When the brain trust behind Rolling Stone Presents: Amplified, the Immersive Rock Experience first came together, they faced a gargantuan task. Not only did they need to comb through seven decades of rock history and create a powerful narrative that would appeal to visitors of all ages, but they had to find a way to utilize the cutting-edge technology of the Illuminarium Las Vegas at AREA15, including the world’s most advanced 4K projection, 3-D audio, in-floor haptics, and 10,000 square feet of immersive space, where even the floor is a screen.
The result is a groundbreaking experience, opening March 12, that draws on more than 1,000 photographs from throughout rock history, 200 videos, 1,300 Rolling Stone covers, the music of more than 300 artists, and narration delivered by Kevin Bacon. “It’s a mash-up of a lot of things,” says former Rolling Stone creative director Jodi Peckman, who served as the project’s executive producer alongside Brad Siegel, founder of Brand New World Studios. “It’s a little bit like an IMAX, a documentary, a movie, a music video, and a photo show all rolled into one.”
“We didn’t want it to be a documentary or a history lesson, because you don’t step into an immersive space for that,” adds former Rolling Stone executive editor and longtime contributor Joe Levy, who signed on as the music supervisor and writer for the project, “To figure this out, we had to go back to the spirit of the UFO Club in London or the San Francisco ballrooms of the Sixties that brought the music to life. That’s the kind of experience we want to be delivering here.”
The idea dates back a couple of years to a meeting between Siegel and Illuminarium Experiences founder/CEO Alan Greenberg. “He took me to see some of the shows he had at the Illuminarium,” Siegel recalls. “I said, ‘I think they’re beautiful. They look great and they sound great. But there’s no story. I think you have a real opportunity to do something in pop culture. There’s a lot that could be done that’s much more impactful.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you come back with some more ideas?’ I said, ‘I’d love to.’”
TIM W WESTOVER/Illuminarium Las Vegas
Siegel reached out to Peckman to see if she wanted to help out. “I was like, ‘I don’t even know what an immersive show is,’” she says. But she found out that was OK: It gave them room to “imagine it from scratch.”
Because of her deep background in photography across three decades at Rolling Stone, Peckman started thinking about ways to build an experience around music and images from throughout the history of rock. She initially batted around ideas about the greatest guitarists in rock or the most important moments in music, but eventually settled on the concept of a creating separate chapters that focused on the ways rock music shaped the culture. They also brought in Pentagram as the design team, and worked closely with Pentagram principals Abbott Miller and Emily Oberman to bring their shared vision to life.
From the very beginning, they knew they didn’t want to tell the story in a linear fashion, since they expected to draw people in of all ages. “If three generations show up — a grandfather, his daughter, and his granddaughter — they will see reference points that each of them know,” says Levy. “But it’s not like the mom and grandfather won’t have heard of Taylor Swift. And it’s not like kids have no interest in classic rock. At this point, classic rock includes the Beatles and Green Day. It includes Led Zeppelin and Nirvana. It is sweeping across several generations.”
The team ultimately created eight chapters that center around the ideas of backstage, bands, cars, studios, political messages, hair, fans, and Rolling Stone. “We wanted it to be a fun and surprising journey so that you get to see different aspects of rock,” says Oberman. “You get to enter the studio and feel a little bit what it’s like to be in one with a musician, or you get to look at something crazy, like the car collections of rock stars. We explain the story of what a band is and what those pieces are that form one. We also felt really strongly about having the message section, where we took songs that had a message and highlighted them.”
The message section spotlights Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” (which Rolling Stone recently named the best protest song of all time), Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi,” Aretha Franklin’s “Think,” and Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club.” “Each one does a different job,” says Oberman. “The Sam Cooke song is about civil rights. ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ is about ecology and the planet. Aretha’s song is about freedom of expression and also just freedom to be who you are. The Chappell Roan song is about LGBTQIA movement. We wanted to tackle different subjects.”
TIM W WESTOVER/Illuminarium Las Vegas
During “Big Yellow Taxi,” a garden grows across the floor; the space transforms into a glittery nightclub for “Pink Pony Club,” complete with an illusion that the floor and walls are actually moving. “The floor is a really big part of the show,” says Oberman. “When we were working on it, we kept saying, ‘More floor! More floor!’ It really helps tell the story. During the studio segment, we put a bunch of rugs on the floor that you often see in recording studios, and then turned them into a kaleidoscope pattern that moves around.”
The 360-degree nature of the screen, sheer size of the room, and rapid-fire presentation of images makes it impossible to see every element of the show at once, even though several photos are mirrored on opposite ends of the screen, and your attention is often drawn to one side or another by sound projections. “Walking into a space where you can’t see everything at once isn’t new to anyone who has ever been to a concert or a festival,” says Levy. “You don’t walk into a concert, sit quietly and focus on one spot. The idea of this show is that there’s so much happening you can’t take it in all at once.”
A key segment from the middle of the show concentrates on hardcore music fans across all generations. Images flash on the screens of die-hards in their bedrooms and arena parking lots, dressed like their heroes. “What makes rock music different from any other popular art form is the role that the audience plays,” says Levy. “And we always knew that fans were important. But once the photo research came in and we saw the richness of the images, the section got longer and longer.”
Something similar happened in the segment about hair. “Hair and rock & roll, especially at the start, is part of what made the stars and the audience stand out from the rest of society,” says Levy. “Both Little Richard and the Beatles challenged every established notion of masculinity with the way that they wore their hair. And then all of a sudden, everyone in the audience is wearing their hair in the same way. And what does that mean? It means they all want to live in this rock & roll fantasy. The amazing thing about the hair section is watching the connections across generations, when you can see a pompadour on Elvis, George Harrison, Chris Isaak, and even Justin Bieber.”
The section about recording studios features a stunningly intimate video of Radiohead playing “High and Dry” in the mid-Nineties. “That section is about the miracle of creation,” says Levy. “We get a chance to witness that miracle, just to drink in what it feels like when a band is putting it together. Thom Yorke’s complaining about his guitar and asking Jonny Greenwood to tune it for him. These kinds of things that happen when you’re trying to put a song together. What we wanted was to just deliver a little moment of the miraculous.”
Securing the rights to that Radiohead video and every other photograph, song, and film clip in the studio was a Herculean effort that required months of negotiations and long conversations with artists and their reps. “There were moments I thought the sky was falling and we wouldn’t be able to get everything we needed,” says Peckman. “But Brad kept telling me we’d pull it off, and there were only one or two things we didn’t wind up getting.”
The show wraps by showcasing every single Rolling Stone cover throughout the publication’s 58-year history. “Rolling Stone began as a way to tell the story of rock & roll,” Bacon narrates as images flash on the screen of early writers like Ben Fong-Torres. “But soon enough, it was a part of that story itself. The Rolling Stone interview became the definitive word from the music’s definitive artists. The cover of Rolling Stone became music’s Mount Olympus. You are not truly an icon until you are there.”
After spending the vast majority of her career at Rolling Stone, creating something on a much larger canvas was an exhilarating endeavor for Peckman. “I found myself constantly questioning what we were doing,” she says. “I’d say, ‘Is this immersive, though? I want this part louder, this part softer, we need more floor here.’ The stress of all that was challenging at times, but this was mostly pretty joyous. We all just had so much fun creating it.”
Oberman feels the same way. “I love it when the haptics kick in and you can feel the bass in your soul,” she says. “It makes me feel like I’m one with the music, the environment around me, and all the imagery that’s flying by.”
