Live at Pompeii film premier premier erupts with Pink Floyd’s original analogue PA with Celestion drivers
Over half a century from its original filming, Pink Floyd’s iconic concert film, Live at Pompeii, has been digitally re-mastered in 4K with a new high-resolution, Dolby Atmos audio mix by Steven Wilson. Thanks to the meticulous restoration efforts of author and audio historian, Chris Hewitt of CH Vintage Audio, a once in a lifetime opportunity arose for attendees of the world premiere screening to experience the film’s soundtrack through Pink Floyd’s original analogue PA system used during their 1971 performance in the ancient Roman Amphitheatre. The WEM PA system, groundbreaking for its time, features period-authentic Celestion G12, G10, and MH1000 drivers.
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Chris Hewitt’s journey into the world of audio began early. “I started listening to rock albums in grammar school,” he says. After leaving for college at 16, he started promoting bands through the student union. This led to work as a road manager and sound engineer, with his first festival gig coming before he turned 17, working with the Grateful Dead. Over his career, he supported a who’s-who of early punk acts including The Sex Pistols, The Damned, Motörhead, The Stranglers, and many others. Today, Hewitt owns CH Vintage Audio, housing “one of the largest collections of 1960s and 1970s sound equipment”.
Pink Floyd
Hewitt’s fascination with Pink Floyd’s started decades ago. He recalls first seeing them live around 1969 and being “blown away” by their innovative use of audio, particularly in their opening number “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” which started the set with the sounds of frying eggs and bacon panning around the room. Inspired by a photo on the back of the Ummagumma album sleeve that showed the band’s gear laid out, it became a dream to one day own a large PA system like theirs.
Live at Pompeii
The path to owning Pink Floyd’s actual Pompeii PA began incrementally. “I started off by buying six WEM Audio Masters that belonged to Pink Floyd,” Hewitt explains. From there, as people learned he was collecting Pink Floyd gear, offers started coming in. While some later PAs used by the band were “fairly standard technology for the time,” Hewitt notes that the Pompeii and Dark Side of the Moon PAs were “unique” and represented “groundbreaking live sound” for their era.
The Live at Pompeii PA system was created by WEM (Watkins Electric Music), a UK company considered a pioneer in large-scale concert sound reinforcement. A hallmark of the WEM sound, and this PA specifically, was their use of Celestion drivers in select models.
For local Celestion enquiries, keep reading at ELFA.
