Yesterday, an Abbey Road recording console used by Pink Floyd during some of the recording of The Dark Side of the Moon, sold at auction at Bonhams New York. The pre sale estimate of £550,000 for the 40–channel EMI TG12345 MK IV console was easily eclipsed by the final selling price of $1,807,500 (£1,441,842). This is a new world record for an item of technology, the previous record being £718,000 paid for an Apple 1 computer in 2014. It is also easily the most expensive piece of Pink Floyd memorabilia to date.
The console, made in 1971, was housed in Studio 2 at Abbey Road Studios, and used by a variety of artists. Other than Pink Floyd, these included the likes of Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Kate Bush.
THE FIRST STUDIO RECORDINGS FROM THE CLASSIC 60s PINK FLOYD LINE UP RELEASED FOR RECORD STORE DAY ON LIMITED EDITION 12″ PICTURE DISC VINYL
Pink Floyd’s ‘London 1966/1967’ was originally recorded for Peter Whitehead as part of his legendary 1967 “Tonite Lets All Make Love In London” film – semi-documentary about the “swinging London” scene of the sixties. The film featured a series of psychedelic performances and interviews and features live performance by Pink Floyd, together with footage of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Mick Jagger, Vanessa Redgrave, Lee Marvin, Julie Christie, Allen Ginsberg, Eric Burdon, Michael Caine and many others attending one of the band’s concerts.
‘London 1966/1967’ features two rare performances, from classic Floyd era featuring Syd Barrett, when they were at their most adventurous and exploratory, including an explosive 17 minute version of ‘Interstellar Overdrive’, recorded at the legendary Sound Techniques studio in early 1967.
These first ever studio recordings from the classic 1960’s Pink Floyd line-up are available as a special Record Store Day release on eye-catching picture disc vinyl strictly limited to 2,000 copies worldwide.
English cartoonist and satirist Gerald Scarfe created his now iconic illustrations for Pink Floyd The Wall back in the 1980s. His paintings appeared on The Wall album artwork, as projections at the band’s concerts, and in the 1982 film directed by Alan Parker. It’s difficult to listen to the music from that The Wall without recalling them.
Over time Scarfe’s creations have become imagery that is recognized worlwide and synonymous with Pink Floyd.
Now a selection of paintings, which were brought to animated life in the movie, have gone on sale to the public for the first time ever. Scarfe has hand picked 11 artworks from his work on Pink Floyd The Wall which will be sold by The San Francisco Art Exchange LLC (SFAE). There will also be an exhibition in July 2017 which Scarfe will attend at the show’s premier at SFAE’s gallery.
Paintings picked and created by Scarfe include The Scream, Wife With Flaming Hair, Giant Judge and Hammers, The Mother, Education For What? No Jobs!, The Wife’s Shadow, One of The Frightened Ones, The Gross Inflatable Pig, Comfortably Numb, and The Teacher.
The San Francisco Art Exchange press release describes the works as:
“Epic in scale and steeped in rock history, these original works of art are marquis collectibles for major individual, corporate, and institutional collectors. Due to the extensive distribution of the imagery via album, live-performances, music-videos, and the film (along with the accompanying publicity), the artwork offered is among the most instantly recognizable and significant in pop culture.
One of the paintings available for purchase, Giant Judge and Hammers, will be prominently on display in London beginning May 13, 2017 as part of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s eagerly anticipated The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains, the first international retrospective of one of the worlds’ most ground-breaking and influential bands. This exhibition is expected to become one of the most successful on record.
Scarfe developed the film’s entire visual environment before the project began and his characters became a mixture of live-action and animated imagery, all of which played an integral role in the surreal narrative.”
Following his performance of the show on February 10th 2017 in Juju’s Bar & Stage London , “Guy Pratt is The Sideman” is lined up for another few unmissable performances
GUY PRATT IS THE SIDEMAN: a one-man show celebrating 30 years as the bass player of choice for the heavyweights of rock and pop. Guy Pratt is a Grammy award winning bassist who has played live and on record with such megastars as Pink Floyd, David Gilmour, Roxy Music, Bryan ferry, Robert Palmer, Gary Moore, Womack & Womack, Jimmy page and David Coverdale… and worked as a studio sideman for artists including Madonna, Michael Jackson, the pretenders, Kirsty MacColl and Elton John.
In his one man, Guy regales audiences with stories from behind behind the scenes. His self-deprecating wit is irrestible and so are his rip-roaring anecdotes. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. If you’re a musician, you’ll probably sue…
“Bass players are ten a penny, but a good wit is hard to find, so we hired him”
– David Gilmour
This week, on Tuesday, March 21st, Guy returns to the Komedia in Brighton. Tickets from Komedia.co.uk now.
On April 23rd, he performs at the Bingley Arts Centre, and tickets are now available from Ticketsource.co.uk.
Finally, between August 14th-28th, he takes the show to the world renowned Edinburgh Festival, playing the Fringe under the show title “Inglorious Bassterd”. Tickets should be available soon from EdFringe.com.
Assuming Pink Floyd do not play at Glastonbury – and given the coolness between Roger Waters and David Gilmour, that seems a reasonable assumption to make, no matter how tantalising the speculation – then the Floyd obsessive in your life has a hole they need filling.
If they also have a garage or storage unit they need filling, then the perfect gift to meet their needs is on the market: the recording console used by the band when they recorded The Dark Side of the Moon.
The desk – the Abbey Road Studios EMI TG12345 Mk IV, in case you didn’t know – was housed at Abbey Road’s studio two from 1971 to 1983, where it was also used to record solo records by Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, as well as work by Kate Bush and the Cure among many others.
It is to be sold by the auction house Bonham’s as part of their TCM Presents … Rock and Roll Through the Lens auction in New York on 27 March. The seller is the producer Mike Hedges, who bought it when the studio upgraded its equipment in 1983. The console was built by Abbey Road and EMI engineers working together, and was among the most advanced of its time when new.
Be warned, however: no estimate is listed, suggesting it may cost more than the casual buyer has to hand. Rolling Stone reports that it is expected to attract “six-figure bids”. It is on view at Bonham’s London branch, in Knightsbridge, from 19 to 27 March.
For something a little less expensive, and for those without room to store a recording console, an early 1970s Pink Floyd promotional poster is being sold at the auction with an estimated cost of between £250 and £410. If you have the money but not the space, then you might want to consider a bid of between £120,000 and £160,000 for Jimi Hendrix’s recorder. Not tape recorder. But recorder, as played tunelessly by children since time immemorial.
You can view a scan of the Abbey Road Console (Lot 35) from the upcoming Bonhams catalogue (March 27) below (Thanks go to Peter Agnos for sending it in)
Pink Floyd will release a previously unheard version of 1966 instrumental Interstellar Overdrive on 12-inch vinyl for this year’s Record Store Day, They’ll launch Interstellar Overdrive – a previously unheard mono instrumental recording of the 1966 track – on April 15 on heavyweight 180-gram vinyl.
It’ll play at 33⅓ RPM and will come with a fold-out poster and an A6 postcard featuring a classic image of the band taken while they were recording their debut single Arnold Layne.
A statement reads: “Written and performed by Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Richard Wright and Nick Mason, Interstellar Overdrive is an unheard recording from 1966, running at a hefty 14 minutes 57 seconds long.
“The original recording was done at the Thomson studio in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, on November 31, 1966, before the band were signed to EMI. “A different, shorter version of the track appears on the band’s debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.”
A limited run of the single will also be available at The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum from May 13.
These days, if you mention The Wall, people may think you’re talking about Donald Trump’s proposed barrier separating the United States from Mexico. If you travel northward into Canada, though, The Wall means something else entirely – Pink Floyd’s 1979 album The Wall is being turned into an opera. Another Brick in the Wall: The Opera is a collaboration between Opéra de Montréal and the band’s former bassist and songwriter Roger Waters. It will premiere at the Quebec opera house on 11 March and is one of a series of events meant to help celebrate the city’s 375th anniversary.
While the opportunity to transform your rock opera into an actual opera sounds hard to pass up, that’s exactly what Waters did when he was approached by the composer Julien Bilodeau and Pierre Dufour, who at the time was the executive director of the Opéra de Montréal. “I wrote them a very polite, but very firm email back saying that my experience had been that most collaborations between popular music in general, but rock’n’roll in particular, and the symphonic orchestral form were unmitigated disasters and I thought it was a terrible idea,” said Waters.
“I got this fantastic letter back from Pierre Dufour. It was so eloquent in defense of their idea and I agreed that I would meet with them.” Dufour, Bilodeau, and the director Dominic Champagne came to New York to meet Waters, armed with preliminary set designs and operatic transformations of Pink Floyd’s hits Comfortably Numb and Another Brick in The Wall, Part 2. Waters was impressed. “We started talking and five hours later we were still talking,” he said. “After that meeting I said, ‘You know what? All right, you’ve convinced me. Let’s do it.’”
Waters joined the team, serving as librettist for the new piece, with music written by Bilodeau. The conductor Alain Trudel and Champagne will guide the Orchestre Métropolitain and Étienne Dupuis, who plays the character inspired by the rock star Pink Floyd, the fictional protagonist of the original rock opera reportedly inspired by both Waters and Pink Floyd’s original leader, Syd Barrett.
Montreal is a fitting place for the opera’s debut, as the origin story behind Pink Floyd’s The Wall started at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium in 1977, when Waters spat in the face of a fan who attempted to storm the stage. It was a move that ended the Pink Floyd concert and shocked the fan, and Waters. “It was a life-changing moment for me only insofar as my response to it made me think of how alienated I had become,” said Waters. “Suddenly a lightbulb went on and this showman in me went, ‘What about doing a rock show and building a wall between the band and the audience, as a physical expression of alienation that caused me to spit on that bloke?’”
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