Rockezine.com interview with Pink Noise on Apr 10, 2003

with Harmjan Olthoff on Apr 10, 2003

In 2000 and 2001 Pink Noise from Groesbeek, the Netherlands performed Pink Floyd’s The Wall in its entirety in their hometown. Including thirteen musicians, a real wall, projections, dolls, costumes and acting, it was an audiovisual spectacle that amazed those who were there. In 2002, they were invited to play in the concert hall De Vereeniging in Nijmegen. All assumed this would be the last show, but they caught the attention of a travelling entertainment company, LEO Events, who asked them to perform some shows with them. Now the Wall will rise again, at least twice, in Oosterhout and Roosendaal. And as if one concept album is not enough they will be supported by My Generation, who will perform the Who’s Tommy. Rockezine sat down with lead guitarist, singer and one of the initiators of the project, Harmjan Olthoff, to talk about their Wall.
		Well, let’s start at the beginning: you are one of the initiators of Pink Noise and the whole project; how on earth did you get this idea of wanting to perform The Wall? And when did you first get the idea? Hem…. In ’96? I don’t really remember… we had decided to shock the people in Groesbeek by performing two Floyd songs live at a band contest, with a band that featured some of Pink Noise’s current musicians, though not all on their current instruments. The performance was a success; so afterwards Rob van Elst (organizer of the yearly “Rocknacht” (rock night, a live festival in Groesbeek) and great Pink Floyd fan) asked us if it wouldn’t be a good idea for us to perform the entire Wall. Rob and some others had already once performed The Wall in a lip-synch version for a full house, so I reckoned, if they had been a success in lip-synch; we could do a better job by playing it live.
		Why The Wall? Because they had done it before? Well, The Wall is a great concept album. It’s a great story from beginning to end, and well... Why not The Wall? Rob van Elst is a complete Wall-craze, and as for us… well… it could have been any Floyd album I suppose, but we reckoned The Wall would be best.
		So then you went and gathered a band… Yes, well, we had a few musicians already; Dirk (Schmiermann, drums), (Sander) Hoppe (bass), and me, and then we went and looked for people who might like such a thing. That was not too easy, I can tell you. In the beginning, we didn’t know if and where we would ever actually perform it, it was just: hey, let’s gather some people and see how far we can get. Then we found a drummer, as Dirk originally would play the second guitar, and we found a keyboard player, and that’s how we started. Only the drummer never showed up for rehearsals, so we fired our drummer, fired our second guitarist, and asked if he would like to come and play drums with us. The keyboard player found out he didn’t have enough time, and he kind of feared that if he would go and play The Wall for years, he would no longer be able to appreciate the music, so he quit. So then we asked Paulus (Rob Pouwels, keyboards). I knew him well, and knew he had already been playing keys in a kind of sloppy way on a cheap keyboard, and I thought he deserved better than that. And some more people joined, and some others, and so on, in fact all of them friends or people we knew. But still there was no real plan, it was just fun to do and see how far we could get making this music.
		And when did you start to think about actually performing it, with show and everything? Stichting Rocknacht had had that idea for quite some time, and we, well, after practising for a few years, slowly we kind of got the idea we might actually do it! In De Hoeve (a local disco and Rocknacht’s home base), ‘cause that was easy; we knew the people and they went out of their way for us, we had an entire week to prepare the show, to try things out and do sound checks etc.
		Never had any second thoughts? Never. Me, Dirk and Hoppe were very dedicated, and three stubborn pigheaded people can accomplish quite a lot if they want to. We never thought: oh no this is not gonna work, just: this might not work if we don’t work hard enough. So we just told everyone to work as hard as they could.
		So how did that go, trying to master The Wall? It’s not just anything… No, but it isn’t everything, either. No really, in the beginning it was no big deal at all. I knew The Wall by heart and so did Hoppe; Dirk was rather familiar with it, so the three most important musicians were fine. Paulus did not know much of Floyd, but then he didn’t know much of keyboards, either, so he was easily malleable. It was not so hard, just a matter of lots of rehearsals, and learning to play together.
		How do you feel about the fact that Floyd themselves have stopped performing? Well, I have some mixed emotions about that. On the one hand, of course, it’s a crying shame, especially considering their reason: they think they are too old to play. And that’s rubbish. You’re never too old to make music. Look at my father (accordionist in Pink Noise)! But on the other hand, they had stopped creating the real psychedelic Pink Floyd music that made them famous years before… their music was not less, just… different.
		Since Roger Waters left, or...? Mmmm… Don’t really know. I mean, The Wall is not really comparable to the earlier albums, like Animals, Meddle or Wish You Were Here. The musical image is different. The other albums often did have a certain theme, but that usually was a social issue, not an issue of one person who happened to have certain feelings… the Wall to me is a story that I can’t really relate to, but which is told by extraordinary music, and in the movie, by images as well.
		Yes, there are different versions of The Wall: the album, the movie, the live-shows… which version do you perform? We mostly followed the album in making our show, but also took quite a few pieces from the film; like parts of “Mother”; and “When The Tigers Broke Free”, which is not on the album; on the other hand we do play “Hey You”, which is not in the film. And we took some parts from The Wall – Live, like “The Last Few Bricks”, which is used to complete the wall if it is not finished by the end of the set, and is some kind of a summary of CD1. And finally we took some parts from The Pulse: “Comfortably Numb” is kind of a mix between The Delicate Sound Of Thunder and The Pulse, in which the vocals are like The Delicate, and the last solo is from The Pulse (grins broadly, as this solo is his major moment of glory in the show)
		What can people expect from your show? Well, no blue screens any more, ha ha! No seriously, kind of like Floyd did it themselves. Build a wall, close it, throw it down, that’s what the show is really about. In our last shows we also had puppets; this time we probably will only use animations, as the puppets have not really survived our last show. We used to project images of the band playing behind the wall on the wall during the second part of the show, but we don’t do that any more. There are some light effects, and acts are performed in front of the wall. Sometimes a brick is removed from the wall to give a glimpse of what happens behind it, as Floyd did in the 80-81 show. There are catwalks on which I walk during the “Comfortably Numb”-solo. Unfortunately fireworks will probably not be permitted.
		Is Stichting Rocknacht still involved with this show? Of course. They arrange the show; do the supervision, the projections, the instructions for the people who construct the wall, all that. LEO Events take care of the sound and lights, and the wall constructors. You don’t see them, but the total amount of people involved with one show is about 50 to 60.
		Did you ever get any negative reactions on your performance of The Wall? No not really. The negative reactions we did get were about the location or the projections, not about the music. And those were only about the first two shows; we had no negative comments at all after our show in De Vereeniging.
		You have two shows planned now, what are you going to do after that? Pfoooh… don’t know. We don’t plan to perform The Wall any more, but then, we didn’t plan to do so after we played in De Vereeniging, either. But there was this agency that arranges parties, and they wanted to make their two-day party a three-day one, with Pink Floyd on Friday. They asked Pink Project, who didn’t feel like doing it, and then they asked us, and we thought, hell, why not. We don’t exist any more, but let’s see if anyone feels like doing it again. I knew that there were at least a few band members who thought well, as we know it already, why not do it a few times more. And surprisingly enough we got the whole band back together, except for one singer, who had become a mother and didn’t have the time any more. But we got a good replacement! And after those two shows… we hem… take a beer! And then… another one! And we will see what happens…
		Will Pink Noise continue to exist after you stop performing The Wall? That chance surely exists…
		And what will the next project be? Animals!
		You end the show by saying: “Isn’t this where…”. Can you explain why you do that? Well, the album The Wall starts with: ”…we came in.”, and ends with “Isn’t this where…”. “Isn’t this where we came in”; it’s a cycle, a vicious circle you can’t get out of. When it is over it is just beginning...
		for more details and tickets, www.thewall2003.nl (Tressy Arts)