Hearing the stage

One early documented foldback mix, sent from front of house back to the stage, was McCune’s for Judy Garland at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium in 1961.

Bill Hanley is credited with the idea of a floor loudspeaker angled up at performers using directional microphones, an idea that arose while he worked with Buffalo Springfield and Neil Young. Around 1969, The Who’s Bob Pridden began turning loudspeakers carrying the full mix toward the band. Early wedges were built by TASCO, then Showco and Clair Brothers.

McCune’s chief engineer Bob Cavin led the design of the MM-4, described as the first mixing console made only for stage monitors.

Monitor engineer Marty Garcia made custom-fit earphones for Todd Rundgren in 1982 to ease vocal fatigue, later founding Future Sonics; by 1985 Rundgren’s band Utopia played with no wedges. Chris Lindop gave Stevie Wonder a wireless monitor feed in the late 1980s, and Garwood Communications, which he founded with Martin Noah, put its bodypack receiver into production in 1987. Jerry Harvey’s custom two-way earpieces for Van Halen in 1995 began the multi-driver in-ear monitor; Shure’s PSM 600 followed in the late 1990s.