David Gilmour Makes His Live at Pompeii Concert Film Free to Watch Online

On a hot Octo­ber day in 1971, Pink Floyd and their crew assem­bled their live gear in an emp­ty ancient Pom­peii amphithe­ater and, with a film crew along for the ride, record­ed one of the first epic con­certs of their career, play­ing “Echoes,” “Set the Con­trols for the Heart of the Sun,” “Care­ful with that Axe, Eugene,” and oth­er prog num­bers that set the stage for Dark Side of the Moon. A few years lat­er, they’d be play­ing in sta­di­ums actu­al­ly filled with peo­ple, and well, you know the rest.

In 2016, gui­tarist David Gilmour returned to the same amphithe­ater with his cur­rent band in tow, and filmed anoth­er con­cert movie (also called “Live at Pom­peii”). This time the sta­di­um was filled (though not on the ancient seats), night­time was exchanged for day­time, and the set list was a com­bi­na­tion of Floyd clas­sics, old­er rar­i­ties like “Fat Old Sun” and “One of the These Days”, and plen­ty of tracks from his then new solo album Rat­tle That Lock, released in 2015.

Gilmour opt­ed not to play “Echoes,” telling Rolling Stone that it was too much a Rick Wright song and didn’t feel right to play it with­out him. It was the first pub­lic per­for­mance in the ancient Roman amphithe­atre since AD 79. (The gui­tarist was also made an hon­orary cit­i­zen of Pom­peii).

Well, Gilmour just released the full con­cert on YouTube after a world­wide cin­e­ma screen­ing of the con­cert in 2017. The YouTube playlist con­tains tracks that weren’t in the film, so for fans, this is just an extra spe­cial bonus.

The band includes Chester Kamen on gui­tars, a ses­sion musi­cian who has played with both Gilmour and Waters on var­i­ous occa­sions; Guy Pratt, who’s been Pink Floyd’s tour­ing bassist since Roger Waters split; Chuck Leavell of the All­man Broth­ers; Greg Phllinganes, and Steve DiS­tanis­lao.

The show begins as the last rays of sun­light dis­ap­pear behind Mt. Vesu­vius, a nice Floy­di­an touch. It ends, appro­pri­ate­ly enough, with “Com­fort­ably Numb,” (embed­ded above) but not with an exact copy of its famous gui­tar solo.

“I just try and let the solo come out,” Gilmour said in the same Rolling Stone inter­view. “I couldn’t play the one off the album. I try not too think about it too much.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live Amidst the Ruins of Pom­peii in 1971 … and David Gilmour Does It Again in 2016

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

David Gilmour Invites a Street Per­former to Play Wine Glass­es Onstage With Him In Venice: Hear Them Play “Shine On You Crazy Dia­mond”

David Gilmour Talks About the Mys­ter­ies of His Famous Gui­tar Tone

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.


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