With more than 35 years’ experience, Allen has been head of security for artists including Oasis, Eminem, Shakira, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Led Zeppelin.
In the 1990s, he developed what is known as the “show-stop procedure, external” – a rapid, co-ordinated response to crowd surges that can bring a concert to an immediate halt.
The system was designed during Oasis’s 1997 Be Here Now Tour.
“I was well versed with dynamic crowds but Oasis was a completely different beast,” Allen recalls.
“Their crowd profile was off the Richter scale, and it was very apparent to me that we need to have something in place.”
The procedure seems obvious now, but it established a chain of command that had previously varied from venue to venue.
For the entire tour Allen stood at the safety barriers, maintaining radio contact with his team and never leaving the band’s line of sight.
“I told Noel and Liam: ‘If I give the sign, there’s a reason to stop the show. It means this is life-critical; I’m not doing it to spoil your night,'” he later recalled, external.
It proved crucial at Manchester City Stadium in 2005.
As Oasis played the opening bars of Lyla, the crowd rushed forward and a safety barrier cracked.
Footage of the concert shows, external people being lifted off their feet and carried along in a wave of bodies that hits the barrier then reverberates back through the audience.
“In the control tower, they had CCTV and everything, but they couldn’t see what we could see [on the ground],” says Allen.
Thanks to the show-stop system, “we had safety spotters who were able to radio the tower, and we stopped the show”, he says.
Immediately, the stage lights went off, a floodlight illuminated the audience and all audio was cut, except for Noel Gallagher’s microphone, allowing him to calmly explain the situation before the band left the stage.
Some 25 minutes later, after the barrier was repaired, Allen gave the go-ahead for a restart.
“The band had full trust in my decision. Everything was safe, no injuries, no deaths. Everyone went home safely, reputations intact.”
