A legendary performance, to say the least, a scrubbed-up release of Pink Floyd at Pompeii has been a long time coming. Finding time in between the endless, ship of Theseus-like task of remastering The Dark Side of the Moon whenever possible and trading digs at one another on social media, the Pink Floyd group begins the inevitable search through the archives. Selling up their material is the best decision the band could have made. A process which serves their wallet and their fans. A patient crowd are rewarded for the wait, the bootlegs can be set aside. Pink Floyd at Pompeii is worth the wait. A clean-sounding reworking of the classic performance which defined the band in their earliest years. They pulled off a masterclass of aesthetic and musical purposes by holding a gig in the abandoned amphitheatre, and that tone, that mood, translates to MCMLXXII.
Instrumental skill is on full display throughout, though that much should be obvious. If it were released at the time of its recording, with the right backing and fanfare, that is, Pink Floyd at Pompeii would have defined the band for years to come. For the hardened Pink Floyd fans, this album will be a dream. A euphoric experience detailing the very best of the band in their earliest, reactive years. Early moments like Echoes – Part One and Careful with that Axe, Eugene, do an exceptional job of easing listeners into what becomes a frenetic and experimental sound on A Saucerful of Secrets. A darker, messier performance than heard on the album, but a solid one all the same. It is this early space rock and acid-tipped experimentation which gives the band its foundation. From there they build, and with it comes exceptional efforts like One of These Days and Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.
While there is a sense of Pink Floyd at Pompeii being too legendary a performance to live up to expectations, the bulk of this mix is brilliant. For those who enjoy the early years of Pink Floyd there is no better experience than this. A nice overview of their first few albums’ worth of material. Pink Floyd at Pompeii is arguably the most complete live concept the band ever released, and with a fresh mix highlighting the instrumental subtleties, it is hard to hear the band in better form than this. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun is as intense as it will ever be, with the crashing cymbals and a volatile David Gilmour guitar piece bringing this piece to life. All well and good, and certainly the best performance Pink Floyd put down on tape. Compared to other live performances, it amounts to little more than effective jam sessions, the soft improvisations that a live performance allows access to.
That is not to discredit just how important Pink Floyd at Pompeii is, you can feel the energies of the historic amphitheatre affecting the band in wonderful ways on these space-age recordings, but the context of what it did for the band is bigger than what it does now. A strong note, a footnote. This is a typical Pink Floyd set of the time, but replacing the audience with the spectacle of location is the difference maker. They lean into those influences picked up through making film soundtracks. Adrian Maben feels like the important piece here; the rise of this image is his doing, not Pink Floyd’s. Where it may not appear on the soundtrack, the purpose of these songs, the depths of Echoes – Part Two, are still a thrill. The spectacle, the experience and the location are all cumulative, but it affects the performance minimally. Splicing studio work in detracts from this as a purely live experience, it is not, but it remains an exceptional document, a brilliantly scrubbed-up piece of the Pink Floyd puzzle.
