Report: Music Entrepreneur Who Toured With LED ZEPPELIN Is Made An OBE
April 19, 2024, 7 months ago
Times Series reports that an entrepreneur who began his career as Led Zeppelin’s touring soundman and went on to a lead a global music technology group, has been made an OBE.
Philip Dudderidge, 75, described himself as a “a teenage rebel who went into the music industry” but found touring America in 1970 with the rock legends a physically punishing ordeal.
He is the founder and chairman of Focusrite, a global firm that supplies hardware and software used by professional and amateur musicians and the entertainment industry.
Dudderidge said about the Led Zeppelin tour: “The music was fabulous of course but the experience of going to the States and doing a tour there, it was really hard work. Not only doing the shows but then having to drive between cities - we did 28 cities in a month - so by the end of it I was completely exhausted. I just said ‘I can’t do any more’. We were only a crew of three, these days they’ll have 50. Really, what I learned in the States was the direction of travel for live sound amplification - systems needed to get a lot bigger.”
He was reunited with Led Zeppelin’s lead singer Robert Plant recently, decades after the two men worked together.
Read more and see photos at times-series.co.uk.
