It's a scorching hot day, and the Hollywood Bowl staff has only a few

days left to prepare for the new season. Despite the last-minute

scurrying, the scene in production director Paul Geller's office is

calm, even if his iPhone rings with different tones every few minutes.

Geller oversees the magic place where every band, singer or soloist

wants to be — the stage — although he can't control everything, even

after 41 years on the job.

“We had a fox come onstage once, right in the middle of a

performance. It sat down behind the pianist for 20 minutes, like it was

listening to the music, then walked away. A family of six raccoons hung

out to listen on one of the arches once, and skunks passing through the

seats produce a 'wave' of people, too.”

Geller's office is a music lover's wet dream: The walls are covered

with framed backstage passes, posters, drumsticks, picks, guitars, even a

soccer ball signed by Rod Stewart. There's a picture of Geller

(complete with impressive mustache and open shirt) at work in the early

days, and a shot of the stage filled with camouflaged soldiers during

the 1992 riots, when the National Guard set up a temporary base here.

He has even more memorabilia in storage, including a 1973 Elton John

tour T-shirt that Geller has had him sign on every visit since. John

holds the record for the most appearances here, but as to where this

rare souvenir is, Geller sighs: “It's in there somewhere.”

The office isn't all a collector's heaven — here and there you can

see blueprints, design proofs, orchestral arrangements and set lists, as

well as jelly beans, European chocolate and various types of

“after-work refreshments.”

Like a benevolent king, Geller watches over his domain from here.

Four large flat-screen TVs line one wall, and from his desktop computer

he can zoom the numerous CCTV cameras around the area to a frightening

distance and revealing accuracy.

Geller was exploring the Bowl and the hills around it at age 8 while

he waited for his violinist father, Irving Geller, to finish rehearsals.

Starting as a temporary “runner” in 1970, he rose through the backstage

ranks and now supervises every aspect of the stage. This includes

rerigging, rechecking and reinstalling all the sound/audio systems,

which haven't been touched since last year; it's far more than just

changing a few lightbulbs.

This year the Bowl celebrates its 90th anniversary. Even though

virtually anyone who's anyone in the world of music has performed here,

this year sees the debut of the Queen of Country, Dolly Parton. There's

the usual eclectic mix scheduled — jazz, blues, '80s throwbacks, opera,

the Buena Vista Social Club, Eddie Izzard, the L.A. Phil playing

Bollywood music, pop princess Kylie Minogue, the sing-along Sound of Music, etc.

The Bowl has come a long way from the early days, when it was a

lo-fi, improv arrangement of movable wooden benches and a rickety

acoustic stage set in the natural amphitheater known as Daisy Dell. The

first arched shell appeared in 1926, and it's been improved on ever

since, including by Frank Gehry, whose fiberglass spheres still float

above the stage. Geller has one of the white arch shell tiles from the

last renovation, in 2003, mounted on his wall, and the Bowl now boasts

excellent audio and big TV screens so you can enjoy the show no matter

where you're sitting.

Geller probably has seen more concerts here than anyone else — even

if nearly all of them were from the wings — and aside from the many

times he saw his father perform from a “proper seat,” his first was a

doozy (and probably one of the Bowl's biggest nights):

“As far as I can remember, that was the last night of the Beatles in

1965 — they snuck me in, I was still a kid back then — and my first

'work' concert was the Grateful Dead, Rod Stewart or Alice Cooper. One

of those.”

Serious rock was quite a change from the classical music he grew up

hearing. His father played with the L.A. Phil for 49 years and his

sister, Valerie, also a violinist, has performed with the orchestra,

too. Years later, he still can't answer the question that everyone asks:

What was the most amazing concert?

“Pink Floyd had these huge searchlights, more than 20 of them. They

all had pink gels, so when the cue came to switch on it was like a huge

fan over the Bowl.”

Rick Wakeman, the Yes prog-rock keyboard wizard, “used the long-gone

100,000-gallon fountain and fire 'reflection pool' in front of the

stage, filled it with dry ice and had a huge inflatable dinosaur appear

from it. Then Elton John, in 1973, I think, had a Busby Berkeley

staircase, which movie star look-alikes — Marilyn Monroe, Groucho Marx —

walked down while white doves were released from five pianos.”

Firework displays are a perennial Bowl favorite, and one time things literally went flying: “In the 1812 Overture, prop cannons onstage puff smoke when the real mortar shells go off

backstage. Back in the good old days, when the Bowl was held together

with toothpicks and spit, Zubin Mehta was often conducting, and he was

always over the top — he wanted 'louder and stronger!'

“Later that night during the concert, backstage little pieces of the

tiles started drifting down. Boom! Bigger pieces would drop down. Then

we heard a crash in the dressing room. The explosions had blown the air

conditioner out of the wall and blown the toilet off its mount and into

the middle of the bathroom.”

This year undoubtedly will bring new surprises, frustrations and

amusements for the staff. As for concertgoers, Geller has some advice:

Look back as you leave, and you may see deer making their way down from

the wilds for a late dinner of what Angelenos have left behind.

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