Chris Barnes and The Australian Pink Floyd Show (TAPS) aren’t just a tribute band, they basically invented the genre. TAPS has spent over 35 years touring the world and bringing the music and stage show of Pink Floyd to the masses. TAPS is on a US tour through September, and vocalist Chris Barnes recently took some time to talk about the band’s amazing story.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws interview with The Australian Pink Floyd vocalist Chris Barnes.
On what fans can expect on this tour – It is more of a “Greatest Hits” package. Obviously, last year we were doing Dark Side because it was its 50th anniversary and next year is Wish You Were Here’s 50th anniversary. So this is obviously advertisers are kind of like the “Greatest Hits”. So we’re covering everything from the Syd Barrett era right through all the pre-Dark Side stuff, the experimental period, right through the big albums of the 70s to the Gilmour era of the 80s and 90s.
Although it is the 30th anniversary of The Division Bell, we are doffing the cap to that album and playing a couple of tracks, one of which we’ve never played before, which has been quite special actually, just to catch people unaware that we suddenly break into this song that people don’t expect, and it’s going down really, really well. (It’s) “Marooned”, the instrumental from Division Bell. I’m not on that one, so I get to just stand at the side of the stage and watch Luc (Ledy-Lepine) play the guitar, and it’s just magical.
On The Division Bell – It’s a great album. It really is. I’m of a certain age where I remember that album actually coming out and being a big noise in 94. I was 17 then. I remember it getting to number one and hearing “Take It Back” and all these, this new era of Floyd, and then seeing the BBC put a documentary on and then showed what became the Pulse concert at Earl’s Court and recording that on a VHS and just watching it over and over again because they played Dark Side all the way through all that and that was a huge thing. This is a pre-internet era where you weren’t even sure how many albums they released, or what the albums were called, it was a really special time when that came out.
On how he first hooked up with TAPS – My introduction to the Aussie Floyd came about through, I ran a children’s music workshop in the town where I lived at the time, and the drummer’s daughter was one of the pupils there. I was aware of the band, I’d seen them several times, and she was like, “Oh my dad’s the drummer in Aussie Floyd”, I knew who he was straight away. He came back from a tour and came in and he helped out whenever he was off tour, he would come in and play, teach drums, and one night we were packing the equipment up and we were chatting and stuff, and I was telling all about the things I’d done and it turns out we were both at the same university studying music, but we were a year apart, so we didn’t know each other. Talking about mutual friends we had or whatever, and, and it was just chatting and I had a really big interest in Pink Floyd, I think he just said to me that night, “Oh, you know, if ever there was an opening, would you be interested?” I was like, “Yeah, yeah, I would”. But then it took a bit of time. It took a couple of years, I think about four years or something. But in the meantime, the kids from the music workshop got on stage with the band and sang the, “We don’t need no education” part of “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2” all in their school uniforms with their ties and stuff marching on the stage. My daughter was one of those people, as was his daughter. So that was just really cool. So through that I got to meet the band and hang out with them and stuff and did that a couple of years with them. I was kind of on the radar then at that point. So I just had to bide my time, as they say.
On if he ever saw Pink Floyd live – No, I hadn’t. No, I couldn’t afford to go to London to watch that concert I mentioned that was shown on the BBC. But I’d been aware of Pink Floyd since a very early age. My brother and I were left a record collection when our cousin who lived with us for a while moved out and just left a load of stuff. In there was Relics, which is this early compilation with some Syd Barrett stuff and some early when Gilmour had just joined, so it’s kind of like 67 to 69. I remember, my brother Craig putting on “Arnold Layne” and really liking this pop song, essentially. Then he, obviously, being six years older than me, knew, then “Interstellar Overdrive” came on and it terrified me. I was only about five or six. He turned the light off in the bedroom and stopped me by going near the light switch and it’d be all these crazy noises and squeaks and feedback and all this crazy stuff. I’d just be absolutely beside myself with fear.
That’s what I thought Pink Floyd were pop songs and scary instrumentals. “Careful With That Axe Eugene”‘s on there as well. That’s got that scream in the middle and like, “What is this music?” Then I saw, when I was in my early teens, I saw the Pompeii concert on the telly and just watched it going, “Oh, this is that band off that album, but I don’t know any of these songs”. The first thing’s “Echoes” and that just blew me away. I think by the end of watching that concert from Pompeii, I was just in now, that was it. Then I went out and bought Meddle. I found an album “Echoes” was on. I bought Meddle that month or, that summer or something. I can’t remember exactly. Another friend of mine, we both would buy, we would find out what album titles there were and we’d buy one each and cassette copy across. Then another friend had an uncle with a big record collection. So I remember giving him a cassette and he copied me Atom Heart Mother when I was like, “What is this? What’s this brass section?”
There was such an interesting journey to go on because I say like pre-internet, you didn’t know the history or that Syd Barrett had left and I’ve probably thought that Syd Barrett was the guy singing on “Echoes”. I didn’t know, innocent times. We’ve got the world at our fingertips these days, but back in those days when you’re trying to find any guitar magazine, you’re rushing, “Oh, right. But what pedals did he use?.” Innocent times.
On TAPS approach to being a tribute band – Well, when the band was formed back in 1988, they set out this blueprint of it’s not going to be about us, the individuals, it’s about the music. The music is doing the talking, not the people on the stage. Because let’s face it, Floyd were kind of anonymous in the seventies. No one really knew what they looked like. They didn’t do lots of TV interviews on TV. They didn’t appear on The Tonight Show or something, talking about an album. They came from an underground kind of background, so they were kind of anonymous in many ways. I think because nobody’s wearing a wig, and Pink Floyd didn’t have an iconic frontman like a Freddie Mercury or a Mick Jagger running around on the stage, so the need to sort of dress up doesn’t really exist. Everyone wears black on stage. All the guys wear black. The girls, the backing vocalists, might wear a different color dress or something, because that was a later feature of Floyd later on, and then they expanded and they’re backing vocalists and a sax player and then expanded with an extra guitarist and an extra keyboard and so on and so on.
But really it is following that blueprint that Floyd kind of set down. When the Aussies got the band together, the original guys, still to this day we follow to the letter their kind of ethos of we’re going to play it like this it’s going to be like the album it’s not about how many notes I can play on the guitar or listen to my vocal range or something like that it’s we serve this music it’s an honor to play this music in the same way that an orchestra would do. You go and watch a classical concert no one’s like, “Hey, look, look who’s on third violin.” It’s not about that. It’s the music is the most important thing, but obviously hand in hand with that comes the fact that Floyd were a pioneering live production monolith touring the world. Our show is a replication of what you would expect to see if you went to see Pink Floyd, the circle screen with the films, really big light show that goes in sync with the music, and the lasers and inflatables. It’s a multimedia experience. You’re not just watching some guys in the corner of a room playing some songs. It’s unique in that respect.
On if he bases his vocal on a particular performance – Obviously the album is the most important. Certainly from the big four albums of Dark Side, Wish, Animals, The Wall, that’s the thing that everybody knows. Sometimes with some earlier material, pre-Dark Side stuff, you could possibly, for instance, when we played “Fat Old Sun”, on the album, it’s kind of five, six minutes, but their live arrangements used to stretch out to 15 minutes. So we created from various bootlegs. We cherry-picked various sections that we liked, and we would create on a computer this definitive version of what we then learned and certain vocal inflections Gilmour performed on that night. I might have incorporated that. We’re more from the live version than the studio version, but as I say, that’s an early track that might be lesser known that was expanded live you certainly wouldn’t think, “Oh, well, we’ll do “Money” tonight, but I’ll sing it differently because I can”. No one’s interested in that. No one’s interested in what I do. It’s about playing that music as it was on the album.
On if it’s important to have support of the original band – It’s well known that the band were booked to play for David Gilmour’s 50th birthday party back in 96. I wasn’t in the band then, but I’ve heard so much about that night that I could only imagine what was going through the band’s minds at that point. It must’ve been both amazing and extremely nerve-wracking at the same time. Obviously, we have Lorelei McBroom as one of our backing vocalists and she toured with the band in 87 and later in 89. No one has sort of gone out and said, “Oh, it’s this band, not this band that I like”. It’s not about that. Pink Floyd really aren’t those kind of guys. They’re very reserved and they’re not a picking sides kind of band.
I will just say a little story that when Nick Mason got the Sauceful Secrets off the ground. We went to see one of his warm-up gigs in a pub in London. There was a few hundred people there and about six or seven of us from the band were watching. After about five or six songs, Nick stood up and addressed the audience and said, “Oh, it’s kind of strange this, feel like I’m in my own tribute band”. Then he paused and went, “Perhaps this should be the Australian Nick Mason show”. Obviously, no one in the audience knew who we were because we’re nobody. But we looked at each other and had a little chuckle to ourselves. Nick said lovely things about us in the press and that’s very kind of him. Nick is the only member of the band I’ve ever met. I met him at a book signing and this is before I joined the band and he’s a delight. He’s so, so nice. He’s a lovely guy.
On if they feel a responsibility to carry the music forward as the band does not play anymore – As someone once said in the band, I can’t remember, I think it might’ve been Luc, one of the guitar players said,” It’s an honor to play this music”. In many ways, you’re just this conduit for this great music being played to a crowd and engaging from looking out at people. There are obviously people who saw the band back when they were an actual functioning entity, and obviously there are people kind of my age and younger, some like the age of my children, who are watching us. maybe been brought by their parents or grandparents or maybe just come off their own volition. I think that’s amazing that this music is just going to continue generation after generation because it still stays relevant. It’s not, to use a phrase, it’s not some old hippie music. Roger’s lyrics were really profound and really hit the sweet spot, certainly on Dark Side.
Those themes that he talked about, about the pressures of modern life are still relevant to this day. There’s no reference to something that happened in 1973 that people today will ask, “What does that mean?” Not everybody might not know what a Learjet is, but that’s probably the only thing I could think of off the top of my head.
On if the band ever considered doing original music – Not as a band as such. We spend six or seven months of the year together. I think the idea of going in a recording studio together would make it hard and everybody lives all over the planet as well. We’ve got people literally all over Europe and all over the States. So it’s logistically impossible, but through the wonders of technology, if somebody did write something and say, “I could really do with some saxophone on this”, and they could send it to Alex (Francois) in Chicago and he could stick his sax on it or whatever. But no, not as a 10-piece band. We’ve never sort of sat and we get asked that quite a lot of “You never written anything together?”, but this takes up so much of your life every year. A lot of the time, there isn’t time to contemplate sitting down and getting together and, “Oh, I’ve got these lyrics”, or whatever. Everybody does things. Everyone does like little bits. Most of my spare time on tour is spent sort of tinkering around on a laptop, coming up with various things, but no one’s got any desires to be the next Taylor Swift or Harry Styles or something. This is our focus. This is our purpose. This just keeps you from sitting in the pub all day. Well, not everybody does that I just want to just clarify we’re not a bunch of alcoholics touring the world.