Berliners couldn’t have given a flying proverbial though: 350,000 people bought tickets and at the last minute the gates were opened up so that another 100,000 people could watch. Even though it wasn’t even close to the band playing, Pink Floyd took on epic proportions in Berlin’s collective conscience.
Fast forward and Aussie conductor Michael Woods is in Berlin conducting Us and Them: Symphonic Pink Floyd for his first time and the response is feverish – his concert’s coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the epic ’89 gig. “I didn’t really understand the significance of it when I was first engaged to do it,” Woods laughs. “I did Symphonic Pink Floyd for the first time with the local State Orchestra in the Berlin Concert House – I was immediately aware of it being a different time. All of their bookshops were full of both English and German language Pink Floyd things and Pink Floyd was really an iconic band of the time for them, so something like Symphonic Pink Floyd was immediately attractive.” Indeed – sell out shows followed.
Us and Them: Symphonic Pink Floyd was the brainchild of Jaz Coleman, from English post-punk outfit Killing Joke. Coleman had some interesting views about how music evolves and becomes accepted in the mainstream. “A couple of the members were drinking in a pub on a Sunday afternoon in Hampstead and arguing about what makes a classic,” explains Woods. “The conclusion was that even if you took something which was progressive at the time, it could up becoming a classic and that something that was a classic, or very popular in one genre, may well become a classic and accepted in another. Coleman was challenged to see if he could start orchestrating some of this Pink Floyd stuff and he started with Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. The aim was to making something that could not only be accepted and covered by a big symphony orchestra, but would be regarded as a classic piece.”
The London Philharmonic caught wind of and commissioned the project and Us and Them was the result. The score combines songs from Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, which as any dedicated Floydian will know, are symphonic sprees in the first place. The London Philharmonic performed and recorded it subsequently and it went straight to the top of the Billboard cross-over charts and became part of the repertoire of many European orchestras, thereby proving Coleman right.
Us and Them: Symphonic Pink Floyd is certainly not the first cross-over work, the Stones, Nirvana and Queen have also received the treatment, but it’s probably one of the best loved and most famous. It’s not just a matter of giving some Pink Floyd songs some orchestral backing or having an orchestra doing a Pink Floyd concert, replacing a tune line with the instrument that can most closely replicate it. “This genre is quite different,” notes Woods. “The thematic and melodic material and the atmosphere and mood of each song has been taken and put in an orchestral setting. So, in this case there are ten movements and some of them are immediately obvious – their rhythm, melody and orchestration – it just couldn’t be any other piece, but there are others where the mood and the themes are brought in a little bit differently. All are recognisable once you get into them as being based upon the material from Pink Floyd, there’s nothing freaky or anything, but it’s more a fantasia [a composition in fanciful or irregular form or style].”
Woods was a teenager when Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall came out and although he was aware of the hits, he wasn’t a diehard fan: he was more impressed when he was given Atom Heart Mother. “That was a beautiful album,” he reflects. “I was attracted to its differences. Other albums of the period had really short songs and a lot of Pink Floyd’s stuff is going for 10, 12, 15 minutes and they were using a full range of orchestral sound and percussion.” No wonder it appealed to Woods, given the orchestral career that unfolded.
Woods’ orchestral conducting training was with hallowed UK conductor John Hopkins. He also happens to be a classically trained trombone player, so he’s played as well as conducted all over the world. Despite the Mozart and Beethoven background, he’s often played on the other side of the classical fence – the cross-over genre floats his boat. “As a trombone player I was very lucky to be in positions where I played large scale cross-overs or pops. I’m drawn to them because it’s really music for everybody. People of all agendas, age groups, backgrounds, education in terms of musical awareness and tastes can be given experiences, and although not everyone can be accommodated each time, we can put on programs which are attractive to a large number of people. It’s a pity that some people stay away because they’ve been led to believe that there’s a wall between the different genres – if you like that you wouldn’t like that – part of our process is breaking that down.”
BY MEG CRAWFORD
