6/22/2023 0 Comments Echoes of pompeiiMaben was later to say, “It was the silence, it was the night time, it was eerie – this is the place the Pink Floyd have got to be.” ![]() He thought it would be perfect for the group to play in. It was a mishap with Maben’s passport that led to him going back to the once great city’s amphitheatre at night. The city was first rediscovered in the late 16th century, and soon established itself as a magnet for visitors from around the world. He chanced upon Pompeii, the city on the outskirts of Naples that had been destroyed by the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius in AD 79, with up to 11,000 residents buried in ash. ![]() It was only when Maben was touring Italy that summer that he found his spot. No location had been decided on for the film. Then there was a tentative agreement – the group would film later in the year. Gilmour was, as Maben says, “very nice and told me they would think about it”. He called O’Rourke again and a second meeting was arranged, this time with David Gilmour present. After this initial contact, he heard nothing. Maben phoned the group’s manager, Steve O’Rourke, in early 1971 and set up a meeting with him to discuss his vision, “a marriage of art and the Pink Floyd”. It was a different world, and that different world was absolutely fascinating.” You had all the little whispers, and the noises, and the shrieking. I found their music fantastic and different compared to other groups. “I thought it would be very interesting to show how they made their noises, their electronic sounds, and put them all together. “When you listened to their records at the time, it was very strange – you didn’t quite know how they made their sounds. More to the point, they had piqued his curiosity – he was intrigued by them. Pink Floyd seemed to marry both his love of art and music perfectly. With these films under his belt, Maben set about ensnaring the group that he really wanted to record. “Belgian TV was more open to the possibilities of making rock films, so I went to Brussels and did a couple of films there with East Of Eden and Family. It was not the case in neighbouring Belgium. “There were few rock programmes – it was just noise to the people who ran TV, even the intelligent ones.” “Art became something new and vibrant.”Ī Parisian youth at an exciting time, Maben had met Jean-Luc Godard and marched with the students in 1968, but despite all this, there was a general mistrust in the capital of rock music. “I was into art films, making portraits of Magritte and art movements,” Maben tells Prog from his residence in Paris. He was young and working for French television. Maben had not emerged from the Cambridge/London art clique that had surrounded the group. It was the vision of UK-born, Paris-residing director Adrian Maben. ![]() Like so much in the Floyd’s career, it was a happy accident. “I think Pink Floyd freaks would enjoy it.”Īlthough shot on 35mm, Live At Pompeii was originally made for television. “It’s just us playing a load of tunes in the amphitheatre with some rather Top Of The Pops-ish shots of us walking around the top of Vesuvius and things like that,” Roger Waters said at the time of the film’s release.
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