But when Brady – who is looking for his seventh ring in an unfailing Hall of Fame career – leaves the field halfway down, he allows a man to take the lead for a 12th consecutive Super Bowl. and whose decisions are discussed, discussed and maybe even danced along.
Don’t mind the action on the field during the NFL showcase game, for many this weekend is all about The Weeknd. And the man who helps bring the pop megastar’s Super Bowl LV halftime show to life is a British TV director named Hamish Hamilton.
Since the 2010 The Who headlining spectacle, now 54-year-old, award-winning Hamilton has been involved in showcasing musicians so famous we know them under one name: Madonna! Beyoncé! Gaga! – or bands that have played soundtrack for a generation, such as Coldplay, Maroon 5 and the Black Eyes Peas.
Global interest in the halftime show is nothing new, although 2021 marks the 30th anniversary of the NFL’s shifting course from traditional brass bands to contemporary music acts – and what a change that was.
Super Bowl XXV – also held in Tampa – began with a superb rendition of Whitney Houston’s Star Spangled Banner.
Halftime was billed as “A Small World Salute to 25 Years of the Special Bowl” with New Kids on the Block, although the day’s events would intervene.
Operation Desert Storm resulted in a post-game band delay with a news report about the Gulf War instead.
It was a watershed moment and the league never looked back, gaining household names such as Michael Jackson, Diana Ross and Boyz II Men in the 1990s.
All of these performances were groundbreaking moments before Hamilton took the reins in 2010.
From Blackpool to the Super Bowl
For Hamilton, who grew up in the North of England in the 1970s, the idea of the Super Bowl, let alone the halftime show, was literally as strange a concept as he could think of, with his focus on English instead from American. American football.
“I grew up in Blackpool,” Hamilton told CNN Sport in a rare interview. “These are the days before the internet and mobile phones and global media sharing. My only knowledge of sports was really my local Blackpool football team, and many miles away in the big city of Liverpool, which dominated European football at the time.”
Hamilton drew attention from America after leading numerous BRIT Awards – the British equivalent of the Grammys – and while he has the opening ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics and the Oscars on his resume, leading the Super Bowl is halftime show, well, the Super Bowl of his career when it comes to the cultural zeitgeist.
“We always looked across the Atlantic to this undiscovered land of opportunity and excellence,” he says. “Creating these massive shows at the epicenter of American culture fills me with tremendous pride.”
The logistics involved in setting up the halftime show is arguably as tricky as trying to win the Super Bowl yourself
Many months, involving a lot of people – halftime is also co-executive produced by Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter’s Roc Nation – go into the schedule, and the song remains, if you will, the same: turn a football field into a concert venue and back in less than 30 minutes.
Hamilton acknowledges that each headliner is different when it comes to the time they spend working together, but “they have a vision, and our role is to bring that vision to life. Ultimately, the mission is to deliver 12 minutes of mid-way entertainment. this football match in February. ”
Hamilton is well aware of how much this performance means to the musicians – “a career defining moment and a big part of their artistic legacy” – against the backdrop of multiple challenges.
“You have to push out a stage in seven, eight minutes, set it up, build and tear it down,” says Hamilton. “In a world that is breaking, it’s a great lesson in what people can build under tremendous stress when they work together and trust each other … It’s extraordinary.
“It’s an adrenaline-pumping rollercoaster and frankly you spend 12 minutes focusing, just trying to keep the train on track and deliver what everyone wants you to deliver.”
Covid-19 concerns
Delivering this year’s show will be a monumental task, with the coronavirus pandemic looming high despite the rollout of vaccines across the country.
The 25,000 fans in attendance are required to wear face covers at all times and will receive PPE kits, a Super Bowl face mask, hand sanitizer and wipes from the NFL upon arrival.
The impact on the halftime show will be significant. After all, this is an event that involves a large number of performers onstage and where social aloofness is the antithesis of what is often a highly coordinated and crowded affair.
Hamilton refuses to give anything away, but admits that “it has put a very different set of parameters around production. [But] we took up the challenge the same way we take the challenge every year, so I think all I would say to everyone is, “Tune in and make your own judgment.” ”
But The Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye) confirmed that “we built the stage in the stadium,” while executive producer Jesse Collins told Entertainment Tonight, “We’re going to use the stadium to present the show in a way never before presented. . “
The acts are smart enough to reportedly perform without a fee from the competition – because the intense interest generated by appearing pays for itself – even though the NFL supposedly provides a budget.
And while Hamilton is unwilling to reveal details, The Weeknd’s manager Wassim “Sal” Slaiby told Billboard magazine that his star client put in $ 7 million of his own money to “make this halftime show be what he wanted. had in mind. “
“I don’t think I have enough money,” he jokes when told that it’s not too late to record the use of a helicopter, which his favorite halftime artist ever – Diana Ross – did to conclude. her show in 1996.
When Hamilton talks about the memories of his halftime show, the sporting parallels come to the fore with the sides competing against the Super Bowl. Looking back at the many great acts he has worked with, his observations about Coldplay’s frontman evoke a team player rather than an individual talent who doesn’t want to share the ball, or rather take the stage.
“Chris Martin is the most generous of the performers,” says Hamilton of his fellow Briton Coldplay headliner at Super Bowl 50 in 2016. “So he calls his buddy Beyonce, he calls his buddy Bruno Mars, and he literally convinces them. .
“They were both a little hesitant at first and he said, ‘Come on guys!’ And so Beyonce shows up with a hundred dancers, and Bruno comes with his entourage And what a great show it was … That came together at the last minute, in a dance studio behind a laundromat If people knew what was going on in this little dance studio they would be shocked. “
But if you can get the boy out of Blackpool, you can’t get Blackpool out of the boy completely. Hamilton takes a look back at his native Britain, asking if English football would ever pull a leaf out of the NFL book and add an extra layer of entertainment to the proceedings.
“I was a football fan as a kid, I always watched the FA Cup, and that was the most important thing on the calendar,” he says of the best comparison to the Super Bowl in England.
“It would be great if the FA decided to have a halftime show and a pregame in the same way as the NFL. The NFL was brilliant, they were very supportive of peace and quiet and they really invested financially, creatively and logistically. creating this center during half time.
“It’s the combination of sports and music and entertainment and it really, really works. I don’t think there’s a better example of it in the world.”