Welcome to the unlikely capital of rock’n’roll

TO WALK AROUND Lititz on a perfect spring day is to see small-town America at its picture-postcard best. Pensioners stroll along the main street, looking in the windows of gift shops, stopping at the tea shops. With around 10,000 residents, the town in Pennsylvania’s Amish country is so pristine that if you saw it in a film you might assume it was a set. You almost certainly wouldn’t guess it was the rock’n’roll capital of the world.

Yet about a mile north of the town centre is an unremarkable industrial park in which the world’s biggest pop and rock shows are made. The boxy buildings on the Rock Lititz campus house around 40 companies, which between them supply everything a touring artist requires. The firms that founded Rock Lititz, Clair Global and Tait Towers, take care of the two staples, amplification and set-building. Others fill in the gaps. One makes only the motors to drive the hoists that pull PA systems into the rafters of arenas; another makes only stage pyrotechnics. There are two huge rehearsal spaces in which the shows can be assembled and road-tested.

Rock Lititz takes artists from the first glimmerings of an idea to the final production rehearsal. There is nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world. And it happened by accident.

In the 1960s two brothers from the town, Gene and Roy Clair, had a hobby supplying PA systems for local shows. In 1966 Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons played Franklin & Marshall College in nearby Lancaster, and the Clairs lent a hand. According to Clair Global’s creation myth, the band members’ wives noticed subsequent shows didn’t sound as good, and the brothers were brought on the road with their own bespoke system. “There you go,” says Troy Clair, son of Gene and now the firm’s CEO. “That was the beginning of a sound company travelling with the band.”

A dozen years later an Australian called Michael Tait—who had been designing lighting and staging for Yes, a prog-rock band—came to Lititz following immigration difficulties in Britain, and set up Tait Towers. The town’s reputation began to spread. But it was not until 2014, when the two companies established Rock Lititz, that it turned from a small hub into the fulcrum of rock.

Put another dime in the jukebox, baby

It is an extraordinary place: part manufacturing centre (Clair Global, for example, still makes its own PA systems, and sends teams on tour with artists), part R&D paradise and part logistics operation (a visit to Rock Lititz reveals just how many moving parts are required to put a show on the road). The attention to detail is staggering. Clair Global monitors all its tours so closely that on its screens you could see that in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the yellow ink in the singer Dua Lipa’s printer was down to 17%.

Two decades ago Rock Lititz might not have thrived in the same way. When artists could make money from recorded music, there was less need to sell tickets to live events at premium prices. After the internet caused a crash in revenue from recordings, that changed. Then came the rise of social media, which had two effects, according to Adam Davis, boss of Tait Towers. It showed there was a global demand for these big shows—and provided the ideal tool to market them.

“We’re making these moments that people will remember for ever,” Mr Davis says. He notes that promotion of these events happens largely through pictures on social media, so a dazzling production is “almost a marketing expense”, which allows for higher ticket prices. Tait Towers’ shows are designed to look as spectacular to the Instagrammer in the back row as to the punters at the front. Simple human vanity takes care of the rest. “I’ve spent $1,000 to come to a sold-out event. Next thing I do is brag about the fact I was there, right? And so I’m going to send you this incredible picture of me being amazing.” Even if the music disappoints, Mr Davis says, the photos will look wonderful.

Amish country turned out to be the ideal location for businesses that are dependent on bespoke parts and custom manufacturing, in which the local Amish and Mennonite communities specialise. When other commercial outfits have struggled to make the items that big shows needed, say both Mr Clair and Mr Davis, adaptable Amish craftsmen have done so with ease. One of Tait Towers’ regular suppliers has been a Mennonite-run company that makes cattle grids: the precision in cutting metal is a transferable skill.

The Pennsylvania countryside has another unanticipated advantage: because it is more conducive to getting things done than distracting big cities, bands themselves have descended on it, too. When The Economist visited, a stadium act was in secret session in a giant rehearsal studio (originally built to test shows before the artists got involved). Musicians and crews stay at the on-site hotel. Lititz may be the only small town where you might see Justin Bieber or Ariana Grande popping out to buy a toothbrush—and bumping into an Amish craftsman on the way.

Covid-19 brought the live-music industry to a halt. Now business is back, and Rock Lititz is busier than ever. But rising demand—up 30% on pre-pandemic levels, estimate Mr Clair and Mr Davis—and varying coronavirus protocols have brought their own difficulties. Getting missing parts from one side of the world to the other overnight is harder than it was. There are shortages of all the things tours need, from trucks to screws. “Things as simple as a stock three-quarter-inch nut: the world is running out,” Mr Davis says.

But Rock Lititz rolls on. By the loading docks of Clair Global’s factory, the flight cases were piling up. When everything had been tested, they were shipped out to the annual Coachella festival in California. Rock just doesn’t happen without Lititz. ■