News

Playwright Tom Stoppard died Nov. 29 in Dorset, England. He was 88.

A renown playwright — “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” (1966), “Jumpers” (1972), “Travesties” (1974) and “The Real Thing” (1982) to name just a few — he also wrote for the screen: “Brazil” (1985), “Empire of the Sun” (1987), “Billy Bathgate” (1991), “Shakespeare in Love” (1998) and others.

His 2006 play “Rock ‘n’ Roll” references Pink Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett. Barrett’s mental decline plays a role in the play’s storyline.

Stoppard also wrote “Darkside,” a BBC Radio 2 production to celebrate Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” (1973) album on its 40th anniversary.

(Photo by Gorup de Besanez)

Adrian Maben, who directed the 1972 concert film “Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii,” has died, according to the official Pink Floyd Facebook page.

The French edition of Wikipedia lists the date and place of his passing as Oct. 28 in Ivry-sur-Seine, outside Paris, France.

Maben, who was 82, not only directed the film, but conceived of the concept of the band playing to an empty amphitheatre at the ancient Italian city that was buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD.

The Internet Movie Database lists 20 directing credits for Maben, including 1978’s “Magritte” about the Belgian surrealist artist with music from Floyd’s Roger Waters; and 2005’s “The Making of Ca Ira,” a documentary about Waters’s opera released that same year.

(Photo: “Adrian Maben in Pompeii” by Matej Zloch, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.)

Wish You Were Here album cover

Hollywood stuntman Ronnie Rondell Jr., pictured ablaze on the cover of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” (1975) album, has died. He was 88.

He died Tuesday at a senior living commumity in Osage Beach, MO.

Rondell, who came from a family of stuntmen, doned a layer of protecting fireproofing under a business suit, was dosed with gasoline, and set on fire 15 times for the Hipgnosis photo shoot on the Warner Bros. backlot in Los Angeles. (Danny Rogers was the model on the left.)

“The flames were blown back and ignited his real moustache for an instant,” Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis recalled. “A close shave, one might say.”

“There’s a funny thing about fire,” Rondell said. “When it gets in your face, you’re going to move.”

“He fell to the ground, absolutely smothered with foam and blankets and everything like that, and he got up, said, ‘That’s it. No more,’” according to Aubrey “Po” Powell, the Hipgnosis team member shooting the photos. “Luckily, I got it in the can.”

Rondell’s resume included work for TV series “Charlie’s Angels,” “Baretta,” “S.W.A.T.”,  “Fantasy Island,” “Dynasty,” “Hart to Hart,” “T.J. Hooker” and others.

His film work included “Lethal Weapon,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Diamonds Are Forever,” “Thelma & Louise,” “Speed,” and “Hooper,” among others.

He retired from Hollywood in  2000.

Read more about the “Wish You Were Here” photo shoot

Pink Floyd announced on the band’s social media feeds that engineer Brian Humphries died May 30.

According to the posts, Humphries was employed by Island Records and worked with groups such as Free and Traffic before leaving the label to work exclusively for Floyd. His early projects with the band included “Ummagumma” (1969), “Zabriskie Point” (1970) and “More” (1969).

In 1974 he became the band’s front-of-house sound mixer, a duty he performed on tours during ’75 and ’77, as well. He would eventually engineer “Wish You Were Here” (1975) and “Animals” (1977), as well as oversee the group’s Britannia Row Studios in the late 1970s.

This 1975 photo of Humphries was taken by Jill Furmanovsky during the making of “Wish You Were Here” at Abbey Road studios. More of Furmanovsky’s Pink Floyd images can be seen at www.rockarchive.com.

British artist and film maker Ian Emes, perhaps best known for his work with Pink Floyd, died last week at 73.

Emes created the animations that the band played during its performances of “Speak to Me,” “Time” and “On the Run” — all from “The Dark Side of the Moon” (1973). He also created a 55-minute film for the band’s “The Endless River” album in 2014; and a film to accompany “Nothing Part 14,” a 7-minute piece recorded by Floyd as part of the making of “Echoes” from “Meddle” (1971), and included in The Early Years: 1965–1972 (2016) boxset.

He also directed a film shown during Roger Waters‘s performance of “The Wall” in Berlin, Germany, in 1990.

Emes’s association with Floyd began in 1972 when keyboardist Rick Wright saw Emes’s animated short “French Windows” on the BBC’s “Old Grey Whistle Test” and contacted the artist. The piece was set to Floyd’s “One of These Days.”

“Pink Floyd called me!” Emes told The Birmingham Post in 2010. “They were my gods and they wanted to see me. I thought I had done something wrong initially. I thought they wanted to tell me off.”

On the contrary, the band commissioned Emes to create the “Dark Side” animations.

Emes also created a film for Linda McCartney‘s “The Oriental Nightfish,” recorded by Wings; a video for Duran Duran‘s 1982 track “The Chauffeur”; and did work for Mike Oldfield.

Joe Pascarell, co-founder, guitarist and vocalist of Pink Floyd tribute band The Machine, has passed away. No age or cause of death was announced.

The band announced his death on social media last Tuesday:

“It is with the most broken of hearts that we announce the passing of our friend, bandmate, and brother, Joe Pascarell,” the post reads. “We’re eternally grateful for the lifetime of friendship and music we’ve shared on-stage and off, and we know he will be with us as The Machine continues on. Shine on, Joe.”

Pascarell founded what’s considered the oldest Floyd tribute group with drummer Tahrah Cohen more than 30 years ago. Among a relatively crowded field of groups devoted to playing the music of Pink Floyd, The Machine stands out as spinning an especially accurate representation.

“They duplicate the sound and hits of Pink Floyd with chilling accuracy,” wrote Matt Diehl of Rolling Stone. “(They) look nothing like Pink Floyd, but that doesn’t matter — they sound exactly like Pink Floyd, and that’s what counts,” Matthew Webber wrote in Spin.

The New York-based group has played venues throughout North America, and has toured as far away as Central America, Europe and Asia.

When the question is asked of us — as it often is by fans of the “Floydian Slip” radio show — who we think is the best Floyd tribute band, our answer for many years continues to be: The Machine.

The group is dedicating its Feb. 5 performance at Berkshire Theatre Group’s Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, Mass., to Pascarell. They’ll be joined by Adam Minkoff.

Shine on, Joe.