Lights, lasers and LED: How concerts have shifted from songs to spectacles

Over time, smoke bombs gave way to pyrotechnics; levers and pulleys gave way to hydraulics, then robotics; strobe lights gave way to lasers; video advanced from oil on a projector lens to complex LED displays. Whenever Lady Gaga acts as the ringleader in a circus of flames, explosions and spurting fake blood; whenever Taylor Swift surfs on a huge floating robot catwalk; whenever Pink spins in a spherical cage 30 feet high — that’s because of generations of tinkerers and pioneers, beginning with Volz, who risked their fingers for theatrical immortality. “It’s totally changed from what it used to be,” says veteran effects man Jimmy Page Henderson, 67, vice president of Syncrolite, a Dallas lighting company. “Everything’s digital now. It’s so complicated now, you almost need to have a degree to go out and become a roadie.”