Pink Floyd

Two nights at the Casino

The band’s first visit is almost forgotten. On 21 November 1970, Pink Floyd played at the Casino de Montreux as part of the Super Pop 70 festival. The concert went well enough for them to be added to the following afternoon’s bill: they played again on the 22nd.

That night’s repertoire was the one from before the fame: “Astronomy Domine”, “Careful with That Axe, Eugene”, “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”, “A Saucerful of Secrets” in a twenty-minute version. A band still psychedelic, a long way from the stadiums it would fill ten years later.

Those two concerts took place in the original Casino, the one that would burn down thirteen months later during Frank Zappa’s concert.

“Atom Heart Mother” at the Pavillon

Ten months later the band returned, this time to the Pavillon, on 18 and 19 September 1971, invited by the Septembre Musical, Montreux’s classical music festival. A psychedelic rock band programmed by an institution devoted to Beethoven and Brahms: the boldness deserves noting. They were touring “Atom Heart Mother”, a twenty-three-minute suite they occasionally performed with brass and choir.

The programme of those two nights also included “Echoes”, which would fill an entire side of “Meddle”. The album would not be released until the following month: the Montreux audience thus heard the piece before it existed on record.

One detail ties it all together: the Pavillon is the theatre where Claude Nobs would install Deep Purple three months later, after the fire, and where the backing track of “Smoke on the Water” would be recorded.

The Chillon viaduct on an English poster

The band’s most visible trace in Montreux is neither a concert nor a record: it is an image. In 1975, the graphic studio Hipgnosis composed the poster announcing Pink Floyd’s concert of 5 July at Knebworth Park in England.

The setting chosen was a retouched photograph of the A9 motorway on the Chillon viaduct, then newly built. The castle can be made out below, along with a cyclist at a standstill and bicycle parts that Hipgnosis scattered across the sky. The slogan, “All Roads Lead To Knebworth”, takes on its full meaning on that road suspended above Lake Geneva.

Nick Mason returns to the same address

Fifty-four years after those two nights in November 1970, Pink Floyd’s drummer was back on a Montreux stage. On 13 July 2024, Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets played at the Casino, as part of the Montreux Jazz Festival.

The coincidence is twofold. It is the same address as in 1970, even though the building is no longer the same: that one burned down in December 1971, and the present Casino was rebuilt in 1975. And above all, Mason’s project is devoted to the band’s years from 1967 to 1972, which is precisely the repertoire he played here on his two visits.

For the occasion he was joined by Gary Kemp, co-founder of Spandau Ballet, and Guy Pratt, bassist on Pink Floyd tours since 1987.