Pink Floyd founding member inaugurates Montreal exhibit featuring band's history

Pink Floyd exhibit opens in Montreal An exhibition centred on the career and influence of rock bank Pink Floyd is set to open in Montreal.

Very few rock bands from the 1970s left a marking impression on Canadian audiences, and especially Quebec, as Pink Floyd.

When the band first toured North America following the release of their album Meddle in 1971, it brought the band to the University of Montreal Sports Center, and Quebec City’s Pavillon de la Jeunesse, which were large auditoriums compared to the theaters they played elsewhere in the United States. It’s perhaps no coincidence that the surviving members of the now-dissolved band chose, after a two-year delay because of COVID-19, to hold the Canadian premiere of the exhibit in Montreal.

“It’s the French influence,” said Nick Mason during an interview with CTV Montreal.

“With Pink Floyd, in 1967, 68 and 69, we could work in France,” he said. “We had some very strong French links.”

In Canada, “you had the American influence in terms of wild audiences, but a sense of interest and greater depth with the French influence. We’d get a fantastic audience.”

Pink Floyd created stage shows and intricate progressive rock music before it was fashionable. Their signature form culminated with The Wall concert tour in 1980 and 1981 -- the production was so massive and expensive that it was only performed in a handful of cities around the world.

Yet, for all its documented history, band members didn't keep much memorabilia. Mason says the best material came from people outside the band

“What really surprised me was the stuff that came out of the woodwork from people who heard about the exhibitions and provided us with all sorts of extraordinary things I never thought we'd be able to access.”

Those extraordinary things included original stage clothes, along with original hand-written song lyrics for classics like Have a Cigar, and even early songs by band co-founder, the late Syd Barrett.

Roger Waters’ bass guitar from the Dark Side of the Moon recording is on display, along with unique guitars that belong to guitarist, composer and singer David Gilmour. His solos remain staples in music classes around the world.

However, Mason's favourite item made for the little-known inspiration for the album The Wall.

“As far as curiosities are concerned, it has to be the cane that used to punish Rogers and Storm (Thorgerson, the band’s future graphic designer) when they were children from the school where they still had corporal punishment,” he said.

“I mean, who kept this? I have no idea. But with that to suddenly appear with the book, the punishment book, that had their names and what they've done wrong.”

The song Another Brick in The Wall alludes to the physical abuse Waters suffered at the hand of a schoolteacher.

The band performed 12 times in Montreal over a 23 year period. The last time was in 1994, when they played three consecutive nights at the Olympic Stadium.

The most infamous show was at the Stadium in 1977, which drew a crowd of 80,000. It was the last show of the Animals tour, and an angry and disillusioned Waters spat at a member of the audience, whom he found unruly. In recordings of the show, Waters can be heard berating the audience for throwing firecrackers and being generally disruptive as he tried to sing Pigs on the Wing.

It’s an event which inspired the album The Wall, But it wasn’t targeting Montreal in particular, says Mason.

“It was stadiums in general, I think,” he said. “Were were coping with this thing, particularly Roger, once you get into the stadium size, you always have 15 per cent who are on drugs and playing Frisbee in the back.”

“I think the realization that we were losing --the disconnect with the audience-- for Roger, it was deeply upsetting.”

The exhibit was put together with the help of Aubrey Powell. He was part of the artistic design firm Hipgnosis, along with the late Storm Thorgerson.

The two designed most of the 1970's iconic record covers by the biggest bands of the era, including Dark Side of the Moon.

“The influence for the Dark Side of the Moon cover came from the band, from [keyboard player] Richard Wright” Powell explained.

“I happened to be thumbing through a physics book about light, and Storm said, ‘I got it, a pyramid with a light going through it’. We went to Abbey Road, showed the guys a drawing of it, and they said, ‘yes, that’s it’, they were not interested in anything else. That's what they wanted.”

“In retrospect, it was the perfect image for Pink Floyd at the time, and somehow, it transcended into generations and it's still the perfect image.”

The exhibit is showing at the Arsenal Art Center on Notre-Dame in Griffintown until December.