Pink Floyd exhibition announced at V&A
It was a concert which featured tape-recorded bird calls, one band member sawing logs, another throwing potatoes at a gong, a bubble machine causing havoc and a crew member dressed as an admiral throwing daffodils into the audience. And it changed rock performance for ever, the Victoria and Albert Museum said on Wednesday as it announced details of its big spring 2017 exhibition: a retrospective of Pink Floyd. “The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains” opens on 13 May 2017 and will run for 20 weeks.
The exhibition will feature a laser light show and previously unseen concert footage as well as more than 350 objects and artefacts including instruments, handwritten lyrics, posters, architectural drawings and psychedelic prints. It will also have on display the Azimuth Co-ordinator, a custom-made quadrophonic speaker system and joysticks which Pink Floyd used to sweep prerecorded sound effects and instruments around a room.
The exhibition will also mark the 50th anniversary of the band's first single, Arnold Layne, a release which has been followed by more than 200 million record sales.
The V&A opened ticket sales and announced the exhibition by flying a giant inflatable pink pig near the museum's entrance, a reference to the inflatable swine which once soared over Battersea power station and featured on the cover of Pink Floyd's 1977 album “Animals.”
The band was founded in 1965 by students Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, Richard Wright and Mason. Barrett, who parted ways with Floyd in 1968, died in 2006 and Wright died in 2008. The remaining members are collaborating for the V&A show.
Mason said he was surprised he and remaining members were still doing things together after 50 years. “If you told me that we would still exist even four years after we started professionally I would have been surprised. Now I feel like something that's owned by the National Trust.”
He was a big fan of the V&A's Bowie exhibition and predicted big things for the Pink Floyd one. “I think we are going to be able to do things that hopefully have never seen or heard before,” said Mason.
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