Terra Firma On Fire
Revisiting Live at Pompeii - PART THREE
Together with the first half of our interview with director Adrian Maben
A four part analysis by Paul Powell Jr, with help and suggestions from Adrian Maben.
Unless
you live in close proximity to an active or dormant volcano, you could
wrap up an entire lifetime of experiences without concerning yourself
with pyroclastic flow, sulfuric acid clouds, or pumice ash. With over
1500 active volcanos on planet earth, today roughly 500 million people
live within the danger zone of one of nature's most unpredictable
explosive forces. Well beneath the earth's crust, the restless heat of
creation left over by the planet's formation 4.5 billion years ago,
occasionally cracks and bursts through terra firma, ejecting molten
rock, asphyxiating gas and various fragmental matter, often with
catastrophic results.
The Mount Vesuvius volcano
eruption in 79 AD directly impacted the ancient Italian cities of
Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae, destroying each location and
ultimately sending reverberations throughout the ancient world. Its
cataclysmic aftermath still influences people today from all walks of
life, enriching the science fields to inspiring the creative arts. In
this article, I'm going to encapsulate and explore the dynamics of
volcanism, visit the excavated city of Pompeii, and go behind the
scenes for the making of Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii with Director
Adrian Maben.
Picturesque yet notorious, Mount
Vesuvius is located 12 miles south-east of Naples, just inside the
coast of southern Italy, rising 1,281 meters above the Bay of Naples.
While currently quiet, the infamous mountain is the only active volcano
on the European mainland. Thanks to steady tourism, the nearby city of
Pompeii continues to thrive, attracting some 2.5 million visitors each
year. Some of these visitors are Floyd fans whom snap up pictures of
the area, especially the huge elliptical amphitheater where the Live at
Pompeii footage was shot. One of the many archaeological treasures, the
huge structure could hold up to 20,000 spectators, often gathering
there to watch bloodsports where gladiators or wild animals clash,
traditionally battling to the death. This ancient amphitheater, one of
the oldest elliptical structures known, antedates the Colosseum in Rome
by more than a century and a half, dating back to 70 BC.
In addition to the amphitheater,
there are two smaller theaters, three public baths richly decorated,
and a large rectangular forum floored with rich marble with rising
colonnades on both sides forming covered walkways. Outside Pompeii
itself, if you watch the Live at Pompeii film closely, you will
remember the Floyd were fascinated with the many bubbling mud holes on
a trek into the countryside. This primordial area is a short distance
west of Naples called the Phlegraean Fields. There the active landscape
is scarred with nasty little mudpots and steam vents called fumaroles,
and large shallow lakes bubbling with active gas emissions. Not really
a charming place to visit unless you are a vulcanologist, or a very
brave tourist.
Mount Vesuvius is part of a
classification of volcano known as a composite or stratovolcano,
characterized by their potential for being unpredictable and highly
explosive. Today, Pompeii's local residents may find it unsettling to
learn that Mount Vesuvius is still an active volcano. In December 1631,
the volcano unleashed another terrifying sequence of pyroclastic
surges, this time killing 4000 residents. The last major eruption of
the volcano in March 1944 sent lava and mud flows streaming into the
sea, ruining many houses along the way but sparing human lives.
Recently, Italian and French scientists found a massive reservoir layer
of magma located fives miles below the surface of Vesuvius and the
Phlegraean Fields.
Also located at the site is a
caldera, defined as a huge collapsed crater; the geological signature
of a supervolcano and the hardest to detect but most devastating
natural forces on earth. Currently six hundred thousand people live
within the 4.3 mile radius red zone of another volcanic eruption. A
plan by Italian officials to pay local residents to move away from the
volcanic danger zone has been met mostly with indifference, especially
the older settled population. Vulcanologists over the last decade have
become much better at predicting eruptions by listening to the
thousands of mini-earthquakes near volcano sites as magma pushes
upwards towards the earth's crust. As the frequency of seismic rumbles
increase, the risk of an eruption increases. For vulcanologists,
monitoring volcanoes up-close is the ultimate adrenaline rush, however
it does not diminish the deadly risk involved, for in 1993, ten
scientists surveying the crater of a Colombian volcano perished in an
unexpected blast. The Vesuvius Observatory, in collaboration with
world's best vulcanologists, are monitoring changes deep within the
magma chamber of the volcano, in preparation for that fateful day when
Mount Vesuvius wakes from her peaceful slumber.
The chain reaction of the Mount
Vesuvius cataclysm began on August 24, 79 AD when sticky hot magma
built up deep inside the volcano core until the mountain exploded
violently, ejecting massive amounts of burning gas and fragmented rock
material called pyroclastic flow, racing towards and destroying the
nearby cities of Herculaneum and Stabiae. In addition, the Mount
Vesuvius eruption also blasted unimaginable volumes of hot ash and
gases, pumice fragments and smoldering cinders 18 miles high into the
atmosphere, ultimately falling on Pompeii as a suffocating tomb of
death. The horrific volcanic fallout obliterated the city when over
three thousand people perished quickly in Mount Vesuvius' angry
eruption. Some scientific accounts place more than thirty feet of hot
ash accumulation in the city and surrounding countryside.
It is estimated that a total of
sixteen thousand people perished in the catastrophe with all three
cities and surrounding countryside combined. The archaeological
byproduct of Pompeii's cataclysm is that the many layers of ash
preserved the cities architecture mostly intact, including its
inhabitants, frozen in the short agonizing moments of their death.
Today you can see plaster casts of these bodies created by
archaeologists from pouring plaster into cavities left by the hardened
volcanic ash.
It took the rediscovery of
Pompeii in 1748 to facilitate the excavation of the city, revealing a
wealth of Roman style architecture and artwork in the form of intricate
floor mosaics and colorful wall frescoes. In recent years, a large
cache of erotic frescoes and sculptures excavated from the ruins of
Pompeii have gone on display in the National Archaeological Museum in
Naples, informing and captivating the public. The real irony is after
two thousand years of enduring earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and
droves of art treasure looters, it is mainly pollution from modern
times that threatens to erode much of Pompeii's classic art and
architecture.
While often majestic with their
snow-covered peaks, volcanic mountains like Japan's Mount Fuji,
Indonesia's Krakatoa and Tambora, California's Mount Shasta, Oregon's
Mount Hood, and Washington's Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier are
currently being monitored by vulcanologists for signs of seismic and
volcanic activity. The magnitude of volcanic eruptions are compared by
the VEI, or Volcanic Explosivity Index. Each succeeding category
represents a tenfold increase in explosivity over the next lower
category. For example, Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD and Krakatoa in 1883
were huge explosions scoring a VEI of 6. Mount St. Helen's dramatic
pyroclastic flow and avalanches in 1980 rated a VEI of 5, or very large
explosion. The largest volcanic explosion in modern times was Tambora
in 1815, rating a colossal VEI of 7, killing some 70,000 people and
blasting enormous amounts of pumice, rock and ash high into the upper
atmosphere.
The global environmental effects
from the Tambora eruption were so extreme that North America
experienced a year without summer in 1816, as a result of the massive
amount of atmospheric dust and sulfur dioxide gas blanketing out the
warming rays of sunlight. All over the earth disruptive weather changes
occurred; altered rain patterns shifted fertile moist lands into dry
arid ones, and along with a global temperature drop of some ten
degrees, there were unimaginable killing frosts and snowstorms all
during the summer months. It is hard for us to imagine today how a
volcanic eruption half-way around the world could ultimately result in
widespread crop failures, sending portions of the population into
famine and disorder, yet it reminds us how very fragile and precious
life is here on planet earth. While the colossal eruptor Tambora was
the greatest volcanic event in modern times, the Indonesian
supervolcano Toba some 74,000 years ago blasted a humongous 8 on the
VEI scale, effectively obliterating a large percentage of Earth's
population.
For the remainder of our revisit
to Live at Pompeii, we're moving briskly away from volcanoes and
Pompeii to present the first part of an extensive and revealing
interview with film director Adrian Maben. Just below the Maben
interview, I have included several weblinks for further reading on the
topics covered in this article. Next time around in our fourth and
final article in the Pompeii series, I'll review in-depth the newly
released Director's Cut DVD of Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii, and conclude
our insightful interview with Director Adrian Maben.
Interview with Adrian Maben - part one
Q: How did Mademoiselle Nobs get done?
Adrian Maben: During the
shoot in Paris, which took place in the spring of 1972 in order to
patch up some of the holes that had been left in the Pompeii live
footage, the group decided that they wanted to do a howling dog blues
sequence. Could I find a sensitive dog - preferably an Afghan - that
would "howl" when the harmonica was played? I had no idea about singing
dogs but I did remember Madonna Bouglione, the thirty year old daughter
(niece?) of the circus director Joseph Bouglione, who was known to walk
around the streets of Paris with an Afghan hound named Nobs. Could the
dog do the trick?
Madonna came to the Studios de
Boulogne in the outskirts of Paris pulling behind her on a lead the
nervous looking, skinny Nobs. David played the harmonica, Roger the
acoustic guitar and Rick kept the hound on the table and pointed the
microphone in the right direction. As it turned out Nobs was pretty
much in tune. By the time the film was released she had become a star...
Q: How was the city of Pompeii chosen as the site for your live footage? Why Pompeii and not Croydon?
Adrian Maben: The original
idea in 1971 was to make a film and use contemporary paintings or
sculptures by de Chirico, Delvaux, Magritte, Tinguely and Christo in
some kind of surrealistic decor. I naively thought that it would be
possible to combine good art with Pink Floyd music.
There was a rather embarrassing
first meeting in London with Steven O’Rourke, the manager, and David
Gilmour when I cautiously produced a few books and some photos of the
paintings. They were both polite and totally unconvinced. We agreed to
talk about the subject at a later date.
In other words, forget the whole idea.
In the early summer of that year
I went on holiday in Italy. I had this French girlfriend and I wanted
to take her to Rome - the city where I had studied film technique at
the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematographia. We traveled further South
by coach to Naples and then on to Pompeii. We paid our entrance fee to
the ancient city and trudged around under the hot sun in the afternoon:
The Forum, The Villa dei Misteri, The Temple of Jupiter...
In the early evening I discovered
that I had lost my passport somewhere in the ruins, possibly in the
amphitheater where we had sat and ate a sandwich. I rushed back to the
iron gate - one of the entrances to Pompeii at that time - and tried to
explain to the guards what had happened. Surprisingly they let me in
and I returned alone, retracing my steps along the empty streets of Pompeii, back to the amphitheater of stone walls and seats.
It was strange. A huge deserted
amphitheater filled with echoing insect sounds, flying bats and the
disappearing light which meant that I could hardly see the opposite
side of this huge structure built more than two thousand years ago.
I knew by instinct that this was the place for the film. It had
to be here. It somehow all came together that evening in the ancient
city. Film the empty amphitheater, resurrect the spirit of Pompeii with
sound and color, imagine that ghosts of the past could somehow return.
I never found my passport.
Later on I read Gradiva by W.
Jensen (and Freud's analysis of his story), in which a German
archaeologist walks round Pompeii under the midday sun and catches a
fleeting glance (or thinks that he catches a fleeting glance) of a
young woman dressed as though she had lived two thousand years ago. Is
this some kind of hallucination? Has he gone mad or does she really
exist? The atmosphere of the book, spooky and moving, was exactly the
kind of feeling that I wanted to establish for the film. Gradiva, the
impression that she might really be there, just round the corner so to speak.
Croydon, somehow, didn't have the same appeal.
There was another reason.
By the end of the sixties,
several concert films or reportages on musicians had already been made:
Bob Dylan’s gritty black and white tour in England "Don't Look Back,"
magnificently filmed by Pennebaker, The Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter,"
the Richard Lester films with the Beatles and above all "Woodstock"
released in 1969.
Most of these musical films relied heavily on the relationship between the band and their public. There had to be a vast audience, the band had to be seen as being hugely successful. Rock films had already become a cliché...
What was the point of doing the
same kind of concert film with the Floyd? Would it not be better to
find a different idea instead of doing yet another documentary with
fans and an enthusiastic public? Filming music should mean more than
simply recording a concert or following musicians on the road as they
travel from one city to the next.
Q: How did you get the Floyd’s equipment to Pompeii?
Adrian Maben: In those
days the Pink Floyd had a lot of equipment, in fact a vast amount of
equipment. It all had to be loaded up onto Avis trucks and driven down
from London to Pompeii. It probably took about three days to get there.
Q: Any sites in the city of Pompeii that you were restricted from filming? Were there any bureaucratic problems?
Adrian Maben: The
Soprintendenza of Naples - the official board that controls the site of
Pompeii - was certainly suspicious of letting a rock group play in the
amphitheater. After searching around I was lucky to meet a professor of
the University of Naples - professor Carputti - who had good
connections with the Soprintendenza and who was also a Pink Floyd fan.
After an exchange of letters and the payment of the entrance fee
(fairly steep even in those days) the problem was solved and we were
given permission to film within the walls of the amphitheater - and
elsewhere - for a period of six days.
Q: What was the reaction of the locals?
Adrian Maben: Only a few
children from Pompeii (about ten) found their way into the amphitheater
while we were working there. They sat quietly in a corner behind the
cameras and occasionally darted out to ask for an autograph from the
members of the band, from the manager Steven O’Rourke, or from the
sound engineers...
Thirty years later I returned to
Pompeii for the Director’s Cut to request permission to do a low flying
helicopter sequence above the streets of the ancient city. I found
myself in the Tourist Authority Information Center. The director, a
well dressed man in his late thirties, immediately recognized me and
said, "How strange to see you here again. I was one of the children who
watched the film being made in 1971! What can I do to help?"
Thanks to that chance meeting the helicopter shot suddenly became possible.
Q: How were the tracks selected for the film ?
Adrian Maben: Echoes Part
I and Part II because the album Meddle was about to be released. The
other tracks were mostly chosen by the band. I politely and cautiously
requested Saucerful of Secrets because I thought that it would look
great in the amphitheater with Roger’s spectacular beating of the gong
and David’s controlled improvisation on the Stratocaster.
Q: Any anecdotes about the shoot?
Adrian Maben: After having
more or less agreed to do the film in Pompeii the Floyd were insistent
on one technical point: NO PLAYBACK. The sound had to be
recorded live, as though we were making a record, on 16 track tape. As
it turned out the quality of the recording was exceptional - probably
because of the natural acoustics of the stone built amphitheater.
One day, a stereo CD should be
made with all the rehearsals, the outtakes and the noise of the
children playing. There’s a lot of unused material on those tapes.
It took us three days to get the
electricity to work in the amphitheater. I was going crazy trying to
get the problem fixed while the group was hanging around doing nothing
because there was nothing to do. On the third day of despair Peter
Watts suggested we fly in an Englishman from London. "An electrical
wizard," he said with enormous conviction. "Someone who could fix the
problem in the twinkling of an eye."
We were just about to ring him
when suddenly, miraculously, the current was switched on. A gigantic
cable stretched from the amphitheater to a modern Church in the town of
Pompeii...
There was also this idea of
filming the band in a restaurant. The Hotel where we were staying would
have been the ideal place to film such a sequence. We all wanted to do
it. There would have been Italian waiters and pasta and local wine and
lots of chit chat. In the end the idea was abandoned - there was no
time and no money - but it returned like a boomerang to the Abbey Road
Studio canteen a few years later.
Tea and apple pie (without the crust) were on the menu.
Thirty years later, during the
making of the Director’s Cut, I returned to Pompeii and went round to
revisit the old Hotel. All the shutters of the thirty odd rooms were
drawn. It had obviously been closed down for years, it had become
abandoned property - a sort of second Pompeii.
I thought of using it for the
Director’s Cut. But would it be possible to get in touch with the
owners, to revisit the dusty bedrooms and the large restaurant and
kitchens where we never managed to film? Would they agree? And even if
I used this new sequence would anybody who saw the film understand the
passage of time?
I also distinctly remember
listening to the first recording of Echoes in my hotel room. The band
had brought me a sample vinyl record and I listened to it with the help
of a portable plastic gramophone borrowed from the concierge. Overnight
I had to finish the technical analysis (camera angles, position of the
tracking shots etc) with a pen, a ruler, a stop-watch borrowed from the
script girl, Marie-Noelle Zurstrassen, and a child’s exercise book.
I've still got the exercise book somewhere...
After the sixth day of the shoot
the Floyd left immediately and the producer wasn’t able to pay the
Hotel bill. No more cash! I was asked to remain in the Hotel - a
prisoner of Pompeii - and to wait for the money to arrive.
The crew had departed. The
negative film had been taken to Rome and would then (hopefully) be
flown to Paris to be developed and printed. As I sat alone in the Hotel
and drank too much wine I mused on what to do next. Above all, there
was the nagging question about whether the band would accept to play
later in Paris to fill in the holes that I had left in the Pompeii
shoot because of the tight schedule.
Helpful Links on Volcanoes and Pompeii:
Volcano World Vesuvius page:
http://www.volcanoworld.org/vwdocs/volc_images/img_vesuvius.html
Volcano educational pages:
http://www.onlinecollegeclasses.com/volcanic-and-geological-resources.html
Smithsonian Institutution Global Volcanism Program:
http://www.volcano.si.edu/gvp/
United States Geological Survey:
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/
Official Pompeii site, Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei:
http://www.pompeiisites.org/database/pompei/pompei2.nsf
If you're planning on going to Pompeii on a budget:
http://www.touritaly.org/pompeii/pompeii-main.htm
To learn more about Pompeii excavations and preservation efforts:
http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/pompeii/index.html
To learn more about Pompeii's erotic art scene, search for "Pompeii" at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/default.stm
|