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Jeff Beck passes away; David Gilmour posts tribute

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Very sad news broke last night – the acclaimed, legendary guitarist Jeff Beck died at the age of 78. His family posted the following on his Twitter page: “On behalf of his family, it is with deep and profound sadness that we share the news of Jeff Beck’s passing. After suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis, he peacefully passed away yesterday. His family ask for privacy while they process this tremendous loss.” David Gilmour posted the following on his and Pink Floyd’s socials: “I am devastated to hear the news of the death of my friend and hero Jeff Beck, whose music has thrilled and inspired me and countless others for so many years. Polly‘s and my thoughts go out to his lovely wife Sandra. He will be forever in our hearts.” Jeff’s career started when he left Wimbledon Art College to join Screaming Lord Sutch and the Tridents, subsequently joining the Yardbirds in 1965 when Eric Clapton left. A couple of years later he formed his own Jeff Beck Group (with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood in the band). In later years, he concentrated on his successful solo career. The quality and style of his guitar playing led to many guest appearances. His work on Roger Waters’ 1992 album Amused To Death was a musical highlight of that work, and during Jeff’s gigs at the Royal Festival Hall in London, September 2002, he was joined onstage by Roger for them to play What God Wants parts 1 and 3. Two years later, Jeff shared the bill with David Gilmour for the 2004 Teenage Cancer Trust concert at the Royal Albert Hall, and in July 2009, again at the Royal Albert Hall, David and Jeff performed an extended version of Jerusalem, William Blake’s poem that became a hymn (seen to the left), followed by Hi Ho Silver Lining (one of Jeff’s biggest hits) with David on vocals and lead guitar. In May 2018, Still On The Run: The Jeff Beck Story (https://www.brain-damage.co.uk/archive/jeff-beck-documentary-including-david-gilmour-contribution-dvd-blu-ray-c.html) was released on DVD and Blu-ray, which includes contributions from David Gilmour as well as Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart and many more.

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Gerald Scarfe: The Art Of Pink Floyd The Wall – hardback book

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To be published (with a slight delay to the previous date) on December 2nd, 2021 by Little, Brown, is The Art Of Pink Floyd The Wall. This is a beautiful new, 288-page hardback book, in landscape format housed within a cardboard sleeve (shown to the right), that reveals a huge amount of rare and previously unseen sketches, paintings and more, created by Gerald Scarfe principally for The Wall project, but also including earlier materials, for Wish You Were Here and Animals, for example. It is an expensive book, but the work involved bringing together the breadth of material within, and the quality of its presentation, help to justify the price tag. Prefaced with a slightly bizarre foreword by Roger Waters (that is not overly illuminating!), Scarfe’s lengthy and absorbing introduction reveals that his first experience of Pink Floyd at UFO in London, 1967. Fast forward to 1973 and – in Nick Mason’s kitchen – Scarfe was asked to work on stuff for the Floyd’s upcoming Wish You Were Here project, specifically animations for the live shows, and of course, the 1974 Winter Tour programme and poster. Even at this stage, the rare images start to flow, with more traditional and recognisable sketches of the band members during their rehearsals, and a spider becoming a screaming Medusa head for Shine On You Crazy Diamond. Of course, the main body of the book concerns his work with Roger Waters and the rest of the band from 1978 onwards. Waters presented his raw demo tapes and explained the concept to Scarfe, who then set about designing the various characters who would inhabit the story; these would inevitably change as the process went on, and some never went past the initial few months (such as Punch and Judy being the main characters). The introduction continues with thoughts of the live show, including the inflatable slug or worm that would be transported from location to location to play the concerts in a venue that the band had total control over. Scarfe discusses his experience of the actual concerts, then talks about the “final part of Roger’s original ambition” for The Wall – the feature film. Scarfe then touches on the Waters Pros & Cons project, including the origins of the name Reg. He concludes the introduction by setting out his aims for this book, looking at things up to current times, and how going through his archives revealed to him that he could cover the whole story – and also showed him that some of the elements were in retrospect very personal to him and his life. The conclusion of the introduction also sees the end of Scarfe’s narrative in a traditional sense, with the rest of the book taken up with a couple of hundred further pages entirely taken up with pictures, paintings, drawings, and more, all accompanied with Scarfe’s footnotes about each image. This arguably works much better, as he isn’t forced into coming up with a narrative which isn’t really needed. It also allows him the ability to give short, pithy, and sometimes amusing captions which wouldn’t fit in to a more conventional rundown.

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Pink Floyd featuring Andriy Khlyvnyuk releasing new music

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Just announced: Pink Floyd are releasing new music in support of the people of Ukraine entitled ‘Hey, Hey, Rise Up’, which will be available digitally from midnight tonight, with all proceeds going to Ukrainian Humanitarian Relief. The track (recorded last Wednesday, March 30th) sees David Gilmour and Nick Mason joined by long time Pink Floyd bassist Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards, and features an extraordinary vocal performance by Andriy Khlyvnyuk of Ukrainian band Boombox. Andriy’s vocals are taken from his Instagram post of him singing in Kyiv’s Sofiyskaya Square. The song itself, ‘Oh, The Red Viburnum In The Meadow’ is a rousing Ukrainian folk protest song written during the first world war which has been taken up across the world over the past month in protest of the invasion of Ukraine. The title of the Pink Floyd track is taken from the last line of the song which translates as ‘Hey, hey, rise up and rejoice’. In the press release, Gilmour, who has a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and grandchildren said: “We, like so many, have been feeling the fury and the frustration of this vile act of an independent, peaceful democratic country being invaded and having its people murdered by one of the world’s major powers”. Gilmour explained how he came to know Andriy and his band Boombox. “In 2015, I played a show at Koko in London in support of the Belarus Free Theatre, whose members have been imprisoned. Pussy Riot and the Ukrainian band, Boombox, were also on the bill. They were supposed to do their own set, but their singer Andriy had visa problems, so the rest of the band backed me for my set – we played Wish You Were Here for Andriy that night. Recently I read that Andriy had left his American tour with Boombox, had gone back to Ukraine, and joined up with the Territorial Defence. Then I saw this incredible video on Instagram, where he stands in a square in Kyiv with this beautiful gold-domed church and sings in the silence of a city with no traffic or background noise because of the war. It was a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music.” While writing the music for the track, David managed to speak with Andriy from his hospital bed in Kyiv where he was recovering from a mortar shrapnel injury. “I played him a little bit of the song down the phone line and he gave me his blessing. I hope that we do something together in person at some point in the future.” Gilmour wanted “to show our support for Ukraine and in that way, show that most of the world thinks that it is totally wrong for a superpower to invade the independent democratic country that Ukraine has become.” The video for ‘Hey Hey Rise Up’ was filmed by acclaimed director Mat Whitecross and shot on the same day as the track was recorded. Gilmour: “We recorded the track and video in our barn where we did all our Von Trapped Family live streams during the lockdown. It’s the same room that we did the ‘Barn Jams’ with Rick Wright back in 2007. Janina Pedan made the set in a day and we had Andriy singing on the screen while we played, so the four of us had a vocalist, albeit not one who was physically present with us.” The artwork for the track features a painting of the national flower of Ukraine, the sunflower, by the Cuban artist, Yosan Leon. The cover of the single is a direct reference to the woman who was seen around the world giving sunflower seeds to Russian soldiers and telling them to carry them in their pockets so that when they die, sunflowers will grow. You can hear/buy the new song via PinkFloyd.lnk.to/HeyHeyRiseUp (http://PinkFloyd.lnk.to/HeyHeyRiseUp) from midnight tonight (12am on Friday, April 8th) in your location.

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The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains coming to Montreal, Canada!

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Announced this lunchtime: Canada has been confirmed as the sixth country to host The Pink Floyd Exhibition: Their Mortal Remains, the magnificent and critically acclaimed major retrospective of Pink Floyd, their music and the impact the band had on art and culture. Following its hugely successful debut at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum in 2017, which saw over 400,000 people attend, the exhibition has subsequently traveled to Italy, Germany, Spain and the United States attracting over 500,000 people and will now take residency in the cultural hub of Montreal. The Exhibition opens on November 4 at Arsenal Contemporary Art Montreal, which should be the perfect venue for the immersive experiential journey through Pink Floyd’s world. The band played in Montreal a number of times, including the concert which concluded the 1977 tour, and inspired The Wall. The exhibition is due to run for the rest of the year, with an anticipated closing date of December 31, 2022. Tickets for the exhibition have just gone on sale via PinkFloydExhibition.com (http://www.pinkfloydexhibition.com) and as before, advance booking is highly recommended as popular times and dates will no doubt sell quickly. Opening hours each week for the exhibition are as follows: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays: 10:00am to 6:00pm (time of last entry)
Fridays, Saturdays: 10:00am to 7:00pm (time of last entry)
Sundays: 10:00am to 5:00pm (time of last entry)  Ticket prices include the excellent audioguide which attendees to previous stagings of the exhibition will know is an extremely well designed facility which will really enhance your visit. For more information about the exhibition, either check out the various articles here on Brain Damage, or visit www.pinkfloydexhibition.com (http://www.pinkfloydexhibition.com).

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