Pink Floyd Stories - 3 Different Ones

When I was revising for my A levels in 1986, I was told that having music quietly in the background would help concentration, so my maths, physics and chemistry studies were usually accompanied by a Pink Floyd soundtrack.

Was it good advice?

Well put it like this, I got what I called a decidedly un-royal flush E, O, F; the 3 lowest grades! But it wasn't all bad; by the end of the final exam I knew all the words to Dark Side of the Moon, Animals and The Wall.

To blame Pink Floyd for my failure to have a university education is probably unfair because I think think the writing was wall a year earlier! But if they did contribute to my dismal performance, I should be grateful because if I had gone to university the following wouldn't have happened:

Get a job with a local IT company

Have a financial advising company as my first customer

Use this company for my own financial advice

Be persuaded to get life insurance and permanent health cover

Now have financial security for the foreseeable future

So I should also say thank you to my good friend Simon Gibbs for introducing me to their music in the first place. Simon was obviously better than me at multi-tasking when he was seventeen as despite knowing every Pink Floyd lyric verbatim, he still went to a top university and eventually gained a PhD.

So to get back to my original topic, last month we went to Wimbledon Theatre to see a Pink Floyd tribute band called In The Flesh. We hadn't heard of them so we didn't know if it was going to be a big disappointment or something worth seeing.

On the night, our hopes weren't raised by seeing the theatre barely a third full; we sat waiting for the show to start. At 7 30 the lights went down and on walked four middle aged guys. First impression was if they sound as dissimilar to Pink Floyd as they look, we would be home in time for Eastenders. I wasn't expecting lookalikes but I was maybe expecting a bass playing and lead guitar playing singers. Instead, there was a keyboard playing vocalist and a bass player lurking in the shadows of the drum kit.

They opened with the song after which they had named themselves and within a few seconds I wouldn't have cared if they had been transvestite midgets, riding unicycles. They sounded awesome. And they continued to sound awesome for the next two and a half hours (other than for twenty minutes around the middle of the show when they stopped for the interval).

They played songs from every era including the twenty minute long Echos and plenty from the more familiar Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. The musicianship was brilliant; I don't think anyone can play a Fender like David Gilmour but this was pretty close, the female vocalist even managed a decent rendition of The Great Gig in the Sky and an original Hammond organ helped create a very authentic sound.

The billing had stated the running time would be three hours so when the final song of the encore finished at 10pm I was rather disappointed; I could have listened for another two and a half hours.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening and they deserved a much better turnout. We left wondering whether the live performance of The Wall by Roger Waters that we had booked to see a month later would actually be as good. We just regretted not having taken the boys, so we have booked to see them again in June
 
I haven't finished with the Pink Floyd theme yet, so if you aren't a fan and haven't already started watching something on iPlayer, now is the time to do so. If you are a fan, when I say this next bit is about the most amazing gig experience ever, you will already know where this is going. And if you weren't at the O2 on May 12th will be feeling very envious!


We booked to see The Wall Live almost a year ago. We almost didn't book at all because despite it being extended to six nights, the only wheelchair spaces left were right at the back of the arena. Also, as I have explained before, I just can't think about events that far away, let alone look forward to them! But Tracy convinced me that it would probably be the sort of show when proximity to the stage wasn't that important. So with the success of the tribute band show a month earlier I was starting to get more excited by it. I had also managed to persuade one of my carers to come at midnight which would avoid the stress of late night bedtime transfers.

The journey there was the usual hassle through the heavy traffic of unsightly South London boroughs although Tracy's brother had managed to get us VIP parking which made things easier.

We were almost the first ones in the arena when doors opened at 6.30 after buying the obligatory merchandise!

The show started just after 8.00 with the album's opening track, accompanied by pyrotechnics. I won't bore you with a song by song analysis but I copied the following from a review in The Guardian as it was quite amusing.

A quarter of an hour into his solo performance of The Wall, Roger Waters unexpectedly calls a halt to proceedings and announces that, through the miracle of technology, he's going to sing Mother as a duet with footage of himself singing the song with Pink Floyd nearly 30 years ago. "If that doesn't sound too narcissistic," he adds. This rather prompts the response: mate, you're performing a 90-minute rock opera so extravagantly tricked out with 3D animations, pyrotechnics and inflatables that it has allegedly cost £37m to stage; what's more, it details how your parents, education, marriage and being in Pink Floyd all contributed to your increasing sense of alienation in the 1970s. Worrying about narcissism seems very much like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolte

The Wall has always been the most problematic of Pink Floyd's multiplatinum albums. Written in the aftermath of Waters spitting in a fan's face during a Canadian gig, it sought to illuminate the psyche that could lead a multimillionaire rock star to do such a thing, although a cynic might suggest that the greatest insight it gave into the psyche of a multimillionaire rock star was unwitting: it variously pointed the blame at Rogers's mother, his teachers, his ex-wife, sundry groupies, the music industry, the government, the South Ruislip Girl Guides, etc - but noticeably failed to include a song called I'm Sorry I Spat In Your Face. Perhaps it's on the forthcoming box set

The entire tour is over 50 shows and there were rumours that David Gilmour would make a guest appearance playing Comfortably Numb at just one performance. We were at the second show of the tour so didn't have high hopes. But when the entire audience got to their feet and applauded as the guitarist on top of the wall was illuminated, it was obvious we had struck lucky. This was only the 3rd time in 30 years that they had played together and only the 2nd time at a public event. I know this makes me look rather sad but it was one of those moments. OK, they are just two guys with guitars but they created the soundtrack to my life as a fifteen to seventeen year old and therefore inextricably linked to many significant 'firsts'. It was something which you knew wouldn't last long and probably wouldn't happen again so I felt this immense pressure to absorb every note and stamp the moment indelibly on my memory. It was over too quickly but I was just happy I had been there!


By all accounts I was not alone in my reaction; many people (ok, many men) were in tears by the end of the song, for once I wasn't one of them!

The whole show was simply incredible. A total sensory overload. The following video is of THAT song and if you don't fancy the entire 8 minutes, go to 6 minutes 15 seconds to see the visuals we were treated to.