Lenny Sasso Pumps Up Smashing Pumpkins Lollapalooza Show with CHAUVET Professional Color STRIKE M

	"I've always just gone with my gut regarding what I felt a song needed in terms of the color," Sasso says. "I don't know if that's some form of synesthesia, but I'll hear a song and just immediately know 'Yep, that song's blue." Photo: Lenny Sasso

Rock band Smashing Pumpkins and lighting designer Lenny Sasso headlined the Bud Light Stage at Chicago's Grant Park during Lollapalooza on July 31.

Sasso created a multi-faceted "four-act" design. Running through his lighting narrative was some deft strobing that morphed and changed directions during the show.

"Oh yeah! I definitely like to lay into it when the band goes there," Sasso says of his strobing. "Billy [ Corgan, the band's frontman] definitely lets me rip it. Also, I like to match a lot of the snare rolls and big hits from Jimmy [drummer, Jimmy Chamberlin]."

Key players in Sasso's strobing arsenal were 46 CHAUVET Professional Color STRIKE M motorized strobe-washes, 16 of which were from Fuse Technical Group, which supplied the floor package, while the remaining were part of the festival stage rig.

"The Color STRIKE Ms really killed it," says Sasso, who worked with PM Dennie Miller. "I was always running them in full-tilt 97-channel mode. During the show, I went back and forth from actually hitting the bar with the STRIKE M's shutter, and then incorporating the bar into swipes, sweeps, chases, etc. This was usually during big guitar solo moments, but also sometimes during softer, mellow ones. For the verses of 'Tonight, Tonight,' it was just all of the strobe bars doing slow dim chases. We also worked with our console to create a nice twinkling star looks. When we got into heavier tunes like 'War Dreams of Itself,' we'd use heavy, rapid sync strobes.

"I loaded the STRIKE Ms in a straight line in 40' truss," Sasso continues. "We placed them upstage directly behind the three inflatables. So, the STRIKE Ms really served two purposes -- providing backlight to strobe and blow through the band, and then as an uplighting source to create a wall of light that accentuated the 'Puppets,' as we called them."

Sasso varied colors to create a distinctive, captivating aura on stage. This was evident right from the start, when the band opened the show with "1979," from the landmark album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Throughout the entire number, he kept the band lit in a teal/turquoise feel, while uplighting them in a dark pink to make them pop against this background.

"I've always just gone with my gut regarding what I felt a song needed in terms of the color," Sasso says. "I don't know if that's some form of synesthesia, but I'll hear a song and just immediately know 'Yep, that song's blue.' Over the last few tours with The Pumpkins, I've been trying to dial back the amount of colors used in a song. I approached this Lollapalooza set as monochromatically as possible, with a secondary color punch here or there."

Sasso followed his vision throughout the four acts of his show. The first act featured the set's inflatables with their colorful rainbow side facing the audience. The designer controlled the video wall as a single color block, hitting strobes, big flashes, or "just hung on a solid color." The focus remained on the band, with fewer movements, and a lot of backlight.

For Act 2, the inflatables were spun 180 degrees to reveal their black-and-white sides with RGB pixels lighting them. The video wall was broken into pixel blocks for varying effects. "Essentially treating the video wall as a big STRIKE M," says Sasso, who noted that this section involved more movement and strobing.

The puppets were deflated for Act 3, and the video wall featured content created by Linda Strawberry (who worked with video director Ben Gilbert) that matched the darker, moodier songs. In the final act, the video wall became a combo of IMAG with Notch effects as Sasso ripped a panorama of colors from his lighting rig.