Bruce Johnston has mixed bands including Hoodoo Gurus, Divinyls, Boom Crash Opera, Crowded House and Midnight Oil in his native Australia, then for a 12-year stint taking care of front-of-house sound for Oasis and, later, building a sound company.
It was in his early days with the Gallagher brothers that Johnston first came across NEXO.
“Oasis needed serious volume. At the time, line arrays had just started but they weren’t giving me what I needed,” commented Johnston. “We mixed on a NEXO Alpha system, and it was just – wow – right in your face. And it never said no.”
Alpha quickly became Johnston’s PA of choice for Oasis. Then, in 2002, came NEXO’s ground-breaking GEO T line array. “We took GEO T on plenty of big stadium tours – big hangs of 24 at 100,000-people events. That PA was very good,” he added. “That’s where my relationship with NEXO started. It was the PA for me.”
Back in Australia and with an inventory of 60 Alpha systems, Johnston set about developing his company Bruce Johnston Audio which later merged with Jands Production Services to form JPJ Audio, now part of the Clair Global group.
Part of the company’s work is to look after ‘permanent rental’ installations in 20 leading live music venues across Australia where Johnston and the team are in the process of upgrading to NEXO P15 for wedge monitoring, standardising on a box he first heard in a demo by NEXO’s Australian distributor Group Technologies.
“When we put the P15 on the floor and it fires away – that horn – we just went ‘wow, listen to that – that’s great!’ And the fact that it had a little more bottom end than the other wedges we tried. I thought it’s much better to start from a powerful box and maybe if someone would want to remove a little bit of something they can, as opposed to trying to add something that’s not there. It serves the purpose of giving people volume,” concluded Johnston. “And that’s what they want.”
