Pink Floyd at Pompeii, one of the most unique concert videos in rock history, will get its debut soundtrack release and be rereleased in theaters, including in Imax format.
The film (formerly known as Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii) was shot in 1971 and released the following year. It follows the band just before The Dark Side of the Moon marked the beginning of their most successful period in terms of sales. On April 24, it will be released in theaters across the globe.
Adrian Maben, who was the first band to play in Pompeii’s eerily empty Roman amphitheater, chose to have the ensemble perform there without an audience, eschewing the typical concert film approach.
They play songs like A Saucerful of Secrets and Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, as well as songs from their 1971 album Meddle. The film includes footage of the band working on The Dark Side of the Moon at Abbey Road studios, which includes the songs On the Run, Us and Them, and Brain Damage, in addition to appropriately surreal images of the city’s classical antiquity and the band strolling across its landscape. The band has also been interviewed.
From the original negatives discovered in Pink Floyd’s archives, the movie has now been restored to 4K resolution. “I have been looking for the elusive Pink Floyd film rushes at Pompeii since 1994,” said Lana Topham, the band’s director of restoration. Therefore, it was a really memorable event when the original 35mm cut negative from 1972 was recently discovered.
The top-charting prog rock artist Steven Wilson has also reworked the movie’s sound design.
Wilson described it as “an honor,” saying, “Pink Floyd has been my favorite band ever since my dad indoctrinated me as a child by playing The Dark Side of the Moon repeatedly. They are a part of my musical DNA and are my Beatles. Pompeii was originally shown to me at a nearby theater on a poor print. Its unrestrained and adventurous rock music, performed by four musicians who seemed to personify intellectual cool, left a profound impression on me.
The movie had already been reissued on DVD, but the soundtrack wasn’t formally released until it was included in the 27-disc box set The Early Years in 2016, despite being heavily bootlegged. On May 2, the soundtrack, which has Wilson’s new mix and is titled Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII, will be reissued on CD, vinyl, and streaming services, incorporating Dolby Atmos spatial audio. On the same day, the movie will be available on Blu-Ray and DVD.
In 2016, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd returned to Pompeii to play in front of an audience.
Although Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason released a new song in 2022 under the Pink Floyd moniker, Hey, Hey, Rise Up, the band’s final album was The Endless River in 2014. It was released in support of Ukraine during Russia’s invasion that year and featured Ukrainian vocalist Andriy Khlyvnyuk.
Given that Gilmour has recently criticized his former bandmate in the media, it is extremely doubtful that the band’s surviving members—Gilmour, Mason, and Roger Waters—will get back together. When asked if he would ever perform with Waters again by a Guardian reader last year, he said, “Definitely not.” People that actively support dictatorial and homicidal tyrants like Maduro [the president of Venezuela] and Putin are generally avoided by me. I would never perform on stage with someone who believes that mistreating women and the LGBT community is acceptable.
In a contract with Sony estimated to be worth $400 million, the band also sold off the rights to its name, likeness, and catalog recordings in 2024, although they kept the songwriting rights.
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