PRG Supplies Motley Crue's PARK MGM Residency

	"The TORNADOs really gave us that extra punch," says Cooper. "They're super bright, fast, and the pixel mapping lets us make them feel musical."

Motley Crue's limited-run residency landed at Dolby Live at Park MGM in Las Vegas from September 12 to October 3, with lighting gear supplied by PRG. Rather than open with a full arena spectacle, the show began in a haze of incandescent glow: ACL bars, PAR cans, and floor strobes flickering behind Tommy Lee. For those first two songs, the band and audience time-traveled back to 1981, when Motley Crue was a gritty club act tearing up the Sunset Strip. Then came "Wild Side," and the rig erupted, erasing the illusion in a flood of modern power and color.

"The idea was to make the audience think, 'Wait, is this the whole show?'" says lighting designer Michael Cooper. "Two songs under a tiny, dirty-club rig, and then we blow the room wide open."

The team had just five days of previsualization before moving into rehearsals, a tight schedule even for veterans. But programmer Christopher Smith says the clarity of Cooper's design made his programming feel natural and flow quickly: "It was condensed, but we both knew I needed to come in with a really well-put-together show. By the time we hit rehearsals, everything just worked. We didn't have to rebuild much at all -- just small tweaks. It was one of those rare times where you hit play and think, Oh my God, that's great."

Recreating the feel of an old-school incandescent rig meant thinking differently about timing and rhythm. "With LEDs, you can snap things instantly," says Smith. "But with incandescent PARs or Fresnels, you need to feel the fade. There's decay -- so your timing instincts need to shift. It becomes all about rhythm instead of color or pattern changes."

Behind Tommy Lee, Cooper placed vintage-style strobes updated with GLP JDCs from lighting vendor PRG's inventory. Smith treated them all like analog fixtures: "You get that same club energy, just with a little more punch."

For those opening songs, the illusion worked so well that the crowd didn't quite know how to react. "People pulled out their phones like, 'Wait, what is this?'" Smith laughs. "By song two, they were in it -- and by the third song, we just blew the place apart."

Once the full rig came online, the show expanded into a kinetic, widescreen experience -- hundreds of cues spanning a mix of fixtures that Cooper and Smith pushed hard: ACME Lighting TORNADOs and PixelLines, Robe FORTEs, PRG Icons, a bank of PRG Best Boy washes, and a Follow-Me system provided by Matt Mills for precise spot tracking throughout the set.

Visually, the design was anything but traditional. "I didn't want symmetry," says Cooper. "Motley Crüe has never been tidy. The rig needed to feel like it was about to fly apart, but in a way that still hits the mark musically."

Cooper intentionally built asymmetry into nearly every layer of the design: offset trusses, uneven fixture groupings, and angled video pieces that broke the horizon line.

"Everything was a little off-axis," he explains. "Even when nothing's moving, the stage feels like it's in motion. That tension, that push and pull, is the band's energy."

"The TORNADOs really gave us that extra punch," says Cooper. "They're super bright, fast, and the pixel mapping lets us make them feel musical. Between those and the PixelLines, we could draw rhythm in midair, almost like watching a guitar solo in light."

Cooper notes that the FORTEs delivered the muscle behind the widescreen moments. "They're the horsepower of the rig," he says. "You can rely on them for those big, arena-sized looks that just fill the room."

The Follow-Me system, he adds, "was a huge help in a residency setting -- tight room, repeating show. Matt dialed in the calibration perfectly, so our focus tracks stayed consistent night after night."

"We built an entire song around the Best Boy washes, because they held up better than expected," Smith says. "They're older fixtures, but they did exactly what I needed. The TORNADOs were great for bending light into riffs -- you could feel the guitar through them. When the tempo's right, it's like tracing the lead lines with light."

The show's seamless feel began long before opening night. The production management and design for the residency were handled by Cooper and his colleagues, Ashley Zapar and Robert Long, via their company A to Z Live. Set design started over a year earlier, evolving through multiple revisions as ideas progressed from early sketches to the final stage.

That long process helped to build trust and alignment across the creative and production teams, setting the stage for a smooth execution once they hit rehearsals. "The Crue team has been together a long time," says Smith. "They know what works, and it's just a great environment to step into. Everyone's on the same page, no ego, just getting it done."

Cooper adds that the crew's experience was essential for quick adaptation as last-minute changes came in from the band. "We had moments where Nikki [Sixx, of Motley Crue] wanted a truss shifted or something adjusted for stage traffic, and Ashley's team just made it happen," Cooper says. "They were incredibly efficient. No drama -- just solutions."

That ease extended to vendor support as well. When Cooper and Smith requested extra strobes to fill out the ground row, PRG's Las Vegas shop team made the change instantly. "It was literally, 'Yep, you got it'," Smith recalls. "No hesitation. That kind of responsiveness keeps your momentum going."

What made the residency stand out isn't just the scale of the rig but the way it followed the band's pulse. Each cue seemed to move in sync with the kick drum or a guitar bend: light as choreography, not backdrop. "For us, it was about rhythm," says Smith. "You don't just chase beats, you chase feel."

Lighting Gear List:
grandMA3 Full Size: 2
Acme Tornado: 48
Acme Pixelline: 71
Robe Robin FORTE: 62
Robe Robin ESPRITE: 31
PRG Best Boy Wash: 26
PRG Icon Edge: 33
GLP JDC1: 42
CHAUVET Professional Strike Array 4: 10
PAR 64: 12
ACL Bar: 4
6" Fresnel: 6
Two Light Molefay: 2
Look Solutions Orka Fogger - 2

Credits:
Production & Set Design: A to Z Live (Robert Long, Ashley Zapar, Michael Cooper)
Lighting Design: newfangled lighting, inc. (Michael Cooper)
Lighting Programming: The DDP Company (Christopher Smith)
Lighting Vendor: PRG (John Wiseman)
Follow Spots: Follow-Me (Matt Mills)
Video Content Design: Robert Long, Ashley Zapar, Colby Geneau, Andy Reuter, Fred Caron, Michael Cooper
Disguise Media Server Vendor and Programming: Riot Video (Colby Geneau)
Automation/Staging: SGPS
Fog: FFP Effects
Design and Previsualization Software: WYSIWYG 2025
Lighting Control: MA Lighting grandMA3
Photos: Brian Friedman
Management: Rick Canny (Favor the Artist), Allen Kovac (10th Street Entertainment)