Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd (56 page)

But Gilmour knew whom to call.

‘David rang me in August, and they were due to open in October,’ remembers Bob Ezrin. ‘He said, “Bob, in my usual inimitable style, I never fail to try and do these things on my own and, as always, I realise I need help. Can you come and help me?”’ he laughs. ‘I found the show to be in some disarray. The problem was there was no producer or director on stage, and David was busy working out which guitar to play. He couldn’t do all this other stuff. There was no sense of flow to the show, the setlist needed rearranging . . .’

Ezrin took charge, viewing proceedings from in front of the stage and communicating with the motley crew via a megaphone.

‘Bob really started knocking us into shape,’ says Renwick. ‘Jack-booting around this aircraft hangar, shouting orders, being very loud and demonstrative. One of the first things he did was make sure that if you weren’t playing, you couldn’t be seen loitering on stage; you were blacked out, or offstage.’ Ezrin would remain with the tour until ‘the baby was walking and I could go back to making some money in my own career’.

Aside from the issue of co-ordinating eleven people on stage, there was also the stage set itself to be considered. Gilmour and Mason first approached
The Wall
tour’s design team, Jonathan Park and Mark Fisher, but both had already allied themselves to the
Radio K.A.O.S.
tour. Instead, set designer Paul Staples was brought into the fold to work alongside Floyd mainstays, lighting designer Marc Brickman and production director Robbie Williams, veterans from, respectively,
The Wall
and
Dark Side of the Moon
campaigns. Their aim was simple. As Marc Brickman explained, ‘The idea is always to pull the last kid in the last seat of the stadium into the show.’

The Floyd’s stage set would be effectively housed inside a steel framework, around 80ft high and spanning the width of the stage, from which pods of light were then suspended. Additional lighting and dry ice machines also operated from tracks above the stage. Trapdoors in the stage itself also opened to reveal extra robotic-looking lighting pods (nicknamed ‘Floyd Droids’ and given individual names Manny, Moe, Jack and Cloyd) that elevated into view at key moments in the show. The back of the stage was filled, as usual, with the band’s familiar circular screen onto which new and old images were projected, including Storm Thorgerson’s specially commissioned films for ‘Learning to Fly’ and ‘On the Run’. The flying pig, aeroplane and a giant mirror ball completed the visual extravaganza. It would take a supporting team of some 160 technicians, riggers, electricians and more to keep the show on the road.

The tour opened on 9 September in Ottawa’s Lansdowne Park Stadium. The set’s greatest surprise came with its choice of opening number, ‘Echoes’ from
Meddle
, which was given its first airing in over a decade. A challenge for all concerned, the piece would be dropped before the end of the month, with Nick Mason later claiming that the band’s new young musicians were simply too good to replicate the shoddy, hippie-ish feel of the original recording.

‘There’s a bit in “Echoes” we call “the wind section” where it all falls apart, and then comes back in,’ explains Guy Pratt. ‘Some of the younger players, mentioning no names, couldn’t get their heads around it not being a set number of bars. It was like, “You have to feel it and know instinctively when to come back in.” David’s great line about that was, “The trouble with modern musicians is that they don’t know how to disintegrate.” ’

Including the whole of
A Momentary Lapse of Reason
made commercial sense, but meant that the first half of the show was unfamiliar to most, and overshadowed by the second half, which ran the gamut of ‘One of These Days’ to a final encore of ‘Run Like Hell’, stopping off at ‘Wish You Were Here’, ‘Another Brick in the Wall Part 2’ and ‘Comfortably Numb’ en route. ‘One of These Days’ would be the oldest song played (Mason later explaining that the sixties-era Floyd sounded ‘too early’).
The Final Cut
and
Animals
were also overlooked, although ‘Sheep’ came close to being included, until Gilmour decided that vocally it was too much Roger Waters’ song.

Aside from the dazzling special effects, the presence of younger and more flamboyant band members made a huge difference. The athletic leaps and bounds made by percussionist Gary Wallis to strike the highest cymbals in his drum cage diverted attention from the staid-looking, middle-aged gentleman playing the drum kit beside him. The elaborately coiffured saxophonist Scott Page was also given to strapping on a guitar and appearing on stage when he wasn’t actually needed. ‘Scott and Gary came with the territory,’ says Bob Ezrin. ‘This was meant to be a more visual show. There’s a lot of “Ooh-aah factor” to a Pink Floyd concert. People want to say, “Wow, look at that!” So they gave it to them.’

The age difference between the original Floyd and some of the hired hands was, initially, not a problem. ‘They treated us very well,’ recalls Guy Pratt. ‘Mind you, I was terrified of David. Nick was the easiest to get on with, as he was such a lovely, amusing man.’

By their own admission, Guy and Jon Carin were also committed Pink Floyd fans, eager to hear stories from past campaigns. ‘I was always plugging David for stories,’ admits Guy. ‘The problem was, he’d start telling a story and, because I was such a Pink Floyd anorak, I’d start correcting him on it. Rick is actually fantastic for reminiscences, whereas David sometimes pretends to have forgotten.’

However, being fifteen years younger than his bosses presented Guy with one immediate problem, when Richard Wright’s beautiful teenage daughter Gala turned up later during the Australian leg of the tour: ‘There’s a certain ethical code of the road. You don’t get involved with anyone that’s part of the management, you don’t get involved with anyone in catering, unless it’s an absolute last resort, and if you get involved with one of the backing singers it will always end in tears.
But
there’s no ruling about daughters of the band - and that was when the age difference did become apparent.

‘We weren’t officially an item on that tour, but it was obvious there was something going on, and it certainly didn’t make me popular, as
everyone
was in love with Gala.’ However, her father didn’t feel inclined to take Guy aside. ‘I was more worried about David and Nick. No one actually cautioned me, but there was a bit of eyebrow-raising.’

As the Floyd moved through North America, the gap closed between their shows and the
Radio K.A.O.S.
tour. ‘We were playing Toronto when Floyd were rehearsing just up the road,’ remembers Paul Carrack. ‘Having them nearby added a bit of spice. There
was
tension there, and we all knew Roger was under a lot of pressure, but I think he felt vindicated because he was doing something different. We did some Floyd tunes, but not many.’

Roger had expressly banned members of Pink Floyd from attending any of his gigs, so Floyd’s monitor technician was despatched undercover to one to report on how much pyrotechnics and special effects Waters was using. While rehearsing in Toronto, Scott Page, Jon Carin and Waters’ old solo bandmate Tim Renwick were among those who walked unrecognised into Waters’ gig. ‘We wanted to see the competition,’ says Renwick. ‘And, pardon the pun, but I thought it was a bit watery. It was more like a tribute band.’ During one part of the show, a spotlight scanned the audience landing on random members of the crowd. ‘And I remember praying,’ laughs Guy Pratt, ‘absolutely
praying
that it landed on Tim Renwick.’

Ticket sales for some of Waters’ shows were not all they could have been. Playing to an audience of 3,000 people in a 6,000-seater hall in Cincinnati was not good for his ego, but Waters remained upbeat, despite knowing that Pink Floyd were playing to 80,000 people the following night. ‘I felt like Henry the Fifth,’ he laughed. ‘ “We happy few, we band of brothers . . .” I felt a huge kinship with [the audience], because there was only a few of them.’

Nevertheless, there would still be dissenting voices in the Pink Floyd audience. ‘There would be people who would make their feelings known about Roger not being there, just by shouting very loudly during moments when the rest of the audience was being very quiet,’ Gilmour told
Q
magazine, while also revealing that on one occasion, he spotted a whole row of fans wearing ‘Fuck Roger’ T-shirts.

Unable to stop any of the Floyd shows going ahead, Waters was still hurling legal missiles from the sidelines, including a writ for over $35,000 in copyright fees for the Floyd’s use of his flying pig. Unknown to the band, Waters had also bought up the rights to animated films by Ian Eames and Gerald Scarfe, which he had then placed with a company he owned. However, as Gilmour pointed out, ‘We never agreed that he owned the rights. Pink Floyd, all of us, had commissioned those pieces of work and paid for them.’ To circumvent the problem with the pig, Floyd ensured that their new version included a pair of hefty testicles to distinguish it from Waters’ original female version. As Gilmour glumly explained: ‘A pig’s a pig, for Christ’s sake, but adding the testicles
was
amusing for us.’

However, as the year ground to an end, it seemed as if the legal battle between the two parties was finally coming to an end. Interviewed for
Rolling Stone
magazine in November, Waters was all but admitting defeat: ‘I’ve finally understood that no court in the land is interested in this airy-fairy nonsense of what is or isn’t Pink Floyd. All I could possibly get out of it is a slice.’

The size of the slice would be decided on 23 December 1987, when Gilmour, Waters and Gilmour’s accountant convened on the
Astoria
houseboat to end the matter once and for all. ‘We hammered it out over a few hours, printed it out, signed it and that’s the legal document we are bound by today,’ explained Gilmour. The terms of the agreement released Waters from any arrangements with Steve O’Rourke, and allowed Gilmour and Mason to use the Pink Floyd name in perpetuity. Waters would get his slice, maintaining his control over, as Gilmour explained, ‘various bits and pieces’, most notably
The Wall
.

Waters would no longer attend board meetings or attempt to veto Gilmour’s and Mason’s plans. Instead he retreated to plan his next move, while sniping at his former bandmates in the press. Gilmour, for his part, invariably took the bait.

Both warring factions would grace the pages of the music press. Waters would usually appear looking stick-thin and imposing in the black sunglasses and black-suit-white-T-shirt uniform of the older rock star. ‘With Carolyne, Roger got into a very American rock story,’ reflected his ex-manager Peter Jenner. ‘Helicopters, nannies and the south of France.’

‘I was still essentially the tall guy in black, standing in the corner scowling at everyone, saying, “Leave me alone,” ’ admitted Waters years later.

Gilmour and Mason would appear less intimidating: all billowy white shirts and pleated trousers. The guitarist especially looked a good deal heavier than the last time Pink Floyd had toured; Mason offered the knowing smile of a kindly, hip uncle, or a man who perhaps couldn’t quite believe his luck. As Waters would remark on the drummer’s reason for staying in Pink Floyd: ‘Nick likes the money and the attention.’

Veteran rock critic Timothy White’s damning article in the September 1988 edition of
Penthouse
found Waters blowing the whistle on what he had called ‘the fair forgery’ of
A Momentary Lapse of Reason
: reeling off the names of songwriters approached by Gilmour to help make a Pink Floyd album; outlining the precise date and location of the guitarist’s meeting with a concerned record company executive; and, best of all, revealing the juicy titbit that Richard Wright was being paid a weekly wage of $11,000. Fans, whose own weekly wages would have amounted to considerably less, wondered whether, in rock star terms, this was good, bad or just average.

Gilmour and Mason would gamely rise to the challenge. They would both make light of Waters’ claims that they had struggled to make a Pink Floyd album without him, basking instead in their new album’s impressive sales figures and the fact that the tour was still lapping the globe and selling out stadiums. As Mason explained, ‘Roger could have finished Pink Floyd off by never leaving. But by leaving it, the ashes suddenly picked up.’ Gilmour was harsher: ‘If Roger put half as much energy into his career as he has into fighting us, he’d be doing a whole lot better than he is now. I can’t understand how he can’t see the stupidity of it all.’

In 1988 the tour moved through New Zealand and Australia and an eight-night stand in Japan, where they were forced to ditch ‘On the Run’ from the set, as it exceeded permissible levels of electricity use. In Melbourne, Gilmour joined Tim Renwick and the newer band members for an after-hours jam at their hotel, playing to around two hundred people under the nom-de-plume The Fishermen’s (‘based on an old Peter Cook joke,’ explained bassist Guy Pratt, ‘where he invented a rhyming slang language’).

The Fishermen’s would make other impromptu appearances around the world. In contrast to previous Pink Floyd tours, the musicians did not split into different cliques. The three original members happily rubbed shoulders offstage with the newer band members, of which Guy Pratt was, according to Mason, ‘invariably the last one out of the bar at night - or first thing in the morning’.

‘My attitude was horrific,’ admits Pratt. ‘I got it all wrong. As a musician you’re hired as a professional to do your job to the best of your ability. I just thought I was one of the band and could go off and get twatted. I heard from someone five months in that David had really wanted to sack me, but he couldn’t as I was the most consistent musician in the band, even after staying up for two or three days at a time. It got to the point where I’d get nervous playing without a hangover.’

Offstage, promoters would routinely supply a couple of limousines only to find Gilmour, Mason and Wright piling into one of the vans with the rest of the band. ‘So you’d have this ridiculous situation where the promoter was in the first limo with a couple of birds he wanted to impress and flanked by a police outrider,’ says Guy, ‘an empty limo behind, and then behind
that
, the band in a van with all the booze for the dressing room.’