Pink Floyd in Pompeii has returned to Italian theaters, until April 30th. After more than half a century, the film is reborn like Pink Floyd at Pompeii – McMLXXII, directed by Adrian Maben, restored in 4K by Lana Topham, with a new audio mix curated by Steven Wilson. The images, taken from the original negatives in 35 mm, shine with new light; The sound envelops the viewer in an immersive experience.

The scenario

We are in 1971, and Pink Floyd are slowly changing skin. Born in the shadow of the most acid and visionary psychedelia of Syd Barrett – who with his lunar fantasy had shaped The Piper at the Gates of Dawn – the band, after his painful abandonment, sailing on sight. In Saucerful of Secrets, their second album represents a transition phase: the last echo of the Barrettian world mixes with new collective thrusts towards sound exploration. With Atom Heart Mother (1970), Pink Floyd even push over: monumental orchestractions, a suite of over twenty minutes, a music that is a journey more than a song. It is a period of pure experimentation: primitive electronics, dilated improvisations, concrete noises, search for atmospheres instead of melodies.

Genesis

Precisely in this crossroads, live at Pompeii was born: a “concert” without public, shot among the ruins of the Roman amphitheater, in total contrast to the oceanic insane of Woodstock. Floyd present some new songs next to historical pieces of their psychedelic period. The result is an initiatory rite, suspended between ancient and future, in which the band seems to finally find its definitive sound: the “Pink Floyd sound”. That mystical performance, immersed in the millennial silence of Pompeii, symbolically closes the era of the Lisergic Jam and anticipates the creative flowering that will explode in Meddle (1971) – with the Echoes suite as a manifesto – and then reach absolute perfection with The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), the masterpiece that will consecrate them in the Olympus of Rock.

Music for ghosts

Filmed between October and November 1971, with the main filming at the Pompeii amphitheater made between 4 and 7 October 1971, Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii is much more than a simple concert movie: it is a visual and sound experience that captures the most secret soul of the band. No audience. No applause. Only the wind that hiss among the stones, the dust that rises under the Mediterranean sun, the music that expands like a timeless echo, merging with the images: the volcanic craters, the mutilated statues, the plumbeo sky. It is as if the band played for the extinct gods, in a silent communion between remote past and near future.

Adrian Maben conceives the idea almost by chance, during a night visit to the Scavi di Pompeii. A sudden intuition: bring rock to the sacred space of history, emptied of men but full of memory. Pink Floyd immediately embrace the project, but with a precise request: no playback, only the raw sound of the tools, recorded directly with a 24 tracks device carried out specifically by England. To complicate everything, the absence of sufficient electricity: the problem was solved by spreading a mileage cable from the town hall to the amphitheater. Despite the technical difficulties – feeding the tools with portable generators, record outdoors in an environment not designed for music – the unrepeatable atmosphere of Pompeii gave the band an invisible, almost metaphysical stage.

The recordings

The ladder mixes psychedelic songs from the past (Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, in Sauerful of Secrets, Careful With That Axe, Eugene) with still unpublished pieces taken from Meddle, such as One of These Days and Echoes, the latter performed in an embryonic but already visionary version. Among the sulphurous vapors of Pozzuoli and the ancient walls of Pompeii, one of These Days were recorded, the first part and the Echoes ending, and in Saucerful of Secrets, performed in separate sections and then mounted in the editing phase. Some coils were lost – as remembered by both Maben and Nick Mason in his autobiography Inside Out (2004) – and this explains the abundance of filming on the drummer during One of These Days.

To integrate the missing material, from 13 to 20 December 1971, the band was filmed in the Europe Sonor studios in Paris: here were registered Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, Careful With That Axe, Eugene and the Gag of Mademoiselle Nobs, an instrumental version of Seamus “sung” by a Russian greyhound, Nobs. visual detail that distinguishes Parisian filming).

Finally, dissatisfied with the duration, Maben convinced the Pink Floyd to stage overcoming at the Abbey Road Studios, during the final stages of the processing of The Dark Side of the Moon. These sequences, shot in documentary almost completed, merged into the extended version released in August 1974, when the group was now consecrated to legend.

Pink Floyd at Pompeii – McMLXXII

The new edition of the film is not just a restoration: it is a rebirth.

The sound, now in Dolby Atmos, transports the viewer to the center of the amphitheater; The restored images return the original vision of Maben. An experience that goes beyond the simple concert, becoming a mystical journey through time and space.

For the first time, from May 2, 2025, the traces of the film will be available in an official album, restored and remixed by Steven Wilson. Available in CD format, LP and on the main streaming platforms, the album offers a new perspective on one of the most magical moments in the history of Pink Floyd.