Pink Floyd – Pink Floyd At Pompeii MCMLXXII [2025]

It took more than fifty years for the film ‘Pink Floyd – Live at Pompeii’ to get an independent release on LP (and CD); Pink Floyd At Pompeii MCMLXXII. The reason: the reissue of the 1972 film. ‘Pink Floyd – Live at Pompeii’ can now be seen in cinemas again. The dizzying cinematography of the band playing in an amphitheater without an audience has been remastered in 4K from the 35 mm images. Razor-sharp and with a great Dolby surround sound. As the film poster, included in the LP release, indicates: It is more than just a film, it is an explosive cinema concert.
I saw the film in the cinema last week and I am still impressed. The music takes me back to more than fifty years ago when I played Pink Floyd’s ‘Ummagumma’ over and over again as a 14-year-old boy. I was still too young to go out and was sentenced to watching Eén van de Acht (popular game show on Dutch TV in the 70’s) with my parents on Saturday nights. But as soon as my older brother, who was allowed to go out, was gone, I sprinted to his bedroom to play ‘Ummagumma’, which he had just bought.
‘Ummagumma’ comes from the time when the band also made the film recording in Pompeii. Songs like ‘Careful with that Axe, Eugene’, and ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun’ are also on ‘Pink Floyd at Pompeii’.
Fifty years later, I am no longer dependent on my brother. I now have my own music room with a hypermodern music system. And I play ‘Pink Floyd At Pompeii MCMLXXII’ there almost every day now. The songs polished by prog rock producer Steven Wilson, such as ‘Careful’ and ‘Set the Controls’, crackle and sizzle. Bassist Roger Waters screams as if his life depends on it in ‘Careful with that Axe’. Everything sounds amazing, what great artists! Past and present merge when I put on this LP.
And the cover? It was made by a young graphic designer, Julian House from London. The colors on the cover remind me of the lava lamp I had in my bedroom in the seventies. A lava lamp is a so-called mood lamp (it looks like a butt plug, but that is not what it is intended for). Invented in 1963 by Edward Craven Walker. When cold, there is a lump of greasy oil substance at the bottom of the lamp, which is illuminated and warmed up when the lamp is switched on and melts after a while. Bubbles of oil rise and cool down again at the top of the lamp and slowly sink back down. Pink Floyd became famous with such projections in the background of their concerts.
The front of the cover is a photo of a fragment from the film. You see the Pink Floyd men walking on the walls of the amphitheater of Pompeii. Pompeii was a Roman city that was covered by a lava flow in 79 AD after an eruption of the volcano Vesuvius near Naples. As a result, it has become one of the best preserved Roman cities, a world heritage site, with a completely intact amphitheater with 20,000 seats. Two thousand years ago, gladiator fights were held there, fifty years ago Pink Floyd recorded their music film there.
Young ‘gladiators’ that’s what the Pink Floyd members on the cover really are, aged 25 to 29 and more or less congealed by lava color. Back then, they still had a whole future ahead of them in which they would make world-class LPs such as ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ and ‘Wish You Were Here’.
Perhaps that is the big difference between now and then. In the early seventies you still had a whole future ahead of you. More than fifty years later you are at the end of your career or even retired, and you might just collapse. But the music of Pink Floyd will always stay alive. For this kind of music it doesn't really matter what time you live in.

Gerrit-Jan Vrielink

Translator: Alex Driessen