Blake - Pigs might fly: the inside story of Pink Floyd

It would be fantastic if we could do it for something like another Live Aid. But maybe Im just being terribly sentimental you know what us old drummers are like.

Nick Mason

I really do hope we can do something again.

Richard Wright

I dont think wed get through the first half an hour of rehearsals. If Im going to be on stage playing music with people, I want it to be with people that I love.

Roger Waters

I think Roger Waters has my phone number. But Ive no interest in discussing anything with him.

David Gilmour

J ust when it seems as if rock music has long lost its power to offend, Pink Floyds reunion has thrown the establishment into a panic. It is 2 July 2005, and the band are due to perform at the Live 8 charity concert in Londons Hyde Park, but the event has already over-run by nearly an hour. In the words of the 1960s counter-culture from which Pink Floyd emerged, The Man is not happy. Except The Man is now Tessa Jowell, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Word filters back to the media that she has called an emergency meeting backstage and is threatening to end the show early, fearful that a crowd of 200,000 people spilling into the capitals streets in the small hours will constitute an act of public disorder.

The last time David Gilmour, Richard Wright, Nick Mason and Roger Waters fell even remotely foul of a politician was some twenty-five years earlier. Then, Pink Floyds hit single, Another Brick in the Wall Part 2, featured a choir of London inner city schoolchildren shouting a chorus of We dont need no education, much to the disgust of the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

In 2005, though, the political landscape has undergone a seismic shift. Live 8 has been staged to raise awareness about Third World deprivation and to urge world leaders, convening for the following weeks G8 Summit, to tackle the issue of poverty. However, one of those very same leaders, Prime Minister Tony Blair, has just let slip that, regardless of the bands political motivation, he is looking forward to watching Pink Floyds performance at Live 8. Blair is a rock fan, a sometime guitar player and, briefly, the lead singer in a band while at university. When press articles about the PMs rock n roll years appear, theyre predictably accompanied by a photo of the youthful Blair in 1972, beaming behind ripples of unkempt long hair. If it wasnt for the grin, he could even pass for a member of Pink Floyd, or, at worst, a member of their road crew, perhaps one let go for being too cheerful by half and getting under Roger Waters feet.

Who knows whether the Floyd-loving Prime Minister lent his voice to the argument? But, after the emergency meeting, which involved the Metropolitan Police and the Royal Parks Agency, Tessa Jowell allows the show to continue. There is even talk of blankets being distributed to those audience members wishing to spend the night in the park. News of the near-cancellation will only make it back to the viewing public in the following days newspapers. But to anyone even dimly aware of the shared history between Pink Floyds members, the real miracle is that they have agreed to be here in the first place.

Live 8 has been a day filled with glowing and not-so-glowing performances, alongside the usual car-crash moments that occur when pop stars get anywhere near a worthy cause. Organiser Sir Bob Geldof has rounded up the heads of pops royal family, using the same persuasive tactics deployed when staging Live Aid in 1985: namely, the implied suggestion that any band that refuses will dent their credibility for ever. U2, Madonna, Sir Elton John, Sir Paul McCartney and numerous younger, unknighted rock stars have agreed to give their services for free. The bill is random, newcomers following old hands, but, as the day wears on, a pecking order of sorts emerges.

Around the world, nine further concerts are taking place in cities such as Rome, Berlin and Philadelphia. For many gathered at these events, though, it is a single performance, taking place tonight in London, that generates the greatest anticipation. As Geldof grudgingly admits, In the US, why this band, with such a painful history of disorder, have agreed to do this, is a far bigger story than Live 8 itself. On the day that Pink Floyds appearance is announced, whispers circulate of a promoter guaranteeing $250 million for the four to tour.

Pink Floyds recording career began in 1967. They have since sold over 30 million copies of their 1973 album, Dark Side of the Moon, alone. Yet their public falling-out has sometimes threatened to overwhelm their artistic achievements. It has been more than twenty-four years since the four members shared a stage. In the meantime, Gilmour, Wright and Mason have forged ahead with the Floyd name, releasing albums and staging tours, while Roger Waters, previously the groups bass guitarist, but also their most prolific songwriter and acknowledged ideas man, has raged from the sidelines, once declaring that his former colleagues took my child and sold her into prostitution, and Ill never forgive them for that.

Forgiveness may not be on the agenda, but today, the four have struck a truce, of sorts. Pink Floyd havent made an album since 1994, and, under normal circumstances, coaxing what guitarist David Gilmour describes as this great lumbering behemoth to rouse itself out of its torpor would have been an arduous process. Yet with the lure of a good cause and Geldofs expert arm-twisting, it has taken just three weeks between the reluctant Gilmour agreeing to play and the re-formed Floyd arriving on stage in Hyde Park.

At 10.17 p.m., David Beckham, officially the biggest footballer in Britain, introduces Robbie Williams, officially the biggest pop star in Britain, on stage. Williamss voice is noticeably frayed, but he slips easily into his routine part boy band heart-throb, part Norman Wisdom camping it up, and making it difficult to imagine anyone having the crowd quite so on their side.

Under the circumstances, it doesnt bode well for next act, The Who. In 1964, Pink Floyds drummer Nick Mason, then studying architecture at Regent Street Polytechnic, watched The Who perform My Generation and experienced a moment of epiphany: Yes, thats what I want to do. With two of their number now gone, The Whos surviving members, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, plus hired hands, plough through Who Are You and Wont Get Fooled Again. They avoid any direct communication with the crowd and, in the case of Townshend and his impenetrable, wraparound shades, any eye contact. The Whos performance is ferociously tight, with glimpses of their former chippy glory, but it seems to be over almost before it has begun.

The show is approaching its tenth hour, the park is submerged in inky darkness, McCartney is still to play the closing slot and, on the sidelines, presumably, Tessa Jowells blankets are being unpacked for those planning a long night under the stars.

At 10.57 p.m., without any fanfare or a celebrity introduction, an eerie yet familiar sound begins drifting across the park. Any remaining roadies on stage suddenly disappear into the wings. The sound rises in volume: the steady, metronomic pulse of a heartbeat. Searchlights sweep over the audience, the video screen behind the stage flickers into life, and the heartbeat grows louder. Then comes the voice: Ive been mad for fucking years. A snippet of speech from a Pink Floyd roadie recorded nearly thirty years earlier at Abbey Road Studios. Its followed by the ominous whirr of helicopter blades, a ringing cash register, and a disengaged cackle of laughter repeated again and again, before segueing into a long, hysterical scream; the closing moment of Speak to Me, the very first track on Dark Side of the Moon.

The goosebumping scream seems to rise in pitch and volume, then is replaced by the soothing opening bars of Breathe. As the searchlights dim and the stage is bathed in light, the audience are allowed their first proper view of the men on stage. In a curious reversal of the decree by the Wizard of Oz to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, the men are all were left with. The flying pig and aerial shots of Battersea Power Station drifting on the video screen behind the stage are familiar Floyd motifs, but, for once, they fail to draw the attention away from the group themselves. In the past, Pink Floyd thrived on their anonymity. As their success grew so did their stage sets; all designed to divert an audiences gaze away from the four unremarkable-looking, long-haired men on stage. By 1980, they played behind a specially constructed wall, as part of Roger Waters lordly protest at the dehumanising nature of the music industry. When Gilmour coaxed the lumbering behemoth back into service in the eighties and nineties, he, Mason and Wright were augmented by younger session musicians, shimmying female backing singers and a Spielberg-style stage show of blinding lasers that over-whelmed the original band members.