One of the most distinctive concert films in rock history, Pink Floyd at Pompeii, is to be rereleased in cinemas – including in Imax format – and have its first soundtrack release.
Filmed in 1971 and released the following year, the film (previously titled Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii) captures the band shortly before The Dark Side of the Moon ushered in their most commercially successful phase. It will be in cinemas worldwide on 24 April.
Forgoing the usual concert film format, director Adrian Maben decided to have the group perform without an audience, in the eerily deserted Roman amphitheatre in Pompeii: the first band to play there.
They play tracks from their 1971 album Meddle, and earlier songs such as A Saucerful of Secrets and Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. As well as suitably trippy shots of the city’s classical antiquity and the band walking through its landscape, the film also features footage of them working on The Dark Side of the Moon at Abbey Road studios, including the songs On the Run, Us and Them and Brain Damage. There are also interviews with the band.
The film has now been restored to 4K quality from the original negatives which were found in Pink Floyd’s archives. “Since 1994, I have searched for the elusive film rushes of Pink Floyd at Pompeii,” said Lana Topham, the band’s director of restoration. “So the recent discovery of the 1972 original 35mm cut negative was a very special moment.”
The film’s sound has also been overhauled, in a new mix by chart-topping prog rock star Steven Wilson.
Wilson said it was “an honour”, adding: “Ever since my dad brainwashed me as a kid by playing The Dark Side of the Moon on repeat, Pink Floyd have been my favourite band. They are my Beatles, deeply ingrained in my musical DNA. I first saw Pompeii from a grainy print at a local cinema. It made an incredible impression on me with its untethered and exploratory rock music made by four musicians who seemed to epitomise the notion of intellectual cool.”
The film has previously been reissued on DVD but, although much bootlegged, the soundtrack was not officially released until it was made a part of the 27-disc box set The Early Years in 2016. Entitled Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII, and boasting Wilson’s new mix, the soundtrack will be reissued on 2 May on CD, vinyl and streaming, including in the Dolby Atmos spatial audio format. A Blu-Ray and DVD of the film will be released the same day.
Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour returned to Pompeii to perform a concert in 2016, this time with a crowd.
The band’s final album was The Endless River in 2014, though in 2022 Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason released a new song under the Pink Floyd name called Hey, Hey, Rise Up. It featured Ukrainian vocalist Andriy Khlyvnyuk and was released in support of Ukraine following Russia’s invasion that year.
A reunion of the band’s surviving members, Gilmour, Mason and Roger Waters, is highly unlikely, with Gilmour having criticised his former bandmate in the press in recent years. Asked by a Guardian reader last year whether he would ever perform with Waters again, he said: “Absolutely not. I tend to steer clear of people who actively support genocidal and autocratic dictators like Putin and Maduro [president of Venezuela]. Nothing would make me share a stage with someone who thinks such treatment of women and the LGBT community is OK.”
Also in 2024, the band sold off the rights to their catalogue recordings, name and likeness in a deal with Sony believed to be worth $400m, while retaining the rights to their songwriting.
Source: theguardian.com
