We saw Pink Floyd perform in Eastbourne last night.
Well, not the actual Pink Floyd because they aren’t talking to each other now; and one of them has died.
So – and the clues are there – we were watching a tribute band: The Australian Pink Floyd; and they’re very good.
They may even be better than the original. Some say so. I’m aware Dave Gilmour, lead guitar and vocalist for Pink Floyd, had them play at his birthday party…no pressure.
It probably wasn’t the youngest audience they’ve performed to. We’re in Eastbourne, remember, held together financially by the grey pound. (And that’s the youth club)
Amid the two and half thousand crowd, I noticed a couple who were under fifty…and had them arrested for trespassing.
No, I didn’t really. In fact, I said how nice it was to see someone in their twenties. The bloke laughed and said, ‘I don’t know any of the songs!’
And why would he? The songs are dinosaurs, not in the least bit radio friendly, each lasting about ten minutes or more, largely instrumental…and unutterably bleak: ‘thirteen channels of shit on the TV to choose from’ etc etc.
So, our young friend was in alien land. Unlike most of the audience, he’d never lain flat on his back gazing at the stars, five miles out of his drug-fuelled mind singing ‘I have become – comfortably numb’.
And he’s too young to know deep and life-defining despair; that ‘hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.’
And the Eastbourne way, as it happens…the sea of bald heads in front of me can’t get enough of the angst. They’ve been hanging on quietly for years.
And the band don’t waste time in friendly greeting. They wander on stage in black and just get going with pulsing bass and driving drum. After about forty minutes, one of them says, ‘It’s good to be back in Eastbourne. And now some more Pink Floyd songs.’
And that’s it. That’s the crowd-pleasing banter for the evening…which in fact echoes the original Pink Floyd who famously made no attempt to engage with their audience. The emotional wall was there long before ‘Wall’ album.
And we’re happy with that. We’re happy with avoidant attachment. We wouldn’t want the hopelessness interrupted by any faux warmth or sincerity, by needy attempts at connection: ‘Hey, we love you guys!’ We know he couldn’t give a shit about being in Eastbourne. And he knows that we know. And none of us mind.
Though when the set finishes with ‘Comfortably Numb’ – which the laws of the Floyd universe dictate it must – there is the hint of hysteria. No one lighting pretend candles, thank God. But down in the stalls, the grey pound are actually standing up, swaying about and waving their pension-happy arms in an alarming outbreak of emotion.
Some may need a new hip in the morning. And let’s not tell the carers. ‘What happens at the Congress Theatre stays at the Congress Theatre.’
But that’s the power of musical nostalgia. You forget the body you’re in – and imagine anything is possible, like it used to be.
‘Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun – Shine on you crazy diamond.
Now there’s a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky – Shine on you crazy diamond.’
We shall remove the bricks in the wall…
...you’re never past that.
