David Gilmour Talks Pompeii Return: ‘It’s a Place of Ghosts’
“Tonight will be the first time since 79 A.D. that there’s been an audience watching something here,” David Gilmour jokes about returning to Pompeii, referencing the devastating volcano eruption that turned much of this part of Italy to ash in the first century. “And there were gladiators, I guess, but the history of it all is something that has crossed our minds.”
Tonight, Gilmour is staging the first-ever rock concert for an audience in the stone, Roman amphitheater, which was built in 90 B.C. Forty-five years ago, as a member of Pink Floyd, he performed a special show – to an empty venue – which was chronicled in the 1972 film Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii. His return is something he’s been awaiting for a long time.
“It’s a fantastic building,” he tells Rolling Stone backstage, seated next to his wife and sometime lyricist, novelist and journalist Polly Samson. “It’s an extraordinary place to be because it was preserved exactly as it was. There are many other sites. If you visit any other antiquity-type sites throughout the world, they’re very damaged with what’s gone on over the centuries since they were abandoned. But this one was just, like, sealed, so you’re looking at rock surfaces and the carving of letters and names in the stones looks like it was done yesterday.” History, it seems, is fluid.
How has it felt so far returning to Pompeii?
David Gilmour: It’s a magical place. I was slightly overwhelmed yesterday when we came here for the first time. We came back here about 10 years ago, with our kids, to show them around the arena. And they were rocking around in there. But coming back yesterday and seeing the stage and everything, it was quite overwhelming really. It’s a place of ghosts … in a friendly way.
Is it a similar feeling to 1971?
Gilmour: No. We’re going to do a full show. There’s an audience. The pressure’s on. Back then, we probably played some of the songs several times. We were filming, which meant you could take it once, stop, set up again and do it again.
Polly Samson: I presume you had right of veto over the music.
Gilmour: I don’t even know if we did. We mixed the sounds ourselves. If they were going to put the sound back onto our film, we wanted to mix it ourselves. So we had the control over making sure the sound was pretty good. Mind you, we had to record on an eight-track recorder, which is tricky, with a full band playing.
What are your most vivid memories from filming here?
Gilmour: I remember Adrian [Maben, director] had lots of problems with red tape and dealing with stuff. I think we lost two or three days. Maybe those were the days we had to walk around the summit of Vesuvius, and we went around to the sulfur pits where the ground is bubbling. It’s near here. It’s fantastic.