Everything can be said about Pink Floyd, except that they have no sense of spectacle. With one more prerogative that most of their colleagues lack: a sense of History. A highly choreographic awareness of History that ties them in particular to Italy. Few concerts remain in the collective imagination of rock people like the one in Pompeii, which was also held behind closed doors. (The first time: then David Gilmour will return to the “scene of the crime” in 2016 in his name). And the same goes for Venice.
The first, Pompeii, by will of the director Adrian Maben who signed the performance; the second to accumulate consensus: an idea of Gianni De Michelis, the politician with the longest and greasiest mane that the republic remembers, at the time vice-premier of the De Mita government and with a smack of taking up the post of Foreign Minister of the sixth Andreotti government.
Venetian, a leading figure in Craxi's PSI, De Michelis embarked – in a gondola – on an undertaking that cost Sacis, the concessionaire that handled the sale of RAI products, 1 billion: it was 1989 and the euro was still a spectre far from appearing. A billion lire, however, was not enough. The Floyd remained in three, engaged like Joseph Conrad's duellists in an endless fight with Roger Waterswith a keen business sense, they put in part of the money from their own pockets, quickly recovering the advance with the related interest as soon as the concert was sold for private viewing in the USA (10 dollars per television screen on pay-per-view for a total of 27 million viewers).
Imagine St. Mark's Square invaded by an army of Floyd fans. Two hundred thousand. Even the pigeons dispossessed. The next day's reports highlighted an apocalyptic vision: the waste and damage as a terrible legacy that Venetians would have to pay for generations to come. In reality, the only incident recorded was the window of a bar shattered in retaliation for the excessively inflated prices, and the usual idiot who left traces of his passage by decorating a column of the Doge's Palace with a marker. That's all. During most international soccer matches, much worse happens, including bruises and injuries. In the sack of Venice in 1797 carried out by Napoleon's troops, the French took the bronze horses of St. Mark's Basilica to Paris and destroyed the Bucintoro, the Doges' galley, considered a national treasure and symbol of the Republic.
As for the waste scandal, the collection began two days after the concert, and one suspects that those who found it convenient to point the finger, the opposition of the municipal council forced to resign, pushed to… slow down.
On the opposite side, that of the Virgils of rock, the singers of great deeds that must be handed down always and in any case – the best concerts of all time, etc. – there are odes of glory when in reality the limits imposed on the band have muzzled the proverbial generosity of the Floyd on stage. This time floating like a waterbed. A panacea for the creaking bones of the original members who are running towards half a century of age.
Perhaps well informed about the band's history, the mayor forced Gilmour and his companions to be consistent with the previous year's album – Delicate Sound Of Thunder – and not exceed the threshold of 60 decibels of noise; while for reasons related to the broadcast of the concert worldwide, the live broadcast and the commercials, the Floyd for their part were forced to play with the handbrake on.
David Gilmour on Q September 1990: “The show had to last a specific amount of time; the satellite broadcast meant we had to have a schedule to stick to. We had the list of songs and we had shortened them, which we had never done before. (…) If we were getting close to the start time of the next song I just had to end the one we were playing.” And putting constraints on Floyd live certainly doesn’t guarantee that the Venice concert will be eligible as one of their best.
In the same interview, Gilmour does not refrain from taking a swipe at the bureaucrats: “The city authorities who had agreed to provide security, sanitation and food have completely reneged on everything they were supposed to do, trying to blame us for all the subsequent problems.” Machiavellian, isn't it? These are the plots that politics uses to conspire: on one side there are those who set up the games – as in the days of bread and circuses – to gain the favor of future voters, on the other hand the opponents who make votive sacrifices so that the Gods or whoever sends everything to pieces so as to ask for heads or the equivalent in times of peace called “resignation”.
Behind the great Pink Floyd concert in Venice there was this, power games of the national establishment. A great fuss artfully raised by the media and interested parties. A huge income for RAI and the band. A huge reverberation that continues to echo decades later. Next year, on July 15, we will talk about it again.
There is nothing new to say, perhaps…?
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
