Charity can cause the wildest of returns. Let’s not forget the original Live Aid allegedly revived Queen (if a dreadful biopic is to be believed) and brought Paul McCartney back on stage for the first time since John Lennon’s death. Live 8, the charity drive organised in 2005, went a step further. Pink Floyd’s bust-up following The Final Cut was a gnarly moment which still affects the surviving band members today. David Gilmour and Roger Waters are unlikely to appear with one another on stage again. They have done so only once since this twenty-minute set, and even then, Gilmour was essentially suspended from the rafters where he played a guitar solo. He could not have been positioned further away from Waters on stage. But that long-running creative flair, and the tensions between the band, bubbled into what proves to still be a fitting end to Pink Floyd’s stage presence.
These are grooves which Waters, Gilmour, and Nick Mason are featuring in their live shows, frequently returning to in the studio. Live 8 shows they worked incredibly well together on stage, but it was never meant to last. Crucial to the twenty-minute set is that the group has enjoyed these songs on solo tours for decades. Being together to perform it adds a layer that many fans believe they want. But it does little for any man on stage, as evidenced by a solid performance of Breathe. Each seems to be having an incredible time because of the music, and the structure of songs they were very familiar with. Waters, particularly, looks utterly thrilled. It’s a chance for him to take a break from lead vocal duties and focus on his bass, which he does not get the chance to do on solo tours. But together, there is an undeniable quality, which appears best of all during the instrumental blur of Money.
Everyone on stage seems satisfied with this performance, even if it was a brief shot of what could have been had tensions simmered and given way to a tour. Some will be thankful it did not, bottling up the nostalgia of seeing them “way back when”. They are not given the chance to say it was not as good the second time around. Merely speculating will suffice, though. Wish You Were Here is the first moment of the set to feature Waters and Gilmour share vocal duties. The audience is just as loud and sounds a tad better than the overlap of the longstanding duo. Gilmour’s vocal interjections over the top of some masterful acoustic playing feel a bit unnecessary, but they do not detract from what becomes a highlight of the set.
It’s a show rounded off with Comfortably Numb, which is as neat an end to the show as can be expected. A four-song performance which puts the very best of Pink Floyd out on stage. They were hardly going to perform Ummagumma in its entirety. This is a crowd-pleaser. A moment for fans at the time that they never believed possible. Stranger things have occurred. Live 8 will never happen again, not with Pink Floyd. This stands as the last-ever performance for a revolutionary band, and it’s a strong performance to end on. Returning would only ruin a moment which has stuck with fans for nearly two decades. Thrills like this are hard to bring together again, and while the performance is certainly not the finest hour for the four, the unlikeliness of it happening at the time, let alone once more, is what keeps it in high praise. Deservingly so, it’s a solid performance, but it does feel a tad flat due to those ongoing tensions.
