Welcome to the unlikely capital of rock’n’roll

TO WALK AROUND Lititz on a perfect spring day is to see small-town America at its picture-postcard best. Pensioners stroll along the main street, looking in the windows of gift shops, stopping at the tea shops. With around 10,000 residents, the town in Pennsylvania’s Amish country is so pristine that if you saw it in a film you might assume it was a set. You almost certainly wouldn’t guess it was the rock’n’roll capital of the world.

Yet about a mile north of the town centre is an unremarkable industrial park in which the world’s biggest pop and rock shows are made. The boxy buildings on the Rock Lititz campus house around 40 companies, which between them supply everything a touring artist requires. The firms that founded Rock Lititz, Clair Global and Tait Towers, take care of the two staples, amplification and set-building. Others fill in the gaps. One makes only the motors to drive the hoists that pull PA systems into the rafters of arenas; another makes only stage pyrotechnics. There are two huge rehearsal spaces in which the shows can be assembled and road-tested.