The British rock group Pink Floyd published the album “Pink Floyd at Pompeii – McMLXXII (2025 Mix)”, with which he recalls his historic concert in the Roman amphitheater of Pompeya (Italy), originally published in 1972, in a restored version.
The band formed by David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Richard Wright filmed in this emblematic stage of the year 70 AC in October 1971, without more public than the recording team, for the movie “Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii” (1972), directed by Adrian Maben.
More than half a century later, this action sees, for the first time, the light in album format, which has a dozen themes, among which are included as “bonus track” ‘an alternative version of “Careful With that that ax, Eugene” and the original recording – and without editing – of “A Saucerful of Secrets”.
With a duration close to an hour and a half, “Pink Floyd at Pompeii – McMlxxii” begins, after a brief introduction, with the first part of his “echoes” (echoes) rumbleing at guitar and drums coup in the millenary stones of Pompeii for 11:55 minutes.
The rest of the repertoire is completed with “Careful with that ax, Eugene”; “To Saucerful of Secrets”; “One of these Days”, “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”, in addition to “Mademoiselle Nobs”, as the only live performance of its song “Seamus” is known.
Some of the songs of the Pompeya concert album were really completed in the Europasonor Studios in Paris (France). This is the case of the latter, where a special appearance is a borzoi dog called Nobs, whose microphone howls are mixed with the sound of the band’s harmonics.
As a powerful final auction, “Pink Floyd at Pompeii – McMlxxii” closes with the second part of “Echoes”, 13:23 minutes long, in addition to the aforementioned alternative “bonus tracks” and without editing.
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Pompeya’s is one of the most special concerts in the band, filmed only a few months before the launch of “The Dark Side of the Moon”, his most recognized record work and considered one of the best albums in the history of music, with the 55th place in the list of Rolling Stone magazine.
The director of the 1972 documentary, Adrian Maben, explained in an interview with “Brain Damage” in 2003 that the original idea of the film intended to combine Pink Floyd’s music with the surreal art of Magritte or Chirico, but ended up choosing Pompeii after suffering an incident in the Roman city while he was on vacation with his partner.
“I discovered that I had lost my passport somewhere in the ruins, possibly in the amphitheater (…) I ran back to the iron fence and tried to explain to the guards what happened. Surprisingly, they let me in and returned alone, by burning my steps through the empty streets of Pompeya,” said the filmmaker.
Maben never found the passport. But after seeing the empty amphitheater at night, with the only sound of nature, he knew it was the ideal place to film with Pink Floyd, although filming was full of technical and logistics setbacks.
On April 24, a 4K restoration of the concert was released in some movie theaters around the world, from the original footage filmed by Maben in 35 millimeters, which already raised 6.4 million dollars at the box office.
In Maben’s words, “Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii” is “an album of music cuts and trivial conversations”, a movie “that will never be finished, with fragments added here and there over many years” and, above all, a “record of the passage of time” that continues to have relevance after more than half a century.
With EFE information
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