
would send the agents
free albums
of all their artists to send out to
promoters
at the time to say, hey. We want
you to buy this band. Here's what they
sound like. So there was a big library
of free goods, which everybody helped themselves to.
My big perk was I got to pick
albums and come home and

(11:21):
give them to my friends, you know, and
say, here, you want you want the next
Deep Purple Machinehead album or this or that?
And I go back because of being a,
you know, the age that I am
and spanning the, you know, the seventies, eighties,
nineties, right up, up to now, which I'm
still current. I'm still here doing things.
So I was able to have some perks,

(11:42):
see some shows for free, and work at
this agency.
And over time, you know, work my way
up to becoming an agent
and learning the business and how to formulate
deals and travel with bands and making sure
that the promoters didn't rip them off. And
if they did, I was sent in to
straighten it out. And because, you know, you

(12:02):
represent all these acts as an agent,
You carry a lot of weight, you know,
to go in there and
strong-arm promoters.
Well, if you want Rod Stewart next month,
you have to take these three bats.
You know?
And you now have to pay Blue Oyster
Cult the money that you took from them
last week.

(12:23):
And you have to put it in this
paper bag, and I gotta take it home
with me today. This is right here. Italian
background here. I'm sure that helps.
Your soprano's childhood helps. Oh, it it was
interesting back then. You know? Very interesting.
I imagine you have an incredible vinyl collection.
Oh, yeah. It it was huge.

(12:44):
I say it was because it was huge
when I had to make the transition. And
it was the transition that
it was kind of funny as, there were
three partners at ATI in in New York,
and, you know, one of them said to
me, listen.
You have you have two choices. And I
said, what's that? And he said, you can

(13:04):
go to Toronto
and work for a club band
up there,
or
you could have the second choice, which is
you're fired.
And I'm saying, well, why?
And he's like, because we signed a band
from Canada,
and we want you to teach them how

(13:25):
to tour. And I said, well, I don't
wanna go to Canada.
I said, I have family here, and I'm
like, you know, I'm loving this job. And
he's like,
I give you your two choices. You pick.
Right? So I picked
going to Canada.
And I didn't know the little club band
was Rush,
who they had just signed to go on

(13:45):
a world tour with a band called Uriah
Heep. I'm sure no one knows these bands.
Oh, no. Everybody knows those bands. Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So so my job was to go up,
teach them about touring, be their tour their
tour manager, tour accountant,
travel Canada. That was my first
Which is a humongous

(14:07):
humongous place. It is and cold.
Yeah.
So here you are. You you have to
go to Canada for some,
at the time in your mind, Podunk band.
Yes.
How did you take in Rush for the
first I'm just I'm trying to put myself
in the position of hearing Rush for the
first
time. There there's

(14:29):
no band like them. So how did that
cover your body?
It it was it was pretty spectacular
because,
being a musician and hearing these guys
play together, which, you know, it was a
while from the time I arrived to the
time I actually heard them fled.
It was a learning experience because they put
me up in Richmond Hill, which is North

(14:50):
Of Toronto, and I was thinking all the
time that this Richmond Hill place was Toronto.
And that's, like, probably, you know,
I don't know.
It's like Chico, California or something. It's like
a small little area, you know. Mhmm. I
got in there, and then I realized that,
oh, Toronto is not as further south of
where I was.

(15:11):
You know? And I was, like, crashing on
the,
the the manager the, you know, their manager's
floor,
his couch.
One point, I was sleeping next to a
Saint Bernard. Oh, to be young again.
Oh, yeah. No. It was great. I mean,
you know, hey. Listen. I was on the
road with them. We did 200 cities a
year

(15:31):
for probably the first three years we were
out there.
You know? That's a lot. That's a lot.
Lot of traveling. And a lot of it
was in, you know, different kind of vehicles,
cars,
station wagons, vans,
motorhomes, buses.
It was a lot of traveling, but a
lot of fun. The first time I actually

(15:54):
heard them play, there was an electricity
that was coming from this band that the
only other band I think I've ever heard,
you know, before that with that much electricity
was the band The Who.
You know? And they had, like, incredible
electricity when they played live
as a three piece.
And don't forget, they had another drummer that

(16:15):
I never heard. When I arrived in Toronto,
Rush did not have a drummer, and they
were auditioning drummers.
So the first time I actually heard them
play with Neil Peart,
it was just outrageous. It was like, wow.
These guys are gonna be huge.
You either have it or you don't have
it. I remember the first time I saw

(16:36):
Coldplay.
I got brought into a a showcase.
They had just been signed,
and my buddy worked for the label. And
he's like, yeah. Check out this band. I'm
like, oh, yeah. Okay. And I
I remember sitting there, and I turned to
my friend, Bruce, also a Canadian, by the
way.
I turned to my friend, Bruce, and I
said,
oh my god. These these guys are gonna

(16:57):
be absolutely
humongous. There's just a difference. There's something.
Yeah. You can tell.
You really can. Yeah.
Yeah. And the and, also, the
I think that CEO also could tell. Yeah.
For sure. Did the guys have a sense
themselves that they were going to

(17:17):
go down in history as it were, or
did
no. I don't think so. I think they
knew they were onto something really great because,
New York agencies signing a Canadian ban was
pretty unheard of back then. It was very
difficult.
And the thing that really helped break Rush
in the history, and everyone who's a Rush
fan would know this, the station WMMS in

(17:39):
Cleveland,
and this this DJ, Donna Helper,
who was there playing the album, everyone thought
it was the new Zep album when it
first came
on. And then and it lit up it
it just lit up the lines. And,
shortly after that, she was in contact
with Mercury Records in Chicago where, at the
time, Cliff Bernstein, who's

(18:00):
one of the owners of Q Prime
in New York, if you're familiar with them,
when they manage Metallica
and Oh, okay. Huge management company. He was
the A and R guy that signed Rush
to their first recording contract in The United
States. So
they really
you know, they hit all the marks, which

(18:20):
you
which Canadian vans
have a really hard time getting into The
US.
And they just had they were at the
right place, the right time with the right
people.
Yeah. And I bet a lot of radio
people miss the days when they could break
a band that just doesn't
doesn't happen anymore. It's it's so
computer driven

(18:42):
and the same 12 songs over and over
again. I know now people rely on things
like
TikTok and the social media, and they won't
even get signed unless which drives me insane.
It has really little to do with talent
and everything to do with the numbers of
your social media.
But at the time, back then, how do
you help the band understand what their responsibilities

(19:04):
are and what it means and keep them
going because
the that many dates is exhausting.
They're away from friends and family. They may
be maybe when they get into it, they're
like, yes, this is exactly who I wanna
be, but don't really understand
how much work it actually is. And this
is back in the day when you would
throw your CDs in the back of your

(19:25):
car and go
just play your ass off anywhere and everywhere,
mosquitoes
or for
big opening things. So
how did you
formulate that plan for them and help them
along the way? Well, you know, the the
plan was formulated by the agents in New
York who booked the shows.

(19:46):
You know, we all I had to do
was make sure that they were
arriving there and departing there and making it
to the next place.
They were very intelligent.
The three guys in Rush
not only were funny,
but they were also very, very,
they were very nice,

(20:06):
and they were very
work oriented. They they were together from the
sixties late sixties
before I met them. They were
playing
in and out of bands and
and having Rush
break up and reform and all sorts of
different
things
way before I even
was there.

(20:26):
So I sort of walked into,
you know, Rush mark two, and it was
it was time to do some Canadian shows.
And here me being from New York, and
I know they used to, like, refer to
me as, oh,
here's the fucking yank
from New York, you know, who thinks he
knows everything.

(20:47):
And he goes, now welcome to Canada. And,
you know, you're in Canada now. And then,
you know, when we got there and, you
know,
Getty used to tell me, you know, if
you want a good good slice of pizza,
you go to this place. It's called Pizza
Pizza. Right?
And I'm like, I've been there.
That's awful pizza. And it goes, oh, you
Yanks. You think you know everything.

(21:09):
I said, when you get to New York,
I will give you a pizza.
I
mean, we had a, like, a a good
time. But then on the way up to
Cochrane, Ontario,
which was minus 35
degrees,
I never experienced anything out that cold.
And, you know, they said and Neil says
to me from the back, he goes, hey.
Do you have any warm clothes?

(21:29):
And I'm driving. I'm I have denim jacket
and jeans, and, you know, my running shoes.
And then, you know, and Genny and Alex
say, and they're like,
pull over.
Doug, those are your warm clothes? I said,
yeah. That's this is what I got. He
goes, you don't have any jacket or anything.
He goes, you know, if we had an
accident right now, you'd die.
I I said, there's no way I would

(21:51):
die. They go, you yanks. You have no
idea.
Okay. Pull the car over. Get out. And
I want you to take a nice deep
breath of fresh air. Really deep. Make sure
you deep breath. Okay? I said, yeah. Okay.
So I pull the car over. As soon
as I close the door of the car,
I hear the automatic door locks.
Right? And then I take this big deep

(22:12):
breath of air, and it felt like someone
took two knives and sliced my nose open.
You know? And then I go, okay.
This is cold. And then I turn around
to get back in the car, and my
hand freezes to the doorknob.
Like, you know, in the early days when
you're a kid and your tongue stuck to
the
piece of metal that you didn't someone dared
you to lick. Right? Brother. Yeah. I did

(22:33):
it. Sure. And then they
they wouldn't and they wouldn't open the car
door. And I'm like then I finally got
in the car, and they say, so so,
Yang, what do you think?
Is it cold enough for you out there?
I go, yeah. They go, okay. Next truck
stop, you're buying something to wear because you're
not gonna have survived through this. And then

(22:53):
from there, we just drove. You know, we
we went Thunder Bay, Ontario. It was Winnipeg.
Places
I've never seen. You know? Got to experience
some amazing things like the northern lights,
which just were incredible.
You know? And then they they did a
small cross Canada tour, and they drove and
drove
and drove. And drove some work.

(23:14):
Yeah. We shared the driving response. I did
a lot of the driving, but they shared
responsibilities,
you know, and along with, you know, doing
various drugs and things to just, you know,
keep your attention on
at bay. You know? Yeah.
But that was the beginning of it all
until the one show in in

(23:36):
August of,
I would think it was August '74
when we went,
with Uriah Heep on their world tour
across The United States. And we went to,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
which was their first show in front of
15,000 people.

(23:57):
How did the audience
take them in?
Amazing.
It was like
everybody was in shock. We were all in
shock.
It was so amazing. It was probably one
of the best experiences they ever had.
You know? The roar of a crowd.
You can't you can't really imagine that when

(24:18):
you're playing clubs for most of your life
Mhmm. Until you get out there and you're
like, oh,
hey.
This is really happening to us.
It's a hell of a communion
to have that between the audience and the
and the musicians and from either side.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Really, you raised each other up in a

(24:39):
lot of ways then. Yes. Like, siblings. We
we that's exactly how it was. Like, you
know, I was maybe
a year older than them at the time.
I was young.
I think I was, like, just turned 22
when I started working for them.
And I know I was I started at
the agency when I was around, I guess,
20.

(25:00):
You know, I got booted out of university
at 19, so
it was a good start.
As you're watching them develop, where along the
way do you start
thinking, okay. There there needs to be some
drama around what's going on. And first of
all, by the way, as a lyricist,
my primary thing, I I write

(25:20):
lyric and melody. Right. Those things are
are incredibly important to me.
And I remember
our mutual friend, Paul, he and I dated
a million years ago, and one of the
first things he did was introduce me to
Rush. I was out of high school
and listening to The Cure and, you know,
all that kind of stuff. You know, Yaz

(25:42):
and this sort of Euro influence pop music.
And he's like, oh, you gotta listen to
this. And
I was like, what is happening?
Who is this? The lyrics were so
incredible. Just the storytelling, and Yeah. I I
was hooked I was hooked immediately.
It's it's unusual for a female to be

(26:04):
hooked on Rush.
And as we as we saw in our
demographics
for the first
twenty years that we were out there, you
know, it was,
mainly a male oriented audience.
Sure. Lizzie would be very upset to hear
that, by the way. She is
she would be like, wait a minute.
She would know it. I mean, it's it
was common. You go to, what, you go

(26:25):
to a rush, you know,
a a rush concert,
it would be 95%
males.
Yeah. Well, Lizzy's one of the greatest musicians
I've ever worked with, so I think that
there's also something
musicianship
recognizes
musicianship as well. And that's the thing. Like,
for me, it started out about the lyrics,
but then once I that spell was sort

(26:48):
of, you know, in its place,
the new spell of realizing
the the
I guess I use the word mathematics, but
just the the intricacies
of the music
for me. I mean, I know I'm preaching
to the choir, but it's it was
unbelievable.
It was unbelievable to myself.

(27:09):
I mean, you know, you take the best
jazz fusion,
you combine it with the heaviest of rock,
and, you know, there were there were bands
at the time that were doing things like
that.
I mean, you know, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer
were there doing it. King Crimson was doing
it.
Yes were doing it. Genesis were doing it.
There there was a lot, and Rush took

(27:30):
it to the next level. But Neil Peart,
the lyricist,
was a genius. He was just brilliant. I
mean, it
he was
a voracious reader. You can tell. And he
would, you know yeah. He would read endlessly.
I mean, when we were on those drives,
all he would do is read book after
book after book.
You know? And then when he he would

(27:51):
pen these lyrics,
and it was amazing, like, you know, how
the guys the other two guys would writing
the music
would intertwine this together.
And it just came out to be just
really incredible.
You know, I'm very fortunate to be at
the right place at the right time as
well. We got along famously. We still get

(28:11):
along to this day.
It's just a really
nice brotherhood of
a life's work,
basically.
Yeah. At what point did the theatrics start
where you start developing
the visual aspect?
It started right away because as soon as
they we started playing live,

(28:32):
you know, in a professional,
I just because I had grown up
doing lighting in high school
for for various plays and things. It was
sort of,
a hobby for me. So I I took
it on. I
I I was not only the tour manager
and tour accountant.

(28:52):
I was also the lighting director, and
I would get what I was told by
the headliners.
Sometimes they were nice. Sometimes they were awful.
Sometimes they would give rush sound check. Sometimes
they would say no sound check. You don't
get to put your gear on till the
audience is in, and you can't eat until
we're done
in catering. You know? It was, like, some

(29:13):
really bad things, and there were some really
nice people. Like, the guys in KISS were,
like, really friendly.
You know? And then the the Uriah Heep
guys were amazing. You know? There was, like
we get to travel with
famous
bands that were out there selling, you know,
millions of tickets,
and some friendly and some little uptight.

(29:35):
I mean, Russia was a force to be
reckoned with. There were a lot of the
headliners.
Really didn't wanna give them the whole PA
system to crank up because they were afraid.
Like, here's the three guys from Canada. They're
just tearing it up. They're ripping it. And,
you know,
better tone them down a little bit. Over
the over the course of the years,
I got very into the theatrical lighting, you

(29:58):
know. And,
over, you know, over the course of
the forty years that I was with them,
I sort of developed my own style,
and I incorporated
all my effects. A lot of my ideas
came from nature
and from lighting, from watching the sun through
clouds, watching the moon through clouds,

(30:19):
watching the moon through trees, lying
out of my mind one night, stone, looking
at wind chimes, thinking they would make great
video walls, and, you know, things like this.
And I would be putting these different shows
together, and, you know, everyone was different.
And I would do what was called I
call it lighting choreography,

(30:40):
where I would take the lyrics and the
lights and sort of merge them together.
So when they're singing about something, the lights
would be,
you know, replicating what they're
singing about.
And a lot of times, I thought I'm
the only one that knows that. Right?
Like, oh, yeah. I did this, but no
one's gonna know that. And then sometimes you

(31:00):
will get fans that will come up to
you and go,
I like what you did here when they
when they said, you know, this and that
and this and that, and you did all
those things.
Then I'm like, wow. Someone does see that.
So now it's not for nothing. It's for
me and for them. Huge fan base. I
don't doubt that at all. I feel like
the work that you've done over the decades,

(31:22):
which is mind boggling anyway,
that
you have inspired
up and coming lighting designers,
certainly.
It's true because I do get a lot
of mail, you
know, especially on Instagram. Like, you know, I'm
on I don't have a lot of followers,
but I have
enough. And I have, you know, people in
Facebook that are constantly saying if it wasn't

(31:43):
for you, I wouldn't be in this business,
and thank you so much. And then, you
know, I
it warms my heart. It makes me feel
great. I know that
you know, I've I've always given young people
and old people the time of day. When
they wanna know things, they ask questions. I'll
answer them. I'll take the time
if I have it. You know?

(32:04):
But when I'm working, I don't see anybody.
It's like, you know, I can have
close friends that would stand in front of
me while the show is going, and
I don't see them. I'm in a little
zone that
is my own little zone.
And then they would get upset. And at
the end of the night, they would come
back, and they go, oh, you're too good
for us now? And I went, what do
you mean? And I said, well, we're standing

(32:25):
in front of you waving. I said, do
you think I can see anything when I'm
doing a show?
I said, I'm zoned in on the stage
in my mind,
and I'm talking
to a dozen spotlight operators calling
queues. I said, I'm not I'm out there.
You know? I said, I'm sorry, but, you
know, hi.
I say hi now. Here here you are.

(32:47):
Yeah. I mean, I think that,
for lack of a better word, there's it's
choreography,
and you have to be so on
the what's going on so that you can
make sure the choreography
is doing what it's supposed to. Exactly. And
a lot of the things that I do
are are, you know, automatic. Like, I'll do
on the fly.
I have a computer running down the majority

(33:08):
of the cues, but I'll augment those cues
manually
just to get in there for timing and
and do certain things, especially with Russia's timing.
You know? I don't I
don't want a computer doing,
you know, timing because it would look sterile.
You bring up a great thing that I
wanted to talk about, actually, in
that AI is, little by little, taking over

(33:31):
everything creative.
I am embracing AI in in in all
different ways.
There's AI that's being used in some of
the immersive technologies that are
coming in Mhmm. That I've been working with
on other shows,
you know, and talking with other bands.
And,
there is a technique from a company that's

(33:54):
out there called Luz, l u z, or
l u zed, as they say up here.
And,
this company does
immersive
stage sets
where they they make it look like there's
something on stage that's really not there,
And it's incredible. And then when they
throw lighting through it,

(34:15):
they use,
artificial intelligence to shade the video that's being
projected. So when the lights move, the shadows
are created by AI.
So, like, holographic?
Yeah.
So it's basically they take little pixels, and
they break it up, and they send it
out. So if you're standing there
watching a show and there's a and there's

(34:36):
a, let's say,
a a warehouse scene where you're standing inside
of a warehouse, and the the depth perception
of that warehouse is incredible,
and you are convinced that it's a built
stage set that's existing there.
Well, you're convinced there until the next song
comes up and they're standing on a, you
know, field of flowers, and it's, like, not

(34:58):
there anymore.
All the world's stage. This is something insane.
This is something really amazing, and,
it's it warrants looking into.
How do you feel about what you said
a few minutes ago about the sterility of
computers
in comparison?
I would never just use a computer to

(35:18):
do the whole job. I would always use
a human element interjecting. I don't like when
it's sterile.
Used to be the time when you used
to have spotlight operators, physical
people up in the truss.
Now you have these infrared cameras, and you
have lighting that you're programming into the
as spotlights. And you have guys under the
stage manipulating and following the artists around.

(35:39):
And, you know, they can trigger the cues,
or they could or you can throw them
into your lighting console. But I love that
human feel of people actually triggering cues on
on a call
rather than just touching a button and going
boop boop boop boop. There it is. You
know it's gonna be there. I like the
human error factor too. You know? It just
brings a different feel to the show.

(36:01):
Well, I like the human element. I mean,
I think of bands like
Pearl Jam and Counting Crows where there's no
auto tune. It's just the voice doing what
the voice does. Yeah. And I'd much rather
hear that
that organic
the beauty of what the voice will do
in any given moment than having it

(36:23):
tuned up to perfection as so many
artists.
It's funny. Rush as a three piece, they
they used computers to trigger
pedals on stage that had, you know,
sounds that would come outside because, it was
only a three piece.
You know, Getty would play keyboards with his

(36:43):
feet sometimes.
You know? And they have all these sounds
that were, like,
in there, but they were triggering them live
even though they were there. It's not like
a computer coming in. They were not ever
playing to track. Sure. Well, Imogen,
heaped it that a lot. She,
she had the
the music that she would start singing something

(37:04):
on stage, record it, and then that would
become the loop, and then she would sing
something else in her car. I think she
still probably does it that way. It's very
cool to watch.
I I do like that hybrid of machine
and man or woman.
I I just I can't help but worry
that
the beauty of boredom
and creativity
intersecting to create incredible things. And if the

(37:27):
computers are constantly doing the thing,
then where does the creativity
where
if we're not bored because we're constantly being
placated by a computer,
what are we missing out on? That's
Yeah. I know I I know what you're
saying, and I'm hoping it doesn't go that
way Because I always love the human element.

(37:49):
That's why I'm here in the human I'm
here because of the human element.
Is there's something to be said about it.
You know? There's something to be said about
somebody making a mistake.
You know? Nobody is infallible, and it's kind
of
brings you into that that live experience.
Well, humanity is a big deal.
It is. Yeah. It's true. And we're desperate

(38:11):
for it as well. And I think there's
a truth to humanity that that's why resonates.
This is why music resonates so deeply with
humans is that
is that it it stirs up the truth
with a capital t,
and
you can't replicate that. It doesn't it's just
not the same. Oh. You know? Yeah. It's
no. It's not. I mean, it's just one

(38:33):
of those things where
it's just enjoyable. When you get out there
and you're performing
and
the band is just
on 10
gelling,
The audience is is participating
in it.
No better feeling than that. I out of
their minds.
And then I'm standing in the backroom pushing

(38:55):
buttons,
talking to to talking to to spot operators.
I'm fascinated by the idea that you can
create an entire
stage setting that looks three-dimensional
and real and that the person standing right
in front of it wouldn't be able to
tell the difference. That fascinates me.
Well, you know, it's funny because, you know,

(39:16):
the guys in Rush never ever really saw
their show till they started doing videos and
helping to edit.
So they never knew what was going on.
And then one day,
you know,
I think Getty was in the editing room
doing something.
And he basically
said, listen. Don't tell the other guys I'm
saying this, but,
you know, it was amazing what I you

(39:37):
got what you're doing.
I had no idea.
I mean, it was really funny. He went
to see talking heads once,
and then he came back after the show,
and he goes, oh, they had this amazing
effect.
I said, what was it? He goes, oh,
they had this light that was, like, over
their head on a on a light post,
and it looked like a shower. It looked
like it was raining

(39:58):
on them at times. And I'm like, really?
He says, yeah. We should we should look
into that. I said, Jed, we have a
100 of those.
He went, what?
Yeah. They had no idea because they're they
play every night. They don't look at what's
going on. Sure.
How how about some stories from the road

(40:20):
that you haven't maybe told before?
Well, I've told them all, I think.
Stories from the road.
There's too many, and they're they're very long.
I mean, I could tell you one that
was hair raising, but it it would be
in a completely whole other episode.
Oh, well, how about the highlights
or the lowlights?

(40:41):
The highlights,
I met an A and R guy that
worked for a record label one year
who was very good friends with this gentleman
who was a drug dealer.
And he would bring them to the shows,
but you know, and they would bring
different samples of different things
that people would like to try.

(41:01):
And then in return, you'd give them some
passes,
and then they would come see the show
and sing and see you next time.
And then they would show up in other
cities, you know, the same same routine.
And over the course of of time,
you know,
the record company rep finally
told me that he works for,

(41:21):
you know,
a dubious family down in, in Florida.
He has to report back to them all
the time, and
this guy would carry
an old school
way old school cell phone,
like, in an attached case with a whip
antenna on it.
And then,
you know, it made me a little paranoid

(41:41):
over the course of about six or seven
times when he visited our tour.
And then
one day,
he wound up
killing two people in, Dayton, Ohio.
And,
you know, I get a phone call from
the A and R guy. I'm not coming
to your show in
in Kentucky, but,

(42:02):
if this person shows up, you're gonna have
to turn him into the police
because he just murdered two people and left
the they found the bodies in his house.
And I'm like, no. No. No. No. No.
No. No.
It was like one of those. Right? And
I'm like, no.
And he goes,
it made me so paranoid. Right? I told

(42:23):
my friend who was the promoter in Louisville.
I told him this
brief story that I just spoke with you
about, and I said, listen. If anything weird
happens, let me know.
At about 05:00 in the afternoon, he goes,
I don't wanna panic you, but there's about
20 black Chryslers just surrounded in the arena.
And I went, thank you.
And then I had to go to the

(42:44):
whole crew and say,
get rid of everything you have.
You know?
They hated me for this.
There's a lot of there's a lot of
toilet flushing happening.
A lot of plastic bags emptied. Sure enough.
Yeah. It was
the the Drug Enforcement Agency and the FBI.
They were all there.
They they came in the building, and

(43:06):
I made the mistake of going up to
them, you know, because I had to say
something.
After the show was over, they were all
gone.
The guy never showed up, and I was
happy for that. It was just
very scary, and I had to do the
whole show that night with a big lump
in my throat
because they threatened that I was going to
jail after the show was over.

(43:27):
They had tape recordings of my conversations with
the A and R guy.
Oh, yeah. They had they had everything going,
and it turned out that this friend who
was the drug dealer
was actually a DEA agent that was hired
to infiltrate the mob
in Florida,
and he turned.
Once he saw how much money was being
made, he went from a DEA agent to

(43:49):
and
that's who I was dealing with. So that
Holy shit. So this is just an idea
of one of the stories.
Oh, wow. That's incredible
and cinematic.
It is.
Oh my god. How the hell did everyone
function back in the day? Because I know
that everything was high as kittens.

(44:11):
How in the world? You had some kind
of control.
You knew when to do it and when
not to do it.
You could do it on days off. You
don't do it when you're working.
Yeah. It's one of the things. And if
you did do it when we're working, you
do it behind closed doors, but no one
knew.
Yeah. But but, you know, there was one
of the things where you you just over

(44:32):
time, it went away
because you can't do it forever and live.
Right. Of course. You have all these people
that will surround you all the time, and,
you know, they'll give you as much as
you want until you're dead. And then once
you put them once you're gone, then they're
gonna go, well, who let's go to the
next person. Let's go to the next band.
You know? Once you're gone, they'll just move
on, and they'll go to the next person

(44:52):
and do it to them.
So you have to realize that it's something
that you really have to control.
And, you know, there is a bit of
control involved. And the guys in Rush,
they I I wouldn't call them, you know,
drug guys at all.
Matter of fact, at one point in time,
Getty called, you know,
smoking hash and marijuana, the foul fumes of

(45:14):
failure.
The three f's.
Oh, yeah. It's funny. Like, you know, we
we had our our moments out there. We
we did some crazy stuff. A lot of
memories you can barely remember. I have to
well, eventually, I'll have to write a book.
I keep saying it. My wife hates me
because I've been saying it for, like, twenty
years now, and, you know, I don't do

(45:35):
it because I'm not a writer.
And,
she's like, just talking to a tape recorder.
I'm like, I just can't do that. I
need to be prompted. I have so many
stories.
I could look at a map and be
prompted at stories. You know? I'll write it
with you. We'll write it together.
Perfect. I'll interview you, and we'll do it
like an interview book. That'd be fun. Do

(45:57):
you know how many interviews it would take?
Yeah. A lot.
Yeah. But it'd be fun. It'd be so
much fun. It would be fun. This was
this is fun just being here. I didn't
even talk technicals, and it's good. As you
developed your style and lighting, you turned that
into a mega company.
Well, it's not not I wouldn't say mega

(46:18):
company. It was a nice family sort of,
business. Like, you know, it's it's a mom
and pop. I did, you know, bring a
few lighting fixtures to fruition
over the years and some consoles that I
put together that, for the time,
were mind boggling
because no one could do some of those

(46:38):
effects with the consoles that existed.
And I had a good team of people
in New York that I used
who worked a lot with the Fillmore East
and the Fillmore West, and
they would help me bring my dreams to
fruition.
And they're still on the wall at a
company in New York called c Factor.
And, you know, a lot of my old
consoles are hanging on the

(46:59):
the wall of fame up there
or the wall of shame. Depends how you
wanna call it. Yeah. I mean, it was
it was amazing. I had a lot of
people at times come up to me and
go, how did you do that?
And I'd say, oh, it was magic. I
I did it with pins.
And I did it. I used to have
little pin matrixes
set up. You know?
It was very similar to something off of

(47:20):
Star Trek.
And I had friends of mine that actually
were, like,
Trekkies that would come up with some ideas
based around the ideas that I had to
give them.
And some of their ideas, I adopted to.
We just put them together in lighting consoles.
Every now and then, I run across somebody
who said, oh, I have one of those
old consoles that you did

(47:41):
with a joystick on it that we could
do. I'm like, yeah. I had a joystick
that had north, south, east, and west, and
then we'd have a series of them.
And you put
with using pins, you could create groups of
lighting to go to the north, south, east,
and west. And when you would rotate the
joystick, it would chase the lights and
tatter them. That's cool. Yeah. It was kinda
fun.
How'd you meet your wife?

(48:03):
At a party
where most people meet their wives at parties.
I met her at two different parties
at two different times,
and she's amazing.
And
it was a party on a golf course,
and I sort of just loved her smile.
And she had recently been divorced,
and I just sort

(48:24):
of got along with her and chatted her
up, and we
got married. And it was
we're still married. Whoops. Part of the secret
is that if you travel a lot, then
the person is always sort of in a
state of missing you. That's really good.
It is. But she was a, you know,
she was a school teacher for many years.
So she was teaching, so she couldn't really
travel, but I would fly her out when

(48:45):
I could. Mhmm. And then when the summer
break came, she came on like Monsters of
Rock and all these, you know, when we
I was with a band ago from, from
Seattle called Queensryche for a while. I designed
some of their shows, and they were out
there with Rammstein and
Ozzy Osbourne and all the all these people.
And I would bring in a school teacher
from
Toronto out

(49:06):
to Monsters of Rock tour
and totally a fish out of water. It
was really fun.
Having grown up in Seattle, Queensryche, legendary, of
course.
Yeah. I was, I had the the
good fortune to work with them on the
Operation Minecraft
Empire tours. That's where we actually use multimedia

(49:27):
to the extreme and intermingled it with animation
and brought it to life in real time
on screens.
Which I feel like was the forerunner to
bands like Nine Inch Nails and all the
things that they did and all
those types of bands. If it weren't for
you and the things that you were developing,
those things either might not have ever happened

(49:48):
or it would have been a lot longer
further off the
the timeline of life.
This is true.
When you've been with the band for several
decades, you are family, you are brothers,
you have
raised each other up in every conceivable
way,
and then
death visits.

(50:09):
And how do you readjust?
How does
how does that of everything around it. I
mean, devastating.
How does one soldier on and
readjust?
It's very difficult to soldier on.
You know, it's it's extremely difficult to soldier
on, especially when you're

(50:29):
been through that. But everyone must soldier on,
as we know.
So when you lose a family man, you
must soldier on. It just takes time.
And
it's one of those things where
no one can force a person to soldier
on.
It has to be
in here, inside of you,
and you have to want to soldier on

(50:50):
to do it. So when the time comes
and people want to, they'll soldier on.
But, you know, people have to respect that.
There's a lot of people don't respect that.
You know?
I mean,
crazy.
You know? Luckily, I I have my company,
Production Design International, and this company we're basically

(51:10):
a laser company because I love lasers, and
I love doing work with lasers.
And we've been doing, like we just did
the Janet Jackson
residency
in Las Vegas, and we did her tour
prior to
that. We we've been doing tools since 02/2006.
We're just leaving tomorrow to to go out
to,
Australia, Hawaii, Japan, New Zealand,

(51:33):
and,
to do lasers for them on that tour.
So that's great.
So, you know, we do a lot of
corporate shows, a lot of,
you know, new music shows out here,
EDM shows.
You You know, we did Kygo recently.
You know, it's all great.
No. We're open to we're open to everything.
I love music.

(51:55):
You know? I love Tame Impala. That's one
of my favorites.
It's a song called Let It Happen. Just
listen to it. It's kinda cool.
Are you a good sleeper? How do you
get the energy to do all these things?
Oh, I'm I am a good sleeper. I
mean, I could sleep, but it's just you
know? I I'm very energetic. I I do
have a lot of electricity inside,

(52:16):
you know,
for my age.
I have a I I have kind of
a funny question about cover bands.
I'm curious. Did
the guys ever
sneak and see any really great Rush cover
bands that impressed them?
There are hundreds
I know. Good Rush cover bands out there.

(52:36):
Oh, good ones. Okay. Guys in the band,
I don't think, have any interest in seeing
a Rush cover.
But
just like
an actor doesn't like to watch their own
movies sometimes,
I have seen the Rush cover that.
It makes me they make me smile. I
I have to say that. And they're
you know, kudos for what they do. There's

(52:57):
a there's a ton of them out there.
You know? Some better than others. What I
really smile about is the young kids that
are, like,
three to six years old that are playing
Neil Peart
drum solos. You know? That's what really makes
me smile.
And,
it's just you know, it's a legacy that,
you know, they there's a generation
of people that are picking up on this.

(53:19):
I mean, the lot you know, the last
tour with Rush
in 2014,
'15,
even even before that, from 2012 to 2015,
people were coming out of the woodwork that
would never ever come to a Rush show,
including
a large female presence,
which was great,
which we had never seen like that. It
was, I would say,

(53:40):
it was up
to maybe sixty forty.
It was pretty amazing.
And then then then there are people like
Jack Black would turn up, and then all
these famous people would turn up, which, you
know, it happened once in a blue moon
in the early days.
But then towards that last five years, it
was like it's coming to a pinnacle. It
was crazy.

(54:01):
Were the band really super hard on are
these perfectionists? I mean, to to create stuff
like that, did it come naturally and easily,
or did they suffer for their art?
They they suffered for I have to say,
they suffered for their art because they were
always challenging themselves.
Rush always challenged themselves.
You know, if they could do something easily,

(54:23):
they didn't wanna do it.
So they have to do something that's difficult.
So let's create something that's that's even more
intense
in
a in a in a more strange time
signature,
and they would do it
and would be like, wow.
Like, who does that?
You know?

(54:43):
I mean, people there's a lot of people
that just didn't get them because of the
broken time signatures sometimes.
You know, there's there's a lot of there's
a lot of songs you can't just along
to
because they're
broken. You know?
They they flow, but the time signatures are
constantly changing.
And the and and they're abstract time signatures.
And you gotta love it. You know? Either

(55:04):
you love it or you don't. I just
love it because I have to groove into
it. Right? Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think that they truly
are it's not hyperbole to say they truly
are a band that stands alone. There is
there are bands that
I don't know. When I think of Rush,
I just think they are here. Here they

(55:25):
are. Everybody else is everywhere else, but here
is Rush.
Yeah.
They are. They're they're a different plane from
from other bands, but the other bands don't.
Some of them realize it. I mean, a
lot of them realize it, but some of
them don't.
Yeah. It's great stuff. And if you've never
heard Rush, anyone listening, definitely

(55:45):
check them out. My
I know this makes me sound very sort
of, I don't know. I I maybe it's
girly, but I love the signals album the
best. I do. Yeah. It's a great album.
I love that record.
I really appreciate your time
and Well, thank you so much. Energy, and
this has been a really interesting conversation.

(56:06):
That's great. I'm glad.
That's what it's supposed to be,
I hope.
And if you really wanna see some of
my work live, I mean, I would suggest
you go to YouTube
and look at Rush playing, a song called
The Garden Life.
If people wanna track you down and find
you out there on the World Wide Web,
do you have an Instagram? What's it under?

(56:26):
Snow North.
Snow North.
Yes. That's me. Snow North. I also have
one for, under PDI effects,
production design international
effects, PDI effects.
Your company. Yes. So I have a company
one, and I have mine. Very modest.
And your website?
My website is PDI effects.

(56:48):
[e-mail].
And if you wanna check something cool, I
could see my wife's she makes jewelry.
Oh, cool. It has a nice jewelry website.
It's it's Ursula Ungerleider
designs dot com, ursula.
My last name, Ungerleider, u n g e
r l e I d e r
designs dot com. And that's all about jewelry,

(57:11):
not about me. She's so cool, and she
makes really nice things. Silversmith,
goldsmith, she's a gem cutter.
She has her you know, she works in
a shop on on Queen Street in Toronto.
Rare gems.
She works with, you know, rubies, diamonds.
Ruby's are my favorite. She's a stonecutter.
She's, you know, cabochon

(57:31):
maker.
She she even taught me how to make
some cabochons once.
Killed my fingers, but it's okay.
I tried it.
Come to Toronto and meet you guys. You
should. Come come up. Yeah. Thank you for
listening, everybody. And, Howard, you are welcome anytime.
Thank you. Appreciate it, Susan.

(57:52):
Yeah. It was really great. Oh, I really
appreciate it. Thank you so much for giving
me the the the space and the time
to do this.
Absolutely.
Thanks, everybody.
Bye.
Bye. See you.
Rate, review, and subscribe to Hey Human podcast
on iTunes, iHeart, Spotify, wherever you get your

(58:12):
podcasts. Thanks.
Bye.