How Stageco became part of the show
For over 30 years, Hedwig De Meyer has been building stages and dreams with Stageco, the Flemish company that has set the scene for acts as big as U2 and Pink Floyd, and is about to build the main stage for Tomorrowland
All the world’s a stage
De Meyer has just come back from the US, where he went to the Electric Daisy Carnival dance festival tour in Las Vegas and saw The Rolling Stones in Pittsburgh. Both events were developed and built with the steel and craftsmanship of Stageco, the company he launched 30 years ago in Haacht, Flemish Brabant.
De Meyer’s parents were farmers who grew chicory in the Flemish Brabant countryside, where from time to time the young Hedwig had to help out. That didn’t really entertain him, so this child of the ’60s became a DJ and took a degree in sound engineering at Brussels’ Narafi institute. More importantly, a meeting with Herman Schueremans, the organiser of a nearby local festival, would influence his career.
Back in 1979, it was on the very lawn of last weekend’s Rock Werchter festival that De Meyer built his first outdoor stage. “We wanted to hire a stage for the first open-air edition of the festival,” he says, “but we couldn’t find a proper one, so we decided to build one ourselves.” With a pole at the front to support the roof and a covered platform on both sides for the loudspeakers, their first stage wasn’t state-of-the-art, but it did the job.
Inside the universe
Over the next few years they would improve as stage builders. Six towers of the sturdiest steel, a black box in the middle and scenery elements next to, behind and above became the standard, and in 1985 Stageco appeared as a separate company.
The bands’ ideas drive our development
“A Genesis tour opened the eyes of the international scene,” recalls De Meyer. “Their production manager, charmed by our vision, asked us to build one of their three stage systems. We stood out, and when he got a production job for Pink Floyd, we were on board too.”
1994’s Division Bell tour was Stageco’s first custom-designed stage tour: a curved roof triggered the audience to “come inside the universe of the band” and was another step forward in stage technology. Stages became an extra artistic outlet for selling rock’n’roll dreams (and concert tickets), with U2’s 360° tour (2009-2011), better known as The Claw, a high point for Stageco.
“We started to collaborate closely with the architects of the bands, without taking over their creative jobs. Their ideas drive our development. Our XXL stage is designed entirely from an architectural point of view,” explains De Meyer, who’s wearing the company slogan — If you can imagine it, we can build it — on his sleeve.
Three spokes
The crisis in the recording industry in the first decade of the millennium came as an unforeseen opportunity for live entertainment and for Stageco: to sell concert tickets and once-in-a-lifetime experiences, you need stages.
“And no one can build them more efficiently,” confirms Geert Vandenbon. The author has just published 30 Years of Stageco: From Werchter to the World, an extensive chronicle of the company, containing pictures and stories from the early days up to the present. “It weighs two kilos,” he says, smiling. “That’s exactly what De Meyer liked about it, as it perfectly symbolises the heavy structures and the rock’n’roll world the company deals with.”
During his research, Vandenbon was especially impressed by the system behind the touring. “There are companies who can create stages, some can produce them, others can transport them, but no one combines these three elements like Stageco does,” he says, comparing the organisation to a perpetual motion machine, always respecting the tight time schedules.
“It’s a wheel with three spokes,” De Meyer says. “And we simply cannot be late. One of my old slogans was: Whatever the weather. You know, we have this sense of urgency which is totally lacking if you try to build a normal house in Belgium.”
The black steel men
Stageco can run three or four productions at the same time, with several stage systems and with their own staff, while still providing one-offs in between, anywhere in the world. “As I speak, we’re at the European Games in Baku,” De Meyer says.
“Apart from our stages and teams at the American dance festivals and with The Stones, we’ll start building stages in the US for Taylor Swift and Kenny Chesney. In Germany we’re now with rock group Böhse Onkelz at the Hockenheim race circuit. Next week there’s Werchter Classic and AC/DC, with whom we’ll do another world tour, and we’ll start building the main stage at Tomorrowland.”
When you’re a pioneer in your business, you can write the rules
This last assignment is proof that the rockers have entered the dance world. They have to, since many of their big rock act friends are getting old. “The challenging thing in this business is that it changes all the time and you have to adapt,” De Meyer says.
“Our workers used to be called the black steel men, since the black of our steel towers and trusses is one of our trademarks. We preferred steel over lightweight aluminium because of its strength, and we painted the steel in black because we didn’t want the material to stand out in the dark. All the emphasis had to be on the bands.”
Didn’t that change with tours like The Claw? “True, that was a perfect balance of stage, band and music, all making each other stronger,” he says. “The stage has become a part of the show. Which for us, humble people in nature as we are, was a top experience.”
It was also an experience for which U2 thanked the company in person at their 2011 “homecoming” gig in Brussels’ Koning Boudewijn stadium. When Bono asked The Edge who he thought was the nicest Belgian, the answer was: “Hedwig, of course”.
“I was surprised,” De Meyer admits. “But it was a pleasing encouragement. Still, after all these years, the most exciting thing is that when you’re a pioneer in your business, you can write the rules of the business.”
Photo: Hedwig De Meyer and The Claw
