Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / The Pink Floyd Airship [Highlight From Episode 273]

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The Pink Floyd Airship [Highlight From Episode 273] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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  Speaker 1: Here's a highlight from a recent episode of Booked on Rock.
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  Speaker 2: Legendary music promoter and longtime VP of Columbia Records, Paul Rappaport,
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  Speaker 2: tell me about the Pink Floyd Airship, biggest rock marketing
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  Speaker 2: event in history. You sat in the book. Yes, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: When I do big events, I like to take a
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  Speaker 2: page out of a band's music or their live show
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  Speaker 2: so that there's an authenticity to it, so that it
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  Speaker 2: makes sense for a fan to I'm going to do
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  Speaker 2: a big event, it's going to be like look here,
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  Speaker 2: but it needs to be attached in an authentic way
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  Speaker 2: to the band. Early on the book, you read about
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  Speaker 2: the Blue Oyster calling the laser beam shot because they
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  Speaker 2: were getting into laser technology. They were one of the
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  Speaker 2: first bands to use that in their production, so that
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  Speaker 2: made sense. When it comes to Pink Floyd, they were
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  Speaker 2: very famous for their inflatables. Anybody who ever saw the
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  Speaker 2: Animals tour subsequent tours had a giant pig that would
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  Speaker 2: float across the stadium. They're famous for inflatables. They're famous
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  Speaker 2: for bigger than in life, you know, for the wall
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  Speaker 2: they had the marry and nets. I mean, you just
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  Speaker 2: talking Florida's Ceiling Giant Puppets, and this is what they're
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  Speaker 2: known for. In nineteen ninety four, I knew that they
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  Speaker 2: would make a great album, and I knew that they
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  Speaker 2: would do a successful tour. But at this time, now
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  Speaker 2: I'm out of promotion. I mean, I'm now doing a
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  Speaker 2: marketing department for Columbus, sort of creative marketing department, and
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  Speaker 2: part of it is at these big events. So I'm thinking, Okay, Pink,
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  Speaker 2: it's nineteen ninety four. There's a lot of young people
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  Speaker 2: that are probably could be new fans, you know for
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  Speaker 2: Pink Floyd, Right, how do we get these people involved?
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  Speaker 2: How do we get them to know what a Pink
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  Speaker 2: Floyd is? Also, I knew they're going to sell a
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  Speaker 2: lot of music, but when you get to what is
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  Speaker 2: beyond superstardom, super duperstardom, I wanted something beatlesque. When the
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  Speaker 2: Beatles came to town, everybody knew they were in town. Your
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  Speaker 2: grandmother knew the Beatles were in town. I mean she
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  Speaker 2: knew what a Beatle was. She may not know the music,
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  Speaker 2: but you couldn't escape it. And so for Pink Floyd,
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  Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, that's what I want. I want
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  Speaker 2: something so big and so amazing that a whole city
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  Speaker 2: knows that Pink Floyd has an album and a tour.
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  Speaker 2: And I was sitting on the fourteenth floor of or
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  Speaker 2: maybe it was twenty six, I can't remem what for
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  Speaker 2: it was, but high above Manhattan and I look out
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  Speaker 2: my window. I'm looking over the Hudson River and I
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  Speaker 2: see the Budweiser blip. It's huge. When blimp's becomes so
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  Speaker 2: after they becomes so big, they call them airships. And
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  Speaker 2: there's this giant, floating, beautiful object. Maybe it's a thousand
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  Speaker 2: feet over the Hudson and it's just cruising. And I'm like,
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  Speaker 2: oh my god, we need one of those. And I
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  Speaker 2: thought it would be a pig. At first, I thought it,
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  Speaker 2: you know, it would be a flying pig. So I
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  Speaker 2: went to my assistant at the time and I said,
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  Speaker 2: find out who makes that and how do we get
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  Speaker 2: one and what does it cost? And it turns out
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  Speaker 2: that there are airship companies and they you know, the
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  Speaker 2: way the airships work is that you them, you paint them.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, Budweiser had its logos, and you know, met
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  Speaker 2: Life had theirs and Goodyear has theirs. And you can
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  Speaker 2: paint whatever you want. I thought it was going to
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  Speaker 2: be a pig, but Gilmore thought that was an old image.
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  Speaker 2: He wanted something new. The Division Bell album was about communication.
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  Speaker 2: I got on the phone with Storm thorguson who's their
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  Speaker 2: graphic designer, who legend Well, I spent a lot of
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  Speaker 2: time in the book. I want people to know Storm.
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  Speaker 2: I want to know what he did. I want them
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  Speaker 2: to understand how he worked because when you read about
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  Speaker 2: when you read about these album covers, how they're created,
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  Speaker 2: that it's mind blowing to read about how he does
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  Speaker 2: this stuff right, So this is not computer generated. These
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  Speaker 2: album covers are our works of art that he you know,
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  Speaker 2: that he photographed. And he designed a psychedelic airship with
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  Speaker 2: a bunch of faces facing each other in flames. And
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  Speaker 2: I mean this thing looked like a creature of its
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  Speaker 2: own when it flew, Like if you looked at it,
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  Speaker 2: you didn't even register as a blimp right away, registered
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  Speaker 2: as like something from Jules Verne. You know. It's like,
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  Speaker 2: you know, it's like a robar of the conquer, Like,
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  Speaker 2: what the hell is that thing flying in? This guy?
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  Speaker 2: And it was gorgeous. There's a great color picture of
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  Speaker 2: it in the book. You can find it on YouTube.
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  Speaker 2: I mean there's a video on YouTube of a little
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  Speaker 2: documentary about it. You'll read in the book about how
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  Speaker 2: you had to talk to President into it because it
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  Speaker 2: was a lot of money. But it became such an
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  Speaker 2: event because it could float from city to city, a
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  Speaker 2: giant airship, psychedelic Pink Floyd, even if you didn't look
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  Speaker 2: up and see it. I put rock stations in the
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  Speaker 2: gondola and they broadcast live from the Pink Floyd Airship,
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  Speaker 2: so you could be and I don't know, Chicago. Hey,
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  Speaker 2: this is Lynn Bremer from XRT. I'm broadcasting live from
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  Speaker 2: the Pink Floyd Airship and we're going to be flying
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  Speaker 2: by the Sears Tower in about thirty minutes if you
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  Speaker 2: want to wave to us as we fly by. We
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  Speaker 2: gave rides to fans, you know, with land and you
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  Speaker 2: could win a ride in the Pink Floyd Airship from
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  Speaker 2: your local record store and when you got in, you
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  Speaker 2: got a Sony walkmand you heard the new album The
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  Speaker 2: Division Bell the thing takes off, you know you're in heaven.
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  Speaker 2: The band loved it because they'd all become pilots and
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  Speaker 2: they wanted to log time in an airship, which I
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  Speaker 2: thought was fascinating. It was so huge because it got
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  Speaker 2: so much coverage, not only newspapers, not only radio, but
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  Speaker 2: television TV, Yeah, TV, because the traffic helicopters would be
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  Speaker 2: doing a traffic report. Oh, here's the so and so highway,
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  Speaker 2: but you know it's having trouble. But that's not you
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  Speaker 2: know the story today, this is And then the camera
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  Speaker 2: swings around. They're flying right next to this two hundred
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  Speaker 2: foot giant psychedelic flying machine that says Pink Floyd on it,
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  Speaker 2: and the guy in the television station going, what the
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  Speaker 2: heck is that? All of a sudden they're talking about
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  Speaker 2: Pink Floyd.
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  Speaker 1: They've been rocking stadiums and concert halls for the past
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  Speaker 1: three decades with a blend of heavy rock and spectacular shows.
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  Speaker 1: The elaborately designed stage pattern after their new Division Bell
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  Speaker 1: album that they've used next week has been in the
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  Speaker 1: works at JR since last week. And that's not all.
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  Speaker 1: Their North American thirty eight city tour is being promoted
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  Speaker 1: by the world's largest airship. We took a ride in
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  Speaker 1: their splashy two hundred foot long hand painted blimp and
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  Speaker 1: got a sneak peek at the completed stage at Joe
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  Speaker 1: Robbie Stadium.
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  Speaker 2: It was bigger than ever I knew it would be big.
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  Speaker 2: I didn't know it would be that. It was so
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  Speaker 2: successful that when the band went back to England they
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  Speaker 2: built one over there, a little bit of a smaller version,
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  Speaker 2: and they made it into a fish. I don't know why,
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  Speaker 2: but Storm wanted a fish, so I had a fish.
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  Speaker 2: But it was very Floydian. You know, it's big, it's psychedelic,
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  Speaker 2: it floats. It was miraculous.