Pink Floyd live performances
Pink Floyd are pioneers in the live music experience, renowned for their lavish stage shows, combining over-the-top visual experiences with music to create a show in which the performers themselves are almost secondary. The Floyd's combination of music and visuals set the standard for musicians on both sides of the Atlantic. As well as visuals, Pink Floyd set standards in sound quality with innovative use of sound effects and panning quadrophonic speaker systems.
Special Effects
Besides the music, arguably the most important and certainly the most elaborate part to any Pink Floyd live show is the special effects.
The light show
In their early days, Pink Floyd was among the first bands to use a dedicated travelling light show in conjunction with their performances, with dynamic psychedelic patterns projected behind the band. It was due to their fortuitous early association with light artist Mike Leonard that the band developed many of these techniques.
When psychadelia fell out of fashion from about 1970 onwards, "Genies", raising platforms conventionally used for roof maintenance in high buildings were brought on tour and filled with lighting equipment to be raised and lowered during performances. Following Roger Waters' departure in 1984, the Pink Floyd light show reached a dazzling pinnacle, utilising hundreds of multi-coloured robotic 'dancing' spotlights and lasers. Their laser shows were particularly famous, such as their use of extremely powerful, isotope-splitting copper-vapor lasers in the 1994 Division Bell tour. These gold-colored lasers were worth over $120,000 apiece and previously used only in nuclear research and high speed photography.[1]
In performances of Dark Side of the Moon, a large circular projection panel dubbed "Mr. Screen" first made an appearance and became a staple thereafter. Specially recorded films and animations were projected onto it, and on subsequent tours, coloured spotlights lights were fixed around the rim, an effect which reached its most spectactular with the dancing patterns of multi coloured lights in the A Momentary Lapse of Reason and Division Bell tours. In the latter, the screen could be retracted behind the stage when not required, and tilted with its peripheral lights focused onto the stage into a single spotlight during the final guitar solo in Comfortably Numb.
Several generations of giant glitter balls began with the Dark Side of the Moon tour, and evolved through subsequent shows into a globe, 25 feet in diameter, which would raise spectacularly from the mixing station in the middle of the audience and open up, flower-like into an array of petals during the final guitar solo of Comfortably Numb, part of the spectacular finale to the Division Bell shows.
Props and Pyrotechnics
Pyrotechnics (such as exploding flashpots, an exploding gong and fireworks) were used extensively throughout their career, as well as copious amounts of dry ice. In 1973's tour to promote Dark Side of the Moon, a large scale model plane flew over the audience and crashed onto the stage with a spectacular explosion.
Over-sized helium balloons were first introduced during the Dark Side of the Moon tours, but in 1975, this element began to play a central part of the live show. For the US leg of the 1975 tour, a pyramid shaped dirigible was floated above the stage. Unfortunately, it was ditched as it became uncontrollable in windy conditions. The trademark giant pig was brought in for Animals in 1977, floating over the audience, as well as a grotesque 'Nuclear Family', a refrigerator filled with snakes, a television and a cadillac. In some shows, an envelope of propane gas was put inside the pig, causing it to explode. The inflatables reached their peak in 1980-1981 during The Wall shows, in which several of the characters from the album were brought to life in the form of fully mobile, giant string puppets, with menacing spotlights for eyes, taking the traditional inflatables to a new level. The characters were designed by notable satirical artist Gerald Scarfe. [2]
Special effects reached a new and outrageous level during these Wall shows. Famously, during the first half of the show, a huge wall was built between the audience and the band. There were 340 white bricks forming a 160-foot long, 35-foot high wall.[2] The final brick was placed as Roger Waters sang "goodbye" at the end of the song Goodbye Cruel World. For the second half of the show, the band was largely invisible, except for a hole in the wall that simulated a hotel room where Roger Waters "acted out" the story of Pink, and an appearance by David Gilmour on top of the wall to perform the climactic guitar solo in Comfortably Numb. Other parts of the story were told by Gerald Scarfe animations projected onto the wall itself (these animations were later integrated into the film Pink Floyd: The Wall). At the finale of the concert, the wall was demolished amidst sound effects and a spectacular light show.
Notable Live Appearances
Early live performances
Long before their mainstream success with Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd were widely regarded as one of the most exciting bands to see live. They found fame in London's underground circuit, playing at infamous venues such as the UFO Club and the Roundhouse, and were trend setters in the psychadelic scene. On 28 April 1967 they featured at The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream benefit gig organised by The International Times and held at the Alexandra Palace. Shortly after the release of their first album, they toured in support of Jimi Hendrix, which brought them even more, mainstream attention. After Syd Barrett's departure, they continued the tradition of using eccentric and colourful effects.
On 26 June 1969, they played a gig known as The Final Lunacy at the Royal Albert Hall. The show featured a bass section, a choir, a roadie dressed as a gorilla and an exhibition of wood sawing. A cannon used exclusively for Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture was brought out and used during Atom Heart Mother. Some consider this appearance the pinnacle of the pre-Echoes performances.
In the May of 1971 at the Crystal Palace Garden Party, due to the fact that it was light and their usual special effects were rendered useless, an enormous inflatable octopus was hidden under the nearby lake which was inflated during Echoes. The concert was so loud that all the fish in the lake were killed.
In November 1972, Pink Floyd performed with the Ballet de Marsailles. An original ballet was coriographed by Roland Petit and included dances to Careful With That Axe Eugene and Echoes.
Some of the shows from the period immeditately after Syd Barrett's departure are documented in the Ummagumma live album.
Dark Side of the Moon
Pink Floyd's 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon brought them wordwide success. However, the band liked to try material out on live audiences before releasing it. The 20th of January 1972 at The Dome, Brighton, saw the debut of an extended piece called Eclipse. This was in fact a prototype version of Dark Side of The Moon. It was included in all the shows of their 1972 tours. When the album was finally released in March 1973 to a hugely enthusiasic response, the band were forced to embark on much larger tours, requiring, in their eyes, much more elaborate stage effects to entertain larger and larger audiences. It was in this period that films synchronised to the music were introduced along with "Mr. Screen".
Knebworth '75
In 1975, the band launched a short tour that ended two months prior to the release of Wish You Were Here, which eventually sold out stadiums. The last gig of the tour was as the headliner of 1975 Knebworth Festival, which also featured The Steve Miller Band, Captain Beefheart and Roy Harper (who joined Pink Floyd on the stage to sing Have a Cigar). It was the second Knebworth Festival, which featured artists such as the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Genesis and Frank Zappa between 1974 and 1979.
Despite some technical problems, the band managed to perform a remarkable concert, which as well as the usual special effects featured a low fly-by by a squadron of spit-fires synchronised to the end of On the Run. Before an audience of 125,000, which would be their biggest until Live 8 some 30 years later, it was the last time the band would perform Echoes and the entire Dark Side of the Moon with Roger Waters.
In the Flesh
The 1977 Pink Floyd - In the Flesh tour was the last time Pink Floyd performed a major worldwide tour with Roger Waters. The tour featured the famous character inflatables puppets, and also featured a pyrotechnic 'waterfall' and one of the biggest and most elaborate stages to date, including canopies that would raise from the stage umbrella-like to protect the band from the elements [3].
Pink Floyd's market strategy for the In the Flesh tour was very aggressive, filling pages of The New York Times and Billboard magazine. To promote their four-night run at Madison Square Garden in New York City, there was a Pink Floyd parade on 6th Avenue featuring pigs and sheep.[4]
During the tour Waters began to exhibit increasingly aggressive behaviour, and would often yell abusively at disruptive audiences who wouldn't stop yelling and screaming during the quieter numbers.[4] In the New York shows they had to use local workers as lighting technicians due to union problems with their own crew. They had several difficulties with the workers; for example, Waters once had to beckon one of the spotlights to move higher when it only illuminated his lower legs and feet while he was singing. He eventually became exasperated, brought the whole band to a halt to remark "I think you New York lighting guys are a fucking load of shit!", and then continued the song.
In the first half of the show, Pink Floyd played Animals, and Wish You Were Here in the second. Although the Animals album had not been as successful as the previous two, the band managed to sell out arenas and stadiums in America and Europe, setting scale and attendance records. In Chicago, the band played to an estimated audience of 95,000; in Cleveland and Montreal, they set attendance records for those venues by playing to over 80,000 people. The Montreal show, the final performance of the tour, ended with Pink Floyd performing a blues jam as the roadies dismantled the instruments in front of the insatiable audience who refused to let the band leave the stage. A small riot at the front of the stage followed the band's eventual exit. That night, Waters spat in the face of a disruptive fan; The Wall grew out of Waters' thoughts about this incident, particularly his growing awareness that stardom had alienated him from his audience.[5]
The Wall Live
Pink Floyd mounted its most elaborate stage show in conjunction with the tour of The Wall. A band of session musicians played the first song, wearing rubber face masks (demonstrating that the individual members of the band were practically anonymous to the public), then backed up the band for the remainder of the show. Most notable was the giant wall constructed between band and audience.
The costs of the tour were estimated to have reached US$ 1.5 million even before the first performance. The New York Times stated in its March 2, 1980 edition that "The 'Wall' show remains a milestone in rock history though and there's no point in denying it. Never again will one be able to accept the technical clumsiness, distorted sound and meagre visuals of most arena rock concerts as inevitable" and concluded that "the 'Wall' show will be the touchstone against which all future rock spectacles must be measured."
The Wall concert was only performed a handful of times each in four cities: Los Angeles, Uniondale (Long Island), Dortmund, and London (at Earl's Court). The primary 'tour' occurred in 1980, but the band performed two more shows at Earl's Court in 1981 for filming, with the intention of integrating the shows into the upcoming movie. The resulting footage was deemed substandard and scrapped; years later, Roger Waters said that he had tried to locate this footage for historical purposes but was unsuccessful, and he now considers it to be lost forever. There are several unofficial videos of the entire live show in circulation.
Gilmour and Mason attempted to convince Waters to expand the show for a more lucrative, large-scale stadium tour, but because of the nature of the material (one of the primary themes is the distance between an artist and his audience) Waters balked at this. In fact, Waters had reportedly been offered a guaranteed US$ 1 million for each additional stadium concert, but declined the offer, insisting that such a tour would be hypocritical.
These shows are documented by the Is There Anybody Out There? The Wall Live 1980-81 album.
Waters later re-created the Wall show in 1990, amid the ruins of the Berlin Wall, joined by a number of guest artists (including Bryan Adams, Scorpions, Van Morrison, The Band, Tim Curry, Cyndi Lauper, Sinéad O'Connor, Marianne Faithfull, Joni Mitchell, Ute Lemper and Thomas Dolby). This concert was even bigger than the previous ones, as Waters built a 550-foot long and 82-foot high wall.[6] The theatrical features of The Wall concert were increased to gather the attention of a sold-out audience of 200,000 people and of another estimated 500 million, in 35 countries, to whom the show would be broadcast. After the concert began, the gates were opened and an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 people were able to watch the concert.
This show is documented by The Wall Live in Berlin album and DVD.
A Momentary Lapse of Reason
After the release of A Momentary Lapse of Reason in 1987, Pink Floyd embarked on an 11-week tour to promote the album. The two remaining members of the band, David Gilmour and Nick Mason, along with Richard Wright, had just won a legal battle against Roger Waters and the future of the group was uncertain. Having the aesthetic spleandour and marvel of The Wall shows to live up to, the concerts' special effects were more impressive than ever. The initial "promotional tour" was extended, and finally lasted almost two years, ending in 1989 after playing around 200 concerts to about 5.5 million people in total, including 3 dates at Madison Square Garden and 2 nights at Wembley Stadium. The tour took Pink Floyd to various exotic locations they had never played before such as shows in the forecourt of the Palace of Versailles, Moscow in the Soviet Union (which was most Muscovites' first rock concert) and Venice despite fears and protests that the sound would damage the city's fountations.
Pink Floyd was the second highest grossing act of 1987 and the highest grossing of 1988 in the U.S.. Financially, Pink Floyd was the biggest act of these two years combined, as it grossed almost US$ 60 million from touring, about the same as U2 and Michael Jackson, their closest rivals, put together. Worldwide, the band grossed around US$ 135 million. A further concert was held in 1990, at the Knebworth Festival in 1990, a charity event that also featured other Silver Clef Award winners. Pink Floyd was the last act to play, to an audience of 125,000. The £60,000 firework display that ended the concert was entirely financed by the band.
These shows are documented by the Delicate Sound of Thunder album and video.
The Division Bell
The Division Bell 's tour in 1994 was promoted by legendary Canadian concert impresario Michael Cohl and became the highest-grossing tour in rock music history to that date, with the band playing the entirety of Dark Side of the Moon in some shows, the first time it had done so since 1975.
The concerts featured even more impressive special effects than the previous tour, including two custom designed airships.[7] Three stages leapfrogged around North America and Europe, each 180 feet long and featuring a 130 foot arch modelled on the Hollywood Bowl. All in all, the tour required 700 tons of steel carried by 53 articulated trucks, a crew of 161 people and an initial investment of US$ 4 million plus US$ 25 million of running costs just to stage. This tour played to 5.5 million people in 68 cities; each concert gathered an average 45,000 audience. At the end of the year, the Division Bell tour was announced as the biggest tour ever, with worldwide gross of over £150 million (about US$ 250 million). In the U.S. alone, it grossed US$ 103.5 million from 59 concerts. However, this record was short-lived; less than a year later, The Rolling Stones' Voodoo Lounge tour (like the Division Bell tour, also sponsored in part by Volkswagen) finished with a worldwide gross of over US$ 300 million. The Stones remain the only act ever to achieve a higher worldwide gross from a tour.
These shows are documented by the P*U*L*S*E album, video and DVD.
1995-present
In 1996, the band performed "Wish You Were Here" with Billy Corgan (of The Smashing Pumpkins fame) at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. In an interview with BBC2 Radio in October, 2001, Gilmour implied that the Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd compilation "probably" signaled the end of the band. "You never know exactly what the future [holds]," Gilmour said. "I'm not going to slam any doors too firmly, but I don't see myself doing any more of that, and I certainly don't see myself going out on a big Floyd tour again." A few days later in an interview with Launch.com, Nick Mason contradicted the statement, saying "I don't feel I've retired yet. You know, if everyone wanted to, we could certainly still do something. I've spent 30 years waiting for the planets to align. I'm quite used to it." Longtime manager Steve O'Rourke died on October 30, 2003. Gilmour, Mason and Wright performed "Fat Old Sun" and "The Great Gig in the Sky" at his funeral at Chichester Cathedral, contrary to reports in the media claiming they played "Wish You Were Here".
David Gilmour released a solo concert DVD called David Gilmour in Concert in November 2002 which was compiled from shows on June 22, 2001 and January 17, 2002 at The Royal Festival Hall in London. Richard Wright, Robert Wyatt, and Bob Geldof (Pink in The Wall film) make guest appearances.
Live 8, 2005
On July 2, 2005 Pink Floyd performed at the London Live 8 concert with Roger Waters rejoining David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright. It was the quartet's first performance together in over 24 years — the band's last show with Waters was at Earls Court in London on June 17, 1981.
Gilmour announced the Live 8 reunion on June 12, 2005:
Like most people I want to do everything I can to persuade the G8 leaders to make huge commitments to the relief of poverty and increased aid to the third world. It's crazy that America gives such a paltry percentage of its GNP to the starving nations. Any squabbles Roger and the band have had in the past are so petty in this context, and if re-forming for this concert will help focus attention then it's got to be worthwhile.
The band's set consisted of "Speak to Me/Breathe/Breathe Reprise", "Money", 'Wish You Were Here" and "Comfortably Numb". As on the original recordings, Gilmour sang the lead vocals on "Breathe" and "Money", and shared them with Waters on Comfortably Numb. For "Wish You Were Here", Waters sung half of the verse's lyrics, unlike the original recording. During the guitar introduction of "Wish You Were Here", Waters said:
It's actually quite emotional standing up here with these three guys after all these years. Standing to be counted with the rest of you. Anyway, we're doing this for everyone who's not here, but particularly, of course, for Syd.
They were augmented by guitarist/bassist Tim Renwick (guitarist on Roger Waters' 1984 solo tour, who has since become Pink Floyd's backing guitarist on stage), keyboardist/backup vocalist Jon Carin (Pink Floyd's backing keyboardist from 1987 onward and occasional keyboardist for The Who, who has since performed on the 1999-2000 North American leg of Waters' "In the Flesh" solo tour), saxophonist Dick Parry during "Money" (who played on the original recordings of "Money", "Us And Them", and "Shine on You Crazy Diamond"), and backing singer Carol Kenyon during "Comfortably Numb". During "Breathe", on the screen behind them, film of the iconic pig from the Animals album was shown flying over Battersea Power Station, and during "Money", a shot of a Dark Side of the Moon record being played was shown. During "Comfortably Numb", the three giant screens showed the Pink Floyd Wall (from the cover of The Wall), and during the final guitar solo, the words "Make Poverty History" were written on the wall, to show Pink Floyd's support for the campaign.
At the end, after the last song had been played, Gilmour said "thank you very much, good night" and started to walk off the stage. Waters called him back, however, and the band shared a group hug (above image) that became one of the most famous pictures of Live 8. As they proceeded to walk off, Nick Mason threw his drumsticks into the audience.
Major Tours
- November 1967 - The first tour of the United States
- November 1967 - Supporting the Jimi Hendrix Experience tour
- July 1968 - A Saucerful of Secrets tour
- May 1969 - The Man/The Journey tour
- September 1970 - Atom Heart Mother World Tour
- October 1971 - Meddle tour
- March 1973 - Dark Side of the Moon tour
- November 1974 - British Winter Tour, 1974
- April 1975 - Wish You Were Here tour
- January 1977 - In the Flesh tour promoting Animals
- February 1980 - The Wall
- September 1987 - A Momentary Lapse of Reason tour
- March 1994 - The Division Bell tour
Comprehensive details of all of Pink Floyd's live appearances can be found at The Pink Floyd Archives.
Backing Musicians
Due to the increasingly complex nature of Pink Floyd's music, more and more musicians besides the band were required on stage to recreate sounds achieved in the studio. Some performances of Atom Heart Mother featured an entire orchestra and choir, reputedly a nightmare to bring on tour. Less 'weighty' contributions from other musicians followed. In 1973 Dick Parry provided saxophone for The Dark Side of the Moon and reprised this for live performances in every subsequent tour except those promoting The Wall and A Momentary Lapse of Reason, the latter in which Scott Page provided sax. For 1977's Animals promotion, Snowy White was brought in as an additional guitarist. He returned for The Wall shows along with a complete 'surrogate band' consisting of Pete Woods (keyboards), Willie Wilson (drums) and Andy Brown (Bass). For the A Momentary Lapse of Reason and Division Bell tours, Jon Carin (whom David Gilmour had met at Live Aid playing in Brian Ferry's backing band) provided additional synthesizors and keyboards, Guy Pratt replaced Roger Waters on bass, Tim Renwick provided additional guitar and Gary Wallace additional percussion. Several backing vocalists, (the most notable of whom are Clare Torry, Sam Brown and Carol Kenyan) have accompanied the band on an off from The Dark Side of the Moon onwards. During their performance at Live 8, Pink Floyd used Tim Renwick, Jon Carin and Carol Kenyan.
Trivia
The band's lavish stage shows were the basis for Douglas Adams' fictional rock music group "Disaster Area" (creators of the loudest noise in the universe, and making use of solar flares in their stage show) in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Douglas Adams was a personal friend of David Gilmour and made a one-time guest appearance on guitar, on the Division Bell tour (October 28, 1994), purportedly as a present for Adams's 42nd birthday.
References
- Mason, Nick. Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd, 2004. ISBN 0297843877
- Schaffner, Nicholas. Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey, 1991. ISBN 0517576082
Notes
- ^ Lighting Dimensions, September 1994, retrieved from here on February 10, 2006
- ^ Schaffner, p. 241
- ^ Schaffner, p. 216-217
- ^ a b Schaffner, p. 218
- ^ Schaffner, p. 219
- ^ Schaffner, p. 308
- ^ VOLA Archive, retrieved 22 March 2006
