Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972) - full transcript

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Could I have egg, sausage,
chips and beans, and a tea?

- Nick?
- What?

- Shall I tell you one thing?
- Tell us one thing, Rog.

- This is nothing like our supper usually is.
- This is true.

Usually we're chatting away,
enjoying ourselves. That's a fact.

Could I have a glass of milk, please?

- What?
- No.

- Why not?
- Whose is that?

- How do you know this isn't yours?
- It hasn't got peas.

Well, this has got ham on it.

That's what you ordered.
You ordered tomatoes.



- Is this your milk? Can I drink it?
- No. You can have a sip.

- Thanks, man.
- When's the shop opening?

I don't think equipment could take over.
We rely on it a lot.

We couldn't do what we do,
as we do it, without it.

We could still do a good,
entertaining musical show without it.

Those things are down
to how you control them,

whether you're controlling them,
not the other way round.

It's a question of using the tools available
when they're available.

There's all kinds of electronic goodies
available for people like us to use.

If we can be bothered.
And we can be bothered.

It's all extensions of what's coming out
of our heads.

You've got to have it inside your head
to be able to get it out at all.

The equipment isn't thinking of what to do
any of the time.

It couldn't control itself.



Can I put this down?

It's just on... the first note.

- Hang on. Say that again.
- Can I put this down?

I've still got to try
and put on the other track.

Stay cool.

Turn the volume down.

It would be interesting to see what four
people could do, if given the equipment,

who didn't know anything about it,
and told to get on with it and do something.

I think we'd come off better.

It's like saying, give a man a Les Paul
guitar and he becomes Eric Clapton.

You know? And it's not true.

Give a man an amplifier and a synthesizer
and he doesn't become whoever.

He doesn't become us.

- Come and hear it.
- I will.

What's this film you've been working on?

You should know. You're the director.

- Rock and roll.
- It's rock and roll?

- Oops!
- Tell us about it.

- Pull yourself together, David.
- I can't.

Oh, dear! God! It's a film
being made in Pompei, mostly, in Italy.

- About?
- It's about the Pink Floyd.

Are you fairly happy about the film?

- What do you mean "happy"?
- Do you feel it's going in a direction

- which is interesting? Or not?
- What do you mean "interesting"?

Hello, Mum! Hello, Dad!

It's just the oysters are good, ain't they?
Good oysters here, aren't there?

It's good oysters here.
Seems to be the right season of year.

- The oysters are all right.
- They're very good.

- Yes, this time of year.
- Were they French?

I don't know what nationality they are.

I like to think oysters
transcend national barriers.

We could become slaves
of all our equipment.

In the past, we have.
But we're trying to sort it all out.

So that we're not. But I agree.
I mean, it worries me sometimes.

That we have this much equipment.
And you can hide behind it.

If I heard somebody saying that,
I'd like to say, if we were at a gig,

it would be nice sometimes to say,
"Go on then, there it is."

"Get stuck in.
You can open the show."

"There's going to be 4,000 people
in here in half an hour."

"Get up there and knock them out, man!"
And they'd say,

"But we don't know the equipment
and need time to rehearse."

So we'd say, "So did we.
About four or five years."

To some extent we're trying
to simplify it now,

make the logistics of it
a little more organised.

It's been a bit Heath Robinson,

a bit "mad scientist's laboratory"
on the stage.

Would you say you've made a lot of
money working with the Floyd?

Depends who you compare it to, really.

- Say, before working with them, yourself?
- Oh, yeah.

Before working with them, I was...

on a very paltry amount of earnings.

I mean breadline. Breadline and less.

When the great economic collapse
happens, it'll happen across the board.

I don't think rock and roll will go first.

The market now in rock and roll
is expanding at a phenomenal rate.

People are constantly saying rock's dying.

Every six months somebody says it,
with enormous conviction.

It's not going to happen.

Unfortunately, really we mark a sort of era.

We're in danger
of becoming a relic of the past.

For some people, we represent
their childhood of 1967,

the underground in London,
or the free concert in Hyde Park.

Can you get me a milk, please?

Could you get me a fruit pie and cream?
And not a corner piece.

I'd like some tea...

- And not the crust.
- I don't care what bit I get.

One without a crust.

Ooh, I like a bit of crust!

Rick, are you doing a run down
from D to the B,

before the singing starts
in the middle eight?

Aren't you doing that one?
Yes... That's the one!

Sure you don't want this one? Why,
because it's got ice cream on it?

- Steve's got one.
- So boring, man!

Christopher, do something for me?
Could you get another apple pie?

- With ice cream and no crust.
- Can I have an apple pie without a crust?

Just the middle piece.
Have you got any middle pieces?

Pardon?...
Only got the round apple pies now?

- What do you want to do?
- Go on.

- The flames of St Joseph Lockwood.
- Do you want one?

- No, thank you, Christopher.
- Tea?

Tea.

All that media stuff is all very irrelevant.

If people come to a concert
and don't like it, they don't come again.

It's an image we'd like to dispel, I think.

It was very heavy a few years ago,
but it's not so bad since.

I still think most people think of us
as a very drug-orientated group.

Of course we're not. You can trust us.

Are you trying to shake this image off?

Well, we're not exactly...

It's not that we're trying to shake
an image off. We're doing other things.

Because we want to do other things.

- What went on, then?
- I'm trying to ask serious questions.

- Do oysters put you in a good mood?
- They certainly seem to, don't they, Rog?

- This is ridiculous.
- It's no good trying to be serious.

- I'm losing my...
- Grip.

..my grip on things.

- There's somebody out there dying.
- You're really talking now.

- Someone's choking.
- Do oysters put you in a good work mood?

Adrian, this has got to stop. This attempt
to elicit conversation out of the chaps

is doomed to failure.
They know you're trying to get them to talk.

If you just spoke to us as if we were having
a natural conversation,

he says in a very loud voice.

- I don't know what you mean.
- Are there difficult moments? Yes.

- What David means?
- I don't know what Adrian means.

Then you're fucking thick!
If you'll pardon my French.

- What are we digging at?
- What do you want to know about it?

Obviously, they're all a gang of idiots,
but live and let live.

- Rock on!
- Quite.

Because we've been together such a long
time, we've passed peaks of disagreement,

and worked out methods of living
with each other, and getting on.

We're happy together.
We don't... work and that's it.

We're not held together
simply by the bond of success, or money.

- He's not very important.
- Don't waste any film on him.

- What's the French for he is only a roadie?
- Say, "Hello, Mum."

- Aren't there any problems or strains?
- Of course there are.

- How do you get round them?
- Pretend they're not there.

We certainly don't face up to them
in an adult way, if that's what you mean.

- A sense of humour.
- We live miles apart.

You've been going together a long time.

- We haven't been "going together"!
- Steady!

- We work together, occasionally...
- We have a great understanding.

- ..whenever we run out of money.
- And tolerance.

So I suppose it's a question of money?

That's all it is, Adrian.

You're being very provocative.
Or trying to be.

- I do my best.
- Well, we refuse to rise.

Quite. Certainly not to a jibe like that.

We understand each other very well.
We're very tolerant.

But there are a lot of things unsaid, as well.
I feel. Sometimes.

- How do you get over the difficult times?
- They're not that difficult.

I don't know how we get over it, but we do.

We're all from the British aristocracy,
except David Gilmour.

- All our mothers are countesses...
- And dukes and duchesses.

My mother was nouveau riche
and bought all the equipment.

When Syd left the group,
we went to David's mother and said,

"We'd like your son to join us.
You'll have to front a lot of equipment."

And that's how we got all our equipment.
It is very easy. It's just a matter of...

- So anybody can do it?
- They have to have a great deal of money.

- You don't need anything else.
- No talent, no musical ability.

No musical training required.

That's what they said to Berlioz.
And he got all those singers together.

That's what they said to Beethoven.
He only carried on because he was deaf.

- Yeah, right. Berlioz is...
- He thought, "I'll get an echo chamber..."

"A thousand musicians and put them all
in a big church. And a thousand singers."

- It's got to sound good.
- Do you think you need any talent at all?

Why are you laughing?

Why aren't there millions
of imitators of our sound?

- Why isn't everyone else as successful?
- Don't tell me they can't afford an amp...

- They haven't the money.
- Rubbish!

We only started
with ten bob's worth of gear.

- Have you altered your tone controls?
- No.

- You altered your volume controls?
- I don't think so. What's different?

- Didn't sound quite as toppy.
- It didn't sound quite as toppy?

It must have been as toppy. The only thing
it could have been is less toppy.

More toppy, rather.

All right, we all know
that you're God Almighty, Roger.

Steve, you're good at your job,
but you could never produce a record.

- It's silly of you to try.
- No, rubbish!

If you take a crappy enough group
with only twelve songs...

You're talking about producing works of art
or Pink Floyd records.

That's 0.01 per cent of the market.
There's plenty of other crap going on.

No, we're not talking about that.
We're talking about a record producer

as somebody who's in charge
of a recording session.

In order to be in charge of that,
you need to have a minimal...

Well, not minimal, you need
an extensive knowledge of the equipment

and what rock and roll's about.

Steve knows rock and roll,
he's got no idea about the equipment,

he's got very little idea, in terms of
technicalities, what the music's about.

He knows what he likes.

Plenty of people have produced records
on that basis, very successful records.

Who?

In the finished article, the only thing that's
important is whether it moves you or not.

I can't get over the sibilance of the vocals
on Obscured By Clouds. I never play it.

- You're obviously in the wrong business.
- That was a bad cut.

That's nothing to do
with the production of the album.

If you listen
to the second string of pressings,

you'll find
the sibilance isn't there.

If you can still hear a sibilance on those,
you've got a very overactive imagination.

- Because there isn't any.
- We have pretty good arguments, yes.

- You manage to get over them?
- Yes, we're pretty durable.

We do have infighting, but you mean
without actually exploding?

We share the same sense of humour,
to some extent. We lust after money.

And we have a lot of interest
in what we're doing together.

We can still combine our interests.
That's when the thing breaks down,

when maybe just one person
finds that what he's doing

doesn't interest him, or he feels
he could do something better by himself.

We did have some very difficult times,
like a few years ago,

but we've managed to avoid the things
that really get people too touchy.

These days.

- The worst things go unsaid?
- Yeah.

- You mentioned money as a main drive?
- Only jovially.

Naturally, four less money-minded people
would be hard to find.

- Feedback.
- Don't worry about that.

Christ! What would rock and roll be
without feedback?

- Can we run back and drop in?
- Yeah. Just turn it down a bit.

- I didn't really make a specific mistake.
- Turn it down?

- My guitar's too loud.
- Can you hear the other one?

No.

25. We're go.

- Altitude 1,600.
- Eagle looking great.

Rocket 1202, we copy it.

35 degrees. 750. Stand by...

4 1/2 down, 5 1/2 down...

100 feet, 3 1/2 down. 9 forward.

OK, 75 feet. Looking good, down a half.

6 forward. 60 seconds.

Lights on. Forward. Forward.

20 feet down. 2 1/2.
Picking up some dust...

4 forward,
drifting to the right a little.

30 seconds.

Contact light? OK, engine stop.

The Eagle has landed.

Do you think you're going round in circles?

We don't feel as though we are,
but it's always possible.

We may suddenly, like the man in a desert,
come across our footsteps,

and think, "My God, it's all a mistake."

But that's not the way
we feel about it, at all.

I think that's jolly unfair.
I think we're ever so progressive.

We evolve a lot between every record.

We have a recognisable... Anyone who
listens to our songs, knows it's the Floyd.

Anyone listening to many other bands will
know they're playing blues, or this or that.

They can say anything
they want, can't they?

- Yes, but do you think they're right?
- Of course I don't.

Who are they to say whether anything is
enough, or not enough, about anything?

- Particularly about our records.
- They buy the records.

Well, they can listen to it and decide
if it's evolved enough for them to buy it.

If it hasn't,
they don't have to buy it.

Two, three, four.

Two, three, four.

Three, four.

What did I pop on? Albatross?
Upon the air?

- I went out in one place, didn't I?
- We'll listen to it. We'll just check it out.

I think the good times are passing by.

They're carrying on and they will continue
to carry on, I suspect.

I don't think rock and roll's dead, no.
Or dying.