‘A window of freedom’: When ‘Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii’ sneaked into Franco’s Spain

“We rolled a joint and went to see Pink Floyd at Pompeii. It was like being at a concert, with a smoky atmosphere among the audience, but sitting in movie theater seats,” recounts Rodolfo Medina. In 1974, he was a 21-year-old with long hair. A few days ago, he turned 71 and still has a few hairs left on his head. Medina, who these days enjoys an active retired life (yesterday, after picking up his grandson from school and handing him over to the parents, he enjoyed watching A Complete Unknown), was one of the Spaniards who was impacted at the time by the documentary Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, the filming of a peculiar concert by the British band: without an audience, in the arena of the Roman coliseum in Pompeii, just a few months before they recorded their masterpiece and best-selling album, The Dark Side of the Moon.

In a context of a music market increasingly focused on attracting veteran fans with purchasing power, on April 26 a restoration of Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii will be released in theaters, adapted for IMAX theaters and with improved sound by the fully qualified English musician Steve Wilson. The recording of that performance will also be released for the first time. Live at Pompeii was a musical documentary that served an almost social function in Spain at the time. In 1974, with Franco already “in transit” (he died in November 1975), but still possessing the cruel energy to pass death sentences, Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii premiered in Spain, a space where rock, psychedelia, and history coexisted.

The one-hour concert film, directed by Frenchman Adrian Maben, had been screened at a film festival in 1972, but failed to gain any commercial success. Two years later, Maben released an extended version, adding an additional half hour and including scenes of the quartet recording The Dark Side of the Moon at Abbey Road, London. This revision was the one shown in Spain, in art-house film clubs.

The journalist and writer Jordi Turtós, now 69, began his degree in journalism that very year: “I watched it in Barcelona, where many music documentaries were being released at the time, like the one about Monterrey Pop or Woodstock. The same bunch of us always got together, a group of long-haired stoners who shared the concept of a band and a revolutionary idea, which was what Pink Floyd was proposing at the time. There was a sense of complicity in the future: the film made us participants in a revolt, in certain nonconformities.”

The idea to record in that setting didn’t come from the band, but from the director. Maben wanted to distance himself from mass concerts, to make “an anti-Woodstock, where the music and the empty amphitheater meant as much, or more, than a crowd of people cheering the band on.” The idea was highly appealing: on a stage populated by the ghosts of the 1,900-year-old faces that dominated the amphitheater’s columns, the goal was to exploit Pink Floyd’s sonic potential, recreate enveloping atmospheres, and achieve an ethereal sound. But the location came about by chance. Maben visited the Roman amphitheater at Pompeii (near Naples) — buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD — as a tourist, as he was a great fan of art and history. When he arrived at the hotel, he realized he had lost his wallet and passport among the ruins. So he returned the next day, now without the tourist convoy. There, alone, he realized the acoustic solemnity and the moving nature of the space. He never recovered his wallet, but he had found his location.

He contacted Pink Floyd’s manager, who proposed the project to the band, and they accepted. At that time — 1971/72 — Pink Floyd was on the launch pad towards its highest level of popularity and also its artistic zenith. Julio Ruiz, 72, a historic radio broadcaster, was working at Radio Popular FM at that time. “I remember that I had already played Pink Floyd’s previous albums on the program, Ummagumma (1969), Atom Heart Mother (1970), Meddle (1971)... The record company sent them to us saying, somewhere between affectionate and contemptuous: ‘These albums are for the progressives.’ Imagine how we were regarded.” Diego A. Manrique, who had also been working as a music journalist for some time and saw the documentary in a film club in Burgos, confirms this: “In the 1960s, the Spanish EMI didn’t want to release Pink Floyd albums because they sounded ‘too strange,’ although in the end they released them reluctantly, ‘so that music journalists would stop bothering us.’” Ruiz tells an anecdote from the screening: “After the performance of Echoes, we applauded, as if we were watching it live. We applauded the screen. That film was a great moment for everyone.”

Recording in Pompeii wasn’t easy. After transporting the equipment and setting it up in the amphitheater arena, it was discovered there wasn’t enough power. The solution: a 1,000 meter-long cable line to the City Hall building. In the film, David Gilmour (guitar and vocals) and Richard Wright (keyboards and vocals) are seen playing shirtless due to the excessive heat, which reached 35 degrees Celsius. In the final shots, the guitarist’s pale back takes on a pinkish hue. Note: this was a concert filmed with a trick, as not all the songs were recorded in Pompeii. With the budget exhausted, time running out, and frequent technical setbacks, some songs, such as Careful With That Axe, Eugene and Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, had to be recorded in a Paris studio.

What’s remarkable about the film is that it shows the band just before they were catapulted to superstardom by The Dark Side of the Moon and then Wish You Were Here. It also shows their capacity for experimentation, a legacy of their early days with Syd Barrett, despite already being considered a band for mainstream audiences. Film director and music producer Gonzalo García Pelayo, 77, also saw the film at the time: “That documentary had legendary status, it was a window of freedom. At the time, I was Smash’s manager, and for them it was a goal: to fuse rock with culture, since the concert was being held in a place as symbolic and important as Pompeii, with historical and cultural significance. That certified rock’s approach to culture, which may seem more normal now, but which at the time was extraordinary.”

Those interviewed affirm that there was no fear of attending these music gatherings, as at that point in time they weren’t part of the regime’s problems. “The police weren’t very concerned about the long-haired ones. We weren’t part of the politicized squad. We were anti-dogmatic. We were closer to anarchist approaches than to socialists and communists, who were the people who wanted to control the regime. We were more interested in Frank Zappa than in politicized groups,” says Jordi Turtós.

In addition to the seriousness of the setting, some images are particularly interesting, such as Roger Waters (bass and vocals) violently hitting the gong while Gilmour tortures his guitar by practicing the slide with a metal thimble on A Saucerful Of Secrets. Or an interpretation of Seamus, a blues number included on the album Meddle that in the documentary was renamed Mademoiselle Nobs, since that — Nobs — was the name of the dog that sings the piece; literally, since Richard Wright is in charge of placing the microphone near the dog’s mouth while it barks in time with Gilmour’s harmonica.

Although Live at Pompeii drew many people to theaters in the United States, the band wasn’t entirely happy. “It was very disappointing financially,” noted drummer Nick Mason in his book Inside Out: A Personal History of Pink Floyd. The biggest pain this time wasn’t Roger Waters, but David Gilmour, who noted years later: “It’s the kind of movie they should only show once, and in the middle of the night.” Curiously, or perhaps precisely because of this aversion to the original, Gilmour repeated the experience in 2017: he performed in the Pompeii amphitheater, but this time, with an audience.

Some of those who saw the concert during the dying days of the Franco dictatorship in Spain will be able to do so again in 2025, under very different circumstances. One of the changes will be that instead of an ashtray on the arm of their seat, they will have a coaster.

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