A couple of things on the tour of the Pink Floyd of "Wish You Were here"

Good rule wants an artist to go on tour to present the new songs live after publishing an album. It wasn’t like that for the Pink Floyd Of “Wish you were here” which presented some songs on the album starting from 8 April 1975, over five months before the release of the disc. The English band previewed “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”the only single of “Wish you were here”“Have a Cigar” and also the first versions of “Sheep” And “Dogs” which would have been published in the next studio album, “Animals” (Read the review here) of 1977.

About the 1975 tour the band’s drummer

Nick Mason in his autobiography ‘Inside out’ He reported: “Our live show benefited from a much higher professional contribution. Previously our special effects had been a dangerous mix of imagination and superficial knowledge of the pyrotechnic arts”.

Despite the supervision of an expert, not everything filmed smoothly. For example, it happened that, as reported by Ultimate Classic Rock, needing to dispose of the remaining ammunitions from their American dates before crossing the border with Canada, they decided to do it by attacking them at the scoreboard report by the Olympia Stadium of Detroit, and then exploded them. “The explosion was devastating,” Mason recalled in his Memoir again. “The scoreboard exploded in smoke, flames and marked tens of thousands of team goals. Not only did we have to pay a replacement scoreboard, but also a lot of windows of nearby houses”.

Another unforgettable moment occurred when the band designed an inflatable pyramid of the size of a house that should have floated over their outdoor shows, but … so Mason writes: “The minimum breath of wind would have made the entire structure tremble and oscillate”. The first time i Pink Floyd They tried to use it, on June 20 in Pittsburgh, things went so badly that the boys of the crew was ordered to detach it and close with the experiment, after which the pyramid crashed into the parking lot and was made to pieces by fans in search of a group’s souvenir.

Despite the commitment that the British group dedicated to the visual presentation of their concerts, none of the tour shows of “Wish you were here” It was professional in a professional way. “I’m sorry I have never filmed and recorded a show by ‘Dark Side’, ‘Animals’ O ‘Wish You Were here’,” he declared with regret Nick Mason At the Rolling Stone magazine in 2018. “The problem is that we had just entered a period when everyone was paranoid on bootlegger and did not record the shows”.

Fortunately, the well -known bootlegger Mike “The Mic” Millard He was always on the piece and ahead to everyone. As Rolling Stone said in 2021, Millard used a fake wheelchair to secretly introduce a recorder at the concerts at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, connected the machine to the microphones that were on his hat and headed towards the front of the Venue. Operating in this way he had high quality recordings of artists such as Rush, Rolling Stones And Led Zeppelinwho even used some of his tapes in one of their 2003 DVDs.

Among the protesses of Millard also the one that many consider the best recording of the tour of
Pink Floyd
of 1975, which with the use of modern audio technology in recent years has further improved the sound. As for the video, the best source seems to be a 27 -minute movie in 8 mm of the show of June 28 in Hamilton, Canada, which was converted into 4K. You can see it below.