Pink Floyd’s remaining and former members have been dashing hopes of a reunion for over a decade now, following the band’s brief reunion for a benefit show in 2005. But while a live gig is probably off the cards — at least one featuring arch archnemeses David Gilmour and Roger Waters — the progressive, psychedelic 60s rock group has secretly been collaborating on quite the consolation prize. Gilmour, Waters, and Nick Mason have all been working closely with London’s Victoria & Albert Museum on Pink Floyd’s first international retrospective. Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains is a massive, immersive journey spanning five decades from the band’s first single in the 60s through to the present day. Alongside 350 artifacts, it will feature trippy vintage gig posters, handwritten lyrics, and the fleshy “life-masks” from Pink Floyd’s The Wall Live in 1979. According to the BBC, it will even include a laser-light show and previously unseen gig footage.
Mason told the UK news channel that he has been excited about working on a Pink Floyd exhibition for a while, but that even he didn’t foresee how much stuff they’d end up hauling out of the archives. “I did think we’d be short of material. That’s turned out to be entirely incorrect. I can’t tell you how much stuff won’t fit in,” he said. “We seem to have a bit of everything. My favorite drum kits. Quite a lot of the old machinery that we used for recording — that’s now completely obsolete with all the digital technology.”
V&A director Martin Roth lauded Pink Floyd as “an impressive and enduring British design story of creative success” who didn’t just create extraordinary music but who “have for over five decades been pioneers in uniting sound and vision, from their earliest 1960s performances with experimental light shows, through their spectacular stadium rock shows, to their consistently iconic album covers.” The exhibition follows 2013’s wildly successful David Bowie Is exhibition, and was announced on Pink Floyd’s official Twitter in the best possible way. The band flew an inflatable pig over the museum this morning as a nod to one of the staple props of their live shows.
“The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains” runs from May 13 to October 1 next year. Tickets are on sale now.
Credits
Text Hannah Ongley
Image via Twitter