Pink Floyd fans in Calcutta were in for a treat as the voice and guitar of the band made their way to the big screen at a movie hall near them on October 15. Only t2 was there!
David Gilmour’s Live At Pompeii was screened at INOX (Quest) –– perhaps the next best thing to seeing him play live.

Initially planned as a single screening, INOX added three more shows after tickets for the first were sold out in six hours. 

In the film, Gilmour plays songs spanning decades, some as recent as 2015 and some go way back to 1971. Visuals, lighting and fireworks made for an amazing spectacle as he returned to the Amphitheatre of Pompeii (built around 70BC) in 2016 after Pink Floyd’s last performance in 1971. This, however, was the first public performance at the venue, in contrast to no audience being permitted in 1971 — which was released the next year as a documentary. “There are ghosts here, but in a good way,” he says in the short documentary that precedes the concert.

The concert began with 5A.M. and Rattle That Lock before moving on to What Do You Want From Me that indicated a return to a full-on vintage Pink Floyd set. But he toned it down and played the piano-driven A Boat Lies Waiting. The highlight of the song was when the band stopped just two beats short of the bar as Gilmour used his trademark bend to start the solo, going on to weave his magic the way he always does. 

The cinema version of the concert is seven songs lighter –– Money, On An Island, Fat Old Sun, The Blue, Faces Of Stone, Coming Back To Life and Today didn’t make the cut. 

Guy Pratt on bass and Steve DiStanislao on drums were the only known faces in a line-up of fresh but accomplished recruits — Chuck Leavell of the Allman Brothers Band on keyboard, Michael Jackson’s musical director Greg Phillinganes on keys, Joao Mello on saxophone, Chester Kamen on the guitar, and Bryan Chambers, Louise Clare Marshall and Lucita Jules on backing vocals. 

Gilmour picks his set list very carefully, just as he does with venues. Pompeii was perhaps the smallest in terms of crowd capacity for the entire Rattle That Lock tour — a mere 2,600 people. He emphasised in interviews prior to the concert that his motive was not to play to large audiences but for concert-goers to leave with a feeling of having witnessed an “unforgettable occasion”. One Of These Days was the only song from the 1971 documentary to have made it to the list even though Gilmour had decided that he would in no way echo the original Live At Pompeii. 

Wish You Were Here, High Hopes, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Sorrow, Run Like Hell and Time culminated in the finale of the evening — Comfortably Numb. It was Earls Court, London, all over again as the green lasers moved to the rhythm of the song as Gilmour topped it off with the most phenomenal solo that left viewers in awe. He breezed in with licks from the studio version and glided over to those that he used for Pulse, though leaving out a few passages that made the 1995 version special.  

As the band bowed to bring the show to a close and the end credits rolled, Beauty from Rattle That Lock began to play. And what a beauty it was indeed!

SUMITH RAMACHANDRAN

It was in the late ’80s when I got hold of Pink Floyd cassettes when people were using terms like “psychedelic”. A family friend got me the album Wish You Were Here and Dark Side Of The Moon from the Gulf. These albums came with all the works, including lyrics and booklets. That was the time someone had gifted me a Sony Walkman that had stereophonic sound. In those days it was unheard of because everyone was used to listening on mono. The first thing that hit me was Us And Them. I knew what chords were being played but it was a different sort of use and application. I had not heard of hammond organ and synthesisers back then. We hadn’t seen those things and it seemed a little strange. 

Then I got to know from others what those things were. There was no Internet back then and reading material was hard to come by. 

We started playing those tunes with our college band, travelling around the country and performing those at shows. We used to play Hey You and the entire The Wall sequence. We didn’t have delay pedals and had to artificially come up with those sounds with whatever equipment was available. If there’s one thing I can say, we played from our hearts. Then I listened to Shine On You Crazy Diamond. In Palghat, where I lived, was a beautiful place with mountains and waterfalls. I used to find desolate places where I would go at least four times a week and listen to music. I used to carry the cassettes, batteries and the tapes –– it made for quite a heavy bag. I know Wish You Were Here and Dark Side Of The Moon backwards. I was very young and I wasn’t listening to Pink Floyd just because of Gilmour. It was the music as a whole that struck me.

As I grew up, I started trying to understand what Gilmour was doing and what his approach was. The first thing I noticed during this concert was that despite the pedals and the pedalboards available these days, they stuck to analogue. To think that they did all this manually in those days, when there was no MIDI.... Analogues have a lot of imperfections and those imperfections make perfect things. If you look back even further, and listen to Kraftwerk of Germany, these guys started the entire experience. 

But if you leave aside everything, people listen to their music after so many years and will continue to do so. That in itself is a victory for the band.  

Just a day before the movie, I was watching a documentary on the collision of stars and the music in the background was The Great Gig In The Sky, and that to me created a sort of psychedelia that I associate with Pink Floyd. Even though I listen to a lot of different music these days, it brought back a lot of memories from childhood. 

Gilmour has well spaced out and thoughtful solos. That is his unique sound. His vibrato, bends and feel are still the same and that’s what sets him apart. 

BEST MOMENTS
1. The compositions themselves.
2. The entire production. 
3. The backing vocals, especially on The Great Gig In The Sky.

Five favourite guitarists
1. Allan Holdsworth
2. Mark Knopfler
3. Tal Farlow
4. John Williams
5. Stevie Ray Vaughan 

Sumith Ramachandran is a guitarist and founding member of Plan B