Chip Monck

Edward Herbert Beresford "Chip" Monck (born March 5, 1939) is an American Tony Award–nominated lighting designer, most famously serving as the master of ceremonies at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.

Early life and education Monck was born in Wellesley, Massachusetts, to a mother from Nutley, New Jersey and a father from Liverpool, England. He acquired the nickname "Chip" at a summer camp on Lake Winnipesaukee, in New Hampshire. While Monck went to the South Kent School on scholarships for ice hockey and crew, he became more interested in welding and machinery, designing a potato harvester that he sold to McCormick. He began volunteering with a summer-theater group at Wellesley College, learning the basics of theatrical lighting from Greg Harney. He began auditing classes at Harvard University while working with the school's theater company. Monck was hired to plan and build the staging and lighting for the Woodstock Music & Art Fair's "Aquarian Exposition" music festival. Paid $7,000 for ten weeks of work,

The Rolling Stones Four months after Woodstock, Monck and Lang planned the Altamont Free Concert for the Rolling Stones, which also had to move from the original planned location, but this time with unfortunate consequences. Members of the Hells Angels motorcycle club were hired to provide security for the concert with terrible results. Monck confronted a member of the Angels stealing a large custom carpet that was part of the Rolling Stones stage set and lost teeth being hit in the mouth with a pool cue. He later tracked down the person and managed to trade a case of brandy for the carpet.

Later career In 1974, Monck was the host of Speakeasy, a short-lived rock-and-roll talk show that featured mostly chat and some live performances by acts including Tom Waits, Frank Zappa and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Monck's persona was well known enough to be parodied as "Chick Monck" on SCTV by Tony Rosato as a marriage counselor employing strobe lights and a fog machine.

Also in 1974, he provided production services for the Muhammad Ali/George Foreman boxing match The Rumble in the Jungle, and the associated three-day music festival Zaire 74, which featured performances by James Brown, Celia Cruz and the Fania All-Stars, B.B. King, Miriam Makeba, The Spinners, Bill Withers, and Manu Dibango. Monck's work can be seen in the documentary films Soul Power (2008) and When We Were Kings (1996).

Monck served as the lighting designer for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, as well as consulting on the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.

In 2003, Monck received the Parnelli Award for Lifetime Achievement in the concert touring industry.

As of 2011, Monck resided in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, Australia concentrating on corporate and retail lighting.

In 2011, he served as the director of production of the One Great Night On Earth Festival, planned for December 1, 2012. This event was intended to raise funds to help Australians in regions devastated by natural disasters like the Black Saturday bushfires, flooding and drought.

In 2019, Monck participated in a series of Woodstock 1969 50th anniversary events at the Berklee School of Music in Boston and made additional appearances and was the subject of interviews in a wide variety of international media outlets.

In 2024, Monck's archives; his lighting documents, images, drawings, and media were accepted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum and archive in Cleveland, Ohio.