Janet Jackson’s bras are swinging in the wind. There are five of them. They are small and tan and faded from use, what you would expect of a bra, but not exactly the bra of a pop star.
The prosaic undergarments are hanging on two clothing racks alongside a row of black military coats labeled “Rhythm Nation jackets” and several pairs of striped and black gloves. They’re all on their way backstage at Poplar Creek Music Theatre in Hoffman Estates, where Jackson recently made a two-day stop.
“This is the biggest show of the summer, production-wise,” says Deb Heed, the venue’s director of marketing, pausing in the empty soundstage during a tour of the Poplar Creek grounds.
Empty of fans, perhaps. But actually, behind Heed’s back, nearly two dozen Jackson roadies and local workers are clambering all around the Poplar Creek stage in the muggy morning air, hoisting huge cables and knocking out rows of seats to make room for a 10-foot stage extension.
The Jackson tour’s 10 semitrailers pulled in around 5:30 a.m., and they won’t pull out again until long past midnight the following day. There to meet them were Poplar Creek production manager Debi Gordon, who serves as a liaison between Poplar Creek and each tour’s production staff, and her assistants, as well as members of the catering staff serving breakfast.
This early morning greeting committee is testament to the fact that, whether the show is big or small, Poplar Creek is more than merely a way station waiting to be filled with the screaming fans and the equipment and the warblings of the latest country or rock ‘n’ roll star. Each of the venue’s shows-36 concerts this year, ranging from children’s artist Raffi to Barry Manilow to Steely Dan-must be meticulously prepared for. On show days, the 500-plus employee operation runs very nearly around the clock.
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The business offices of Poplar Creek are on the hill opposite the main amphitheater; both buildings are topped with orange steel beams. Inside, the offices are bustling. The main switchboard rings constantly as concertgoers call about ticket availability and whether the night’s concert will be canceled because of an impending rainstorm darkening the western sky.
(For the record, Poplar Creek has never, in its 15-season history, canceled a concert because of rain. This has, on occasion, created its own brand of fun. Mudslides down the lawn, anyone?)
Standing by the door to the office of Joan Van Dyck, the theater’s general manager, Heed remarks in a whisper that Van Dyck has “a lot of balls in the air right now.” It’s a juggling metaphor that seems apt throughout the office.
Down the hall, for instance, a harried receptionist grabs the bleeping phone while talking with a fan who is dropping off some handpainted chairs she hoped Jackson would sign.
Van Dyck has worked at Poplar Creek since its opening concert, John Denver on July 4, 1980. She started answering phones and served in a variety of different jobs, including production manager, before finally taking over the helm of the theater six years ago.
The venue is owned by the Nederlander Organization, a family-held New York company that manages and owns some 50 theaters and six outdoor theaters around the country, including Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wis.
Van Dyck says Poplar Creek has “matured” since its opening.
“(We) bring a wide spectrum of talent to the community,” she says. “We offer something for everyone, whether it’s a family show like the Beach Boys to a children’s show like Raffi to blues, country, rock or pop.”
Poplar Creek attracts a half a million people a season, according to Van Dyck.
Among Van Dyck’s many responsibilities is paying Jackson’s tour company when the group arrives, although the show was actually booked in May by a Detroit talent booker employed by Nederlander. Asked how much a star like Jackson might earn for a two-night performance, Van Dyck gives a slight smile. “She’ll be well taken care of,” she says.
Pressed, Van Dyck and Heed will recount some favorite Poplar Creek stories, none of which-alas-involve drunken rock stars, smashed guitars or public urination. The wildest they get is fondly recalling the 1990 New Kids on the Block show, where tremulous teenage girls lined up at 9:15 a.m. for lawn seats, and members of NKOTB sped all over the Poplar Creek grounds on little mopeds.
There also was the time that a woman was barred from the gates at a Grateful Dead concert because she wasn’t wearing shoes, and fellow concertgoers dug into their pockets and made her a pair out of whatever scraps they pulled up.
“It was a typical Deadhead communal kind of thing,” Heed says.
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One of the first sights tired roadies, sound men and tour managers see when they disembark from the semitrailers in the eyelid-peeling hours between 5 and 6:30 a.m. is a table of coffee and sweet rolls.
“The key is breakfast,” explains caterer Bob Schneeberger, co-owner of the Elk Grove Village company L’Elegante Cuisine Inc., the firm responsible for Poplar Creek’s catering. “Usually they can tell how their day is going to go from then on. (We try to make sure) it just gets better after that.”
Like most employees at Poplar Creek, during the busy season anyway, the caterer’s work is never done. Sometimes L’Elegante employees have stayed until 2 and 3 a.m. if a band chooses to unwind backstage, as Steve Miller and his bandmates did during a recent Poplar Creek appearance. “We have to be there to make sure they don’t run out of ice,” Schneeberger explains.
The company is responsible for backstage catering at Poplar Creek; it also runs the Poplar Creek dinner theater tent, called the Terrace, across from the main concession stand, where concertgoers can have a buffet dinner before the show. The Terrace generally attracts 40 to 100 diners nightly, perhaps more for dressier events such as a Bette Midler or Liza Minnelli performance, according to Heed.
Hungry ticket holders, however, are the least of Schneeberger’s worries. Bowls of separated green and red M&Ms may be close to the top of that list.
Rock stars can have all kinds of weird riders attached to their contracts, Schneeberger explains. It’s not just like when Michael Bolton asked for a nice pasta dinner (lobster-stuffed tortellini) in his dressing room after the show.
He says it’s more like when Phil Collins had to have one of his backstage rooms outfitted like an English pub, something Heed arranged. Or then there’s the crazy stipulation of more than one rock star that bowls of all-green (or all-red) M&M’s be placed in the dressing room before each performance.
Schneeberger has ’em all figured out, though.
“They just do it to see if you’re paying attention,” he says. Now his staff goes through a big jar of the candy before each season, separating the colors, and when Rock Star X or Country Singer Y requests a specific color, they are ready.
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Maintenance crews began sprucing up Poplar Creek’s 84-acre grounds in April for the summer-long season, according to Heed and maintenance director Greg Regan. Regan was on hand to greet the Jackson tour in the early morning hours, but the maintenance day will not end until much later.
Members of the maintenance staff don’t begin pressure-spraying the rows of seats to clear off popcorn shards and sticky cola until well past midnight after the first night’s show. The next day, the staff turns to the parking lots and grounds, picking up trash, watering and cutting grass and flowers and pruning shrubbery.
A highlight-which looks “pretty cool” in Regan’s estimation-is the trash “sweep” of the lawn after each performance. Nearly 100 ushers and security guards form a line from top to bottom of the wide Poplar Creek lawn and move across in a straight line, leaving clean green behind them as they pick up garbage concertgoers left behind.
While usher Jamie Millet, 16, of West Dundee laments the cigarette butts she must pluck from grass during this duty, she is still enthusiastic about her job.
“The concerts are great,” she says. “The people are great. Even cleaning’s fun. ‘Cause you make it fun!”
Millet is typical of the college or high school-age workers that make up most of Poplar Creek’s seasonal staff of 500.
This can sometimes cause a problem, at least according to security guards Tim Price, a 20-year-old Drake University student from Elgin, and Todd Garifo, 20, an Arlington Heights resident and student at Northern Illinois University. On the first night of the Jackson concert, the two have been assigned to make sure pedestrians don’t slip and fall making their way down Poplar Creek’s walkway, slick this night from the rain that began sluicing down shortly after soundcheck was finished in the late afternoon.
“We have to secure the area,” Price says.
The two say that Jackson’s crowd-young teenagers, twentysomethings on dates and even a few families-is a walk in the park compared to recent Jimmy Buffett shows, where some overzealous older fans, drunk from too much beer and too few Cheeseburgers in Paradise, lit fires on the lawn and threw beer bottles at security.
“(Adult fans) look at you and act like, `Aw, you’re just a kid,’ ” Garifo explains. “They won’t listen.”
The more prosaic duties like the above or parking lot guard are generally assigned to the younger security staff, while the more experienced assist the tour’s own security staff. This night, for example, Jackson has three personal security guards sitting outside her dressing room backstage. Backstage is a small, labyrinthine corridor. There are dressing rooms for the star, backup singers, dancers and the band and a production room complete with telephones and a fax machine.
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By 6, the gates have opened to admit the tiny group of fans who have been waiting in the still-plinking rain.
The T-shirt stands are now up and running. A sweatshirt embroidered with the singer’s first name and the name of her recent album and current tour “janet.” runs a whopping $75. The basic black concert T-shirt is around $20.
“They’ll never give that up,” says Leonard Lair, a Chicago resident and bagel store manager who sells T-shirts part time, speaking of concertgoers dedicated to buying classic black.
Some fans are there for the show alone and couldn’t care less about the venue.
“We just want to see Janet,” explains Ena Miller, a Chicago resident and sales representative, attending with her friend David Taylor, also of Chicago.
Others see the theater as a fun, summertime activity; they’re the kind of music fans James Taylor, another Poplar Creek habitue, immortalized in his song “That’s Why I’m Here” (turning up with a “baby and a blanket and a bucket of beer”).
Concertgoer Debbie Ladeur, a Naperville resident and corporate recruiter, praises the venue’s “open atmosphere. It’s party-like. It’s fun. No matter where you’re sitting, you can see good and hear good.”
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A number of hot dogs are roasting in warmers in Poplar Creek’s three main concession areas-1,200, to be precise. The 600 regular and 600 Chicago style hot dogs will be washed down with beverages from two beer trailers (which were increased to eight for Jimmy Buffett). Along with the three main concession stands, Poplar Creek also has a barbecue tent for ribs and sandwiches; two popcorn wagons; portable carts for ice cream, hot dogs and pretzels; two liquor kiosks; a wine cooler and frozen lemonade stand; and a pizza stand.
Ogden Entertainment Services, which runs the concession stands, has a full-time manager and staff. But the 100 workers needed each evening come from local community groups; they work the booths as a fundraiser, and the groups receive a percent of the evening’s take.
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On this night, the theater troupe the Independent Players of Elgin is on call. Joan Devine, a librarian at Kimball Junior High School in Elgin, and Don Haefliger, an English and drama teacher at Elgin’s St. Edward High School, are dishing up hot dogs in the center concession stand.
“We decided to be runners,” Devine says, explaining why she and Haefliger opted to pass out food rather than work the cash register (“too complicated,” she says).
“We figure it couldn’t be any worse than doing lunch duty at our schools,” she says.
Poplar Creek officials declined to elaborate on their concession booths’ sales figures, but did allow they aim for $5 spent on food per person, which in a 25,000-capacity amphitheater amounts to a tidy sum.
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Finally, by 9 p.m. sharp, the opening act, MC Lyte, has finished. The lights dim again and a cheer arises.
“Janet! Janet! Janet!” chants the crowd.
The sun has just disappeared for the night, and the lawn above the indoor pavilion-littered with a few muddy and devoted fans, hunched under their blankets and ponchos-has turned a bright fluorescent green in the fast-fading evening light. Then the diva appears, in glittering white and a plumed hat, attended by her phalanx of dancers, backup singers and band members. A guitarist pounds out the searing beat of “If,” from her latest album.
She segues into one of her trademark tunes, “What Have You Done For Me Lately?” and then the music breaks. Jackson grasps a few long-stemmed roses from the fans who crowd up to the stage and says, “Thank you” in that breathy voice so eerily reminiscent of her brother’s.
“Thank you so much for coming,” she says. “It means a lot.” The crowd roars.
It might be tempting to say that the night has just begun. But, of course, it hasn’t.
