Pink Floyd: behind the wall: the complete psychedelic history from 1965 to today 9781627880756, 1627880755

With a music career spanning nearly half a century, Pink Floyd is one of the most successful rock bands in history. With

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Pink Floyd: behind the wall: the complete psychedelic history from 1965 to today
 9781627880756, 1627880755

Table of contents :
First bricks --
The Syd Barrett years --
The doldrums --
Meddling through --
Lunar eclipse --
Postcards from the edge --
Dog eat dog --
Walls and burning bridges --
Cut to pieces --
Lapses and divisions --
Not just another brick.

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Pink Floyd B e hind t he Wall

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Pink Floyd B e hind t he Wall

Hugh Fielder THE COMPLETE PSYCHEDELIC HISTORY FROM 1965 TO TODAY

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contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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First Bricks The Syd Barrett Years The Doldrums Meddling Through Lunar Eclipse Postcards from the Edge Dog Eat Dog Walls and Burning Bridges Cut to Pieces

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6 16 40 52 70 94 110 126 148

10 Lapses and Divisions 11 Not Just Another Brick

Discography Albums Selected Bibliography Acknowledgments Picture Credits Index

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CHAPTER 1

F irst B r ic k s

RIGHT: People looking out over the River Cam below the King’s College Chapel spires in Cambridge, England. Three members of Pink Floyd grew up in this idyllic university town — Roger Waters, Syd Barrett, and David Gilmour.

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ven though Pink Floyd formed in London and first found success providing the musical soundtrack to the London psychedelic scene in the 1960s, the group’s origins are rooted 60 miles north, in the historic university town of Cambridge. This is not just because three of the band grew up there. Their music resonates with the unhurried and self-assured pace of Cambridge life, the elegant architecture, the carefully manicured lawns, the placid River Cam winding its way between the colleges. Cambridge was an idyllic place to grow up during the postwar years of the 1950s and 1960s. With 10,000 students in residence, the university was the town’s biggest employer, providing jobs for everyone from porters to professors. The flat terrain made it easy to get around by bike, and most people did. (Every now and again, your bike might be “borrowed,” but you’d find it a few days later at the police pound.) George Roger Waters, the oldest member of the Cambridge trio, was born 20 miles south of London, in Great Bookham, near Leatherhead, on September 9, 1943. His father, Eric Fletcher Waters, a religious and physical education teacher, was at the time serving as a Second Lieutenant with City of London Regiment of the 8th Battalion Royal Fusiliers. In January 1944 Eric was part of a landing force on the Italian peninsular of Anzio, and he was shot and killed on February 18, 1944, during the prolonged battle that followed. Roger was five months old when Eric died, but it wasn’t until he was three that he realized that—unlike the other children around ABOVE: A travel poster produced for London & him—he had no father. It North Eastern Railway (LNER) to promote rail affected him badly, and travel to Cambridge. would continue to do so as he grew older. As former Rolling Stone editor Timothy White later wrote, “I’d wager that there isn’t a day that goes by when Roger Waters doesn’t consciously and unconsciously mourn and miss the father he never knew—or hate the hierarchy of circumstances

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that robbed him of a parent.” The loss would inform much of his work with Pink Floyd, notably The Wall, The Final Cut, and his subsequent solo albums. In 1944 Roger’s mother, Mary Waters, moved the family to Cambridge, where her sister lived. She got a job in a local primary school, and within a few years she was teaching her son’s class. Two years later she found herself teaching another Roger: Roger Barrett. Naturally, Mary’s son was not about to start hanging around with a kid two years younger than him, but he was at least aware of the other Roger, who lived two doors from Mary’s sister. The two boys also went to the same Saturday morning art class, where Barrett found someone of his own age to paint with: David Gilmour. Roger Keith Barrett, later known as Syd, was born in Cambridge on January 6, 1946, the fourth of five children. His father, Dr. Arthur Barrett, was a pathologist at the nearby Addenbrooke’s Hospital. He was also a prominent figure in the town’s cultural life as a member of the University Botanical Society and oboist in the Cambridge Philharmonic Orchestra. Roger’s mother was a senior figure in the Cambridgeshire Girl Guide movement, and her son a keen Boy Scout. They lived in a large house with a big living room and kitchen where the parents and children would entertain their respective friends, often at the same time. Roger was a confident extrovert who was by all accounts indulged by his mother. He could charm her into just about anything he wanted, but would sometimes display a violent temper if things didn’t go his way. He was naturally gifted at music, words, and painting, although he generally resisted any attempt to improve these gifts with formal training. David Jon Gilmour was born on March 6, 1946, in Newnham, on the southwestern fringe of Cambridge. His father was a professor of genetics at Cambridge University, his mother a teacher who later became a TV producer, and he had two brothers and a sister. He grew up in a relaxed atmosphere, where music was a regular feature, but he also had to learn to be self-sufficient at an early age. He was only five when he was sent to boarding school for a year while his parents relocated temporarily to America. It was not an experience he enjoyed. “Roger lost his father in the war,” he once joked. “I lost mine in Greenwich Village.” Gilmour could cross the road from his house onto a footpath that led to the bucolic Grantchester Meadows, which run along the banks of the River Cam, as immortalized by the romantic poet

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ABOVE: The picturesque Grantchester Meadow. Both Gilmour and Waters would pay homage to this scenic spot in “Fat Old Sun” and

“Grantchester Meadows.” RIGHT: Romantic poet, Rupert Brooke, who also immortalized the spot in his piece “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester.”

Rupert Brooke in “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester,” which ends with the famous lines, “Stands the church clock at ten to three / And is there honey still for tea?” Waters, Barrett, and Gilmour had their own memories of the area. Waters would go fishing; Barrett would play there with his younger sister Rose, exercising his imagination. It was a perfect place to enact stories from children’s books like The Wind in the Willows. Pink Floyd would later pay their own homage with Waters’s “Grantchester Meadows” (from Ummagumma) and Gilmour’s “Fat Old Sun” (from Atom Heart Mother), both of which evoke the sound and atmosphere of the place.

At the age of 11, Waters moved up to the Cambridgeshire High School for Boys, the source of his irritation against the education system, which would eventually manifest itself as a full-scale tirade on The Wall. He was particularly scathing about the teachers, later recalling, “There were some who were just incredibly bad and treated the children so badly, putting them down all the time, never encouraging them to do things, just trying to keep them quiet and still and crush them into the right shape so that they could go to university and ‘do well.’” FIRST BRICKS

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RIGHT: A shot of the Radio Luxembourg studio.

Radio Luxembourg was responsible for bringing rock ’n’ roll to British teenagers back in the days when the BBC didn’t make it available on the national airwaves.

Barrett joined Waters at the school two years later. He never seemed to hate the place as much as Waters did, although he had frequent disciplinary problems over his uniform and in particular his aversion to shoe laces. (Gilmour’s parents sent him to the nearby fee-paying Perse School instead.) Despite his antipathy toward his teachers, Waters took an active interest in sport. He was a member of the school rugby team—alongside Storm Thorgerson, who would later design the artwork for many of Pink Floyd’s albums—and the cricket team, in which he played alongside Bob Klose, who would become part of an embryonic Pink Floyd line-up a few years later. Waters had a sense of adventure, too, as he showed when he went hitchhiking around the country at the age of 13. More incongruously, he joined the local cadet force and held a position of command for a time— until his charges rebelled against his dictatorial manner and beat him up. Waters’s response was to hand in his uniform, whereupon he was given a dishonorable discharge. He subsequently joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and became the chairman of the local youth branch. The arrival of rock’n’roll in the mid 1950s, spearheaded by Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock,” became a rallying point for any teenage rebel, with or without a cause. Haley’s was the first record David Gilmour bought, a brittle 78 rpm disc that got broken when somebody sat on it. Barrett’s musical 10

epiphany was Lonnie Donegan’s “Rock Island Line”; Waters’s was Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-a-Lula.” Rock’n’roll was hard to find on the radio. The BBC, which had a monopoly on the British airwaves, had yet to acknowledge the existence of teenagers, who instead tuned their cheap transistor radios to Radio Luxembourg, a commercial station beamed toward Britain in crackling AM frequencies from the tiny European principality. Listening was often a clandestine affair, carried out under the covers, late at night, when the best American rock’n’roll was played. It was the entry point to an alternative cultural experience. Converts would gather in coffee bars to exchange news on the latest Eddie Cochran single or cram into one of the listening booths at Millers Music Shop in the center of Cambridge. Both Barrett and Gilmour bought their first acoustic guitars at Millers at the age of 14, but while Barrett was happy to strum the first two or three chords he could master and then let his imagination take over, Gilmour learned to play from Pete Seeger’s instructional book-and-record set. He would listen to records that interested him, trying to decipher the guitar parts, displaying the meticulous attention to detail that would characterize his career. Waters declined to buy a guitar. Instead, as soon as he was old enough, he bought a 1946 vintage Francis-Barnet motorbike. His new friend on the pillion seat was Barrett. “We became close

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ABOVE: The front window of Miller’s Music Centre in Cambridge, England. Both Barrett and Gilmour

bought their first acoustic guitars here.

when we were teenagers,” Waters recalled. They spent a lot of time “talking about smoking dope, but not doing it—in those days.” Waters’s cricketing pal Bob Klose met Barrett around the same time. “I would go along to Syd’s after school and he’d be there painting away,” he said. “And we’d play and chat, strumming away at some basic chords with the occasional Bo Diddley riff.” Despite having received a final school report that somewhat uncharitably stated he had “never fulfilled his considerable potential,” Waters gained the necessary qualifications to study mechanical engineering at Manchester University. Shortly before he was due to start, however, he changed his mind and decided instead to take a year off while he considered what to do next. He hitchhiked across Europe, through Greece and Turkey to Lebanon, on an adventure that would continue to resonate some four decades later, when he recorded a starkly political song called “Leaving Beirut,” which he released as a download in 2004. Returning to Cambridge, Waters applied to the School of Architecture at Regent Street Polytechnic College in London. Realizing that he would need to be able to demonstrate a proficiency in drawing for his interview portfolio, he began to hang out more with the more artistically minded Barrett, who by now had a flashy new Futurama II electric guitar, for which he’d built his own box amplifier. It was after traveling up to London to see Gene Vincent in concert in late 1961 that Waters and

Barrett started thinking about forming their own band. They even prepared a list of necessary equipment. A few weeks later, however, Barrett’s world was shattered when his father died of cancer—a tragedy made worse by the fact that he had only found out about his father’s condition a few weeks earlier. Barrett’s response was to immerse himself in music and painting, having moved down to the front room on the ground floor of the house. It was effectively a self-contained living space that could double up as a studio or rehearsal room—as it did when he joined his first band, Geoff Mott and the Mottoes, in 1962. Barrett played guitar and sang covers of Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran while also performing instrumentals by seminal British guitar band the Shadows. Meanwhile, as the Barrett family adjusted to their new circumstances, his mother took in student lodgers, including a future Japanese prime minister and the daughter of the actress Jeanne Moreau. In the summer of 1962 Barrett left Cambridgeshire High School and enrolled at the Cambridge Technical College to study art. By now, Waters was at Regent Street Polytechnic College, where he was no more impressed by his tutors than he had been by his school teachers in Cambridge. He finally bought his own guitar, a Spanish acoustic on which he neatly inscribed the slogan “I Believe to My Soul” (after a Ray Charles song). He hooked up with another guitar-playing student who could also sing, Keith Noble, and together they formed the Tailgate Two and began playing songs by everyone from the Everly Brothers to Buddy Holly at private parties. Almost six months passed before Waters noticed two other musically inclined students hanging around the common room: Richard Wright and Nick Mason. Richard William Wright was born on July 28, 1943, in Pinner, a prosperous, leafy suburb in the northwest of London. His father was the chief chemist at Unigate Dairies and provided Richard with a typical upper-middle-class education at a private preparatory school (where corporal punishment was evidently rife) and the highly regarded Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hampstead School. As a child, Wright learned piano and trumpet before teaching himself to play the guitar at 12 while recovering from a broken leg. What really lured him away from classical music was jazz, notably Miles Davis’s take on Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, a record that he always played from start to finish, he said, “because it stops you dead in your tracks.” The album also inspired him to FIRST BRICKS

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add trombone and saxophone to his instrumental repertoire. He’d decided to study architecture on the advice of a teacher but was already showing ambivalence to that field by the time he met Waters. Nicholas Berkeley Mason was born on January 27, 1944, in Birmingham. When he was two, the Mason family—which included Nick and three sisters—moved to fashionable Hampstead in north London after his father landed a job as a filmmaker for Shell Oil. They lived on Downshire Hill, an attractive street lined with Regency houses made famous by a group of artists, among them Stanley Spencer and Mark Gertler, in the 1920s and 1930s. Mason’s father made films about motor sports and collected vintage cars (a hobby his son would later pursue with equal fervor), while Nick attended the enlightened co-educational Frensham Heights private school in Surrey and got his first drum kit at the age of 12,

“…HE WAS VERY CLEVER, VERY INTELLIGENT, AN ARTIST IN EVERY WAY. AND HE HAD A FRIGHTENING TALENT WHEN IT CAME TO WORDS…” —DAVID GILMOUR (ON SYD BARRETT) having failed to master piano or violin. He played in the school’s Dixieland jazz band for a while before starting to listen to Radio Luxembourg, which prompted him to buy a 78 rpm single of Bill Haley’s “See You Later Alligator,” followed by Elvis Presley’s Rock ’n’ Roll album. His first band, the Hotrods, didn’t get much further than a group photo and several versions of Duane Eddy’s “Peter Gunn,” recorded to Mason’s reel-to-reel tape machine. At Regent Street Polytechnic College, he was the most committed of the three architecture students who would go on to form Pink Floyd, although he still kept his drum kit set up in his room, just in case. The year 1963 was a watershed in British pop as the Beatles shot to national stardom, leaving a trail of chirpy young beat groups in their wake. The buzz across the music scene was palpable; there was a sense that this was the beginning of something important, beyond the media-created burst of Beatlemania. It certainly seemed the right time to be in a band rather than a 12

TOP: Syd Barrett in 1964 performing in Those Without circa 1963–1964. ABOVE: Ticket stub to Those Without on June 16, 1963.

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ABOVE: A painting from Syd Barrett in 1964. It was reported that Syd immersed himself in painting and music when his father died in 1961, and he was accepted by the Camberwell College of Art in London just a few years later.

ABOVE: Looking up at Regent Street Polytechnic College in London, where Roger Waters met Nick Mason and Richard Wright in 1962.

duo. Before long, Waters and Noble decided to expand their lineup—and where better to start than with Waters’s new friends, Mason and Wright. By the summer of 1963 they had become Sigma 6, which for a while also included Wright’s girlfriend (and later wife) Juliette Gale on backing vocals. The line-up was as fluid as the name, which changed first to the Abdabs and then to the Screaming Abdabs (a British slang term for a fit of anger) over the course of the next year. They played a steady diet of American rhythm and blues (much of it having originally been released on Chicago’s Chess label), plus an elongated version of John Lee Hooker’s boogie classic “Crawling King Snake.” At one point they rehearsed a bunch of songs written by an aspiring songwriter called Ken Chapman, who also managed the group briefly. But when a music publisher rejected the songs, the band’s impetus to play together—which had peaked with the publication of a small article in the Regent Street Polytechnic College student magazine— began to ebb away. For now, Waters, Wright, and Mason remained a functioning musical unit in need of a singer and a guitarist. Back in Cambridge, Barrett was enjoying his heyday on the local scene, becoming known as “Syd the Beat” on account of his tight jeans and Chelsea boots. He’d been joined at Cambridge Technical College by Gilmour, and they’d spend hours playing together, with Bob Klose in tow, smoking a little hashish and trying to work out the Keith Richards licks on early Rolling Stones

records. Barrett was the least accomplished musician among them, but he made up for it in other ways. “The thing with Syd was that his guitar wasn’t his strongest feature,” Gilmour recalled. “His style was very stiff. I always thought I was the better guitar player. But he was very clever, very intelligent, an artist in every way. And he had a frightening talent when it came to words. They just used to pour out.” One early outpouring that stuck was the jaunty, nonsense-rhyming “Effervescing Elephant,” a song that would later show up on his second solo album, Barrett. Gilmour and Barrett each joined several bands, although strangely they never did so together. It generally went like this: one would join a band, and after a few months some of the band members would quit to form a new band, bringing in other guys from other bands, who would then quit to form a new band—and so it went on. That was how Gilmour ended up in Jokers Wild, the most professional of the Cambridge bands, whose Beach Boys and Four Seasons covers—plus Gilmour’s rendition of Wilson Pickett’s “In the Midnight Hour”—were well received on the local scene, resulting in a flourishing gig list. Barrett’s bands never reached that level, but he wasn’t too bothered. He’d set his mind on attending Camberwell College of Art in London, even forgoing a ticket to see the Beatles at the Cambridge Regal in November 1963 so that he could attend an interview on the same day. Borrowing his girlfriend’s father’s FIRST BRICKS

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ABOVE: An early shot of Pink Floyd. From left to right: Richard Wright, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Syd Barrett.

RIGHT: An early group shot of Pink Floyd. From left to right: Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, Bob Klose, and Richard Wright. FAR RIGHT: A very young David Gilmour on the far left performing in the blues-rock band Joker’s Wild alongside Dave Altham, John Gordon, and Tony Sainty. 14

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shoes—with laces—was another sign of his determination. And it worked. Barrett moved to London in the summer of 1964, renting a flat off Tottenham Court Road in a less than salubrious part of town, not far from where Klose now lived. The two friends promptly found Waters living with Mason in a large, rundown house in Highgate, north London. Waters and Mason’s landlord was Mike Leonard, a lecturer at the Polytechnic who had also recently set up a sound-and-light department at the nearby Hornsey College of Art. Leonard used projectors and light machines to create all manner of special effects—gadgets Waters in particular was very impressed by. Leonard also showed an interest in the Screaming Abdabs (or whatever they were called that week) and let them rehearse at the house, much to the annoyance of the neighbors. With Wright on an extended holiday in Greece, having been kicked out of the Polytechnic College, Leonard moved in on keyboards, and the band even performed as Leonard’s Lodgers a couple of times—until the others decided he was too old to join their band permanently. The house in Stanhope Gardens, west London, is where Pink Floyd really came together, although it took them a while. Barrett was focused on settling into his art course, so it was Klose who began rehearsing with the band. It turned out that Klose could really play guitar—rather than just strum a few chords—and the group quickly restructured around him, with Waters moving to bass. Klose also brought in a new singer, another Cambridge associate named Chris Dennis, and the band took on another new name, the Tea Set. Dennis’s quirky sense of onstage humor did not sit easily with the band’s rambling R&B style, however, and when Barrett escaped his seedy surroundings, moved up to Stanhope Road, and started hanging around at rehearsals, Dennis was dropped. The returning Wright quickly struck up a rapport with Barrett, their jazzy improvisations bringing a whole new dynamic to the band. Barrett was also coming up with some new songs—“Butterfly,” “Remember Me,” and a quaint ode to the burgeoning pot culture entitled “Let’s Roll Another One”—but he still expressed doubts about what he could contribute to the band. In a letter to his Cambridge girlfriend, he said he was thinking of asking Gilmour to take his place in the band. Part of the problem was that he didn’t gel musically with the more straight and structured Klose. Thankfully, Barrett persevered, and the gigs started trickling in: a few pub dates followed by a support slot at a Polytechnic College dance headlined by the Tridents, featuring a young Jeff

Beck, who was about to replace Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds. They were gradually learning about setting up and onstage presentation, and over Christmas 1964 they demoed four songs—three Barrett originals and a cover of Slim Harpo’s “I’m a King Bee”— which they pressed up as seven-inch acetate “test” records to play to anyone who might give them a gig. Barrett’s other contribution was to provide the band with yet another name after they turned up ABOVE: The cover of Syd Barrett’s First Trip. During to a gig only to find anothe summer of 1965, a friend shot some footage of ther Tea Set on the bill. He Barrett taking magic mushrooms, and the film ended spliced the names of two up on DVD years later. obscure Carolina bluesmen in his record collection—Pink Anderson and Floyd Council —and came up with Pink Floyd. At first, not wanting to appear too freaky, they called themselves the Pink Floyd Blues Band. Then, when Klose quit in the summer of 1965 after failing his first-year exams, taking much of the blues element with him, Messrs Barrett, Wright, Waters, and Mason soldiered on as the Pink Floyd Sound. During that summer, on a trip back to Cambridge, a friend shot some footage of Barrett after he’d taken magic mushrooms (some of which appeared on DVD years later as Syd’s First Trip). Barrett also drove down to the South of France with his old school friends, Storm Thorgerson and David Gilmour, where the three of them would busk for their supper. A couple of months later, the Pink Floyd Sound played at Thorgerson’s engagement party, alongside Joker’s Wild and a thenunknown American folk singer named Paul Simon. Later that year they entered two beat group contests in London—only to discover that both were due to take place on the same evening. They passed on one, lost the other, and were back to feeding on scraps. Fortunately, something was stirring underground. FIRST BRICKS

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CHAPTER 2

T he Syd B ar r e t t Y e ars

RIGHT: From left to right: Rick Wright, Rogers Waters, Nick Mason, and Syd Barrett before a set.

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ABOVE: Marquee poster promoting a Pink Floyd performance on March 15, 1966.

he Pink Floyd Sound had their first contact with London’s emerging counterculture on March 13, 1966, when they played the Spontaneous Underground at London’s Marquee Club. This weekly Sunday evening gathering, or “happening,” had started a couple of months earlier as a deliberate attempt to pull together London’s fragmented experimental scene. It was not advertised—admission was by mimeographed flyers sent out via a mailing list—and the emphasis was on poetry and performance art, with no real division between the performers and the audience members (who were encouraged to dress up and react “spontaneously” to the proceedings). The other group in attendance was AMM, an avant-garde freeform jazz quartet who distorted the sound of their instruments using microphones and sound effects caused by hitting or scraping any surface within reach. Syd Barrett was particularly taken with the guitarist, who rubbed ball bearings up and down his fretboard. The Pink Floyd Sound’s R&B-based improvisations were well received, and they were invited back. As the band’s set progressed,

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the house lights were dimmed so that films and lights could be projected directly onto them. Encouraged by the audience response, the band grew bolder; Barrett started using his Zippo lighter as a bottleneck, toying with feedback, and hooking his guitar up to a Binson echo unit with a dozen different delay settings. It was at a Spontaneous Underground event in June 1966 that Peter Jenner, an assistant lecturer at the London School of Economics, first saw the Pink Floyd Sound. He was an enthusiastic fan of experimental music and had helped to start a production company that recorded avant-garde jazz bands. But he was also on the lookout for something more commercial that could help to fund the company, and he liked what he heard, later describing the band to Pink Floyd biographer Miles as “a mixture of R&B and electronic noises . . . a far-out, freaky pop group.” Jenner raved about the band to an old school friend, Andrew King, who had recently quit his job at British Airways’ training department but had conveniently come into an inheritance. Together they tracked the band down to Stanhope Gardens and made them an offer. The Pink Floyd Sound were nonplussed. Although they had been making a name for themselves at the Spontaneous Underground, they were finding other gigs hard to come by. They were also suspicious of these two guys showing up and promising to make them “bigger than the Beatles.” They went off on their summer holidays, with the band effectively in limbo. When they returned from their travels—Waters and Wright to Greece, Mason to America—Jenner and King made them the same offer, but with the added promise of new equipment. The summer break had invigorated the band members, who were now more enthusiastic about becoming a successful pop group. London was officially “swinging,” according to Time magazine, which had recently run a cover feature on the city’s vibrant pop, art, and fashion worlds. The Beatles had yet again transformed the musical landscape with their Rubber Soul and Revolver albums, while the soundtrack to the summer of 1966 was dominated by big hits from the Rolling Stones (“Paint It Black”), the Who (“I’m a Boy”), the Kinks (“Sunny Afternoon”), and the Small Faces (“All or Nothing”). The pent-up demand for pop music—which the BBC had still not adequately addressed—had resulted in the setting up of a dozen or so “pirate” radio stations, which broadcast from ships anchored just outside British territorial waters. During their holidays in Greece, Waters and Wright had both

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taken LSD. For Waters, it was a profound experience—although not one he necessarily needed to repeat. Barrett, meanwhile, had taken LSD back in Cambridge, and found the experience more engrossing. He had also become friends with Jenner, who turned him on to the Byrds and Love. The band decided to accept Jenner and King’s management offer and started to rehearse again, with a renewed sense of purpose. Meanwhile, Jenner and King set up a company, Blackhill Enterprises, as a six-way partnership to handle the band—a remarkably egalitarian move at a time when managers routinely took anything from 25 to 50 percent of a band’s earnings. Jenner and King also began a hasty learning curve in the music business, about which they knew little. Their first priority was to find more gigs for the Pink Floyd Sound, and Jenner soon found them. He had been helping to set up the London Free School, a radical venture based in North Kensington, near Notting Hill Gate, that offered advice and help to the local largely West Indian population, many of whom were living in squalid accommodation and were frequently exploited by unscrupulous landlords. A series of fundraising events was being organized at All Saints Hall near Portobello Road, at the heart of London’s nascent hippie community. (As the sons of clergymen themselves, Jenner and King were easily able to convince the local vicar to run a musical evening as a benefit for the school.)

“…EACH NIGHT WAS A COMPLETE BUZZ BECAUSE WE DID TOTALLY NEW THINGS AND NONE OF US KNEW HOW THE OTHERS WOULD REACT TO IT.” —RICK WRIGHT The first show, on September 30, was billed as a “Sound and Light Workshop.” It was sparsely attended but greatly enlivened by the presence of two visiting American students from Timothy Leary’s infamous Castalia Institute in Millbrook, New York, who turned up with a slide projector and shone avant-garde images onto the band in time with the music. Word soon spread and the second show two weeks later was a near sellout.

ABOVE: Launch poster for the alternative newspaper International Times. Pink Floyd headlined the benefit show on October 15, 1967 to get the newspaper off the ground. Over 2,000 people attended, including Paul McCartney (in disguise).

Jenner and his new wife had made a wooden structure containing a row of spotlights with different colored Perspex in front of each bulb, which they placed in front of the band, casting eerie shadows of the musicians on the wall behind them as the lights flickered on and off. The local hippies loved it. Wright later described the All Saints Hall gigs to author Nicholas Schaffner as “purely experimental, and a time of learning and finding out exactly what we were trying to do. Each night was a complete buzz because we did totally new things and none of us knew how the others would react to it.” One of Barrett’s flatmates, Peter Wynne Willson, worked at a theater in the West End in London, where he found and restored some discarded theater lighting, to which he added a keyboard so that he could operate the lights more efficiently. He also painted blank slides in various colors, and while they were projected he would alternately heat them with a small blowtorch and cool them with a hairdryer, creating amoeba-like effects that projected onto and around the musicians as they played. THE SYD BARRETT YEARS

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THE UFO CLUB QUICKLY BECAME THE MEETING POINT FOR THE HIPPIES AND FREAKS AS WELL AS THE MOVERS AND SHAKERS…

ABOVE: Nick Mason playing drums at the UFO Club in London on January 1, 1967.

LEFT: Rick Wright at the UFO Club in London on January 1, 1967. 20

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ABOVE: Pink Floyd performing at the UFO Club in 1967. RIGHT: Roger Waters performing live onstage at the UFO Club in London on January 1, 1967. He’s playing a Rickenbacker 4001S bass guitar.

A SMALL BLOWTORCH AND A HAIRDRYER HELPED CREATE THE AMOEBA-LIKE EFFECTS THAT PROJECTED ONSTAGE…

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By now, Barrett had moved to Earlham Street, in Covent Garden, with Willson and some other Cambridge friends, and it was here that he started writing songs that would gradually replace the R&B material upon which the Pink Floyd Sound had so far been reliant. There were instrumentals, like the wild, spacey “Interstellar Overdrive” and “Pow R Toc H,” with its weird vocal interjections; songs like “Mathilda Mother” and “Lucifer Sam,” with lyrics inspired by nonsense poets Hillaire Belloc and Edward Lear; and the strange-but-true tale of a man who stole ladies underwear from washing lines in Cambridge and went by the name of “Arnold Layne.” As Waters explained in a 1967 magazine interview, “Both my mother and Syd’s mother had students as lodgers. And there was a girls’ college up the road so there were constantly great lines of bras and knickers on our washing lines and Arnold, or whoever he was, had bits and pieces off our washing lines. They never caught him.” Hashish and LSD were readily available at the flat but were generally taken to get into it rather than out of it. As Jenner later told writer Robert Sandall, one of his strongest memories was of Barrett “sitting in his Earlham Street flat with his guitar and his book of songs which he represented by paintings with different colored circles.” For now, nobody else in the band came close to Barrett in either creativity or drug taking. Meanwhile, the band’s shows at All Saints Hall were creating a buzz across London’s burgeoning underground scene. When a benefit show was arranged to launch an “alternative” newspaper, International Times, Pink Floyd—who had finally dropped the superfluous “Sound” from their name—were the obvious choice as headliners. The event was staged on October 15 at the Roundhouse, a disused circular railway shed awaiting renovation in Chalk Farm, north London. The show drew more than 2,000 people, including Paul McCartney, who wandered around incognito in an Arab costume, and film director Michelangelo Antonioni, who was in London to shoot Blow Up. Among the attractions was a psychedelic light show, which was beamed onto the ceiling; films by William Burroughs and Kenneth Anger, which were projected onto a white sheet hanging from a balcony; a painted Cadillac; various stalls and fortune tellers in the alcoves; and a giant green jelly that failed to survive an altercation with Pink Floyd’s van. Singer Marianne Faithfull won a “Shortest/Barest” contest in an abbreviated nun’s habit; the actress Monica 22

ABOVE: CD cover for The First 3 Singles released in 1997.

Vitti came second in a white miniskirt. But the highlight of the evening was Pink Floyd’s performance, which saw them play on a trailer they’d found in a corner of the building—there was no stage, after all. It was the first time most of the audience had seen the band or their light show, and it led to national press coverage. This was a pivotal moment that established Pink Floyd as the house band of the underground scene. Just before Christmas they were asked to play the opening night of the UFO Club (which stood for either Underground Freak Out or Unidentified Flying Object, depending on whom you asked). The club was held in a basement ballroom, starting when London’s tube service ended on a Friday night and finishing just as the first tube trains started up the following morning. It quickly became the meeting point for the hippies and freaks as well as the movers and shakers of the scene, plus passing pop stars like Pete Townshend, Eric Burdon, and even Jimi Hendrix, all of whom were able to wander unmolested through the crowd. There would be macrobiotic food stalls in one corner, drug dealers in another, with large inflatables occasionally drifting across the floor. The underground scene certainly seemed to be coming together. “For a brief moment it looked as if there might actually be some combining of activities,” Nick Mason recalled. “People would go down to this place and do a number of things rather

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ABOVE: 1960s psychedelic…from left to right: Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Syd Barrett, and Rick Wright all dressed up.

than simply a band performing. There would be mad actors, a couple of light shows, perhaps the recitation of some poetry, a lot of wandering about, and a lot of cheerful chatter.”

FOR NOW, NOBODY ELSE IN THE BAND CAME CLOSE TO BARRETT IN EITHER CREATIVITY OR DRUG TAKING…

As 1967 dawned, Pink Floyd began to think about turning professional, now that they were expanding their range of venues and audiences. On January 17 they played a successful Music in Colour show at the upmarket Commonwealth Institute in Kensington, a venue more commonly known for classical concerts. They also booked time at a cheap recording studio to make a demo tape to shop around to record companies, but when they played it to UFO cofounder Joe Boyd (an American who was also employed as the U.K. representative for the U.S.-based record label Elektra), Boyd told them it wasn’t quite up to scratch. THE SYD BARRETT YEARS

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Fortuitously, a friend of Boyd’s, filmmaker Peter Whitehead, had just been commissioned by the British Film Institute to make a film about “Swinging London,” and he was persuaded to film Pink Floyd at a recording session at Sound Techniques in Chelsea. With Boyd producing, the band recorded two long, improvised instrumentals, “Interstellar Overdrive” and “Nick’s Boogie.” A brief extract of the footage was used in the resulting film, Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London; the full recordings (some 28 minutes long) would later appear on the 1990 expanded soundtrack CD. The band had hoped that Boyd could use his connections to get them signed to Elektra Records—just as he had another UFO favorite, the adventurous folk duo the Incredible String Band— but Elektra’s owner, Jac Holzman, declined, perhaps figuring that one strange-sounding British band was enough. Boyd then took the tape to Polydor, a German-based label that at the time was in the process of expanding its British activities. Polydor showed more of an interest in the band, and so too did booking agent Bryan Morrison, who had recently booked Pink Floyd for the Architectural Association’s Christmas Ball. Morrison advised Jenner and King to make another demo and take it to EMI, the biggest record company in the U.K. He even offered to pay for it—in return for the publishing rights. The band returned to Sound Techniques with Boyd and recorded “Arnold Layne,” the most commercial song in their repertoire. They also recorded “Let’s Roll Another One,” an early song that dated back to their Stanhope Garden days, as a potential B-side. Mindful that record companies—and indeed radio stations— might not appreciate the title, they changed it to “Candy and a Currant Bun” and altered the lyrics accordingly. EMI did indeed make a better offer, making it clear that it would use its considerable weight within the industry to promote the band but also insisting that the band use an in-house producer. This was partly because it was company policy— even Beatles producer George Martin was an EMI employee— and partly because of a slight wariness about Pink Floyd’s underground associations. For the band—still a pop group, as far as the band members were concerned—this was not a major problem, but it meant dispensing with Boyd’s services. This led to mumblings of “selling out” among the underground community, but it had no noticeable effect on the band’s regular dates at the UFO Club. 24

ABOVE (TOP and CENTER): Cover and sampler for the Peter Whitehead film, Tonite

Let’s All Make Love in London. ABOVE (BOTTOM): CD for Pink Floyd’s London ’66–’67, taken from Peter Whitehead’s

film, Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London.

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ABOVE: The members of Pink Floyd posing for an early promotional photo in 1967 in London. From left to right: Nick Mason, Rick Wright, Rogers Waters, and Syd Barrett. THE SYD BARRETT YEARS

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ABOVE: Single album sleeve for “Candy and a

Currant Bun.” LEFT: Sheet music for Pink Floyd’s “Arnold Layne.” RIGHT: A 1967 Pink Floyd “Arnold Layne” poster.

“Everyone was talking about the psychedelic revolution and light and sound and all the rest of it,” Mason told biographer Miles. “People were looking to try and guess, as they always are, what was going to happen next in music. This looked like it was going to happen next. I mean, we were incredibly awful, we were a dreadful band, we must have sounded frightful, but we were so different and so odd. You look at the early photographs and we look like an elderly version of the Monkees. So the record deal was in fact a really rather good one, considering we had no track record and couldn’t play our instruments.” That might be a little self-deprecating, but Pink Floyd were certainly different from most of the pop groups signing to record companies at that time. Their contract stipulated an advance of £5,000—to be recouped against royalties—which they used to buy a secondhand Bentley to transport them to gigs. EMI assigned Norman Smith to produce Pink Floyd. He had previously worked with the Beatles as an assistant to George Martin, so he had the right credentials, but when he tried to rerecord “Arnold Layne” at Abbey Road the band told him they would prefer instead to try to improve on the original version, having already started work on songs for their first album, so it was Joe Boyd’s recording that was released as the band’s first single on March 10, 1967. Despite EMI’s best efforts, the single peaked at No. 20 in the U.K. charts, which meant that a planned appearance on the BBC’s 26

prestigious weekly television chart show Top of the Pops was not forthcoming. The band had even made a black-and-white promotional film, which showed them playing around with a tailor’s dummy on a beach, but it was never broadcast (although it is now readily available on YouTube). The best publicity the band received came when the pirate station Radio London banned the song for being “too smutty.” Interviewed at the time, Barrett said he simply thought “Arnold Layne” was “a nice name [that] fitted very well into the music I had composed. Then I thought that Arnold should have a hobby, and it just went on from there.” Under the terms of Pink Floyd’s deal with EMI, the band had been given a specific period of “album development time” at Abbey Road, although Barrett had already written the majority of the songs during the second half of 1966 at his flat in Earlham Street. “It was very difficult in some ways,” he later recalled, “getting used to the studio and everything. But it was fun. We freaked about a lot. I was working very hard then.” Producer Norman Smith was adept at using the studio’s fourtrack recording machines. He would bounce down the bass and drum parts onto a single track, leaving more room for vocals and overdubs. This was particularly useful on the instrumental “Interstellar Overdrive,” which was laden with overdubs and effects throughout, although Smith was more than a little annoyed that the group had managed to destroy four expensive studio microphones while recording it.

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ABOVE: Pink Floyd in the recording studio working on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. From left to right: Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Syd Barrett, and Rick Wright.

THE BAND MANAGED TO DESTROY FOUR EXPENSIVE STUDIO MICROPHONES WHILE RECORDING “INTERSTELLAR OVERDRIVE.” ABOVE: Roger Waters waves in the recording studio as Pink Floyd work on The Piper at the Gates of

Dawn. Nick Mason is on the left and Rick Wright is on the right.

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Meanwhile, in the studio next door, the Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—the album that would set the music world spinning on its axis when it came out that summer. Paul McCartney had already encountered Pink Floyd at the International Times launch party, and at the UFO Club, and described the band as a “knockout.” One afternoon, at around 5:30 p.m., McCartney popped in with George Harrison and Ringo Starr in tow to see how the band was getting on. “We all stood rooted to the spot, excited by it all,” Waters told Miles. Between sessions, Pink Floyd had been gigging more regularly, and had discovered that when they ventured out of London into provincial dancehalls, they were greeted not as psychedelic heroes but with a hail of bottles and glass by a crowd that had come expecting to hear “Arnold Layne”—a song the band almost never performed live—instead of a sustained barrage of noise and feedback. To make matters worse, the dancehall venues were often unsuited to the band’s light show as well.

PAUL MCCARTNEY HAD ALREADY ENCOUNTERED PINK FLOYD AT THE UFO CLUB AND DESCRIBED THE BAND AS A “KNOCKOUT.”

ABOVE (TOP): Poster for the 14-Hour Technicolor Dream benefit for

International Times headlined by Pink Floyd on April 29, 1967. ABOVE: Poster for the Pink Floyd concept show Games for May on

May 12, 1967. 28

Pink Floyd rewarded their loyal London following with some more special shows. On April 29 they headlined yet another benefit for International Times, which was seemingly congenitally incapable of organizing its finances. Billed as a 14-Hour Technicolor Dream, the event took place at the cavernous Alexandra Palace in North London and attracted some 10,000 people. Also on the bill were the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Soft Machine, the Pretty Things, Savoy Brown, the Creation, and the Social Deviants, as well as clowns, dancers, poets, and performance artists—including Yoko Ono, who invited audience members to snip off bits of her dress with scissors. John Lennon showed up in his Rolls Royce after seeing news of the event on television. Pink Floyd played at dawn, having raced back from doing a TV show in Holland, and afterward the revelers frolicked in the park outside, rolling a ten-foot joint made out of paper, flowers, and leaves.

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ABOVE: Syd Barrett performing onstage at Alexandra Palace in London, England, on July 29, 1967.

ABOVE: A back projection is being tested here for Pink Floyd’s first concept show, “Games of May—Space Age Relaxation for the Climax of Spring,” on May 12, 1967. THE SYD BARRETT YEARS

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ABOVE: Rick Wright, Syd Barrett, and Roger Waters at the timpani during rehearsals for their Games for May concept show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on May 12, 1967.

A couple of weeks later, on May 12, Pink Floyd staged their own happening, Games for May, at another prestigious classical venue, the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The show featured the band’s full range of lighting effects, projectors, and slides; a surround-sound quadrophonic system with speakers placed at the back of the hall and controlled by a joystick device known as the Azimuth Coordinator; a machine that spewed bubbles throughout the show, which left marks on the plush leather seats, resulting in the venue banning the group from returning; and sound effects piped into the foyer before the show. Afterward, everyone was given a daffodil to take home. The Financial Times reviewed the concert and paid tribute to the audience as much as the band. Barrett had written a new song for the occasion, also called “Games for May.” It was soon retitled “See Emily Play” and recorded as the band’s second single. More whimsical and commercial than “Arnold Layne,” it gave the band 30

the Top 10 single they craved and led to successive appearances on Top of the Pops. It was around this time, however, that Barrett’s mental condition started to give cause for concern. To the others in the band, bound up in a daily working relationship with Barrett, the changes were not so noticeable. But as producer Norman Smith recalled in an interview with London’s Capital Radio, things became difficult during the sessions for “See Emily Play”: “Syd used lyrics with a musical phrasing, and it was a statement being made at a given time. That meant that when you came back five minutes later to do another take, you wouldn’t get the same performance.” Barrett’s old Cambridge buddy David Gilmour also noticed a marked change. His band, Jokers Wild, had changed their name to the more prosaic Flowers and had moved to Paris to cash in on the city’s growing fascination with the British beat scene. On a return trip to London, Gilmour was invited along to a Pink

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ABOVE: Syd Barrett adjusting a rubber duck during rehearsals for the “Games of May” concept show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on May 12, 1967. Drummer Nick Mason is on the left.

Floyd session, where he came face to face with Barrett for the first time in almost nine months. “Syd was a changed person,” he recalled. “He didn’t appear to recognize me at first . . . as Roger so eloquently put it later, his eyes were black holes in the sky.” Joe Boyd, too, would have a disturbing encounter with Barrett in June, when Pink Floyd played the UFO club for the first time in a couple of months. “The great thing about Syd was this twinkle in his eye, this impish look about him, this mischievous glint,” he told Miles. “He came by and I said, ‘Hi Syd,’ and he just kind of looked at me. I looked right in his eye and there was no twinkle, no glint. It was like somebody had pulled the blinds, nobody home. It was a real shock. Very, very sad.” (According to the International Times, Pink Floyd played “like bums” that night.) By now, Barrett had moved from Earlham Street to a west London apartment with some of his previous flatmates, but the

once trippy, creative atmosphere had grown darker. There were stories of LSD being slipped into cups of coffee and tea and even into the cat food. There were also rumors of violent incidents involving girlfriends. The other band members were worried but reluctant to intervene and risk damaging their increasingly fragile yet essential working relationship with Barrett. The management hoped it was just a phase. Eventually, some other friends “rescued” Barrett and took him to stay with them in South Kensington. But his grip on reality continued to weaken. How much of this was due to drugs and how much to a nervous breakdown is hard to say, but his behavior grew more and more unpredictable. As “See Emily Play” rose up the charts, reaching No. 6, Pink Floyd made two appearances on Top of the Pops. They would have made a third, but Barrett announced that if John Lennon no longer had to appear on the show, he didn’t either. THE SYD BARRETT YEARS

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ABOVE: Syd Barrett in 1967 at a BBC Radio taping.

Pink Floyd continued a relentless gigging schedule, playing more than 35 shows during June and July alone. On July 29 they returned to London’s Alexandra Palace to headline what was billed as a “Love In.” There wasn’t much love in evidence, however: one person was stabbed and several others were mugged. The overall atmosphere was unpleasant, but Barrett was oblivious. He stared out at the audience, his arms dangling at his sides, while Waters covered his vocals; when he did strum his guitar, the others might have wished he hadn’t. Finally, Jenner and King acted. Despite the imminent release of the band’s debut album, all gigs for August were canceled. Barrett was dispatched on holiday to the Spanish island of Formentera with Wright and his wife. Waters and his girlfriend stayed on nearby Ibiza and paid regular visits. Inquiring journalists from the music press were told that the band had taken a break due to nervous exhaustion—which was true. But while Barrett got plenty of rest, a violent Mediterranean thunderstorm did little to improve his fragile mental state. Over the years there has been considerable speculation about Barrett’s medical condition. Several diagnoses of his symptoms have been made, ranging from schizophrenia to Asperger’s Syndrome, although none has ever been confirmed. “Syd turned 32

into a very strange person,” Waters later recalled in the documentary The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story. “Whether he was sick in some way or not is not for us to say in these days of dispute about the nature of madness. All I know is that he was fucking murder to live and work with.” In fact it didn’t matter that the band were not around to promote their first album. Released at the beginning of August, the timing of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (the title was taken from a chapter in Kenneth Grahame’s children’s book The Wind in the Willows) was perfect, coming at the hazy climax to the summer of 1967. The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had come out a couple of months earlier and could be heard blaring out of every fashion boutique on London’s hip and trendy Kings Road. Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” the Move’s “I Can Hear the Grass Grow,” and Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” were also big hits that summer. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn was hailed as the defining album of British psychedelia with its combination of whimsical songs and adventurous, jarring instrumentals that encapsulated the diverse strands of the underground scene. The cover, shot by fashion photographer Vic Singh using a prism lens given to him by George Harrison, was both innovative and indicative of the album’s contents. The album was a Top 10 success, reaching No. 6, and spawned a host of wannabe groups who could imitate the style but never the substance.

IT WAS AROUND THIS TIME THAT BARRETT’S MENTAL CONDITION STARTED TO GIVE CAUSE FOR CONCERN… At the beginning of September the band went back to work, playing shows that had been postponed from the previous month as well as touring Scandinavia and Ireland. They also started recording tracks for their next album, including Waters’s “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” and Barrett’s “Jugband Blues,” with its prophetic opening lines, and the presence of a Salvation Army brass band.

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ABOVE: Richard Wright, Nick Mason, Syd Barrett, and Roger Waters at the BBC studios in 1967.

Barrett and the band’s managers wanted to release “Jugband Blues” as a single, but the others were against it, as was Norman Smith. Instead they opted for a more banal, pop-oriented composition, “Apples and Oranges,” which Barrett described at the time as “a happy song [with] a touch of Christmas. It’s about a girl I saw walking around in Richmond.” (Actually his girlfriend.) Not so happy were two other songs that Barrett wrote around this time, “Vegetable Man” and “Scream Thy Last Scream.” Neither has been officially released, although they have turned up on bootlegs. According to Jenner, Barrett had written “Vegetable Man” on demand when the band needed another song for a session. “He just wrote a description of himself, where he was and what he was

doing,” Jenner explained. “‘Vegetable Man’ and ‘Scream Thy Last Scream’ were like open sores, more and more naked.” In the meantime, Jenner and King had set up Pink Floyd’s first American tour for late October. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn had been passed by EMI to its U.S. subsidiary, Capitol, which in turn passed it on to another subsidiary, Tower Records, which specialized in soundtracks and musicals. In the spirit of the time, Tower arbitrarily removed three tracks from the album that it thought could be combined with the singles to make an “instant” second album, should any of the singles become a hit. The band were not consulted or even informed—and they were none too pleased when they found out. THE SYD BARRETT YEARS

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ABOVE: Gig poster for Fillmore West and Winterland shows with Procol Harum on November 10–11, 1967. Pink Floyd pulled out of the shows on the first US tour.

RIGHT: Poster for the 1967 Jimi Hendrix tour with Pink Floyd, the Move, the Nice, and others. 34

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JUST GETTING BARRETT ON STAGE EACH NIGHT WAS A MAJOR ACHIEVEMENT…

OVERLEAF: Group shot of performers at the Christmas Olympia ABOVE: Members of the Nice playing on May 1, 1968 in Denmark. From left to right: Keith Emerson, Brian Davison, Lee Jackson,

and Davy O’List. Davy O’List would occasionally stand in for Syd Barrett when he successfully evaded capture during his frequent disappearances.

The tour was scheduled to cover San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Boston. Their first show was at the Winterland in San Francisco, supporting Janis Joplin. Tower Records had billed Pink Floyd as “the Light Kings of England,” but the band’s light show had been designed for clubs and theatres— not a cavernous venue that doubled as an ice-rink. King later described the results as “pathetic,” although the audience was at least intrigued by the music. Things began to unravel in Los Angeles. In the dressing room before a show at the Cheetah Club, Barrett rubbed a handful of Mandrax—or maybe Quaaludes—into his hair. On stage under the lights, the Mandrax melted, and a gooey white liquid ran down his face. He added to the effect by detuning his guitar strings while strumming away. The band had lined up three promotional TV spots, the first of which was on The Pat Boone Show. As Waters later recalled, Barrett would happily lip-synch away during rehearsals, “but when it came to an actual take he’d just stand there without moving a muscle. They’d yell, ‘Cut!’ and stop and start again, and the same thing would happen. Eventually I said, ‘Listen, he’s a bit weird. I’ll mime it.’” The infuriating thing was that Barrett seemed

Tour in 1967 headlined by Jimi Hendrix (wearing a hat in the front center). Pink Floyd band members stand on either side of Hendrix: Roger Waters, Syd Barrett, and Rick Wright are on his right, and Nick Mason is on his left side.

to know what he was doing—some of the time at least. “I was thinking, shall I roar with laughter, or shall I try and kill him?” Mason recalled. “I don’t remember being overcome with compassion.” On Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, Barrett managed to lip-synch his way through “Apples and Oranges” and “See Emily Play,” although he looked catatonic while doing so. On The Perry Como Show, Mason stepped in to lip-synch “Matilda Mother.” Then, on a visit to Capitol Records, Barrett burst into tears, asking King, “What do you want me to do?” King acknowledged defeat, canceled the remaining dates, and the band flew home. Instead of confronting the problem, however, they went straight out on a three-week tour of the U.K., headlined by Jimi Hendrix, for which they were sandwiched between the Move and the Nice, with another three bands on the bill. Pink Floyd would play for 20 minutes per show, twice nightly, to an audience of screaming teenage girls; all of the bands traveled together in one bus. Just getting Barrett—whom Hendrix called “laughing Syd Barrett”—onto the stage each night was a major achievement. On one occasion, Jenner found him at the local railway station; on nights when he successfully evaded capture, Davy O’List of the Nice would stand in for him. THE SYD BARRETT YEARS

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ABOVE: Pink Floyd backstage at London’s Saville Theatre in October of 1967. From left to right: Nick Mason, Rick Wright, Syd Barrett, and Roger Waters.

Pink Floyd were trapped. They couldn’t go on with him, and yet they didn’t feel they could cope without him. “The thought of losing the flow of songs was disastrous for us as that point,” Waters admitted, “because he was doing most of the writing.” But that argument would soon be undermined when “Apples and Oranges,” which was released at the start of the tour, failed to get anywhere near the charts. Shortly before Christmas, the other members of the band got in touch with David Gilmour, who had been working as a van driver in London after his band, Flowers, broke up, destitute, in Paris. “I’d heard Piper,” he later told Mojo magazine. “It sounded terrific, and I was sick 38

with jealousy. I went to see them at the Royal College of Art in December. Nick actually came up to me and said, ‘Nudge nudge . . . if such and such happened and this and that, would you be interested?’ Then, after Christmas, they got in touch. There was no real discussion or audition or anything like that. They just said, ‘Do you want to?’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ It was as simple as that.” Mason later explained that the band’s idea had been to adopt “the Beach Boys formula, in which Brian Wilson got together with the band on stage when he wanted to. We absolutely wanted to preserve Syd in Pink Floyd one way or the other.” Gilmour aside, Waters, Wright, and Mason had also considered Jeff Beck as

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a replacement. Beck would have increased their profile considerably, but he was not interested. Gilmour was someone they knew and could trust, having come from the same background. Barrett was presented with a fait accompli at a meeting between band and management. “We said, ‘Why doesn’t Syd just write songs and come and record and we’ll go and do gigs,’” Waters recalled. “And I think at that point Syd had an idea that the band should employ two girl saxophonists—something weird like that.” Pink Floyd started rehearsing as a five-piece, with Barrett still in the line-up, which as Gilmour later noted was “a very difficult and strange time . . . I would be learning and playing Syd’s parts and singing his songs while Syd would be standing there, sometimes singing a little bit and sometimes playing a little bit. Very odd.”

THE BAND FELT TRAPPED. THEY COULDN’T GO ON WITH SYD, AND YET THEY DIDN’T FEEL THEY COULD COPE WITHOUT HIM… Barrett still had one more act of mad genius to enact when he turned up to a rehearsal with a new song, “Have You Got it Yet?” Waters would later recall spending about an hour attempting to explain to Barrett that he kept changing the arrangement, making the song impossible to follow. “He was singing, ‘Have you got it yet?’ and I’d sing, ‘No, no.’ Terrific!” The five-piece band lasted for four gigs. On January 29, 1968, Waters, Gilmour, Wright, and Mason headed off in the band Bentley to a gig at Southampton University. At some point, one of them asked, “Shall we go and pick up Syd?” Someone else said, “Let’s not.” As Mason cryptically recalled in The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story, “We had a style, really, that if there was a problem— ignore it. And we finally got to the point where we ignored it by not picking Syd up one day. Just going off with the four of us.” RIGHT (TOP): Liverpool “Skeleton” poster for a Pink Floyd gig on March 20, 1968. RIGHT (BOTTOM): Single 7-inch album sleeve for “Apples and Oranges,” a song composed by

Barrett which failed to top the charts.

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CHAPTER 3

T he D old r ums

RIGHT: Pretty in pink…Pink Floyd (Nick Mason, David Gilmour, Rick Wright,

and Roger Waters) are shrouded in pink for a promotional photo in 1968.

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ABOVE: Promotional shots of (left to right) Nick Mason, David Gilmour, and Roger Waters on June 21, 1968, in The Hague (the seat of

government in the Netherlands).

he reconfigured Pink Floyd did not tell their managers that they had stopped taking Barrett to gigs, and when Jenner and King found out, they were taken aback. “We fought to keep Syd in the band,” Jenner recalled. “I didn’t really know David although I knew he was a talented guitarist and a very good mimic. He could play Syd guitar better than Syd.” According to King, Barrett was shocked by his bandmates’ decision. He had never considered the others to be his backing musicians (unlike their admirers in the underground scene and media), but was “devoted” to the band. Jenner and King were not convinced the band could survive without him, particularly since none of the others had shown any real sign that they could write songs. Having taken the traumatic decision to ditch Barrett, however, the band had found a new confidence. There had been no adverse reaction from audiences. “Roger was the one who had the courage to drive Syd out,” Gilmour recalled, “because he realized that as long as Syd was in the band, they couldn’t keep it together. The chaos factor was too high. Roger looked up to Syd and he always felt very guilty about the fact that he’d blown out his mate.” Some would argue that Barrett’s specter never fully left the group. In a practical sense, however, a meeting of Blackhill Enterprises was called in early March 1968, whereupon the sixway partnership was amicably dissolved. Waters, Wright, and Mason took the name “Pink Floyd,” while Jenner and King retained Blackhill and elected to manage Barrett. In a 1994 interview with

t

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Mojo magazine, Wright said he was invited to join Barrett. “Peter and Andrew thought Syd and I were the musical brains of the group, and that we should form a breakaway group to try and hold Syd together. And believe me, I would have left with him like a shot if I had thought Syd could do it.” Pink Floyd approached Bryan Morrison, who had cleverly steered the band toward EMI Records and was now their booking agent, and asked him to manage them. Morrison agreed, and assigned the role to one of the assistants at his agency, Steve O’Rourke. The band continued to play Barrett’s songs while they set to work developing their own style, which would revolve more around structure and dynamics than improvisation. One of the earliest examples was a song called “Careful with That Axe, Eugene,” which started out as a three-minute B-side and progressed into a ten-minute epic of tense, explosive drama. They also took advantage of changes on the live scene. The underground was no longer an exclusive fraternity. The UFO Club had closed, to be replaced by the more commercial Middle Earth in London’s Covent Garden. And the growing university and college circuit offered a more sympathetic audience than the ballrooms that had proved such an ordeal. Not that it was all plain sailing. For a start, Barrett would occasionally show up at gigs. At Middle Earth, for example, he stood staring at Gilmour from the crowd; at Imperial College, London, he had to be dissuaded from joining the band on stage. It was as if he didn’t understand why he was no longer in the group.

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Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gilmour took a while to settle into his new role in the band. “For the first six months I really didn’t feel confident enough to actually start playing myself,” he recalled. “I was mostly playing just rhythm guitar and, to be honest, trying to sound a bit like Syd. But it was obvious the band had to change into something completely different.” For the others, the relief was palpable. For Mason, the band’s new guitarist was, after Barrett, “the difference between light and dark.” Gilmour had a strong sense of “form and shape,” Mason added, “and he introduced that into the wilder numbers we’d created. We became far less difficult to enjoy.” For Wright, Gilmour was “much more of a straight blues guitarist” than Barrett. “That changed the direction, although he did try to reproduce Syd’s style live.” In the wake of Barrett’s departure, it was Waters—recently married to his Cambridge girlfriend, Judy—who began to assume leadership of the band in terms of musical direction. In the spring, Pink Floyd resumed work on their second album, which had been temporarily shelved as the band’s dramas had unfolded. They had Barrett’s last bequest, “Jugband Blues,” which they were happy to use, but his other two recent songs, “Scream Thy Last Scream” and “Vegetable Man,” were quite unsuitable for the band’s new direction. They also had Waters’s “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” which was already an integral part of their live set. Gradually, more new songs emerged— Waters’s “Let There Be More Light” and “Corporal Clegg,” Wright’s “Remember a Day” and “See Saw”—and Norman Smith strained every production sinew to knock them into shape. But the songs still couldn’t be described as commercial. The band’s most deliberate attempt to record a commercial single—Wright’s “It Would Be So Nice” backed by Waters’s “Julia Dream”—was succinctly described by Mason as “fucking awful.” The recordbuying public agreed. The turning point was a long, three-part instrumental the musicians devised together called “A Saucerful of Secrets,” which ended up giving the album its title. “It gave us our second breath,” Waters recalled. “We had finished the album. The record company wanted the whole thing to be a follow-up to the first album but what we wanted to do was this longer piece. And it was given to us by the record company like sweeties after we’d finished. We could do what we liked with that last 12 minutes. It was the first thing we’d done without Syd that we thought was any good.”

LEFT: CD single for Wright’s song,

“It Would Be So Nice.”

RIGHT: CD single for Waters’ song,

“Let There Be More Light.”

ABOVE: Norman “Hurricane” Smith, Pink Floyd’s EMI producer in the late 1960s. Although he didn’t

understand what Pink Floyd were trying to create with “A Saucerful of Secrets,” he showed the band members how to produce the tracks themselves. THE DOLDRUMS

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ABOVE: A 1968 Pink Floyd press photo taken in Brussels. Roger Waters is in the front, Rick Wright is to the right, Nick Mason is to the left, and David Gilmour is in the back.

According to Gilmour, the song had started life when Waters and Mason started drawing “weird shapes” on a piece of paper. The drawing then provided a structure for the music. “We tried to write music around the peaks and valleys of the art. My role, I suppose, was to try and make it a bit more musical, and to help create a balance between formlessness and structure, disharmony and harmony.” Mason would later describe the band’s mode of working as “finding something we can do individually that other people haven’t tried, like provoking the most extraordinary sounds from a piano by scratching around inside it.” Indeed it’s possible to trace a developing strand from “A Saucerful of Secrets” through 44

“Atom Heart Mother” and “Echoes” to Dark Side of the Moon. Norman Smith didn’t see it that way, however. “He just couldn’t—he didn’t—understand,” Wright recalled. Smith told the band that what they were doing was rubbish, and that it wouldn’t sell a single record, but they persevered, convinced that “A Saucerful of Secrets” was “one of the best things we’d put on record.” Credit to Smith, though: despite his disapproval, he allowed the musicians to produce the track themselves, teaching them the fundamentals of the studio and the mixing desk at a time when many producers jealously guarded the “secrets” of their trade. They created “A Saucerful of Secrets” by improvisation and patiently building up layers of sound until they were satisfied with the results. Over time,

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this would become their default method of working in the studio. The album A Saucerful of Secrets was released in the U.K. in June 1968, the cover artwork marking the start of a long association with the design company Hipgnosis. Cofounder Storm Thorgerson had been at the same Cambridge school as Waters, although it was Gilmour who initially proposed that he should be offered the chance to design the artwork. The album itself just made the U.K. Top 10, although it was not as successful as The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Neither the band nor EMI Records were notably concerned, however. Both saw this as a transitional album. At the end of June, Pink Floyd headlined the first large-scale open-air free concert in Britain, which took place in London’s Hyde Park. The concert was instigated and promoted by Blackhill Enterprises, proving that there was no lingering ill feeling between the members of Pink Floyd and their former managers. It was a lovely summer’s day; the crowd basked in the sunshine by the lake, enjoying the free entertainment, which also featured Jethro Tull. Pink Floyd’s set climaxed with “A Saucerful of Secrets,” followed by an encore of “Interstellar Overdrive.” They were back on course. A second tour of America began in July. Pink Floyd made their New York debut in a hot, crowded club called the Scene, which got hotter and more crowded over the course of their three-night stint as word spread about the band. They were even more cramped at the infamous Chelsea Hotel, where band and entourage had to share two rooms. Things were less intense in Los Angeles, where they played the Shrine Auditorium, and in San Francisco, where they played the Avalon Ballroom—but so was the audience reaction. The band also appeared at open-air festivals in Philadelphia, Washington, and Michigan, on bills headlined by the Who and Ten Years After. Already, however, they were deciding that it was better to be the only band on the bill—audiences paid more attention and the band had more control over their performance. For the rest of the year, Pink Floyd toured the university circuit around the U.K., venturing into Europe for concerts and TV appearances in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, where they quickly found appreciative audiences. Italy was keen, too, although rock concerts there seemed to have been designated as an acceptable battleground by students (armed with rocks and bottles) and the police (tear gas and water cannons). RIGHT: Pink Floyd at Steve Paul’s the Scene in New York in 1968. Roger Waters is on bass,

Nick Mason is on drums, and Rick Wright on keyboard.

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ABOVE: Cover of the single for “Point Me at the Sky.” LEFT: A 1968 Detroit poster advertising English acts performing

at the Grande Ballroom, including Pink Floyd, the Who, and Fleetwood Mac. ABOVE: A flyer for the Shrine Exposition Hall in Los Angeles for July 26 and July 27 of 1968, when Pink Floyd performed at the venue.

After a couple of bad experiences, the band decided against playing piggy-in-the-middle any longer. At the end of the year they were approached by German film director Barbet Schroeder to provide the soundtrack for his romantic comedy More. Specifically, Schroeder wanted the band’s music to be heard every time a radio or television set was switched on, or when the action switched from one location to another. This appealed to the band, and in January 1969 they put down 16 tracks in five recording sessions. Gilmour, Wright, and Mason sat in one room, composing the music; Waters sat in another, writing lyrics. Made in haste, More lacks Pink Floyd’s trademark quality control. The most successful tracks were drawn from songs that they were already playing live, such as the atmospheric “Cymbaline,” “Green Is the Colour,” and the heavy “The Nile Song.” Released in July 1969, it reached No. 9 in the U.K. charts— repeating the initial success of A Saucerful of Secrets—but didn’t stay there long. The band had also been considering their next “group” album, but as yet there was almost no new group material to record. A Gilmour–Waters song, “Point Me at the Sky,” had been released as a single in December without success; 11 years would pass before the band released another single. Wright suggested that 46

the four of them should each produce one half-side of the new album, and in the absence of any viable alternative the others agreed. It was also decided that they wouldn’t play their individual contributions to each other until they were complete. Wright already had his piece mapped out: the four-part “Sysyphus,” a more natural and organic affair than some of the group’s other material. “There are no electronic sounds, no juggling with tapes,” he recalled. “Theoretically, you could do it live, and the only reason I did virtually all of it myself is that was quicker that way. I didn’t write out scores—I drew graphs.” Waters evoked his childhood haunt on an acoustic ballad, “Grantchester Meadows,” that was given added atmosphere and depth by the use of stereo field recordings of humming insects, and birds, swans, foxes, and children playing. At the end, a fly buzzes from side to side; footsteps chase it around the room and then it’s swatted with a hefty thwack. His other composition, the snappily titled “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict,” was at the time a contender for the longest song title ever—at least until people started taking the accolade seriously. He later described it as “a bit of concrete poetry. Those were sounds that I made, the voice and the handslapping were all human generated—no instruments.”

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ABOVE: Soundtrack for the 1969 film More. RIGHT: Movie posters for More. THE DOLDRUMS

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ABOVE: A 1969 promotional postcard of Pink Floyd. From left to right: David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Rick Wright. ABOVE (CENTER): 1969 tour program. ABOVE (RIGHT): A release from the Bryan Morrison agency detailing the gig dates for May and June of 1969.

Gilmour’s “The Narrow Way” was borne out of “desperation . . . I’d never written anything before. I just went into a studio and started waffling about, tacking bits and pieces together.” Mason recruited his wife Lindy, a trained flautist, for “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party.” “I attempted to do a variation on the obligatory drum solo—I have never been a fan of gymnastic workouts at the kit, by myself or anyone else.” He found Norman Smith very helpful when it came to the flute arrangements, but the studio manager less so—particularly after he “reprimand[ed] me for editing my own tapes.” When the band presented the resulting album, Ummagumma, to EMI, the label seemed decidedly unimpressed. In retrospect, Waters felt that the band members should have presented their pieces to each other earlier and discussed them. “I don’t think it’s good to work in total isolation,” he admitted. Mason agreed, noting, “Our sum is always greater than our parts.” The band had already run out of studio time, however, so they decided to add a second disc of live material. They recorded two shows, at Birmingham’s Mothers Club (good show, faulty equipment) and the Manchester College of Commerce (faulty show, good equipment). The resulting versions of “Astronomy Domine,” Careful with That Axe, Eugene,” “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” and “A Saucerful of Secrets” were a fine representation of the band in concert. But EMI hedged its bets, packaging the double-album at a budget price and bouncing 48

the band from the Columbia label to the recently launched “progressive” imprint, Harvest. In the event, Ummagumma was the band’s most successful album to date, reaching No. 5 in the U.K. A spring tour of Britain culminated in another special Pink Floyd show when the band reached London. The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes—More Furious Madness from The Pink Floyd was staged at the prestigious Royal Festival Hall and featured two lengthy conceptual suites that utilized various songs from More and Ummagumma. The first was “The Man,” subtitled “A Day in the Life of a Wage Slave,” during which the road crew constructed a table on the stage; when the band took a break, they were served tea at the table. The second suite, “The Journey,” featured a grotesque monster with a gasmask on its head and outsized genitalia. The monster walked around the hall, accosting members of the audience, before ambling around the stage and urinating on the front row—all in the name of art. Perhaps the most noteworthy gig for Pink Floyd during the summer of ’69 came when they were commissioned by the BBC to take part in the broadcaster’s coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing. They played a five-minute bluesy jam in the studio while actors including Ian McKellen and Judy Dench read poetry and quotes about the moon. “It was fantastic to be thinking that we were making up a piece of music while the astronauts were standing on the moon,” Gilmour recalled.

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ABOVE: Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni shooting the movie Zabriskie Point in the Mojave Desert. Antonioni asked Pink Floyd to do the soundtrack for the film, though only three pieces ended up making

it onto the final version.

Later in the year, the band were involved in a slightly more down-to-earth soundtrack project for Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point. He had seen the band play in their psychedelic days, while he was in London shooting Blow Up, and decided to use them after hearing “Careful with That Axe, Eugene.” The band spent two weeks recording tracks with Antonioni in Rome but found him hard to please. “We did some great stuff,” Waters recalled, “but there was always something that stopped

it being perfect. You’d change whatever was wrong and he’d still be unhappy. It was hell, pure hell.” In the end, Antonioni used only three pieces of music, one of which was a variation on “Careful with That Axe, Eugene.” Among those he rejected was a piece by Wright that later became “Us and Them” on Dark Side of the Moon. By the end of the year it was time for another Pink Floyd album. And this time they couldn’t get away with another Ummagumma. THE DOLDRUMS

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WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SYD? JANUARY 6, 1946—JULY 7, 2006 Syd Barrett left Pink Floyd in early 1968. After that, his mental state continued to deteriorate, partly as a result of his drug intake, and partly due to his highly strung character. His manager, Peter Kenner, encouraged him to pursue a solo career and organized some recording sessions in May and June 1968. The sessions yielded seven songs, none of which were complete. Jenner, who produced the sessions, later admitted that he had “seriously underestimated” the difficulties of working with Barrett in the studio. Next to try was Malcolm Jones, head of EMI’s alternative rock label, Harvest, who produced a number of sessions at Abbey Road Studios in April and May 1969, with David Gilmour on bass and Humble Pie’s Jerry Shirley on drums. Members of Soft Machine would also appear on a couple of tracks. The results were variable, much like Barrett’s sense of tempo, which caused difficulties for the other musicians. His inability—or refusal—to play a song the same way twice created further problems. It was left to Gilmour and Waters to coax more songs out of Barrett during June and July, between mixing sessions for Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma. Not surprisingly, The Madcap Laughs, released in January 1970, was an inconsistent album. The highlights include the simple, mesmerizing “Terrapin” and “Golden Hair,” and the stark, schizophrenic “Dark Globe.” Some would criticize Gilmour’s decision to leave in some of Barrett’s false starts and wayward singing, however, and the album got no higher than No. 40 in the U.K. charts. The following month Barrett, who had played no gigs since leaving Pink Floyd, recorded four new songs for a BBC Radio 1 session, which suggested that he already had material for a second album. This time, Gilmour roped in Rick Wright to try to keep the sessions, which spread across the first half of the year, on an even keel. Attempts to get Barrett to play to a prerecorded backing track were only partially successful, however, and some overdubs were added without Barrett’s active involvement. Released in November 1970, Barrett had a smoother overall feel compared with the first album, although some critics felt that

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it smothered Syd’s style. More apparent was the paucity of songs beyond the opening trio of “Baby Lemonade,” “Love Song,” and “Dominoes” (plus the later “Gigolo Aunt”). Meanwhile, Barrett’s first proper gig since leaving Pink Floyd—at the Music and Fashion Festival at London’s Olympia in June, with a band featuring Gilmour (on bass) and Jerry Shirley, among others—ended after just four songs when he walked offstage.

BARRETT’S FIRST GIG SINCE PINK FLOYD ENDED AFTER ONLY FOUR SONGS WHEN HE WALKED OFFSTAGE… After managing to just about keep it together for a second BBC Radio 1 session in February 1971, Barrett returned to Cambridge, where he gradually got involved in the local music scene, making the odd guest appearance with other acts. In early 1972 he put together a trio called Stars and played some informal gigs at local coffee bars, but after a disastrous show with the MC5 at the Cambridge Corn Exchange, Barrett’s new band came to a grinding halt. Later that year he moved back to London, where he would keep a low profile. In August 1974 manager Peter Jenner tempted him back to the Abbey Road Studio for three days that produced just a bunch of rhythm tracks and a few guitar overdubs. His last appearance at Abbey Road was in June 1975, when he dropped in unannounced on Pink Floyd as they were mixing “Shine on You Crazy Diamond”—a song that, by coincidence, had been written specifically about him, although it’s doubtful whether he knew that at the time. Barrett then slipped back to Cambridge, where he fell even further under the radar. Even the Syd Barrett Appreciation Society fanzine, Terrapin, would be forced to close as a result of “lack of Syd.” A small but noisy clique of obsessives continued to

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ABOVE: An edition of Terrapin, the Syd Barrett

Appreciation Society fanzine.

ABOVE (LEFT): Album cover for Madcap Laughs, which was Barrett’s first solo album, released in 1970. ABOVE: Syd Barrett in 1969.

lobby EMI, insisting the label was withholding unreleased songs. EMI repeatedly replied that there was nothing of releasable quality and finally proved the point in 1988 with Opel. Of the six “new” songs, only the title track could claim to add anything to the Barrett legacy. Subsequent compilations unearthed two more unissued tracks, “Bob Dylan’s Blues” and a 14-minute instrumental jam called “Rhamadan.” Barrett himself lived quietly in Cambridge, painting and gardening, comfortably sustained by his Pink Floyd songwriting royalties and only becoming agitated when pestered on occasion by well-meaning but misguided fans overeager to remind

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him of his past. His former bandmates were discouraged from contacting him for the same reason. By the time Barrett reached his fifties, his health began to suffer. After battling diabetes and pancreatic cancer, he died at home on July 7, 2006, aged 60. His death certificate listed his occupation as “retired musician.” All four members of Pink Floyd attended Games for May, a tribute to his life and work, at London’s Barbican Centre in May 2007, although they did not appear onstage together. Among the other performers were Robyn Hitchcock, Captain Sensible, Damon Albarn, Chrissie Hynde and Kevin Ayers—just a handful of his numerous musical devotees.

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CHAPTER 4

Me d d ling T hr ou gh

RIGHT: A young Roger Waters standing thoughtfully at the microphone in a recording studio.

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ABOVE: Scottish avant-garde composer Ron Geesin, who worked with Roger Waters on a project called Music for the Body.

avid Gilmour came up with the chord sequence that became the theme of “Atom Heart Mother” toward the end of 1969. “It sounded like The Magnificent Seven to me,” he recalled. “I called it ‘Theme from an Imaginary Western.’” Waters heard it during a rehearsal, and picked up on its “heroic, plodding quality”—as well as its soundtrack potential. Together with Wright, they began adding new themes and variations. “We sat and played with it, jigged it around, added bits and took bits away,” Gilmour told London’s Capital Radio. “We farted around with it in all sorts of places for ages until we got some shape to it.” The band started including it in their shows from

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mid-January 1970, as a work in progress, introducing it as “The Amazing Pudding.” Between gigs, Pink Floyd booked time at Abbey Road Studios and recorded the basic structure of their “Pudding.” Returning from a European tour in late March—with just a week’s break before an American tour—they decided to add a choir and brass section into the mix. With Norman Smith now taking a backseat role as executive producer, Waters suggested they recruit Ron Geesin, a Scottish avant-garde composer and performer he’d been working with on a project called Music for the Body, which was intended as a soundtrack for a suitably avant-garde movie called The Body.

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"WE SAT AND PLAYED WITH IT, JIGGED IT AROUND, ADDED BITS AND TOOK BITS AWAY..." —DAVID GILMOUR BELOW and RIGHT: Pink Floyd performing at the Pop Festival in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in

June of 1970.

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ABOVE: Pink Floyd performing onstage in Hyde Park, London, on July 18, 1970.

“Roger said he would like me to write the brass and choir parts,” Geesin later told author Glenn Povey. “Floyd were off to the States, and Roger left me with a skeletal tape of the rhythm and chords. It was to be a 25-minute piece, which is a hell of a lot of work. Nobody knew what they wanted. They couldn’t read music.” There were also problems with the tempo, which varied between the different prerecorded sections. “These were the things we were stuck with, and it was a problem when it came to recording the live musicians on top of the prerecorded tapes.” Geesin had volunteered to conduct the orchestral sessions but soon regretted it. The brass players were “hard, uncaring types who weren’t going to tolerate anyone green or naïve.” The selftaught Geesin was both. Worse, on the funky section he’d wrongly 56

estimated where the first beat of each bar should be. Chaos ensued until Geesin was rescued by choir director John Aldiss, who took over as conductor. But it’s fair to say the brass contributions never sparkled. Looking back, Gilmour conceded that some of the playing “seems a bit messy when I listen to it now. Little things jump out at me and I think, ‘shouldn’t have done that.’” The second side featured a song apiece by Waters, Gilmour, and Wright. Waters’s “If,” an affectingly melodic ballad, would

WRIGHT'S "SUMMER '68" WAS CANDIDLY AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL...

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ROGER FOUND A NEWS STORY ABOUT A PREGNANT WOMAN WHO WAS FITTED WITH AN ATOMIC PACEMAKER. IT WAS CALLED "ATOM HEART MOTHER..." ABOVE: Roger Waters onstage in Hyde Park, London, on July 18, 1970.

rarely be played live by the band but was performed by Waters on his solo tours in the ’80s. Gilmour’s “Fat Old Sun” was his own sequel to Waters’s “Grantchester Meadows”; Wright’s “Summer ’68” was a candidly autobiographical song. The final track, “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast,” was another sound-effects experiment, capturing the sounds of roadie Alan Stile preparing his breakfast in sizzling stereo (as recorded in Mason’s kitchen). “The Amazing Pudding,” as it was still known, was given its full live premiere with choir and orchestra at the Bath Festival at the end of June. A three-day event staged near the current Glastonbury Festival site, it featured Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, Frank Zappa, Steppenwolf, Santana, Johnny Winter, the Byrds, and Country Joe and the Fish, among many others.

Somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 people attended, resulting in the countryside being gridlocked for miles. Pink Floyd took the stage five hours late, with dawn breaking just as they fired green flares into the sky while serving the “Pudding.” A couple of weeks later, “The Amazing Pudding” was given a new name when the band performed it at a BBC Radio concert, just before another headlining engagement at a free festival in London’s Hyde Park. They needed a proper title for D.J. John Peel’s introduction (and for the BBC’s royalties paperwork). There was a copy of the Evening Standard lying on a table, and Geesin suggested that Waters might find a title in there. Roger leafed through and found a story about a pregnant woman being fitted with an atomic pacemaker headlined “Atom Heart Mother.” MEDDLING THROUGH

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ABOVE: Pink Floyd circa 1970. From left to right: Rick Wright, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, and Nick Mason.

The cover of the resulting album, also called Atom Heart Mother, included another twist or two. The band told designer Storm Thorgerson they wanted something “unpsychedelic, un-Floyd, just off-the-wall, ordinary.” Thorgerson toyed around with an image of a man diving into water, but the band felt it wasn’t ordinary enough. (The image would later surface for Wish You Were Here.) After a conversation with a friend, who suggested that you couldn’t get more ordinary than a cow, Thorgerson drove out into the countryside and photographed the first cow he came across: a pedigree Fresian named Lulubelle III. The band left their name off the cover, resulting in an image that Thorgerson dubbed “totally cow.” They played along 58

further by naming sections of the long title track “Breast Milky” and “Funky Dung.” Then the record companies joined in. EMI brought a herd of cows into London and organized a dawn photo shoot along the Mall—the long stately avenue between Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace—while Lulubelle III found herself plastered on freeway boards in America by Capitol Records. Despite booking a six-week U.S. tour—the band’s second of the year— to precede the album’s release in October, Atom Heart Mother stalled outside the Billboard Top 50, no doubt hindered by the lack of a single—or anything remotely radio-friendly. It was a different story in Britain. The album was eagerly awaited by

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THORGERSON DROVE OUT INTO THE COUNTRYSIDE AND PHOTOGRAPHED THE FIRST COW HE SAW...

ABOVE: Cover for Atom Heart Mother designed by Storm Thorgerson.

ABOVE: From left to right: Rick Wright, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason doing an interview backstage on November 14, 1970.

enough of the half-million-or-so people who had heard the title track at gigs over the course of the previous year to make a swift rise to No. 1, briefly replacing Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. It remained in the charts for five months. It was around this time that Pink Floyd turned down a potentially fascinating soundtrack opportunity from film director Stanley Kubrick, who expressed an interest in using Atom Heart Mother for his new film, A Clockwork Orange. “He just phoned up and said that he wanted it,” Waters told Great Lake in 1973. “We said, ‘Well, what do you want to do?’ and he didn’t know. He [said he] wanted to use it ‘how I want, when I want.’” That wasn’t good enough for the band, who opted to reject Kubrick’s request.

Pink Floyd spent nine months of 1970 on the road, playing “Atom Heart Mother” at almost every show. During the latter part of the year, at specific shows in big cities, they would add a choir and brass section made up of local musicians. They may not have exuded rock star charisma or flamboyance in the manner of the Rolling Stones or Deep Purple, but they were gradually making their mark. Truth to tell, they were more domesticated than their peers. No televisions were seen tumbling from their hotel rooms. Three members of the band were now married, with Gilmour the only bachelor. They lived comfortably in houses lacking the usual rock-star extravagances in London, socializing together less as they worked together more. MEDDLING THROUGH

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ABOVE: Nick Mason performing at Rotterdam’s Ahoy on April 3, 1971. PREVIOUS PAGE: Rick Wright tuning Roger Waters's bass in Copenhagen, Denmark, in November of 1970. ABOVE: Farnborough Tech College poster advertising a Pink Floyd performance on February 13, 1971.

After the breakthrough with Atom Heart Mother, EMI Records were understandably keen for Pink Floyd to start work on a follow-up, particularly as the recording process was becoming longer with each album. The band booked Abbey Road Studios for a month at the beginning of 1971, even though they had nothing prepared. Mason told Musician magazine that it was “a specific attempt to do something different by a slightly different method. Any time anyone had any sort of rough idea, we’d put it down.” One of the first ideas came as they were setting up in the studio and Wright was doodling on his piano, which was hooked up to a Leslie amplifier. Every time he hit a particular note it made a strange sound. It was “a kind of feedback thing,” Gilmour recalled. “‘Ping.’ It was a complete accident. We said, ‘That’s great!’ and used it as the start of the piece.” The piece started out as “Nothing” and then for a while it was known as “Nothing Pts 1–24.” After they’d amassed 36 ideas—some related, some not— it became “Return of the Son of Nothing.” Most of the ideas came from Gilmour and Wright, but it was largely Waters and Mason who pieced them together into what Waters later described as “an epic sound poem.” 62

ABOVE: David Gilmour having an intimate moment with his guitar on April 3, 1971. RIGHT: David Gilmour performing at Rotterdam's Ahoy on April 3, 1971.

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ABOVE: A fan cools off in a pond before the open-air concert at the Crystal Palace Bowl featuring Pink Floyd and the Faces on May 15, 1971.

"ONE OF THESE DAYS" STARTED OUT AS A ONE-NOTE BASS RIFF FROM WATERS AND BECAME THE DRIVING FORCE OF THE SONG... The band worked diligently through the spring, reducing their live schedule accordingly, but they still hadn’t finished recording the song when they presented “Nothing” to an audience at the Crystal Palace Garden Party in south London in mid May, for which they were supported by the Faces. It rained through most of Pink Floyd’s set, and while the musicians were relatively sheltered on the Hollywood Bowl-style stage, the audience huddled under plastic macs. During “The Return of the Son of Nothing,” a giant inflatable octopus rose up from the lake that separated the stage from the audience amid a pall of orange smoke. Unfortunately, few of the 64

live fish in the lake survived the vibrations from the band’s sound. The band eventually recorded their sound poem, now called “Echoes,” in July, opting for George Martin’s Air Studios, which had recently upgraded to state-of-the-art 16-track recording facilities. (Abbey Road was still using eight-track.) At 23-and-a-half minutes, “Echoes” would occupy an entire side of the band’s new album, just as “Atom Heart Mother” had done on their previous LP. On the flipside, one of the other tracks they recorded for the album managed to condense the quintessential Pink Floyd experience into just under six minutes. “One of These Days” started out at a

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ABOVE: Rick Wright performing onstage at KB Hallen on September 23, 1971 in Copehagen, Denmark.

one-note bass riff from Waters that was fed into the Binson echo unit they’d hung onto since the Syd Barrett days. The riff became the driving force of the song. “You sort of make a rhythm between yourself and the echo,” Gilmour explained to Capital Radio. “Originally, it was just that sound, then later on, after we’d recorded other things, it didn’t sound like it held up on its own for the whole number. We did another bit with heavy vibrato—the whole middle section—and then we started laying on the whole boogaloo: all the organs and fast guitars.” Mason also made his one and only vocal contribution

to the band, intoning the line “One of these days I’m going to cut you into little pieces” at the height of the boogaloo section. Among the remaining tracks there were two Gilmour–Waters collaborations: the pastoral “A Pillow of Winds,” and “Fearless,” with its darker lyrical undertow—“Fearlessly the idiot faced the crowd.” The latter also featured a recording of fans of Liverpool Football Club singing their team’s anthem, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” But there were no sonic experiments this time, unless you count the singing dog howling along to Gilmour’s bluesy guitar on “Seamus.” MEDDLING THROUGH

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ABOVE: Album cover for Meddle.

ABOVE: “One Of These Days” single.

After asking Storm Thorgerson simply to produce something “ordinary” for their last album, the band gave him a more specific design brief this time: an “underwater ear.” Thorgerson duly complied, adding ripples to represent sound waves around an image of a human ear. The trouble was that you had to squint quite hard to tell that it was in fact an ear, or at least open up the gatefold sleeve vertically. The band—away on tour in Australasia—didn’t see the finished design until it was too late. It remains Thorgerson’s least favorite Pink Floyd album cover, although it’s probably better than his original suggestion, which was to use an image of a baboon’s anus. Meddle was released in November 1971. It failed to emulate Atom Heart Mother’s chart-topping success in the U.K., peaking at No. 3 while Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells a Story, Led Zeppelin’s Four Symbols, and T.Rex’s Electric Warrior jostled for the top spot. Eighteen months later, however, Meddle was still in the chart, still racking up appreciable sales. In the U.S., Meddle failed to rise above No. 70 on the Billboard chart—a worse return than its predecessor. It was proving tough to break Pink Floyd in America, with their anonymous image and lack of FM airplay—even “One of These Days” was considered too raucous by D.J.s and programmers. The band began to express concerns about Capitol Records’ commitment to breaking Pink Floyd in the U.S., and wondered whether the label actually understood what they were all about. After all, their American tours were selling well, and their underground status continued to increase. There was clearly a market for their music, but Capitol didn’t seem to know how to exploit it—possibly because there were no other similar bands on the label. 66

ABOVE: Nick Mason looking focused as he performs in Boston, Massachusetts, in November of 1971.

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ABOVE: Album cover for the 1996 CD reissue of Relics.

Pink Floyd’s image could have been given a major boost around this time by a film in which they starred as well as provided the soundtrack. Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii was filmed amid the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, literally buried alive in 79 A.D. by the devastating volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which still smolders today. The film was the brainchild of French director Adrian Maben, who was looking to make a rock-music movie that would be in total contrast to the likes of Woodstock or the Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter. His idea was to film Pink Floyd playing in the empty ruins of the Roman amphitheater in Pompeii, in the shadow of the still-active volcano, with all the atmospheric connotations that such a scenario might conjure up. The idea appealed to the band, who further stipulated that they would play live in the amphitheater; there would be no playback or use of tapes. Six days in early October 1971, were set aside for filming, and Maben set about convincing the Italian authorities that Pink Floyd’s music would not cause the carefully excavated and restored ruins of Pompeii to crumble into dust. The band showed up at the appointed time, their equipment— complete with 24-track mixing console—was set up, and as soon as it was plugged in it fused the entire power supply on the site. This might have been a foreseeable problem, but it took three days to solve. Meanwhile, the band twiddled their thumbs at the local hotel. Once a long cable had been laid to a nearby town hall with a more reliable power source, the band emerged to play the core of their current show—“A Saucerful of Secrets,” “Careful with 68

That Axe, Eugene,” “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” “One of These Days,” and “Echoes”—while the crew scurried around, shooting them in close-up. The shoot was rushed, but the acoustics of the amphitheater were excellent. Maben also captured the band walking around on the slopes of Vesuvius. When he got back to Paris, however, Maben discovered that 12 canisters of film had “gone missing,” which limited his editing options somewhat. He persuaded the band to fly to Paris, where they shot more footage, including a repeat of the “singing dog” routine, this time with a French dog. The film eventually premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival in September 1972 to encouraging reviews. Mason felt it was “a surprisingly good attempt to film our live set. The elements that seemed to make it work—none of which we really thought about during the filming—were the decision to perform live instead of miming, and the rather gritty environment created by the heat and the wind.” But the film’s backers wanted yet more footage. Maben pleaded with the band and was grudgingly granted access to Abbey Road in early 1973, just as they were putting the finishing touches to their next album. But by the time Live At Pompeii was finally granted a theatrical release in 1974, its moment had passed. Pink Floyd were becoming superstars.

ABOVE: The original album cover for Relics. RIGHT: Rick Wright performing in Boston, Massachusetts, in November of 1971.

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CHAPTER 5

Lunar E c lipse

RIGHT: David Gilmour performing at the Rainbow in London, 1972.

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n early December, 1971, just a couple of weeks after the completion of a 27-date U.S. tour and the release of Meddle, the members of Pink Floyd gathered round Mason’s kitchen table in Camden Town, London, to discuss their next album. Their schedule for 1972 was already filling up: British dates had been announced for February, with a second trip to Japan in the works, and another U.S. tour and more soundtrack work to follow. The band wanted to take advantage of the touring to road test and refine some new material ahead of recording. It was Waters who pushed for a theme to the music that they could all work to, as Mason recalled: “We assembled a list of all the difficulties and pressures of modern life that we particularly recognized—deadlines, travel, the stress of flying, the lure of money, a fear of dying, and the problems of mental instability spilling over into madness.” Waters took on the responsibility of writing all the lyrics—not that any of the others had been doing much of that lately, even on their own songs. Meanwhile, Gilmour, Wright, and Mason focused on songs and ideas. Some songs were left over from earlier albums: Waters’s “Brain Damage” was revived from the Meddle sessions, while Wright’s “Us and Them” dated back to the Zabriskie Point outtakes. “Time” had a verse and chorus, but no lyrics. Waters also had a catchy bass riff in an usual time signature that would morph into “Money.” At the beginning of January 1972 the group reconvened at a warehouse in Bermondsey, south London, where they spent nearly three weeks knocking the songs into presentable shape. “At the start we only had vague ideas about madness being a theme,” Wright told Disc and Music Echo magazine. “We rehearsed a lot, just putting down ideas, and then in the next rehearsal we used them. It flowed really well. There was a strong thing in it that made it easier to do.” They spent three more days at north London’s Rainbow Theatre, rehearsing the show with their production crew, who now had nine tons of sound and lighting equipment, plus a few new gadgets-in-progress to entertain themselves and the audience. They also had a new lighting designer, Arthur Max, whom they’d lured from his job at New York’s Fillmore East. From there it was straight to Brighton for the opening night of the U.K. tour, ironing out the glitches as they went along.

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RIGHT: Pink Floyd onstage in London in 1972. From left to right: David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Rick Wright. 72

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ABOVE: Pink Floyd's "Great Gig in the Sky" features the rants of TV personality and philosopher Malcolm Muggeridge, shown here in France, 1972. ABOVE (RIGHT): 1972 program promoting Pink Floyd's "Eclipse."

A month later, Pink Floyd were back at the Rainbow Theatre, this time for four sell-out shows, and they were confident enough to invite the media along. For the first half of the show they performed the new songs, gathered together under the working title of Eclipse, in pretty much the same order that they appeared on record a year later. Some songs—notably “Money,” “Time,” and “Us and Them”—already stood out. Others—such as the guitar/keyboard jam “On the Run,” and “The Great Gig in the Sky,” an electric-piano solo accompanied by tapes of British philosopher and television personality Malcolm Muggeridge in full rant—were still coming together. But even at this early stage, there was a clear, concise edge to the lyrics, in contrast to the spacey, whimsical ramblings of much of the band’s earlier work. A review in the Sunday Times caught the flavor. “It looks like hell. The set is dominated by three silver towers of light that hiccough eerie shades of red, green, and blue. Smoke haze from blinding flares that have erupted and died drifts everywhere. A harsh white light bleaches the faces of the musicians to bone . . . The ambition of the Floyd’s artistic intention is now vast. Yet at the heart of the multimedia intensity they have an uncanny feeling for the melancholy of our times . . . In their own terms, Floyd strikingly succeed. They are dramatists supreme.” In late February the band decamped to the Château 74

d’Hérouville near Paris—about to be immortalized by Elton John as the Honky Chateau—to record the soundtrack for La Vallée, a new film by Barbet Schroeder, with whom they had worked on More. They spent an intense week applying their mood-music skills to footage of a bunch of well-heeled hippies encountering a lost tribe in a hidden valley in the Andes. The songs were mostly fairly lightweight, although they still benefited from Waters’s thematic approach, and there were glimpses of the way the band would sound on Dark Side of the Moon, notably on the title track. The soundtrack album was released in June 1972, but it was retitled Obscured by Clouds after a dispute with the film company. Ironically, the film was then retitled La Vallée (Obscured by Clouds), but not even that could save it from a critical mauling. March saw Pink Floyd back in Japan for concerts in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and Hokkaido, and in April they started another lengthy U.S. tour. By now, a number of new effects had worked their way into the show, such as the sheets of flame rising from cauldrons at the back of the stage and the gong that burst into flames during “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.” The road crew was always up for a few extra surprises when they got the chance. At the Hollywood Bowl, searchlights scanned the night sky behind the famously domed stage, and the show finished with a big firework display.

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RIGHT: Album cover art for Obscured by Clouds. BELOW: "Free Four" single cover.

"THEY HAVE AN UNCANNY FEELING FOR THE MELANCHOLY OF OUR TIMES" —SUNDAY TIMES ON PINK FLOYD

RIGHT: Movie posters promoting Barbet Schroeder's La Vallée (Obscured by Clouds). LUNAR ECLIPSE

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BELOW: Rick Wright, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and David Gilmour perform onstage at Amsterdam's Olympisch Stadion on May 22, 1972.

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lefT: Pink Floyd performing onstage at the Olympisch Stadion in Amsterdam on May 22, 1972.

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THE CHIMING CLOCKS ON PINK FLOYD'S "TIME" CAME FROM ENGINEER ALAN PARSONS.

ABOVE: Roger Waters playing a Fender Precision bass guitar on May 22, 1972, at the Amsterdam Rock Circus in the Netherlands.

It wasn’t until June that Pink Floyd finally started recording their new songs at Abbey Road studios. Their timing was just right. They found the place full of new technology, with 16-track recording consoles having recently been installed, and who better to explore the possibilities therein than Pink Floyd? There was also excited talk among the engineers about the new Dolby noise reduction system due to arrive shortly. Plus there were new gizmos for the band to play with, notably the EMS Synthi-A, the latest in (albeit still primitive) synthesizer technology. The whirring, helicopter-like noises that Wright discovered on it transformed “On the Run” when added to Mason’s heavily treated hi-hat. Mason had an electronic drum kit on hand, but he generally preferred the traditional approach. The dynamic beats at the beginning of “Time” were recorded on a set of specially tuned rototoms—metal-framed drums with no shell that are tuned by 80

ABOVE: Bassist and singer Roger Waters performing on stage circa 1972.

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ABOVE: Alan Parsons in a studio circa 1970.

rotation—which happened to be lying around the studio. The chiming clocks came from a quadrophonic test recording album that engineer Alan Parsons—on his way from being tape-op assistant for the Beatles to a successful solo career as the Alan Parsons Project—had made in an antique clock shop a month earlier. For “Money,” a seven-part tape loop was constructed from the sound of coins and cash registers, cut into equal lengths, and spliced together. The band had now played the songs enough times to know how they wanted them to sound—something Gilmour believed made a crucial difference. “You couldn’t do that now, of course,” he later told the writer Robert Sandall. “You’d be bootlegged out of existence. But when we went into the studio we all knew the material. The playing was very good. It had a natural feel. And it was a bloody good package—the music, the concept, and the cover all came together. And it was the first time we’d had great lyrics.”

Sometimes, though, the singing went beyond words—literally, when gospel singer Clare Torry was brought in to add wordless vocals to Wright’s “Great Gig in the Sky.” “It sends shivers down my spine,” Wright told a Montreal radio station. “No words, just her wailing. It’s got something in it that’s very seductive. My memory is that she went out into the studio and did it very quickly. Then she came back in looking embarrassed and saying, ‘I’m really sorry about this,’ but we were going, ‘This is wonderful.’” By now, the album’s working title had changed from Eclipse to Dark Side of the Moon, so the band were not pleased to discover that another British band, Medicine Head, had just released an album with the same title. “We weren’t annoyed at Medicine Head,” Gilmour explained to Sounds magazine. “We were annoyed because we had already thought of the title before the Medicine Head album came out.” Fortunately for Pink Floyd, the Medicine Head album sunk without a trace, so they were able to re-appropriate the title. LUNAR ECLIPSE

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ABOVE: Roger Waters and David Gilmour looking tense in Marseilles, France, in 1972.

RIGHT: DVD cover for Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii.

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ABOVE: David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Rick Wright in Marseilles, France, with friends and family.

As recording continued, the band had other commitments and distractions to deal with. There was another tour of the U.S. to complete, and then further dates in Europe, with Dark Side of the Moon occupying the first half of the show. Meanwhile, the saga of the Live at Pompeii film rumbled on. Director Adrian Maben came to film the band at Abbey Road and caught them at their most surly, highlighted by Mason in the canteen, petulantly demanding a piece of apple pie “with no crust.” Waters contemptuously blows smoke rings at the camera and responds to questions like “Are you happy?” with “What do you mean by ‘happy’?” There are two illuminating studio snapshots, however: a tracking shot of Wright laying down a piano part, and another of Gilmour adding an overdub. When Waters queries the guitar tone over the intercom, Gilmour mutters, “Christ, where would rock ’n’ roll be without feedback?”

Then there was the long-running saga of the Roland Petit Ballet. The band had expressed an interest in writing a piece for the French troupe to perform, and none other than Rudolf Nureyev was on board, while the equally impressive Roman Polanski fancied filming the whole affair. Mason later spoke of “innumerable discussions, a number of lunches, a number of dinners, and very high-powered meetings.” The original idea had revolved around Remembrance of Things Past, but the band found Marcel Proust’s magnum opus heavy going, with some members barely making it to the second chapter, let alone the second volume. Then it switched to the Arabian fable “One Thousand and One Nights,” but nobody was ever quite sure how or why.

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ABOVE: Pink Floyd bowing to the crowd after performing live with the ballet in Marseilles, France, on January 11, 1972.

The project fell to earth after what Waters described to Zig Zag magazine as “another great lunch.” As the afternoon became more inebriated, the ideas grew more outlandish, culminating in Polanski suggesting they make “the blue movie to end all blue movies.” Then, Waters continued, the conversation “petered out into cognacs and coffees and we jumped into our cars and split. God knows what happened after that.” What happened next, in fact, was that Pink Floyd rerecorded some existing pieces for the ballet to dance to and performed live with them on selected performances in Paris and Marseilles. But work on Dark Side of the Moon continued unabated. The album 84

took shape through the fall of 1972, and it was while Waters was thinking about ways of bringing more continuity to it that he had the idea of linking the tracks with bits of speech. “I still glow with pleasure at how well that worked,” he told the writer Peter Henderson, 25 years after the album’s release. “I devised a series of about 20 questions on pieces of card. They ranged from obscure questions, like ‘What does the phrase “the dark side of the moon” mean to you?’ to a series of questions that related to each other, like ‘When was the last time you were violent?’ and then ‘Do you think you were in the right?’ We asked people to just go into an empty studio, look at the top card, respond to it, move

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ABOVE: Promotional photo of Pink Floyd for Dark Side of the Moon. From left to right: Nick Mason, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, and Rick Wright.

on to the next card, and respond to that, and so on until they’d done all the cards.” Pink Floyd’s road crew were willing guinea pigs—that’s the road manager’s voice you hear at the beginning of the album. But passing strangers also took part. Paul McCartney, who was recording at Abbey Road at the same time, was roped in, as was his wife, Linda, although their replies were not used. The final snippet as the album fades—“There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact, it’s all dark”—came from Jerry Driscoll, the doorman at Abbey Road. The heartbeat that opens and closes the album was made by gently beating a padded bass drum

(recordings of real heartbeats sounded “too stressful”). It was also slowed down considerably below the normal heart rate of 72 beats per minute. Things only started to become fraught as the band approached the final mix. By now, it was clear that they were onto something special, but after months in the studio worrying about the nuances, they were in danger of losing the broader perspective on the album as a whole. The main bone of contention was between Gilmour—who wanted the voices and sound effects to be lower in the mix—and Waters, who wanted them to stand out with greater clarity than on previous albums. LUNAR ECLIPSE

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ABOVE: Pink Floyd publicity photo circa 1973. Roger Waters (top left), Rick Wright (top right), Nick Mason (bottom left), and David Gilmour (bottom right).

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ALL FOUR MEMBERS IMMEDIATELY CHOSE THE DESIGN OF LIGHT PASSING THROUGH A PRISM FOR THE COVER...

ABOVE: Album cover for Dark Side of the Moon.

The band eventually made the decision to bring in an impartial set of ears: Chris Thomas, an engineer who’d worked on the Beatles’ “White Album” and had done his best to bring some coherence to that sprawling double album. He was, according to Mason, “an inspired choice.” Even Waters was happy with the compromise. “I remember going to hear the final mix, and it was quite a relief actually because I think we’d almost run out of steam at that point,” he told the makers of a Classic Albums documentary about the record. “Chris’s mix was softer than I had expected—certainly softer than I would have done it. But I think he did a great job.” The artwork, in contrast, was much more straightforward. Wright told designer Storm Thorgerson that he wanted something “simple and bold.” Thorgerson remembers coming in with several ideas—one of them was a photograph of the Marvel Comics character the Silver Surfer on a tiered wave—but all four members immediately chose the design of light passing through a

prism. Thorgerson scarcely had time to explain that he was trying to reflect the band’s light show. It didn’t matter; it was another strong image that was seemingly unconnected to the album’s contents. Students of optics will note that the color purple is missing from the light spectrum. This is because it was felt that purple would not show up against the black background. And in what was now becoming a tradition, nowhere on the front or back cover is the album’s title mentioned. The only reference to the band is in the credits on the inner sleeve, which state that the album was “Produced by Pink Floyd.” Dark Side of the Moon was released in March 1973 with the band in the midst of the first of two extensive American tours they would play that year. At New York’s Radio City Music Hall they made full use of the theater’s hydraulic stage and air vents, filling the auditorium with smoke and training red and green laser beams onto giant mirror balls suspended from the ceiling. LUNAR ECLIPSE

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BELOW: Pink Floyd performing live onstage in Los Angeles in 1973.

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ABOVE: Singles of "Money" and "Us and Them."

ABOVE: A gong on fire onstage at Pink Floyd’s performance in Earls Court, London, for the Shelter benefit concert on May 18, 1973.

Capitol Records had lined up a massive promotional campaign for the album—even persuading the band to release an edited version of “Money” as a single. They were rewarded when Dark Side of the Moon reached the coveted No. 1 spot for one week in late April, in-between Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies and Elvis Presley’s Aloha from Hawaii. Gilmour’s immediate response to the band’s newfound chart success was, “Yes, it is nice isn’t it? We’ve never been above 40th position before. I don’t think it will make any change. I mean, we’ve never had a problem selling out even the largest halls and I don’t really see how that can change.” Amid the euphoria, nobody seemed to notice that, although the album was slipping down the charts, it hadn’t dropped out of the charts. It never did. In fact, it would remain in the U.S. charts for the next 15 years—until Billboard changed the rules and made it ineligible. Even so, it has spent more than twice as long in the charts as its nearest rival, James Taylor’s Greatest Hits. In Britain, Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies managed to beat Dark Side of the Moon to the top spot, although Pink Floyd’s

album remained in the charts for the next six years. Worldwide sales of the album are estimated at 50 million copies—a figure surpassed only by Michael Jackson’s Thriller and AC/DC’s Back in Black. It still sells about a quarter-million copies around the world every year. Capitol Records’ efforts in support of Dark Side of the Moon in the U.S. were not enough to convince Pink Floyd to remain on the label, however. The band had already decided that the label was not sufficiently equipped to handle them, and in late 1973 they signed a North American deal with CBS Records, despite having no new album on the horizon. By now, the band had wound down their touring activities and retreated back to their families to enjoy the fruits of what was already a phenomenal success, aware that their lives would never be the same again. “We knew before we finished the album that it was definitely going to do a lot better than anything we’d done before,” Gilmour told the band’s biographer, Miles. “But we didn’t think it was going to do that well.”

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DARK SIDE OF THE MOON STILL SELLS APPROXIMATELY A QUARTER-MILLION COPIES EVERY YEAR... LEFT: David Gilmour performing onstage at the Shelter benefit concert on May 18, 1973. He's playing a Fender Stratocaster guitar (using a wah-wah pedal).

ABOVE: Earls Court, London, performance of Pink Floyd for the Shelter benefit concert on May 18, 1973. LUNAR ECLIPSE

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DARK SIDE OF THE RAINBOW Forget Roger Waters’s bleak visions of paranoia, madness, and death. The real meaning of Dark Side of the Moon is to be found within the Judy Garland movie The Wizard of Oz. Or so some would claim. The connection between Dark Side and Oz dates back to the mid 1990s, when Pink Floyd fan websites started getting excited about the synchronicities that occur when you play the movie and the album simultaneously. It works like this: Put a copy of Dark Side into your CD player and then cue up Oz on the television. Start up the movie, but pause it when you get to the third roar of the MGM lion. Turn down the sound on the TV, and then press “play” on the album and film at the same time. A couple minutes in, during “Breathe,” Gilmour sings, “Look around”; seconds later, Dorothy turns around. Spooky, eh? But that’s just the start. Depending on just how much attention you’re paying, further synchronicities soon tumble forth. Dorothy breaks into a trot just as the band sings, “No one told you when to run.” The chimes in “Time” coincide with the arrival of the Wicked Witch of the West and stop when she dismounts from her bike. “The Great Gig in the Sky” starts just as the tornado begins and lasts for the duration of the storm. When it finishes—and bear in mind that it marks the end of side one of the original album—the black-and-white portion of the film also ends, and— ker-ching, ker-ching!—the start of “Money” heralds the color section of the movie, with the Munchkins dancing in time to the music (kind of). The scarecrow starts dancing just as the band reach the part about the lunatic on the grass. Finally, as the album ends to the sound of fading heartbeats, we see Dorothy leaning over the Tin Man, banging on his chest to see if he has a heart. These are just the highlights. Over 70 such examples have been found so far, and you can rest assured that the search is still ongoing. Some of you may have already spotted a potential flaw in this theory—namely that the album doesn’t last as long as the movie. The obvious answer is to play it again. Opinion is still divided on

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exactly when to press “play” again, but you should be able to notch up at least 30 more synchronicities—by which time you’ll be into your third spin of the album. Mind you, some radical splinter groups opt for playing Animals or Meddle instead, once Dark Side has finished, and are now compiling an alternative gospel of latterday synchronicities (largely ignored by the true believers).

IF YOU GAZE VERY CLOSELY AT THE COVER OF PULSE , YOU CAN MAKE OUT AN IMAGE OF A GIRL WEARING A PAIR OF RED SHOES... That’s the evidence. It can’t all be coincidence, can it? So it must have been deliberate. There are two main conspiracy theories to explain it. One is that the whole band were “in on it.” The other is that this was Waters’s plot alone, and that the other members were unaware of what he was up to. The search is now on for the smoking gun. The “Roger did it” faction believe they have found theirs in an interview with engineer Alan Parsons, who states categorically that at no point during the recording of Dark Side of the Moon did anyone ever hear mention of The Wizard of Oz. With the kind of logic that would satisfy any witch-hunter or UFOspotter, this proves that Roger acted alone . . . because he didn’t mention it to anyone else. But wait. The “it was the band” brigade have found their smoking gun, too. If you gaze closely—very closely—at the cover of Pink Floyd’s 1995 live album, Pulse, you’ll make out an image of a girl wearing a pair of red shoes: Dorothy’s red shoes! Look harder and you’ll see the Wicked Witch of the West’s bicycle and the Tin Man’s axe. The fact that these three icons are also associated with Pink Floyd songs dating back to the 60s is irrelevant—since Waters had left the band long before Pulse came out, this proves he could not have done it alone.

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In recent years, the search has widened. Wish You Were Here has been played to Blade Runner with satisfying results. Meddle is doing well as a soundtrack to Fantasia. And “Echoes” sounds good on Contact. In fact, pick a Pink Floyd album, choose your favorite movie, and there’s a web site out there waiting for you.

But what word from the band themselves? Gilmour has spoken of “some guy with too much time on his hands.” Waters finds the whole thing “amusing”. But it was Nick Mason who really let the cat out of the bag. “It’s absolute nonsense,” he replied when asked by a reporter about the theory. “[Dark Side] has nothing to do with The Wizard of Oz. It was all based on The Sound of Music.”

ABOVE: Album cover for Pulse. LEFT: Movie poster for The Wizard of Oz.

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CHAPTER 6

P ostc ar d s f r om t he E d ge

RIGHT: Promotional photo of Pink Floyd circa 1974. From left to right: Rick Wright, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and David Gilmour.

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athered together in a dingy rehearsal space in late 1973, the four members of Pink Floyd were acutely conscious of the extent to which the phenomenal success of Dark Side of the Moon had changed them, individually and collectively. True to form, however, these were not thoughts that they expressed to each other as they prepared to start work on a new album. Instead they were preoccupied with ensuring that the album itself would not be compared to its illustrious predecessor. With no leftover material from Dark Side to work with, they were in a perfect position to make a fresh start. But their initial idea—to make an album using only sounds generated by household objects—was an indication of their somewhat confused state of mind. They spent a lot of time and energy tapping wine bottles, stroking glasses, stretching and plucking rubber bands, tearing strips from rolls of adhesive tape, exploring the sound properties of various broom bristles and aerosol sprays, and so on. By speeding up or slowing down the tapes of these sounds, they were getting at least a semblance of changing musical pitch. Eventually, however, the futility of the whole exercise became too obvious to ignore.

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"OF COURSE IT CHANGED OUR LIVES. WE WERE NOW A BIG ROCK'N'ROLL BAND" —RICK WRIGHT

release in December 1973, a British dental surgeon named W.R. Phang complained that Thorgerson’s use of an image of the sign outside his surgery breached his professional code of conduct regarding advertising, so it was replaced on subsequent pressings by a picture of a gargling monk. Despite these tribulations, the album briefly made the U.S. top 40 and the U.K. top 30. In the spring of 1974, Pink Floyd knuckled down to writing some new songs that they could road test on a French tour lined up for the summer. The first of them, initially known simply as “Shine On,” grew out of a four-note guitar riff by Gilmour. He has never been able to explain where it came from. “I may have been playing an A-minor chord and just moved my fingers to the wrong frets,” he speculated in the documentary The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story. “It could just have been an accident. But it did seem to have a haunting, calling sound to it.” It was a sound that reminded Waters of Barrett—not that the specter of his old bandmate and school friend had ever really left him. “I wanted to get as close as possible to what I felt,” Waters told the journalist Phillipe Constantin. “That sort of indefinable, inevitable melancholy about the disappearance of Syd. Because he’s left, withdrawn so far away that as far as we’re concerned, he’s no longer there.”

BELOW: Masters of Rock LP cover.

Meanwhile, Capitol Records—aware that it would not be benefiting from the next Pink Floyd album—had decided to cash in on the success of Dark Side of the Moon by repackaging and reissuing the band’s first two albums, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets, as a double album entitled A Nice Pair. Inspired by the title, designer Storm Thorgerson came up with a series of crass visual puns for the cover art, one of which involved a picture of the heavyweight boxing champion Floyd Patterson repainted in pink—an idea that was abandoned when Patterson (or his people) demanded a $5,000 fee for its use. There were plenty more ideas; so many that Thorgerson decided to spread 18 of them across the album’s gatefold sleeve. The one containing the album’s title featured a pair of naked female breasts alongside a (nice) pear. The breasts were censored by Capitol, but the pear survived intact. Following the album’s 96

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ABOVE: A Nice Pair LP featuring the various covers designed by Storm Thorgerson for the album’s suggestive title. POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

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The song gradually developed into another 20-minute marathon filled with musical twists and turns. Waters also had two more new songs: “Raving and Drooling” and “You Gotta Be Crazy,” forceful diatribes on the stresses of modern life that continued the themes of Dark Side of the Moon. Progress was slow, however, and the songs were barely in any presentable shape by the time the French tour rolled around. To add to the complications, several of the venues also had to be hurriedly re-arranged or canceled after the road crew discovered problems with the power supply and further difficulties bringing in the vast amount of equipment the band was now using.

The latest addition to the band’s stage production was a 40 ft. circular screen, which would be set up behind the musicians. Much of the fall of 1974 was spent making and editing films to be projected while they played Dark Side of the Moon. The band spent three weeks rehearsing their set, synching the songs to the films, before heading out on their first British tour for two years. These were groundbreaking shows that stretched the boundaries of live audiovisual technology, effectively recasting the band’s performance as a carefully timed soundtrack to a range of special effects—films, mirror balls, lights, smoke, flares, and more— which meant the scope for improvisation was severely limited.

ABOVE: Steve O’Rourke, the manager of Pink Floyd (wearing glasses), with the band reflected in the mirror behind him in Birmingham, England, on December 4, 1974.

RIGHT: Ticket for the 1974 Pink Floyd concert at Empire Pool, Wembley. FAR RIGHT: 1974 winter tour program/comic. 98

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ABOVE: Nick Mason (left) and Roger Waters (right) performing live onstage during the winter tour on December 1, 1974.

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BELOW: From left to right: David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Rick Wright performing live onstage during the 1974 winter tour.

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ABOVE: Roy Harper performing live onstage on May 7, 1975. David Gilmour performed with him at London’s Hyde Park the previous year. LEFT: Kate Bush circa 1970. David Gilmour was so impressed by her (then unknown) song tape that he paid for her to make a professional demo.

While audiences on the tour were awed by the performances, they did not fit many journalists’ visions of what a rock’n’roll show should be; reviews of the gigs were increasingly negative, with most critics seemingly failing to understand what the band were trying to achieve. This inevitably led to an atmosphere of mistrust between the band and the rock press. Gilmour was stung into responding to one scathing review in the New Musical Express that was as personal as it was musical, criticizing Gilmour’s “filthy hair” along with the band “playing on remote control.” Stressing that he took his guitar playing very seriously, he added, “I don’t need to have clean hair to do that.” A couple of years later, in an interview with Street Life magazine, Waters took issue with 102

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ABOVE: Album cover for Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom, produced by Nick Mason.

ABOVE: Robert Wyatt looking proud of his catch in 1970. Nick Mason produced his hit album Rock Bottom, and Pink Floyd played a benefit gig for him after a fall left him paralyzed in 1973.

reviewers’ criticisms of the band’s lyrics. “Sometimes I think those people couldn’t do any better themselves,” he said. “They tend to forget that people who buy and get into the music haven’t all got degrees in English Literature.” Pink Floyd’s perceived “aloofness”—not to mention their newfound status as rock behemoths—did them few favors among critics keen to enhance their own credentials at almost anyone else’s expense. They were not quite so sealed off from the rest of the rock’n’roll world as many believed, however. Gilmour had struck up a friendship with the anarchic folk singer-songwriter Roy Harper, performing with him (and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones) at another of Blackhill’s long-running free concerts

at London’s Hyde Park in August 1974, and was also impressed enough by a tape of songs from an unknown singer named Kate Bush that he paid for her to make a professional three-track demo. He also took a shine to an obscure British country-rock band called Unicorn after hearing them play at a wedding, and, he ended up producing the group’s second album. Meanwhile, Nick Mason produced the album Rock Bottom by former Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt, as well as a version of Neil Diamond’s “I’m a Believer”—as made famous by the Monkees— that gave Wyatt a rare UK Top 30 hit. (Pink Floyd had earlier played a benefit gig for Wyatt after he was paralyzed from the waist down following a fall from a balcony in 1973.) POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

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It is fair to say, though, that despite the steady flow of royalties from sales of Dark Side of the Moon, 1974 was a fairly grim time personally for the members of Pink Floyd. Waters and Mason’s marriages broke up, and even though Gilmour had managed to settle down with his American girlfriend, Ginger, the unspoken pressure of having to follow a mega-platinum album was affecting them all. They admitted to a sense of “disconnection” during their British tour at the end of the year—in particular, a disconnection between themselves and their audience. The beginning of 1975 found the band back at Abbey Road, in the newly refitted Studio Three, attempting to record their three new songs. According to Waters, the early sessions proved “laborious and tortured,” with several members of the band complaining of boredom. They pressed on for a few more weeks until matters came to head. “I said that the only way I could retain interest in the project was to try and make the album relate to what was going on,” Waters recalled. “The fact that no one was really looking each other in the eye, and that it was all very mechanical.”

"WE WERE NERVOUS OF CARRYING ON" —NICK MASON Specifically, Waters wanted to split “Shine On” into two parts and place one at each end of the album. He also wanted to ditch the other two songs the band been working on—they felt “cobbled together,” he said—and replace them with new songs. Gilmour, however, believed that they should just get on with recording the material they already had. He later admitted that he had “moaned and groaned” when Waters suggested they start afresh. “But I was wrong, he was right, there you go,” he added with a laugh. There still wasn’t much laughter at the time, although there was definitely a sharper focus to the newly retitled “Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” which the band had been playing for nearly a year. “That song changed quite a lot in the studio,” Gilmour recalled. The song would come to be seen by many as being about Barrett, but for Waters that wasn’t entirely the case. “I sort of knew that we were over, as far as the band of brothers notion of a group was concerned,” he said. “We just weren’t 104

anymore, and we were never going to be that again. So I was mourning that loss, as well as the loss of Syd as a friend and as a colleague.” For Gilmour, Pink Floyd was not so much a band of brothers as a band of seekers. “We were dedicated to hunting down and playing something with some meaning and soul,” he recalled. “Every moment of musical magic is something that you find, that you’re hunting for. Your fingers are moving around with a certain amount of experience and a certain amount of luck, looking for those little things that make your ears prick up. Then you see other people’s ears prick up. And then you know you may be on to something.” Gilmour would summarize these sessions as a “strange period” for the band, noting a sense of distance between the members. “Roger wasn’t the only one who noticed this sense of absence,” he recalled. “That sense of absence was a large part of the album’s magic. Maybe it was the feeling of post-euphoria. It wasn’t a permanent thing, but sometimes little dips in life can inspire great things. It’s odd to try and work out how something as good as that album came out of this blank feeling that we all had.” There was certainly nothing “blank” about the two new songs that Waters came up with, “Have a Cigar” and “Welcome to the Machine.” They were attacks on a venal record business that had made them stars, and which was now demanding its pound of flesh. As it transpired, Roy Harper was next door, in Abbey Road’s Studio Two, suffering the same kind of ennui that the members of Pink Floyd were going through. He seemed to be spending as much time in their studio as his own. “There was a lot of arguing about how we were going to do the song, how we were going to make it work,” Gilmour explains in the documentary film about the making of the album. “At one point, Roy, who was in the room, piped up and said, ‘I’ll do it.’” Although Waters would come to regret persevering with his own vocal, he would also admit that he could never have matched Harper’s cynical parody. Wish You Were Here’s title track—perhaps the only Pink Floyd song you are ever likely to hear sung in a subway—grew out of another Gilmour riff. “I was strumming on a 12-string guitar I’d recently purchased and came up with the opening riff,” he told the documentary. “Roger and I then worked on the verses, Roger came up with these brilliant words, and there we were.”

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ABOVE: Pink Floyd performing live at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena in April of 1975. From left to right: David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Rick Wright.

“EVERY MOMENT OF MUSICAL MAGIC IS SOMETHING THAT YOU FIND, THAT YOU’RE HUNTING FOR…” —DAVID GILMOUR POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

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Previously, audiences had listened respectfully to the band—“In the quieter passages you could hear a pin drop,” Gilmour recalled. Now, the crowds showed up to celebrate, and often paid little attention to what was happening on stage. In Los Angeles the Chief of Police declared the band’s upcoming five-night stint at the 15,000-capacity Memorial Sports Arena in Exposition Park

“an illegal pot party.” A heavy police presence of some 200 officers per night made over 500 arrests, virtually all of them for marijuana possession and other misdemeanors, although one person was arrested for cocaine possession and another for carrying a loaded gun. The East Coast leg of the tour in June included several openair shows, and the band decided that they needed a large-scale special-effects setup to avoid being dwarfed by the stadiums they were playing in. They commissioned architectural designers Mark Fisher and Jonathan Price to construct a giant pyramid that could radiate beams of light reminiscent of the Dark Side of the Moon’s cover art, achieved by putting a helium balloon inside the pyramid. Unfortunately, on its maiden flight at the Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, the pyramid was caught by a gust of wind and broke loose. The helium balloon escaped into the sky, never to be seen again, and the pyramid crashed into the car park, where it was torn to shreds by souvenir-hunters.

LEFT and BELOW: 1975 shot of David Gilmour performing in Los Angeles.

RIGHT: Crew pass for Pink Floyd’s 1975 U.S. Tour.

Further recording sessions were slotted around two U.S. tours the band had been booked to play during the first half of 1975, which had been scheduled several months earlier. The March leg, which covered the West Coast, brought home to the band the difference between being cult heroes and megastars.

"YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE IN IT FOR ANYMORE"—DAVID GILMOUR

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Between the two tours, the band had returned to Abbey Road, where they tried frantically to complete the album. The day before they were due to fly back to America, they were mixing “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” when Syd Barrett walked into the control room. Nobody in the band had seen him in four years, and for a while none of them recognized this “very plump” man with a “shaved bald head,” as Gilmour put it. “He was jumping up and down, brushing his teeth,” Wright recalled in The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story. “It was awful. Roger was in tears.” For Mason, Barrett’s eyes seemed the same, but “everything else was different.” After some stilted conversation, the band tried to carry on working, and Barrett left as mysteriously as he’d arrived. All in all, it was one of the most overwhelming moments in the band’s history. After completing the second U.S. tour, Pink Floyd would play just one more show in 1975, a headline engagement at the Knebworth Festival, staged 30 miles north of London in front of a crowd of 100,000 people, in July. The start of the band’s set was deliberately timed to coincide with a flyby from two World War II Spitfire fighter planes. The show was marred by sound problems caused by a faulty power supply that repeatedly sent Wright’s keyboards out of tune, although the audience seemed to be placated by the special effects. For the cover of the band’s new album, designers Hipgnosis came up with a picture of “two men shaking hands, one of them getting burned,” as Storm Thorgerson later described it, inspired by the lyrics of “Have a Cigar.” The inner sleeve and back cover contain surreal pictures that reference the other elements (earth, air, and water). All that remained was to work record companies into apoplexy by wrapping the album in black plastic, although the circular sticker on the front (featuring two robot hands in a clasp) did at least include the name of the band and the title of the album. Wish You Were Here was released in September 1975 and went straight to the top of the U.S. and U.K. charts. The band themselves were nowhere to be seen, however. Another 15 months would pass before they emerged again—this time into a very different rock scene.

RIGHT: From top to bottom: single for “Wish You Were Here”; LP for Wish You Were Here; single for “Have a Cigar;” 1975 promotional ad for Wish You Were Here. 108

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ABOVE: Rick Wright (top left), David Gilmour (middle), and Roger Waters (top right), all backstage at Knebworth in 1975.

THE START OF THE KNEBWORTH FESTIVAL WAS TIMED TO COINCIDE WITH A FLYBY FROM TWO WWII SPITFIRE FIGHTER PLANES... ABOVE: Programs for Knebworth and First XI in 1975. POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

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CHAPTER 7

D og E at D og

RIGHT: David Gilmour with Paul McCartney backstage at the Knebworth Music Festival in 1976.

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ABOVE: Pink Floyd Songbook from 1977.

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ad it not been for the Sex Pistols, most people wouldn’t have known that Pink Floyd existed in 1976. As it was, various members of the band that sparked the British punk scene that year were regularly photographed wearing Pink Floyd T-shirts—to which they had added two words in scrawled ink: “I hate.” The irony was that the two bands shared a similarly jaundiced view of society; they simply chose to express it in very different ways. It was also, as Gilmour acknowledged at the time, something of a backhanded compliment that the Sex Pistols should choose to aim their ire at Pink Floyd rather than any of the other so-called “dinosaurs” of progressive rock (who rarely expressed any view on society unless it got in the way of their making more money). Unlike Yes, Pink Floyd did not stand outside an airport squabbling over the choice of colored limousines available to take each of them to their luxury hotel; unlike Emerson Lake & Palmer, they did not employ a “carpet roadie,” who could be fired for vacuuming the band’s $20,000 Persian rug against the lie of the wool. The contract rider for Pink Floyd’s shows spent more time detailing the requirements of the production crew—which included a sitdown meal with waitress service—than the band’s own needs. In fact, the members of Pink Floyd had achieved their remarkable level of success while remaining virtually anonymous as individuals. Any one of them could walk down the street without being recognized. That was the way they wanted it. “We really don’t want to become public property,” Gilmour told Beat Instrumental. “I hate the thought of walking around and having people continually staring at me and tormenting me. A lot of people are happy to trade that for their privacy but I’m not and we’re not as a group.” Pink Floyd may have remained out of sight for the whole of 1976, but they were far from inactive. In fact, it was one of their most productive years of the decade. They had recently bought a three-story warehouse on Britannia Row in Islington, north London, to store their equipment and use as their headquarters. They set up a company, Britannia Row Productions, to rent out their equipment and lights and keep key members of their production crew employed during periods of reduced activity, although as Mason would later observe, few other bands had a need for the “wildly elaborate kit that we insisted on building for ourselves.” For a while, the most used piece of equipment in the building was the billiard table that had been installed on the top floor.

h

ABOVE: The 1984 book cover for George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

The band also built a recording studio on the ground floor that would give them the freedom to make their next album at their own pace. Although they had previously been given unlimited recording time at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios, this obviously came at a price. The new studio was ready by the beginning of 1976, and Pink Floyd duly started work on their next album in March. In contrast to the lethargy that had dogged the Wish You Were Here sessions, the atmosphere this time, in the band’s own studio, was much more brisk and workmanlike. They began by reviving the two songs that had been jettisoned from Wish You Were Here, “You’ve Gotta Be Crazy” and “Raving and Drooling.” Both had been performed regularly in concert since 1974, so they already had a clearly defined shape to them, but in the new studio they took on a harsher and bleaker sound, and as Waters refined the lyrics, a concept for the album took shape. Instead of the generalized themes of alienation, pressure, and the meaning of insanity that had permeated the last two albums, this time Waters homed in on something more specific, based around George Orwell’s short but succinct novel, Animal Farm. But whereas Orwell’s biting satire (dressed up as a children’s story) had been directed at Stalin’s Russia and the DOG EAT DOG

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“...THINGS AREN’T GETTING ANY BETTER, THEY’RE GETTING WORSE, AND THE SEVENTIES IS A VERY BALEFUL DECADE.” —ROGER WATERS

ABOVE: Roger Waters in concert circa 1977.

hypocrisy of the communist state, Waters aimed his lens closer to home. His own leftwing views were not radically different from Orwell’s, and he was disillusioned by Britain’s Labour government, which during the 1970s had been hampered by internecine warfare. He used the animals in Orwell’s book but changed their characters to reflect the social decay he saw happening around him. “I think the world is a very, very sad fucking place,” he told one journalist. “I find myself backing away from it all. I think these are very mournful days. Things aren’t getting any better, they’re getting worse, and the seventies is a very baleful decade.” “You Gotta Be Crazy,” initially written around a chord sequence devised by Gilmour, became “Dogs,” a 17-minute portrayal of naked self-interest broken up on occasion by bouts of uncertainty. Gilmour’s searing guitar, whether close-up or echoing in the distance, added to the harrowing mood. “Raving and Drooling,” meanwhile, became “Sheep,” pulsating with confusion and panic, with a blasphemous parody of “Psalm 23” hissing through a vocoder. 114

To these two songs Waters added the vitriolic “Pigs (Three Different Ones),” in which he deliberately took aim in successive verses at greedy, exploiting capitalists; Margaret Thatcher, the recently elected leader of the Conservative Party; and Mary Whitehouse, a tireless but frequently ridiculed campaigner against the “rising tide of filth and obscenity.” It was only near the end of the recording sessions that he attempted to lighten the unrelenting gloom by adding two heartwarming acoustic ballads, “Pigs on the Wing (Part I)” and “Pigs on the Wing (Part II),” both of them love songs for his new girlfriend. The other members of the band did not necessarily share Waters’s strident political views. Wright was opposed to many of them, while Gilmour and Mason remained ambivalent. But Waters was now in charge of the band, writing all the lyrics and virtually all of the music, and the atmosphere between them was getting colder. Wright later acknowledged that he kept his head down and ended up contributing little to the album. “Tensions were beginning to come between us,” he said.

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ABOVE: A 40-foot long inflatable pig suspended between two of the chimneys at Battersea Power Station in London during the photo shoot for the cover of Pink Floyd's Animals on November 6, 1976. DOG EAT DOG

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Waters also insisted that the picture should be “real,” so the band commissioned a German company that had made zeppelins in the 1920s to produce a 30 ft. inflatable pig. On the appointed day, 40 photographers were positioned around the power station to capture the moment. A marksman with a rifle was also hired to shoot down the pig, christened Algie, if it attempted to break free from its moorings. Unfortunately, the light was deemed unsuitable, and Algie was never even inflated. The following day, the photographers resumed their posts, but nobody had remembered to tell the marksman. The pig was inflated and rose up between the chimneys, before a gust of wind caused the cable tethering the pig to snap. Algie soared upward, straight into the flight path for Heathrow Airport, before drifting southeastward, eventually landing in a field in Kent, 50 miles from London. In a final irony, the pig shown on the album cover had to be stripped in. Animals was released in the U.K. in January 1977 to the accompaniment of advertisements in the music press that said simply “Oink, Oink, Woof, Woof, Baaaaa.” It reached No. 2 in the charts, failing to dislodge 20 Golden Greats by the Shadows, the British instrumental group who were heroes to Gilmour and just about every guitarist from his generation. The album was released in February in the U.S.A., with a full-page advertisement in the New York Times showing Algie nuzzling up to one of the power station chimneys. The album rose to No. 3, behind Wings Over America and the soundtrack to A Star Is Born. ABOVE: Promotional poster for Animals in 1977.

Only Gilmour was prepared to challenge Waters, and even then only when it came to the music. “In terms of drive and lyrical concept, [Waters] was the de facto leader,” Gilmour recalled. “But I certainly had a resistance to saying that he was our leader, because it created a feeling that you had to defer to him on other matters, and on musical matters I didn’t feel I should. I didn’t think that it was good for us, for me not to argue and push my case as I saw it.” Waters’s leadership also now extended to his directing the album artwork. He came up with the idea of a pig flying over Battersea Power Station, a large south London landmark on the banks of the River Thames that was on the verge of becoming obsolete. “I like the four phallic towers,” he told Capital Radio. “And the idea of power I find rather appealing in a strange way.” 116

THE BAND COMMISSIONED A GERMAN COMPANY THAT HAD MADE ZEPPELINS IN THE 1920S TO PRODUCE A 30FT. INFLATABLE PIG CHRISTENED “ALGIE.”

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RIGHT: A view from the back of the hall at a Pink Floyd concert in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on February 17, 1977. The sound engineers are working at the mixing desk and the audience is getting ready for the upcoming show.

LEFT: Nick Mason performing live onstage at Ahoy in Rotterdam on February 17, 1977, during the Animals tour. DOG EAT DOG

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LEFT: David Gilmour performs live onstage at Ahoy in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in February of 1977 during the Animals tour.

ABOVE: Pink Floyd added a new guitarist to the tour, Snowy White. Here he is performing live onstage with a Gibson Les Paul on the In the Flesh tour.

The fact that sales of Animals failed to match those for either Wish You Were Here or Dark Side of the Moon (which was still in the Billboard Top 100) was of little concern to the band or their record labels. The numbers still compared favorably to any of Pink Floyd’s peers in contemporary rock, and any suggestions of diminishing popularity were answered when tickets went on sale for the In the Flesh tour, which would span nearly seven months and cover Europe and the U.S.A.

The band added a second guitarist for the tour: 29-year-old Snowy White, a little-known session player recommended by Kate Bush’s manager. This allowed Gilmour to focus on specific solo guitar parts without affecting the overall sound quality, although White himself was given several important roles. He kicked off the whole show, playing bass guitar on “Sheep,” and took solos of his own on “Have a Cigar” and “Shine on You Crazy Diamond.”

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ABOVE: An inflatable pig floats above the stage in February of 1977 in the Netherlands on the Animals tour.

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The band also devised a whole series of inflatable animals to fly over the audience during the first half of the show while they played the album, including a new pig—considerably less benign-looking than Algie—that emerged from a cloud of smoke at the back of the stage and trundled out over the audience on a wire that stretched to the back of the venue, swaying and glaring down at the crowd with glowing amber eyes. Dangling above the band was a “nuclear family” of inflatables: father in lurid blue-and-red pinstripe trousers, with glasses and cigar; plump wife with shrunken head and painted blond hair; son in red overalls with blue-and-white cap; daughter in red dress with pigtails; and an unfortunate infant literally slashed in half—the requisite 2.5 children—each of them lit internally so as to be seen more clearly. For the second half of the show, the band played Wish You Were Here in front of a giant circular screen that showed films, including a specially commissioned animation from cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, whose politics and cynicism matched Waters’s views. The animation (which accompanied “Welcome to the Machine”) began with

a metallic robot stalking a barren landscape and ended with the blood from a severed head gradually flooding an urban wasteland, the waves eventually morphing into bloodied hands. In a break from the norm, there was no fixed truss above the stage to support lights. Instead, the circular screen was ringed with spotlights, while two specially adapted cherry pickers were positioned on either side of the stage and festooned with an array of lights. The hydraulic cranes maneuvered the lighting platforms out across the stage, where they could be lowered to within inches of the heads of the band members, bathing them in columns of bright light. This was easier to do with Pink Floyd than most other bands, since Gilmour and Waters remained largely static on stage, seemingly oblivious to the audience. The fact that they were often wearing headphones (the whole show now running to a click track) only added to the sense of remoteness. At the climax to the show, the giant mirror ball rose from the back of the stage before being unfurled with all of the stage lights trained on it, creating a dazzling effect.

BELOW: British caricaturist, graphic artist, and sculptor Gerald Scarfe making papier-mâché heads, surrounded by other characters in his studio. Pink Floyd commissioned Scarfe’s animation to play on a screen behind them during “Welcome to the Machine.”

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ABOVE: Pink Floyd performing live onstage during the Animals tour on March 1, 1977.

RIGHT: 1977 ticket to a Pink Floyd concert in Dortmund, Germany. 122

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WATERS EVENTUALLY SNAPPED ON THE LAST NIGHT OF THE TOUR WHEN HE SPAT IN THE FACE OF A CONCERTGOER… ABOVE: Posters promoting Pink Floyd concerts in Chicago and Oakland in the U.S.

The European dates took place in arenas, but when the In the Flesh tour reached the U.S in April the band played several outdoor shows in sports stadiums. To meet the added scale of these shows, more inflatables were added: a television, a Cadillac, and a refrigerator with a door that opened to reveal a clew of worms—a pungent comment on the consumerism and decay the band were railing against. For the first few stadium dates, a second pig was added, too, and would rise up from behind the stage, reaching a height of some 300 ft. before bursting into flames. The second pig’s showbusiness career came to an early end, however, when an overeager member of the production crew filled the inflatable with a mixture of acetylene and oxygen (rather than the usual propane) for the show at Milwaukee County Stadium. As it rose up above the stage, the pig exploded with a deafening noise that startled the band and sent pieces of flaming plastic showering back down to Earth. Pink Floyd set new attendance records across the U.S., playing to 80,000 people in Cleveland and Montreal, and more than 95,000 at Solider Field Stadium in Chicago (a figure disputed by the promoter until manager Steve O’Rourke hired a helicopter to fly over and photograph the crowd), but they found playing to such large crowds—in what was frequently a rowdy circus atmosphere—unpleasant, particularly as it went against the very themes they were attempting to address. Whereas European crowds usually came to see the show—and could be relied upon to be noisily appreciative—the audiences at these U.S. shows

seemed to be there purely to party, and the irony that the band’s spectacular staging effects were simply adding to the carnival feel was not lost on them. Waters in particular found the U.S. tour dispiriting, and he would sometimes berate audiences if he felt they were not paying attention. By now, he was also traveling separately from the rest of the group, and the mood among them was sullen at best. Waters eventually snapped on July 6, the last night of the tour, at the Stade Olympique in Montreal, Canada. In the weeks leading up to the show, he had failed to emerge for the encore at Philadelphia’s Spectrum theater, and he had sworn at an audience in New York’s Madison Square Garden when people started letting off firecrackers. In Montreal he became increasingly agitated by the behavior of some unruly fans in front of the stage, and during “Pigs” he beckoned a male concertgoer toward him before deliberately spitting in his face. The rest of the audience was largely unaware of what had happened, but for the band it was a depressing way to end the tour. This time it was Gilmour who skipped the encore, choosing instead to watch from the sound desk as the others played a slow 12-bar blues. As the band played on, the road crew gradually dismantled their equipment before physically removing the musicians—Pink Floyd’s preferred method of letting the stadium crowd know that the show really was over. As it turned out, this would be the last ever tour by Pink Floyd in their current guise, although they did have one more spectacular show to perform. DOG EAT DOG

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GILMOUR’S GEAR David Gilmour has always been associated with the Fender Stratocaster guitar. His infatuation with the instrument began when he saw Hank Marvin, lead guitarist in the British instrumental group the Shadows, play one in the early 1960s. When he joined Pink Floyd in 1968, Gilmour was playing a blond Strat—a birthday present from his parents. When the guitar got lost during an American tour that summer, the band replaced it with a white model. In 1970 Gilmour bought a black Stratocaster at Manny’s guitar shop in New York. It has become indelibly linked to him ever since, having featured on “Money,” “Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” “Comfortably Numb,” and numerous other classic Pink Floyd tracks, leading Fender to issue a David Gilmour Signature model in 2009. Since reviving Pink Floyd in 1985, however, Gilmour has tended to favor a red Strat. He has also used other guitars, like the Bill Lewis he uses to reach the high tones on “Money,” and the Fender 1000 pedal-steel guitar he plays on “Breathe” and “The Great Gig in the Sky.”

Gilmour plays his guitars through Hiwatt amplifiers and WEM cabinets using a Yamaha RA-200 rotating speaker and an Alembic F-2B preamp—his “secret ingredient.” His effects board has been customized by Pete Cornish, creator of his own tone pedal, custom fuzz, and ST-2 treble and bass booster. Among the other pedals he has used are the Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face, the Electro Harmonix Big Muff, and the Cry Baby wah-wah—not forgetting the now-legendary Binson Echorec II, which Gilmour inherited from Syd Barrett when he first joined the band. When the Binson started to become unreliable, Gilmour replaced it with an MXR Digital Delay System, which he has used ever since. ABOVE: David Gilmour’s 1954 Fender Stratocaster.

LEFT: David Gilmour onstage during a soundcheck at Vredenburg in Utrecht, the Netherlands, with Fender amplifier heads and Stratocaster.

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BELOW: David Gilmour onstage during a soundcheck at Vredenburg in Utrecht playing his Fender 1000 pedal-steel guitar.

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CHAPTER 8

W alls and B ur ning B r id ge s

RIGHT: From left to right: Brian James of the punk group the Damned, Capital Radio DJ Nicky Horne, and Nick Mason (on the far right) who produced their second album while on a break from Pink Floyd.

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eturning from the grueling In the Flesh tour in July 1977, the weary members of Pink Floyd scattered to recuperate. By the end of the tour, they were barely communicating; now, each pursued their own interests. Gilmour had serious doubts as to whether Pink Floyd would continue to function—whether they had anything more to offer as a band. To stop his mind from wandering, he made a solo album, working with his old Jokers Wild rhythm section of drummer Willie Wilson, who had subsequently played with Syd Barrett before joining Quiver, and bassist Rick Wills, who had gone on to play with Peter Frampton, Roxy Music, and the Small Faces. The album, simply entitled David Gilmour, was deliberately light and relaxed in comparison with Pink Floyd’s seriously calculated material. Gilmour asked Roy Harper to write the lyrics for one song, and he also covered a track by Unicorn, the band he’d produced a couple of years back. Released in May 1978, it was a pleasant enough album but not particularly memorable. That same month, Wright released his solo album, Wet Dream, for which he called in touring guitarist Snowy White plus saxophonist and flautist Mel Collins, who had previously played on sessions with the band. The result was an album that often sounds like Floyd outtakes from a couple of albums back. Wright had not been in a good place while making the album. His relationship with his wife, Juliette, to whom he’d been married since 1965, was falling apart. (Likewise, Mason and Waters had also separated from the women they’d wed in the 1960s; only Gilmour was bucking the trend, having married his American girlfriend Ginger a couple of years earlier.) A few months earlier, Mason had an unexpected brush with the punk movement when he was asked to produce the second album by the Damned, who had been the first British punk band to make a record. The Damned had initially wanted Syd Barrett to produce the album but—like everyone else who sought him out—had been unable to track him down. Mason accepted the challenge but soon found a band mired in “musical differences”: guitarist and songwriter Brian James was keen to move things on; the others, in true punk style, were resistant to progress. As Mason would later note, Music for Pleasure (a jokey reference to a budget record label) was recorded in less time than it took to set up Pink Floyd’s microphones. It consists largely of under-rehearsed leftovers from the band’s first album, plus an intriguing exploration of psychedelic jazz on the closing track,

r

ABOVE: David Gilmour's solo album released in 1978, simply entitled David Gilmour.

AB O

ABOVE: Promotional photo of David Gilmour in the late 1970s.

AB O

ABOVE: Richard Wright's solo album entitled Wet Dream, also 128

released in 1978.

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AB OV E: The Damned’s sec ond album

d with gui AB OV E: Nick Mason worke

, Music for Pleasure, produc

ed by Nick Mason.

tarist Steve Hillage on his alb

um, Green.

“You Know.” More rewarding, for Mason, was his subsequent assignment with guitarist Steve Hillage, formerly of the 1960s hippie outfit Gong. The resulting album, Green, features experiments with ambient electronic music reminiscent at times of David Bowie’s collaborations with Brian Eno. Waters, meanwhile, had gone to Switzerland to recover from what, for him, had been a particularly exhausting and traumatic tour—an experience he did not intend to repeat. It had, however, given him some ideas for the next Pink Floyd project. He talked with friends about the feelings of alienation he had felt from the audiences, the distance between them, the difficulty of communicating with them, the metaphorical wall between them. In the summer of 1978 Pink Floyd convened for the first time in a year at Britannia Row Studios, where Waters played them cassettes of demos he had recorded for two possible album projects and asked them to pick a favorite. One had the working title Bricks in the Wall; the other would subsequently become his first solo album, The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking. Gilmour, Wright, and Mason unanimously voted for Bricks in the Wall, but not without reservations. Wright was concerned that the songs were all in the same key and tempo, while Gilmour felt that some of the music was weak, and that some of the lyrics amounted simply to “whingeing.” But he was confident that the band could make it work. Early on, they agreed to bring in an outside producer to help shape what was already looking like it would end up as a double album. Waters chose Bob Ezrin, whom his girlfriend of the time, Carolyn Christie, had worked for, and whom he had met previously. Born in Toronto, Canada, Ezrin had produced Alice Cooper’s Love it to Death, Killer, and School’s Out before enhancing his reputation by arm wrestling the Berlin album out of Lou Reed, finding the sound to match the makeup on Kiss’s Destroyer, and producing Peter Gabriel’s first solo record. Ezrin later recalled that Waters had made it clear early on that the project was his, while also noting how such a declaration can make it difficult for a band to work together. “Roger was sensitive to that—or as sensitive as Roger can be—so he brought me in, I think, as an ally,” Ezrin said. “But my perception of my job was to be an advocate of the work itself, and that very often meant disagreeing with Roger, and other people, and being a catalyst for them to get past whatever arguments might exist.” WALLS AND BURNING BRIDGES

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WATERS TALKED ABOUT THE FEELINGS OF ALIENATION HE HAD FELT FROM THE AUDIENCES… THE METAPHORICAL WALL BETWEEN THEM…

LEFT: Roger Waters performing circa 1979.

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ABOVE: Single for “Another Brick in the Wall.” RIGHT: Single for “Run Like Hell.”

Mason told Record Collector magazine that the “basic structure” of the album was already there at the start of the sessions: “Like a skeleton with lots of bones missing, the story was roughly laid out. A few numbers needed chucking, and Roger spent a lot of time with Bob Ezrin making the story comprehensible. Then we reconvened at Britannia Row in October 1978 and started turning it into something good.” Trying to lighten and brighten some of the denser parts of Waters’s concept was a struggle, according to Ezrin, who remembered Waters “grudgingly” accepting Gilmour’s “Comfortably Numb” for the album. Ezrin also recognized the potential of “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2,” but struggled to get the band to see it. “I’d just done a session in New York,” he recalled, “and Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards were in the next studio. I heard this drum beat and went, ‘Wow, that would work great with rock’n’roll.’ When I started listening to ‘Another Brick in the Wall,’ that beat kept playing through my head. But what Roger had written was just one verse and one chorus long. When we played it with the disco beat, I said, ‘This is a hit. But we need two verses and two choruses.’ And they said, ‘Well, you’re not bloody getting them. We don’t do singles, so fuck you.’ So while they were gone, I copied the verse and chorus, took one of the drum fills, and put it in between [them to] extended the chorus. Then I played it to them.” Gilmour would later recall Ezrin telling him to go out to clubs and listen to some disco music. “So I forced myself out and listened to loud four-to-the-beat drums and stuff and thought ‘Gawd awful.’ But when we tried putting it onto ‘Another Brick in 132

the Wall,’ it seemed to make it more catchy. We did the same exercise on ‘Run Like Hell.’” Recording continued at Pink Floyd’s typically stately pace until, early in 1979, they were suddenly confronted by impending financial disaster. A couple of years earlier, they had placed the considerable fortunes earned from Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here in the hands of investment company Norton Warburg, run by Andrew Warburg, Waters’s friend and godfather to one of his children. Norton Warburg persuaded the band to invest their money in a diverse range of enterprises and promised to arrange their tax affairs and pensions so that they could be offset against the 83 percent tax rate Pink Floyd would have been liable to pay in Britain in the 1970s. However, the business ventures that Norton Warburg had chosen turned out, without exception, to be complete failures. These included a floating restaurant, a hotel that branched out into manufacturing fudge, a computer game, a film that nobody saw, a skateboard company, a car-hire business, and a children’s shoe factory. In an attempt to recoup the losses, Norton Warburg had started investing money it no longer had into further ventures that also failed. Worse still, the company had made no provision for tax avoidance, which meant the band members were now liable to pay tax on money that had already been squandered. Unsurprisingly, Andrew Warburg had since fled to Spain. (He was later arrested and jailed for fraud.) “It was entirely our fault,” Gilmour told the Belgian magazine Weekend Knack. “Pure stupidity. We thought we had handled our

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money with care. The financial experts we appointed made a mess of our administration. If we hadn’t taken action immediately, we would have been bankrupt.” Teams of accountants moved into Britannia Row, examining the band’s financial affairs to see what could be salvaged while also seeking to minimize their tax exposure. The accountants’ advice was unequivocal: the band needed to become tax exiles and leave the country—at once. They would not be able to return to Britain for a least a year. And they still owed a hefty tax bill. Within three weeks, Pink Floyd had relocated to the south of France with their tapes and as much as they could carry with them. For a band that had always maintained their English roots—however many holiday homes they might have acquired along the way—it was a very unsettling experience. The band picked the south of France because both Gilmour and Wright had recorded their solo albums at Super Bear Studios in the mountains above Nice. They had enjoyed working there and felt that it would be a good place to continue work on their new album. By now, The Wall had taken on an added significance, since Pink Floyd would be relying on its success to pay their bills. However, the delays caused by the various difficulties the band had faced at home meant that the original projected release date in the fall of 1979 was now out of the question. The atmosphere in the studio was fraught, with creative and musical tensions regularly bubbling over—or, as Mason later put it, “Roger was starting to go a bit mad.” “There was tension between the band members, even tension between the wives of the band members,” Ezrin recalled. “There was a period in France where it was very hostile; that passiveaggressive English-style conflict. Roger and I were having a particularly difficult time. I really dreaded going in to face the tension so I would find any excuse to come in late the next morning. And that of course just made things worse.” For Gilmour, most of the disagreements were artistic in nature. “It wasn’t total war,” he said, “although there were bad vibes—certainly toward Rick, because he didn’t seem to be pulling his weight.” Wright had reached a creative impasse and was unable to play his keyboard parts to Waters’s satisfaction. The relationship between the two was disintegrating; Wright believed Waters was trying to get rid of him, which was in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even Ezrin thought that Wright “was being set up to fail.”

In fact, Waters was becoming increasingly exasperated not just with Wright but with the whole band. He later told Mojo magazine that Gilmour was “just not interested,” Wright was “pretty closed down,” and Mason was “happy to listen but more interested in his racing cars.” Gilmour and Mason would both argue that they contributed as much as they could, but it wasn’t easy. Even Waters would admit that there was no democracy involved in the recording process. “If somebody had a good idea,” he said, “I would accept it and maybe use it. There was only one chief, and that was me.” The crunch came when CBS Records, desperate to release the album before the end of the year, offered to increase the band’s royalty rate if they could deliver the record in time. Waters and Ezrin decided this might be possible if they hired a second studio to speed up the recording before the mixing process, which was scheduled to take place in Los Angeles after a planned break. A suitable studio was found some 50 miles way; Waters and Ezrin moved there to work on the vocals while the others remained at Super Bear to complete the instrumental parts.

“IF SOMEBODY HAD A GOOD IDEA, I WOULD ACCEPT IT AND MAYBE USE IT. THERE WAS ONLY ONE CHIEF, AND THAT WAS ME.” —ROGER WATERS With the deadline looming for finishing the recording, Wright had still not completed his keyboard parts. When he was asked to curtail his summer break and finish the recording in Los Angeles, however, Wright refused, using a well-known two-word Anglo Saxon phrase—at which point Waters boiled over and demanded that Wright leave the group, threatening to cancel the album (on which they were all financially dependent) if he didn’t. Gilmour told Wright that he would back him if he wanted to stay, even though he was contributing nothing of note to the band, telling him that he felt he had a “sacrosanct right” as a founding member to remain in the band as long as he wanted. WALLS AND BURNING BRIDGES

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“He said, ‘Do you still want me in this band?’” Gilmour recalled. “I said, ‘Not particularly, because you’re not doing anything, but I’ll support your right to be in it till the end.’” Mason was also against forcing Wright out, not least because he thought he might be next. Waters would later claim that Gilmour suggested they should get rid of Mason; Gilmour says he didn’t. In the end, however, Wright decided to quit the group, which he felt was disintegrating anyway. It was agreed that he would finish his contributions to the album and then leave quietly. Nothing would be announced. The reason for this subterfuge was that Pink Floyd were still in the process of negotiating a new contract with CBS in America, and they figured that their position would be weakened if one of them had just left. To cover themselves, they added a clause specifying exactly who and what might constitute Pink Floyd. Among the permutations was a version of Pink Floyd that did not include Wright, and another that did not include Waters—something that would have significant ramifications a few years down the line. The mixing sessions took place in a cold, inhospitable atmosphere. Mason’s insecurities were not assuaged when he was unable to nail the drumming for “Mother” to Water’s satisfaction, leading him to bring in Toto drummer and noted session player Jeff Porcaro to play on the track in Mason’s place. Meanwhile, Ezrin remained convinced that “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” could be a big hit, but he still only had one verse and one chorus to work with.

Ezrin telephoned Nick Griffiths, the engineer who was in charge of Britannia Row Studios during Pink Floyd’s absence, and asked him to round up a bunch of kids from the nearby Islington Green School, telling him he wanted them to sound “cockney.” Griffiths managed to get a class of kids (plus music teacher) for one lesson’s worth of time in exchange for agreeing to record the school orchestra. The reaction of the music teacher to the famous refrain about not needing no education was not recorded, but Ezrin got what he wanted. “I called Roger into the room, and when the kids came in on the second verse there was a total softening of his face—he got it.” There were a few more musical arguments to be resolved during the mixing sessions. Arranger and composer Michael Kamen had been brought in to add orchestral arrangements to several tracks, but Gilmour was not happy with what he heard on “Comfortably Numb.” The debate rumbled on for weeks, but Ezrin and Waters were in agreement on this one, and eventually Gilmour gave way.

BELOW: Rick Wright with his son, Jamie, in Munich, Germany, in 1977.

IN THE END, WRIGHT DECIDED TO QUIT THE GROUP, WHICH HE FELT WAS DISINTEGRATING ANYWAY… “They knew I was doing a lot of work on the song,” he recalled. “They were just sort of letting me do whatever I wanted. Roger’s attitude was, ‘Go ahead and waste your time doing a lot of silly stuff. In the end, it’s going to be the way I hear it.’ Well, I’m the guy who did ‘School’s Out,’ and I’ve got this thing about kids on a record. And this song was about kids.” LEFT: Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro performing in February of 1981 in Los Angeles, California. Porcaro was brought in to drum for the song “Mother” when Mason didn’t perform the song to Waters’s satisfaction. WALLS AND BURNING BRIDGES

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LEFT: Roger Waters rehearsing for The Wall in London, 1980.

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The band’s record companies had settled on November 30 as the last possible release date for The Wall in order to maximize pre-Christmas sales, and label executives began to panic when the band were still tinkering in the studio at the beginning of the month. There were even veiled threats to seize the tapes—further heightening the paranoia levels inside and outside the studio— but in the end the band were able to finish the record just in time to meet the planned date. Waters had fallen out with Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis in the wake of the Animals cover debacle, so the band’s new double album would be housed inside a sleeve designed by Gerald Scarfe, with whom they had recently collaborated on the In the Flesh tour. The minimal artwork featured a plain white wall outlined in pale blue across the front and back covers, with the title of the record and the band’s name displayed on a transparent sticker fixed to the front. The inside artwork featured a set of characters designed by Scarfe—characters that would shortly be seen breaking through gaps in the wall as part of the band’s upcoming live show. The album credits, meanwhile, were clearly assembled in haste: backing singers, orchestral arrangers, and sound man are all present and correct, but there’s no mention of Wright or Mason anywhere, and you have to look hard to find Gilmour’s name. The Wall entered the U.S. Top 40 just before Christmas and then began its slow climb up the charts, eventually dislodging greatest hits collections by Donna Summer and the Bee Gees to hit No. 1 in mid January. It would remain at the top for a total of 15 weeks, and was still in the Top 20 in July. Surprisingly, one of the few major territories where it failed to top the charts was the U.K., where The Wall peaked at No. 3 after failing to dislodge hits compilations by Abba and Rod Stewart despite selling more than a million copies in its first two months of release. Today, total worldwide sales are estimated to have reached some 30 million copies. Bob Ezrin had his point about “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” proven emphatically when it hit No. 1 around the world. It even reached the much sought-after Christmas No. 1 slot in the U.K., although the band’s self-imposed tax exile meant they were unable to return for the festivities, which would presumably have included a first appearance on Top of the Pops in a number of years. In the U.S. the single spent four consecutive weeks at the top of the charts between February and March 1980. And just like 138

that, Pink Floyd’s financial problems had been solved, almost as quickly as they had first arisen. No sooner had the band finished work on the album than they started preproduction on the live show to accompany The Wall. “I always knew right from the word go that this was going to be a record, a show in three or four cities, and a movie,” Waters later claimed. He had devised a show that involved building a wall across the front of the stage during the performance that would completely obscure the band from the audience (and vice versa) to reinforce the themes of isolation and alienation that the album portrayed. Nothing like this had ever been attempted in the arenas that Pink Floyd were planning to play. Architectural designers Mark Fisher and Jonathan Ward, who had been involved with the band’s use of inflatables, were charged with putting Waters’s vision into practice and designed a wall that was 40 ft. high and 160 ft. wide. It would need to be constructed, brick by brick, in front of the band during the first half of the show, and then come crashing down at the climax—hopefully without tumbling into the audience. In addition, provisions needed to be made for sections of the wall to be opened up during the second half of the show so that particular scenes could be enacted within.

THERE IS NO MENTION OF WRIGHT OR MASON ANYWHERE ON THE ALBUM CREDITS, AND YOU HAVE TO LOOK HARD TO FIND GILMOUR’S NAME… “I never doubted that it could be done,” Fisher said. “Obviously, it was more ambitious than anything that had been tried before, and therefore entailed more kit, but all that really meant was that there were larger versions of the same old problems. My main consideration was how to accomplish the task without compromising the creative and philosophical ideas of the show itself.” RIGHT: Pink Floyd performing on February 28, 1980, at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York.

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The first issue involved the bricks themselves. Ward estimated that they would need 400 or so, and they would need to be light and transportable. “I toyed with the idea of slotting plywood panels together,” he recalled, “but I realized this would make them too heavy, and we’d rejected anything molded as too big. The solution came to us in a pub. Someone suddenly remembered that cardboard boxes are delivered in flat packs, then unfolded into shape.” After working out how to fit the boxes together (and what kind of cardboard to use), Fisher and Ward then had to devise a method of building the wall on the stage. Ward spent a month at the Seattle-based company that made portable Genie Hoist lifting cranes, which he then adapted so that they could be coupled together to make hydraulic lifting platforms. Figuring out how to have the wall come tumbling down without crushing the front rows of the audience required more ingenuity. “It had to come down from the top,” Ward recalled, “so we added an arm to the hoists to knock the bricks off that was operated by a system of air cylinders.” The wall itself needed to be white so that Gerald Scarfe’s animations could be projected onto it. Ward and his team tried various techniques before discovering that household white emulsion paint worked best. Scarfe had also designed a new range of inflatables—a teacher, a mother, a lover, and an even more evil-looking pig than before—that needed to hover, dance, and glower above the audience. And then there was the life-size plane that needed to fly down from the back of the arena and crash onto the stage. While Waters worked on creating the show, Gilmour assembled the music, which was essentially the full album adapted for the show, which required a second “surrogate” band to play alongside—and sometimes replace—the real Pink Floyd. This band included Snowy White, from the In the Flesh tour, and former Jokers Wild drummer Willie Wilson. Wright, who was no longer an official member of Pink Floyd (although nobody knew that yet), was hired to play with his old band; because of his “nonmember” status, Mason would later joke that Wright was the only one who made any money out of the shows. As a result of the complex and expensive staging, the others are estimated to have lost almost a million dollars from staging The Wall, although it must be said that none of them has ever seriously complained about it. 140

The logistics and equipment involved in presenting The Wall on stage—including a 109 dB, 150 kW quadrophonic sound system—meant that touring in the conventional sense was an impossibility, although the band did briefly investigate the idea of using an inflatable, slug-like transportable arena. Instead, they set up a series of shows in the U.S. and Europe: the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena and New York’s Nassau Coliseum in February 1980, London’s Earls Court in August (once their tax exile was over), and the Westfalenhalle in Dortmund, Germany, in February 1981, with a second run at Earls Court in June. These Earls Court performances in June 1982 were filmed for the upcoming movie of The Wall, and it was the last time that Waters, Gilmour, Mason, and Wright would play together for 26 years. The band would end up playing 29 shows for an estimated 300,000 people, all of which passed off within a hitch—except for during the opening night, when a curtain caught fire. (Most people thought it was part of the show.) Most audiences were deceived by the surrogate band, who wore masks, and they watched in awe as the band gradually disappeared behind the wall but continued playing, with a barely visible light show continuing on the stage behind them. They were dazzled by the crashing plane, the outlandish inflatable puppets, the poignant scenes set in a living room within the wall, and the provocative animations projected upon it. Most importantly, they were left unscathed when the wall finally came tumbling down. For many, the highlight came when Gilmour appeared on top of the wall, midway through the second half of the show, to sing “Comfortably Numb.” Waters regards The Wall shows as “the best we did together as Pink Floyd.” Over the next two decades, he received numerous requests for permission to stage The Wall from various promoters, producers, and directors, but the only ones he agreed to were amateur productions by colleges and schools. “It’s ironic because the favorite anthem, ‘We don’t need no education,’ caused uproar when it first came out. Politicians and educationalists lined up to denounce it as the death knell of all schooling. In fact the piece has turned out to be a great help to a large number of people trying to teach music and English to kids because the kids get interested in all the ideas it attempts to express. This makes me happy.” RIGHT: Roger Waters (top left) and Pink Floyd (bottom) performing in February of 1980 at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York. RIGHT: Pink Floyd’s The Wall tour poster, ticket, and backstage pass for stage crew.

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BELOW: Pink Floyd performing on August 7, 1980, at Earls Court, London, in front of the literal “wall” constructed specifically for the show.

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ABOVE: A “teacher” puppet at The Wall stage show on June 16, 1981, at Earls Court, London. LEFT: Pink Floyd performing onstage during The Wall stage show on August 6, 1980, at Earls Court, London.

OVERLEAF: The wall destroyed…Pink Floyd performing onstage at Earls Court in London during The Wall tour on August 6, 1980. WALLS AND BURNING BRIDGES

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CHAPTER 9

C ut to P ie c e s

RIGHT: David Gilmour performing live onstage at the Hammersmith Odeon in London on April 1, 1984. He is playing a Fender Stratocaster.

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ABOVE: Film director Alan Parker observes a rehearsal.

he final part of Waters’s original three-part vision for The Wall began in September 1981 when production got under way for a film directed by Alan Parker, who had established his credentials as a strong-minded visionary three years earlier with Midnight Express. Waters had already written a script and was in line to play the lead role of Pink, the alienated, dysfunctional pop star. He had also enlisted Gerald Scarfe to provide animations for the movie. Pink Floyd put up a sizeable chunk of the $20-million production budget, with Parker investing some of his own money as well. The original idea had been to base the film around a combination of concert film footage with Scarfe’s animations and some additional scenes starring Pink. But when Parker reviewed the footage from the Earls Court shows he was not impressed. He told the band he was not interested in making a rock’n’roll movie. It had been the ideas and the concept behind The Wall that had attracted him, and he had now begun to develop his own ideas about how these could be portrayed in the film. Parker had not been encouraged by Waters’s screen test, either, and persuaded him to abandon his acting dream and allow the director to pursue his own vision for the film instead,

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using Pink Floyd’s songs and Scarfe’s animations as a starting point. Waters acquiesced and went off on a sixweek holiday, leaving Parker to begin work on the film. He began by casting Bob Geldof, the singer with the Irish New Wave band the Boomtown Rats (and not a Floyd fan), in the largely nonverbal role of Pink. “I really made the film with a completely free hand,” Parker told Rolling Stone magazine. “I had to have that. I couldn’t be second-guessed by Roger, and he appreciated that. The difficulty came when I’d finished. I’d been shooting for 60 days, 14 hours a day—that film had become mine. Then Roger came back and I had to go through the very difficult reality of having it put over to me that it was actually a collaborative effort. It wasn’t a totally happy experience.” Waters would later describe the making of the film as “the most unnerving, neurotic period of my life, with the possible exception of my divorce.” The two men were used to getting their own way in their respective fields, and they had egos to match. They clashed repeatedly, with Parker threatening to quit on more than one occasion.

“I REALLY MADE THE FILM WITH A COMPLETELY FREE HAND… I HAD TO HAVE THAT. I COULDN’T BE SECOND-GUESSED BY ROGER, AND HE APPRECIATED THAT. THE DIFFICULTY CAME WHEN I FINISHED…” —ALAN PARKER

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ABOVE and BELOW: Stills from The Wall directed by Alan Parker. LEFT: The Wall press photo of Bob Geldof.

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BELOW: Still from The Wall starring Bob Geldof and directed by Alan Parker.

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Pink Floyd rerecorded several songs from The Wall for the film, including a couple that had not made the cut the first time around. Waters also wrote a new song, the poignant “When the Tigers Broke Free,” which serves as the film’s overture and specifically references his father’s death at the Battle of Anzio during World War II. Gilmour and Mason declined to get involved in the furor surrounding the film and kept a low profile throughout, although Gilmour briefly assumed an unexpected public persona when he captained a team on BBC TV’s light entertainment show, Pop Quiz, beating teams led by Phil Collins and Queen drummer Roger Taylor. Meanwhile, Mason recorded his first “solo” album, Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports, in collaboration with jazz keyboard player Carla Bley, who wrote all the material. (It is arguably more of a Carla Bley record than a Nick Mason record.) As Christmas approached, CBS Records decided to see what more they could squeeze from the Pink Floyd catalogue by compiling A Collection of Great Dance Songs, its title a jokey reference to the band’s recently acquired dancefloor status with “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2.” None of the other five tracks on the album were remotely danceable, with the possible exception of “Money,” which had been rerecorded after a contractual dispute with Capitol Records (not that you could really tell the difference).

ABOVE: Nick Mason collaborated with jazz keyboard player Carla Bley (above) on his album Nick Mason’s Fictitious Sports.

ABOVE: Album covers for Nick Mason’s Fictitious Sports and Pink Floyd’s A Collection of Great Dance Songs. 154

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ABOVE: Sheet music for “When the Tigers Broke Free.”

RIGHT: Album cover for The Wall: Music from the Film.

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ABOVE: The Wall film poster.

ABOVE: The Wall promotional booklet.

After an advance screening at the Cannes Film Festival, The Wall was given its official premiere at London’s Leicester Square Odeon theater on July 14, 1982. Waters, Gilmour, and Mason all attended (Wright was apparently “on holiday”), as did Gerald Scarfe and Bob Geldof, but Alan Parker was notable by his absence. Reviews of the film were generally favorable, although some critics resented being battered by the “relentless imagery.” Many of those images were unforgettable, however, notably those of the schoolchildren in blob masks being led toward a meat grinder during “Another Brick in the Wall.” Scarfe’s animations were particularly vivid: the goose-stepping hammers, the genitalia-shaped flowers, the warplanes that turned into crosses, the judge who literally talked out of his backside. Soon after the film opened, it was announced that Pink Floyd would be releasing a soundtrack album featuring the newly recorded material. The album was even given a working title, Spare Bricks, but when Gilmour and Mason turned up to start work on it they discovered that Waters had scrapped the idea in favor of new album concept about the senseless futility of war. In many ways, this was a continuation of the themes Waters had pursued on The Wall and earlier albums, but his anger had been

sharpened by Britain’s recent war with Argentina over sovereignty of the Falklands Islands, which had resulted in more than 800 deaths during the spring and summer of 1982. The Final Cut is the album on which any pretense of Pink Floyd functioning as a democratic unit was exposed as a sham. After his bruising confrontations with Alan Parker during the making of The Wall, Waters was in no mood to countenance dissent—as Gilmour discovered early on, when he queried both the suitability of the concept and the quality of the songs. “I said to Roger, ‘If these songs weren’t good enough for The Wall, why are they good enough for now?’” he recalled. “We had the most awful time. Roger had got Rick out, Nick wasn’t around much, and now he was starting on me. It was a most unpleasant and humiliating experience.” Waters was unrepentant. “The fact was that I was making this record,” he subsequently told Uncut magazine. “Dave didn’t like it, and he said so. There wasn’t any room for anyone else to be writing. I didn’t play the guitar solos, Dave didn’t write any lyrics.” When the others complained, Waters threatened to take the album away from Pink Floyd and release it as his own. As far as Mason was concerned, however, it was effectively a Roger Waters

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ABOVE: Pink Floyd’s Works LP, released in 1983.

ABOVE: Single for Pink Floyd’s "Not Now John."

solo album anyway. “The rest of us just sort of drifted into it,” he said. “It was a ghastly period with Roger, being treated more and more like a useless piece of kit and him saying menacingly, ‘If we want to make another record, it will be different after this.’” Mason’s confidence was further undermined when funk/soul drummer Andy Newmark was brought in to play on the final track, “Two Suns in the Sunset.” The album was recorded in piecemeal fashion at a halfdozen studios in and around London, but tellingly not at Pink Floyd’s own Britannia Row studio. Bob Ezrin was not invited back, his confrontational style having been deemed unwelcome. In any case, he’d blown it soon after The Wall was released by telling a journalist in confidence about the upcoming live shows, only to have his thoughts relayed in the following week’s edition of Billboard magazine. Gilmour’s dissatisfaction with the project and his rows with Waters culminated in him insisting his name be removed from the production credits. “My ideas weren’t the way Roger saw it,” he told the UK newspaper the Sun. “It is not personally how I would see a Pink Floyd record going.” Instead, Waters was listed as producer alongside James Guthrie, who had worked on The

Wall and mixed the sound at the band’s live shows, and Michael Kamen, who had provided the orchestral arrangements on The Wall while the album was subtitled “A Requiem for the PostWar Dream by Roger Waters.” Gilmour and Mason were credited simply as performers, while Wright’s name was nowhere to be seen. It was the first time anyone realized that he was no longer a member of the band. Released in March 1983, The Final Cut made use of an impressive new technical innovation: Holophonic Sound, which enabled specific sounds to be projected outside the usual stereo range. It would prove particularly effective when listening to the album with headphones. The missile heard at the beginning of side two, for example, appears to be launched from in front of you before traveling overhead and then crashing behind you. After the success of The Wall, The Final Cut was bound to chart on the strength of advance orders alone. It reached No. 6 in the U.S. but fell away quite sharply, ultimately selling around two million copies—much the same as Meddle, which had only made it to No. 70 on the charts. In the U.K., the album made it all the way to No. 1—an improvement on The Wall, which had stalled at No. 3—and remained on the charts for nearly six months. CUT TO PIECES

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By now, the future of Pink Floyd had begun to attract media attention, with Wright’s departure and stories of disagreements between the remaining members becoming widely known. Many assumed that the album’s title was a signal of the band’s impending demise, and the lack of any further activity from the band only added to the speculation—as did the silence emanating from their management office. A year passed before news broke of any further Pink Floydrelated activity, the release of Gilmour’s second solo album, About Face, in March 1984. Featuring ten self-penned songs (with lyrics by the Who’s Pete Townshend on a couple), the album was recorded in France with a band of handpicked session musicians, including drummer Jeff Porcaro and bassist Pino Palladino, plus a guest appearance from Traffic frontman Steve Winwood on keyboards. More significant was the presence of producer Bob Ezrin, who helped to give the album direction and substance, notably on “Murder,” an uncharacteristic outburst of anger by Gilmour at the man who killed John Lennon. “He was looking to do things that he couldn’t do within the context of Pink Floyd,” Ezrin recalled. “During the making of The Wall, David and I found that our sessions were fun and productive—more about the art than the ego. And during About Face we struck up a deeper relationship.” “I had a bit more time and was feeling a bit freer about things on this album,” Gilmour told Source magazine. He maintained much the same attitude that summer with a tour of 3–4,000-capacity theaters (rather than stadiums) in Europe and North America with a band that included Mick Ralphs from Bad Company. “It’s nice to get out and do something on a slightly different scale, go out and do theaters, which is not really a possibility with Pink Floyd until we get a lot less popular,” he told Musician. Meanwhile, Waters had returned to the studio a month before the release of The Final Cut with most of the people who had worked on the album—except for Gilmour and Mason. Over the next ten months he recorded The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, a concept piece that he had first presented to Pink Floyd in 1978, when it was rejected in favor of The Wall. The overarching idea had developed into a 40-minute dream about one man’s midlife crisis, presented in the realtime of the album, with the tracks running from “4:30 A.M. (Apparently They Were Traveling Abroad)” to “5:11 A.M. (The Moment of Clarity).”

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ABOVE: Richard Wright at Britannia Row in the 1980s.

ABOVE: The album cover of David Gilmour’s second solo album, About Face.

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ABOVE: The album cover of Roger Waters’s The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking.

ABOVE: Promotional photo of David Gilmour.

ABOVE: David Gilmour performing live onstage at the Hammersmith Odeon in London on April 1, 1984. RIGHT: A tour ticket to David Gilmour and Band in 1984.

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The biggest surprise when the album was released in May 1984 was the presence of Eric Clapton on guitar and, more noticeably, Dobro. It was an unlikely pairing at first sight, but Waters had recently helped Clapton record the soundtrack to the John Hurt film The Hit, and Clapton was happy to return the favor. The cover art, by Gerald Scarfe, showed a blond hitchhiker wearing nothing but red high-heeled shoes and a backpack (a reference to the part of the album where the lead character fantasizes about having sex with a hitchhiker he has picked up). It was denounced as sexist by feminist groups, prompting CBS Records to put a black sticker over the girl’s buttocks—thereby succeeding only in drawing more attention to them.

THE BIGGEST SURPRISE ON WATERS’S NEW ALBUM WAS A GUEST APPEARANCE BY ERIC CLAPTON ON GUITAR. WATERS HAD HELPED CLAPTON RECORD THE SOUNDTRACK FOR A JOHN HURT FILM, AND HE WAS HAPPY TO RETURN THE FAVOR… Waters’s subsequent tour of the U.S. and Europe that summer (followed by a second U.S. leg in March 1985) was closer in scale to a Pink Floyd event. He played arenas, backed by Scarfe’s animations and films by Nicholas Roeg that were projected onto large screens behind the band. Clapton formed part of the band for the 1984 shows, alongside Michael Kamen on keyboards and Andy Newmark on drums. The first half of the show featured Pink Floyd material that dated as far back as “Set the Controls for Heart of the Sun” and “If,” as well as a couple of songs from The Final Cut; for the second half, Waters presented the whole of his new album. Concert receipts were not up to the Pink Floyd scale, however, and Waters was rumored to have lost up to a million dollars on the venture. RIGHT: Roger Waters performing with Eric Clapton onstage in Rotterdam on June 19, 1984. 160

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ABOVE: Singer Bryan Ferry (center) performs with Pink Floyd's David Gilmour (far left) onstage during the Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium on July 13, 1985, in London, England.

WHEN WATERS’ MANAGER, STEVE O’ROURKE, SUGGESTED THAT HE MAKE ANOTHER RECORD WITH GILMOUR AND MASON, WATERS’ RESPONSE WAS TO FIRE HIM… ABOVE: Nick Mason’s second solo album, Profiles, which was a collaboration with Mike Oldfield and Rick Fenn. 162

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Hitch Hiking and About Face each scored respectable chart positions on either side of the Atlantic, with Waters’s album reaching No. 31 in the U.S. and No. 13 in the U.K. and Gilmour’s peaking at No. 32 in the U.S. and No. 21 in the U.K. Neither came close to the kind of sales figures that a new Pink Floyd album would have been expected to achieve, however. In fact, Pink Floyd still owed another album to CBS and EMI, but when manager Steve O’Rourke suggested that Waters make another album with Gilmour and Mason, Waters’s response was to fire his manager. In a series of business meetings during 1985, Waters made it clear to Gilmour and Mason that he would not be recording a new album with them. In his view, Pink Floyd was finished, and he wanted the band laid to rest so that he could continue his solo career. As Gilmour explained to Uncut, “Roger said, ‘I’m not working with you guys again.’ He’d say to me, ‘Are you going to carry on?’ and I’d say, quite honestly, ‘I don’t know. But when we’re good and ready I’ll tell everyone what the plan is.’”

BBC TV’s Driving Force show, where he teamed up with Richard Noble (at the time the holder of the world land-speed record) to drive a double decker bus around an obstacle course and change a tire on an 18-wheeler truck. After completing his Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking tour, Waters kept a low profile until December, when he appeared in a BBC tribute to John Lennon, playing “Across the Universe.” A few days later, he wrote formally to EMI and CBS Records, stating that he considered Pink Floyd to be a “spent force creatively,” and making clear that he would not be recording again with Gilmour and Mason—“or with anyone [else] as Pink Floyd.”

ROGER WROTE FORMALLY TO THE RECORD COMPANIES AND STATED THAT HE THOUGHT PINK FLOYD WAS A “SPENT FORCE CREATIVELY”… The same argument festered through 1985. Gilmour made a handful of live appearances, mainly guesting with other artists. Most notably, he appeared at the London Live Aid event in July as a member of Bryan Ferry’s band. He was also onstage for the famous finale, although he was too far from the microphones to be heard. Later that year he played with Pete Townshend’s Deep End band at concerts in aid of the Double “O” charity, which Townshend had set up to help heroin addicts. Mason released his second “solo” album in August 1985: Profiles, a collaboration with 10cc guitarist Rick Fenn and Mike Oldfield. It was mostly instrumental, although Gilmour showed up to sing on one track. Mason had at least remained faithful to Britannia Row Studio, recording the album there and becoming the de facto owner as the others gradually sold their shares of the building to him. His other notable appearance that year was on

ABOVE: Press photo of Roger Waters.

ABOVE: 1985 promotional poster for Roger Waters’s concert in NYC. CUT TO PIECES

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CHAPTER 10

Lapse s and Divisions

RIGHT: Rick Wright, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason in May of 1988.

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ABOVE: The record company publicity photo for Pink Floyd’s “Learning to Fly” single in 1987.

he year 1986 was, for the most part, one of phony war between Waters, who wanted Pink Floyd to disband, and Gilmour, who didn’t believe any one member had the right to call time on the group. As far as Gilmour was concerned, Waters’s letter to CBS and EMI, in which he made clear that he had no intention of recording with or as Pink Floyd ever again, was an attempt to “gear us up into doing something.” “He believed very strongly that we wouldn’t do it,” Mason said. “Or couldn’t do it,” Gilmour added. “I remember meetings in which he said, ‘You’ll never fucking do it.’ That’s precisely what was said. Exactly that term . . . except slightly harder.” Mason would later recall another meeting where Waters tried

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to convince the others that Pink Floyd was over. “Our feeling was, ‘It’s not correct for you to decide.’ By telling us that we couldn’t carry on without him, Dave—who can be very pigheaded— absolutely saw red and finally got it together to go back to work. Roger had been my great mate for years, but even I thought it was an outrage.” The irony, as Mason would later point out, was that Waters could easily have killed off the group simply by staying in it. “By remaining in it and never doing another stroke of work, nothing would ever have happened.” In early 1986 Gilmour began to create a new Pink Floyd album, bringing in musicians like keyboardist Jon Carin, who had played with Bryan Ferry, along with Mason. Wright got in touch after he

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heard that Waters had left the group. Gilmour also recruited Bob Ezrin to help bring the project to fruition. It was a challenge that Ezrin couldn’t resist, but it wasn’t quite as simple as that, since he’d just turned down the opportunity to work with Waters on his next album. “After years of not talking to me and being negative about me in the press, I get a call from Roger apologizing for the way he’d treated me and wanting to discuss working with me on his next album,” Ezrin explained. He was excited at first by the material Waters played him, but he began to feel uncomfortable once they started to negotiate the terms of making the album. “As flexible as he would like to portray himself, he’s an incredibly rigid guy.” The plan was that Ezrin and his family would move to the U.K. for three months while they made the record. “But I knew it would take six months . . . probably longer. I talked to my wife about it, and for two weeks we were going to do it. But one day she burst into tears and said she just couldn’t face it. So I called Roger and said that I couldn’t do it. And there were fireworks, and everyone was angry with me—again.”

WHEN WATERS FOUND OUT THERE WAS GOING TO BE A PINK FLOYD ALBUM WITHOUT HIM, HE BEGAN A HIGH COURT APPLICATION TO HAVE THE GROUP LEGALLY DISSOLVED… Two weeks later, Ezrin received a call from Gilmour, who wanted to play him some songs intended for an album Pink Floyd were planning to make a without Waters. “When I heard them I was definitely interested,” Ezrin recalled. Gilmour proposed starting work on the album in the U.K., with regular breaks for Ezrin to return home, before completing the record in Los Angeles. “This all seemed much more favorable and human to me, so I said yes.” Now Waters was really angry, believing this all to be part of a conspiracy against him. When he found out there was going to be a Pink Floyd album without him, he began a High Court application in October 1987 to have the group legally dissolved.

The statement he had previously issued to CBS and EMI Records was now made public, complete with his assertion that Pink Floyd were “a spent force creatively.” The others responded in November with a statement of their own. “Although Roger Waters quit in December 1985, the group have no intention of disbanding. On the contrary, David Gilmour and Nick Mason with Rick Wright and producer Bob Ezrin are currently recording a new album.” Gilmour’s own explanation was equally measured. “The strength of Pink Floyd always lay in the talents of all four members. Naturally we will miss Roger’s artistic input. However, we will continue to work together as in the past. We are surprised at recent claims that Roger believes the band to be ‘a spent force creatively’ as he’s had no involvement with the current project. The three of us are very excited by the new material and would prefer to be judged by the public on the strength of the forthcoming Pink Floyd album.” EMI and CBS Records were anxious not to get embroiled in the legal battle—not least because they had deals with both Waters and Pink Floyd—but when Waters’s lawyers started making threatening noises about what might happen if a new Pink Floyd album came out, the labels checked the small print of the band’s contract and found that it allowed for various permutations of the band members to operate as Pink Floyd—including one that did not include Waters. Even so, the labels were wary as to whether the public would buy an album by this reconfigured Pink Floyd in such high quantities as before, so were not about to offer any inducements to the band, financial or otherwise, to speed up their progress. A Momentary Lapse of Reason came together on Gilmour’s houseboat, built in 1910 for Edwardian music hall impresario Fred Karno, which Gilmour had moored on the Thames at Hampton Court. Gilmour had also converted the dining room into a studio. “It wasn’t just the boat,” Ezrin recalled. “It was the whole environment around the boat. It was so imposing that it was impossible to divorce it from the music we were making. We agreed that what made a great Pink Floyd album was the atmosphere and the sense of environment from start to finish. Everyone nodded, and when we looked around we realized we were in the place—this magnificent boat on this magical river.” Inspired by the setting, Ezrin now found himself sitting in a rowboat at five o’clock one Sunday morning, “freezing my nuts off,” as he attempted to record the album’s opening sequence. LAPSES AND DIVISIONS

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ABOVE: Roger Waters’s Radio K.A.O.S. album released in June of 1987.

While the music came easily to Gilmour, words were a tougher proposition. Looking beyond the professional wordsmiths-forhire, he found a veteran of the early 1970s hippie daze, Anthony Moore, a former member of a little-known group called Slapp Happy. Moore’s lyrics strengthened three of the early, crucial tracks on the album. “We were all conscious that Roger’s greatest contribution was his amazing poetic, lyrical sense,” Ezrin continued. “We never tried to replicate that, but we knew there was a hole that we needed to fill. And Pink Floyd was always a collaboration, so we brought in collaborators. Once we got into the right frame of mind, which we did very early on, we were in the flow.” Mason and Wright were involved only in a limited capacity. Mason was present, but by his own admission he was out of practice; Wright arrived later and was also rusty. As far as Gilmour was concerned, Waters had broken their confidence. Gilmour was also distracted by threats of injunctions from Waters’s lawyers, particularly once it became known that Pink Floyd intended to tour in 1987. Once the band had finished recording the basic tracks on Gilmour’s boat they moved to Los Angeles for mixing and overdubs. As well as giving them access to top U.S. session players—including drummers Jim Keltner and Carmine Appice, bassist Tony Levin, and saxophonist Tom 168

Scott—the move also had the advantage, according to Ezrin, of placing them in a time zone that restricted the number of hours during which Waters’s lawyers could pester them. Just in case anyone thought that Waters was giving up the fight, however, his lawyers issued a new statement in April 1987 declaring that his dispute with the other members of Pink Floyd was “proceeding in the courts to resolve the question of rights to the name and assets of Pink Floyd, which include the many stage effects used in the past. Despite press reports to the contrary, Waters, the major songwriter and producer of Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall as well as the lead singer and creative force, has not dropped any of his claims.” (Among Waters’s claims was that he held the “creative rights” to Algie, the flying pig. When the others checked back, they found that Waters had indeed commissioned Algie, but also that he had specified a sow, so it was decided that the pig for the band’s forthcoming concerts would have unfeasibly large testicles. This, of course, was not enough to deter Waters’s lawyers, who issued another writ in which they claimed that the gender of the pig was “irrelevant.”)

ONE OF ROGER’S CLAIMS WAS THAT HE HELD THE “CREATIVE RIGHTS” TO ALGIE, THE FLYING PIG… Despite Waters’s best efforts, it was proving tough for him to force the other members of Pink Floyd to disband. There had never been a formal partnership between them, making it much less straightforward for the group to be legally dissolved. In the meantime, Waters had been working on a second solo album, Radio K.A.O.S., which was released in June 1987. Taking the form of a radio show hosted by noted Los Angeles D.J. Jim Ladd, the album explored the power of capitalism and market forces over politicians and was dedicated “to all those who find themselves at the violent end of monetarism.” Produced by Waters and keyboard player Ian Ritchie, the album failed to match the success of its predecessor, stalling at No. 50 in the U.S. and No. 25 in the U.K. In August, Waters started a 34-date tour of North American arenas for which he was joined on stage by Ladd, who introduced

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ABOVE: Singles taken from A Momentary Lapse of Reason: "Learning to Fly" (left), "On the Turning Away" (center), and "One Slip" (right).

a selection of songs that ranged from Pink Floyd material to tracks from the new album. The set varied from night to night but would frequently include an homage to Syd Barrett, with the original promotional film for “Arnold Layne” shown on the big screen while Waters and his band had tea on stage; during the interval, Waters would enter a phone booth in the auditorium and take questions from the audience. The show closed each night with the optimistic anthem from Radio K.A.O.S., “The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid),” which Waters had composed after watching the transatlantic charity concert on television. The tour finished with two nights at London’s Wembley Arena—the only European dates on the tour. Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason was released in early September 1987, with many of the reviews naturally focused on whether it was a “real” Pink Floyd album or not. Opinions were divided; as far as Waters was concerned, the album was “a pretty fair forgery.” The cover marked a return for Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis, who managed to round up 800 hospital beds and set them up for a photo shoot on the beach at

Saunton Sands in Devon, southwest England. The inner sleeve contained a picture of Gilmour and Mason, Wright’s return having been complicated by several factors, including a clause in his leaving agreement that prevented him from rejoining the band and Gilmour’s lingering uncertainty over whether Wright would be able to contribute more than he had on recent albums, as well as to protect him from the litigation Waters was taking against the band. The album confounded the record companies’ doubts and rose swiftly to No. 3 in both the U.S. and the U.K., comfortably outselling its predecessor, The Final Cut. Even so, with the band having not toured for ten years there was some speculation—not least within the Pink Floyd camp—as to whether they could still attract a stadium-sized crowd. Gilmour and Mason had put up $3 million in startup costs for the tour themselves, with Mason having to sell a couple of vintage cars to fund his share of the cash. Their anxieties were assuaged when the first show to go on sale, at Toronto’s Canadian National Exhibition Stadium, sold out in a few hours. A second show was added, and that sold out too. LAPSES AND DIVISIONS

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LEFT: David Gilmour (seated left), Rick Wright (seated right), and Nick Mason (standing) in Versailles, France, on June 9, 1988. 170

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LEFT: 1987 Pink Floyd World Tour program. BELOW: A Momentary Lapse of Reason tour pass in 1987.

On September 9, 1987, following a month of rehearsals, Pink Floyd started a three-month tour of North American stadiums and arenas in Ottawa, Canada. The eight-piece band recruited for the tour included guitarist Tim Renwick (another of the Cambridge generation who had played on Waters’s Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking tour), young session bassist Guy Pratt (who had established his reputation with the Dream Academy, Icehouse, and Bryan Ferry), keyboard player Jon Carin, drummer Gary Wallis, and three backup singers. The tour’s promoters had already attracted the attention of Waters’s lawyers, who warned of injunctions if their client’s “creative rights” were infringed. Pink Floyd had lawyers on

standby in every city, just in case. Waters himself was having to face a grim reality—one that was brought home forcibly during a couple of weeks in October, when the two bands found themselves touring in uncomfortably close proximity. Pink Floyd’s stadium shows—with lights, sound, and special effects to match—were selling out; Waters, meanwhile, was struggling to half-fill arenas. Waters may have been the “creative leader” of Pink Floyd, but to the hundreds of thousands of people who flocked to see the band—many of them for the first time— he was simply the bass player who had left the group. It was Gilmour’s guitar and voice that best embodied the sound of Pink Floyd. LAPSES AND DIVISIONS

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ABOVE: The giant pig above the stage at a Pink Floyd concert at Wembley Stadium, UK, on August 5, 1988. 172

ABOVE: Poster for a concert in Versailles, Paris, in June of 1988.

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ABOVE: Curtain call after Pink Floyd’s concert at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 24, 1988. David Gilmour is second from the left, and Richard Wright is on the far right. LEFT: Ticket for concerts in both Japan and Wembley Stadium in London in 1988.

“My [attorney] told me over a year ago that the kind of justice I was after I could only get from the public,” Waters told Rolling Stone. “The law is not interested in the moral issue but in the name as a piece of property. I’m out on the road in competition with myself—and I’m losing. I’m sure I would be much happier if I could murder them professionally as Pink Floyd.” At the end of 1987, with the threat of a long, bitter, and costly court case looming, the two sides came to an agreement that effectively ended the legal dispute between them. Waters acknowledged Gilmour and Mason’s right to the name “Pink Floyd”; they in turn conceded his rights to the concept of The

Wall and various special effects—including the pig. Only the animosity remained. Waters went home, Pink Floyd went global. The band spent the first quarter of 1988 touring New Zealand, Australia, and Japan, the second back in North America, and the third trundling around the stadiums of Europe. They also played a huge outdoor show at the Royal Palace of Versailles on the edge of Paris, and another at West Berlin’s Reichstagsgelände, where 2,000 East Berliners gathered on the other side of the Berlin Wall to listen to the show. Arrests were made after people chanted for the Wall to be knocked down. (A year and a half later, the Wall would come down, along with the regime that built it.) LAPSES AND DIVISIONS

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PINK FLOYD PLAYED A CONCERT IN WEST BERLIN, AND 2,000 EAST BERLINERS GATHERED ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BERLIN WALL TO LISTEN…

ABOVE: Press photo of Nick Mason. LEFT: Pink Floyd performing live onstage in the Netherlands on the Momentary Lapse of Reason tour on June 13, 1988. LAPSES AND DIVISIONS

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RIGHT: Pink Floyd in the Netherlands on June 13, 1988.

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THE DELICATE SOUND OF THUNDER WAS THE FIRST ROCK ALBUM TO BE PLAYED IN SPACE WHEN A RUSSIAN SPACECRAFT TOOK IT WITH THEM ON BOARD…

ABOVE: Pink Floyd 1989 tour program.

ABOVE: Delicate Sound Of Thunder LP and live album which was released in November of 1988

RIGHT: Goffertpark Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, ticket stub.

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ABOVE: Pink Floyd performing live onstage on the first date of the Another Lapse tour.

Pink Floyd wound down with another short tour of the East Coast of the U.S.A., including four nights at Nassau Coliseum, which were recorded for a live album. When the results were issued on a double CD set as Delicate Sound of Thunder in November 1988, some critics were suspicious that the live sound was “too perfect.” It was with some pleasure that Gilmour made clear that there had been no fixing, no overdubbing. “It’s real music performed by live people,” he explained, “with one or two younger, keen hired guns helping us in there.” The album features live versions of most of the tracks from A Momentary Lapse of Reason plus numerous Floyd classics, including a ten-minute romp through “Money” and the awesome finale of “Comfortably Numb” and “Run Like Hell.” It reached No. 11 in both the U.S. and the U.K. It was also the first rock album to be played in outer

space when the crew of the Russian spacecraft Soyuz TM-7 took it with them at the end of November. Gilmour and Mason attended the launch in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, where they handed over a cassette of the album. (The crew left the cassette box behind to “save weight.”) The tour didn’t stop with the release of the live album. In May 1990, Pink Floyd were back in Europe, playing Italy and Greece before taking their live show to Russia for four nights at Moscow’s Olimpiyskiy Stadium in early June. Many bands would scale down their Russian shows in view of the distances involved and the problems of getting paid in a convertible currency; Pink Floyd requested that the Russian promoter fly their full show in and out of the country, and were paid a proportion of their fee in a consignment of timber. LAPSES AND DIVISIONS

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ABOVE: Don’t cross the streams…Pink Floyd’s laser light show on March 18, 1990.

The whole operation was certainly more efficient than the fiasco of their Venice concert the following month. The band had arranged to play a free show on a floating barge on the lagoon facing St. Mark’s Square. The concert would be simulcast to television around the globe. Two days before the show, however, the Superintendent of Monuments suddenly announced that the vibrations from the band’s sound system could damage the facades of ancient buildings, with a risk of falling masonry. Bemused that the subject had not been raised before, the band agreed to lower their decibel level. On the day of the concert, more than 200,000 people turned up to find that the civic authorities had made no provision for them whatsoever. Not a single mobile toilet had been arranged. The result was that parts of the city came to resemble open-air latrines. In the aftermath, the army was called in to clear up 300 tons of rubbish and excrement, 180

prompting first the head of the city’s culture committee and then the rest of the council to resign, leaving Venice to be governed by an ad hoc administration. Plans for a commemorative postage stamp were quietly canceled. Even so, more than 100 million people got to see the concert in the more comfortable surroundings of their living rooms, and by the time the tour finished, a couple of weeks later, Pink Floyd had played 200 shows to an audience of some 5.5 million people, with total receipts estimated at $100 million. Less happily, Gilmour’s 14-year marriage to Ginger had reached breaking point, and Waters was suing the band for unpaid royalties for using the pig. Waters had spent the first part of 1988 working on an album that would eventually emerge as Amused to Death. He put the project aside for a while, however, when he was approached to

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ABOVE: Roger Waters performs live onstage at The Wall concert in Berlin, Germany, on July 21, 1990.

write an opera based on a libretto by the French writer Étienne Roda-Gil, whom he had first met 20 years earlier. The opera, titled Ça Ira (which translates approximately as We Will Make It) was based on the events leading up to the French Revolution, and there were plans to stage it at the bicentennial celebrations of the storming of the Bastille in the summer of 1989 before the project got mired in budgetary constraints and French cultural politics. Later in 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall gave Waters another idea. He had previously stated that he would perform The Wall in Berlin once the existing Wall was demolished, and in April 1990 he made good on that promise when he announced plans to stage the album at Berlin’s Potzdamer Platz, located in what was once no-man’s land between East and West Berlin, on July 21, in aid of the Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief. The scale of the event matched anything Pink Floyd had ever attempted, with or without

Waters. Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park, who had designed the original Wall in 1980, were hired to build a new open-air Wall strong enough to withstand 40 mph. winds. An all-star cast was assembled for the show, including Bryan Adams, Thomas Dolby, Marianne Faithfull, Cyndi Lauper, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Sinéad O’Connor, German band the Scorpions, and Levon Helm, Rick Danko, and Garth Hudson from The Band. Despite the logistical complexity, the short preparation time, and the sheer difficultly of organizing an event in a nation still in the throes of reunification, the show passed without incident. The performance itself was largely the same as the version of The Wall staged in 1980, although Waters added “The Tide is Turning” as a more optimistic finale. Some 180,000 people had bought tickets, but another 120,000 are thought to have gatecrashed the show, which was filmed for release on video later in the year. LAPSES AND DIVISIONS

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WATERS PROMISED TO PERFORM THE WALL IN BERLIN ONCE THE EXISTING WALL WAS DEMOLISHED, AND HE MADE GOOD ON HIS PROMISE…

ABOVE: Concert pass for The Wall show starring Roger Waters and special guests.

LEFT: Roger Waters with the Scorpions at the rehearsal for The Wall concert in Berlin, Germany.

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ABOVE: CD for The Wall—Live in Berlin.

ABOVE: Special Edition DVD for The Wall—Live in Berlin. LEFT: Roger Waters performs in Berlin, Germany, on July 21, 1990, to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall. LAPSES AND DIVISIONS

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ABOVE: Boxed set for Pink Floyd’s Shine On.

ABOVE: Roger Water’s solo CD, Amused to Death. RIGHT: La Carrera Panamericana CD featuring music by Pink Floyd.

Despite the success of the show, Waters couldn’t resist a dig at his former band, who had just played their only concert of 1990, headlining the Silver Clef Awards Winners charity show at Knebworth Park on a bill also featuring Paul McCartney, Elton John, Genesis, Eric Clapton, and Dire Straits. “It will be most gratifying that a few more people in the world will understand that The Wall is my work and always has been,” he told Q magazine. “Still, most of the audience for this show will think it’s Pink Floyd anyway. The attachment to the brand name is limpet-like. It’s just something I have to live with.” After releasing The Wall—Live In Berlin in September, Waters resumed work on Amused to Death. Progress was slow, and not helped by the breakup of his marriage to his second wife, Carolyne Christie. The album was eventually released in September 1992, featuring another surprise guest guitarist: Jeff Beck. “Roger had been chasing me for months,” Beck recalled. “When he put me on [the album], the thing was nowhere near completed. He played me only the pieces where he wanted guitar. On the opening track (“The Ballad of Bill Hubbard”), we just blazed away for 15 minutes, had a coffee, and went home. Forgot all about it. Next thing I know it’s the lead track on the album. I don’t know what the hell it’s all about. He did explain it to me, but I wasn’t really listening.” 186

In fact, the album was about the power and influence of television—which, according to Waters, has the potential either to save or destroy us. The album performed better in the charts than Radio K.A.O.S., reaching No. 21 in the U.S. and No. 6 in the U.K., but sales were not strong enough to make the idea of a tour economically feasible. Pink Floyd meanwhile took an extended break after completing the Momentary Lapse tour in the summer of 1990, during which Mason married actress Annette Lynton, his second wife, and Gilmour began a relationship with journalist Polly Samson. In 1991, Gilmour and Mason, along with manager Steve O’Rourke, decided to indulge their collective passion for vintage sports cars by taking part in the Mexican Carrera Panamericana. Combining business with pleasure, they decided to make a film of their rally experience for which they would also provide the soundtrack. The whole venture nearly ended in disaster when the replica C-type Jaguar driven by Gilmour and O’Rourke went over a cliff at a high speed. While Gilmour suffered only cuts and abrasions, O’Rourke suffered a compound leg fracture and was hospitalized. According to Mason, it could have been a lot worse. Recording the soundtrack to the film took Gilmour, Mason, and Wright back in time to Pink Floyd’s early dalliances with the

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Gilmour was also more relaxed as the album began to take shape. His playing was more expansive and his lyric writing was encouraged by his girlfriend (and soon-to-be wife) Polly, to the point where he decided she should be given cowriting credits. Admitting that A Momentary Lapse of Reason had been “a very, very difficult process,” he told Guitar World, “We’re all playing and functioning much better than we were after the trials and tribulations of the late Roger years.” Communication became a recurring theme for many of the songs, particularly on “Poles Apart,” “Lost for Words,” and “Keep Talking.” It was a theme that Storm Thorgerson would pick up on for the album cover, for which he constructed two 15 ft. high metal heads that he placed facing each other in the flat fenland near Ely in Cambridgeshire.

ABOVE: Polly Samson and David Gilmour at the Serpentine in London.

movie industry in the late ’60s/early ’70s, on albums like More and Obscured by Clouds, creating music in the studio to fit existing visual images. So it was perhaps no accident that they took a similarly retro approach when it came to recording a new Pink Floyd album at the beginning of 1993. The three of them convened at the newly refurbished Britannia Row Studio with no preconceived ideas and started jamming together. Within a couple of days it was clear that this “old fashioned” method that had served them so well on the Atom Heart Mother, Meddle, and Dark Side of the Moon albums was still capable of yielding results. They decided to invite their bassist, Guy Pratt, to the sessions, and he added a new dynamic to their endeavors. After two weeks, they had over 40 workable musical ideas down. In February they moved to Gilmour’s houseboat studio where they were joined by Bob Ezrin, and they began the process of turning the best ideas into songs. With less pressure and fewer distractions—and no angst from Waters’s lawyers—the atmosphere was congenial and productive. At one point they even entertained the idea of a second, more ambient-oriented record, which could have opened up a whole new range of possibilities, before deciding to focus on a single album. Wright was now a fully functioning member of the band again, and he would end up writing one song and cowriting four others.

ABOVE: Postcard for Pink Floyd’s Division Bell tour.

By the summer the band were ready to commit to releasing the album in March 1994 with a world tour to coincide. This gave them time to work on their staging and presentation, and they commissioned their longtime designer Mark Fisher and lighting designer Marc Brickman to design a stage based on the shape of the Hollywood Bowl with a giant rotating circular screen encircled with lights that could hover horizontally above the band as well as hanging vertically behind them. Two towers on either side of LAPSES AND DIVISIONS

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ABOVE: The Pink Floyd Airship.

ABOVE: Pink Floyd’s “Take It Back” single.

AUTHOR DOUGLAS ADAMS CAME UP WITH THE TITLE FOR THE DIVISION BELL ALBUM. the stage would house a state-of-the-art Turbosound PA system with up to 300 speakers, but still leaving room for an inflatable pig to poke its head over the top. Three stages were eventually built so that the band could maximize their touring schedule as the stages leapfrogged their way along the route. As the album neared completion, new films were commissioned to be projected onto the screen for particular songs. Meanwhile, Brickman was lining up 400 Vari-Lites and two copper-vapor lasers that had originally been developed for NASA and were so powerful that they required Federal Aviation Authority approval so that the airspace above the venue could be closed. The mirror ball was enlarged and moved to the newly designed sound-and-lighting center in front of the stage so that the whole stadium could be bathed in shafts of light. But amidst all the cutting-edge technology, the band brought back their original 1960s lighting man, Peter Wynn Wilson, to recreate his 188

ABOVE: Pink Floyd’s “High Hopes” single.

psychedelic liquid oil patterns during the two Syd Barrett-era songs they were planning to play on tour. Only the album title itself was subject to the usual lastminute panic. In the end, the band’s friend and fan Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, came up with The Division Bell. The grateful band came up with a generous donation to the charity of his choice before realizing that the title actually came from one of the song lyrics. The Division Bell was released on time in March 1994 and went straight to No. 1 in both the U.S. and the U.K. The tour began in Miami at the end of that month and crisscrossed North America through July. The Apple computer system operating the light shows was flexible enough that the band could change their set list without having to let everyone know days in advance (as would often be the case), and they took full advantage, bringing a new edge to the show and keeping the crew, which now numbered 200, on their toes.

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ABOVE: From left to right: David Gilmour, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd at a concert on their Division Bell tour in April of 1994.

ABOVE: Ticket to Pink Floyd’s Munich concert in 1994.

Just four days after their last U.S. show, Pink Floyd started their European tour in Portugal, having flown their equipment across the Atlantic in one huge Russian Antonov transporter and a couple of Boeing 747s. By now, the band had taken to playing the whole of Dark Side of the Moon, in sequence, for the second half of the show, and had commissioned new films to replace

some of the original visuals, which they considered to be dated. They also extended an invitation for Waters to join them for that part of the show, but he declined, which was a shame, since if nothing else he would surely have enjoyed the dinner with Czech Republic president, playwright, and former political prisoner Václav Havel that followed the band’s concert in Prague. LAPSES AND DIVISIONS

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ABOVE: A view of the dynamic stage show during a Pink Floyd concert on the Division Bell tour in 1994.

The tour ended in London with a 14-night run at the indoor Earls Court arena. The opening night was canceled after a section of seating collapsed minutes before the concert was due to start, injuring several people, although fortunately no one was seriously hurt. The concerts were recorded and filmed for another live album and video, Pulse. The tour ended on October 29, having reached the same number of people and earned the same gross income in six months that the previous tour had taken two-and-ahalf years to accrue. But while the tour had been an outstanding success, there were no further plans on the horizon. 190

ABOVE: Ticket and poster for Pink Floyd’s Earls Court, London, concert.

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ABOVE: Single for “Wish You Were Here” released in 1995.

ABOVE: Pulse press folder, DVD, and CD released in 1995. LAPSES AND DIVISIONS

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CHAPTER 11

N ot J ust A not he r B r ic k

RIGHT: Roger Waters performing at the Glastonbury Festival on June 28, 2002.

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he last sighting of Pink Floyd in the 20th century came in January 1996, when Gilmour, Mason, and Wright attended New York’s Waldorf Hotel for the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Waters and Syd Barrett had also been sent invitations but declined to attend.) They were inducted by Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, who vividly recalled the impact of hearing Dark Side of the Moon as a teenager before joining Gilmour and Wright for an impromptu version of “Wish You Were Here.” After that, Pink Floyd quietly and deliberately slipped below the radar. The response from management to enquiries about recording or touring was that there were “no plans at present.” Instead it was Roger Waters who emerged with an American tour in the summer of 1999, having remained out of the spotlight since the release of his Amused to Death album in 1992. “I’ve sensed a turning of the tide in recent years in terms of the public’s awareness of who I am and what my contribution to Pink Floyd was,” he said at the time. With no new album to promote, Waters devised a show that would provide an overview of his career. “I listened to everything I’d done in the last 30 years. I wrote a list—a very long list—and then I slowly whittled it down until it was about two and a half hours long.” While the show included most of Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, and chunks of The Wall, Waters reclaimed several songs that his former band had ignored like “Welcome to the Machine” and “Dogs” while also collating songs from his solo albums into one segment.

t ABOVE: CD and promotional flyer for Echoes.

“I’VE SENSED A TURNING OF THE TIDE IN RECENT YEARS IN TERMS OF THE PUBLIC’S AWARENESS OF WHO I AM AND WHAT MY CONTRIBUTION TO PINK FLOYD WAS…” —ROGER WATERS LEFT: Roger Waters sitting outside Abbey Road Studios in London circa 2001. 194

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LEFT: Roger Waters performing in Caracas, Venezuela, during the Festival Pop concert on March 17, 2002.

By starting with “In the Flesh,” “The Thin Ice,” “Another Brick in the Wall,” and “Mother,” Waters put the emphasis on The Wall. Amid the quadrophonic sound, big-screen projections of Gerald Scarfe’s animations, and the flying pigs, he continually stressed the message of the songs. The success of the tour—24 shows in little over a month—led Waters to repeat the exercise the following summer for a series of shows at which he refined the set list by delving back to “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” from A Saucerful of Secrets, and adding a new closing song, “Each Small Candle,” which he had recently written in response to the wars that were tearing Yugoslavia to pieces. The concert at Seattle’s Rose Garden Arena was filmed and recorded for release on DVD and CD. While Waters took a break in 2001, Gilmour returned with a couple of solo shows in London and Paris. He played several Pink Floyd favorites, with Wright joining the band for “Fat Old Sun” from Atom Heart Mother as well as a rare gem, “Terrapin,” from Syd Barrett’s abortive solo career. There was also a new song, “Smile,” and a version of Bizet’s “Je Crois Entendre Encore,” from his opera The Pearl Fishers.

The shows were also a signal that Gilmour was laying Pink Floyd to rest. “I don’t like to say that I’ll never do something again, but I suspect that I’ve done that,” he said. “One never knows if one’s poor tired old ego might creep up on you and persuade you to give it another go. I mean, I’m at liberty to play with Nick and Rick any time. But the weight of the whole Pink Floyd thing is something that I don’t feel like lifting these days. I wouldn’t feel happy doing it without a new record, so you’re talking about two years at least. I just think that I’ve grown out of it. Finally. Probably.” Waters resumed his In the Flesh Tour in 2003, after a year’s break, playing South Africa, South America, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Thailand, India, and the United Arab Emirates in March and April before hitting Europe in May and June. In London he was formally reunited with Mason, who joined the band for “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.” The tour ended with a show at the Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, which had started as a small hippie gathering in the late 1960s but had since grown into the biggest annual festival of the year in Britain, with a predominantly young audience. NOT JUST ANOTHER BRICK

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ABOVE: Ticket for Live 8 on July 2, 2005.

In interviews, Waters said he had been tempted by offers to stage The Wall again. “I had all kinds of stupid grandiose plans for building a wall across the Grand Canyon. Then I thought, somebody has to pay for this. I mean, the Berlin show had cost $6 million, and we only got that back through the video and album. When I looked into it they were actually thinking about the Indianapolis Race Track, and while they talked about crowd control and things it was really going to be an exercise in selling Coca-Cola or whatever. Actually, doing The Wall again would be very difficult”—but perhaps not quite as difficult as he first thought. The next two years were quiet. Gilmour was awarded a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in the Queen’s 2003 birthday honors list, and he joined in the Strat Pack concert in September 2004 to mark the 50th anniversary of his favorite guitar, the Fender Stratocaster. Meanwhile, Waters released two songs via the internet in 2004, one of which was “Leaving Beirut,” which he’d written about his travels in the Middle East as a teenager. He also took part in the hastily prepared benefit concert for the survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami, offering a filmed performance of “Wish You Were Here” with Eric Clapton. And so the announcement on June 12, 2005, that Waters, Gilmour, Wright, and Mason would be appearing together as Pink 196

Floyd at the forthcoming Live 8 concert in London’s Hyde Park came as a total surprise. Organized by Bob Geldof, Live 8 marked the 20th anniversary of Live Aid, with the aim of raising awareness for the Make Poverty History campaign, and it was timed to coincide with the G8 summit in Scotland. “Like most people I want to do everything I can to persuade the G8 leaders to make huge commitments to the relief of poverty and increased aid to the third world,” Gilmour said at the time. “Any squabbles Roger and the band have had in the past are so petty in this context, and if reforming for this concert will help focus attention then it’s got to be worthwhile.” Waters explained the sequence of events. “I think Bob ran into Nick at a party and said, ‘Why don’t you talk to Roger?’ And Nick said, ‘Why don’t you talk to him?’ So we spoke on the telephone, and he asked me if I’d make the call, and I said, ‘Yeah, well, why not?’ So I did, and David was a bit surprised when the phone rang and it was me. We chatted for a few minutes, and he said, ‘I’ll have a think about it.’ And he called me back about 24 hours later and said, ‘All right. I’ll do it.’” The band spent three days preparing for their 25-minute spot, which was now set to close the show. While the atmosphere was committed and congenial, both Waters and Gilmour had to make adjustments in their style. Each of them had made their own subtle adjustments to classic Pink Floyd songs over the previous 20 years; now they had to present the material as it had originally been performed. They recruited backing musicians—guitarist Tim Renwick, keyboard player Jon Carin, and saxophonist Dick Parry—to ensure that the audience would hear exactly what they expected to hear. There was also some dispute as to what songs to play; “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” was eventually dropped because the underlying message was thought to be “too negative.” At the climax of the day-long Live 8 show on July 5, the reunited Pink Floyd walked out onto a darkened stage in Hyde Park to the accompaniment of a thudding heartbeat that became the introduction for “Speak to Me”/“Breathe.” They were a model of utterly focused attention, meticulously reproducing the sound of a song that was already embedded in the consciousness of the audience and millions of television viewers around the world. Waters was visibly affected by the significance of the occasion. After “Money,” which gave the band the chance to loosen up a little, he addressed the crowd while Gilmour tinkered with the

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LEFT: Rick Wright performing at the Live 8 show in 2005. NOT JUST ANOTHER BRICK

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ABOVE: David Gilmour and Roger Waters performing together for the first time in over 20 years at the Live 8 show.

RIGHT: Nick Mason performing at the Live 8 show in 2005. 198

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opening chords of “Wish You Were Here.” “It’s actually quite emotional standing up here with these three guys after all these years, standing to be counted with the rest of you,” he said. “Anyway, we’re doing this for everyone who’s not here, but particularly of course for Syd.” After a version of “Wish You Were Here” that perfectly captured the nuances between the three acoustic guitars, Waters and Gilmour donned their electric instruments once more, and with a muttered “here we go” from Waters they plunged into “Comfortably Numb” while the screen behind them showed a wall inscribed with the words “Make Poverty History.” At the end Gilmour thanked the audience and turned to leave before Waters beckoned him back for a group hug that would become the most frequently used image in the following day’s newspapers— a symbol of the whole event.

“…I THINK I CAN CATEGORICALLY SAY THAT THERE WON’T BE A TOUR OR AN ALBUM AGAIN THAT I TAKE PART IN…IT’S JUST, I’VE BEEN THERE, I’VE DONE IT.” —DAVID GILMOUR It was one of the shortest but most intense performances Pink Floyd had ever given—and, inevitably, it raised speculation about whether the reunited band might tour together again. Offers of £150 million were reportedly made; Waters, carried along by the emotion of the occasion, initially failed to quell the prospect of more shows. For Gilmour, however, the circumstances of the one-off reunion proved that things should remain that way—as a one-off. “The rehearsals convinced me that it wasn’t something I wanted to be doing a lot of,” he told the Associated Press. “There have been all sorts of farewell moments in people’s lives and careers which they have then rescinded, but I think I can categorically say that there won’t be a tour or an album again that I take part in. It isn’t to do with animosity or anything like that. It’s just . . . I’ve been there, I’ve done it.”

ABOVE: David Gilmour performing at the Live 8 show.

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ABOVE: David Gilmour’s On an Island.

ABOVE: Roger Waters’ Dark Side tour program.

RIGHT: David Gilmour’s “Arnold Layne” single featuring David Bowie and Richard Wright.

A year later, Gilmour and Waters were back on their separate career paths. Gilmour released his third solo album, On an Island, comprising ten new songs, several of which included lyrics cowritten by his wife, Polly Samson. The album featured Wright on Hammond organ, and orchestral arrangements by noted Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner, with David Crosby and Graham Nash providing backing vocals on the title track. The album topped the U.K. charts and reached No. 6 in the U.S., providing Gilmour with his first Top 10 solo album there. He toured the U.S. between March and May, and Europe in July and August with a band that featured Wright and several 200

other former Pink Floyd collaborators, among them Guy Pratt, Jon Carin, and Dick Parry. At the London concert at the Royal Albert Hall, Crosby and Nash sang backup vocals on several songs, while David Bowie made a guest appearance at the end to sing “Arnold Layne” and “Comfortably Numb.” The last date on the tour took place at the Gda´nsk Shipyard in Poland, which was where the Solidarity Movement had been formed in the early ’80s, precipitating the downfall of the Eastern European communist states. The performance was recorded and filmed for a live CD and DVD. Meanwhile, Waters returned with his own band for a Dark

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ABOVE: Roger Waters performs live onstage at the Acer Arena in Sydney, Australia, on January 25, 2007.

Side of the Moon live tour featuring the whole of the album in the second half of the show—just as Pink Floyd had done during their final tour in 1994. The open-air shows featured elaborate staging by lighting designer Marcus Brickman, including lasers, flamethrowers, psychedelic projections, fog machines, and floating puppets. The tour started in Europe in June before moving to North America in the fall and continuing the following year with live engagements in South America, Australia, and Asia. He then returned to North America and Europe in 2008, bringing the total number of shows to 110. ABOVE: Pink Floyd’s Oh, by the Way CD. NOT JUST ANOTHER BRICK

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LEFT: Passers-by on Primrose Hill in London watch as Sky Arts pays tribute to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album cover on October 21, 2009.

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ABOVE: Remember That Night, a two-disc DVD special edition of David Gilmour performing live at the Royal Albert Hall.

ABOVE: Richard Wright performing at the Live 8 show on July 2, 2005. Wright passed away on September 15, 2008, after battling cancer.

The death of Syd Barrett in July 2006 briefly stopped his former colleagues in their tracks. Barrett had been in the hospital with complications arising from diabetes and died a week after returning home following a short battle with pancreatic cancer. None of the other members of Pink Floyd attended his cremation, and they said nothing about his death beyond an official statement of regret and sadness. There was some criticism of this in the media, but in truth they had already expressed themselves fully as his specter hung over Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall. “I lost Syd 30 years ago,” a deeply affected Gilmour told a friend. The prospect of the post-Barrett line-up reuniting once again ended with the death of Richard Wright, who had also been battling cancer, on September 15, 2008.

A year earlier, Wright had appeared with the other members of the band at a tribute to Barrett in London, although they did not perform together. Wright’s final public appearance had taken place a year earlier when he performed with Gilmour at the premiere of Remember That Night, the film of Gilmour’s concerts at the Royal Albert Hall the previous May. In April 2010, Waters announced that he was taking The Wall on a world tour, starting in North America in September. He explained that the idea for the show had arisen during his Dark Side of the Moon tour. “I had been kind of reluctant to take that whole piece and redo it,” he said. “But it really worked well. So when I’d recovered from that, I thought maybe I had one more in me. Laurie, my fiancée, said that maybe I should do The Wall. I said I couldn’t, but it wouldn’t go away.”

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ABOVE: Roger Waters sings during a performance at Hong Kong’s Convention and Exhibition Centre on February 15, 2007. An image of Syd Barrett is projected on the screen behind him as he plays. Syd died on July 7, 2006, in Cambridge, UK.

Back in 1980, The Wall had never been considered a viable touring proposition due to the complexity of the production. Improvements in technology had changed that perception, although as stage designer Mark Fisher points out, “It’s the same bloody wall. Identical. The engineering behind the building of the wall—the platforms that the men go up and down on to build the wall, the stabilizing masts that go up inside the wall to stop it falling over and the cardboard bricks themselves—are exactly what I designed back in 1980.” The only difference lay in how it was all controlled. “In 1980, there were no computer control systems. So I sat behind the stage with a bank of switches and moved things up and down. Now we have a computer that does the same thing, and a man that watches the computer.” As far as Fisher was concerned, it was only the cost that prevented a full-

scale tour of The Wall in the 1980s. “It wasn’t that the show was really expensive—it was that tickets were really cheap. In 1980 the top ticket price in London was £8. Now people are paying £80 and more. Even allowing for inflation of around 300 percent, that changes the economics of putting a touring show together.” If the basic technology of building The Wall had not changed, other elements of the show were radically transformed. If you wanted a moving light in 1980, you had to use an elaborate pulley system, or put a guy with a spotlight on top of a cherry picker. Today, it’s possible to fit 24 automated Vari-Lites around the rim of a circular screen. But the biggest advances were in video and animation projection. In 1980 three 35mm projectors struggled to project Gerald Scarfe’s inimitable animations onto the wall in focus and without too much overlap. In 2010 Fisher had 15 NOT JUST ANOTHER BRICK

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ABOVE and RIGHT: Roger Waters performs The Wall in its entirety at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on November 8, 2010. In the above picture, the children next to him are wearing t-shirts that say “Fear Builds Walls.”

high-definition projectors pointed at the wall and mapped to a digital grid capable of adding each brick to the projection space as soon as it was positioned on the wall. All of this required considerable choreography, meaning the overall mood was a far cry from some of the shows in 1980, which Fisher would describe as “a mad race between the drug-crazed road crew and the band to see who could get to the intermission first.” The projectors had to be precisely focused on the wall before every show, which meant that the road crew would have to build the wall almost as soon as they completed the load-in and then take it down again to allow the band to soundcheck. “There’s a lot of tight scheduling, so that everyone can do the things they need to do at the right time,” said video content director Sean Evans, an American who listened to The Wall so much while growing up that he already knew the album “inside and out.” Early on in proceedings, Waters told Evans that he didn’t “just want to do this as it was. I have no interest in not making 206

this political. We have to modernize it, and we have to bring a message.” According to Waters, the show was no longer simply the story of one frightened man hiding behind a wall, but a more expansive look at the way nations and ideologies are divided from each other. “We are controlled by the powers that be, who tell us that we need to guard against the evil ones who are over there and different from us and who we must be frightened of,” he explained. Part of the message included broadening out the references to World War II to take in other wars and acts of violence that have occurred in the years since. “Roger put a notice on his website asking for people to send in pictures and details of family members, civilian or military, killed in wars or terrorist acts,” Evans recalled. “He wanted to include them on ‘The Thin Ice’ but he didn’t know how, so we just waited to see what showed up. We worked on it for months, and the first time I saw it with an audience even I welled up. It’s very intense.”

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Getting Scarfe’s original animations to hold up against the new graphics was another time-consuming task. “His stuff is legendary, you can’t mess with it,” Evans said. “Fortunately, Roger had the original film, so we were able to restore it from the best possible source, but it still took a lot of work to make it look good against the other stuff we were doing. Some of it, like the flower sequence, was actually made for the circular screen, so we extended the stems across the wall so that it looked as if the flowers were coming from somewhere.” The projectors at Evans’s disposal could also create black holes in the wall and make the whole edifice sway and buckle alarmingly. In fact, there were moments in the show where you wondered whether the animated trickery might upstage the climax to the show, when the wall comes crashing down. “We’ve paced the effects so it all builds up to that point,” Evans said. “It’s very intentional. And we thought about whether to add any effects to the wall as it falls. But actually, it looks pretty spectacular from wherever you are in the arena, with all the smoke billowing out and stuff. But if you’re in the first five rows it feels like it’s gonna hit you. I’ve been in the pit a couple of times with a camera and gotten brained a couple of times. Those things are heavier than they look.” The Wall opened in Toronto on September 15, 2010, and continued across North America before reaching Mexico City on December 21. The tour grossed more than the one by Lady Gaga that took place at the same time and was second only to Bon Jovi’s stadium tour in terms of revenue—a remarkable achievement for a show that was as much about the message as entertainment. More significantly, the tour established that The Wall was Waters’s creation, as originally played by Pink Floyd—a subtle distinction that was not widely understood in 1980. The Wall moved to Europe in March 2011, with the tour continuing until August. By now, the show had developed a tight choreography, but Waters kept the production crew alert by continually revising various elements of it. He had also developed a crowd-friendly demeanor, smiling and making eye contact with the fans down the front. It was a far cry from the remote, uncommunicative figure he had cut for so long—not least during the original performances of The Wall. “I’m completely different, and feel completely different, about being on stage now than I did then,” he has since admitted. “In the last 30 years I’ve come round to embracing the possibilities of that connection with the audience. Now I milk it mercilessly, 208

because it’s fun and it feels good, whereas back then I was so fearful that when I was on stage I was the same as I was at a party; standing in a corner, not looking at anybody, smoking cigarettes and more or less saying, ‘Don’t come anywhere near me.’ Thank goodness I’ve grown up a bit since then.” When The Wall reached London in April 2011, Waters was reunited with Gilmour, who briefly reprised his original role of playing and singing “Comfortably Numb” at the top of the wall. After the wall came tumbling down, Gilmour and Mason clambered across the rubble to join a visibly moved Waters. “Thirty years ago, when David and Nick and I first did this, I was a rather grumpy person, disaffected with rock’n’roll audiences, as young David will attest,” Waters announced, to which Gilmour smiled and nodded. “But all that’s changed—I could not be happier than to be in this room with these two guys and all of you here tonight.” Gilmour and Mason then joined the rest of the band for the encore of “Outside the Wall” on mandolin and tambourine.

ROGER WATERS’ THE WALL TOUR GROSSED MORE THAN THE ONE BY LADY GAGA THAT TOOK PLACE AT THE SAME TIME… In 2012, The Wall toured Australia, South America, and North America, selling more than 1.4 million tickets and moving into stadiums to fulfill demand. But it wasn’t just about the scale. In October, Waters made a guest appearance at the “Love for Levon” concert in tribute to the late Levon Helm, drummer with The Band. In December he hurriedly rounded up his band to appear at 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief at New York’s Madison Square Garden, where he was joined on stage by Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder for “Comfortably Numb.” The Wall was back in Europe during the summer of 2013, this time playing stadiums, and as this book went to press there were still no plans to demolish it once and for all. It could well end up becoming the enduring legacy of Pink Floyd—even more so than Dark Side of the Moon.

PINK FLOYD: BEHIND THE WALL

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ABOVE: Roger Waters rocking out at Philips Arena on June 13, 2012 in Atlanta, Georgia.

ABOVE: A Foot in the Door, Pink Floyd's greatest hits CD. LEFT: Pink Floyd’s Discovery boxed set.

NOT JUST ANOTHER BRICK

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ABOVE: Roger Waters performs The Wall live onstage at AT&T Park in San Francisco, California, on May 11, 2012.

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WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT DARK SIDE OF THE MOON? Forty years on, Dark Side of the Moon remains far and away the most successful concept album ever made. Its worldwide sales of 34 million copies dwarf all other contenders—as well as subsequent Pink Floyd efforts like Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall, which some might argue are better concept albums. It’s not just the sales—only Michael Jackson’s Thriller and AC/DC’s Back in Black have sold more copies—but also the longevity. No album has spent more weeks in the charts than Dark Side. It was in the Billboard album chart for nearly 15 years, and would probably be there now had the eligibility rules not been changed in the late 1980s. It still notches up annual global sales of over a quarter-million copies. So what’s the secret? Why is the album’s appeal so broad, so timeless? The central themes of Dark Side of the Moon are alienation and insanity—not topics that you would necessarily choose if you were aiming for popular appeal. It’s a question even the band have trouble answering. “I don’t think we ever really understood,” Nick Mason has since confessed. “There are elements that you would never have perceived at the time. It was partly about timing and partly about the songs being relevant to people at that time, and that gave it a lift that brought it on to the attention of another bunch of people, and so on . . .” Certainly, the band were aware that they were on to something special when they finished the album, even though they could not have predicted just how special it would be. “I can clearly remember that moment of listening to the final mix all the way through and thinking, ‘My God, we’ve done something absolutely fantastic here,’” David Gilmour recalled. Roger Waters—the dominant though not yet dominating force in the band when they recorded Dark Side—has his own theory. “The music’s quite compelling,” he said, “but I think there’s something more. Maybe it’s the simplicity of the ideas that appeal to a generation going through puberty and trying to make sense of it all.”

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On its release in March 1973, Dark Side of the Moon seemed to capture the zeitgeist: there was a rapidly expanding market for rock music, with new generations of listeners now coming aboard, and stereo sound had just become affordable to most of them, instead of being the exclusive pleasure of hi-fi enthusiasts. Dark Side of the Moon was the perfect stereo album.

DARK SIDE OF THE MOON WAS IN THE BILLBOARD ALBUM CHART FOR NEARLY 15 YEARS… It was also headphone heaven. You can sit back and listen to the heartbeat gradually get louder as it mingles with a disembodied Scottish voice saying, “I’ve been mad for fucking years,” and a maniacal laugh that gets blotted out by a helicopter noise whirring from one ear to another—which in turn collides with a screaming female voice before subsiding into the slow, deliberate beat and soothing guitars of “Breathe.” Just as you’ve relaxed into the song, however, it suddenly shifts gears, and you’re carried along by a rapid hi-hat rhythm and an electronic riff while voices, footsteps, whirring noises, and bits of feedback fly by on either side of your head. Next comes a dull explosion and more running footsteps, and as they die away there’s the reassuring tick of a clock that lulls you in once again before a cacophony of alarm clocks shatters your senses and leads you into the heavy, ponderous guitar chimes of “Time.” And after all that, you’re still only eight minutes into the album, with another 34 to go. The sonic experience of Dark Side of the Moon is as vivid now as it was then. Other artists have constructed more sophisticated soundscapes, but none have had the same immediacy. And nobody plays around with stereo like they did back then.

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Disc ography Ummagumma

PINK FLOYD ALBUMS The Piper at the Gates of Dawn August 1967 Columbia/EMI (U.K. #6) / Tower/Capitol (U.S. #131) Produced by Norman Smith Astronomy Domine / Lucifer Sam / Matilda Mother / Flaming / Pow R Toc H / Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk / Interstellar Overdrive / The Gnome / Chapter 24 / The Scarecrow / Bike

A Saucerful of Secrets June 1968 Columbia/EMI (U.K. #9) / Tower/Capitol (U.S. —) Produced by Norman Smith Let There Be More Light / Remember a Day / Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun / Corporal Clegg / A Saucerful of Secrets / See Saw / Jugband Blues

Soundtrack from the Film More June 1969 Columbia/EMI (U.K. #9) / Tower/Capitol (U.S. #153) Produced by Pink Floyd Cirrus Minor / The Nile Song / Crying Song / Up the Khyber / Green Is the Colour / Cymbaline / Party Sequence / Main Theme / Ibiza Bar / More Blues / Quicksilver / A Spanish Piece / Dramatic Theme

October 1969 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #5) / Harvest/Capitol (U.S. #74) Produced by Pink Floyd and Norman Smith Astronomy Domine / Careful with That Axe, Eugene / Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun / A Saucerful of Secrets // Sysyphus / Grantchester Meadows / Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict / The Narrow Way / The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party

Atom Heart Mother October 1970 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #1) / Harvest/Capitol (U.S. #55) Produced by Pink Floyd Atom Heart Mother (Father’s Shout / Breast Milky / Mother Fore / Funky Dung / Mind Your Throats Please / Remergence) / If / Summer ’68 / Fat Old Sun / Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast (Rise And Shine / Sunny Side Up / Morning Glory)

Meddle November 1971 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #3) Harvest/Capitol (U.S. #70) Produced by Pink Floyd One of These Days / A Pillow of Winds / Fearless / San Tropez / Seamus / Echoes

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Obscured by Clouds June 1972 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #6) / Harvest/Capitol (U.S. #46) Produced By Pink Floyd Obscured by Clouds / When You’re In / Burning Bridges / The Gold It’s in the . . . / Wot’s . . . Uh The Deal / Mudmen / Childhood’s End / Free Four / Stay / Absolutely Curtains

Dark Side of the Moon March 1973 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #2) / Harvest/Capitol (U.S. #1) Produced by Pink Floyd Speak to Me / Breathe / On the Run / Time / The Great Gig in the Sky / Money / Us and Them / Any Colour You Like / Brain Damage / Eclipse

Wish You Were Here September 1975 Harvest (U.K. #1) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. #1) Produced by Pink Floyd Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1–5) / Welcome to the Machine / Have a Cigar / Wish You Were Here / Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Parts 6–9)

Like Hell / Waiting for the Worms / Stop / The Trial / Outside the Wall

The Final Cut March 1983 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #1) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. #6) Produced by Roger Waters, James Guthrie, and Michael Kamen The Post War Dream / Your Possible Pasts / One of the Few / When the Tigers Broke Free (added to 2005 CD edition) / The Hero’s Return / The Gunner’s Dream / Paranoid Eyes / Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert / The Fletcher Memorial Home / Southampon Dock / The Final Cut / Not Now John / Two Suns in the Sunset

A Momentary Lapse of Reason September 1987 EMI (U.K. #3) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. #3) Produced by Bob Ezrin and David Gilmour Signs of Life / Leaning to Fly / The Dogs of War / One Slip / On the Turning Away / Yet Another Movie / Round and Around / A New Machine (Part 1) / Terminal Frost / A New Machine (Part 2) / Sorrow

Delicate Sound of Thunder Animals January 1977 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #2) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. #3) Produced by Pink Floyd Pigs on the Wing (Part 1) / Dogs / Pigs (Three Different Ones) / Sheep / Pigs on the Wing (Part 2)

The Wall November 1979 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #3) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. #1) Produced by Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, and Roger Waters In the Flesh? / The Thin Ice / Another Brick in the Wall Part 1 / The Happiest Days of Our Lives / Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 / Mother / Goodbye Blue Sky / Empty Spaces / Young Lust / One of My Turns / Don’t Leave Me Now / Another Brick in the Wall Part 3 / Goodbye Cruel World // Hey You / Is There Anybody Out There? / Nobody Home / Vera / Bring the Boys Back Home / Comfortably Numb / The Show Must Go On / In the Flesh / Run

November 1988 EMI (U.K. #11) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. #11) Produced by David Gilmour Shine on You Crazy Diamond / Learning to Fly / Yet Another Movie / Round and Around / Sorrow / The Dogs of War / On the Turning Away // One of These Days / Time / Wish You Were Here / Us and Them / Money / Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 / Comfortably Numb / Run Like Hell

The Division Bell March 1994 EMI (U.K. #1) / Columbia/Sony (U.S. #1) Produced by Bob Ezrin and David Gilmour Cluster One / What Do You Want from Me / Poles Apart / Marooned / A Great Day for Freedom / Wearing the Inside Out / Take it Back / Coming Back to Life / Keep Talking / Lost For Words / High Hopes

DISCOGRAPHY

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Pulse

A Nice Pair

June 1995 EMI (U.K. #1) / Columbia/Sony (U.S. #1) Produced by James Guthrie and David Gilmour Shine on You Crazy Diamond / Astronomy Domine / What Do You Want from Me / Learning to Fly / Keep Talking / Coming Back to Life / Hey You / A Great Day for Freedom / Sorrow / High Hopes / Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 // Speak To Me / Breathe / On the Run / Time / The Great Gig in the Sky / Money / Us and Them / Any Colour You Like / Brain Damage / Eclipse / Wish You Were Here / Comfortably Numb / Run Like Hell

January 1974 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #21) / Capitol (U.S. #36) Astronomy Domine / Lucifer Sam / Matilda Mother / Flaming / Pow R Toc H / Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk / Interstellar Overdrive / The Gnome / Chapter 24 / The Scarecrow / Bike // Let There Be More Light / Remember a Day / Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun / Corporal Clegg / A Saucerful of Secrets / See Saw / Jugband Blues

Is There Anybody Out There— The Wall Live 1980–81 March 2000 EMI (U.K. #15) / Columbia/Sony (U.S. #19) Produced by James Guthrie MC-Atmos / In the Flesh? / The Thin Ice / Another Brick in the Wall Part 1 / The Happiest Days of Our Lives / Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 / Mother / Goodbye Blue Sky / Empty Spaces / What Shall We Do Now? / Young Lust / One of My Turns / Don’t Leave Me Now / Another Brick in the Wall Part 3 / The Last Few Bricks / Goodbye Cruel World // Hey You / Is There Anybody Out There? / Nobody Home / Vera / Bring the Boys Back Home / Comfortably Numb / The Show Must Go On / MC-Atmos / In the Flesh / Run Like Hell / Waiting for the Worms / Stop / The Trial / Outside the Wall

COMPILATIONS

November 1981 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #37) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. #31) One of These Days / Money / Sheep / Shine on You Crazy Diamond Parts 1–9 / Wish You Were Here / Another Brick in the Wall Part 2

Echoes November 2001 EMI (U.K. #2) / Capitol (U.S. #2) Astronomy Domine / See Emily Play / The Happiest Days of our Lives / Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 / Echoes / Hey You / Marooned / The Great Gig in the Sky / Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun / Money / Keep Talking / Sheep / Sorrow // Shine on You Crazy Diamond Parts 1–7 / Time / The Fletcher Memorial Home / Comfortably Numb / When the Tigers Broke Free / One of These Days / Us and Them / Learning to Fly / Arnold Layne / Wish You Were Here / Jugband Blues / High Hopes / Bike

A Foot in the Door

Relics May 1971 Starline/EMI (U.K. #32) / Capitol (U.S. #152) Arnold Layne / Interstellar Overdrive / See Emily Play / Remember a Day / Paintbox / Julia Dream / Careful with That Axe, Eugene / Cirrus Minor / The Nile Song / Biding My Time / Bike

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A Collection of Great Dance Songs

November 2011 EMI (U.K. #14) / Capitol (U.S. #50) Hey You / See Emily Play / The Happiest Days of Our Lives / Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 / Have a Cigar / Wish You Were Here / Time / The Great Gig in the Sky / Money / Comfortably Numb / High Hopes / Learning to Fly / The Fletcher Memorial Home / Shine on You Crazy Diamond Part 1–5 / Brain Damage / Eclipse

PINK FLOYD: BEHIND THE WALL

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SINGLES Arnold Layne / Candy and a Current Bun March 1967 Columbia/EMI (U.K. #2) / Tower/Capitol (U.S. —) Produced by Joe Boyd See Emily Play / Scarecrow June 1967 Columbia/EMI (U.K. #6) Tower/Capitol (U.S. #134) Produced by Norman Smith Apples and Oranges / Paintbox November 1967 Columbia/EMI (U.K. —) Produced by Norman Smith

Summer ’68 / Julia Dream October 1970 Tower/Capitol (U.S. —) Produced by Pink Floyd and Norman Smith One of These Days / Fearless November 1971 Harvest/Capitol (U.S. —) Produced by Pink Floyd Free Four / Stay July 1972 Harvest/Capitol (U.S. —) Produced by Pink Floyd Money / Any Colour You Like May 1973 Harvest/Capitol (U.S. #13) Produced by Pink Floyd

Flaming / The Gnome November 1967 Tower/Capitol (U.S. —) Produced by Norman Smith

Time / Us and Them February 1974 Harvest/Capitol (U.S. #101) Produced by Pink Floyd

It Would Be So Nice / Julia Dream April 1968 Columbia/EMI (U.K. —) Produced by Norman Smith Let There Be More Light / Remember a Day August 1968 Tower/Capitol (U.S. —) Produced by Norman Smith Point Me at the Sky / Careful with That Axe, Eugene December 1968 Columbia/EMI (U.K. —) / Capitol (U.S. —) Produced by Norman Smith The Nile Song / Ibiza Bar July 1969 Harvest/Capitol (U.S. —) Produced by Pink Floyd

Have a Cigar / Welcome to the Machine November 1975 Harvest/Capitol (U.S. —) Produced by Pink Floyd Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 / One of My Turns November 1979 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #1) Columbia/CBS (U.S. #1) Produced by Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, and Roger Waters Run Like Hell / Don't Leave Me Now April 1980 Columbia/CBS (U.S. #53) Produced by Bob Ezrin, David Gilmour, and Roger Waters

DISCOGRAPHY

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When the Tigers Broke Free / Bring the Boys Back Home July 1982 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #37) Columbia/CBS (U.S. —) Produced by Roger Waters, James Guthrie, and Michael Kamen Not Now John / The Hero’s Return April 1983 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #30) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. —) Produced by Roger Waters, James Guthrie, and Michael Kamen

VIDEOS AND DVDS Live at Pompeii September 1972 Universal Home Video (U.K.) Directed by Adrian Maben Echoes (part 1) / Careful with That Axe, Eugene / A Saucerful of Secrets / One of These Days / Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun / Mademoiselle Nobs / Echoes (part 2)

Learning to Fly / One Slip October 1987 EMI (U.K. —) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. #70) Produced by Bob Ezrin and David Gilmour

The Wall

On the Turning Away / Run Like Hell (live) December 1987 EMI (U.K. #55) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. —) Produced by Bob Ezrin and David Gilmour

Delicate Sound of Thunder

One Slip / Terminal Frost June 1988 EMI (U.K. #50) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. —) Produced by Bob Ezrin and David Gilmour

August 1982 Sony Music Video (U.K./U.S.) Directed by Alan Parker

June 1989 PMI (U.K.) / MVE/CBS (U.S.) Shine on You Crazy Diamond / Signs of Life / Learning to Fly / Sorrow / The Dogs of War / On the Turning Away / One of These Days / Time / On the Run / The Great Gig in the Sky / Wish You Were Here / Us and Them / Comfortably Numb / One Slip / Run Like Hell

Pulse—Earls Court, London, 10-20-94 Take It Back / Astronomy Domine (live) May 1994 EMI (U.K. #23) / Columbia/Sony (U.S. #73) Produced by Bob Ezrin and David Gilmour High Hopes / Keep Talking October 1994 EMI (U.K. —) / Columbia/Sony (U.S. —) Produced by Bob Ezrin and David Gilmour

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June 1995 PMI (U.K.) / SMV (U.S.) Shine on You Crazy Diamond / Learning to Fly / High Hopes / Take it Back / Coming Back to Life / Sorrow Keep Talking / Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 / One of These Days / Dark Side of the Moon / Wish You Were Here / Comfortably Numb / Run Like Hell

PINK FLOYD: BEHIND THE WALL

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SYD BARRETT ALBUMS The Madcap Laughs January 1970 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #4) Produced by Malcolm Jones, Syd Barrett, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, and Peter Jenner Terrapin / No Good Trying / Love You / No Man’s Land / Dark Globe / Here I Go / Octopus / Golden Hair / Long Gone / She Took a Long Cold Look / Feel / If It’s in You / Late Night

Roger Waters, and Peter Jenner Opel / Clowns and Jugglers / Rats (alt. take) / Golden Hair (alt. take) / Dolly Rocker / Word Song / Wined and Dined (alt. take) / Swan Lee / Birdie Hop / Let’s Split / Lanky (Part One) / Wouldn’t You Miss Me (Dark Globe) / Milky Way / Golden Hair (alt. take)

Crazy Diamond: The Complete Syd Barrett April 1993 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) Three CD boxed set containing The Madcap Laughs, Barrett, and Opel, each with additional outtakes and alternate versions

The Best of Syd Barrett: Wouldn’t You Miss Me Barrett November 1970 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) Produced by David Gilmour Baby Lemonade / Love Song / Dominoes / It Is Obvious / Rats / Maisie / Gigolo Aunt / Waving My Arms in the Air / I Never Lied to You / Wined and Dined / Wolfpack / Effervescing Elephant

COMPILATIONS

April 2001 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) / Capitol (U.S. —) Includes one previously unreleased track, Bob Dylan Blues

The Radio One Sessions March 2004 Strange Fruit (U.K. —) Recorded at the BBC in February 1970 and February 1971 Terrapin / Gigolo Aunt / Baby Lemonade / Effervescing Elephant / Two of a Kind / Baby Lemonade / Dominoes / Love Song

An Introduction to Syd Barrett

Syd Barrett November 1974 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) / Harvest/Capitol (U.S. #163) Double album repackage of The Madcap Laughs and Barrett

The Peel Sessions February 1988 Strange Fruit (U.K. —) Recorded at the BBC, February 1970 Terrapin / Gigolo Aunt / Baby Lemonade / Effervescing Elephant / Two of a Kind

October 2010 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #104) / Capitol (U.S. —) Compilation of Pink Floyd and solo material plus one previously unreleased track, Rhamadan

SINGLES Octopus / Golden Hair November 1969 U.K. Harvest/EMI Produced by Syd Barrett and David Gilmour

Opel October 1988 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) Produced by Malcolm Jones, Syd Barrett, David Gilmour, DISCOGRAPHY

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DAVID GILMOUR ALBUMS David Gilmour May 1978 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #17) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. #20) Produced by David Gilmour Mihalis / There’s No Way out of Here / Cry from the Street / So Far Away / Short and Sweet / Raise My Rent / It’s Deafinitely / I Can’t Breathe Anymore

About Face March 1984 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #21) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. #32) Produced by Bob Ezrin and David Gilmour Until We Sleep / Murder / Love on the Air / Blue Light / Out of the Blue / All Lovers Are Deranged / You Know I’m Right / Cruise / Let’s Get Metaphysical / Near the End

On an Island March 2006 EMI (U.K. #1) / Columbia/Sony (U.S. #6) Produced by David Gilmour, Phil Manzanera, and Chris Thomas Castellorizon / On an Island / The Blue / Take a Breath / Red Sky at Night / This Heaven / Then I Close My Eyes / Smile / A Pocketful of Stones / Where We Start

Live in Gdansk September 2008 EMI (U.K. #10) / Columbia/Sony (U.S. #26) Produced by David Gilmour and Phil Manzanera Speak to Me / Breathe / Time / Breathe (Reprise) / Castellorizon / On an Island / The Blue / Red Sky at Night / This Heaven / Then I Close My Eyes / Smile / Take a Breath / A Pocketful of Stones / Where We Start // Shine on You Crazy Diamond / Astronomy Domine / Fat Old Sun / High Hopes / Echoes / Wish You Were Here / A Great Day for Freedom / Comfortably Numb

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Metallic Sphere (The Orb Featuring David Gilmour) October 2010 Columbia/Sony (U.K. #12) Produced by Martin ‘Youth’ Glover Metallic Spheres / Hymns to the Sun / Black Graham / Hiding in Plain View / Classified // Es Vedra / Hymns to the Sun (Reprise) / Olympic / Chicago Dub / Bold Knife Trophy

SINGLES There’s No Way out of Here / It’s Deafinitely August 1978 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. —) Produced by David Gilmour Blue Light / Cruise February 1984 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. #62) Produced by Bob Ezrin and David Gilmour Love on the Air / Let’s Get Metaphysical April 1984 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) Produced by Bob Ezrin and David Gilmour All Lovers Are Deranged / Murder April 1984 Columbia/CBS (U.S. —) Produced by Bob Ezrin and David Gilmour On an Island / On an Island (edit) February 2006 EMI (U.K. —) / Columbia/Sony (U.S. —) Produced by David Gilmour, Phil Manzanera, and Chris Thomas Smile / Island Jam June 2006 EMI (U.K. —) / Columbia/Sony (U.S. —) Produced by David Gilmour, Phil Manzanera, and Chris Thomas

PINK FLOYD: BEHIND THE WALL

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Thought / March Past of the Embryos / More Than Seven Dwarfs in Penis-Land / Dance of the Red Corpuscles / Body Transport / Hand Dance—Full Evening Dress / Breathe / Old Folks Ascension / Bedtime-Dream-Clime / Piddle in Perspex / Embryonic Womb Walk / Mrs. Throat Goes Walking / Sea Shell and Soft Stone / Give Birth to a Smile

NICK MASON ALBUMS Nick Mason’s Fictitious Sports May 1981 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) / Columbia/Sony (U.S. —) Produced by Nick Mason and Carla Bley Can’t Get My Motor to Start / I Was Wrong / Siam / Hot River / Boo to You Too / Do Ya? / Wervin’ / I’m a Mineralist

Profiles (Mason & Fenn) August 1985 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. —) Produced by Rick Fenn and Nick Mason Malta / Lie for a Lie / Rhoda / Profiles (Parts 1 & 2) / Israel / And the Address / Mumbo Jumbo / Zip Code / Black Ice / At the End of the Day / Profiles (Part 3)

The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking April 1984 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #13) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. #31) Produced by Roger Waters and Michael Kamen 4:30AM (Apparently They Were Travelling Abroad) / 4:33AM (Running Shoes) / 4:37AM (Arabs with Knives and West German Spies) / 4:39AM (For the First Time Today Part 2) / 4:41AM (Sexual Revolution) / 4:47AM (The Remains of Our Love) / 4:50AM (Go Fishing) / 4:56AM (For the First Time Today Part 1) / 4:58AM (Dunroamin / Duncarin / Dunlivin) / 5:01AM (The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking Part 10) / 5:06AM (Every Stranger’s Eyes) / 5:11AM (The Moment of Clarity)

Radio K.A.O.S.

SINGLES Lie for a Lie / And the Address (Mason & Fenn) September 1985 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) Produced by Rick Fenn and Nick Mason

June 1987 EMI (U.K. #25) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. #50) Produced by Roger Waters, Nick Griffiths, and Ian Richie Radio Waves / Who Needs Information / Me or Him / The Powers that Be / Sunset Strip / Home / Four Minutes / The Tide is Turning (After Live Aid)

The Wall—Live In Berlin

ROGER WATERS ALBUMS Music from the Body (Ron Geesin & Roger Waters) November 1970 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) Produced by Ron Geesin and Roger Waters Our Song / Sea Shell and Stone / Red Stuff Writhe / A Gentle Breeze Blew Through Life / Lick Your Partners / Bridge Passage for Three Plastic Teeth / Chain of Life / The Womb Bit / Embryo

September 1990 Mercury/Phonogram (U.K. #27 / U.S. #56) Produced by Roger Waters and Nick Griffiths In the Flesh (featuring the Scorpions) / The Thin Ice (featuring Ute Lemper) / Another Brick in the Wall Part 1 / The Happiest Days of Our Lives / Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 (featuring Cyndi Lauper) / Mother (featuring Sinéad O’Connor and The Band) / Goodbye Blue Sky (featuring Joni Mitchell and James Galway) / Empty Spaces / What Shall We Do Now? (featuring Bryan Adams) / Young Lust (featuring Bryan Adams) / One of My Turns / Don’t Leave Me Now / Another Brick in the Wall Part 3 / The Last Few Bricks / Goodbye Cruel World // Hey You (featuring Paul Carrack) / Is There Anybody Out There? / Nobody Home / DISCOGRAPHY

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Vera / Bring the Boys Back Home / Comfortably Numb (featuring Van Morrison) / In the Flesh (featuring the Scorpions) / Run Like Hell (featuring the Scorpions) / Waiting for the Worms (featuring the Scorpions) / Stop / The Trial (featuring Tim Curry, Thomas Dolby, Ute Lemper, Marianne Faithfull, and Albert Finney) / The Tide is Turning

Amused to Death September 1992 Columbia/Sony (U.K. #8 / U.S. #21) Produced By Roger Waters, Nick Griffiths, and Patrick Leonard The Ballad of Bill Hubbard / What God Wants Part 1 / Perfect Sense Part 1 / Perfect Sense Part 2 / The Bravery of Being Out of Range / Late Home Tonight Part 1 / Late Home Tonight Part 2 / Too Much Rope / What God Wants Part 2 / What God Wants Part 3 / Watching TV / Three Wishes / It’s a Miracle / Amused to Death

COMPILATIONS

In The Flesh—Live December 2000 Columbia/Sony (U.S. — / U.K. —) Produced by James Guthrie In the Flesh / The Happiest Days of our Lives / Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 / Mother / Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert / Southampton Dock / Pigs on the Wing Part 1 / Dogs / Welcome to the Machine / Wish You Were Here / Shine on You Crazy Diamond Parts 1–8 / Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun // Breathe (In the Air) / Time / Money / Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking / Perfect Sense Parts 1 and 2 / The Bravery of Being Out of Range / It’s a Miracle / Amused to Death / Brain Damage / Eclipse / Comfortably Numb / Each Small Candle

Ça Ira (featuring Bryn Terfel, Ying Huang, and Paul Groves) September 2005 Sony Classical (U.K. — / U.S. —) Produced by Roger Waters and Rick Wentworth Act One: The Gathering Storm / Overture / Scene 1: A Garden in Vienna 1765 / Madame Antoine, Madame Antoine / Scene 2: Kings Sticks And Birds / Honest Bird, Simple Bird / I Want to Be King / Let Us Break all the Shields / Scene 3: The Grievances of the People / Scene 4: France in Disarray / To Laugh is to Know How to Live / Slavers, Landlords, Bigots at Your Door / Scene 222

5: The Fall of the Bastille / To Freeze in the Dead of the Night / So to the Streets in the Pouring Rain / Act Two: Scene 1: Dances and Marches / Now Hear Ye / Flushed with Wine / Scene 2: The Letter / My Dear Cousin Bourbon of Spain / The Ship of State is all at Sea / Scene 3: Silver Sugar and Indigo / To the Windward Isles / Scene 4: The Papal Edict / In Paris There’s a Rumble under the Ground // Act Three: Scene One: The Fugitive King / But the Marquis of Boulli has a Trump Card up his Sleeve / To Take Your Hat Off / The Echoes Never Fade from that Fusillade / Scene 2: The Commune de Paris / Vive la Commune de Paris / The National Assembly is Confused / Scene 3: The Execution of Louis Carpet / Adieu Louis, for You It’s Over / Scene 4: Marie Antoinette—The Last Night on Earth / Adieu My Good and Tender Sister / Scene 5: Liberty / And in the Bushes where They Survive

Flickering Flame—The Solo Years May 2002 Columbia/Sony (U.K. — / U.S. —) Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door / Too Much Rope / The Tide is Turning / Perfect Sense Parts 1 and 2 / Three Wishes / 5:06AM (Every Stranger’s Eyes) / Who Needs Information / Each Small Candle / Flickering Flame / Towers of Faith / Radio Waves / Lost Boys Calling

SINGLES 5:01AM (The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking Part 10) / 4:30AM (Apparently They Were Travelling Abroad) April 1984 Harvest/EMI (U.K. #76) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. —) Produced by Roger Waters and Michael Kamen 5:06AM (Every Stranger’s Eyes) / 4:56AM (For the First Time Today Part 1) June 1984 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. —) Produced by Roger Waters and Michael Kamen

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Radio Waves / Going to Live in L.A. May 1987 EMI (U.K. #74) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. —) Produced by Roger Waters, Nick Griffiths, and Ian Richie The Tide is Turning / Money (live) November 1987 EMI (U.K. #54) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. —) Produced by Roger Waters and Nick Griffiths Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 (featuring Cyndi Lauper) / Run Like Hell September 1990 Mercury/Phonogram (U.K. — / U.S. —) Produced by Roger Waters and Nick Griffiths The Tide is Turning / Nobody Home October 1990 Mercury/Phonogram (U.K. #54 / U.S. —) Produced by Roger Waters and Nick Griffiths What God Wants Part 1 / What God Wants Part 1 (version) August 1992 Columbia/Sony (U.K. #35 / U.S. —) Produced by Roger Waters To Kill the Child / Leaving Beirut September 2004 Digital download Produced by Roger Waters and Nick Griffiths Hello (I Love You) / Hello (I Love You) (version) March 2007 Silva Screen Records (U.K. —) Produced by Roger Waters and James Guthrie

RICHARD WRIGHT ALBUMS Wet Dream September 1978 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) / Columbia/CBS (U.S. —) Produced by Richard Wright Mediterranean C / Against the Odds / Cat Cruise / Summer Elergy / Waves / Holiday / Mad Yannis Dance / Drop in from the Top / Pink’s Song / Funky Deux

Zee—Identity April 1984 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) Produced by Richard Wright and Dave Harris Confusion / Voices / Private Person / Strange Rhythm / Cuts Like a Diamond / By Touching / How Do You Do It / Seems We Were Dreaming

Broken China November 1996 EMI (U.K. —) / Guardian Records (U.S. —) Produced by Richard Wright, Anthony Moore, and Laurie Latham Breaking Water / Night of a Thousand Furry Toys / Hidden Fear / Runaway / Unfair Ground / Satellite / Woman of Custom / Interlude / Black Cloud / Far from the Harbour Wall / Drowning / Reaching for the Rail / Blue Room in Venice / Sweet July / Along the Shoreline / Breakthrough

SINGLES Zee—Confusion / Eyes of a Gypsy March 1984 Harvest/EMI (U.K. —) Produced by Richard Wright and Dave Harris

DISCOGRAPHY

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A lbums The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967) Pink Floyd’s one and only album with Syd Barrett virtually defined British psychedelia in the 1960s. It’s also a sparkling testament to the shortlived, shimmering genius of Barrett, who wrote almost all of this masterpiece off the top of his head, so to speak. Liberated by LSD, Barrett’s songs take flight on a magic carpet of cosmic philosophy (“Astronomy Domine,” “Chapter 24”), surreal whimsy (“Matilda Mother,” “Flaming”) and sublime nursery-rhyme lyrics (“The Gnome,” “The Scarecrow,” “Bike”), bolstered by trippy, Technicolor instrumentals (“Interstellar Overdrive,” “Pow R Toc H”). The other members are willing and able fellow travellers, having developed their style on the burgeoning London underground scene, where they were effectively the house band. Rick Wright’s Farfisa organ playing in particular is a crucial element in the sound of the album, and he was clearly closest to Barrett in terms of musical empathy. Nonetheless, Roger Waters and Nick Mason provide a tight rhythmic foundation for Barrett’s musical fantasies. Credit is also due to EMI’s inhouse producer Norman ‘Hurricane’ Smith, here stepping up to the plate for his first major production project, having previously engineered the

Beatles. He had no affiliation with or sympathy for psychedelia, but having learned all there was to know about the technical possibilities of EMI’s Abbey Road Studio with the Beatles, he was able to capture the full dimension of the band’s playing without compromising their edginess or Barrett’s childlike innocence. The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is a one-off. By the time it was released, in August 1967, the LSD that had enhanced Barrett’s incandescent songwriting was already dragging him toward a mental hell, and when Pink Floyd came to make their next album, he was no longer a member of the band.

A Saucerful of Secrets (1968) With Barrett gone, Pink Floyd were left groping for direction on their second album. Barrett’s parting gift, “Jugband Blues,” may sound jovial enough, but the lyrics are dark and damaged compared to the freewheeling gaiety of the first album. The addition of a Salvation Army brass band to the song comes across as a forced attempt to lighten the mood. As the final track on Secrets, it makes for a dislocated farewell, especially with Barrett’s closing line, “And what exactly is a dream? / And what exactly is a joke?”

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Forced to rely on their own nascent songwriting, and with new guitarist David Gilmour still bedding down, the band put the emphasis on atmosphere. This works best on Waters’s brooding, spacey “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” with its rumbling rhythm and haunting vocal melody, and the 12-minute group-written title track, a three-part instrumental that begins with some tentative scraping and scratching, building to a rhythmic cacophony that eventually gives way to sonorous church organ. It’s a template that the band would return to— with increasing finesse—on subsequent albums. Elsewhere, Waters’s opening “Let There Be More Light” kicks in with a brisk, vibrant bassline before getting bogged down by a plodding beat, although it’s worth sticking with the song for Gilmour’s revealing guitar solo near the end. And while Wright’s breezy “Remember a Day” is promising, his other offering, “See Saw,” is turgid by comparison. Overall, however, what saves A Saucerful of Secrets is its strong sense of determination.

Ummagumma (1969) With no new group material prepared for their third album, Pink Floyd instead opted to give each member one half of an album side each to play with—an indulgence they scarcely warranted at this stage in their careers. Only Waters comes up with a song worthy of the name: the gentle, acoustic “Grantchester Meadows,” which evocatively recalls his childhood haunt, complete with pastoral sound effects. By contrast, the humangenerated effects he provides for “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict” are, like the title, mere novelty. Wright’s four-part “Sysyphus” is at least structured with an opening and closing theme, and some aggressive piano playing and loose sound sculptures in-between, but it’s mostly too retentive to be easily accessible. Gilmour’s three-part piece,

“The Narrow Way,” which starts with an acoustic sequence followed by some eerie electric guitar, is also somewhat selfabsorbed. Only Mason’s “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party” makes an effort to engage, with its unorthodox nine-minute drum solo sandwiched between an entrance and exit theme that utilizes part of an unused Barrett instrumental. Fortunately, the band had the good sense to include a second live album that would help sustain Pink Floyd’s group identity. They punch out a tougher version of Barrett’s “Astronomy Domine” before adding an edgy dynamic to “A Saucerful of Secrets” and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.” Even better is a new song and fast-growing live favorite, the suspenseful “Careful with That Axe, Eugene,” which finally releases its ever-growing tension with a blood-curdling scream from Waters. All in all, Ummagumma served as a reminder that Pink Floyd were still around, but didn’t really offer many pointers for the future.

Atom Heart Mother (1970) After marking time with Ummagumma, Pink Floyd returned with renewed ambition. The title track of Atom Heart Mother is a 23-minute suite that employs an orchestra and choir. Such classicalrock fusions were fashionable at the time, with Deep Purple and the Nice among those taking the plunge, but Pink Floyd avoid the potential pitfalls by keeping the orchestral arrangements (by Ron Geesin) relatively simple. If it sounds a little stilted at times, that’s down to technical recording problems rather than the concept or composition. The opening brass bombast leads to the first of a series of mood changes that help maintain the impetus, which include a celestial-sounding choir and, most successfully, an unusually funky passage on which Waters and Wright lay down the rhythm ALBUMS

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and Gilmour improvises sweetly on top. The recurring theme holds the piece together through some bumpy, dissonant passages, although the final five minutes appear not to have been thought through clearly enough, and the ending is somewhat inconclusive. Waters again comes up with the best of the individual songs on the album’s second side: the quietly contemplative “If,” which deals with alienation—a topic that would soon become an obsession. Meanwhile, Wright gets unexpectedly personal on “Summer ’68,” while Gilmour makes his own way down to Grantchester Meadows on “Fat Old Sun.” The final, effectsladen track, “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast,” is an indulgence to which Pink Floyd are rather more entitled this time around. And some of the quirky ideas therein will soon be developed more effectively as they hit their creative stride.

Meddle (1971) Often regarded as the first “real” Pink Floyd album, Meddle leaves the last remnants of the group’s psychedelic past behind them and marks the beginning of their most productive decade. Gilmour’s growing confidence is almost palpable as their trademark sound begins to coalesce. There’s also a new sense of purpose and direction about the two standout tracks, “One of These Days” and “Echoes,” even if they both rely on ideas that have already been explored on earlier albums. The menacing, echo-drenched bass note that starts the opening “One of These Days” soon gives way to the relentless pounding of double-tracked guitar while Wright toys with the Dr. Who theme on keyboards. And after Mason’s disembodied voice intones, “One of these days I’m going to cut you into little pieces,” Gilmour takes over with some searing slide guitar. Meddle is dominated by the 23-minute “Echoes,” which builds gradually but deliberately from its opening “ping” of 226

piano through a series of cleverly linked fragments that have an aura of sophisticated mystery running through them, culminating in the tension and release of Gilmour’s exquisite guitar crescendo before the final verse lets you down with a cozy glow. The other four tracks are largely forgettable, although the wistful “A Pillow of Winds” (by Gilmour and Waters) has a pastoral charm. But it matters not. By now, Pink Floyd had reset the controls for the heart of the 1970s, revealing their true potential in the process.

Dark Side of the Moon (1973) Pink Floyd’s most consummate album, Dark Side of the Moon comes close to perfection, combining the group’s individual talents into one groundbreaking concept set. Themed around the pressures of modern life and madness, the potent sound dynamics highlight the contrasting imagery of the songs—light and dark, us and them—but the band keep things simple and stark, and the music is likewise tightly focused, making it easily accessible and giving it a timeless quality. The dramatic impact of the album is enhanced by the various sound effects, which are integrated into the rhythm of the songs: the heartbeat and manic laughter at the start of “Speak to Me,” the cacophony of clocks at the beginning of “Time,” and of course the coin-clashing, speaker-hopping, register-ringing “Money,” which has become Pink Floyd’s most recognizable anthem. Gilmour’s guitar provides a superb instrumental identity to the band—particularly with the solo on “Time”—but the whole band sound closer here than they ever will again. That said, they were unafraid to bring in outsiders who they felt could add something more—Clare Torry’s anguished vocal on “The Great Gig in the Sky,” perhaps the most seductive song ever written

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about death, certainly does just that. So too does saxophonist Chris Parry, with his strident solo on “Money,” and his more measured contribution to “Us and Them.” Dark Side of the Moon took a huge conscious effort to make, but it possesses a vitality that still has the power to thrill.

Wish You Were Here (1975) Despite the daunting prospect of having to follow Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here rises admirably to the challenge. What it lacks in dynamics and interplay, it more than makes up for in tension and control—nowhere more so than during the album’s first four minutes, where Gilmour’s taut guitar and Wright’s keyboard chords stretch the suspense to breaking point and beyond before Gilmour finally provides exquisite relief with a simple, unadorned, four-note riff. That riff sets the mournful tone for “Shine on You Crazy Diamond,” an epic 26-minute eulogy to Syd Barrett that bookends the album and is arguably the finest track the band would ever produce. While the ghost of Syd hovers above many a Pink Floyd album, “Shine on . . .” is the only track written specifically about him, celebrating the genius that leaked into madness while mourning his loss to the band. Waters’s lyrics and the band’s playing are so complimentary it hurts. Between the two halves of this epic are a pair of rants against the system—the acerbic “Welcome to the Machine” and the viciously cynical “Have a Cigar”—and the melancholic, acoustic title track, which neatly sums up how the band were feeling at the time. Despite Waters’s growing dominance of Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here is still very much a “band” album, with each of the musicians contributing to the overall sound. It may not have the spark and fizz of Dark Side, but in other ways it cuts much deeper.

Animals (1977) The first Pink Floyd album on which the lyrics play as big a part as the music, Animals is Waters’s bleak, Orwellian view of the world, summed up by the antics of “Dogs,” “Pigs (Three Different Ones),” and “Sheep.” Said dogs are selfish, greedy yuppies, trampling over everyone else to get to the top and then trampling over each other; the three different kinds of pig each have their own morality, which they try to impose on everyone else; and the sheep are the exploited masses who rise up against the dogs, egged on by a sarcastic parody of the 23rd Psalm. At either end of this barrage of cynicism is an optimistic, personal, acoustic love song, “Pigs on the Wing,” which attempts to lighten the gloom. Ironically, there’s as much vitriol pouring out of Animals as there was from any of the punk albums released at the time. Pink Floyd may not snarl very effectively, but when it comes to creating a sustained atmosphere of brooding menace they are in their element. The sound of Animals is dank and constricted, pierced occasionally by fists of noise and some superb expletives of guitar from Gilmour. Animals is not a pretty album, but then it was never meant to be. It conveys its message in the stark yet consummate manner Pink Floyd had made entirely their own. It was never going to appeal to the rock’n’roll fashion victims—not when punk was about to provide them with another photo opportunity—but then Animals doesn’t need safety pins to hold it together.

ALBUMS

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The Wall (1979)

The Final Cut (1983)

The most spectacular piece of rock theater ever devised, The Wall is the pinnacle of Pink Floyd’s achievements. Conceived by Waters as a (double) album, stage show, and film, it takes the recurring themes of the band’s previous three albums to their logical conclusion, homing in on the barriers people erect around themselves for protection as well as the barriers society imposes for control. The Wall is a dense affair, its metaphors, allusions, and flashbacks often hard to follow. But it’s saved by the atmosphere and the sense of drama that—once you’re hooked—keeps you primed for more. It’s also enlivened by a handful of superb songs. There’s the opening, bombastic “In The Flesh?,” a not-sosubtle slab of heavy rock that sets the scene. There’s Pink Floyd’s greatest hit, “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2,” with its rant against the excesses of the education system and unlikely disco rhythms. There’s “Hey You,” a heartfelt plea for human contact from the other side of the wall. There’s “Comfortably Numb,” possibly the most powerful and emotional song the band would ever record, and fittingly the final collaboration between Waters and Gilmour. And there’s the potent, guitar-driven antifascist howl, “Run Like Hell.” The Wall is more of a soundtrack album than previous Pink Floyd albums—even previous Pink Floyd soundtrack albums. Some people prefer the live album, Is There Anybody Out There—The Wall Live 1980–81, which lacks the subtlety of its studio counterpart but is easier to follow. Take your pick.

Effectively a Roger Waters solo album in all but name, The Final Cut is disappointing as a Pink Floyd record but a good start to Waters’s solo career. It’s a disappointing Pink Floyd record because the band are barely on it—Wright was gone by now, while Gilmour and Mason were restricted to doing as they were told. The overall theme—the futility of war—was never going to be a barrel of laughs, but without the other members’ distinctive sense of drama (or their restraining influence) the atmosphere of unremitting gloom becomes overwhelming. As an album, however, The Final Cut has a greater sense of clarity than The Wall. It is certainly more bitter and vicious, as the opening track, “The Post War Dream,” clearly demonstrates with its caustic attack on the nature of war. And if that doesn’t prove the point, check out the dark humor of “The Fletcher Memorial Home,” on which Waters literally spits out his condemnation of the world’s “incurable tyrants”: Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Leonid Brezhnev among them. Having lambasted the carnage and death of World War II, Waters appeared to regard the Falklands War of 1982 as a personal affront. His focused anger makes for some devastating antiwar propaganda, but whether that makes for a great rock’n’roll album is rather more debatable. Ironically, Waters might have got more respect and attention had he released The Final Cut under his own name.

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A Momentary Lapse of Reason (1987)

The Division Bell (1994)

If The Final Cut is effectively a Waters solo album, where does that leave A Momentary Lapse of Reason? Without Waters, obviously. Mason and Wright are barely present, too, suggesting that this might be more of a Gilmour solo album, although it bears little resemblance to his own About Face, released three years earlier. Rather, A Momentary Lapse of Reason is Gilmour’s attempt to make a Pink Floyd album without Waters. His guitar and voice are a clearly identifiable part of the Pink Floyd sound, so there is an instant familiarity. He had also enlisted producer Bob Ezrin, who worked on The Wall (and About Face), to provide some continuity. And he roped in lyricist Anthony Moore to fill the gap that Waters left. The opening “Signs of Life” has the same mood-setting atmosphere as “Speak to Me” (from Dark Side of the Moon) and “Shine on You Crazy Diamond.” Later on, “The Dogs of War” could be a sequel to the songs from Animals, while “A New Machine” could refer to “Welcome to the Machine” (from Wish You Were Here). And despite its commercial aspirations, parts of “One Slip” are not dissimilar to elements of The Wall. On the other hand, “Learning to Fly” and “On the Turning Away” have been tweaked into radio-friendly rock by Ezrin. They are both great rock songs, but whether they are Pink Floyd songs is another matter. The inescapable fact is that without the presence of both Gilmour and Waters, a Pink Floyd album will always struggle to live up to the name.

If you accept A Momentary Lapse of Reason as a Pink Floyd album, The Division Bell will make you feel better. It’s a much more creditable attempt to make a Pink Floyd album without Waters. For a start, Mason and Wright are back onboard as fully participating members of the band, bringing a greater sense of musical legitimacy as well as a studied elegance to the proceedings. Wright arguably makes his strongest contribution to a Pink Floyd album since Wish You Were Here. There’s also an easy familiarity running through the tracks as the band deftly rework their own trademarks with the benefit of better technology, courtesy of Bob Ezrin, who produces once again. There’s even a theme running through the album— communication, or rather the lack of it. It’s an appropriate topic for Pink Floyd to tackle, although it’s fair to say that Waters would not have done it this way. Many of the songs—notably “What Do You Want from Me,” “Poles Apart,” “Wearing the Inside Out,” “Keep Talking,” and “Lost for Words,” are concerned with various aspects of the difficulties we have in communicating with each other. Gilmour’s new wife, Polly Samson helped to harden the album’s conceptual feel, cowriting many of the lyrics with her husband. Almost certainly the last Pink Floyd studio album, The Division Bell allowed the band to bow out in pristine fashion—which may or may not be what you want from them.

ALBUMS

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Se le c te d B ibliography Inside Out—A Personal History of Pink Floyd by Nick Mason. Weidenfeld & Nicolson

DVD

Madcap—The Half Life of Syd Barrett by Tim Willis. Short Books

The Making of Dark Side of the Moon. Eagle Rock

Pink Floyd by Rick Sanders. Futura

Live At Pompeii—The Director’s Cut. Universal The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story. Direct Video The Story of Wish You Were Here. Eagle Rock

Pink Floyd: In the Flesh by Glenn Povey and Ian Russell. Bloomsbury Pink Floyd: The Early Years by Barry Miles. Omnibus

Websites

Pink Floyd: The Visual Documentary by Barry Miles and Andy Mabbett. Omnibus

brain-damage.co.uk

Saucerful Of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey by Nicholas Schaffner. Sidgwick & Jackson

pink-floyd.org

pinkfloydz.com

pinkfloyd.net pinkfloydarchives.com

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A c knowle d gme nts In addition to his own interviews with David Gilmour, Roger Waters, and Richard Wright, the author acknowledges material from the following publications and radio stations: Beat Instrumental, Billboard, Capitol Radio, Classic Rock, Disc and Music Echo, Evening Standard, Guitar World, Hollywood Reporter, International Times, Melody Maker, Mojo, New Musical Express, Q, Radio One, Record Mirror, Rolling Stone, Sounds, Spin, Street Life, Sunday Times, Terrapin, Toronto Q107 Rock Radio, Trouser Press, Zigzag.

Hugh Fielder would like to thank Dennis Pernu at Voyageur Press for getting this whole project started; Jeannine Dillon at Race Point for her encouragement and patience (especially her patience); Tom Seabrook for his valiant efforts on behalf of the collective noun; his wife, daughters, and sons-in-law for understanding that he will never really grow up; and Pink Floyd for being such a remarkable band.

P ic tur e C r e d i ts ALAMY IMAGES

P38, Pink Floyd backstage at the Saville Theatre © Pictorial Press Ltd /

P9, Grantchester Meadow, Cambridge © Anthony Eva / Alamy P9, Rupert Brooke © Lebrecht Music & Arts Photo Library / Alamy P11, Miller’s Music Shop © Kumar Sriskandan / Alamy P13, Regent Street Polytechnic © Graham Salter / Lebrecht Music & Arts Library / Alamy P14, Early group shot of Pink Floyd © Interfoto / Alamy P21, Pink Floyd at the UFO club © Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy P36–37, Pink Floyd with Jimi Hendrix on tour © Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy

Alamy P45, Roger Waters in NY in 1968 © Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy P45, Pink Floyd performing in NY in 1968, top © Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy P45, Pink Floyd performing in NY in 1968, bottom © Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy P51, Terrapin magazine © Jeff Morgan 16 / Alamy P58, Pink Floyd promo 1970 © Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy P74, Malcolm Muggeridge © Penny Tweedie / Alamy

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P95, 1974 promotional photo © A.F. Archive / Alamy P135, Rick Wright with son © Interfoto / Alamy P149, The Wall, children in masks © Moviestore collection Ltd / Alamy P149, The Wall, pig © Moviestore collection Ltd / Alamy P153, The Wall, Bob Geldof © Moviestore collection Ltd / Alamy P182–183, Berlin wall rehearsal with the Scorpions © Brian Harris / Alamy P211–212, Roger Waters performing in San Francisco, California in 2012 © Zuma Press, Inc. / Alamy

BARRY PLUMMER PHOTOS P71, David Gilmour at the Rainbow © Barry Plummer P109, Roger Waters backstage at Knebworth © Barry Plummer P109, Rick Wright backstage at Knebworth © Barry Plummer P109, David Gilmour backstage at Knebworth © Barry Plummer P125, David Gilmour playing his steel guitar © Barry Plummer P158, Rick Wright at Britannia Row © Barry Plummer

FLOYDSTUFF.COM

P156, The Wall promotional booklet P157, “Not Now John” single P159, David Gilmour press photo #1 P163, Roger Waters press photo P166, Pink Floyd press photo #1 P169, “Learning to Fly” single P169, “On the Turning Away” single P169, “One Slip” single P171, World Tour 1987–1988 program P171, A Momentary Lapse of Reason AAA pass P178, Goffertpark Nijmegen ticket stub P187, Division Bell promotional postcard P188, Pink Floyd Airship press photo P188, “High Hopes” single P190, Earls Court ticket stub P191, Pulse press folder P191, “Wish You Were Here” single P194, Echoes promotional flyer P200, Roger Waters’ Dark Side tour program

FRANK WHITE PHOTO AGENCY

P12, “Those Without” ticket stub P13, Syd Barrett painting P15, “Syd Barrett’s First Trip” video cover P17, Pink Floyd press photo P26,”Arnold Layne” single P39, “Apple & Oranges” single P43, “It Would Be So Nice” single P43, “Let There Be More Light” single P44, Brussels press photo P45, “Point Me at the Sky” single P46, Shrine expo flyer P48, promotional postcard P66, “One of These Days” single P75, “Free Four” single P90, “Money” single P90, “Us & Them” single P90, “Time” single P108, “Have a Cigar” single P108, “Wish You Were Here” single P112, Pink Floyd songbook P114, Roger Waters concert photo P128, David Gilmour press photo P132, “Another Brick in the Wall” single P132, “Run Like Hell” single P151, The Wall press photo of Bob Geldof P155, “When the Tigers Broke Free” single

P42, Roger Waters in the Hague © Laurens Van Houten / Frank White Photo Agency P42, David Gilmour in the Hague © Laurens Van Houten / Frank White Photo Agency P42, Nick Mason in the Hague © Laurens Van Houten / Frank White Photo Agency P55, Pink Floyd at the Rotterdam Pop Festival © Laurens Van Houten / Frank White Photo Agency P55, Pink Floyd (Roger Waters lifting guitar) at the Rotterdam Pop Festival © Laurens Van Houten / Frank White Photo Agency P62, David Gilmour backstage at the Ahoy © Laurens Van Houten / Frank White Photo Agency P62, Nick Mason at the Ahoy © Laurens Van Houten / Frank White Photo Agency P63, David Gilmour at the Ahoy © Laurens Van Houten / Frank White Photo Agency P67, Nick Mason at Boston Music Hall © Jim Kozlowski / Frank White Photo Agency P69, Rick Wright at Boston Music Hall © Jim Kozlowski / Frank White Photo Agency P139, The Wall in NY (faces) © Al Munson / Frank White Photo Agency P141, The Wall in NY with Roger Waters © Ron Akiyama / Frank White Photo Agency P141, The Wall in NY (hammer) © Ron Akiyama / Frank White Photo Agency

PICTURE CREDITS

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GETTY IMAGES P2, Pink Floyd in pink © Michael Ochs Archive P4, Dark Side of the Moon promotional shot © Michael Ochs Archive P7, Bridge over the River Cam in Cambridge © Kathleen Revis / National Geographic / Getty Images P8, Poster produced for London & North Eastern Railway © Science & Society Picture Library / SSPL via Getty Images P10, The Radio Luxembourg studio © Deutsch Jean-Claude / Paris Match via Getty Images P20, Rick Wright at the UFO Club © Andrew Whittuck / Redferns P20, Nick Mason at the UFO Club © Andrew Whittuck / Redferns P21, Roger Waters at the UFO Club © Andrew Whittuck / Redferns P23, Pink Floyd circa 1967 © Doug McKenzie / Getty Images P25, Pink Floyd portrait 1967 © Michael Ochs Archives P27, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Rick Wright in recording studio © Andrew Whittuck / Redferns P27, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, Syd Barrett, and Rick Wright in a recording studio © Andrew Whittuck / Redferns P29, Syd Barrett performing at Alexandra Palace © Michael Putland / Getty Images P29, Rehearsal for Pink Floyd’s “Games for May” © Nick Hale / Getty Images P30, Rick Wright, Syd Barrett, and Roger Waters at the timpani © Nick Hale / Getty Images P31, Syd Barrett adjusting a rubber duck © Nick Hale / Getty Images P32, Syd Barrett at a 1967 BBC Radio taping © Chris Walter / WireImage P33, Rick Wright, Nick Mason, Syd Barrett, and Roger Waters at BBC Studios © Chris Walter / WireImage P34, SF Fillmore poster © GAB Archive / Redferns P35, Nice and Davy O’List © Jan Persson / Redferns P41, Pink Floyd in pink © Michael Ochs Archives P43, Producer Norman Smith © Jorgen Angel / Redferns P49, Michelangelo Antonioni shooting a film © Mondadori / Mondadori via Getty Images P51, Portrait of Syd Barrett © Gems / Redferns P53, Roger Waters in the studio © Andrew Whittuck / Redferns P54, Producer Ron Geesin © Brian Shuel / Redferns P56, Hyde Park in July of 1970 © Michael Putland / Getty Images P57, Roger Waters in Hyde Park © Michael Putland / Getty Images P59, Rick Wright, David Gilmour, Nick Mason backstage in Copenhagen © Hans-Jurgen Dibbert—K&K / Redferns P60–61, Roger Waters and Rick Wright in Copenhagen © Jorgen Angel / Redferns P64, A fan in the pond at the Crystal Palace concert bowl © Popperfoto / Getty Images P65, Rick Wright in Copenhagen © Jorgen Angel / Redferns P73, Pink Floyd performing in London © Michael Putland / Getty Images

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P76–77, Pink Floyd performing in Amsterdam © Gijsbert Hanekroot / Redferns P78–79, Pink Floyd performing at the Olympisch Stadion © Gijsbert Hanekroot / Redferns P80, Roger Waters in Amsterdam © Gijsbert Hanekroot / Redferns P80, Roger Waters on stage in 1972 © Michael Putland / Getty Images P81, Alan Parsons © Michael Ochs Archives P82, Roger Waters and David Gilmour in Marseilles © Deutsch Jean-Claude / Paris Match via Getty Images P83, Pink Floyd with family in Marseilles © Deutsch Jean-Claude / Paris Match via Getty Images P84, Pink Floyd in Marseilles at ballet © Deutsch Jean-Claude / Paris Match via Getty Images P85, Dark Side of the Moon promotional shot © RB / Redferns P86, Dark Side of the Moon promotional shot © Michael Ochs Archives P88, Pink Floyd circa 1973 © Jeffrey Mayer / WireImage P90, Gong on fire at Earls Court © David Warner Ellis / Redferns P91, David Gilmour onstage at Earls Court © David Warner Ellis / Redferns P91, Pink Floyd performing at Earls Court © David Warner Ellis / Redferns P93, Wizard of Oz movie poster © GAB Archive / Redferns P98, Steve O’Rourke with band members reflected in mirror behind him © Mick Gold / Redferns P99, Nick Mason and Roger Waters performing in 1974 © Mick Gold / Redferns P101–102, Pink Floyd performing onstage during the Winter tour © Mick Gold / Redferns P102, Kate Bush © Chris Walter / WireImage P102, Roy Harper performing live onstage © Collin Fuller / Redferns P103, Robert Wyatt © Michael Ochs Archives P105, Pink Floyd performing in Los Angeles in 1975 © Michael Ochs Archives P106, David Gilmour in 1975 © Jeffrey Mayer / WireImage P107, David Gilmour in 1975 © Jeffrey Mayer / WireImage P111, Paul McCartney and David Gilmour © Michael Putland / Getty Images P115, Photo shoot at Battersea Power Station © Keystone / Getty Images P117, Nick Mason in Rotterdam © Gijsbert Hanekroot / Redferns P117, Sound engineers at the mixing desk before a Floyd concert © Gijsbert Hanekroot / Redferns P118, David Gilmour in Rotterdam © Gijsbert Hanekroot / Redferns P119, Snowy White performing live onstage with Pink Floyd © Ian Dickson / Redferns P120, Pink Floyd performing in Rotterdam with the inflatable pig © Rob Verhorst / Redferns P121, Gerald Scarfe © Terrence Spencer / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images P122, Pink Floyd on the Animals tour © David Redfern / Redferns

PINK FLOYD: BEHIND THE WALL

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P124, David Gilmour with Fender amp heads and Stratocaster © Rob Verhorst / Redferns P127, Nicky Horne, Brian James, and Nick Mason © Erica Echenberg / Redferns P131, Roger Waters in 1979 © Richard McCaffrey / Getty Images P134, Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro © Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images P136–137, Roger Waters rehearsing for The Wall © Evening Standard / Getty Images P142–143, Stage shot of the Wall © Peter Still / Redferns P144, The Wall in London (hammer) © Rob Verhorst / Redferns P145, Teacher puppet © Peter Still / Redferns P146–147, The Wall in London destroyed © Rob Verhorst / Redferns P149, David Gilmour performing live with a Fender Stratocaster © Phil Dent / Redferns P150, Director Alan Parker © Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images P154, Carla Bley © David Redfern / Redferns P159, David Gilmour performing live with a Fender Stratocaster © Phil Dent / Redferns P161, Roger Waters and Eric Clapton performing live onstage © Rob Verhorst / Redferns P162, Bryan Ferry and David Gilmour onstage at Live Aid in 1985 © Georges DeKeerle / Getty Images P165, Rick Wright, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason in 1988 © Michael Putland / Getty Images P170, Nick Mason, Rick Wright, and David Gilmour © Rob Verhorst / Redferns P173, Pink Floyd doing a curtain call after a concert in Minneapolis © Jim Steinfeldt / Getty Images P172, Giant pig above the stage at Wembley Stadium © Peter Still / Redferns P174–175, Pink Floyd performing in Rotterdam in 1988 © Rob Verhorst / Redferns P176–177, Pink Floyd performing in Rotterdam in 1988 © Rob Verhorst / Redferns P179, Pink Floyd live onstage in Belgium © Rob Verhorst / Redferns P180, Pink Floyd in 1990 © Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images P181, Roger Waters onstage at the Wall concert in Berlin © Michael Putland / Getty Images P184–185, Roger Waters performs the Wall in Berlin © Georges Merillon / Gammo-Rapho via Getty Images P187, David Gilmour and Polly Samson © Dave M. Benett / Getty Images P189, David Gilmour, Rick Wright, and Nick Mason in 1994 on the Divison Bell tour © Denis O’Regan / Getty Images P190, View of the stage show on Pink Floyd’s Division Bell tour © Denis O’Regan / Getty Images

P193, Roger Waters at the Glastonbury Festival © John Furniss / WireImage P194, Roger Waters sitting outside Abbey Road © Will Rosser / Sony Music Archive / Getty Images P195, Roger Waters performing in Venezuela in 2002 © Juan Barreto / AFP / Getty Images P197, Rick Wright at Live 8 © Mick Hutson / Redferns P198, Nick Mason at Live 8 © Peter Still / Redferns P198, David Gilmour and Roger Waters at Live 8 © John Furniss / WireImage P199, David Gilmour at Live 8 © John Furniss / WireImage P201, Roger Waters performing in Sydney, Australia © Lisa Maree Williams / Getty Images P202–203, Sky Arts tribute to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon in London sky © Getty Images P203, Roger Waters performing in Hong Kong with Syd Barrett images © Richard A. Brooks / AFP / Getty Images P204, Rick Wright performing at Live 8 © John Furniss / WireImage P205, Roger Waters performing at the Wells Fargo Center in 2010 © Jeff Fusco / Getty Images P206, Roger Waters performing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania © Jeff Fusco / Getty Images P209, Roger Waters performing The Wall in Atlanta, Georgia © Chris McKay / WireImage

OUTLINE PRESS P124, David Gilmour’s 1954 Fender Stratocaster

PINK FLOYD ARCHIVES P26, “Arnold Layne” sheet music P34, Jimi Hendrix tour poster P48, 1968 tour program P74, Eclipse program P98, Tour program/comic P141, The Wall tour poster P155, “When the Tigers Broke Free” sheet music P178, World tour program

All reasonable attempts have been made to contact the copyright holders of all images.

PICTURE CREDITS

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I nd e x Page numbers in italics indicate photographs.

Abbey Road Studios 26, 50, 54, 62, 64, 68, 80, 83, 85, 104, 108, 113, 194, 224 Abdabs 13 About Face (Gilmour) 158, 158, 163, 220, 229 Acer Arena, Sydney, Waters’ solo performance at, 2007 201 Adams, Douglas 188 Ahoy, Rotterdam: live performance at, 1971 62 live performance at, 1977 117, 199 Air Studios 64 “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” (Pink Floyd) 57, 226 Aldiss, John 56 Alexandra Palace, London 28, 29, 32 Algie (inflatable pig) 115, 116, 121, 168 All Saints Hall, London 19, 22 Altham, Dave 14 American Bandstand 35 AMM 18 Amsterdam Rock Circus, live performance at, 1972 80 Amused to Death (Waters) 180–181, 186, 186, 194, 222 Anger, Kenneth 22 Animal Farm (Orwell) 113–114, 113 Animals (Pink Floyd) 92, 113, 114, 115, 116, 116, 117, 119, 120, 122, 123, 138, 212, 215, 225, 227, 229 Animals tour, 1977 see In the Flesh Tour “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” (Pink Floyd) 132, 132, 135, 138, 154, 156, 195, 196, 217, 223, 228 Antonioni, Michelangelo 22, 49, 49 Apollo 11 48 Appice, Carmine 168 “Apples and Oranges” (Barrett) 33, 35, 38, 39, 217 “Arnold Layne” (Barrett) 22, 24, 26, 26, 30–31, 169, 217 “Arnold Layne” (Gilmour feat. Bowie and Wright) 200, 200

“Astronomy Domine” (Barrett) 48, 218 Atom Heart Mother (album) (Pink Floyd) 9, 54, 56, 57, 58–59, 59, 62, 66, 187, 195, 214, 225–26 “Atom Heart Mother” (single) (Pink Floyd) 44, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 64 “Baby Lemonade” (Barrett) 50 Barrett (Barrett) 13, 50, 219 Barrett, Dr. Arthur 8 Barrett, Rose 9 Barrett, Syd 8, 9 artistry of 13 childhood 8 death 204 drug taking 11, 22, 30–31, 35, 50 education 10, 11, 13 father dies 11 first guitars 10, 11 first record bought 10 forced out of Pink Floyd 39, 42, 43 guitar playing 13 joins first band 11 life after Pink Floyd 42, 50–51, 104, 108 mental condition 30–39 painting 8, 11, 13, 13, 22, 51 Radio 1 sessions 50, 219 “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” and 104, 108 solo gigs 50 solo recordings 13, 50, 51, 219 see also under individual recording title Syd Barrett’s First Trip 15, 15 turns up at Pink Floyd gigs 42 see also under individual album and song title Bath Festival 1970 57 Battersea Power Station 115, 116 BBC 10, 48, 50, 57 Beatles 12, 13, 18, 32, 87 Beck, Jeff 15, 38–39, 186 Belloc, Hillaire 22 Birmingham’s Mothers Club, live performance at, 1969 48

Blackhill Enterprises 19, 42, 45, 103 Blade Runner (movie) 93 Bley, Carla 154, 154 Blow Up 22, 49 “Bob Dylan’s Blues” (Barrett) 51 The Body 54 Boston, Massachusetts, live performance at, 1971 66–67, 69 Bowie, David 129, 200 Boyd, Joe 23, 24, 26, 31 “Brain Damage” (Waters) 72 “Breathe” (Pink Floyd) 92, 124, 196 Brickman, Mark 187, 188, 201 Britannia Row Productions 113, 129, 132, 133, 135, 157, 158, 163, 187 Burdon, Eric 22 Burroughs, William 22 Bush, Kate 102, 103 “Butterfly” (Barrett) 15 Ça Ira (Waters) 181, 222 Cambridge 7, 8, 8, 15, 19, 22, 30, 43, 45, 50, 51, 171 Cambridge Technical College 11, 13 Cambridgeshire High School for Boys 9, 10, 11 “Candy and a Currant Bun” (“Let’s Roll Another One”) (Barrett) 15, 24, 26 Capitol Records 33, 35, 58, 66, 90, 96, 154 “Careful with That Axe, Eugene” (Pink Floyd) 42, 48, 49, 68 Carin, Jon 166, 171, 196, 200 Castalia Institute, Milbrook, New York 19 CBS Records 90, 133, 135, 154, 160, 163, 166, 167 Chapman, Ken 13 Cheetah Club, Los Angeles, live performance at, 1967 35 Chelsea Hotel 45 Christie, Carolyn 129, 186 Clapton, Eric 15, 160 A Clockwork Orange (movie) 59 Cochran, Eddie 10, 11

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A Collection of Great Dance Songs (Pink Floyd) 154, 154, 216 Collins, Mel 128 Columbia Records 48 “Comfortably Numb” (Pink Floyd) 124, 132, 135, 140, 179, 200, 208 Concert for Sandy Relief 208 Contact (movie) 93 Copenhagen, live performance at, 1970 62 Corgan, Billy 194 Cornish, Pete 124 “Corporal Clegg” (Waters) 43 “Crawling King Snake” (John Lee Hooker) 13 Crosby, David 200 Crystal Palace Garden Party, 1971 64, 64 “Cymbaline” (Pink Floyd) 46 Damned 127, 128, 129, 129 “Dark Globe” (Barrett) 50 Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd) 44, 49, 74, 80–81, 83, 84–85, 86, 86, 90, 92, 96, 98, 104, 107, 119, 132, 168, 187, 189, 194, 200–201, 202–203, 204, 212, 213, 215, 226–227 Dark Side of the Moon, Waters’ solo tour, 2006– 2008 200–201, 201 Dave Gilmour Signature Stratocaster 124 David Gilmour (Gilmour) 128, 128, 220 Deep End band 163 Deep Purple 59 The Delicate Sound of Thunder (Pink Floyd) 178, 179, 215, 218 Dennis, Chris 15 Discovery (Pink Floyd) 209 The Division Bell (Pink Floyd) 187–189, 187, 188, 189, 190, 190, 215, 229 The Division Bell, tour, 1994 187–190, 189, 190 Dobro 160 “Dogs” (“You Gotta Be Crazy”) (Waters) 98, 113, 114, 194 “Dominoes” (Barrett) 50 Donegan, Lonnie 10 Driscoll, Jerry 85 Driving Force 163 “Each Small Candle” (Waters) 195 Earls Court: The Division Bell tour, 1994 190 Shelter benefit concert at, 1973 90, 91 The Wall tour at, 1980 142–143, 144–145, 146–147 Echoes (Pink Floyd) 194, 216 “Echoes” (Pink Floyd) 44, 64, 68, 93 Eclipse (working title for Dark Side of the Moon) 74, 81 Edwards, Bernard 132 “Effervescing Elephant” (Barrett) 13 Elektra Records 23, 24

Emerson Lake & Palmer 113 EMI 24, 26, 42, 43, 45, 48, 50, 51, 58, 62, 113, 163, 166, 167 Empire Pool, Wembley, live performance at, 1974 98 Evans, Sean 206, 208 Everly Brothers 11 Ezrin, Bob 129, 132, 133, 135, 138, 157, 158, 167, 168, 169, 187, 229 Faces 64 Faithfull, Marianne 22 Fantasia (movie) 93 Farnborough Technical College, live performance at, 1971 62 “Fat Old Sun” (Gilmour) 9, 57, 195 “Fearless” (Gilmour–Waters) 65 Fender 124 Fenn, Rick 163 Ferry, Bryan 162, 163, 166 Filmore West and Winterland The Final Cut (Pink Floyd) 8, 156–157, 158, 160, 169, 215, 228 First 3 Singles (Pink Floyd) 22 Fisher, Mark 107, 138, 140, 181, 187, 205–206 A Foot in the Door (Pink Floyd) 209, 216 14-Hour Technicolor Dream 28, 28 Games for May concept show, 1967 28, 28, 29, 30, 30, 31, 51 “Games for May” (Barrett) 30 Geesin, Ron 54, 54, 56, 57 Geldof, Bob 150, 151, 152–153, 156, 196 Geoff Mott and the Mottoes 11 “Gigolo Aunt” (Barrett) 50 Gilmour, David 8, 15, 71 on “Atom Heart Mother” 54 Barrett and 8, 12, 13, 15, 30–31, 42, 43, 50, 108 Barrett solo recordings and 50 birth and childhood 8–9, 10 Cambridge Technical College 13 CBE 196 Dark Side of the Moon and 81, 90, 92, 93, 212 discography 220 education 10 equipment 124, 124, 125 fame 194 The Final Cut and 156, 157 first guitar 10 first record bought 10 joins Pink Floyd 38–39, 42–43 Jokers Wild 13, 14, 30, 128, 140 Live Aid and 162, 163 Live 8 and 196–197, 199, 198, 199 love life/marriages 59, 104, 180, 186, 187

Momentary Lapse of Reason and 166, 167, 168, 169, 171 More and 46 on Norton Warburg and business failings of Pink Floyd 132–133 on Pink Floyd as a band of seekers 104 Pop Quiz 154 response to criticism 102 right to name “Pink Floyd” 173 on “A Saucerful of Secrets” 44 Sex Pistols, on 113 solo work 128, 128, 133, 158, 158, 159, 160, 195, 200, 200, 204, 204 see also under individual recording title songwriting see under individual song title Soyuz TM–7 and 179 split of Pink Floyd and 160, 163, 166, 167 support for other artists 103 The Wall and 129, 132, 135, 138, 140 Waters’ Wall tour and 208 Wright’s exit from Pink Floyd and 133, 135 Glastonbury Festival, Waters’ solo performance at, 2002 192–193, 195 “Golden Hair” (Barrett) 50 Gordon, John 14 “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party” (Mason) 48 “Grantchester Meadows” (Waters) 9, 46, 57 “Great Gig in the Sky” (Wright) 74, 81, 92, 124 Green (Hillage) 129 “Green Is the Colour” (Pink Floyd) 46 Griffiths, Nick 135 Guthrie, James 157 Hammersmith Odeon, live performance at, 1984 148–149 Harper, Roy 102, 104, 128 Harrison, George 28, 32 Harvest Records 48, 50 “Have a Cigar” (Waters) 104, 108, 119, 217 “Have You Got It Yet?” (Barrett) 39 Havel, Václav 189 Henderson, Peter 84 Hendrix, Jimi 22, 32, 34, 35 “High Hopes” (Pink Floyd) 188, 218 Hipgnosis 45, 108, 138, 169 The Hit (movie) 160 Hiwatt 124 Holly, Buddy 11 Holophonic Sound 157 Holzman, Jac 24 Horne, Nicky 127 Hornsey College of Art 15 Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, Minneapolis 173 Humble Pie 50 Hyde Park, live performance at, 1970 56, 57

INDEX

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“If” (Waters) 56–7, 160 “In the Flesh” (Pink Floyd) 195 In the Flesh tour, 1977 119, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 123, 128, 130, 140, 195 In the Flesh Waters’ solo tour, 1999–2003 194–195, 195 Incredible String Band 24 International Times 19, 22, 28, 31 “Interstellar Overdrive” (Barrett) 22, 24, 26, 27, 45 Is There Anybody Out There – the Wall Live 1980– 1981 (Pink Floyd) 216 Islington Green School 135 “It Would Be So Nice” (Wright) 43, 217 James, Brian 126, 128 “Je Crois Entendre Encore” (Bizet) 195 Jenner, Peter 18, 19, 22, 24, 32, 33, 35, 42, 50 Jethro Tull 45 Jimi Hendrix tour, 1967 34, 35, 35, 36–37 Jokers Wild 13, 14, 30, 128, 140 Jones, Malcolm 50 Joplin, Janis 35 “Jugband Blues” (Barrett) 32, 33, 43 Kamen, Michael 135, 157, 160 KB Hallen, Copenhagen, live performance at, 1971 65 Keltner, Jim 168 Kenner, Peter 50 King, Andrew 18, 19, 24, 32, 33, 35, 42 Kinks 18 Klose, Bob 10, 11, 13, 15 Knebworth Festival, 1975 108, 109, 109, 111 Kubrick, Stanley 59 La Carrera Panamericana (Pink Floyd) 186–187, 186 La Vallée (movie) 74, 75 Ladd, Jim 168, 169 Lear, Edward 22 “Learning to Fly” (Pink Floyd) 166, 166, 169, 218 Leary, Timothy 19 Lennon, John 28, 158, 163 Leonard, Mike 15 “Let There Be More Light” (Waters) 43, 43, 217 Levin, Tony 168 Live Aid 162, 163 Live 8 196, 196, 197, 198, 199, 204 London ’66–’67 (Pink Floyd) 24 London Free School 19 Los Angeles, live performance at, 1973 88–89 Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, live performance at, 1975 105, 107 “Love for Levon” concert, 2012 208 “Love Song” (Barrett) 50 “Lucifer Sam” (Barrett) 22

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Lulubelle III 58 Lynton, Annette 186 Maben, Adrian 68 The Madcap Laughs (Barrett) 50, 51, 219 Madison Square Garden, New York, live performance at, 1977 123 Manchester College of Commerce 48 Marseilles, France, live performance at, 1972 82, 84 Martin, George 24, 64 Marvin, Hank 124 Mason, Lindy 48 Mason, Nick 65 Barrett’s exit from Pink Floyd and 35, 38, 39, 42, 43, 108 birth and childhood 12 Britannia Row and 163 Cambridge Technical College 11 Dark Side of the Moon and 72, 80, 82, 87, 93, 212 Discography 221 Driving Force, appears on 163 drug taking 19 education 11, 12 Final Cut and 156, 157, 158, 229 first band 12 first records 12 on Gilmour joining Pink Floyd 38, 43 Hillage, work with 129 on Pink Floyd’s equipment 113 La Carrera Panamericana and 186–187 on Live at Pompeii 68 Live 8 and 196, 198 marriages 48, 104, 128, 186 Meddle and 226 A Momentary Lapse of Reason and 169, 229 on Pink Floyd method of working 44 produces The Damned 128, 129, 129 produces Wyatt 103 on Pink Floyd record deal 26 Regent Street Polytechnic 13, 15 right to name “Pink Floyd” 173 Rock Bottom, performs on 103 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and 194 Sigma 6 and 13 solo recordings 154, 154, 162, 163 Soyuz Tm-7 and 179 The Wall and 132, 135, 138, 140, 156 on underground scene 22, 25 Ummagumma and 225 Waters’ exit from Pink Floyd and 133, 163, 166, 168 Waters’ political views and 114 Waters’ The Wall tour and 208 Wright exit from Pink Floyd and 135 The Massed Gadgets of Auximenes—More Furious Madness from the Pink Floyd 48

Masters of Rock (Pink Floyd) 96 “Mathilda Mother” (Barrett) 22, 35 Max, Arthur 72 MC5 50 McCartney, Paul 19, 22, 28, 85, 111 Meddle (Pink Floyd) 66, 66, 72, 92, 157, 187, 214, 226 Medicine Head 81 Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief 181 Middle Earth, Convent Garden 42 Millers Music Shop, Cambridge 10, 11 A Momentary Lapse of Reason (Pink Floyd) 167, 168, 169, 171, 171, 179, 215, 229 A Momentary Lapse of Reason, tour, 1987–1988 171, 171, 172, 173, 174–175, 176–177, 186 “Money” (Pink Floyd) 72, 74, 81, 90, 92, 124, 154, 179, 196, 217 Moore, Anthony 168 More (soundtrack from the movie) 46, 47, 48, 187, 214 Morrison, Bryan 24, 42, 48 “Mother” (Pink Floyd) 135, 195 Mothers Club, Birmingham 48 The Move 32, 35 Muggeridge, Malcolm 74 “Murder” (Gilmour) 158 Music for Pleasure (Damned) 128, 129 Music for the Body 54 Music in Colour, Commonwealth Institute, Kensington 23 “The Narrow Way” (Gilmour) 48 Nash, Graham 200 Nassau Coliseum, New York: Another Lapse tour, 1988 179 The Wall tour, 1980 139, 140, 141 New Musical Express 102 Newmark, Andy 157 Nice 35, 35 A Nice Pear (Pink Floyd) 96, 97, 216 Nick Mason’s Fictitious Sports (Mason) 154, 221 “Nick’s Boogie” (Pink Floyd) 24 Noble, Keith 11, 13 Noble, Richard 163 Nureyev, Rudolf 83 O’List, Davy 35 O’Rourke, Steve 42, 98, 123, 162, 163, 186 Obscured by Clouds (Pink Floyd) 72, 74, 75, 187, 215 Oh, by the Way (Pink Floyd) 201 “The Old Vicarage, Granchester” (Brooke) 9 Oldfield, Mike 163 Olympisch Stadion, Amsterdam, live performance at, 1972 76–77, 78–79 On an Island (Gilmour) 200, 200, 220

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“On the Run” (Pink Floyd) 74, 80 “One Of These Days” (Pink Floyd) 64–65, 66, 68, 217 “One Slip” (Pink Floyd) 169, 218 “One Thousand and One Nights” 83 Ono, Yoko 28 Opel 51, 219 “Outside the Wall” (Pink Floyd) 208 Palladino, Pino 158 Parker, Alan 150, 150, 156 Parry, Dick 196, 200 Parsons, Alan 80, 81, 81, 92 Pat Boone Show 35 Patterson, Floyd 96 Peel, John 57 The Perry Como Show 35 Perse School 10 Phang, W.R. 96 “Pigs” (“Three Different Ones”) (Waters) 114 “Pigs on the Wing (Part I)” (Waters) 114 “Pigs on the Wing (Part II)” (Waters) 114 “A Pillow of Winds” (Gilmour–Waters) 65 Pink Floyd: albums see under individual album title Barrett forced out of 39, 42, 43 discography 214–219 financial affairs 132–133, 138 as a five-piece 39 formation of 8–13 legal right to name 173 name, birth of 15 record deal, first 24, 26 reunion at Live 8 196, 197, 198 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction 194 sales 66, 90, 104, 119, 138, 157, 212 songs see under individual song title split 156–157, 158, 163, 166, 167, 168 tours 33, 34, 35, 35, 38, 45, 48, 54, 57, 58, 66, 72, 74, 83, 87, 90, 96, 98, 98, 99, 100–101, 104, 107, 107, 108, 117, 119, 119, 120, 122, 123, 123, 128, 129, 138, 140, 141, 142–147, 168, 169, 171, 171, 173, 174–177, 179, 179, 186, 187, 188, 189, 189, 190, 190 see under individual album, tour and venue name Wright leaves 133, 135 see also under individual member name The Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett Story 32, 96, 108 Pink Floyd Blues Band 15 Pink Floyd Sound 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (movie) 68, 82, 83, 218 Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Pink Floyd) 27, 32, 33, 38, 45, 96, 214, 224 “Point Me at the Sky” (Gilmour–Waters) 46, 46, 217 Polanski, Roman 83

Polydor Records 24 Pop Festival, Rotterdam, 1970 55 Porcaro, Jeff 134, 135, 158 Povey, Glenn 56 “Pow R Toc H” (Barrett) 22 Pratt, Guy 171, 187, 200 Preisner, Zbigniew 200 Price, Jonathan 107 Procol Harum 32, 34 Profiles (Mason) 162, 163, 221 The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking (Waters) 129, 158, 159, 160, 163, 171, 221 Pulse (Pink Floyd) 92, 190, 191, 216, 218 Quiver 128 Radio K.A.O.S. (Waters) 168–169, 186, 221 Radio London 26 Radio Luxembourg 10, 10 Rainbow Theatre, live performance at, 1972 71, 74 Ralphs, Mick 158 Regent Street Polytechnic College, London 11, 12, 13, 13, 15 Relics (Pink Floyd) 68, 68, 216 “Remember a Day” (Wright) 43 “Remember Me” (Barrett) 15 Remember That Night (Gilmour) 204, 204 Remembrance of Things Past (Proust) 83 Renwick, Tim 171, 196 “Return of the Son of Nothing” (Pink Floyd) 62, 64 “Rhamadan” (Barrett) 51 Richards, Keith 13 Ritchie, Ian 168 “Rock Around the Clock” (Haley) 10 Rock Bottom (Wyatt) 103 Roda-Gil, Étienne 181 Rodgers, Nile 132 Roeg, Nicholas 160 Roland Petit Ballet 83 Rolling Stones, The 13–14, 18, 59 “Run Like Hell” (Pink Floyd) 130, 132, 179, 217, 218, 223 Sainty, Tony 14 Samson, Polly 186, 200 Sandall, Robert 22, 81 A Saucerful of Secrets (Pink Floyd) 43, 45, 46, 96, 195, 214, 224–225 “A Saucerful of Secrets” (Pink Floyd) 43, 44, 45, 48, 68 Saville Theatre, London, backstage at, 1967 38 Scarfe, Gerald 121, 121, 138, 140, 150, 156, 160, 195, 205, 208 Scene, New York 45, 45 Schaffner, Nicholas 19 Schroeder, Barbet 46, 74

Scott, Tom 168 “Scream Thy Last Scream” (Barrett) 33, 43 Screaming Abdabs 13, 15 “Seamus” (Pink Floyd) 65 “See Emily Play” (Barrett) 30, 31, 35, 217 “See Saw” (Wright) 43 “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” (Waters) 32, 43, 68, 74, 160, 195 “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict” (Waters) 46 Sex Pistols 113 Shadows 11, 124 “Sheep” (“Raving and Drooling”) (Waters) 98, 113, 119 Shelter benefit concert, Earls Court, London, 1973 90, 91 Shine On (Pink Floyd) 186 “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” (Pink Floyd) 50, 96, 98, 104, 108, 119, 124 Shirley, Jerry 50 Shrine Exposition Hall, Los Angeles, live performance at, 1968 46 Sigma 6 13 Silver Clef Awards Winners charity show 186 Singh, Vic 32 Sky Arts 202–203 Small Faces 18, 128 “Smile” (Gilmour) 195 Smith, Norman 26, 33, 43, 44, 48, 54 Soft Machine 50, 103 Solidarity Movement 200 Solider Field Stadium, Chicago, live performance at, 1977 123 Songbook, 1977 (Pink Floyd) 112 “Sound and Light Workshop” 19 Sound Techniques, Chelsea 24 Soyuz TM–7 179 Spectrum Theatre, Philadelphia, live performance at, 1977 123 Spontaneous Underground, Marquee Club, London 18, 18 Stade Olympique, Montreal, live performance at, 1977 123 Starr, Ringo 28 Stars 50 Stile, Alan 57 “Summer ‘68” (Wright) 56, 57, 217 Super Bear Studios, Nice 133 Tailgate Two 11, 13 “Take It Back” (Pink Floyd) 188, 218 Tea Set 15 Ten Years After 45 Terrapin (Syd Barrett Appreciation Society fanzine) 50, 51

INDEX

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“Terrapin” (Barrett) 50, 195 Thatcher, Margaret 114 “The Thin Ice” (Waters) 169, 195, 206 Thomas, Chris 86 Thorgerson, Storm 10, 45, 58, 66, 86, 96, 97, 108, 138, 169 “The Tide is Turning” (Waters) 181, 223 “Time” (Pink Floyd) 74, 80, 92, 217 Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London (movie) 24 Top of the Pops 26, 30, 31 Torry, Clare 81 Tower Records 33, 35 Townshend, Pete 22, 158, 163 Tridents 15 “Two Suns in the Sunset” (Waters) 157 UFO Club 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28, 31, 42 Ummagumma (Pink Floyd) 9, 48, 49, 50, 214, 225 Unicorn 103, 128 U.S. tours: first, 1967 34, 35 second, 1968 45, 45, 46, 46 1970 58 1971 72 1972 74, 83 1975 105, 106, 107, 107, 108 1977, In the Flesh tour 123, 123 1980, The Wall tour 140 1984/85, Waters’ solo 160, 168–9 1987, A Momentary Lapse of Reason tour 171, 173, 173, 179 1994, The Division Bell tour 188, 189 1999, Waters’ solo tour 194 2006, Gilmour solo 200 2006–2008, Waters’ solo Dark Side of the Moon tour 201 2010– Waters’ solo The Wall tour 204, 208, 209, 210–211 “Us and Them” (Wright) 49, 72, 74, 90, 217 Vedder, Eddie 208 “Vegetable Man” (Barrett) 33, 43 Venice, live performance at, 1980 180 Vincent, Gene 10, 11 Vitti, Monica 22 The Wall (album) (Pink Floyd) 8, 9, 129, 132, 133, 135, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142–3, 144–145, 146–147, 150, 151, 152–3, 154, 157, 158, 204, 205, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210–211, 215, 228 The Wall (movie) 150, 151, 152–153, 154, 155, 156, 156 The Wall – Live in Berlin (Pink Floyd) 185, 186, 221–222 The Wall, tour, 1980 136–7, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142–147

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The Wall, Waters’ solo live performance, Berlin, 1990 181–182, 181, 182–183, 184–185, 186 The Wall, Waters’ solo tour of 2010, 204–206, 205, 206, 207, 209, 210–211 Wallis, Gary 171 Warburg, Andrew 132–133 Warburg, Norton 132–133 Ward, Jonathan 138, 140, 181 Waters, Eric Fletcher 8, 9 Waters, Judy 43 Waters, Mary 8 Waters, Roger 9 Animals and 104, 113, 114, 116, 121 assumes leadership of Pink Floyd 43 “Atom Heart Mother” and 54, 57 Barrett and 10–11, 35, 38, 39, 42, 43, 50 birth 8 buys first guitar 11 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, joins 10 childhood 8, 10–11, 46 criticism of lyrics, response to 102–103 Dark Side of the Moon and 87, 92, 93 Dark Side of the Moon solo tour 200–201, 200, 201, 204 death of father and 8, 154 discography 221–222 drug taking 11, 19 Final Cut and 156–157, 158 first record bought 10 Glastonbury Festival, 2002 192–193, 195 Live 8 and 196, 198, 199 love life/marriages 43, 104, 128, 186 More and 46 Obscured By Clouds and 72, 74 political views 114 Regent Street Polytechnic College, London 11, 12 Saucerful of Secrets and 43 solo work see under individual album and song title split of Pink Floyd and 133, 156–157, 158, 162, 163, 166, 167, 168, 169, 171, 173 Ummagumma and 48 The Wall (album) and 129, 132, 138, 140 The Wall (live at Berlin Wall) and 181, 181, 182–183, 184–185 The Wall (movie) and 150 The Wall (solo tour, 2010–2013) and 204, 205, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210–11 Wright exit from Pink Floyd and 133, 135 “Welcome to the Machine” (Waters) 104, 121, 194, 217 Wembley Stadium, live performance at, 1988 172, 173 Wet Dream (Wright) 128, 129

“When the Tigers Broke Free” (Waters) 154, 155, 218 White, Snowy 119, 119, 128, 140 White, Timothy 8–9 Whitehead, Peter 24 Whitehouse, Mary 114 The Who 18, 45, 158 Wills, Rick 128 Wilson, Brian 38 Wilson, Peter Wynne 19, 22, 188 Wilson, Willie 128, 140 Winter tour, 1974 99, 100–101, 102 Winwood, Steve 158 Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd) 58, 93, 104, 107, 108, 108, 113, 121, 132, 215, 227 “Wish You Were Here” (Pink Floyd) 104, 108, 191, 194 Wizard of Oz (movie) 92, 93, 93 Works (Pink Floyd) 157 Wright, Jamie 135 Wright, Juliette 13, 128 Wright, Richard 11 Atom Heart Mother and 54, 57, 56 Cambridge Technical College 11 childhood 11 Dark Side of the Moon and 72, 87 death 204 discography 223 Final Cut and 228 joins band 13 leaves Pink Floyd 133, 135, 140, 158 Live 8 196, 204 Live at Pompeii and 83 marriages 32, 128 Momentary Lapse of Reason and 229 More and 46 on early days of band 19 Porgy and Bess (Davis) and 11–12 Regent Street Polytechnic 13 returns to Pink Floyd 166–7, 168, 169, 186–7 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and 194 Sigma 6 and 13 solo albums 128, 128, 133 see also under individual recording title song writing 49, 72, 81 see also under individual song title Syd Barrett and 15, 42, 43, 44, 50, 108 UFO Club 20 The Wall and 129, 133, 135, 138, 157 Waters’ political views and 114 Wyatt, Robert 103, 103 Yardbirds 15 Yes 113 Zabriskie Point (movie) 49, 72

PINK FLOYD: BEHIND THE WALL

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A division of Book Sales, Inc. 276 Fifth Avenue, Suite 206 New York, New York 10001 RACE POINT PUBLISHING and the distinctive Race Point Publishing logo are trademarks of Book Sales, Inc. Race Point Publishing © 2013 All photographs from the publisher’s collection unless otherwise noted on pages 232–5. All background textures © iStockphoto. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are made without any guarantee on the part of the author or Publisher, who also disclaims any liability incurred in connection with the use of this data or specific details. This publication has not been prepared, approved, or licensed by Pink Floyd or any of its assignees. This is not an official publication. We recognize, further, that some words, model names, and designations mentioned herein are the property of the trademark holder. We use them for identification purposes only. ISBN-13: 978-1-937994-25-9 Digital edition: 978-1-627880-75-6 Softcover edition: 978-1-937994-25-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Author: Hugh Fielder Project editor: Jeannine Dillon Designer: Jacqui Caulton Picture research: Tom Seabrooke Printed in China 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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