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Michael James Kluczynski was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, on 30th March 1949. He first started getting paid to work with bands in 1968, with a local band in Scotland called Spiggy Topes. They were formed from the ashes of several bands out of Inverness.

In 1971 Mick came down to London when a band he was working with was offered a record deal as Cliff Bennett's backing band. The deal feel through, and one of the band members, Chris Adamson, survived by working as a Floyd roadie. He arranged for Kluczynski to join their small team as part of the "Quad Squad":

"There was no formal crew, just four of us loosely employed to handle all aspects of the sound and rigging," says Kluczynski. "My first job was to empty the tour manager's garage, which was full of all the old WEM PA columns and return them to Charlie Watkins, because we had just taken delivery of the latest generation of PA. The 2 by 15-inch bins had a Vitavox horn on the top and a JBL 075 bullet super tweeter -- I used to carry these things on my back up into balconies! When we played the first Earls Court show, we used our maximum number of Kelsey and Martin bins and horns. The bins were three high, with 13 at each side of the stage, and in the center piece where there were bins missing was a column of JBL horns. On top of those, we had a row of double Vitavox horns, on the back of which were throats that we had made up, which took two ElectroVoice 1829 drivers in the same throat. ElectroVoice claimed it wouldn't work, but we got up to four in one throat. One quad section would drive two horns in one phase direction, and another quad section would drive another two in the opposite phase direction. But EV wouldn't believe it until they saw 15,000 people walk out of Earls Court at the end of the night dazed and speechless."

Kluczynski recalls that his first show as a crew member, the opening night of this tour at the Brighton Dome, ended in disaster. He says, "In those days, we didn't understand how to separate power sufficiently between sound and lights. That was the only show that we had to cancel and reorganize, because we were all sharing the same power source. The Leslies on stage sounded like a cage full of monkeys, because they were sharing a common earth. It was the very first show that any band had done with a lighting rig that was powerful enough to make a difference. So we had this wonderful situation where the fans were actually inside the auditorium, and we had Bill Kelsey and Dave Martin at either side of the stage screaming at each other in front of the crowd, having an argument."

Over the years Mick worked with many bands, including The Cure and Erasure, and in 1994 founded MJK Productions Ltd, using his experience to manage big "one off" events, rather than tours, such as the BRITS, which he did every year from 1993 until his death ion 7th February 2009.

More information about Mick

[Floyd Website - "Welcome to the Machine"]

[Productions Website]

[Scots - Spiggy Topes]

[Production International magazine profile]

[[Category:1949_births]] [[Category:2009_deaths]] [[Category:Road_Crew]] [[Category:Music]]