Pink Floyd's Live Stage Set-up

Sound On Stage number 5, March 1997 
"Welcome to the Machine - the story of Pink Floyd's live sound: part 1"

     Over the 30 years that have passed since their debut record, 
     Pink Floyd have remained unchallenged as the rock world's 
     premier live attraction.  In this unique and comprehensive 
     four-part series, MARK CUNNINGHAM traces the development of 
     the Floyd's live sound and talks to the key personnel who 
     have contributed to some of the greatest shows on Earth.

   When Pink Floyd embarked on their most recent jaunt around the 
world with the 1994 Division Bell tour, no less than 53 articulated 
trucks were required to transport the PA and lighting systems, 
projection equipment, staging, and all the additional elements which 
went into what has so far been acclaimed as the benchmark touring 
production of the '90s.  By contrast, at the time of the band's first 
single, "Arnold Layne", in the spring of 1967, they traversed the 
country in a humble van.

   Given the musical sophistication of their later years, it is 
equally difficult to conceive of Pink Floyd as a run-of-the-mill R&B 
combo, and yet this is precisely how they began when they were formed 
at the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Architecture in 1965 as 
The Abdabs by bassist Roger Waters, keyboard player Rick Wright, and 
drummer Nick Mason and several others.  Like most bands of their time, 
their early repertoire consisted mainly of R&B and pop covers, and was 
broadened when guitarist, singer, and Bo Diddley fan Roger "Syd" 
Barrett arrived in the line-up, conjuring their new name: The Pink 
Floyd Sound.  Within a year, Barrett blossomed as a songwriter, 
producing whimsical numbers such as "Candy And A Currant Bun", which 
would steer the band in a new direction.

   Soon to drop the redundant suffix (and the definite article), 
their live set began to feature extended, feedback-drenched
instrumental "freak-outs", largely dominated by Barrett's guitar
experimentations and Wright's Stockhausen-flavoured organ solos. 
Arguably, the biggest influence on the band's development at the
forefront of the psychedelic revolution was Barrett's appetite for 
a certain hallucinogenic substance.  Musically, however, he relied
heavily on his echo box and slide techniques, often involving ball
bearings, plastic rulers or a Zippo lighter, to achieve his eclectic
blend of guitar effects, while the other band members experimented
with similar flair.  You had to be there. 

   By early 1967, Pink Floyd had secured both an EMI record deal and 
an enviable following as the darlings of London's underground scene 
with their "free-form", jazz-inspired, psychedelic noodlings, 
frequently accompanied by strange film sequences which were projected 
onto the band along with "liquid (coloured oil slide) movies" -- the 
product of experimental Lighting Designer Mike Leonard.  Even at this 
early juncture, while their contemporaries were busy playing at pop 
stars, the Floyd placed little emphasis on themselves as performers, 
preferring to give audiences an experience that relied on this 
interaction of sound, light and atmosphere.  Numbers like "Interstellar 
Overdrive", which often lasted one hour, were based around one riff 
or chord and, like rave music more than 20 years later, they sent 
audiences on a magnificent sensory journey.

   "Interstellar Overdrive", was, in fact, one of the titles performed 
by the Floyd at their "Games For May" at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall 
on May 12 1967, an event set up by their managers Andrew King and 
Peter Jenner of Blackhill Enterprises, and promoted by classical pro-
moter Christopher Hunt.  Not only did this mark the first appearance
at the hall of what was essentially a pop band, this "happening" also
marked the first appearance in Britain of a rudimentary quadraphonic
PA system, effected by additional speakers erected around the room and
an early version of an amazing device, which has now gone down in
Floyd folklore as the "Azimuth Coordinator".  This elaborate name was
given to what was essentially a crude pan pot device made by Bernard
Speight, an Abbey Road technical engineer, using four large rheostats
which were converted from 270 degree rotation to 90 degree.  Along with
the shift stick, these elements were housed in a large box and enabled
the panning of quadraphonic sound. 

   To augment the music, Waters rented a basement in Harrow Road to 
record a number of effects tapes on a Ferrograph.  These sounds 
included backwards cymbals, distorted percussion, and fake birdsong, 
and were played around the audience as the band performed.  Waters 
explained at the time: "The sounds travel around the hall in a sort of 
circle, giving the audience an eerie effect of being absolutely 
surrounded by this music."  From this point onwards, it seemed, the 
Floyd were destined to become pioneers in live sound.

                         WATKINS DOMINATED

   Little in terms of purpose-designed PA technology existed before 
1967, the only options open to the Floyd being Vox or Selmer columns 
and 100 Watt amps.  Therefore, when Charlie Watkins designed his first 
WEM single column PA, the Floyd took it to their hearts, and it 
remained with them for the next four years.  The Floyd's system was 
based around the WEM B and C cabinets.  The B cabinet housed four 
12-inch Goodmans 301 twin cone speakers, while the C cabinet had four 
12-inch Goodmans Audiom 61s.  Pinned in between the B and C cabinet 
was an X32 horn in a narrow column.  To drive the system, the Floyd 
used WEM amplification, and Road Manager/Sound Engineer Peter Watts 
mixed with four small five-channel WEM Audiomaster consoles whose 
comparatively primitive functions included bass, treble, and middle 
controls, presence and input sensitivity.  This was the state of the 
art back in the late '60s.

   WEM founder and PA designer Charlie Watkins, who toured with the 
Floyd during this period, says of their introduction to his system: 
"A similar PA of mine had debuted at the Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival 
in August 1967, and in the following month, Pink Floyd played through 
one at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, and were immediately impressed, 
because it was the only proper PA system capable of taking more than 
100 Watts.  They soon invested in a system, and as they earned more 
money, they began to duplicate the amount of equipment until they 
owned the most sophisticated PA in the country."

   Armed with this state-of-the-art system, the Floyd -- now with 
ex-Jokers Wild and Bullitt singer/guitarist David Gilmour who replaced 
his drug-damaged pal Syd Barrett in March 1968 -- staged concerts, 
which were promoted as "sonic experiences", and toured in 1969 with 
their "Massed Gadgets Of Auximenes" extravaganza.  A newspaper review 
of the final date of this British tour described the performance as 
including "electronic and stereophonic effects thrust around [the
Royal Albert Hall] from a battery of boxes and speakers.  Edge of the
world sounds shiver; footsteps clump around the dome; voices whisper;
a train thunders; a jungle erupts." 

   Of an earlier concert at the Royal Festival Hall that April, Nick 
Mason was quoted as saying: "The Azimuth Coordinator system might have 
been improved if we had simplified it by having four speakers 'round 
the hall instead of six.  I am sure a lot of people couldn't 
differentiate between each speaker.  If we can develop this kind of 
thing into an even bigger and better stage without getting too 
technically involved, we will be going in the right direction."  He 
would not have too long to wait.

   Meahwhile, Peter Watt's small crew (including Bobby Richardson, 
Brian Scott, and Lighting Engineer Arthur Max) was joined by roadie 
Seth Goldman, who began working for the band on their September-
October 1970 "Atom Heart Mother" tour of America and years later would 
become their dedicated monitor engineer.  Apart from the photograph on 
the reverse side of 1969's "Ummagumma" album sleeve, the best evidence 
of the touring equipment favoured by Pink floyd in the late '60s and 
early '70s is the Adrian Maben film "Live at Pompeii", which was shot 
in the summer of 1971 and shows the band's WEM system in all its 
glory.  But the end of that year witnessed a complete turnaround.

   In 1971, Peter Watts became involved with audio pioneers Bill
Kelsey and the late Dave Martin.  It was Martin who allegedly followed
a design by future Turbosound founder Tony Andrews and built the first
bass bin, which revolutionised PA technology.  Martin, who had built
his first bass reflex cabinet at the age of 15, made a failed attempt
at designing a 4 by 15-inch bin with a detachable flare before 
producing his definitive 800 Watt flanged 2 by 15-inch.  The laws of
physics now began to govern live performance audio and instead of
literally adding more cabinets for extra reinforcement, bands were
able to "throw" their sound much further by using a combination of the
bass bin concept and Vitavox "voice of the theatre" horns. 

   In the May of that year, during a break from their "Atom Heart 
Mother" tours and sessions for the "Meddle" album, Pink Floyd hired 
the Wandsworth Granada [venue] to evaluate a new two-way passive Bill 
Kelsey system, which initially incorporated seven-foot, 500-lb. RCA 
"W" cabinets before switching to Martin's 2 by 15-inch bass bin.  
Kelsey, who had already built PAs for King Crimson and ELP, recalls: 
"What happened was indicative of the way the Floyd used to do business 
in the days when they were more of a cult band.  Peter Watts and Steve 
O'Rourke (Floyd's manager) said they'd like to try a system so I went 
down with all the gear, and then found there was another PA company 
there and that it was to be an A/B test.  Feeling a bit miffed that I 
hadn't been told, I set up the gear as did the other company, and they 
tried it out with the mixing console at the back of the hall.

   "It seemed to be going all right, but Peter said, 'To be quite 
frank, I'm disappointed... it's rubbish.'  And Steve cut in, 'You 
realise you've wasted my whole day, not to mention the cost of the 
hall.'  Peter continued to push up one fader to produce this horrid, 
muffled sound, while the second fader produced a nice, clear sound.  
I just wanted the ground to open up.  Suddenly they both burst into 
laughter and admitted they'd crossed the whole thing over."  Despite 
the elaborate wind-up, Kelsey's system was taken on board at the 
beginning of the following year.

THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

   Recorded over the course of seven months with the working title of 
"Eclipse (A Piece For Assorted Lunatics)", "The Dark Side of the Moon" 
catapulted Pink Floyd from their enigmatic cult status to the stadium 
rock elite.  Released in March 1973, it signified the first major 
switch from their earlier psychedelic formula and set a new precedent 
for record production which Floyd continued to build upon.  As was the 
case for many bands who moulded their material on the road for some 
time before committing it to tape, the Floyd performed an embryonic 
version of "Dark Side" both prior to and during their sessions at 
Abbey Road throughout the whole of 1972.

   The live rehearsals for this new concept piece were initially held 
in Januyary 1972 at the now-defunct Rainbow Theatre in London's 
Finsbury Park, and they were notable for both the first use of their 
new sound and light systems, and the introduction of a new team 
member.  Mick Kluczynski had worked with a number of Scottish bands 
since 1965, one of whom received an offer to record in London in 1971 
as Cliff Bennett's backing band.  Kluczynski accompanied them but the 
whole deal soon fell to pieces.  One of the band members, Chris 
Adamson, survived by working as a Floyd roadie and arranged for 
Kluczynski to also join their small team as part of the "Quad Squad".

   "There was no formal crew, just four of us loosely employed to 
handle all aspects of the sound and rigging," says Kluczynski.  "My 
first job was to empty the tour manager's garage, which was full of 
all the old WEM PA columns and return them to Charlie Watkins, because 
we had just taken delivery of the latest generation of PA.  The 2 by 
15-inch bins had a Vitavox horn on the top and a JBL 075 bullet super 
tweeter -- I used to carry these things on my back up into balconies!  
When we played the first Earls Court show, we used our maximum number 
of Kelsey and Martin bins and horns.  The bins were three high, with 
13 at each side of the stage, and in the centre piece where there were 
bins missing was a column of JBL horns.  On top of those, we had a row 
of double Vitavox horns, on the back of which were throats that we had 
made up, which took two ElectroVoice 1829 drivers in the same throat.  
ElectroVoice claimed it wouldn't work, but we got up to four in one 
throat.  One quad section would drive two horns in one phase direction, 
and another quad section would drive another two in the opposite phase 
direction.  But EV wouldn't believe it until they saw 15,000 people 
walk out of Earls Court at the end of the night dazed and speechless."

   In an A/B text during rehearsals, the band's existing WEM amplifiers 
came second place to the new American Phase Linear models, discovered 
by Kelsey, and so yet another injection of quality was given to their 
PA.  It was common for Pink Floyd to modify off-the-shelf equipment for 
their own purposes, thereby creating unique products.  Along with Crown 
and BGW, Phase Linear became one of the few brands of amplification 
taken seriously by the top touring bands of the early '70s.  Whilst
the Phase Linear 400 and 700 models were taken on board by the Floyd,
because of their superior sound quality, in their regular domestic
format they were unfit for the rigours of the road due to their slight
physical construction and the weight of the transformers on their
chassis.  To compensate for this, the band's technicians designed a
new metal chassis into which the amp would fit, while the mains
transformer was removed from the amp and supported horizontally on the
outside of the chassis. 

   Acclaimed by critics as "rock's first conceptual masterpiece", 
"The Dark Side of the Moon" was premiered as "Eclipse" over the four 
nights of February 17-20 at the Rainbow, by which time the band had 
been touring in the UK with their new system for a month.  The standard 
show at the time consisted of two sets: the first featured earlier 
numbers such as "Set The controls For The Heart Of The Sun", "Careful 
With That Axe Eugene", and "Echoes"; the second consisted of what was 
to later be known as "The Dark Side of the Moon" (then without the 
"Eclipse" finale which was yet to be written).  "One Of These Days" 
was reserved as a breathtaking encore.  These previews of the 
forthcoming album amounted to something of a bootleggers' paradise.  
A poor live recording of "Dark Side" was available through the German 
black market for around a year prior to the studio album's release, 
and although the band were horrified, it could be said that this 
created even more interest in the real thing.

   Kluczynski recalls that his first show as a crew member, the 
opening night of this tour at the Brighton Dome, ended in disaster.  
He says, "In those days, we didn't understand how to separate power 
sufficiently between sound and lights.  That was the only show that 
we had to cancel and reorganise, because we were all sharing the 
same power source.  The Leslies on stage sounded like a cage full of 
monkeys, because they were sharing a common earth.  It was the very 
first show that any band had done with a lighting rig that was powerful 
enough to make a difference.  So we had this wonderful situation where 
the fans were actually inside the auditorium, and we had Bill Kelsey 
and Dave Martin at either side of the stage screaming at each other in 
front of the crowd, having an argument."

                          BOARD DECISION

   Another vital piece of kit added to the Floyd inventory at this 
time was a 24-channel mixing console manufactured by Ivor Taylor and 
Andy Bereza of Allen & Heath, a new company which took its name from 
a defunct toolmaking firm.  Bereza, the man resonsible for inventing 
what became the Portastudio, originally built mixers at home in the 
late 1960s under the trading name of AB Audio and was responsible for 
the board used in the live soundtrack recording of the cult movie "A 
Clockwork Orange", as well as mixers for bands including The Bee Gees.  
The Allen & Heath business grew steadily in its first year with its 
small six-channel boards, many of which were used in cathedrals, 
churches, and small theatres, as part of installed public address 
systems.  Then an opportunity arose for the company to build a 
quadraphonic desk for The Who, news of which filtered into the Floyd 
camp, and an order was placed for a custom quad board in advance of 
the first "Dark Side" rehearsals.

   Future Floyd Production Director Robbie Williams, who joined the 
crew in January 1973 just as Seth Goldman took a long break to work 
with ELP, Three Dog Night, and T. Rex, remembers his first sighting of 
the desk.  "This board was actually the reason for my involvement with 
the band.  I was a frriend of Peter Watts and had always been 
interested in the audio business.  One day in November 1972, I went 
'round to his flat to see him in the process of taking this console to
bits and rebuild it in time for some shows with the Roland Petit
Ballet in France the following January.  To me at the time, it was the
most magnificent piece of electronics, about the size of my coffee
table.  Peter had bought the very first Penny & Giles quad panners on
the market, and I spent the next month helping him rebuild this thing." 

   The quad function on this desk was given the name "Sound-In-The-
Round", and unlike conventional quad, the speakers were positioned 
front, back, left, and right in a diamond, with the front channel 
situated behind the band.  On the desk, any channel could be routed 
into the quad section, which was operated via the pair of joysticks on 
the right of the board.  The quad function, however, came into use as 
an enhancement for sound effects or occasional solos.

   Williams, who in the late '60s earned his roadie stripes through 
working for the seminal lighting company Krishna Lights, says: "After 
helping Peter get the desk match fit, I asked him, 'Does this mean I'm 
part of the crew?'  To which he replied, 'Well, I guess you'd better 
come out to Paris and give us a hand, just in case anything happens to 
the desk.'  And it went from there.  When I joined, the crew consisted 
of Peter, Mick, Chris Adamson, Graeme Fleming, Robin Murray, and 
Arthur Max.  I was very much the under-assistant truck packer for the 
PA department, and through the '70s as Pink Floyd's fame grew, so did 
my responsibilities."

   Kluczynski says of the Allen & Heath mixer: "It did tend to be a 
little unreliable, but it kept going, even though Seth Goldman and I 
would each have to take a corner and jolt it into life every day!  
We'd even driven it with truck batteries at the Rainbow during the 
power strikes.  We would be in Newcastle one night and have to nip 
back to London to get it fixed in the middle of the night, and then 
travel back up to Sheffield or somewhere for the next gig.  The quad 
panner for the second Allen & Heath desk we used [built in the bottom 
of a lift shaft in Hornsey in 1973] was actually made from cut 
Elastoplast cans and there was a read-out panel in the middle, which 
was a circle with quadrants in it.  As you panned, you could see the 
quadrant you were in which pulsed from green to red.  When you removed 
this panel and looked underneath it, you saw that these Elastoplast 
cans had been cut to make a spiral in which the LEDs were inserted to 
give you the pulse reading."

   This was not the only amazing do-it-yourself story... "Around late 
1974, we bought a Sony hi-fi crossover, but before that we were running 
the PA full-range," says Kluczynski.  "The only protection Bill Kelsey 
put in for the high end was through having crossovers built into Old 
Holborn tins and placed inside the cabinets.  In the more sophisticated 
version, there was a light bulb in line.  If you were to overdrive the 
cabinet, the light bulb went white hot, but the horns didn't blow up!"

                           PARSONS'S MIX

   Towards the end of the recording sessions for "Dark Side" in January 
1973, Pink Floyd relocated to Paris to work on music to accompany the 
Roland Petit Ballet.  Added to the growing crew on this occasion were 
Robbie Willams and Alan Parsons, the "Dark Side" Studio Engineer who 
had been lured away from Abbey Road to replace Chris Mickie behind the 
front-of-house console.  Parsons's appointment began an unusual trend 
for Floyd to hire the services of whichever studio engineer had worked 
on their latest album (although this ploy was not always successful), 
and like many of his successors, he was a total novice in the concert 
environment.

   Parsons, whose only other work as a live sound engineer was for 
Cockney Rebel at Crystal Palace, says: "I was due to go on a skiing 
holiday when I was asked over to the Palais des Sport in Paris to 
learn the ropes at some shows they were doing with the ballet, and I 
remember that a lot of the movements were based around "One Of These 
Days".  They should have done more of those performances, because the 
whole concept of a rock band with lights and special effets, and a 
brilliantly choreographed dance routine was just stunning.  I was 
literally dropped in at the deep end when they said, 'Come and see one
of the shows, and then you can take over as our engineer.'  So after
watching Chris Mickie behind the desk in Paris, I took over and stayed 
with them on the road for about a year or so, which included two 
American tours." 

   When mixing the Floyd, Parsons says that his obvious main concern 
was avoiding feedback -- a task made difficult by the speaker 
positioning and the close proximity of the front stack to the band.  
"You'd be standing on stage and almost have the horns pointing straight 
at you," comments Parsons.  "But the performance of that rig was so 
pure; there was no pink noise, no graphic EQ to tailor the sound, it 
was literally down to how you drove the bottom, mid, and top."

   As well as recalling the excellent quality of this PA's sound, 
Parsons casts his mind back to an American tour date in Detroit when 
many of the system's components were wiped out by pyrotechnics.  "By 
mistake, the flashpots at the front of the stage had been filled twice 
with explosives.  The result was a double-strength explosion, which 
ended up injuring several people in the front row of the audience.  
Unfortunately for us, it also destroyed about 60% of the horns and 
bins, so we had to struggle on for the rest of the show with less than 
half our PA rig.  Of course, we had a gig the next night and finding 
replacement gear was a major headache."

   The aspect of Floyd's sound that Kluczynski remembers most was 
David Gilmour's guitar sound.  "Gilmour was always loud, especially at 
Earls Court where, during the solo in 'Money', his four 4 by 12-inch 
cabinets were screaming away at such a level that we couldn't physically 
put him through the PA.  Most of the time I'd mix the solos, because 
Alan was a bit shy of pushing up the faders compared to me, so I'd 
nudge his arm a bit!"

   In complete contrast to today's standards, Pink Floyd employed just 
two outboard devices for use at front of house on the "Dark Side" 
tours, and both of them were Echoplexes for the repeat vocals on "Us 
And Them".  Williams says: "The band members would treat their own 
sounds and produce effects on stage themselves, which is essentially 
what happened in the studio.  So the sound heard through the PA was 
generally what came from Gilmour's amps, for example.  Each of them 
had a stack of those dreadful Binson Echorecs and Echoplexes [based on 
circuitry designed for a GPO telephone switching device].  Rick Wright 
had a little keyboard mixer that had a couple of effects sends on it, 
which used to go into various Binsons, and there was a feed going from 
that to front of house.  For the early "Dark Side" concerts, he also 
had personal access to the "Sound-In-The-Round" via a joystick on his 
mixer." 

   As for microphones, for years Roger Waters insisted on their 
trademark rectangular Sennheiser vocal mics (gold one side, black the 
other).  Parsons says: "The choice was certainly individual, and they 
didn't sound bad.  Generally, we used dynamic mics.  There were a lot 
of SM58s floating around for backing vocals, as part of a Shure setup.  
At nearly every gig, I would have to re-position the mics a foot away 
from the guitar cabinets, because the crew would always ram them right 
up against the grilles, which in my mind was ridiculous.  I was always 
frustrated that whenever I got a really good sound on one gig, the 
crew would break down all the gear and load out at the end of the 
night, and all my settings would be lost.  So I literally had to start 
from scratch every night, checking the mics through the desk.  The 
crew would say, 'Oh, we've put the guitar on a channel over here, 
because that channel wasn't working,' so all of my previous checks 
were rendereed useless.  Drums were always critical, so I had this 
idea of buying a little six-channel Allen & Heath mini mixer which I 
took home with me every night in a briefcase!"  

   Crucial to the "Dark Side Of The Moon" concept, both on record and 
live, were the sound effects which included various human voices, a 
heartbeat, explosions, the "Money" cash register, and, for "Time", the 
(alarming) clocks.  Parsons himself recorded the clocks for the album 
on an EMI portable quarter-inch tape machine and later fed through the 
live quad mix to the astonishment of audiences around the globe.  He 
says: "We went back to the album multitrack tape to copy those clocks 
and other effects for the live shows, and played them through the quad 
system on a TEAC four-track deck.  For some reason, the board was 
miswired inside and instead of playing them through the PA as tracks 
1,2,3,4, the board sent them out as 2,4,1,3.  I was never able to 
remember exactly which order it was, so I always carried a test tape 
with me to ensure that the channels were all coming out in the right 
place.  I had Mick Kluczynski firing up the tape machine and would 
give him a nod to hit the play button in the right places.  We had a 
tape for 'One Of These Days', which included the big, thumping drum 
sound and Nick Mason's distorted vocal effect which said, 'One of 
these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces."  Mick had been 
touring with the band almost as long as they had been performing it, 
but it seemed he could never fire up the tape in the right place 
without a cue from me."

   Kluczynski confirms that prior to the four-track TEAC machine, he 
had been using a four-track Sony for sound effects.  The band later 
progressed to eight-track Brennells when, Kluczynski says, "Allen & 
Heath ceased to exist for a while as we knew it, and the key personnel 
had moved to Brennell, including Nigel Taylor [brother of Allen & 
Heath troubleshooter Ivor], who we later poached for our crew."

                       THE MONITORING VIRUS

   The 1972 and '73 "Dark Side" tours were notable for the Floyd's 
first use of stage monitoring, although it remained minimal until 
their "Animals" tour four years later.  Never a fan of monitors, 
Kluczynski says that once the first wedges appeared, they began to 
spread like a virus and front-of-house engineers quickly realised a
they had a struggle for control on their hands.  Before the advent 
of monitoring, Kluczynski maintains, the band were able to hear each 
other clearly by keeping a sensible level on stage.  "During a show, 
you could walk around the back of the Floyd stage and have a normal 
conversation, because overall they never played too loud, apart from 
Dave.  The band literally heard themselves off the backline and what 
was coming back at them from the PA.  They were very much into the 
environmental sound of the house and the pure feel of their music.  
Because they had no monitoring, there was never the battle between the 
instrument and the wedge.  Subsequently to hear themselves, they kept 
the general level down, which was really good and incredibly well-
disciplined.  There was never any ego bullshit in that department.  

   "The first monitor we brought in was when Dick Parry came on the 
tour as sax player.  Dick had to have a monitor, because his 
instrument was so loud to him that he couldn't hear the band without 
one.  The next addition of wedges came when our three female backing 
vocalists walked on stage and said, 'We'll come back when you've 
finished setting up.'  We said, 'We have finished.'  They said, 'Where 
are the monitors then?'  'The what?!'  So we got a couple of Tannoys 
and stuck them in boxes for them."

   Williams, who loathes the very concept of monitoring with a 
vengeance, comments: "Dave, who stood next to the girls, said, 'Oh, I'll have one.

Sound On Stage number 6, April 1997
"Welcome to the Machine - the story of Pink Floyd's live sound: part 2"

     In the wake of their huge success with the "Dark Side Of 
     The Moon" album and tours, Pink Floyd graduated to stadium 
     status and helped to shape the future of top level touring 
     sound with the formation of their own PA rental company.  
     In the second installment of this four-part series, MARK 
     CUNNINGHAM chronicles the band's "Wish You Were Here" and 
     "Animals" period of the mid-70s.

   After two American tours which had seen the debut of their new 
three-way active PA systems, Pink Floyd returned to Blighty {that 
is, England} to make their only UK concert appearance of the year, 
at the Knebworth Festival on Saturday 5 July 1975.  This performance 
witnessed the live premiere of the forthcoming album, "Wish You Were 
Here", nine weeks before its release, and it came exactly seven days 
after the Floyd's last North American date in Toronto, the end of 
which was notable for a huge unplanned pyrotechnics explosion that 
resulted in the shattering of several nearby residents' windows!

   Mick Kluczynski's foreign duties at the time included clearance 
of equipment into a country, arranging trucks, and organising load-
ins.  At the end of a tour, after the band and crew returned home, 
he stayed to supervise the trucking of all the equipment and then 
do the bookwork.  With Knebworth so close, it was decided that 
Robbie Williams and Graeme Fleming would prepare for Knebworth in 
Kluczynski's absence during the early part of the week.

   Kluczynski recalls: "The gear arrived back in the UK on the 
Wednesday, and it got to Knebworth on the Friday morning ready for 
rigging.  We had ordered some JBL long-throw horns, the old seven-
foot-long fibreglass festival horns, but didn't get delivery of them 
until the Friday night.  So literally on Saturday morning, Robbie and 
I were building them into the rig.  We had the Floyd set up totally 
independent of the support bands [which included Captain Beefheart 
and Linda Lewis], which was the normal approach for us, although we 
would normally run the show for them.  However, because the Floyd crew 
had been on tour, we ended up engineering just our own section of the 
show, and I brought in Trevor Jordan, Bryan Grant, and Perry Cooney 
(ex-IES) to look after front of house for the support bands and do 
the changeovers on stage, so Robbie was fresh for the Floyd."

   Seth Goldman had been mixing the monitors for the band on their 
American dates but, as Taylor recalls, the decision was made that it 
was not financially viable to finance his return trip purely for the 
Knebworth show.  "I think Nick Mason was the one who said, 'We're not 
paying for him to fly back for just this gig, we'll get someone else.'  
And we ended up using a Scottish guy from IES called Arnie Toshner.  
I had only been around for about a year, and I remember thinking how 
strange it was that a band this big would quibble about such an 
expense!"

   While the first half of the Knebworth set was dedicated to the 
forthcoming album material, complete with specially commissioned 
Gerald Scarfe animation projections, the second set was Floyd's 
last ever complete live re-creation of "The Dark Side Of The Moon" 
to feature Roger Waters, and was followed by "Echoes" and a dazzling 
fireworks display.  Backed yet again by sax player Dick Parry, 
vocalists Venetta Fields and Carlena Williams, and special guest Roy 
Harper, who delivered his "Have A Cigar" vocal, Floyd's performance 
was little short of perfect.  Or at least that's how it seemed to most 
of the fans.  Behind the scenes, however, the crew were suffering a 
technical nightmare.

   For previous outdoor festivals, Floyd had used the Mole Richardson 
generator trucks that were common in the film industry, but Knebworth 
was the first instance where the band's crew had to book generators 
themselves.  "None of the other acts prior to Floyd used keyboards, 
so voltage fluctuation didn't bother them," says Kluczynski.  "But 
the generators that had been booked weren't stabilised, and to silence 
them, they were situated off stage with straw bales all around them.  
When the Floyd went on, the keyboards were all out of tune and sounded 
terrible, and then the straw caught fire!  If we'd have known of the 
hazards, we probably would have run the keyboards from batteries, and 
it would have been just as effective.  So Knebworth was Robbie's 
baptism of fire as a production manager, but you learn!"

   This was not the first disaster to befall the floyd that summer 
evening.  Unlike recent shows where a model aeroplane had featured in 
the band's production, the plan was to book two real Spitfires to do 
a flypast as the introduction to the performance.  Frustratingly, the 
planes arrived early as they needed to return to base before dark, and 
a rather long and embarrassing pause followed.  The band were even 
more red-faced a few weeks earlier during their American tour when a 
new item in their set design did not prove quite as user-friendly as 
they'd hoped.  Seth Goldman says: "They were always into great ideas 
and one of them was to cover the entire stage in a helium-filled 
pyramid, which served both as protection in the event of rain and also 
as a visual prop when it was hoisted several hundred feet above the 
stage.  Unfortunately, it died on the first open-air gig in Fulton 
County Stadium, Atlanta [June 7 1975]."

   As the pyramid rose up above the walls of the stadium, the wind 
took hold and it was blown into the car park whereupon a group of 
frenzied fans ripped it into pieces.  "That was the end of our roof 
for that tour!" says Taylor of this Spinal Tap-like episode.  "When we
played in Milwaukee County Stadium, it poured with rain and the band 
had to do most of the second set with a tarpaulin just above their 
heads, which was supported by a few of us standing around them on the 
stage with eight-foot scaffold poles.  It was fucking hilarious but 
very dangerous, with two inches of water at our feet.  But 'Echoes' 
was fantastic, because the crowd were all soaked, but suddenly they 
could see the band properly, and because the stage was so wet, the 
dry ice looked better than ever.  It was just a marvellous finale!"

                              BRIT ROW

   By 1975, Pink Floyd had accumulated a substantial arsenal of sound, 
lighting, projection, and staging equipment, which was now overseen 
by a formidable road crew.  When the band returned that June from 
their second American tour of the year, with no imminent touring 
plans, they made the decision to keep their crew employed and maximise 
their investment in equipment by hiring it to outside parties.

   For years, the Floyd's road crew led a nomadic existence, storing 
equipment in temporary locations, such as the fourth floor of tour 
management legend Rikki Farr's apartment block or in garages near 
Portobello Road.  But now a permanent storage home had been found for 
the Floyd's wares in the form of a converted chapel in Britannia Row, 
a difficult to negotiate side street close to Roger Waters's home in 
Islington, North London.  Britannia Row Productions was born, making 
its official debut at Knebworth.

   "Brit Row was really started to give a reason to not fire the 
crew," explains Williams.  "So they gave Mick and I the opportunity 
to run Britannia Row Audio, and Graeme Fleming the responsibility of 
Britannia Row Lighting."

   "Robbie and I thought long and hard about it," adds Kluczynski.  
"Up until 1975, we were touring for something like nine months a year, 
and then it changed to six months every two years.  We were on wages 
all that time, so for 18 months we would be doing nothing unless Dave 
Gilmour asked us to provide a system for a free Hyde Park gig he was 
doing, and it was becoming difficult to justify our existence."

   In the early days, Brit Row suffered from the kind of naive 
business logic that the Beatles displayed with their Apple venture.  
As a fledgling rental facility, the organisation faced two major 
problems.  Because Floyd rarely toured with a support band in the 
'70s, Williams's and Kluczynski's lives had become incredibly insular, 
therefore forming relationships with management companies in order to 
pitch Brit Row business required considerable effort.  Also, Brit Row 
was only allowed to operate with the Floyd's existing equipment; any 
further investment in stock had to be paid for out of profit.  While 
their speakers and bass bins could equip as many as five average 
bands, with just one front-of-house desk the company could only 
service one tour at a time.

   "Until we could get far enough ahead to buy that second mixer, we 
were stuffed," Kluczynski says.  "We had minimal foldback, so for us 
to actually start the company properly, we needed two monitor systems 
and at least another front-of-house desk.  We did okay within our means 
though.  Then the band went back on the road for half of '77, which 
effectively closed us down.

   "Our maximum continuous touring period was 21 days, during which 
Steve O'Rourke could book as many shows as he wanted.  So we would 
often tour America in four 21 day periods with two week breaks in 
between.  To maintain some kind of presence throughout the world while 
we were away in '77, we split the main PA in two, one half of which 
was joined by another mixer and left in London for Perry Cooney to run 
for us.  The other half went to Long Island with a view to attracting 
American clients, and as I had an American girlfriend, I went with it.  
It was bloody hard work!  In the end, I was sub-contracting the gear 
to Tasco and other service companies, and it all started to get very 
messy.  That's when I bailed out and went freelance."  Kluczynski now 
runs his own successful company, MJK Productions, working on a wide 
range of tours and events including The Brit Awards.

   During 1979, New Zealander Bryan Grant, formerly a sound technician 
with rental company IES and an advance man on Floyd's '75 tour, joined 
Britannia Row to rationalise the business and improve communications 
between departments.  Kluczynski was now out of the picture, having 
given up hope of turning Britannia Row Inc. into a successful operation.  
Grant settled into devising and selling recording and touring packages 
to prospective clients.  "We carried on like that until 1984 when Robbie 
Williams and I bought the equipment from the Floyd and set up Brit Row 
as an independent organization.  It was then that we concentrated on 
audio," says Grant of the company which has since reactivated its 
American base and become one of the most successful audio rental 
outfits in the world.

                        ANIMALS IN THE FLESH

   During the next year off the road, David Gilmour guested on various 
projects; by artists including Cambridge pals Quiver, the band which 
featured future Floyd sidemen Willie Wilson and Tim Renwick, and backed 
the Sutherland Brothers on their hit "Arms of Mary".  As executive 
producer, he also assisted with demo sessions by a young Kent songstress 
named Catherine Bush, after which Pink Floyd reconvened in April 1976 
in their own newly-built recording studios at Britannia Row to work on 
their next album, "Animals".

   On the day of its release, January 23 1977, the band played the 
first date of its "In The Flesh" European tour in Germany at Dortmund's 
Westfalenhalle, and later embarked on American dates which climaxed on 
July 6 at Montreal's semi-built Olympic Stadium.  Despite the fame and 
fortune earned by the Floyd over the previous four years, this new 
production showed that creatively the band were showing no signs of 
complacency.  Their trademark visual prop, the giant porker, made its 
debut on this tour as one of several inflatables, and new film footage 
had been shot to accompany the "Animals" material.

   Kluczynski, who on this tour handed his effects tapes responsibilities 
to studio engineer Brian Humphries and took on the role of production 
manager, comments: "This was the first tour we did where we had to use 
click tracks and the music synchronised to the film, hence Roger Waters 
needed to wear headphones."

   The "In The Flesh" tour marked yet another transition in Floyd's 
statistic-busting live career.  In complete contrast to what was 
acceptable to the new Punk philosophies [remember Johnny Rotten's 
"I Hate Pink Floyd" T-shirt?], stadiums and large arenas were now the 
only places which could physically accommodate the Floyd's multimedia 
presentations, and in many cities, they were at least doubling the size 
of their audiences.  Similarly, this governed a notable increase in the 
size of Floyd's PA.  Active crossovers came into the picture on the 
"Wish You Were Here" tour as the band introduced a new three-way active 
PA with Martin bins.  For the 1977 tour, Bill Kelsey designed a four-way 
active system, which comprised of Kelsey bins, 2 x 15-inch blue fibreglass 
front-loaded mid cabinets, Altec horns, and JBL 075s.  Augmented by 
additional horns and bins depending on the sizes of venues, this formed 
the core of the Britannia Row PA system.  Karl Dallas praised the sound 
in "Melody Maker", writing in his review of Floyd's January show at 
Frankfurt's 12,000 capacity Festhalle: "It all adds up to the clearest 
sound I have ever heard in a hall this size."

   On the eve of the North American leg of the tour, Kluczynski and 
Graeme Fleming made an advance check on the first outdoor venue, 
Atlanta Stdium, to gauge the extent of the PA equipment and sound 
power required.  Kluczynski: "I walked down onto the field and started 
looking upwards, and up, and up... I suddenly went into a blind panic 
and couldn't wait to get on the phone to Robbie in London to tell him 
to double what we'd ordered!"  

   The actual configuration of the PA and the mix passing through it 
signified a change of direction -- one which borrowed much from the 
techniques of The Grateful Dead and their Meyer Sound-designed system.  
Rather than rely on conventional backline amplification, the Dead 
placed PA columns along the back of the stage and gave a final mixed 
feed directly to the front-of-house engineer. Each column of the PA 
contained one instrument, and then each group of columns would be 
repeated along the PA stacks in a huge "wall of sound".

   "We adapted that idea, but instead of having a wall of columns 
along the back of the stage, we split our system left and right and 
made that the principle for our PA," recalls Kluczynski.  "This meant 
we were up to 36 foot high to gain the projection required, whereas 
until then we had been stacking horizontally simply because of the 
nature of the venues.  Our quad development paralleled these changes.
We previously had four points, but we now eliminated the back point -- 
because it was irrelevant -- after realizing that the sum total of the 
three quad stations should equal the whole PA, so there was an equality 
in volume throughout."  The equipment and technical rider for the tour 
recommended that each of the three quad towers "should be two metres 
high by four metres long by two metres deep, with three meters 
overhead clearance".

   The Phase Linear 400 and 700 amps used by the Floyd since the early 
'70s were re-racked at the end of 1974 by Bill Kelsey and Peter Watts, 
who had replaced the Phase Linear front panels with new engraved signs 
which read "Pink Floyd Power Amp".  In preparation for the "In The 
Flesh" tour, the band purchased the new and more powerful Phase Linear 
Dual 500s, and Nigel Taylor supervised their custom racking inside a 
Brit Row-built 19-inch cube-shaped chassis.  Each chassis, which 
housed two amplifiers, was designed to enable simple disconnection of 
wiring for servicing on a workbench.

   A major change was happening in the console department in 1977.  
While Brian Humphries mixed at front of house with the Floyd's new 
custom-designed double Midas console (see box "Mirrored Midas"), Seth 
Goldman engineered the monitors using a standard Midas 24:12 console, 
which he also remembers using in America with a variety of bands 
throughout 1979 as part of Britannia Row Inc's hire stock.  Use of 
outboard equipment for live concerts was beginning to grow, and the 
front-of-house racks now included Klark Teknik DN27 graphic equalisers.  
Robbie Williams also recalls that one of the first truly influential 
items of outboard equipment made its debut with Floyd on the "In The 
Flesh" tour: the Eventide Harmonizer.  "We got hold of it because one 
of Eventide's guys was a die-hard Floyd fan and he had made this huge 
piece of equipment.  Gradually, noise gates and more and more outboard 
began to appear, until it looked like we were carrying a recording 
studio on the road."

                             ALIENATION

   Although a real step forward technically, "In The Flesh" proved to 
be the most unhappy tour of the band's career.  Now distanced from 
each other as individuals, the magic had long since evaporated; 
matters finally came to a head on the last date of the American leg.  
In interviews while on the road, Waters had reported his frustration 
at the "meaningless ritual" of live performance, where his intensely 
personal songs were treated with a lack of respect by "whistling, 
shouting, and screaming" audiences.  In Montreal on July 6, he took 
it out on an innocent fan in the front row by spitting in his face.

   "On that 1997 tour, Roger was definitely becoming unpredictable and 
was changing a lot as a person," says Robbie Williams.  "The last gig 
was pretty awful, because he was shouting abuse at the audience when 
they wouldn't shut up during the quiet numbers."

   Some years after the fateful tour, Waters commented: "We played 
to enormous numbers of people, most of whom could not see or hear 
anything.  A lot of people were there just because it was the thing 
to do.  They were having their own little shows all over the place, 
letting off fireworks, beating each other up and things like that.  
As the tour went on, I felt more and more alienated from the people 
we were supposed to be entertaining."  Stadium rock had become such 
an isolating experience that he imagined building a wall between the 
band and its audience.  Now, there was an idea.

                      Next month: "The Wall"

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Sidebars:

PINK IRONY

   Little more than two years before Pink Floyd embarked on their 
enormous "In The Flesh" tour of the USA, Rick Wright said: "I don't 
agree with these huge shows in front of tens of thousands of people.  
Wembley Empire Pool is the biggest place you can play before you 
lose the effect."

SLY PORKER

   The legendary inflatable Floyd pig was conceived by Roger Waters 
and originally designed by ERG of Amsterdam in December 1976 for the 
photo session at Battersea Power Station which spawned the "Animals" 
album cover.  The original porker went missing when it broke free from 
its ties during the shoot and flew across the Home Counties, much to 
the disbelief of aircraft pilots!

   A replacement was made in time for the launch of the "In The Flesh" 
tour in Dortmund in January 1977, where it emerged from over the PA 
stacks through a cloud of black smoke during, appropriately, "Pigs 
(Three Different Ones)".  It has since become a staple prop for every 
Floyd tour.  When Roger Waters left the band in the mid-1980s, part of 
the settlement stipulated that he would be paid $800 every time his 
ex-colleagues performed live with the pig (a sow).  In a bid to avoid 
paying this royalty (and at the same time possibly deliver a thinly-
veiled sarcastic message), Gilmour and co. added testicles to the pig 
and claimed it was a different beast altogether.  That's balls for you.

SNOWY WHITE

   Added to the Floyd's lineup for the 1977 "In The Flesh" tour was 
guitarist Snowy White, who had impressed Steve O'Rourke with his live 
work for Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel and Al Stewart.  Those who 
purchased the eight-track cartridge version of "Animals" will be 
familiar with White's brief guitar solo, which linked the two verses 
of a rare, composite version of "Pigs On The Wing".

   He was hired yet again in 1980 to support Gilmour on the "Wall" 
shows as one of the "surrogate band"; his role was made all the more 
difficult by his commitments with Thin Lizzy.  He says: "It was a 
crazy period where I was learning two bands' material, which were 
totally different to each other, all at once.  Floyd were rehearsing 
at Los Angeles Sports Arena, and every morning in my apartment, I 
would spend a couple of hours going through Lizzy songs, then polish 
up on the Floyd stuff before going to rehearse.  It was a busy time."

   White would later perform at Roger Waters's "Wall" extravaganza in 
Berlin in 1990.

MIRRORED MIDAS

   In November 1976, Midas, whose key players were Chas Brooke (of BSS 
fame), Geoff Beyers, and Dave Kilminster, began designing a new Pink 
Floyd custom console, which Kluczynski describes as being a radical 
step forward in front-of-house control.  This console as a whole, 
which was completed just in time for its debut on the "In The Flesh" 
tour, was formed from two separate mirror imaged desks, each side 
containing twenty channels but operating as one large forty-channel 
board.  In total, there were eight stereo sub-groups and eight effects 
busses, and each input had three controls, which could be assigned to 
any of the effect busses via the buss transfer electronics.

   The left-hand desk had inputs 1-20, effects returns 1-4, and aux 
masters 1-4, while the right-hand board had inputs 21-40, effects 
returns 5-8, and aux masters 5-8.  All channels had routing switches 
to sub-groups (S1-8) and six quad sub-groups (Q1-6).  EQ was three-
band with various switchable frequencies.  In between the two boards 
sat a new Midas quad board with joystick panners for each of the quad 
sub-groups.  This separate board had four four-channel returns for 
effects, each of which featured trim levels and a diamond-shaped mute 
switching layout.

   Robbie Williams poetically describes this desk package as being 
"the dogs bits at the time".  He adds: "It wasn't the traditional 
Midas grey either, it was finished in a lovely aubergine colour and 
really was a splendid piece of kit.  By the time we ordered it, we 
were already operating Brit Row as a rental company, so we had our 
eyes on the future."  Even more impressive was its multi-coloured 
screen-printed graphics, which were applied with ultraviolet inks.  
A UV light unit, fitted over the meter bridge, flooded the work 
surface, enabling the desk to shine brilliantly (and allow foolproof 
operation by the engineers) in the darkness of an auditorium.  "It 
looked absolutely stunning," says Chas Brooke.  "No one had done 
that before, and probably no one since, because it cost a fortune.  
Manufacturing such an elaborate console meant, of course, that it 
was impossible to make any money out of the exercise, but it was 
definitely worth the effort."

   The quality of this unusual console package owed much to its 
state-of-the-art op-amp, the Philips TDA 1034, which was the fore-
runner of today's standard 5532 and 5534 op-amps.  Says Brooke: 
"This was a very expensive, ground-breaking, military specification 
linear op-amp in a metal case (unlike today's more common plastic-
cased variety), and we decided that Pink Floyd deserved it for this 
console.  As such, this was one of the very first consoles to use it."

   The console is now owned by a small rental company in France.


Photo caption: 

"Pink Floyd's 1975 classic "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" was performed 
live for the first time in the UK on November 4 1974 at the Usher Hall 
in Edinburgh -- the first date of their autumn/winter British tour.  
Before the doors opened, the road crew posed for this rare photograph 
which also shows the band's second generation Allen & Heath desk, 
lighting console, the TEAC four-track tape machine for sound effects, 
and the PA stacks with the front quad speakers at the right-hand side 
of the circular screen.  {List of people pictured: Paul Devine (lights), 
Graeme Fleming (Lighting Director), Peter Revell (projectionist), 
Coon (intercoms), Bernie Caulder (quad and drum technician), Robbie 
Williams, Paul Murray (projectionist), George Merryman (technician), 
Mick Kluczynski, Nick Rochford (truck driver), Mick Marshall (lights), 
Phil Taylor.  "...Rick Wright is seen tinkering on his grand piano."}

Sound On Stage number 7, May 1997
"Welcome to the Machine - the story of Pink Floyd's live sound: part 3"

     MARK CUNNINGHAM continues his comprehensive study of Pink 
     Floyd's classic tours and goes behind the scenes of the 
     most outstanding live production of the 1980s: "The Wall".

   Although their eagerly-awaited follow-up to "Animals" began life 
at Britannia Row Studios, Pink Floyd were soon forced to spend most 
of 1979 overseas as tax exiles and completed the recording of their 
new album in the South of France, Los Angeles, and New York.  In the 
mind of Waters, its author, "The Wall", like The Who's "Tommy", was 
always going to be more than just a double album; it also generated 
a controversial Alan Parker-directed movie and one of the most 
ambitiously theatrical rock concert productions of the modern era.

   Harvey Goldsmith had been involved in promoting almost every 
major Floyd tour of the previous 10 years, but nothing could prepare 
him for the sheer expanse of "The Wall", a project originally born 
of Waters's reaction against stadium rock.  He says: "Roger Waters 
took me out for dinner one night and said, 'I have got this idea,' 
and he started to tell me about this story.  He said, 'I want to 
build a wall between the band and the audience, and as the show 
progresses, The Wall will build up and up and up...'  The bricks 
were all cardboard, of course, but I told him that on the last show 
there should be a concrete wall, so we could do it for real!  We 
talked it through and he pretty well had the whole show in his mind.  
Then we started liaising with Fisher Park [set design specialists 
Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park] to create that event which marked a 
big turning point in the history of live shows."

   Throughout the making of the album, plans were being drawn up 
for the forthcoming production, based on Waters's bizarre concepts.  
As well as a number of massive inflatable puppets based on Gerald 
Scarfe's distinctive "Wall" cartoon sketches of the schoolteacher, 
the mother, and wife, the central "prop" was the "Wall" itself: 
420 white, fireproof cardboard bricks built 31 foot high and 160 
foot wide.  It was slowly constructed in front of the band during 
the first 45 minutes of the show by the six-man Britro Brick 
Company (!), until Roger Waters slotted the final brick into place 
at the end of "Goodbye Cruel World" to signify the intemission.  
The show climaxed with the collapse of the wall against a volley 
of explosive sound effects and smoke.  An encore would have been 
a trivial irrelevance. 

   Says Robbie Williams: "I always knew 'The Wall' was a killer 
album, and that we'd go out and tour it, although most of us 
assumed it would just involve a slightly bigger PA system and a 
few lasers.  I don't think anybody had any conception of what was 
going on in Roger's mind, and when we first heard that he wanted 
to build a massive wall across the stadium with the band performing 
behind it, we all said, 'You've got to be f**king mad!'  We thought 
the audience would storm the stage and that the poor guys at front 
of house were going to get killed."

   Unable to enter the UK for tax reasons until April 5 1980, 
Pink Floyd held the live premiere of "The Wall" at Los Angeles 
Sports Arena on February 7 1980, then move to Nassau Coliseum 
in New York for five shows, before finally playing six London 
dates at Earls Court on August 4-9.

                              AT FOH

   In deciding upon the most suitable front-of-house engineer, 
the bass player had only one person in mind, and "The Wall"'s 
co-producer and engineer, James Guthrie, was approached by Waters 
several times on the subject.  Guthrie, who began his studio 
career at Mayfair Studios in 1973, says: "I was quite opposed to 
the idea initially and told him, 'Look Roger, this is a whole 
different area of expertise.  You should get someone more suited 
to the job, because I have only ever worked in studios.'  As time 
went on, the project became more and more complex.  Gerald Scarfe 
had already begun working on the animation which was used for both 
the film and live shows, as well as graphics.  While we were in 
France, Roger cornered me yet again and quite abruptly said, 'You 
are the only person qualified to mix the live show, so you have to 
do it.'  He was also enticing me by saying that we could get any 
piece of equipment we wanted, and being as I'd always liked a 
challenge, the prospect became more exciting by the day.  I finally 
agreed, and in the end, we had more equipment at front of house 
than most of today's studios."

   Along with the excitement of making this challenge work, 
Guthrie was quite naturally anxious at the prospect of working 
in the radically different acoustic environment of the concert 
arena, although the pressure was lifted by the luxury of spending 
up to three weeks in production rehearsals at the LA Sports Arena.  
This followed preliminary routining of the music with the band at 
Leeds Rehearsal Studios on Sunset Boulevard (next door to where 
Jackson Browne was rehearsing), while the set was assembled and 
tested on a movie sound stage in Culver City.  "Once the show 
started to take shape, the production rehearsals had to take place 
in the arena simply because the show was so enormous," says Guthrie.  
"I quickly became acquainted with the acoustics of a large room, 
albeit an empty one which is another issue altogether.  You can 
EQ and voice the PA thoroughly but, of course, when the doors open 
and the audience pours in, the acoustics change dramatically.  This 
was particularly evident at Nassau Coliseum, where we played in the 
depths of winter and many of the fans were wearing thick sheepskin 
coats, which dampened the sound even further.  For me though, the 
first show would be the first time I would have to deal with this 
phenomenon."

                             ON STAGE

   Few bands had dared to even think of staging such an ambitious 
show, let alone tried to plan one.  Inevitably "The Wall" grew 
into a monster, a logistical nightmare which required setting up 
specialist teams within the crew to ensure precision -- a procedure 
which has since become commonplace within the live industry.  The 
complex music also determined that each Floyd instrumentalist was 
duplicated and the eight-man line-up enhanced by four backing 
vocalists, but it was also Waters's idea that the Floyd members 
would each have a "shadow" and this was reflected in the positioning 
and lighting of the musicians.  There was even a "Wall" uniform: 
the crew and band alike wore black short-sleeved shirts with sewn-on 
"hammer" logos.  Everyone, that is, except Waters who chose to wear 
a T-shirt with a large "1" emblazoned on his chest.  Number One? 
Top Man?  Big Cheese?  It made you wonder.

   Waters's vision necessitated two custom-built stages, one in 
front of the other at slightly different heights, which were 
separated by a large black Duvetyne drape.  The task of pacing the 
building of the wall between the two stages and isolating the band 
from the audience while the show was in motion was no mean feat in 
itself.  Add to this the operation of the Scarfe inflatables, the 
flying pig, a crashing model Stuka, Marc Brickman's imaginative 
lighting, film projections, and copious pyrotechnics, and one 
begins to realise the intensity that must have built up behind the 
scenes while the audiences sat there agog.

   All senses were sent reeling from the very beginning of the 
show, which began with a quite startling piece of deception.  
Despite being introduced as Pink Floyd by a deliberately tacky MC, 
the first number, "In The Flesh?" (a satirical nod to Waters's 
"Animal" tour experience), was performed at the front of the stage 
by the surrogate four-piece (Snowy White, Andy Bown, Peter Wood, 
and Willie Wilson), who wore perfectly formed latex Floyd masks 
modelled for by the genuine band at the Hollywood film studios 
during rehearsals.  No wonder the audience was confused when the 
second number started and Waters and co. came into view!

                         HOLD IT! HOLD IT!   

   Whilst the band and crew had worked solidly on perfecting the 
show over the previous weeks, not one complete run-through of 
the production had been attempted without being punctuated by some 
form of technical or directional problem.  Rehearsals continued in 
this vein right up until the first night, mostly due to Waters's 
relentless perfectionism.  It should be noted that the credits for 
the show read: "'The Wall' written and directed by Roger Waters.  
Performed by Pink Floyd."  While Gilmour's role was to rehearse the 
band and ensure that individual parts were reproduced faithfully 
from the album, Waters's unique position in this whole production 
arguably made him the only person who knew exactly how the show 
should be run.  Given the additional responsibility as a singer 
and bassist, one can only imagine the frustration he incurred when 
rehearsed sections did not quite go to plan.

   Guthrie recalls: "There were so many things to coordinate that 
we would get part of the way through, only to be stopped by Roger's 
loud voice through the PA saying, 'Hold it, hold it!'  He'd then have 
a go at somebody for not bringing a puppet out at a vital moment, 
or saying that the wall should have been built up more by now, and 
there were also numerous occasions when he'd alert us to badly timed 
sound effects or lighting cues.  It went on and on like this every 
day with continuous interruptions from Roger, shouting 'Hold it, 
hold it', and we were becoming increasingly frustrated because we 
were very anxious to do a complete run-through in order to get a feel 
for the dynamic and flow of the show."  Despite such wishes, the crew 
had to contend with rehearsing in sections which, Waters has said, was 
the only way he could accurately plot the progress of his production.

   When the big opening night arrived, Guthrie and his front-of-house 
team joked before the show that whatever occurred, at least Waters 
could not interrupt the proceedings.  After all, this was now playing 
to a real audience of 11,000 people.  But... "During 'The Thin Ice', 
I could hear an intermittent electronic crackle.  I thought it was 
coming from one of the drum mics, and my assistant engineers Rick Hart 
and Greg Walsh were going frantic, listening through headphones and 
soloing everything in an attempt to find the source of this noise.  
We couldn't work out what it was.  Then all of a sudden, Roger shouted 
through the PA, 'Hold it, hold it!', and I nearly died!  I turned to 
Rick and could see the colour draining from his face.  I thought I was 
dreaming.  I looked at Greg, and he had already turned white and was 
staring in disbelief -- I think we were all in shock!  The pyrotechnic 
guys had guaranteed that when the plane exploded at the end of 'In The 
Flesh', all the flames would be out upon landing at the side of the 
stage.  But when they raised the drape between the two stages, some 
of the embers from the spraying pyros had lodged in the material and 
caught fire.  The sound that we had been hearing had come from the 
riggers in the catwalks above the stage trying to put out this fire 
with extinguishers, so it wasn't anything electronic at all!"

   Waters remained calm and informed the audience that the show would 
resume as soon as the minor blaze was under control and the drapes 
were flown back into the ceiling.  Adds Guthrie: "Half the fans 
panicked and ran to the exits, and the other half were stoned and 
thought it was all a pretty far out part of the act!  By the time 
they restarted the show, I could just about see the stage as the 
beams of light shone through the heavy, thick smoke left behind."

   Vision later improved as the audience was treated to the heroic 
sight of Gilmour, hydraulically lifted above the wall to perform 
"Comfortably Numb" [quite possibly my most treasured memory of any 
concert I have ever seen].  This scene, according to Phil Taylor, 
was included in the show at the express request of Waters.  "When 
we were rehearsing, Roger decided it would be a fantastic idea if 
Dave appeared over the top of the wall for his vocal sections and 
guitar solos.  He said 'You should go up on a lift and it'll look 
great.'  I must have been laughing a little too loud, because Roger 
quickly turned to me and added 'And you can go up with him!'  So 
that was me with Dave every night, crouching beside him and holding 
on for dear life!"

   It is worth noting that the first night in Los Angeles was not 
the only instance where Roger Waters was forced to bring an untimely 
halt to a show.  The previous occasion was in July 1977 during the 
band's four night run at Madison Square Garden in New York City on 
the "In The Flesh" tour, where it was not fire but a technician's 
stupidity which was to blame.  Snowy White says: "Because of various 
union regulations in the States, we were forced to use a number of 
local technicians and one of the lampies didn't have a clue.  He was 
focusing a spotlight at Roger's feet instead of his face and body, 
and Roger reacted by bending down and 'willing' it upwards with his 
hand.  After a while, he'd clearly had enough of this incompetence 
and he stopped the band halfway through a song, saying, "I think you 
New York lighting guys are a f**king load of shit!', and we then 
carried on without batting an eyelid!"

WALL OF SOUND

   Problems with the opening shows in Los Angeles were not confined 
to the legendary fire incident.  Guthrie's spine tingles at the 
memory of receiving a whole consignment of defective Altec 15-inch 
woofers, which necessitated brisk replacement with Gauss 15-inch 
drivers.  However, such recollections pale into insignificance when 
reappraising what was arguably the most potent PA system of its time.

   Purchased by Britannia Row especially for "The Wall", in addition 
to a new Martin quad system, was the new Altec "Stanley Screamer" 
grid-flown system designed by Stan Miller, which was dubbed the 
Flying Forest because of its array of different sized constant 
directivity horns.  Those fortunate to have witnessed any of these 
magical shows will remember the awesome sensurround experience of 
having low register vibrations firing up their spine.  The influx of 
sensurround movies in the '70s, such as "Earthquake", had inspired 
Guthrie to suggest augmenting the PA with a system which would enhance 
the show's sound effects.

   As well as being placed either side of the stage underneath 
the PA, a mixture of 16 Gauss-loaded Altec 2 x 18-inch subs and 
(in Europe) an unspecified quantity of 2 x 15-inch Court DLB-1200 
cabinets were positioned under seating blocks all the way around 
the perimeter of the arena.  The cabinets were used in conjunction 
with a sub-sonic synthesizer for ultra low sub-bass at several key 
points during the show, such as the helicopter buzz on "The Happiest 
Days of Our Lives" and the explosive climax when the wall came 
tumbling down.  Guthrie says: "That was when I pushed the fader up 
as far as it would go, and the whole arena literally started shaking.  
Anybody lucky enough to have been sitting over those sub-woofers must 
have been bouncing!"

                       LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS

   No fewer than a massive, and previously unheard of, 106 
unautomated input channels (not including echo returns) were put 
under Guthrie's jurisdiction at front of house.  Fortunately, his 
life was made easier by enlisting the help of assistant engineers 
Rick Hart, from the album mixing sessions at Producer's Workshop in 
LA, and Greg Walsh.  "There were actually four drum kits, because 
Nick Mason and Willie Wilson each had a kit on both stages, and we 
used a colossal amount of microphones.  And because Roger and Andy 
Bown both played bass, there had to be two bass rigs on each stage 
(two Altec rigs for the front stage and two Phase Linear-amplified 
Martin rigs at the rear).  So just concentrating on the balance of 
the music was enough for me to think about," recalls Guthrie.  

   Once again at the heart of the mixing process was the famed 
UV-lit Midas 40-channel custom board with its central quad section.  
The main board, however, underwent significant repair work in 
between the 1980 and 1981 "Wall" shows after being damaged in a 
fire at Alexandra Palace.  Despite the wealth of facilities offered 
by the Midas for the "In The Flesh" tour, it could not cope alone 
with "The Wall"'s demands for channels, not even with the addition 
of a 24-channel stretch.  Williams recalls that "we just kept 
patching in 10-channel stretch units, ad infinitum!"

   To simplify the complex mix, Guthrie devised a plan whereby 
Hart would look after the left side of the desk and Walsh, the 
right, while he mostly concerned himself with sub-groups in the 
middle.  This triumvirate engineering formula has since become 
a Floyd norm.  "They would feed me whatever was playing at the 
time.  If Dave was playing acoustic guitar, they would make sure 
that all of his electric guitar mics were muted, so the only thing 
being fed was the acoustic.  I had a couple of faders that were 
simply for Dave's guitars and I could balance them accordingly.  
If I wanted to change the balance between mics, I could just reach 
over and do that, then return to my normal balancing act.  The same 
regime was followed for the keyboards.  Rick Hart was also flying 
the quad, so when different effects needed to fly around the room, 
he was operating the joysticks.  Greg, meanwhile, was running the 
echo spins."

   Added to the outboard racks used for the "In The Flesh" tour 
were several items removed from Britannia Row Studios at Guthrie's 
specific request.  "I just added all the stuff I liked to use in 
the studio," he says.  "We had Urei 1176 and dbx limiters, Eventide 
Harmonisers, Publison DDLs, and for outboard EQ, I used K&H 
parametric equalisers.  In fact, we pretty much emptied Brit Row 
and stuck everything in touring racks."  This also followed through 
for the microphone inventory.  For drums, Guthrie's choice included 
an AKG D12 on the kicks, and 202s and 421s on toms, while vocal mics 
were both Shure M57s and 58s.  One of the first quality radio mics, 
a Nady, was also used by Waters as he wandered the stage for a large 
proportion of the set.

   Hardly surprising for someone of his background, Guthrie 
borrowed much from his portfolio of studio techniques for the live 
shows and began to work on the front-of-house mix only when he and 
the band were satisfied with the sound on stage.  "It's my standard 
practice in the studio to get the sound right in the playing area 
first and then see what I can do to improve on it on the desk, and 
I was pleased to discover that it also worked well live."  He even 
voiced the PA in the same way that he voiced studio monitors, and 
for this purpose, he carried with him to each venue a Revox and a 
quarter-inch tape of "Comfortably Numb" to play through the rig at 
high levels, while he listened around the arena and ran back to 
the mixing area to make adjustments on the graphics.

   The subtractive EQ techniques for which he had gained a 
reputation in his studio career were also adopted for the shows.  
He says: "When you're dealing with PA systems which tend to squawk 
at you and be a little nasty, it's always a good move to start by 
cranking up the volume and subtracting what you don't want to hear 
in terms of frequencies.  It always sounds more natural and I can 
get a much bigger sound that way.  You start flat and listen to 
what is going on, working out if there is a problem with what you 
have and how you are going to rectify it.  One should never EQ for 
the sake of it, although many people do."

   Guthrie's studio experience was further called upon to achieve 
maximum separation between the backline amplification in a bid to 
improve control.  He and backline head Phil Taylor placed large 
foam baffles either side of the guitar and bass amplifiers and 
keyboard Leslies, almost as if they were establishing a studio 
environment on stage.  Says Guthrie: "We found that underneath 
the stage was a huge area of low frequency rumbling, which was 
reducing the definition of the low end, so we hung more of these 
foam traps down there at varying intervals and it made an enormous 
difference.  The other thing we did was to turn everyone down on 
stage so the band were playing at an unusually low level.  I 
thought they would tell me to piss off, quite frankly, but Roger 
was actually very supportive, because he wanted to achieve the 
highest resolution sound possible.  It was a bit of a problem with 
Dave though because, like most guitarists, he needed to play at a 
certain volume to get the sustain and feedback, so his level would 
tend to creep up during the show."

   Even more control was provided by the ingenious, dual purpose 
"hammer" flags which hung above the auditorium at Earls Court, a 
venue famous for its aircraft hangar-like acoustics.  A similar 
idea had been introduced at the Festhalle in Frankfurt during the 
"In The Flesh" tour, where, under Nigel Taylor's direction, the 
installation of drapes was extremely effective, absorbing the 
spurious energy which reflected off the venue's walls and domed 
ceiling.  This time, however, these drapes had been transformed 
into highly memorable visual props.  As Robbie Williams confirms, 
acoustic consultant Stephen Court, whose Court Acoustics business 
was then based in the Britannia Row complex, played a part in 
designing the echo absorption traps for the London shows.  Court 
says: "Earls Court was a massive lavatory, acoustically-speaking.  
I had worked with Ken Shearer who had installed the mushrooms in 
the Royal Albert Hall and I'd seen how effective they had been.  
So between myself and the Floyd crew we had the idea to put up some 
flags, which in real terms acted as blankets to get rid of all the 
echo, and the band's artwork team created these wonderful banners."

                             STAGE MIX

   Positioned behind the wall, Seth Goldman ran the extensive 
monitoring regime with a Midas Pro 2 console for the main stage 
and another Midas console with Pro 2 and Pro 4 modules for when 
the band performed on the front stage.  All the backing vocals 
were summed through a small Altec rack-mounted mixer.  What might 
be described as the forerunner of in-ear monitoring was also 
featured in the show, as Goldman explains: "Kenny Schaffer of 
Schaffer-Vega built me an ingenious wireless system with Koss 240 
headphones for Roger, and he got on with them really well, which 
probably accounts for why he was one of the first people to take 
up the original Garwood in-ear monitors when he did his own 
version of "The Wall" in Berlin in 1990."

   Owing to an increase in the amount of monitoring required for 
this two-stage show, Guthrie states that he was often engaged 
in an amicable "battle" with Seth Goldman as he tried to persuade 
the monitor engineer to reduce on-stage volume.  "I was getting 
quite a bit of monitor spill into the mics, and that's where the 
potential feedback was coming from," says Guthrie.  "But the 
stage was very nicely laid out, because the wedges were facing 
upwards from underneath the stage with a grid on top, so you 
didn't actually see any wedges from the front of the audience."

                      ROLL THE SOUND EFFECTS!

   The sound effects used live were typically lifted from 
"The Wall" album masters and remixed to the Floyd quad format, 
which had now reverted to the diamond shape, with the points at 
left, right, front, and back.  Also on tape were a number of 
instrumental and vocal enhancements.  "The band played everything 
live," says Guthrie, "but I also played in orchestral tracks, 
which were remixed into quad for songs like 'Comfortably Numb' 
and 'The Trial', and for 'Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)' we 
had all the schoolkids singing.  Track 8 carried the timecode, 
while on track 7, there was a click introduced by a count which 
we would start in the mixing area and would be heard by the band 
either through the room monitors or their headphones.  They would 
then play in time to the animation and recorded tracks which 
served to enlarge the musical production.  This was all done a 
few years before the advent of samplers, so nowadays an additional 
keyboard player, like Jon Carin, would play all of these extra 
parts from his Kurzweil keyboard."

   Adjacent to the sound equipment in the mixing area were three 
35mm projectors Mag-linked to two effects-loaded eight-track tape 
recorders.  The Floyd's regular nine metre circular screen was 
used at the back of the stage for 35mm back projections during 
the first half, but once the wall was built, it acted as a giant 
screen for all three of the linked 35mm projectors out front for 
animation.  Brit Row's head technician Nigel Taylor routinely 
battled with the unreliable pre-SMPTE synchronisation of the 
eight-track machines and projectors.  "The timecode was on the 
35mm mag, and we used Mini Mag synchronisers from a company 
called Maglink.  We had those on the album so we were able to 
use everything that we'd already recorded," says Guthrie.

   Quite simply one of the best live productions of the last 
20 years, "The Wall" marked the end of what many people consider 
to be the definitive Pink Floyd line-up.  Their professional 
relationship was soon to collapse in a battle between Waters and 
Gilmour, and the chances of the four members ever sharing the 
same stage again look increasingly slim.  But, as their song 
stated, the show must go on.  And so it did.

   Next month: The reformation of Pink Floyd and how their 
most successful album was given new life for their triumphant 
"Division Bell" shows of 1994.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Sidebars:

THE WALL '90

   Although 180,000 tickets were sold for Roger Waters's all-star, 
post-Floyd performance of "The Wall" on July 21 1990 in what had 
been the "no man's land" between East and West Berlin, it was 
estimated that a further 120,000 East Germans gained free entry 
after tearing down barriers.  Several of the Floyd's backup 
musicians from the original "Wall" performances of 1980 formed 
the basis of Waters's Bleeding Hearts Band, such as guitarist 
Snowy White, keyboard player Peter Wood (who tragically died in 
December 1993), and backing vocalists Joe Chemay, Jim Haas, Jim 
Farber, and John Joyce; and special guests included Van Morrison, 
Bryan Adams, The Band, Joni Mitchell, Sinead O'Connor, and The 
Scorpions.  Meanwhile, Michael Kamen (who also played keyboards 
with Pink Floyd at Knebworth three weeks earlier) conducted the 
Military Orchestra of the Soviet Army and the East Berlin Radio 
Orchestra and Choir.  Britannia Row once again provided all PA 
services, and engineering the sound at front of house was Gary 
Bradshaw, while Robin Fox took care of the stage monitoring.

   The 5 million pounds aimed to be raised by the concert was 
in aid of the Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief, a charity 
founded by World War II hero Leonard Cheshire VC.

   Rather than rely on the helicopter sound effects heard on 
the original album, two actual helicopters were provided by 
the US 7th Airborne Corps to hover over the audience.

   Since the Berlin event, Waters has seriously considered 
performing "The Wall" live again.  "I'd love to do it in the 
year 2000.  We did it in 1980, then again in 1990.  I think 
it works best in 10 year cycles.  I've already got my eye on 
the Grand Canyon as a possible venue, or somewhere equally 
dramatic."  We'll see.

PETE CORNISH: FX GURU

   March 4 1976 was the day that Pete Cornish, one of the world's 
top guitar amplification and effects authorities, started work 
on designing his first effects pedalboard for David Gilmour.  
And more than 20 years later, he is still assisting the band's 
frontman.  Gilmour's first Cornish board consisted of a two 
guitar input selector and strobe tuner feed, while the actual 
effects were a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face, an MXR Phase 100, 
Dynacomp and noise gate, a Uni-Vibe, Pete Cornish Custom Fuzz, 
and a Jim Dunlop Cry Baby.  The board featured three Cry Baby 
sweep pedals, modified as a tone control, volume pedal, and 
wah-wah respectively, and three outputs with independent on/off 
switches allowed Gilmour's simultaneous use of any of all of 
his amps.

   Modifications, including the addition of a Colorsound treble 
and bass boost unit, were made to the board for the "In The Flesh" 
tour of 1977, and for the same tour, Cornish made a bass effects 
board for Roger Waters plus an acoustic and an electric board for 
Snowy White.  But it was "The Wall" which saw Cornish working at 
full stretch to build another five boards, the basis of which, 
for guitars, featured a Deluxe Electric Mistress flanger and 
Big Muff, and retained the sturdy Cry Baby pedals for volume, 
tone, and wah.

   Phil Taylor says: "I was with the band whilst they were 
recording in America, and I had to work out how many pedalboards 
I needed for the show.  I ended up with 11, and because there 
were no faxes back then, I had to send drawings to Pete by 
express mail and discuss them with him on the phone.

   "We were not only adding a second guitarist, but we also now 
had a second bass player who needed his own board, plus we had 
a complete second stage to equip and I needed another four mini 
pedalboards for this.  I already had some spare send and return 
units to cover unseen eventualities.  I put it all together by 
working out with David and Roger exactly which effects would be 
needed for the songs performed on each stage, and then making 
the boards as compact as possible by including only the necessary 
effects for each situation.  Getting all those made thousands of 
miles away from Pete was a bit of a headache, but he is someone 
who can always be relied on to deliver the goods."

THE "BRITRO" CUSTOM BRICK

   Parallel to the first recording sessions for "The Wall" at 
Britannia Row Studios in October 1978 were the first stages in 
the development of the live show concept.  On December 8 1978, 
Mark Fisher sent to Britannia Row's Graeme Fleming a dozen 
"genuine Britro brand kiddie bricks", along with a covering 
note which explained that "although a bit of care may be 
necessary to assemble them, they do form an elegant executive 
paperweight... when completed and interlocked."  The letter 
was signed "M. Fisher, president, Britro Brickworks".

PREMIERE SOUND

   A full Britannia Row concert sysem accompanied the first 
public preview of "The Wall" movie at the Cannes Film Festival 
in April 1982.  Understandably, Pink Floyd were anxious that 
the sound quality for the world premiere at the Leicester Square
Empire on July 14 should mirror the efforts which went into 
producing the music.  It was discovered that the cinema's own 
loudspeakers would not cope with the demand for low frequency 
fidelity, and a joint decision was made by James Guthrie and 
Nigel Taylor to hire a more suitable bottom-ended system, namely 
a Court "Black Box" rig.

   Stephen Court says: "It was a bit of a panic, because the 
Empire thought their system was more than adequate, and it was 
probably the best in Europe at the time.  But when we turned up 
for a private screening, it was embarrassing, especially when 
the wall came down, because the sound just completely broke up.  
So we very hastily threw up some Court bass bins in the theatre, 
and the end result was a real first for cinema."

MISSING BRICKS: THE LOST DOCUMENTARY & LIVE ALBUM

   Pink Floyd performed live for the last time with Roger Waters 
when they staged a final run of "Wall" shows on June 13-17 1981 
at Earls Court.  One of the purposes of these shows was for the 
filming of live footage originally intended for use in the Alan 
Parker-directed film of the album, which starred Bob Geldof.  
This live footage, however, has never been seen.  Neither has a 
"behind the scenes" documentary on the production, filmed during 
the 1981 performances by lighting designer Marc Brickman, which 
included interviews with the band and all the key crew members.

   James Guthrie recalls: "Floyd's manager Steve O'Rourke was the 
executive producer, and it was all put together for television, 
but although fascinating to watch [Guthrie owns a rare edited 
copy], it never saw the light of day.  In the archives, there are 
multitracks and video footage of the whole show, none of which 
have ever been released.

   "'The Wall'" shows at Earls Court were recorded at 15 ips 
on 48 tracks, using two-inch analogue tape and Dolby A, and we 
had four 24-track Studer [two A800s and two A80s] machines 
overlapping to ensure the whole show was recorded without a gap.  
Our mobile studio didn't have nearly enough channels so we 
supplemented them by installing another Trident console, making 
room for it by removing the tape machines and putting them in 
an adjacent Portacabin.  Unfortunately, the live recording of 
"The Wall" wasn't even mixed.  There are numerous boxes of tapes 
for the original studio album, what with the sound effects and 
different versions of songs, and I believe Roger has possession 
of them all in a vault somewhere."

Sound On Stage number 8, June 1997 
 "Welcome to the Machine - the story of Pink Floyd's live sound: part 4" 
  
      MARK CUNNINGHAM concludes his unique 4-part documentary 
      with a look at Pink Floyd's live achievements following 
      the departure of Roger Waters, including the record- 
      breaking Division Bell tour of 1994. 
  
    As the dust settled after the multi-faceted "Wall" project, it 
 became clear that Pink Floyd would not be able to withstand the 
 internal problems which had been growing since the making of 
 "Animals" in 1976.  Whilst it had not been announced officially, 
 Rick Wright had left the band, and with Roger Waters establishing 
 a virtual autocracy, little room remained for the input of other 
 members.  Not surprisingly, the band's next album, "The Final Cut 
 (A Requiem For The Post War Dream)", released in March 1983, was 
 little more than a Waters solo venture, even though he valued 
 (and continues to value) the guitar work of David Gilmour. 
  
    Nevertheless, so distanced was Gilmour from the bass player, 
 both creatively and personally, that he withdrew his own name from 
 the production credits of "The Final Cut" and, immediately following 
 the last session began work on his second solo album, "About Face". 
 Waters, meanwhile, returned to a song cycle he had demoed in 1978 
 as a possible Floyd album, and in 1984, he issued his "Pros and Cons 
 Of Hitchhiking".  Both musicians embarked on solo tours in Europe 
 and America that year.  Waters hired Eric Clapton as his lead 
 guitarist and staged a live production that won the approval of many 
 a discerning Floyd fan, while Gilmour favoured a lower key approach. 
 It soon became obvious that the Pink Floyd name was always going to 
 attract a far greater audience than any of the individual members, 
 even though Waters might not have found it comfortable to agree with 
 such sentiment. 
  
    To those close to Pink Floyd, it came as no shock when the 
 tension within the band resulted in Waters quitting in December 
 1985.  "It took a lot of strength to walk away," he said later. 
 A well-publicized feud followed over the next two years, with a 
 legal battle which saw Gilmour eventually winning the rights to the 
 Floyd monicker.  By the summer of 1986, he was back in the studio 
 with Mason and the newly re-elected Wright (and a host of session 
 musicians) to work with "The Wall"'s co-producer Bob Ezrin on the 
 first album from this new regime, "A Momentary Lapse Of Reason", 
 and rehearse for the first Pink Floyd live dates since 1981. 
  
    The new Floyd was fleshed out by, among others, Gilmour's friend 
 from Cambridge and erstwhile Mike & The Mechanics guitarist Tim 
 Renwick, ex-Icehouse bassist Guy Pratt, percussionist Gary Wallis, 
 and keyboard player Jon Carin, who helped Wright renew his skills 
 as a musician after succumbing to Waters's autocratic behavior 
 during the "Wall" project.  Talking about the acrimonious split with 
 his former bass playing partner during an interview to publicize the 
 tour, Gilmour said: "There are many things that Roger contributed to 
 Pink Floyd that are missed, such as his positive drive, his concepts, 
 and especially his skill as a lyricist.  But I think the awful ex- 
 perience of living with Roger's megalomania burned Nick and Rick out 
 to a certain degree, and it affected their confidence as musicians." 
  
    On their "Momentary Lapse" tour of 1987-89, the Floyd performed 
 199 shows to a total worldwide audience of 5.5 million, despite 
 their initial plan to simply promote the album with an 11 week trek. 
 Typically for Floyd, it was the largest production ever taken on the 
 road at the time and featured the world's biggest outdoor stage, 
 custom-built by Paul Staples.  The proscenium alone was 85 foot high 
 by 98 foot wide.  Transportation required four steel systems on the 
 road at any one time, and 45 trucks were used to move the steelwork 
 and equipment. 
  
    In 1984, during the band's inactive period, Britannia Row 
 Productions became an independent company, purchased from Pink 
 Floyd by Robbie Williams and Bryan Grant.  For this tour, Brit Row 
 merged their own facilities with those of their close associates, 
 American-based Maryland Sound Inc. (MSI) whose proprietory PA stock 
 formed the core of the touring system.  This featured quantities of 
 4 x 15-inch low packs, 4 x 12-inch high packs and a TAD 2001 high 
 end driver, all powered by P500 amplification. 
  
    The tour began in Ottawa on September 9 1987, with MSI also 
 fulfilling the band's quad requirements.  However, by the time 
 the shows hit Europe, Brit Row exercised its wishes to introduce 
 Turbosound TMS-3s as the quad replacements.  Grant says: "The point 
 at which Brit Row began to seriously consider Turbosound as its main 
 source of arena and stadium systems came in September 1988, when 
 Samuelsons was being radically restructured and we saw an opportunity 
 to purchase its entire TFA Turbosound stock, while also employing most 
 of the accompanying crew." 
  
                         SOUTHERN FRIED SOUND 
  
    A new face among the Pink Floyd crew in 1987 was American 
 front-of-house engineer Buford Jones whose experience in the sound 
 reinforcement business began in 1971 as part of Showco's team in 
 Dallas, Texas before he turned freelance in 1980.  By the time of 
 his introduction to the Floyd, his live mixing credits had included 
 ZZ Top, Lynyrd Skynyrd, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, 
 and David Bowie.  Quality references indeed, but 10 years on, Jones 
 is still not clear as to why his name was suggested for the Floyd 
 tour. 
  
    He says: "The phone rang one day and Robbie Williams asked if I 
 was interested, so an appointment was set up for me to see David 
 Gilmour in LA, and the next day I was officially on board.  Unlike 
 James Guthrie, I had not worked with them in the studio so it was 
 new ground for both parties.  Maybe they were looking for someone 
 who was used to working for live bands all year round, in which 
 case I was a perfect candidate.  I treated the gig with the same 
 degree of musical sensitivity that I have always relied upon.  My 
 objective is always to learn the music and reproduce it as closely 
 as possible for an audience." 
  
    Jones may have worked with some of the biggest names in the 
 world, but even he was not accustomed to working with a quad sound 
 system in a stadium production.  During rehearsals in Toronto, it 
 became clear to Gilmour that even though he had broad shoulders, 
 the responsibilities he had set himself in pulling the show together 
 were just too much to bear on his own.  Inevitably, he called upon 
 James Guthrie and Bob Ezrin to help smooth the way and offer their 
 informed opinions.  It was Guthrie who coached Jones as a newcomer 
 to 'the Floyd way', taking him through the vital cues, fader rises, 
 and dynamics of the mix. 
  
    Says Jones: "The Floyd project made for an incredibly interesting 
 challenge, and to do that quad mix and analyse it was a hell of an 
 education, because it was not something that came from the book. 
 It was something quite unique to Floyd.  What you could achieve by 
 panning an instrument around the room was amazing.  You could 
 actually shift the reverb of something into the centre of the room 
 or to the back.  Those sorts of things were judgment calls that I 
 would use to determine what I thought was exciting.  You wouldn't 
 have those opportunities with other artists." 
  
    In easing Jones into the situation, David Gilmour made himself 
 available to answer important technical queries and give his views 
 on the engineer's suggestions.  "He always gave me a straight answer," 
 says Jones. "But I found that the person who was best at explaining 
 exactly what was needed was Jon Carin.  Whenever I am working on a 
 tour, I always focus on one individual from a band, and Jon was my 
 music source.  Night after night, we would religiously listen to the 
 show tapes and analyse them so that we could improve on the mix with 
 each performance." 
  
    At the start of rehearsals, Jones was using a Midas Pro 4C 
 console, which had become a little tour-weary by 1987 and was 
 in need of replacement.  For the meantime, it would still cope 
 admirably with Mason's and Wallis's drums and percussion (with 
 the aid of a 16-channel stretch board), but it was also decided 
 to take on two Yamaha PM3000 consoles.  Added to this equipment 
 was a new quad console designed and built expressly for the tour 
 by Britannia Row.  This configuration stayed in place until a 
 third PM3000 finally replaced the Midas setup for the 1989 legs, 
 for which the crew personnel remained virtually identical. 
  
    Jones comments: "I thing the complexity of MSI's wiring, to 
 get those three consoles working together, was astounding, and 
 those desks were really working for me.  I felt the partnership 
 between MSI and Brit Row was very smooth, mainly because of Robbie 
 Williams, for whom I have tremendous respect.  The cooperation 
 with regards to what I needed was always there, 100%, and Robbie 
 was always around to back me up. 
  
    "We had 136 input channels over three consoles, so that was 
 a lot different to what I'd been used to.  In addition to the 
 personnel from MSI and Brit Row, Pink Floyd let me choose two 
 people to help me with the engineering so that I could concentrate 
 more on the musical elements of the mix and ensure a consistency 
 from gig to gig.  I had worked on several tours with assistents 
 to whom I would delegate certain responsibilities.  When we started 
 out, I had James Geddes, a studio engineer for Jackson Browne, and 
 Bob Hickey, who had mixed James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt.  I hired 
 Bobby to handle the drum mix for me, while James took control of the 
 effects returns and quad tape returns.  Their consoles dumped into 
 mine and I would blend their levels into the rest of the mix." 
  
    Once the crew's initial excitement from the early tour dates 
 began to dissipate, Jones started to relax and enjoy working on 
 what he describes as a major highlight of his engineering career. 
 He then watched with amusement as, later in the tour, his assistent 
 engineers were replaced with some new blood, namely Larry Wallace 
 and Dave Lohr.  "There were lots of mistakes on the first two shows 
 when the change took place.  When the new guys came on, it was quite 
 funny to see them struggle through their initial freak out stage 
 with the sophisticated demands of the show.  We'd already been 
 through that and it made us realise the extent of what we were 
 doing.  A little bit of every emotion is going to flow as you get 
 to grips with it." 
  
    Seth Goldman began mixing the Floyd's monitors in America with 
 a Midas Pro 40 console, but a lack of channels forced him to switch 
 to a Ramsa 840 and a Yamaha PM3000 for mixdown to sub-groups when 
 the tour reached Europe on June 10 1988.  Buford Jones comments: 
 "Very seldom did I have any problem with the feedback that you can 
 sometimes get with loud monitoring.  Although much of that was down 
 to Seth's sensitive skills, the stage design was also responsible 
 in the way that the wedges were pointing upwards from underneath 
 the stage grating, so there was very little interaction between the 
 monitors and the front-of-house mix.  Certainly, the signals that 
 were coming off stage did not require me to do much in the way of 
 extensive EQing." 
  
                             KNEBWORTH '90 
  
    Having already played at Wembley Stadium and Manchester City FC's 
 Maine Road ground in the August of the previous year, Pink Floyd 
 returned to the UK and performed at London Arena on July 4-9 1989, 
 two weeks before completing the last leg of their long-running 
 "Momentary Lapse" tour in Marseilles. 
  
    Following a year which saw the Floyd members individually 
 guesting at friends' gigs and appearing on studio sessions, 
 the band reassembled for a memorable one-off performance in 
 front of 125,000 people at Knebworth on June 30, 1990, where 
 they "headlined" above Paul McCartney, Phil Collins, Genesis, 
 Dire Straits, Eric Clapton, Tears For Fears, Status Quo, Cliff 
 Richard & The Shadows, and Robert Plant & Jimmy Page -- easily 
 the greatest gathering of British stars since Live Aid.  The 
 concert was in aid of Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy and the 
 BPI's BRIT School for Performing Arts, and 60,000 UKP of Pink 
 Floyd's own money was spent on an outstanding firework display 
 as the finale. 
  
    The Brit Row PA for the occasion consisted of Turbosound TMS-3 
 cabinets, stacked eighty per side, ten wide and eight deep, and 
 MSI high and low packs on three delays.  "The prevailing wind shot 
 right down the site and we had more sound out backstage than out 
 front!" recalls Bryan Grant.  Although on tour in Canada that June 
 with David Bowie, Buford Jones was allowed to skip two dates to work 
 with Pink Floyd at Knebworth, and was supported by Andy Jackson who, 
 four years later, would slide into Jones's front-of-house shoes 
 with consummate professionalism. 
  
    At this show, his last with the Floyd, Jones was only able to 
 arrive in time for the soundcheck on the previous evening, and 
 in hindsight, he feels that his task was hampered by his lack of 
 pre-rehearsal.  He says: "Knebworth was a wonderful opportunity 
 to reunite with the band and crew, and be able to look back on 
 the previous tour with great fondness.  I gave it my best shot 
 at Knebworth, but I did suffer from the disadvantage of a tight 
 schedule which didn't allow for any preparation.  Nonetheless, 
 Andy was a big help by doing what the other two guys had done for 
 me on the last tour; I think we maybe had two different approaches. 
 And the only thing I regret was not having enough time together to 
 map the show out in detail beforehand." Despite such problems and 
 even in the face of a rain storm, Pink Floyd's set completed a 
 fabulous day, but the band's most outstanding tour was still yet 
 to come. 
  
                         THE TOLL OF THE BELL 
  
    Recorded aboard The Astoria, David Gilmour's houseboat studio 
 on the River Thames, "The Division Bell" signified the true 
 renaissance of Pink Floyd.  For the first time in many years, 
 Mason and Wright were playing with passion and confidence, while 
 Gilmour felt he was in a real band once more, instead of "shaping" 
 music with a bunch of associates as had largely been the case 
 with "A Momentary Lapse Of Reason".  With the album in the can, 
 Pink Floyd flew to America in February 1994 to begin production 
 rehearsals for their forthcoming tour in the world's largest 
 aircraft hangar at Norton Air Base in San Bernardino, California, 
 under the jurisdiction of the appointed rehearsals project manager, 
 Richard Hartman and production director Robbie Williams. 
  
    These days, it is hard to think of the name Britannia Row 
 without thinking of stadium shows and blue boxes.  But Floyd's 
 "Division Bell" tour was one of the first occasions where the 
 Turbosound Flashlight system was used on a full-scale stadium 
 production, on this occasion delivering no less than 232,000 
 Watts of unbridled music power.  Rarely does a rock'n'roll show 
 garner praise for its sonic fidelity in the general press, but 
 throughout the tour, newspapers the world over raved about the 
 "perfect quadraphonic sound system".  One reporter, Michael Norman 
 of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, was moved to write: "No rock band 
 can match Pink Floyd when it comes to making a stadium show come 
 off sounding as if it's being held in your living room." 
  
    Although the touring system went through several changes 
 following the opening dates in America, the PA itself normally 
 consisted of 200 cabinets with 112 of these forming the front-of- 
 house system across two steel towers.  The main PA consisted of 
 32 Flashlight mid/high cabinets per side, eight wide by four deep, 
 with a further 32 sub-boxes at stage level in the wings.  Wide 
 dispersion Floodlights were positioned at the front of the stage 
 as fill-in cabinets, and both Floodlight and Flashlight enclosures 
 were used for the three quadraphonic stacks.  Each of the delay 
 towers, meanwhile, carried six focused mid/high and six bass 
 cabinets.  The configuration of the PA provided maximum horizontal 
 and front-to-rear coverage, with dispersion spread out to the 
 extremes of the audience.  This coverage was further enhanced by 
 having flown mid/high boxes and tall, narrow bass stacks. 
  
    This system was amplified by BSS EPC-760s and -780s, and the 
 control racks dedicated to the PA were also full to the brim with 
 BSS wares.  These included FDS-360 crossovers, TCS-804 digital 
 delays, MSR-604 and -602 mic splitters, DPR-502 dual graphics, 
 and a bank of Varicurve for accurate remote equalisation of the 
 house and delay rigs. 
  
    Set designer Mark Fisher and construction companies Brilliant 
 Stages and StageCo designed and built three enormous stage sets 
 (the largest ever) measuring 60 metres wide by 22 deep by 23.5 
 high, incorporating 700 tons of steel.  Each stage (based on the 
 famous domed Hollywood Bowl) took three days to build, eighteen 
 hours to set up, seven hours to break down, and two days to fully 
 dismantle for load-out.  Hence, a strict "leapfrogging" regime 
 was put into action on each leg of the tour, with 33 trucks 
 delivering the staging to venues well in advance of each show. 
  
    By contrast, the complete PA system, including delays and quad 
 towers, fitted into a paltry two trucks.  Years before, a system 
 of similar power would have required more than double the trucking, 
 but the deceptive size-to-performance ratio of the compact, new 
 generation Turbosound system contributed to a healthy cost saving. 
 And yet more staggering statistics: the tour also employed eight 
 tour buses, another eighteen trucks for production, catering and 
 power, and a 161-strong crew.  All in all, this required $4 million 
 to finance prior to the first performance, and a further $25 million 
 in running costs.  The 100,000 UKP loss suffered by the Floyd on 
 their 1974 UK tour now paled into petty cash-sized insignificance. 
  
    Making his first appearance with the band since they played at 
 The Roundhouse in 1968 was lighting designer Peter Wynne Wilson 
 who brought a psychedelic flavour to the set with the live liquid 
 light show he previously projected onto the Floyd, back in the Syd 
 Barrett era.  Fittingly, and much to the amazement of fans, the 
 band included a faithful interpretation of "Astronomy Domine" 
 (from their 1967 debut album) in their set.  The inclusion of the 
 track on the live album "Pulse" would earn Barrett substantial 
 royalties.  In an equally nostalgic gesture, Pink Floyd dusted 
 down and performed "The Dark Side Of The Moon" in its entirety 
 in Detroit on July 15, the first time the band had done so since 
 Knebworth in 1975.  This, along with other classics, new and old, 
 from the Floyd catalogue, benefited from the latest in film 
 projection tecnology, namely four Cameleon Teleprojectors and a 
 Bran Ferren-designed 70mm, 10kW Xenon, SMPTE timecode-controlled 
 projector with the capacity for a 6,000 foot reel.  Such expensive 
 hardware was used to display special footage conceived for the 
 tour by long-term Floyd associate Storm Thorgerson, formerly of 
 design gurus Hipgnosis. 

THREE-WAY MIXING 
  
    At front-of-house, 136 channels were controlled by two Yamaha 
 PM4000 consoles and a PM3000, whose sole purpose was to handle 
 the effects returns.  Added to the desk inventory was a custom- 
 designed Midas XL3 quad board with a central VCA section and dual 
 joysticks for panning.  As part of Brit Row's equipment stock, 
 this desk would later be used on a variety of tours, including 
 Oasis's 1996 summer festivals. 
  
    Mark Fisher styled the mixing tower in such a way that it 
 would appeal to the band while they performed for two hours! 
 Within this structure were front-of-house engineer Andy Jackson 
 and his assistants Colin Norfield and Dave Lohr.  Jackson, who 
 had engineered the new album, the "Wall" movie soundtrack, and 
 "The Final Cut", as well as a number of Floyd solo projects, 
 concentrated on mixing the bulk of the band, while Norfield 
 handled bass, drums, and PA management duties, and Lohr 
 controlled the quad system and tape effects. 
  
    This was not the first time that Norfield and Jackson had 
 worked together.  Six months before the tour, during a break from 
 the "Division Bell" sessions, Pink Floyd performed a short set of 
 classics at an all-star charity show organised by Mike Rutherford 
 of Genesis in Cowdray Park, Sussex on September 18 1993.  Whilst 
 Jackson mixed the Floyd (with Rutherford on bass), he was all too 
 aware of the simplicity of Norfield's front-of-house organisation 
 of the consoles for the sets by Eric Clapton, Genesis, and the 
 remaining three members of Queen.  Norfield recalls: "I had three 
 drum kits subbed on a Yamaha PM3000 into three pairs of groups 
 on the PM4000.  Andy came up to me and said that he thought what 
 I'd done was great and that it made his life a lot easier when it 
 was his turn to mix.  So when the Floyd tour came around, he was 
 quite happy to have me on the tour with him.  Likewise, it was a 
 big thrill for me." 
  
    Jackson's transition from the studio work on the album to 
 arriving in the States for the tour appeared to be seamless. 
 Ahead of him, Norfield and Seth Goldman busied themselves with 
 preparations for the forthcoming American trip.  "Andy was doing 
 things on the album right up to the last minute," says Norfield. 
 "We were down at rehearsals in San Bernardino, and it all came 
 together brilliantly from the start." 
  
    The responsibility for the overall management of the PA system 
 was assigned to Norfield.  He says: "The buck stopped with me, 
 so to speak.  Dave Lohr would go in before me to EQ the quads, 
 then Paddi Addison and I would follow him to run up the PA with 
 pink noise and unit checking, so it was all ready to go.  I then 
 put some music through the system that I was very familiar with 
 and EQ'd it to my taste.  After a thorough line check, Andy would 
 come in, and the countdown to the show began." 
  
  
    Says Jackson: "In theory, I retained overall control of the 
 mix, because Colin's desk was sub-grouped through mine, and I had 
 a couple of master faders for the two drum kits.  Originally, I 
 also controlled the bass, but I gave it over to Colin, because it 
 seemed to make more sense.  Fortunately, we worked pretty well 
 together and saw eye to eye about most things, so in practice I 
 didn't have to start pushing his masters around as might have 
 happened with other engineers I've worked with." 
  
    In spite of appearances, Jackson insists that the job of mixing 
 the Floyd was not as complex ast it initially seemed, especially 
 with his partner Norfield around.  "In some ways, because of the 
 amount of control we had, it was easier than mixing a gig in a small 
 club.  Colin and I had many discussions on how we were going to 
 approach the show, and we both agreed that we would get the best 
 results if we kept it as simple as possible.  This, we felt, would 
 leave us free to do the more important things better, namely organise 
 sounds and balances.  We weren't making technical changes for the 
 sake of it, we were literally trying to improve the sound quality 
 of the shows as they progressed." 
  
    Amongst the 11-piece band (which also featured "Dark Side"/ 
 "Wish You Were Here" saxophonist Dick Parry and backing singer 
 Sam Brown) was Jon Carin whose large synthesizer rig was pre-mixed 
 on stage for a direct stereo feed to Jackson at front of house. 
 "The levels were actually changed on the synths themselves," 
 comments Jackson.  "I might say, 'Can you make that piano sample 
 a touch louder?' and Jon would take it up a notch, so that when he 
 called up that patch, for whichever song, it was just that bit 
 louder.  We would refine that mix between us in soundchecks before 
 gigs, and once it was sorted, it was the same every night.  It was 
 so much easier than having half a desk full of keyboard channels." 
 In a similar vein, Colin Norfield received a stereo feed from Gary 
 Wallis's electronic percussion. 
  
    As the tour continued, from America to Europe, Jackson and 
 company set about gradually decreasing the number of channels they 
 were using in an attempt to further simplify their engineering tasks 
 and establish a more foolproof setup.  Jackson says: "David Gilmour 
 had four guitar cabinets in stereo, with two different types of 
 cabinet (WEM and Marshall) each side.  Intitially I had four mics up, 
 one on each cabinet, but I ended up trimming it down to two because 
 they did the job just as well and there was less to go wrong.  The 
 same thing would happen on drums where Colin started the tour with 
 a top and a bottom snare mic, but we dumped the bottom mic because 
 it just wasn't necessary.  We also lost the mic on Guy Pratt's bass 
 amp and resigned ourselves purely to the DI signal.  Within a short 
 time, we had got things down pretty much to a good workable minimum. 
 I would much rather spend my time riding Dave's lead vocal fader 
 because it is more important. 
  
    "Dave's guitar sound continued to be processed from his own rack, 
 and we didn't really have to do anything to it at front of house. 
 We didn't use too much outboard really.  We used some things to 
 brighten, fatten, and lend ambience to vocals, such as harmonisers. 
 There were, of course, the normal gates and compressors, and some 
 specific long delays on vocals, but in terms of reverbs, we didn't 
 go very far because there's not much need for reverb when you're 
 playing in stadiums!" 
  
    Gilmour used a regular Shure SM58 for vocals, while the other 
 singers were on SM51 condensers.  The guitar cabinets were miked 
 with updated versions of the small, square Sennheisers, which were 
 favoured Floyd microphones 20 years earlier.  "They sounded OK when 
 I pushed the faders up!" laughs Jackson.  "We had some other Shure 
 mics on the blankets inside the kick drums," he adds.  "They looked 
 like PZMs but were actually dynamic mics.  [Shure] SM57s were placed 
 on Nick and Gary's snares, and on toms, we had little Ramsa tie-clip 
 mics that clung to the tom shells."  Also for drums were AKG 414s 
 on overheads and SM57s and 414s on Wallis's percussion. 
  
    For the first time, Pink Floyd's monitoring comprised of 23 
 Turbosound floor wedges and three Garwood Radio Station in-ear 
 monitoring systems: Nick Mason exclusively used ear moulds, Gary 
 Wallis had moulds, headphones, and a regular three-way sidefill, 
 and Dick Parry used moulds plus one wedge.  Normal wedges were 
 used by every other band member.  "I tried the ear moulds out with 
 Rick Wright, but he didn't get on with them," says Seth Goldman 
 who was assisted on monitors by Alan Bradshaw.  Between them, 
 they controlled the stage mix with two VCA-linked Midas XL3s -- 
 one carrying the vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards, and effects 
 returns, the other taking care of the two drum kits and percussion. 
 One interesting invention to aid contact between the band and 
 Goldman was a footswitch device by each vocal microphone, which 
 removed the mic from the house PA and routed the voice to a speaker 
 above Goldman's desks.  This enabled any one of the band members 
 to calmly request any adjustment to monitoring levels without 
 resorting to the traditional screaming of abuse endured by other 
 monitor engineers! 
  
    Working closely with Jackson and Norfield, Dave Lohr operated 
 two eight-track tape machines for effects playbacks, with the 
 first four tracks sent to each of the four quad points, and the 
 others used for timecode, clicks, and feeds to the stage.  Rather 
 than re-invent the wheel, Pink Floyd unearthed the master show 
 tapes from previous tours and compiled new eight-track reels to 
 replace their worn-out predecessors. 
  
    Jackson: "For the '94 tour, it was done using Dolby SR, 
 because it  was the new system whereas it had previously been 
 dbx noise reduction.  It is surprising that the Floyd have been 
 happy to adopt low tech solutions when they are known for being 
 high tech, and again a fairly low tech approach was made.  The 
 actual effects were mainly recorded at the time of the albums, 
 and there were quite a few that I was involved in, such as people 
 running down corridors, Roger driving his car around the car park 
 at the back of the studio, and rowing down a river.  A few effects 
 were timecode synched to film, but a lot of them were flown in 
 manually.  It was a case of Dave Lohr cueing up a section of the 
 tape and pressing the button at the right time.  It was always 
 close enough, because the effects were not so musically critical 
 that they had to be bang on time. 
  
    "Inevitably, at the end of every show, we'd have a talk about 
 what we did and try to tighten things up on the next one, having 
 listened to the DATs I recorded each night.  But it didn't take 
 long to get the show well routined.  At the end of the tour, all 
 the DATs were locked in a cupboard somewhere, probably in the Floyd 
 warehouse.  They were all collected up and a list had to be made 
 of where each one was and who I'd given one to.  A few of them 
 went missing... I'm sure you could find the bootleg somewhere!" 
  
    Much shorter than the previous Pink Floyd outing in 1987-1989, 
 "The Division Bell" tour ended in late 1994 and immediately went 
 into the history books as a classic Floyd period, one which was a 
 veritable showcase for the art of concert production in the '90s. 
 As David Gilmour commented: "The response to 'The Division Bell' 
 and the tour was beyond our wildest dreams.  To still be pulling 
 in crowds of this magnitude [an average of 45,000 per night in 
 America] is pretty mind-blowing." 
  
    Colin Norfield almost certainly speaks for the whole crew when 
 he says: "Andy, Dave, myself, and all the guys had enormous fun 
 on the road with the Floyd, and it probably rates as the most 
 enjoyable tour I've been on in my 28 years as an engineer." 
  
                         COMING BACK TO LIFE? 
  
    If there is a common thread which links those who have been 
 fortunate to work on the road with Pink Floyd, it is one of 
 immense pride and satisfaction at being part of what critics have 
 dubbed "the greatest show on Earth".  Britannia Row's Bryan Grant 
 says: "I've always felt that part of Pink Floyd's success has been 
 because they always wanted to push boundaries and give an immense 
 production value to what they do.  Their concerts are multimedia 
 events and that tradition stretches way back to their psychedelic 
 period with the oil slides.  They are certainly hugely responsible 
 for the way concert productions have grown more sophisticated over 
 the years."  Long-standing lighting designer Marc Brickman agrees: 
 "The thing about the Floyd is that they're always prepared to take 
 chances, and new things evolve because of that.  They're still 
 right on the cutting edge." 
  
    With thirty years of madness, pigs, walls, musical innovation, 
 and human conflict behind them, one might say that little remains 
 for Pink Floyd to conquer.  Critics assumed they were washed up when 
 Syd Barrett left in 1968.  They were wrong.  Immense skepticism 
 crept in when Floyd continued without Roger Waters.  "The Division 
 Bell" kicked the narrow-minded firmly into touch.  Despite seeming 
 impossibilities, with every tour they have always managed to exceed 
 even their own monumental standards of presentation.  This obviously 
 begs the question, what next? 
  
    With David Gilmour mostly concentrated on family life in the 
 Sussex countryside at present, it would seem that if there are plans 
 for the Floyd machine to spring back to life, it will not occur in 
 the near future.  But perhaps we could expect a multimedia Millenium 
 spectacular to end all spectaculars.  It would certainly be a fitting 
 end to the 20th century -- the century which gave birth to rock'n'roll 
 and witnessed amazing leaps in concert technology. 
  
    Perhaps the next Pink Floyd shows will take place somewhere 
 in the outer reaches of the universe, beamed into stadiums around 
 Earth as three-dimensional, holographic, "virtual" performances. 
 Now, this may all seem just too bizarre to imagine, but no more 
 than the idea of Gilmour, Mason, and Wright going back to their 
 roots and playing a club tour of the Home Counties... with Syd 
 and Roger.  There's more chance of seeing pigs fly. 



Sidebars: 
  
  
 A MOMENTARY LAPSE OF CASH 
  
 Strange but true... When Pink Floyd played Moscow in June 1989, 
 they received no money for their troubles.  Instead, they were 
 rewarded with items such as a large consignment of timber... to 
 fuel a secret Floydian guitar factory perhaps?  Probably not. 
  
  
 GILMOUR'S KIT 
  
 Here in its breathtaking entirety is the list of contents of 
 David Gilmour's most recent touring rig: 
  
 * GUITARS 
 Fender Stratocaster, 1957 vintage re-issue. 
 Fender Telecaster 1952 vintage re-issue. 
 Gibson Chet Atkins electro-classical. 
 Gibson J-200 Celebrity acoustic. 
 Jedson lap steel. 
  
 * AMPLIFICATION 
 6 HiWatt Custom AP100 amps. 
 2 WEM 4 x 12-inch cabinets. 
 2 Marshall 4 x 12-inch cabinets. 
 2 Doppola rotary speakers (designed by Phil Taylor, built by 
    Paul Leader). 
 Samson Guitar Transmitter/Receiver system. 
  
 * EFFECTS/MISCELLANEOUS 
 2 Peterson strobe tuners. 
 Pete Cornish custom effects. 
 Routing system with Custom Audio footswitch board, triggering: 
 Boss CS-2. 
 compression/sustainer. 
 MXR Dynacomp Compressor. 
 Ibanez CP-9 Compressor. 
 Pete Cornish Soft Sustain. 
 Boss MZ-2 Digital Metalizer. 
 2 Chandler Tube Drivers. 
 Pete Cornish Big Muff. 
 Rat. 
 Sovtek Big Muff II. 
 Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress. 
 Univibe. 
 Tremulator. 
 MXR Digital Delay. 
 Lexicon PCM70 Delay. 
 Boss CE-2 Chorus. 
 5 Boss GE-7 Graphic EQs. 
 Digitech Whammy. 
 Ernie Ball Volume Pedal. 
 Dynacord CLS-222 Leslie Simulator. 
 Alembic F2B Preamp. 
 Jim Dunlop Heil Talk Box. 
  
  
  
 HITCHHIKER'S JAM AT EARLS COURT 
  
 The album title, "The Division Bell", was suggested by the author 
 of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and Floyd fan Douglas 
 Adams.  His birthday present from David Gilmour later that year 
 was an invitation to play guitar with the Floyd in October 1994. 
 Shockingly, the first night of the band's mini residency there 
 was cancelled only minutes before the start of the show when 
 seating collapsed, injuring several of the 1,200 fans sat within 
 the block (see letter from the Floyd members). 
  
 [On a letterhead from Pink Floyd with a centered image of the 
 stone heads (and a little boy in front of the left head) at 
 the top of the page, is this text and large signatures of the 
 band members:] "We are very pleased that you were able to get 
 here tonight after the terrible experience of last Wednesday. 
 We are assured that all safety checks have been made on the 
 rebuilt stand and feel confident that you can sit back and 
 enjoy the show.  Thanks for your support." 
  
  
 BRIT ROW AND TURBOSOUND 
  
 1991 was a landmark year for Britannia Row Productions, a year in 
 which Robbie Williams left the company and went on to form his own 
 successful independent production operation, RWP, and one which saw 
 Brit Row move from its original Islington base to a new site in Oslers 
 Road, Wandsworth.  Co-director Mike Lowe had joined the company in 
 1987, and along with Bryan Grant, he was taking an increased interest 
 in Turbosound's new generation of PA Equipment, namely Flashlight. 
  
 Lowe says: "We beta tested the prototype Flashlight system in 1989 
 and used it at Glastonbury and Roskilde, just as we began to get 
 production line equipment going.  Roger Waters's "The Wall" in Berlin 
 followed and artists such as the Pet Shop Boys and Cliff Richard went 
 out with it in 1991.  By the time Flashlight went on its first stadium 
 tour with Dire Straits, we had pretty much disposed of our stock of 
 TMS-3s in favour of this new Turbosound product, and it was inevitable 
 that it would be used for 'The Division Bell' tour." 
  
  
 [picture caption:] 
  
 Andy Jackson and Colin Norfield extend a warm apres-gig welcome 
 to you at The Donkey's Knob -- the 1994 Pink Floyd crew's official 
 travelling pub under the second tier of the front-of-house riser. 
 Impromptu jam sessions with various Floyds and roadies were a 
 nightly affair. 
  
  
 GILMOUR'S RIG IN THE '80s & '90s 
  
 When Pink Floyd were recording "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" 
 in Los Angeles, equipment design specialist Bob Bradshaw was 
 recommended to David Gilmour as an ideal source for a new guitar 
 processing rig for the band's forthcoming 1987 world tour.  Bradshaw 
 was duly commissioned for the job.  However, the end product was 
 not without its problems and one show ground to a halt when the 
 system broke down.  To solve the dilemma during a break in the tour 
 itinerary, Phil Taylor brought in Pete Cornish initially to rebuild 
 sections of the rig to ensure its roadworthiness.  Says Taylor: 
 "Pete stabilised and altered the power supply for the Bradshaw foot 
 controller board which, minus its audio side, was retained when the 
 system was completely rebuilt for the 'Division Bell' tour.  We 
 essentially married the board to a Pete Cornish audio routing system. 
  
    "Since the 1970s, David's systems have always given permutations 
 of clean, distorted, and delayed sounds.  But as time has progressed, 
 the rig has become larger, some of the components have changed, and 
 there are wider choices in each area of effects." 
  
    Seventeen years after Gilmour first used a Heil voice box for 
 the recording of the "Animals" track "Pigs (Three Different Ones)", 
 the voice box returned once again to flavour his guitar sound.  This 
 time it was a borrowed Electro-Harmonix model, employed for "Keep 
 Talking".  Then a new Heil unit was purchased and modified by Cornish 
 to be taken out on the road.  "The Heil has a tiny horn unit, and if 
 you power it with a 100 Watt amp, there is nowhere for the bottom end 
 signal to go and you quickly burn out the output transformers.  So 
 Pete introduced a crossover to remove those frequencies." 
  
    When it was mooted that "The Dark Side Of The Moon" might be 
 dusted off and reintroduced to the Floyd live set, Taylor brought 
 in a Dynacord CLS-222 Leslie Simulator, which Cornish modified in 
 order to set the bass and treble fast and slow speeds independently. 
 But to enforce the rotary sound, Taylor came up with an interesting 
 new product.  For the "Division Bell" album, Gilmour recorded with 
 a small Maestro Rover revolving speaker, which he had positioned 
 above his two 1959 Fender Bassman and two HiWatt SA 2 x 12-inch amps. 
 To reproduce the sound live, Phil Taylor used the basis of the 
 Maestro to design a larger, double speaker cabinet version named 
 the Doppola, which was built by Paul Leader.  "We powered the two 
 Doppolas with HiWatts and tried out a number of different drivers 
 to see what would handle the power and sounded the most like a guitar 
 speaker.  David had the Doppolas switched on throughout the whole show 
 and they were blended into his 4 x 12-inch mix at various points 
 during the set when some movement was required." 
  
    The rig is permanently set up in the Floyd warehouse and Taylor 
 occasionally plays through it to ensure that, just in case of 
 emergencies, it is all operating correctly.  Taylor comments: 
 "Since the last date of the '94 tour, David hasn't had the need to 
 go anywhere near it, even though he has been doing the odd guest 
 session spot with people like B. B. King." 
  
  
 "DIVISION BELL" TOUR BACKLINE 
  
 * Nick Mason 
 Drum Workshop drums, hardware & pedals, Paiste cymbals, Latin 
 percussion, Pro Mark sticks, Dauz pads, Yamaha DTS-70 trigger 
 interface, Remo drum heads 
  
 * Rick Wright 
 Kurzweil K2000 keyboard, K2000S rack modules & MIDI board, 
 Hammond B-3 organ, Leslie speaker system 
  
 * Jon Carin 
 Kurzweil K2000 sampler/mother keyboard & K2000S rack modules, 
 Syco Logic MIDI router, Roland MC-500II & MC-50 sequencers, 
 Roland SE-70 processor, Dynatech hard drive unit, Mackle mixers, 
 Leslie speaker system 
  
 * Guy Pratt 
 1951 Fender Precision Bass, 1963 Fender Jazz bass, Spector NS2, 
 Status five-string fretted and fretless basses, Trace Elliot MPII 
 computerised preamp, JBL UREI power amps, Hartke 4 x 10-inch cabinets, 
 Yamaha SPX-90 & SPX-990 multi-FX, Boss SCC-700 control unit 
  
 * Tim Renwick 
 Fender Custom Shop Stratocasters, Takamine 6- and 12-string acoustic 
 guitars, Ovaton Hi-String acoustic guitars, Ovation Hi-String acoustic 
 guitar, Gibson Chet Atkins classical guitar, Music Man 150 Watt amps, 
 Marshall 4 x 12-inch cabinets, Tube Works Stereo Reverb unit, Roland 
 SDE-3000A digital delay, Yamaha SPX-900 & SPX-990 multi-FX, Pete 
 Cornish Custom pedalboard with 10 available effects 
  
 * Gary Wallis 
 Drum Workshop drums, hardware & pedals, Zildjan cymbals, Latin 
 percussion, Vater sticks, Dauz pads, Yamaha DTS-70 trigger interface, 
 Remo drum heads, Kurzweil K2000R sampler, Yamaha DMP-7 mixer 
  
 * Dick Parry 
 1950 Selmer Super Action tenor saxophone with Otto Link mouthpiece, 
 1994 Selmer SA80-Series II baritone saxophone with Lawton mouthpiece 
  
  
 THE LIVE ALBUMS 
  
    "Delicate Sound Of Thunder" was recorded in August 1988 over the 
 course of Pink Floyd's five concerts at Nassau County Colisseum, 
 New York, and released in November 1988 as a live document of the 
 "Momentary Lapse of Reason" tour.  The album also earned the notoriety 
 of being the first rock music to be played outside of Planet Earth 
 when the cosmonauts of Soyuz 7 took a cassette with them aboard their 
 1988 space mission. 
  
    Front-of-house engineer Buford Jones was asked by David Gilmour 
 to mix the live tapes during a problematic six-week period at Abbey 
 Road Studio 3.  Jones says of the recordings: "Dave Hewitt [the 
 recording engineer from the Remote Recording Services mobile] put 
 the tracks down for me on a 32-track Mitsubishi digital machine for 
 all the instruments and vocals, and for drums we recorded with a 
 24-track Studer.  Unfortunately, the sessions coincided with some 
 changes at Abbey Road, and Studio 3 was still under reconstruction 
 with all new equipment, which had not been used nor tested, so we 
 had an enormous amount of downtime which affected creativity.  This 
 meant that the album was quite rushed towards the end." 
  
    In an interview around the time of its release, it was stated 
 that the album was purely mixed from the live multitracks with no 
 additional recording.  However, Jones is emphatic that an additional 
 32-track machine was wheeled into the studio for overdubs and sub- 
 mixes.  He comments: "We only did three overdubs, which I think 
 was a positive thing.  David did an acoustic guitar on 'Comfortably 
 Numb', Rick Wright re-recorded his vocal on 'Us And Them', and Sam 
 Brown replaced Rachel Fury's backing vocal on 'Comfortably Numb'. 
 Jones was assisted on the mixing of the album by Larry Wallace and 
 Abbey Road engineers Tristan "TAP" Powell and David Gleeson. 
  
    When "Pulse" was issued in [June] 1995 as a souvenir of the 
 "Division Bell" tour, many critics wondered whether yet another 
 Floyd live album was necessary so soon after its predecessor. 
 Even Gilmour had his doubts, although he felt that the presence 
 of both the Barrett-era "Astronomy Domine" and astoundingly 
 faithful live workout of the "Dark Side Of The Moon" suite more 
 than justified its existence.  That "Pulse" earned platinum status 
 on advance orders alone proves that his assumption was correct. 
 With a pulsing LED on its spine as a reference to the famous 
 "Dark Side" heartbeat, "Pulse"'s lavish packaging rates among the 
 most sophisticated to ever grace an album. 
  
    Co-producer and engineer James Guthrie, who mixed the album 
 in three-dimensional Q sound, says: "Despite the 13-year gap, 
 the recording methods for both "The Wall" shows and "Pulse" were 
 very similar.  With "Pulse", we booked a mobile from Paris called 
 Le Voyageur 11 and recorded in Europe and the UK yet again with 
 four 24-track analogue machines running at 15 ips, but this time 
 with Dolby SR.  I went back to David's studio, The Astoria, with 
 116 rolls of tape and waded through them for months before settling 
 on the best performances." 
  
    Both "Delicate Sound of Thunder" and "Pulse" were accompanied 
 by video releases. 


Main PF Page
Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!