Pink Floyd - a moment in time 30 years ago

Above: a compilation of news reports on Pink Floyd's 1988 concert near Perth, Australia.

When Pink Floyd took to the stage at East Fremantle Oval exactly 30 years ago, I was not expecting a concert that would live so vividly in my memory. But the magical sense of place and feeling of that evening has not been diminished by the passing of three decades.

As the sun went down on a sultry mid-summer day in Australia, beneath the twinkly stars of the southern sky, some 25,000 people gathered at the outdoor sports ground to witness the music and laser show spectacle. It wasn't cheap; tickets were $37, which was a sizable bite into my budget at the time. I was 21, and living cheaply as a backpacker on a one-year working-visa. However, my budget took secondary consideration next to the draw of such a big night. Pink Floyd were part of the pantheon of modern music greats, alongside The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who.

Big night: concert ticket and photo of the Pink Floyd
gig at East Fremantle Oval, February 24, 1988

Up until that evening the music of Pink Floyd had drifted in and out of my life, mostly through the 1979 hit Another Brick in the Wall. When I arrived in Western Australia at the start of 1988, I found the band's new single On the Turning Away was receiving heavy radio airplay. I was deeply struck by this song - then and now - and regard it as one of their greatest moments.

The Pink Floyd of 1988 was a patched together, not quite complete version of the band that created a string of masterpieces in the 1960s and 1970s. The group had fractured in the early 1980s with Richard Wright, the keyboard/singer, the first to depart followed by singer-songwriter Roger Waters. At that stage, with only two core members remaining, it seemed the band was done. But in the heat and ashes of bitter legal wrangles, singer-guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason re-engaged with Wright, recorded a new album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987), and set about self-financing a world tour.

I'd been immensely impressed by On The Turning Away, not at all by its follow-up The Dogs of War, but mesmorised again by another track Learning to Fly. I was staying at Travelmates, a backpackers' hostel in Perth. A group of fellow travellers who were seriously into Pink Floyd convinced me it would be worth shelling out $37 for a ticket. And so I went to East Fremantle Oval that evening.

There was a uniqueness to the night. As we stood in the sweet, warm evening air we were bathed in more than simply music; it was an experience and total immersion in sound and laser lights. Giant inflatables soared above the crowd, one a pig, another the frightful schoolteacher immortalised in the video for Another Brick In The Wall.

It was jaw-dropping and intangibly uplifting.  The Cold War was thawing, the world seemed to be shifting and Pink Floyd, the musical kings, were providing a timeless soundtrack. The evening captured something of that moment, a feeling of freedom, of new beginnings and new possibilities.

Not everyone was happy. The staging of an outdoor rock concert by one of the biggest bands in the world, in the middle of suburbia, caused plenty of local criticism - as evident in the contemporary newscasts in the video above. I also remember one amusing quip in the press the following day from a retired music teacher who lived nearby, he derided the night claiming Pink Floyd "wouldn't know a tuning fork from a pitch fork".

Others have reminisced about vast plumes of marijuana smoke that hung heavy above the crowd that evening. There certainly was a thick fragrance, which may have had some baring on the laid back attitude of the police who peacefully monitored the event from a distance.

As it turned out it was the last concert Pink Floyd ever played in Australia. They had one more world tour, in 1994, which had no Australian dates. After that they were gone, bar for a last-minute, unexpected reunion by all four members to perform three songs in London's Hyde Park during the Live 8 charity event in 2005.

Having seen and heard the reinvigorated Pink Floyd, I kept their music by my side for the rest of my year-long adventure in Australia, and for years later. The live album of that tour, Delicate Sound of Thunder, to this day sparks vivid memories of that time - but no track more so than On The Turning Away.

Even as the decades have ticked by, I hoped that I would get a chance to see Pink Floyd one more time. But following the death of Wright in 2006 that possibility all but vanished, and the gap between the last tour and today is now wider than Pink Floyd's entire recording career (1967-94)*. However, I shall always treasure that night of warmth, joy and togetherness at East Fremantle Oval.

* Excluding The Endless River (2014). My review can be read here.
Video: Pink Floyd perform On the Turning Away during the 1987-90 world tour


Video: Nick Mason interview the day before the East Fremantle concert

Pink Floyd's final spark of brightness

The cover art from Pink Floyd's The Endless River

Pink Floyd’s career trajectory resembles that of a comet blazing across the night sky and heading for a final encounter with the sun. It first gained luminance in the 1960s and glowed brightest in the 70s. In the same way that those enigmatic cosmic snowballs lose layers of material and shrink as they move ever nearer to the sun, so too have Pink Floyd gradually diminished in structure; first with the departure of Roger Waters in 1985, and then the death of Richard Wright in 2008.

The Endless River probably represents the final spark of brightness as Pink Floyd’s comet nears its terminal rendezvous. Shorn of Waters, devoid of lyrics (bar the final track Louder than Words), the double album must be viewed as the band’s swan song, albeit an accidental one.

At the heart of The Endless River are unused recordings made 21 years ago during rehearsal sessions by David Gilmour, Nick Mason and the late Wright as they worked on the band’s last studio album, 1994’s The Division Bell. In many ways the album is a tribute to the immense contribution keyboard player Wright made to the Pink Floyd sound. Gilmour and Mason revisited the instrumental recordings, a mixture of odds and ends, and have added to and enhanced them to create what Gilmour has referred to as a “21st Century Pink Floyd album”.

The instrumental music flows from track to track for 53 minutes. It is a concept album in an age where such things no longer exist. In a world of playlists and iPod shuffles, here is a record to be listened to from start to finish, designed as if the 33rpm vinyl LP had never fallen out of favour. An album designed to have the needle dropped on track one and left to play uninterrupted - preferably with the lights dimmed, or off, for maximum impact.

Across the four sides (yes, four) there are echoes of signature musical moments from the group’s extensive career. Tracks four on both side 2 and side 3, titled Anisina and Allons-y (1) are dreamily memorable, as is the album’s second track It’s What We Do, which most strongly carries Pink Floyd’s distinctive musical DNA.

On two tracks voice samples have been added; the intriguing opening track Things Left Unsaid, which could quite easily have been at home on any of Pink Floyd’s previous studio albums, and Talkin’ Hawkin’, a reprise of Keep Talking from The Division Bell complete with voice samples from physicist Stephen Hawking.

Whether The Endless River will be of interest to, or have any relevance for, today’s generation of young music consumers is debatable. There has been support for the record, which topped many countries’ charts in its opening week, likely due to older fans eager to hear anything ‘new’ from the band after two decades of silence - a silence broken only by the one-off reunion of Waters, Gilmour, Mason and Wright at Live8 in 2005.

When Gilmour gives voice to Louder Than Words, the floating, poignant last track on The Endless River, one is left to reflect on the crazy diamond musical journey Pink Floyd have taken us on, starting in 1967 with the now long departed co-founding member Syd Barrett, and onwards through the decades that followed. Listening to Pink Floyd’s back catalogue is to take a journey back through the last 40-odd years of your life.

As Louder than Words fades out the comet jettisons its final layer of ice and rock, and Pink Floyd are gone.