The Pink Floyd gig that was towed 3,500 miles: “That’s through the North Sea”
The most famous Pink Floyd gig might be that beautiful night so famously filmed in the amphitheatre at Pompeii. Still, years later, the British prog heroes would return to another ancient Italian location: Venice. While not as well known as the one undertaken in the city destroyed by Vesuvius erupting, the one in ‘La Serenissima’ was also historic.
The late 1980s was a strange time for Pink Floyd. After completing his final album with the band, 1983’s The Final Cut, the band’s leader and bassist, Roger Water, departed acrimoniously. This, as well as lukewarm reactions to the record, meant that the group’s future hung precariously in the balance. However, after a while, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright reconvened, and Gilmour started to develop solo material he’d been working on into a 13th Pink Floyd album. It became 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason.
While this new look and new-sounding Pink Floyd received mixed reviews, the album still reached number three in the UK and US. This refreshed the operation and saw them embark upon a lengthy world tour between 1987 and 1989. This run featured their free performance on a floating barge on Venice’s Grand Canal on July 15th, 1989.
The band had originally planned to play a free show in the middle of the iconic St Mark’s Square to coincide with the celebration known as the ‘Feast of the Most Holy Redeemer’. However, things did not run smoothly. The city council was not impressed by the perceived disregard for their invaluable architecture, and tensions grew between both parties.
Things were so tense that even the city’s Superintendent for Cultural Heritage vetoed the show just days before it was due to occur. They claimed that the volume would damage the mosaics at St Mark’s Basilica, and that there was a very real risk the whole piazza could sink due to the masses of fans flocking to watch the ‘Wish You Were Here’ band.
Eventually, an agreement was reached. Pink Floyd settled on lowering the decibels of their famously loud live show from 100 to 60. This wasn’t the only concession, though. For it to go ahead, they also compromised on playing on a floating platform in the Grand Canal, some 200 yards from the square. While it was all well and good agreeing to perform on the barge, getting it to Venice was a different matter.
Gilmour recalled the extensive journey the barge had to make to allow the band to play in The Years Later box set. He said: “I do remember the word coming up, ‘Gig in Venice’… ‘Do a gig in Venice’, ‘Do a gig in Venice’, and you are gonna go, ‘Absolutely, of course, we want to do a gig in Venice’. Where do we do this gig in Venice? ‘Well, out on the water, of course, facing St Mark’s Square’. ‘Yeah, what do we play on?’ ‘Well, there’s a floating barge platform in Norway that is 150 yards long and 100 yards wide, and we can tow it from Norway to Venice. That’s through the North Sea, down the Channel, across the Bay of Biscay, through the Straits of Gibraltar, down past all of Spain, France, and up the other side of Italy’, and that is what happened.'”
While the show became a battleground between Venetian progressives and traditionalists, with the former camp maintaining that one of the world’s biggest bands playing in the city was good for its global image, and their opposite numbers asserting that it was a danger, most of the 200,000-strong crowd were on good behaviour on the night. However, the minority ultimately ruined it for the majority, and due to fans urinating on monuments and a large amount of litter – 300 tonnes to be exact – the local population were outraged. This soured the event for many.
This led to Mayor Antonio Casellati, and the entire City Council who voted for him, to resign. As for Pink Floyd? They have always maintained that the local authorities “completely reneged” on their side of the deal, which led to the logistical nightmare in the show’s aftermath.
