With this in mind you
can be forgiven a sharp intake of breath when, towards the end of the exhibition,
in a room dedicated to the Division Bell tour of 1994, we are informed that
for this undertaking the now three-man Floyd required one Antonov military
freight plane, two Boeing 747 cargo planes, eight tour buses, 18 production trucks
and 53 additional articulated lorries. Such was the scale of this final Pink
Floyd tour that three separate but identical stages were required. While one
was in use another was being set up and the third taken down, all three leapfrogging
one another along the way because of the time required to construct and
dismantle them.
I suppose this is as
good a way as any of measuring the extraordinary career progress of this most
inscrutable of groups, a bit of a national treasure in many ways, whose shows
became increasingly gargantuan in scale while its individual members chose to
disappear into relative obscurity, at least while Roger Waters was at the helm.
With all manner of distractions going on around them, Pink Floyd sang about
alienation, British reserve, space travel, the futility of war, madness and
death, the combination of which set them apart from their peers yet earned them
a devoted following worldwide. The session singer Clare Torry certainly sounded
as if she was in mid-orgasm during ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’ on Dark
Side Of The Moon,
but – unlike every other artist you care to name – courtly romance was absent
from the music of Pink Floyd.
Neither did they dress
up. Jeans and t-shirts, usually black, was their preferred kit, nothing
remotely ostentatious that might distract from the music, films and props, and
this was another distinctive Floydian trait. The David Bowie Is and Revolution
1966-1970 exhibitions at the V&A were chock full of clothes, the Ziggy
outfits and more for DB, the Sgt Pepper
Beatle uniforms and Roger Daltrey’s fringed Tommy
coat in the latter. But as far as Pink Floyd are concerned, they might just as
well have performed naked on stage for all that this exhibition reveals. In many
ways, however, this was part of their charm. As John Peel is famously quoted early
on in the exhibition, “They could have joined the audience at one of their own
gigs without being recognised.”
So unlike those other
exhibitions we get no stage clothes on showroom dummies. Instead we get Fender guitars,
enough to stock a high end music shop, and amps, and gadgets, stage props
galore, some of them gigantic, posters and flyers, photos, some handwritten lyrics
and lots of that magically surreal Hipgnosis artwork, most notably the famous refracting
prism from the cover of Dark Side,
the burning man of Wish You Were Here
and the flying pig that slipped its moorings and caused such a fuss in the
skies above Battersea Power Station.
It’s a shame, then, that
my old pal Storm Thorgerson is no longer around to admire so much of his
handiwork. Knowing Storm as I did, however, I have no doubt that had he not left
us in 2013 he would have demanded a key role in staging this show, and in the
process made life hell for everyone involved. I published his books at Omnibus
Press and as a result happen to know that this exhibition ought to have been
staged a good deal sooner than now. Countless delays occurred because Waters
and David Gilmour don’t often see eye to eye and to get them to agree on
anything is as vexed an issue as sorting out the endless squabbles in the
Middle East.
No matter. An accord was
reached and the exhibition subtly avoids any mention of the internal struggles
that rent the Floyd apart after The Final
Cut in 1983. Waters was livid when after a four-year hiatus the other three
opted to continue without him, not least because the fans didn’t seem to miss
him either, so he would have had to swallow a bit of pride to accede to this
exhibition’s latter rooms, when Gilmour led a Pink Floyd with Mason on drums
and Richard Wright on keyboards, augmented by session musicians.
Quite rightly, due space
is given to the group’s founding mastermind Syd Barrett whose blue Telecaster
with small round mirrors attached can be seen in a display dedicated to this
most famous of acid rock casualties. This early tableaux serves to remind
visitors of the time when Pink Floyd was a pop group just like any other,
appearing on Top Of The Pops and having their photographs taken
kicking their legs in the air dressed in Carnaby Street finery; floral shirts, stripy
trousers and Edwardian jackets long ago consigned to the trash.
Once Syd was out of the
picture the group’s main pre-occupation was to distance themselves from all
that, simultaneously drawing attention away from themselves as people or,
heaven forbid, personalities. This served to establish Pink Floyd as a brand,
as distinctive as it was enigmatic, recognisable only by their props, the weird
artwork and Gilmour’s sustained guitar lines. This modus operandi reached its logical conclusion
during The Wall
concerts in 1980 and ’81 when four lookalikes briefly took Floyd’s place on
stage, a neat sleight of hand represented in the exhibition by the four face masks
worn by the imposters. ‘We are not really here,’ was the prevailing message
from a group whose members quite literally turned their backs to the camera.
Johnny Rotten of the Sex
Pistols famously wore a Pink Floyd t-shirt on which he had scrawled ‘I hate’
before the band’s name, a dig at the group’s perceived pretentiousness, and
this too makes an appearance, though it is made clear that Lydon, as he became,
later admitted to liking Pink Floyd after all.
So did I and millions of
others, and I was pleased that the final room showed footage from the last (and,
subsequent to 1981, only) occasion when Waters, Gilmour, Mason and Wright
performed together, the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park in the summer of 2005.
Somehow that day the hatchets were buried and Pink Floyd’s final performance
was as emotional as it was out of character for them. As I wrote at the time:
“Bereft of their usual crowd-pleasing
props and light show, Floyd’s music, clearly well-rehearsed, seemed to take on
an added warmth as the night drew in. The moving sight of this much-loved
British band together again for the first time in 24 years was made all the
more poignant when Waters dedicated ‘Wish You Were Here’ to Syd Barrett, their
founding genius.”
In that final room they perform ‘Comfortably
Numb’ behind a brick wall that falls away, and at the close, hesitantly, they put
their arms around each other in an uncharacteristic display of brotherly affection.
Perhaps behind their moody music and magnificent stage props Pink Floyd had a
soft centre after all.
The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their
Mortal Remains is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, until 1 October.
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