Pink Floyd at Pompeii-MCMLXXII 💛💛💛💛💛💛💛

A review of the remastered release of Pink Floyd's iconic concert film, seen on 04.27.2025.

In another lifetime, I was a theatre maker and even reviewed performances for two separate publications (which explains some of the writings here dated before I entered the Substackiverse). I will occasionally be publishing a review of a performance, event, or broadcast I saw that is notable for one reason or another. If you are an organization seeking to add me to your press contact list, please email me directly. For anyone else wishing to skip these posts, I will tag them under “reviews” and will include this preamble at the top for easy opt-out. For an at-a-glance rating view, I’ll include an “out of seven” 💛 scale, but I hope the review paints a more complex and nuanced canvas than a simple rating scale, be it yellow emoji hearts.

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Numerous generations have discovered Pink Floyd at an age that has you questioning systems of power, thinking about personal transcendence, and deciphering the face reality wears to convince you it is, in fact, as it seems. I discovered The Dark Side of the Moon in 8th Grade: it was insta-intimacy. Understanding flowed between the expansive sound coming out of my speakers and my new budding quest for meaning: the music proving to be a mirror and a window, and continuing to serve as an artistically awake analysis of my worldview and self-reflective evolution years to come.

Pink Floyd is the gift that keeps on giving.

The rerelease of Pink Floyd at Pompeii doesn’t need a “why now?” explanation. When you create timeless music that still speaks to the unresolved, uncomfortable knots in our human experience, when the power hierarchy that oppresses the masses hasn’t changed, what’s surprising is that we are not seeing more resurgence of relative art remastered and delivered to a younger audience whose understanding of reality is even more obscured than our own. The messages that reverberate among the sound waves of Floyd tunes still echo hauntingly about the aether.

For those of you that missed this masterpiece of the 70s, the band set up their instruments in the ruins of the once beautiful Pompeii, forever frozen in time by the ashes of Mount Vesuvius, and throughout the course of a couple of days filmed their music under the blazing sun and the direction of Adrien Maben. It became an instant classic as it caught the band in their transition from space rock to prog rock at the hight of Floyd’s career. Four beautiful men, their tech toys, and a once proud Pompeii, now a mass stone cemetery.

There is no audience present for this concert, unless you count the sparse filming crew, and the lingering ghosts of generations long forgotten. Being a second-hand viewer of all this, makes the production feel even more meta — did they know that fifty years later, we’d still be thirsty for a time rife with possibilities, even if a lot less technologically advanced? Did they know how much more of a victim to our own cynicism we would become?

Interspersed throughout the ghostly concert were candid behind the scenes captures: the band hanging out, being interviewed, recording at Abby Road Studios for their upcoming album. The most overt thing that struck me was how lucid and thoughtful and unmanufactured Waters, Wright, Gilmore, and Mason were. There were no polished PR answers, no shyness of close ups of nicotine-stained smiles, no BS illusions being sold. Live at Pompeii is the real deal. Raw and beautiful and profound.

Like most Floyd fans, I had seen the DVD, but nothing compares to the movie theatre experience. Not only can you see the margins of the film in its full version, but the remastered audio lifts you out of your seat and hangs you in the middle of a space cushioned by the sound waves of everything and everywhere. There are no flashy pyrotechnics but the fire battering of Vesuvian agony still thunder in Waters’ wails and the images of extorted faces carved in stone.

There are no video effects but the iconic shots of the band looking quite small amidst the arena, while Gilmore makes his guitar cry,

the dolly shot behind the speakers of the matter-of-factly stated names,

the unforgettable capture of Roger and that gong,

all culminates into a 90 minute masterpiece. It’s not without its humour either. Nick Mason’s crustless pie caprice and his observation on group dynamics are particularly fun. And there’s a bit with a dog, for Pete’s sake! A bit with a dog! A beautiful Borzoi called Mademoiselle Nobs wails in key while Richard Wright holds a microphone to her mouth.

There’s some foreshadowing of the troubles that the band would come to a decade later when David Gilmore and Roger Waters worldviews clash leading to the latter leaving the band. But bits of interviews and dialogues expose how much the men had in common, especially when it comes to technology and gadgets, as Gilmore quips: “ You want to use the machines not the other way around", an issue our society wrestles with while helplessly looking at the rapid rise of AI.

Waters has remained consistent in his criticism against governmental overreach and genocidal atrocities. Gilmore and his wife have doubled down in calling his former band mate anti-semitic. One has to wonder if these two men, these titans of our generation, can’t reconcile, what hope is there for the rest of us, what hope is there for Gaza? Perhaps one day they can show us how it’s done.

The last time David Gilmore, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright shared a stage together for a benefit in 2008 brings pangs of nostalgia. It was ‘the last time’ because Richard Wright’s spirit left the earthly plane soon after. At the end of that short lived reunion, you can see Waters waving Gilmore to return for their curtain call. David Gilmore’s intense blue eyes soften with a smile and he walks back to the men with whom he shared an unforgettable journey that would shape generations. And in that moment, the spirit of Pompeii sparked for a brief moment, before taking its last bow.

And they claim pigs don’t fly.

Video taken by a friend the last time we went to see Roger Waters in concert. It still holds up.

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