\n<\/p>\n
Bob Heil\u2019s career as a groundbreaking sound engineer who brought thunder and rich sonic coloring to tours by rock titans like the Grateful Dead and the Who began behind a pipe organ in a 1920s movie palace.<\/p>\n
Mr. Heil, who helped usher rock into its arena-shaking era by designing elaborate sound systems that allowed rock juggernauts of the late 1960s and \u201970s to play at volcanic volumes, first learned to appreciate the full spectrum of musical tones as a teenager, when he took a job playing the massive Wurlitzer pipe organ at the opulent Fox Theater in St. Louis.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to voice and tune<\/a> 3,500 pipes, from one inch to 32 feet,\u201d he said in a 2022 video interview with the audio entrepreneur Ken Berger. \u201cVoicing taught me to listen. Very few people know how to listen. Listening, you\u2019ve got to mentally go in and dissect.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Heil died on Feb. 28 of cancer in a hospital in Belleville, Ill., his daughter Julie Staley said. He was 83. His death was not widely reported at the time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Although he worked behind the scenes, Mr. Heil was enough of a force that the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland credited him with \u201ccreating the template<\/a> for modern rock sound systems\u201d In 2006, the Hall installed a public display containing his mixing boards, speakers and other items.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe concert business became what it is today<\/a> because he made the experience so much better for the customers,\u201d Howard Kramer, who at the time was the Hall of Fame\u2019s curatorial director, said in an interview that year with The Houston Chronicle. \u201cNo one made the leaps in live sound that he did.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Heil got started in the business in 1966. Up to that point, top rock \u2019n\u2019 roll bands often had to rely on feeble sound systems that were drowned out by screaming fans. That roar, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones wrote in his 2010 autobiography, \u201cLife,\u201d<\/a> was often so deafening in the band\u2019s early days that audiences could hear nothing more than the drums: \u201cWe used to play \u2018Popeye the Sailor Man\u2019 some nights, and the audience didn\u2019t know any different.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Heil gave rock shows the sound arsenal they needed. \u201cWe were the first company back then to build a package P.A<\/a>.,\u201d he said in a 2008 interview with the audio magazine TapeOp. \u201cYou could come to Heil Sound in 1972 and leave the facility with a complete system: snakes, road cases, everything \u2014 even a modular mixer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He also put a distinctive stamp on 1970s rock with the Heil Talk Box,<\/a> an effects pedal that transformed guitar parts and vocals into an interstellar drone. Joe Walsh used it in memorable fashion on his hit \u201cRocky Mountain Way\u201d<\/a> in 1973, and the Talk Box was a signature<\/a> of Peter Frampton\u2019s monster-selling 1976 double album, \u201cFrampton Comes Alive!\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Mr. Heil\u2019s career took a major turn in 1971, he told Mr. Berger, when a manager for the Who frantically called him in St. Louis, asking if he could get his crew to Boston the next day. The opening show there, part of the band\u2019s tour in support of its hallowed album \u201cWho\u2019s Next,\u201d had been a disaster, with one newspaper noting that the band\u2019s \u201csoaring brand of rock could not be heard\u201d under the venue\u2019s \u201cmiserable conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n Roger Daltrey, the band\u2019s lead singer, threatened to fly back to England until Mr. Heil arrived with his rig. When Mr. Daltrey \u201cdid the sound check,\u201d Mr. Heil recalled, \u201cit was OK, because it was a monster P.A.\u201d He would work with the Who for the next decade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Robert Gene Heil was born Oct. 5, 1940, in St. Louis, the elder of two children of Robert and LaVerna (Bills) Heil. His parents owned a clothing shop in the small town of Marissa, Ill., about 40 miles east of St. Louis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As a youth, Bob not only played the accordion and the organ but also became a ham radio enthusiast, which gave him an early opportunity to fiddle with electronics. After graduating from Marissa Township High School in 1958, he spent time studying at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and the St. Louis Institute of Music.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 1966 he opened Ye Olde Music Shop in Marissa, where he rented Hammond organs and repaired instruments for professional musicians. He also began to design his own audio systems.<\/p>\n Before long, he was supplying them to country acts like Dolly Parton and Little Jimmy Dickens as they came through St. Louis. His big break came in 1970, when management of his old employer, the Fox Theater, called him and told them of a crisis: The Grateful Dead was set to play there, but the band\u2019s P.A. system had been confiscated by authorities in a drug raid.<\/p>\n On a subsequent call with Mr. Heil, Jerry Garcia, the band\u2019s lead guitarist and vocalist, \u201calmost dropped the phone\u201d when he learned that Mr. Heil had a sophisticated system featuring an amplifier by McIntosh, the high-end audiophile brand, Mr. Heil told Mr. Berger. Performing Musician magazine later called the resulting concert \u201cthe night that modern live sound was born.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to his daughter Ms. Staley, Mr. Heil is survived by his wife, Sarah (Benton) Heil; another daughter, Barbara Hartley; a stepson, Ash Levitt, the president and chief executive of Heil Sound; a sister, Barbara Schneidewind; and seven grandchildren. Both daughters are from his first marriage, to Judy Mortensen, which ended in divorce.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n By 1980, Mr. Heil had grown weary of life on the road, so he created a new line of headsets and microphones for the ham radio industry. At one point, Joe Walsh, another ham enthusiast, told him he wanted to use one of his microphones onstage.<\/p>\n Mr. Heil protested that the microphones were not concert quality. Mr. Walsh disagreed. \u201cI was at his house and went downstairs to his little studio and he proved it to me,\u201d Mr. Heil told TapeOp. \u201cSo I had to start listening all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n