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I had previously covered the Publius Enigma riddle that surrounded the release of Pink
Floyd’s 1994 album The Division Bell. The link is down below, but today I want to talk about Pink
Floyd’s late 80’s concert that was broadcast all over the world and took down a government.
Pink Floyd would release the album a Momentary Lapse of REason in 1987
their first album without Roger Waters who had left the band several years
prior. The band’s making was marred by legal headaches over the name of the
band. Eventually things would be worked out and the album would see arealse.
Despite mixed reviews from fans and critics the was a huge success going selling 10 millio
copies worldwide. The band would embark on a worldwide tour to support the record.
While Venice, Italy was somewhere the band wanted to play it seemed impossible for the
fact that there wasn’t really a venue that could house the band and thousands of their fans.
David Gilmour would recall to classic rock magazine Initially Steven [O’Rourke,
Floyd manager] was very against the idea of playing Venice, saying it would be too difficult.
Throughout the second leg of that tour he’d come up to me and say: “It’s never going to happen”.
I said: “Steve, if Venice doesn’t happen, you’re fired”. Or something like that. He would say.
The band would find themselves scheduled to play venice on July 15, 1989 where they were planning
on playing a free show for fans to coincide with a holiday called Feast of the Redeemer. The cost
for the show was being picked up by italian state run television. The concert was originally set to
take place in St. Marks Square, but the residents of the city and some of their more conservative
local politicians were against it. Gilmour would tell classic rock the upheaval over the concert
was merely political manuevering saying There was a big row on the Venice council. Some people
there wanted to get others off, and they used this issue to discredit them. We were political pawns.
The Architect's newspaper would write the following about why locals were against
the concert stating A number of the city’s municipal administrators viewed the concert
as an assault against venice, something akin to a barbarian invasion of an urban space.
Adding that the City’s superintendent of cultural heritage “vetoed the concert”
a few days before it was set to happen with the paper writing and i quote “on
the grounds that the amplified sound would damage the mosaics of St. Mark’s Basilica,
while the whole piazza could very well sink under the weight of so many people.”
Eventually a deal would be worked out where the band offered to reduce the volume of the
concert from 100 db to 60 db and play on a barge a few hundred meters from the square.
The more liberal members of the city council who were in favour of the concert was quoted as that
that vence “must be open to new trends, including rock music”
The barge the band would perform on was used to transport and service oil rigs. Drummer
nick mason would tell classic rock how the local politicians who’d made life difficult for the band
got their own barge and showed up right in front of the performance stage telling
classic rock They’d got an official barge and decided to moor it right in front of the
stage – to the fury of the crowd. We were really rather pleased when the crowd took
it upon themselves to start hurling whatever they could at the barge. It was very amusing:
the waiters assembled like Roman centurions and used their trays as protection from the
barrage. They then found somewhere more suitable to moor. In the same interview
david gilmour would add “As we finished, the council’s own firework display started and
the volume was 10 times anything we put out. If anything caused a problem, it was that. “
The concert would be shown on Italian Television and would be broadcast to nearly 20 countries
with 100 million people witnessing the show on television. It was estimated that 200,000
people descended on Venice for the show, while the city’s 60,000 residents mostly left for the
weekend hoping to find the city intact when they came home. The concert would be poorly planned.
There were no portable washrooms setup, or garbages sresulting in people going to the
bathroom on statues and the walls of buildings and leaving behind 300 tons of garbage and another 500
cubic meters of empty cans and bottles. There was some minor damage to a statue
called the The Judgement of Solomon. Beyond that the crowd was reasonably well behaved.
While residents of the city were livid with the fact that the concert went ahead
they had other underlying grievances as well. The LA Times would write in 1989 “Venice’s greatest
enemies are not frequent floods, polluted air, floating banks of seaweed--nor even the pigeons
whose droppings corrode the marble palaces--but politicians, at all levels, who have been in
charge of the historic city for the past 40 years. Decent housing is all but unavailable;
administrative indecision has led to a 12% drop in resident population in recent years.
Young couples must move to the mainland to find living space.” The paper would chalk up
a bureaucracy that was rife with inefficiencies and corruption for creating underlying resentment
against politicians. Add to that the pink floyd concert that was poorly organized
and an already angry population it was no surprise what came next.
Following the concert Rome ‘s mayor told Washington Post, and i quote This wasn’t a
cultural event "but a great commercial enterprise promoted by television and the record industry."
Several days later Venice’s Mayor Antonio Casellati echoed similar sentiments pointing
the finger at state run television RAI for pushing for the show to happen as they gained
financially from broadcasting the concert. He would also tell classic rock magazine
that he wasn’t present when the council voted to allow the concert to proceed and that renagging
on the concert could have setup the city with legal headaches.. The residents at the public
meeting didn’t care they were called their local politicians and beaurocrats fools and scoundrels
and adding "Resign, resign, you've turned Venice into a toilet." The blow back was so severe that
city council and mayor would step down.as a result of the fallout from the concert.