Pink Floyd live performances


Pink Floyd is an English progressive rock band, formed in the mid-1960s in London.

Performance history

Barrett era

Pink Floyd earliest shows were performed in 1965. They included Bob Klose as a member of the band, which at first played mainly R&B covers. Klose left the band after 1965. The remaining four members played small, mostly unadvertised shows at the Marquee Club in London through June 1966. The set list continued to include R&B and psychedelia began to appear.
On 30 September 1966, Pink Floyd were invited to play All Saint's Church Hall to raise money for the nascent International Times newspaper and became the "house band". They began to use visual effects at these shows, and gradually stopped covering R&B. Word of these shows spread in the London underground culture and the band developed a following. On 23 December 1966, the first of the "International Times" associated gigs was played at the UFO Club in London. Mainstream interest about the counterculture was increasing, and part of the band's 20 January 1967 show at the UFO Club was broadcast in Granada TV's documentary entitled It's So Far Out, It's Straight Down. This was the first recording of the band playing live.
In April 1967, Pink Floyd were among 30 bands that played The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream benefit gig, which was organized for the "International Times" legal defense fund and held at Alexandra Palace in London. The other bands included The Who, The Move, The Pretty Things, Soft Machine, Tomorrow and The Creation. Guests included John Lennon, John Dunbar, Michael Caine, Yoko Ono, Julie Christie, Mick Jagger and David Hockney. Both the BBC and filmmaker Peter Whitehead filmed portions of the event. There is no known footage of Pink Floyd in the show.
On 12 May 1967, Pink Floyd performed at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, in a concert entitled Games for May. At this show they debuted a multi-speaker pan pot system, controlled by a joystick from the stage, that allowed them to move the sound to remote loudspeakers. This precursor to their later "Azimuth Coordinator" was stolen after the show.
Their debut single, "Arnold Layne", charted well in the UK, and the band was invited to perform on the BBC2 music show The Look of the Week on 14 May 1967. The setlist for the broadcast consisted of "Pow R. Toc H." and "Astronomy Domine". This was their first British television appearance.
Pink Floyd appeared on the BBC2 music show Top of the Pops for three weeks in July 1967 after their second single "See Emily Play" reached No. 6 on the UK charts. By this time, guitarist and songwriter Syd Barrett's behavior had become difficult and unpredictable. On one occasion he remarked that if John Lennon did not have to appear on Top of the Pops, neither did he. Their management company, Blackhill Enterprises, convinced the band to cancel their August shows and go to Spain to recuperate.
Throughout the summer and into the autumn of 1967, copious drug use, especially of LSD, and constant pressure by the record company to write new hit songs, continued to affect Barrett's mental state. He became unable to make a meaningful contribution on stage, playing his guitar incoherently and sometimes not playing at all. On the band's first US tour in November 1967, he stared blankly into space during their 4 November American Bandstand performance, strummed listlessly and barely managed to mime the vocals to "Apples and Oranges". On 5 November, when they appeared on The Pat Boone Show, Barrett sat in silence, not answering questions. He refused to mime "See Emily Play" and Waters was forced to mime the track instead.. After the 22 December show, the rest of the band put out the word that they needed another guitarist. Jeff Beck and Davy O'List were considered. David Gilmour was brought in to augment Barrett during live shows, and for the first four UK shows of 1968 Pink Floyd was a five-man live act. On 26 January 1968, on their way to a show at Southampton University the others decided not to pick up Barrett, and he was out of the band.

Transition and experimentation

A typical 1968 set list included some of the following:
  • "Astronomy Domine"
  • "Interstellar Overdrive"
  • "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun"
  • "Pow R. Toc H."
  • "Let There Be More Light"
  • "The Massed Gadgets of Hercules"
  • "Flaming"
  • "Keep Smiling People"
On 29 June 1968, Pink Floyd headlined the first free Hyde Park concert organized by heir management company, Black hill Enterprises, which later parted ways with the band over their decision to remove Barrett. Others performing were Tyrannosaurus Rex, Roy Harper and Jethro Tull.
A second tour of the US during July and August 1968 was launched to support release of their second album, A Saucerful of Secrets. Throughout 1968 and 1969, shows increasingly consisted of post-Barrett compositions, although "Astronomy Domine" and "Interstellar Overdrive" were performed into the 1970s. The band's audiences changed during this time. Barrett-era crowds had consisted mainly of hippies who would dance to the music. The band now drew a more "intellectual" crowd, who would sit and remain quiet until the last note of a song was played. By early 1969, most of the band's excess earnings were spent on upgrading their sound equipment, rather than maintaining a permanent light show. If visuals were used, they were provided by the venue or the local promoter.
A typical 1969 set list would include some of the following:
See: The Man And The Journey Tour
  • "The Man/The Journey"
  • "Astronomy Domine"
  • "Interstellar Overdrive"
  • "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun"
  • "Pow R. Toc H."
  • "Let There Be More Light"
  • "A Saucerful of Secrets"
  • "Cymbaline"
  • "Green is the Color"
  • "Main Theme"
  • "Careful with That Axe, Eugene"
The shows at Mothers, Birmingham on 27 April 1969 and the College of Commerce, Manchester on 2 May 1969 were recorded for the live part of the Ummagumma album. The show at Bromley Technical College on 26 April 1969 was also stated to have been recorded for the album.
On 14 April 1969, at the Royal Festival Hall in London, the band debuted their new pan pot 360-degree sound system, dubbed the "Azimuth Coordinator". This show, named "More Furious Madness from the Massed Gadgets of Au Ximenes", consisted of two experimental "suites", "The Man" and "The Journey". Most of the songs were either earlier material retitled, or released later under a different name.
A UK tour during May and June 1969 culminated in the show called "The Final Lunacy" at the Royal Albert Hall on 26 June 1969. Considered one of Floyd's most experimental concerts, it featured a crew member dressed as a gorilla, a fired cannon, and band members sawing wood on the stage. At the finale of "The Journey" suite the band was joined on stage by the brass section of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the ladies of the Ealing Central Amateur Choir. At the, end a pink smoke bomb was let off.
An additional complete performance of "The Man/The Journey" occurred at the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam on 17 September 1969 and was taped and broadcast by Dutch radio station Hilversum 3. Portions of the suites were being performed as late as early 1970.

The "Atom Heart Mother" era

A typical 1970 set list included some of the following:
  • "Astronomy Domine"
  • "Interstellar Overdrive"
  • "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun"
  • "A Saucerful of Secrets"
  • "Cymbaline"
  • "Green is the Color"
  • "Main Theme"
  • "Careful with That Axe, Eugene"
  • "Sysyphus." pts. 1-4
  • "Grantchester Meadows"
  • "Embryo"
  • "The Violent Sequence"
  • "Heart Beat, Pig Meat" performed at Manchester Opera House on 8 February 1970
  • "Atom Heart Mother"
  • "Fat Old Sun"
  • "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast"
At gigs in early 1970, Pink Floyd performed an instrumental piece which had originally been intended for their soundtrack of Michelangelo Antonioni's film Zabriskie Point, referred to as "The Violent Sequence". This became the basis for "Us and Them" on The Dark Side of the Moon. It was identical to the music of the eventual song and was the earliest part of 'Dark Side' to have been performed live.
In January 1970, the band began performing an untitled instrumental piece which became the title track of their next album, Atom Heart Mother. At this point, it had no orchestra or choir accompaniment. The song debuted at the Bath Festival in Somerset on 27 June 1970 under the title "The Amazing Pudding", the first time with orchestra and choir.
It was announced as "The Atom Heart Mother" by John Peel on his BBC Radio 1 show "Peel's Sunday Concert" on 16 July 1970, a name suggested by him to the band, and it was introduced by the same name two days later at the Hyde Park free concert. Local orchestras and choirs were not always available on tour, and the band played a simpler version of the song when they performed live.
On 28 June 1970, Pink Floyd was the end-performance of the Kralingen Music Festival or "Stamping Ground" in a park near Rotterdam, The Netherlands. On 18 July 1970, they headlined a free concert in Hyde Park, London, organized by Blackhall Enterprises, and closed the show with "Atom Heart Mother". The song had been given the name after Roger Waters read an article in a newspaper about a woman who had a prototype heart pacemaker.
Pink Floyd also appeared at a small free festival in Canterbury on 31 August 1970, which was filmed. This was the final part of the Medicine Ball Caravan tour organized by Warner Brothers, later made into a film of the same name. Pink Floyd footage was not included. Over 500,000 people came to their show at Fête de Humanity, Paris on 12 September 1970, their largest crowd ever. Filmed by French TV, the show was never broadcast. An experimental track on the album Atom Heart Mother, "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast", was performed at a few gigs in December 1970.
A recording was made of a Fillmore West show in San Francisco, California on 29 April 1970 on Wolfgang's Vault. The show included material from Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother.