THE 25 MOST IMPORTANT GIGS

BAD

IMPRESSION

DID YOU

SPOT THAT ?

QUESTIONS

& ANSWERS

THE FAKE SIDE

OF THE FLOYD

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In the Flesh ? movie sequence

One of the most direct allusions to the band's life in the film version of « The Wall » concerns the fans who seen under arrest during the In the Flesh? sequence. This is a direct reference to the incidents the band witnessed in April 1975 during their North American tour. At that time the American authorities wanted to showing thof force by carrying out tight controls to arrest people with drugs during the concerts in San Diego and the Sport Arena in Los Angeles.

These arrests produced a lot of controversy in the United States because it was part of a takeover by the authorities. Drugs had indeed become a major scourge because of the mass arrival of extremely pure heroin. The ravages on the youth resulted in a decrease in tolerance on the part of the citizens who then elected stricter police chiefs (it was the time of the "French Connection"). Most of the charges were eventually dropped.

From the first versions of the scripts of "The Wall" (there were at least four treatments), this episode clearly appeared. It was even much more developed but was eventually reduced to the In the Flesh? and Run like Hell sequences (in a way). For the sake of completeness, the band referred to these incidents during the Vera part of the original "The Wall performed live" concerts in 1980 (via photo projections.

When Alan Parker « announced » his next movie

In January 1981, Alan Parker, who had been hired to direct Pink Floyd The Wall, was shooting his film Shoot the Moon. He didn't hesitate to make a subtle reference to the Floyd in his film.

Alan Parker:

« Eventually, I left for northern California to prepare Shoot the Moon and Roger phoned me with an idea. Why didn’t I produce the film with him, with Michael Seresin (my long time cameraman whom Roger had met separately) directing in tandem with Gerald Scarfe? The idea appealed because I could be vicariously involved with a project I had great hopes for, without having to sweat the blood that directing requires. Some hope. In January 1981 we began filming Shoot The Moon and, simultaneously, I arranged for our British production manager, Garth Thomas, to begin prepping The Wall with Production Designer Brian Morris, whom I had worked with many times before »

« The Making of the Wall - an essay », Alanparker.com

Interviewer: « Dans « Shoot the Moon », on trouve un certain nombre de références rock comme les Beatles « If I fell », les Stones « Play With Fire », les Eagles, Bob Seger et justement un poster de « The Wall »».

Alan Parker: «Parce que cette musique est celle des gens qui sont tombés amoureux, voilà quinze ans, la musique que j’écoutais à l’époque. Tu sais, « Shoot the Moon » n’est pas très éloigné de ma propre expérience de la vie de couple. Pour la scène de la fessée, j’ai dû concevoir une chambre d’enfant. Je voulais un poster rock parce que tous les gosses de cet âge en ont sur leurs murs. Quant au poster, c’est juste un clin d’œil. »

«Derrière le mur », Best, August 1982.

« Works » of pastiche ? »

The cover is strongly inspired by a work of the Dutch painter Wladimir Flem "Nederland industrialiseert" dating from 1948.

Recycled cover!

This cover included in the recent « Later Years » boxset come from is an old project proposed by Hipgnosis for the album which would become « Animals » (before the theme inspired by Orwell’s « Animal Farm » was eventually chosen).

Aubrey Powell:

« It was originally an idea related to Animals but was never used, though I had always loved it. It had lain dormant ever since »

« One of my turns », Prog Magazine, December 2019

« Flying sheep »

In 1977, during concerts in American stadiums, the group thought of propelling an inflatable sheep above the audience.

1976.xx.xx Sheep Fly testing from Rare Pink Floyd on Vimeo.

Roger Waters:

« We had mortars and we had a pack of nine, and there were like Chinese fireworks and we would fire something that looked like a firework about a thousand feet into the air ... but when it ‘BOOF' ... it opened out ... into about four or five footlong tissue paper think parachute in the shape of the sheep with led feet so you speak and they would drift down over the crowd. It was one of the most remarkable pieces of rock theater that i've ever seen and i've been desperate to do it, again ever since and now you can’t ... "health and safety » ... you can't for anything over the crowd »

« Simple facts », 2015.

Festival de Montréal 1979

In order to offset the enormous costs of the Montreal Olympic stadium, the Canadian’s promoters and the authorities planned a Rock festival who packed together Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney and Pink Floyd for the summer 1979! The promoters were counting on the simultaneous releases of the Led Zep’s « In through the back door » (August 1979), Mc Cartney’s « Back to the egg » (June 1979) and « The Wall » originally scheduled for June. According to Donald K. Donald (the promoter behind the catastrophic group's gig in 1977) if the first agreed, the Floyd’s agreement never came (the delaying release of « The Wall » was a big issue).

« Le Devoir », 8 janvier 1980

Auto-références

During the original Wal shows (1980-1981), Pink Floyd self-cited during the song Vera. The projections on the wall are a testimony on the last years of the group and in particular its tours of 1975 and 1977. The projected pictures come for the most part from the shots taken between 1974 and 1975 by Storm Thorgerson and Jill Furmanovsky for the aborted book project "In the Pink". Some images have since been released on other media, others remain unpublished. Note the legends under the photographies.

Rick Wright Chords reference

During the ovarian struggles between the new look Pink Floyd and Roger Waters between 1987 and 1990, Rick Wright revealed that he had to tune Roger's bass because he was unable to do so. This echoed Gilmour's words that Waters was a limited musician.

Rick Wright:

«The only time I'd get angry with Roger onstage was when he'd be playing out of tune; we'd be in D and he was still banging away in E because he couldn't hear it. I had to tune his bass onstage, you know. In those days there were no strobe tuners, so after every number he'd stick the head of his bass guitar over my keyboards and I'd tune it up for him »

« The 30th year Technicolour dream », Uncut, July 1995

Roger Waters:

«They thought I was tone-deaf: «Ooh, he's just a boring teacher-figure who tells us what to do, but he can't tune his own guitar …». They felt very insignificant, I think»

«Roger Waters Says Pink Floyd Bandmates Thought He Was Tone Deaf», iHeart Radio, 1st November 2016

Roger Waters defended himself from this anecdote. Nevertheless, images prove it like the one captured in November 1970 in Denmark or in 1973:

Interviewer: «We’ve got a lovely quote about that Roger used to have his bass tuned for him»

David Gilmour:«That’s partly true, but only ‘cos it was easier to have Rick do it with his electronic gadget»

«I like a good laugh», The Mazing Pudding, Issue 12

Screen Movies

If it’s well-know known that the first projections on stage date from the 1974 French tour (they were modestly still image projections), the idea is much older. In the deal that bound the band to M.Antonioni for the soundtrack of "Zabriskie Point", the Floyd asked permission to use the spectacular end scene showing the explosion of the villa in slow motion and from multiple angles. The Floyd considered using this sequence during their 1970 American tour as indicated by these press clippings:

Article du 12 Mai 1970 du « The Cincinnati Enquirer »

17 Apr 1970 The Fresno Bee

This sequence was finally integrated into the title Eclipse which concluded the performances of "The Dark Side of the Moon" from the British tour of 1974.

« Close our eyes to the octopus ride ! »
At the free festival at the Crystal Palace in London on May 15, 1971, the Floyd used one of its first inflatable effects. This effect was created by a group of Dutch artists called "Eventstructure Research Group" for a 1968 exhibition. It was a 25 meter long octopus with 8 tentacles. When air was injected into the structure, the octopus slowly emerged on the surface of the lake.

Aubrey Powell:

«(Roger) was thinking all the time, "How can we better this ?" But it really stated way back at that Crystal Palace gig with that inflatable octopus. I think he realised that the audience appreciated something more that just the band. You see him today and he's gone off the clock with it, which is fantastic!»

«To Infinity... And Beyond!», Uncut, May 2019

Aubrey Powell:

«That was some Dutch people, they said they wanted to do it and we just said, OK (…) That was great, this huge Octopus that was buried in the lake in the front of the stage and that floated to the surface and its tentacle unraveled and went up the bank and out sort of 50-60 yards into the audience. It was terrific and a lot of dry ice we emptied several hundred weight of dry ice in to this pond. Probably didn’t do the fish much good»

«Off the Record», 3 November 1985.

Even though this effect caused the death of marine fauna due to the use of pink smoke bombs. Three years later, this idea was taken up and improved:

Ringo et le Floyd

For the album "The Final Cut", the band decided to use an audio spatialization system called Holophonic. This system, developed by physiologist Hugo Zucarelli, simulates a three-dimensional sound effect. A recording system using a dummy named Ringo was developed to record a bi-naural sound.

David Gilmour:

« Well, there's a dummy head thing that Neumann and Sennheiser used to make - a dummy head microphone thing, where you just have a head with microphones in, and if you listen back to stuff recorded on that on headphones, you actually get all-round sound. But this one does all-round sound and up and down and all sorts of strange stuff. It has a dynamic thing as well, where it affects the dynamics and you can have things that appear to your brain to be fantastically loud, but they're not moving the needles very loud at all. It's not actually a loud sound on the tape,but your brain thinks it is. The secret of this Holophonic thing is that it actually fools your brain; it's not what is actually on the tape or on the record, that isn't all of it - it's actually making a reaction with your brain; it's very hard to explain but it alters how you perceive the sound. »

« The rise of Pink Floyd and the decline of Sydnis Barret », Sounds Magazine, May 1983.

Michael Kamen, Roger Waters, James Guthrie and Ringo during « The Final Cut » recording sessions.

In Extremis

Because of the recording of "Animals" in their new studios in Brittania Row, we do not have session-sheets giving details about the dates of recording of the songs of the album (contrary to "The Dark Side of the Moon" or "Wish you were here" recorded at EMI studios). We know since then that these sessions were spread out from April to November with an interruption during the summer (as often with the band). However, following the birth of his son Harry on November 17, 1976 and to soften the subject of the album, Roger Waters decided to record a song that he had written at the very end of 1975: Pigs on the Wing .

This inclusion in the album was particularly late as the first press kit sent to the different European offices of EMI attests, indicating that the album is only composed of three tracks: Sheep, Dogs and Pigs.

The Wall of Ban
In 1980, Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) was unofficially adopted by black students during demonstrations against segregation in schools. The South African government then decided to ban the song from record stores on May 2, 1980 by listing it as a "Dangerous Item". The album topped the album sales charts with 75,000 records sold.

But the title also provoked a short controversy with the English government and with associations. Thus, the "Inner London Education Authority", as well as the new Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher hated the song. The British Minister of Education signed a joint appeal with the BBC to ban the broadcast of this single on radio stations.

Paradoxically, while the band was seen as a sleeping dinosaur, this controversy offered a new notoriety to the new music scene.

One (another) slip

In 1987, the band released a sign to promote Learning to Fly in the USA. This four track vinyl included a do your own lead version of Terminal Frost. As the name suggests, it was a version without the guitar solo that serves as a backing track for amateur guitarists. But for some reason, it was the album version that was unfortunately pressed on the record.

Photographies by Chicago Sun-Times.

On June 19, 1977, Soldier Field of Chicago. The promoters of the concert told the band that they had sold 67,000 tickets. However, faced with the band's doubts, the Floyd's management hired a helicopter pilot and had photos taken of the audience. They estimated the audience at 95,000 people!

Warning! Graphics!!

Superbear Studios, faced with the instant success of the album « The Wall », capitalized on the Pink Floyd name. At their own risk.

Damon Metrebian (fondateur des studios Superbear):

«Pendant toutes ces années, nous n’avons fait aucune campagne de communication. Nous avons passé deux fois des annonces dans le magazine anglais Music Week.
Une en janvier 1978, pour annoncer l’ouverture du studio, l'autre en janvier 1980. Cela ne nous a pas apporté de nouveaux clients, mais la seconde annonce, une publicité pleine page dans laquelle j'avais tenté d'imiter le style de Gerald Scarfe, représentait un mur portant le nom des musiciens qui avaient enregistré chez nous, avec une brique au nom de Pink Floyd et le slogan « Encore une nouvelle brique à notre mur ». Ça a failli nous attirer un procès avec Pink Floyd !»

«Studios de légende - Secrets et histoires de nos Abbey Road français », Manuel Jacquinet, Octobre 2020.

The first inflatable prop concept
To promote the Atom Heart Mother album, Hipgnosis and the Harvest label decided to take the cow concept to the extreme by offering a surprise box who contained a poster, and more surprising, an inflatable cow udder to some retailers and journalists

On the left below, the cardboard box and above the inflatable udder. On the right, circled, the prop used for the US advert of « Relics » (late 1971).