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18 TIL I DIE TOUR 1996/1997:
In my opinion these were the best stage designs BA ever had...although some might consider them slightly too colourful they looked really cool and varied from gig to gig as well. Sometimes you even had different coloured underwear!.....underwear being giant unflatable underwear (see picture below) that popped up beside each side of the stage for when Bryan sang '(I Wanna Be) Your Underwear' on the b-stage!

Bryan and the team of designers thought very carefully about the design of the '18' stage structure...at the time Bryan said that if he were going to a gig he would like it to be full of surprises...and thats exactly what you got with this tour. Apart from the underwear there were also the trademark 'bridge' at the back of the stage...you can see this in the pictures above and below. Before each concert...the organisers would let a few a hundred or so people behind the curtain and onto the bridge (none of the crowd knew about it). When Bryan came on and started to sing the opening song ('The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You')...when he got to the second verse the curtain would drop and the whole crowd could see the bridge behind the stage with all the fans clapping and cheering. It's looked really good. To keep the element of surprises Bryan liked to spring on everybody...Bryan kept the b-stage idea for this tour for the middle of the show.....he still uses it to this day! It's an idea which many other famous stadium bands have copied since...like 'The Rolling Stones' for example. These pictures are from the '96 stadium tour...although the stage was pretty much the same for the arena dates the following year in '97.

As you can see from the picture below...the 'star' (which illuminated....see bottom picture) was the focal point of the stage which was surrounded by chains and more lighting. In the arena dates the star was situated behind the curtain above the bridge and usually lit up when he started to sing '18 Til I Die'. The setup on these stages looked second to none and really helped to make 'A Night To Remember'.

BA and the band get down on the b-stage (below).......the first 3 big pictures were taken at the Song Festival Ground, Tallin, Estonia.